Our church choir (St. Catherine’s Episcopal, Temple Terrace, Florida) is singing this on Christmas Eve. I may even be singing the alto aria Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris :eek: I just love this piece. I’m crazy for baroque/Classical period anyway, and this is just amazing!
Unfortunately, when I tell people, all excited, that we’re doing the Vivaldi Gloria
nobody has a clue what I’m talking about. So, is this a really obscure thing, or am I just talking to people who are unsophisticated musically?
Are you talking about this one? If so, I know the first movement (the “Gloria in Excelsis”) very well, and love it. – it shows up pretty often in “Best of Baroque” collections. The rest I’m not familiar with.
I’ve sung it. I think I heard it sung when I was in about 9th grade (by the high school choir), and sang it two years later with a different high school choir. We were accompanied by the high school orchestra. I may have gone on to sing it a year or two later with a college choir as well–but it gets harder to remember at that point.
At any rate-- I know the piece, and I would consider myself not exceptionally musically sophisticated, but perhaps slightly more sophisticated than many people. So I wouldn’t call it really obscure, and I bet some of the folk you talk to would think parts of it sounded vaguely familiar if they listened to it, but I may be odd.
Unrelated, I think you have just changed the music in my head this evening to bits and pieces of Vivaldi’s Gloria. It could be worse-- at least this is more cheerful music than the last music I started hearing in my head as a result of some thread on this message board.
Lucky you! My church choir performed this a few years ago, and I loved it. I just went to find the CD we made of our performance, and I’m surprised by how many CD’s I have where I am a performer! If I were organized they could have their own shelf, but since I’m not, I can’t find that CD. Oh well, I’ll just have to hum it in my head the rest of the day! Maybe it’s in the car…
Back when I had a halfway-decent singing voice and was musically active, I performed the Vivaldi Gloria what…how many times? It was a annual staple in high school. We performed it twice in college. My community chorus performed it twice. It was also a semi-staple in the church choir repetoire.
It’s one of 2 pieces (the other being the alto portion of the Hallelujah Chorus and assorted other “Messiah” pieces) I can still sing without looking at any sheet music. Not the whole thing, mind you – I’m talking about the alto portion in the “Gloria”, the “Cum Sancto Spiritu”, and, to a lesser extent, the “Credo”.
I last sang in a group about 10 years ago. The music remains embedded in my brain. Anne Sexton wasn’t kidding when she wrote that “the music remembers more than I”.
Sorry about the slight hijack – the Vivaldi “Gloria” is one of my all-time favorites
I’ve sung the “Domine Deus” solo many a time with my church group in Christmas season! In my experience, most musical people know of it – it’s a great piece that’s done fairly frequently. It’s probably not as familiar/hummable to the layman as something like “The Barber of Seville”, but I can’t think of anyone I know musically who wouldn’t know “Gloria”.
(And now it’s stuck in my head too…I see right through your nefarious plan. :P)
It’s super famous. It’s nowhere near as famous among non-music lovers as The Four Seasons, but it’s pretty much his only other piece that people tend to know.
If you really want to go deep, you can start making references to Vivaldi’s other Gloria to your choir friends at rehearsal.
(he did write another one - it just hardly ever gets done)
