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Dextera Domini, Concertato a 4 voci, for soprano, alto, tenor, bass and basso continuo. Revision by Antonio Frigé; introduction by Beniamino Calciati. Pian & Forte, Vol. 153.
Giovanni Battista Casali, born in 1715 in Rome, was admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1740. Designated assistant to Girolamo Chiti, choirmaster of the Chiesa Romano di San Giovanni in Laterano, he became his successor in 17591. He was a member of the Congregazione dei musici di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and the Guardiano della sezione dei maestri Compositori, and from 1754 until his death he was also choirmaster at the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Vallicella. He died in 1792.
His Neapolitan-style works, the interludes and dramas for music, are a corollary to his numerous psalms, cantatas, masses and other compositions, based on the proprium missae, where the Roman style predominates instead. An ideal stylistic review was made by Siegfried Gmeinwieser2, who also studied the predecessor of San Giovanni in Laterano in depth.
The following historical-critical judgement paints Casali as appreciable and very attached to the Palestrinian tradition (as it was intended in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century): in fact he was mentioned, among others, by the writer Charles Burney (who assisted in the oratorio Abigail, considering him as being neither innovative nor ancient), by the Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis (who considered him to be lacking in inventiveness, but of a very pure style), by the abbot Giuseppe Bertini (who reputed him as “a worthy chapel master…of a lively and clear style”), and by French musician and scholar Albert Lavignac (who, assimilating him to others, qualified him a possessor of competence and delicate artistic sense, however would not be minimally advanced with respect to the Palestrinian style).
In the didactic aspect, it is necessary to underline that Casali was not only the Master of different composers, among which the name of André Gretry (who however, had little musical consideration) stands out, but he also held the position of examiner for admissions to the aforementioned Congregazione dei musici di Santa Cecilia. In this role, he became protagonist of a long controversy also involving Luigi Antonio Sabbatini and Padre Martini, with whom Casali had frequent correspondence (in 1774, for example, he complained about the decadence of the Academy and of contemporary music manifestations). The detailed description of this controversy, which saw Casali reject the admission of a candidate due to a wrong answer in the fugue subject in the exam, was made by Élodie Oriol3, who shed new light on the dynamics of professionalisation and the protection games within the Roman milieu of the time, on Casali’s relations with musical and ecclesiastical contemporaneity and on personal and musical aspects that were not always flattering.
The composition uses two verses of Psalm 117 and is of uncertain liturgical destination. Built on a stable 3/8 meter, it presents a desired thematization of each text fragment, thus permitting effective interlocking play sustained by the movement of the figured bass. The beginning, consists of a duet between the soprano and the tenor, permitting the alto creep in, and the subsequent introduction of the second verse of the psalm by the tenor. However, there is an insistence on the fragment “dextera domini”, that after a short time allows a tight polyphony, an ideal transmission of the works of the Lord of which the psalm narrates.
Beniamino Calciati
(Trans. Linda Przybiernow)
1. It could be interesting, also at the end of executive practices, to consult the works of Graziano Fronzuto, Organi di Roma, Florence: Leo S. Olschki editor, MMVIII, p. 6.
2. Cfr. Casali, Giovanni Battista in: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, in care of Ludwig Finscher, Personenteil 4, Stuttgart: Bärenreiter Metzler, 2000, p. 327-329.
3. Élodie Oriol, Dynamiques de professionnalisation et jeux de protection: pratiques et enjeux de l’examen des maítres de chapelle à Rome (1784) in <Annales historiques de la Révolution française>, vol. 379/1 (2015), p. 47-69.
Giovanni Battista Casali (b Rome, 1715; d Rome, 6 July 1792). Italian composer. In 1740 he was admitted to the Bologna Accademia Filarmonica. He was assistant to Girolamo Chiti, maestro di cappella at S Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, and in 1745 was designated his successor, taking up the post in 1759. Between 1752 and 1791 he was a member of the Congregazione di S Cecilia, serving as one of the examiners and several times holding the office of guardiano della sezione dei maestri compositori. From 1754 until his death he was also maestro di cappella at S Maria in Vallicella and was active in several other churches in Rome. He exchanged letters (now in I-Bc) with Martini in Bologna.
Casali wrote much in the strict contrapuntal style of the Roman school, but also used the modern concertante style with virtuoso coloratura lines and homophonic writing, and often with instrumental accompaniment. Burney, who heard his oratorio Abigail (1770) in Rome, called the music ‘common-place, for though it could boast of no new melody or modulation, it had nothing vulgar in it’. This remark is perhaps the source of Fétis’s judgment that Casali ‘had little invention, but his style was very pure’. Grétry, who was Casali’s pupil for two years, praised his counterpoint instruction and called him one of the most famous maestri di cappella in Rome. Casali’s compositions, which are mainly sacred, are in church archives in large numbers, above all at S Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. His Roman oratorios followed the style of the mid-18th-century opera seria, which preserved the da capo aria. During his long term of office he became one of the best-known Italian composers of sacred music of his time.
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