'My heart dissolves in tears'
Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 18 - 29 March 2013 - Be a maestro!
by Reinier Maliepaard
In contrast to Vivaldi, his contemporary Antonio Caldara (ca. 1670 - 1736), composer of many operas, oratorios and cantatas, is nowadays more or less forgotten. In fact, during his lifetime, he was one of the greatest Baroque composers! A few facts: Johann Sebastian Bach made a copy of a Magnificat by Caldara and arranged a part of it. Haydn possessed copies of two of Caldara's Masses. Mozart recycled some of Caldara's six hundred canons in KV 555, 557 and 562. Beethoven studied counterpoint examples of Caldara, provided by his famous teacher Albrechtsberger. For the young Georg Philipp Telemann, Caldara was a model for his church and instrumental music. And: throughout the 19th century Caldara's works appeared in printed anthologies of music.
Nevertheless, the renaissance of his music is just a matter of time: in a few years, Caldara will be as famous as he was during his lifetime. It's at least promising that interesting recordings of his work have been released the last years.
Caldara was a profilic composer of the oratorium, a musical theater-without-staging. He wrote his 43 oratorios (and how many have been lost?), written for patrons in his native Venice, Rome, Florence, Mantua, and Vienna. I like you to make acquainted with one of them: 'Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo' (Magdalene at the Feet of Christ), composed about 1700 in Rome. Summarized, it is about the inner struggle of Mary Magdalene between the forces of good and evil and her decision at the end to follow Christ.
The 18th century composer Charles Avison in 'An Essay in Musical Expression' of 1735 described the music of Caldara as 'noble' and 'full of pathos', the latter referring to the sensitive expression of words and affections. I think that we can follow Avison: Caldara's arias in 'Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo' reflect a vari-
ety of moods and emotions, often movingly depicted. He shows also his endless melodic gifts: simple (= many repetitions), beautiful melodic lines, lacking any vocal virtuosity but made like ariosos.
I choose for this newsletter the da capo aria 'In lagrime stemprato' of Caldara's 'Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo'. The text:
In lagrime stemprato il cor qui cade
Già s'elesse
per l'orme impresse
del tuo piè di seguir del ciel le strade.
My heart dissolves in tears, and sinks.
It has chosen here and now
to follow in Thy footsteps
the road to heaven.
The sentence "to follow in Thy footsteps the road to heaven" has Caldara represented with the rhythmical figure short-short-long. The so called figura corta, which can represent the 'Affekt' trust, here: Mary's trust in Jesus.
Listen on YouTube to Caldara's aria 'In lagrime stemprato' (ca. 1700 from 'Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo'): www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CGfqdnrvaw