Giuseppe Sarti: “One of the musicians who best knew all the secrets of the art”
Bella Brover-Lubovsky
Giuseppe Sarti (1729-1802) is best remembered nowadays as one of the late-eighteenth century Italian composers who “provided” Mozart with one of his quotations in Don Giovanni. In his time, however, Sarti was recognized as one of the central figures of his generation, both with regard to his contribution to most of the extant musical genres and to the sheer breadth of his musical activity.
Sarti was described by contemporaries as “one of the musicians who best knew all the secrets of the art” and “one of the most learned composers of his époque.” His employer, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, declared that “no one composes choruses as well as he does”, and his pupil Luigi Cherubini called Sarti’s melodies “full of charm and tenderness.”
Born in Faenza to a jeweler and an amateur violinist, Sarti began his musical training in 1738 with composer and theorist Francescantonio Vallotti, maestro di capella at the Basilica del Santo in Padua. Sarti’s kinship with Vallotti’s acoustical conceptions later led to his invention of a tool for measuring vibrations. As a composer, Vallotti’s guidance gave Sarti a firm grounding in monumental choral style, both devotional and dramatic, along with a liberal treatment of dissonance and a taste for harmonic complexity. Later, Sarti studied with the famous Giambattista Martini in Bologna, with whom he retained strong personal and professional ties long after the completion of his years of study (1739-42).
Sarti started his professional career as organist of Faenza Cathedral and theater director in his native city (1748-52), where he wrote his first opera, Pompeo in Armenia. In 1753- 1775 (excluding 1765-68), he worked in Copenhagen as an Italian opera company and court music director; and in 1766-67 he served as maestro di coro at the famous Ospedale della Pietà in Venice.
In 1779 Sarti replaced the late Giovanni Andrea Fioroni as a maestro di cappella of the Milan Duomo. His victory in the competition for the post (with an eight-voice mass for the feast of the nativity of the Holy Virgin Mary, patron saint of the cathedral) along with Teatro Alla Scala’s successful revival of his Le gelosie villane greatly increased his reputation and won him many pupils. (Sarti retained this position even when working outside Italy, dispatching to Milan numerous sacred compositions.)
Sarti’s Giulio Sabino, composed in 1781 for the Venetian Teatro St Benedetto, became one of the most popular opera seria in the late eighteenth century, revived more than twenty times by various theaters throughout Europe. A year later, Sarti’s most successful comic opera, Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode, on a libretto after Carlo Goldoni’s Le nozze, was performed in the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. It also enjoyed European-wide success, being performed in several different languages under alternative titles; in Vienna alone it received over 60 performances (in both Italian and German) by 1790.
(Its characters and intrigues are very similar to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro; and one aria–‘Com un agnello’) was quoted in Don Giovanni’s second-act finale.)
In April 1782, the Grand Duke of Russia Pavel Petrovitch, traveling incognito with his wife in Italy, heard Sarti’s Alessandro e Timoteo staged in Parma’ Teatro Ducale. The Grand Duke recommended Sarti as Giovanni Paisiello’s successor as St-Petersburg’s imperial chapel director. The empress Catherine the Great duly extended the invitation, and in 1784 Sarti moved to the Russian capital.
In St-Petersburg, Sarti enjoyed great popularity among a broad circle of music lovers as one of the most esteemed late-century “domestic” Italians. Although invited to Russia as representing the current Italian style, he displayed a remarkable openness towards local culture and musical idioms and willingly assisted the progression of Russian music. During his two periods of appointment as a court Kapellmeister (1784-87 and 1793-1801), Sarti worked in a variety of styles and genres, composing dramma per musica and comic operas, chamber cantatas and official ceremonial music, as well as spiritual choral works employing Russian Orthodox texts. He also worked as Conservatory director, presented organ recitals at St Petersburg’s Catholic church, and served as music instructor to the Theatre School. Sarti’s fascination with Russian national style culminated in his involvement in a work on a grandiose historical spectacle, The Early Reign of Oleg (along with Carlo Canobbio and Vassily Pashkevitch), on a libretto written by Catherine the Great.
