Tracks
1.1 Jephte: Cum Vocasset (Alto) - Si Tradiderit (Tenor) 1.2 Jephte: Transivit Ergo (Chorus) 1.3 Jephte: Et Clangebant (2 Sopranos) - Fugite, Fugite (Bass) 1.4 Jephte: Fugite, Fugite (Chorus) 1.5 Jephte: Et Percussit Jephte (Soprano) - Et Ululantes (2 Sopranos, Alto) - Cum Autem Victor (Bas) 1.6 Jephte: Incipite in Tympanis (Soprano) - Hymnum Cantemus (2 Sopranos) - Cantate Mecum (Soprano) 1.7 Jephte:Cantemus Omnes (Chorus) 1.8 Jephte:Cum Vidisset (Alto) - Heu Mihi (Tenor, Soprano) 1.9 Jephte:Abiit Ergo (Chorus) 1.10 Jephte:Plorate Colles (Soprano) 1.11 Jephte:Plorate Filii (Chorus) 1.12 Jephte:Plorate Filii (Chorus) Version 2 1.13 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Sinfonia 1.14 La Strage Degl'innocenti: D'una Vergine (Soprano) 1.15 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Amici, E Qual (Bass) 1.16 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Non E Gia Lieve (Tenor) 1.17 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Per Fugare (Tenor) 1.18 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Cosi Devo (Bass) 1.19 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Su Dunque Alti Compagni (Alto) 1.20 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Compagni, E Qual (Tenor) 1.21 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Ah, Che Troppo Soffersi (Bass) 1.22 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Su, Su, Dunque (Chorus) 1.23 La Strage Degl'innocenti: La Strage Diffondasi (Bass) 1.24 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Su, Su, Dunque (Chorus) 1.25 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Sinfonia 1.26 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Gia de L'indegna Strage (Soprano) 1.27 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Ritornello - Piangete (3 Madri) 1.28 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Ingiustissimo Re (Soprano) 1.29 La Strage Degl'innocenti: A Punir (3 Madri) 1.30 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Cessate O Madri (Alto) 1.31 La Strage Degl'innocenti: Cadete Pur (Chorus)
Notes
The oratorio developed out of paraliturgical devotional practices of the Oratorian order during the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century, it had grown into an independent genre and spread rapidly across Europe. Giacomo Carissimi, chapel master at the German College in Rome from 1629 to 1674, was considered the main exponent of the genre and one of the leading composers of church music as a whole. So much so, that princes from across Europe frequently sent their musicians to be trained under him, or even attempted-without success-to recruit him for their own courts. Jephte was Carissimi's most successful and long-lasting composition. Athanasius Kircher printed part of it's final chorus already in his Musurgia universalis (Rome 1650), the whole work soon became widely disseminated through manuscript copies, and Handel still drew inspiration from it for his oratorio Samson. The key to the oratorio's success lies in it's text, a paraphrase of Judges 11.27-38, which offered Carissimi the material to create a complete drama of varied emotional charge within a short space of time: Before Jephthah takes the Israelites into battle against the Ammonites he vows to God that if he be victorious, he would sacrifice the first living being that comes to meet him upon his return. The ensuing battle scene depicts graphically with warlike music the devastation of the Ammonite army. Jephthah's triumphant homecoming takes a tragic turn when he is met by his only daughter who in a heroic gesture gives herself up to be sacrificed in order for her father to keep his sacred vow. The final chorus, arguably one of the finest pieces of vocal ensemble music ever written, expresses in increasingly dense chains of dissonant suspensions the Israelites' grief for Jephthah's daughter. The multiplicity of early surviving sources of Jephte, along with the absence of an autograph score makes it difficult to determine the precise Urtext of the work. The most reliable source is a copy in the hand of Carissimi's student Marc-Antoine Charpentier (now in the Bibliothèque National, Paris). Stripped of it's obviously French elements, it served as the basis of this recording. The major differences between the various sources concern the final chorus. Therefore, this movement is included twice on this recording, placing alternative readings side by side. Track 11 represents the shorter and presumably original version, whilst track 12 contains an insertion of eleven bars after the repeat of the A-section, which cannot be found in any surviving source, but goes back to Friedrich Chrysander's edition (Bergedorf 1869). Regrettably, Chrysander never published a commentary elucidating the origin of this version. However, it is believed that he had access to sources in Hamburg and Berlin which were lost during World War II. Although the expansion has entered many subsequent editions and has enjoyed some popularity due to it's daring harmonic progressions, it's authenticity is highly questionable: the absence of early sources aside, contrapuntal faults in this section go beyond rhetorical licenses commonly employed in this work or in Carissimi's oeuvre as a whole. Lastly, in the last bars of the movement, track 12 reproduces the reading of a source in the Royal College of Music in London, containing a written out ritardando. Antonio Bertali left his native city of Verona in 1624 to work in Vienna, where he secured himself a position as instrumentalist, teacher, and composer at the imperial court in 1631. After Giovanni Valentini's death in 1649, Bertali succeeded him as imperial chapel master, a post which he held until his own death in 1669. Directing one of Europe's largest and best funded musical institutions for two decades gained him an international reputation as one of the foremost composers of his century. Like many composers of the seventeenth century, he fell into oblivion soon after 1700; his historical significance and the high quality of his many
