Messa di Gloria
It
comes as a surprise to find that Puccini wrote anything other than
grand operas; and in fact in his adult life he did so very rarely. This mass, however, was
written when he was
only 18, as a submission for his final qualifications at the Musical
Institute
at his home town of Lucca. Puccini
came from
a family of church musicians, and although that tradition supplied the
form of
the piece, it is undeniably the world of the opera house which shaped
the music.
Puccini set
the usual five parts of the mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and
Agnus Dei. While
there are a few signs (mostly in the
passages for the soloists - tenor and bass only) of the gripping drama
and
psychological intensity which would characterise Puccini’s later work,
the mass
leaves us in no doubt about his operatic antecedents.
After a lyrical Kyrie, the Gloria starts with
a jaunty melody, bordering on cheekiness, which is reminiscent of
Rossini or
Donizetti; and at ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’ it breaks
into a magnificent
slow march which might well be straight out of Verdi.
The Credo is full of dramatic interest,
heightened by frequent changes of key, tempo and dynamics. The Sanctus and the Agnus Dei are dignified but
short, and almost an
anti-climax to the preceding movements.
Perhaps Puccini realised that by then he had done
more than enough to
satisfy the examiners!
After its
first peformance in 1880 the Messa di
Gloria was laid aside and only in the 1950s was the
manuscript rediscovered
by an American musicologist. Since
then
it has been regularly performed – but
not as often as its musical inventiveness and exuberant theatricality
(not to
mention its contribution to our understanding of
Puccini’s development) would seem to justify.