Apart from his affiliation with the imperial courts of Catherine II and Paul I, Sarti enjoyed patronage from Prince Gregory Potemkin, Count Sheremetev and others from the St-Petersburg and Moscow aristocratic elité. In 1787- 91 Sarti’s family lived in a Ukrainian residence given by Potemkin, who additionally offered him the directorship of the Music Academy in the newly founded city Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), later moved to Kremenchug. Sarti also accompanied the imperial journey to the Crimean peninsula, visiting Belorussia, southern Russia, Ukraine and Bessarabia; his music was played at every significant stop. In 1796, upon his presenting a lecture on his invented tool for measuring vibrations and establishing a pitch standard for the St Petersburg orchestras, to the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Sarti was accepted as its member. In 1801, after the death of Paul I, Sarti decided to return to Italy. On the way, he was visiting one of his daughters in Berlin where he died in 1802.
Sarti’s sacred compositions masterfully combine highly elaborate contrapuntal techniques with the dramatic effects, rich and expressive orchestration and melodic opulence of opera. Sarti also displayed a highly successful flair for combining the unique tradition of the a cappella singing in the Russian Orthodox Church with his personal style. His most innovative compositions were created and performed for elaborate Russian state celebrations: the end of the Second Turkish War (1787-91) and the conclusion of a Yassy treaty. He was most celebrated in Russia for his solemn imperial style and his respect for Russian national sentiment.
Magnificat in D and Gloria in G
John A. Rice
Sarti composed this Magnificat for two four-part choruses (SATB, SATB) each accompanied by its own orchestra. In the opening movement the two choral-orchestral groups create a massive, brilliant sound: a sonic magnificence in keeping with the text’s opening word. At “Et exaltavit” the tempo quickens (Più allegro), and the choruses alternate, tossing material back and forth as if echoing one another. Sarti made the second movement, “Quia respexit,” a soprano solo, very different from the first movement, this solo uses the galant style to convey charm and gracefulness. The words “omnes generationes” (all generations) caused Sarti, momentarily, to bring back the choruses.The third movement returns to grandeur of the first, to express the meaning of the words “Quia fecit mihi magna.” But the mood suddenly changes at the words “Et misericordia” (and mercy), to which Sarti responded with the first sustained music in the minor mode and chromaticism in the melodic lines.The quiet, mysterious ending of that minor-mode passage emphasizes, by way of contrast, the brilliance of the movement that follows, “Fecit potentiam”.
Always aware of the need for contrast, for musical chiaroscuro, Sarti found plenty of opportunity for novelty in “Suscepit Israel.” The choruses give way to solo soprano and alto. As in “Quia respexit” the galant style predominates, but here triple meter gives the music in sound of a tender, slow minuet. From the words “Sicut locutus” to the end of the Magnificat, Sarti’s setting unfolds in a series of connected movements, culminating with a great fugue (“Sicut erat in principio”). The two chorus first sing fugal expositions in alternation, but eventually produce a contrapuntal climax by singing in eight parts simultaneously.
Vocal soloists play an important role in this Gloria, whose aria-like movements for soli and the long orchestral introductions at the beginning of almost every number remind us of Sarti’s lifelong interest in the theater. The opening chorus in G major, with extensive writing for soloists, is a sonata-form movement laid out on a large scale. It will return, with different words, at the end of the Gloria. With “Laudamus te” begins the succession of solo numbers. A solo violin contributes a concertante part to the alto solo “Gratias agimus tibi,” in which Sarti gave both the vocal and instrumental soloists opportunity to perform cadences. The soprano returns as soloist in “Dominus Deus,” a very brilliantly orchestrated piece. Although Sarti did not divide this Gloria into two parts, the fugal chorus “Domine Fili” in effect marks the end of the first of two parts. Sarti must have had a fine tenor available when he wrote this Gloria. The tenor solo “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” begins with a note sustained for four measures, demanding from the performer a good messa di voce. Sarti later gave his tenor opportunity to display his coloratura singing. In “Qui tollis peccata mundi,” the first movement in the minor mode, the alto soloist sings in alternation with
the chorus. This very short movement serves as a kind of introduction to the much longer soprano aria that follows, which–alone among the solo numbers in the Gloria– features the slow-fast structure very frequently encountered in late eighteenth-century opera arias. The soprano and alto soloists predominate near the beginning of the Gloria; the tenor and bass predominate near the end. Sarti made “Qui sedes” the tenor’s second solo; it is followed by the first and only bass solo, “Quoniam tu solus sanctus.”. A short slow passage in G minor serves as an introduction to the final movement, “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” which, as mentioned earlier, reuses the music of the first chorus. It thus brings to a satisfying conclusion a work in which Sarti explored a wide variety of vocal effects, tonalities, and instrumental sonorities in music that skillfully exploits conventions shared by theatrical and sacred music.