This morning, I was “tormented” trying to identify a musical passage running through my mind. Passages come back to me like this. Rhythm or stress must be an essential aspect of music (yes, I know, it goes without saying), because — this is from a nearly functionally illiterate music lover — I kept recalling how this particular passage is accented or stressed; that is how I best remember it. I am not sure what the particular musical term is. Agitato? Sforzando?

Listen to this movement for chorus from Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589: namely, Domine, Fili unigenite (the only begotten Son of God). It’s a little over two minutes long.

Is it not marvelous? It is passages and works like these that make Vivaldi so special and inimitable. His music uplifts.

This wonderful performance is from the album Vivaldi’s Gloria by the Academy of Ancient Music, conductors Simon Preston and Christopher Hogwood; the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

— Roger W. Smith

    July 2019

P.S. It is music like this that makes me feel like I want to weep with tears of joy.