Niccolò Jommelli’s Laudate Pueri Dominum View larger

Niccolò Jommelli’s Laudate Pueri Dominum

From Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal for soloists, 4 choirs and basso continuo (Rome 1750)

Study, reconstruction and critical edition

More details

Author António Jorge Marques
Editor Giorgio Monari
Series Saggi Ruspoli
Nr. 2
Size 17×24, pp. XIII+165
Year 2021
ISBN 9788855430746

Price 25,00 €

In 2003, whilst researching some anonymous manuscripts in Portugal’s National Library (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal), the present author found an intriguing and incomplete work for 16 voices and basso continuo. The first gathering was missing and, consequently, also the title page where the information relating to the author, title, institution and, sometimes, property is usually recorded. The extant part of the manuscript consists of six sewn gatherings of 25 folios and, apart from some added notes and a few ink stains by a later hand, is in very good condition, partly due to the thickness and excellent quality of the paper. […] The immediate reaction to the discovery was almost of disbelief and astonishment: a sacred work in stile concertato for 16 voices and basso continuo with the characteristics of an autograph is indeed a very rare find in Portuguese archives and, as far as the rich and varied music holdings of the first library of Portugal are concerned, the only specimen of its kind. A second slower and more thorough inspection revealed it to be psalm 112, Laudate pueri Dominum, without the first verse (Laudate pueri Dominum laudate nomen Domini) and part of the second (Sit nomen Domini benedictum ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum): in fact the truncated work starts with the words «ex hoc nunc». It also became clear that it is a polychoral work of rather momentous proportions, certainly written for a solemn occasion. Furthermore, the several corrections found confirmed the specimen to be an autograph rather than a copy.