Works
His contributions to liturgical music in Rome were profound as composer, organist, maestro di capella, writer on music theory and history, and as esaminatori dei maestri for the Academy of St. Cecilia. He was extremely prolific, with some 325 masses, 800 Psalm settings and 235 motets among the 3500 compositions listed by his pupil and biographer, Girolamo Chiti. He prepared a complete year of music for St. Peter’s, with settings for the masses and offices of every Sunday and holy day.
Pitoni’s early works are brilliant examples of his genius in the Roman contrapuntal style of Palestrina. In later years he moved toward more homophonic textures with polychoral elements. His use of stile concertato also included solo sections and concertante instrumental parts. It is said that his immense facility allowed him to compose the parts of a 16-voice mass separately, without use of a score. To modern ears and eyes these compositions may seem dull and even repetitious. However, given typical performance practices in the early 18th century – vocal ornamentation (“divisions”), instrumental participation, antiphonal location for polychoral elements, just intonation, and varied vocal colors – even the homophonic works must have made a strong impression in the highly reverberative church interiors of Rome. At the end of his life he was preparing a mass for twelve choirs, left incomplete at his death. He was buried in the Pitoni family vault in the Basilica of San Marco, where he had served for some 66 years. His best known work is the Dixit Dominus a 16 in 4 choirs.
Read more about this topic: Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“My first childish doubt as to whether God could really be a good Protestant was suggested by my observation of the deplorable fact that the best voices available for combination with my mother’s in the works of the great composers had been unaccountably vouchsafed to Roman Catholics.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you don’t look too closely. Artists are cleaners, don’t let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men.”
—Francis Picabia (1878–1953)