Niccolò Jommelli was an enormously popular composer of the middle 18th century, declared the greatest living Italian composer by Charles Burney. His operas have seen some revivals from singers investigating the rich lost treasures of the era, but his church music is all but forgotten. The Requiem mass recorded here was the most popular one in the repertory until Mozart's came along, and part of it was sung as late as 1868, at Rossini's funeral, but eventually, the dictates of progress, real or perceived, drove it out of ...
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Niccolò Jommelli was an enormously popular composer of the middle 18th century, declared the greatest living Italian composer by Charles Burney. His operas have seen some revivals from singers investigating the rich lost treasures of the era, but his church music is all but forgotten. The Requiem mass recorded here was the most popular one in the repertory until Mozart's came along, and part of it was sung as late as 1868, at Rossini's funeral, but eventually, the dictates of progress, real or perceived, drove it out of musical memory. It is an absolutely gorgeous work, and its structure is unique. In its mood, it has the consoling quality of Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45, with a major-key Dies irae and gentle solo parts rather than those depicting wrathful judgment. It is those solo parts that are the work's most distinctive feature. Some are arias, but in the main, Jommelli avoids the example of his operas and weaves the soloists into the often highly contrapuntal choral-orchestral texture....
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