Cappella Neapolitana presents the Beatus vir concert at the Basilica del Gesù Vecchio

Martedì 21 febbraio alle 20.30 alla Basilica of the Old Jesus, via Giovanni Paladino, 39, Neapolitana chapel presenta il concerto “Beatus Vir”, musica di Francesco Provenzale, Alessandro Scarlatti, Gennaro Ursino, Gaetano Veneziano.

Il “Beatus Vir” è uno dei cinque salmi usati durante l’età barocca per le feste solenni. Questo programma ne presenta due in prima esecuzione moderna di Francesco Provenzale e del meno noto Gennaro Ursino, insieme ad altre composizioni sacre e strumentali dei maggiori esponenti della musica a Napoli alla fine del Seicento, in gran parte custodite tra i tesori dei Girolamini.

Let's compare two unpublished psalms in the modern age, which in addition to dealing with the same subject, were written by two composers who succeeded each other, Ursino and Provenzale, at the Conservatorio dei Turchini in Naples.

Free admission

All the composers in this program met and sometimes clashed at the heights of music production and consumption in Naples in the latter part of the seventeenth century: consider the arrival of Alessandro Scarlatti “the Palermitan” whose appointment as maestro of the Royal Chapel in 1684 upset the civic predominance of Francesco Provenzale, the most important of the “local” maestros in the long didactic chain that ran through that century, producing an unprecedented “strike” by Provenzale's most loyal followers who resigned from the Chapel itself. Thanks to the many recoveries made by Antonio Florio, we now know the high level of the thirty or so compositions that remain to us by Provenzale (among other things, the other Beatus Vir for solo voice, in A minor, by this author had been recorded), and by his favourite pupil Gaetano Veneziano, who opposed the triumphant Scarlatti with pieces of a similar level and who, not by chance, then took his place as maestro of the Real Cappella from 1704. This will instead be the first opportunity to listen to music by Gennaro Ursino in a modern way, who was active for forty years (in 1715 he was “retired” for his “decrepit” age) and who in turn replaced Provenzale from 1701 as maestro at the Conservatorio dei Turchini (where he had entered as a student in 1663 at the age of 12) after having already been active as maestro at the Tesoro di San Gennaro, at the Annunziata (from 1701), in the Church of the Gesù and in the other Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo (vice-maestro and then director from 1688), confirming himself among the most authoritative personalities of seventeenth-century music in Naples.

Program

Francesco Provenzale (1632 – 1704)

Beatus vir for soprano with violins (first modern performance)

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725)

Sonata No. 5 for strings (allegro) – Largo – Allegro – Minuet

Francesco Provenzale (1632 – 1704)

In Conspectu Angelorum for soprano, Alto with violins

Gennaro Ursino (1650 – after 1715)

Beatus vir for Alto and 4 instruments (1696) (first modern performance)

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725)

Toccata for organ

Gaetano Veneziano (1656 – 1716)

“Quare de Vulva” lesson for Soprano, Alto with violins

Cristina Fanelli soprano

Marta Fumagalli tall

Marco Piantoni, Nunzia Sorrentino violins

Rosary of Better purple

Manuela Albano cello

Franco Pavan, Pierluigi Ciapparelli theorbos

Angelo Trancone organ