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Antonio Vivaldi composed three settings of the Gloria from the Roman mass. One, RV 590, is unpublished and housed in the Kreuzherren Library in Dresden, Germany. RV 589 is Vivaldi's most well-known choral composition, performed by countless choirs throughout the world; however, RV 588 is a delightful and most accessible setting for choirs of all abilities.
Why is RV 589 better known than the others today? One hypothesis, put forward by H. Robbins Landon in his book Vivaldi, Voice of the Baroque, focuses on the "rediscovery" of the music of Vivaldi in the late 1930s.
The enormous popularity of the second Gloria in D (RV 589) derives, most probably, from two important factors: (1) It was one of the first pieces of Vivaldian sacred music to be performed at the Chiesa dei Servi, as part of the Settimana Celebretiva di Antonio Vivaldi, produced by the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena in September 1939; on that occasion, the pieces were selected and conducted by Alfredo Casella, who also edited all the church music performed. Casella even wrote the programme notes. The Gloria was also the first major piece of Vivaldian church music to be recorded, shortly after World War II. (2) The second factor, and the decisive one, is quite simply that this Gloria is possibly the most accessible and immediately comprehensible of all Vivaldi's sacred music-the Four Seasons of its genre.1
Whichever of the two settings was written first, it provided the blueprint for the other. Key centers are almost identical, as is the orchestration, with the exception of an additional oboe in RV 588. The textual plan is similar in each work, as are several of the compositions: Laudamus Te for two sopranos; Gratias agimus tibi for chorus in E minor, and the concluding double fugues of Cum Sancto Spiritu. In the Preface to the Ricordi orchestral score of RV 588, Michael Talbott identifies a Gloria by Veronese composer Giovanni Maria Ruggieri as the source material for both works. Very little is known of Ruggieri's life, although he published four collections of instrumental music and had twelve operas staged in Vienna between 1696 and 1712. Ruggieri's Gloria, dated September 1708, was found in Vivaldi's personal collection of scores.
Scattered throughout the score one...