Giovanni Salvatore (1611-c.1688) - Messa (III) con l'organo al choro (1641)
Performers: Emanuele Cardi (organ); Gregoriano Urbis Cantores
Further info: Opera Omnia Per Organo
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Italian composer and organist. He was almost certainly a pupil of G.M.
Sabino and Erasmo Bartoli (‘Padre Raimo’) at the Conservatorio della
Pietà dei Turchini at Naples. Later he became a priest. In 1641 he was
organist of SS Severino e Sossio, Naples, and later organist and maestro
di cappella of S Lorenzo Maggiore. From 1662 to 1673 he taught at the
Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini. During his last years he was
rector and maestro di cappella of the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù
Cristo; as his successor was appointed in 1688 he probably died in that
year. It was once thought that he taught Alessandro Scarlatti but this
is unlikely. According to Liberati and Pitoni, Salvatore was greatly
esteemed during his lifetime. Liberati even placed him above Frescobaldi
on the grounds that he could compose fine vocal works without confusing
their style with organ music. The vocal music has not yet been
published or critically investigated. The larger works are written in
the concertato style typical of the mid-17th century, with effective
progressions and expressive dissonances but a limited harmonic idiom.
Homorhythmic chordal and imitative textures alternate between the first
and second choirs, both of which are skilfully combined with
instrumental sinfonias. Contrasting metres and textures and occasional
word-painting are characteristic. A set of four-voice responsories for
the Office of the Dead are simpler in style.
The organ works in the Ricercari, written in open score, demonstrate
much technical skill. They are in the southern Italian tradition of the
early 17th century as represented by Mayone, Trabaci and Frescobaldi,
and though they do not depart radically from it in style or form, they
are more tonal, close-knit and concisely organized. Salvatore
occasionally used durezze e ligature (chromaticism, sharp dissonances
and striking harmonic progressions) and the unpredictable, virtuoso,
rhapsodic style associated with the Neapolitans and the Romans. The
volume contains eight contrapuntally interesting ricercares, one on each
of the eight tones, with two, three or four subjects and their
permutations. In no.4 the four subjects, having been treated at length
in their original forms, appear in turn in traditional cantus-firmus
settings; in no.8 the hymn Iste confessor is presented as a cantus
firmus in each voice. Despite its title the volume also includes other
music. In three canzonas the opening section is repeated at the end; a
fourth is a set of contrapuntal variations on the bergamasca melody,
reaching a brilliant concluding virtuoso climax. Three organ masses
include Kyrie settings based on the melodies Orbis factor, Cunctipotens
genitor and Cum jubilo; brief versets in imitative or toccata style are
intended for alternation with a choir. Salvatore appended a brief
treatise, Breve regola per rispondere al choro, to the third printing of
G.B. Olifante’s Porta aurea sive directorium chori (Naples, 1641).
