Magnificat (Torri)

Pietro Torri's Magnificat in C major for double choir and orchestra likely dates from the 1690s. The work is scored for two SATB choirs, two trumpets, bassoon, strings and basso continuo. Its music opens with an instrumental introduction (sinfonia). Most of the composition's movements are either choral movements, in which all singers and instruments participate, or duets for two singers and a more limited instrumental accompaniment.
The Magnificat in C major, BWV Anh. 30, is Johann Sebastian Bach's arrangement of Torri's Magnificat. In Bach's version of the work, which originated around 1742, there are an additional trumpet and timpani. Both Torri's original and Bach's arrangement were recorded in the first decade of the 21st century. Shortly after the second of these recordings was released in 2012, it was discovered that BWV Anh. 30 was an arrangement of Torri's Magnificat. Before that, Bach's version had been attributed to various composers, including Antonio Lotti.
History.
Pietro Torri likely wrote his Magnificat in the 1690s, when he was in the service of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria. In that period Torri followed his employer to the Spanish Netherlands (1692) and was later deputized to Hanover (1696), only returning to Bavaria in 1701. In the early 1790s Torri wrote scenic works such as "L'ambizione fulminata" and "Gli amori di Titone e d'Aurora" for Munich, and "I Preggi della primavera" for Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Electress Palatine at Leuchtenberg.
"S. Vinceslao", "Abelle" and "S. Landelino" are oratorios Torri likely wrote for Brussels between 1692 and 1701. Secular works of this period include the "Trastulli", a collection of 60 short vocal works, and "Briseide", a dramma per musica staged in Hanover. In 1704 Torri was back in the Netherlands, and a few years later, still in the retinue of the Bavarian elector, in French territory.
He returned to Munich in 1715, where he would remain till the end of his life, composing still over 20 new operas and other stage works, at a rate of around one every year. Among his liturgical compositions of this period is a Requiem mass for the Elector, who died in 1726, after which Torri remained in the service of Charles Albert, son and successor of Maximilian II Emanuel. Torri's Magnificat disseminated via manuscript copies: one of such manuscripts, from the Bokemeyer collection, is conserved in the Berlin State Library, another is in the British Library.
Scoring and structure.
The text of Torri's Magnificat is the Latin version of the Biblical canticle "My soul doth magnify the Lord" from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke (10 verses), followed by a doxology (2 verses). The composition is in C major.
Scoring.
Torri's Magnificat is set (for 15 voices and more):
and basso continuo (Bc; figured bass for the organ). When both bassoon and organ play, the former's voice is almost entirely identical to the bass line of the latter. The 15 voices can also be defined as singers (8), trumpets (2), strings (4) and basso continuo (1), meaning that the bassoon can be seen as part of the continuo group, together with the organ.
Movements.
First movement.
After an orchestral introduction, dominated by tutti chords, the sopranos of both choirs sing the first verse of the canticle in unison, on the tune of sixth Psalm tone setting of the Magnificat, while the trumpets play , with an orchestral accompaniment. The second verse of the Magnificat follows in a monumental setting for double choir and orchestra.
Second movement.
The second movement, setting the third verse of the Magnificat, is a duet for the alto and tenor of the first choir, accompanied by both trumpets and the continuo.
Third movement.
The third movement, setting the next verse of the Magnificat, is another duet: soprano and bass of the first choir sing, accompanied by the continuo.
Fourth movement.
The fourth movement, taking a central place in the composition, is a stile antico setting of the fifth verse of the canticle, for all four voices of the first choir, and continuo.
Fifth movement.
The fifth movement, setting the next verse of the Magnificat, is a duet for the alto and tenor of the second choir, accompanied by two violin voices, and continuo.
Sixth movement.
The "Deposuit potentes" movement is a setting of two verses of the Magnificat.
Seventh movement.
The seventh movement, setting the ninth verse of the Magnificat, is the last duet, for soprano and bass of the second choir, and continuo.
Eighth movement.
The eighth movement is again for all forces (), setting the next verse of the Magnificat, and the first half of the Doxology.
Ninth movement.
The final movement, also for , is a broad fugue with three musical subjects, respectively introduced on the words:
In the course of the movement the musical texture grows ever more closer-knit.
Bach's version (BWV Anh. 30).
Torri was, in the retinue of his employer Max Emanuel, in Brussels and Mons from 1704 to 1715. Ernest Augustus, Prince of Saxe-Weimar visited the Netherlands in 1707, where he may have met the Bavarian Elector and the composer. Peter Wollny thinks it likely that it was there that the Prince obtained a copy of Torri's Magnificat, which he brought back to Germany. That a copy of the work circulated in Thuringia before Torri's return to Munich is attested by an inventory written in Rudolstadt in 1714. Johann Sebastian Bach, who was employed by Ernest Augustus, then Duke of Saxe-Weimar, from 1708, thus likely knew Torri's Magnificat from his time in Weimar, and may have taken performance parts of the work with him when he left that city in 1717.
Bach copied Torri's Magnificat, likely from performance parts, around 1742 in Leipzig, where he was employed since 1723, likely in view of a performance of the work. Having copied the work without much modification apart from merging the parts for bassoon and organ in a single continuo part for unspecified instruments, he added a third trumpet (which he indicated as "Principale" in his manuscript) and timpani to the composition. Another minor adjustment is that Bach applies a caesura in the music between the end of the Gospel text and the start of the doxology, so that the composition has ten movements ("Gloria Patri" becoming the ninth, and the fugal "Sicut erat" as the tenth and last movement). Whether by omission or because he didn't know, Bach did not mention the composer of the original on his copy. Antonio Caldara's , which Bach copied and arranged around the same time (BNB I/C/1 and BWV 1082), carries the name of the original composer in the header of Bach's manuscript.
By 1841 Bach's manuscript was owned by the Royal Library at Berlin (later converted to the Berlin State Library), where it was classified as Mus.ms. Bach P 195; before that it was owned by, among others, Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach's student Johann Christian Kittel, and, from 1809, , a collector of music by Bach and other Baroque composers. Kittel and Poelchau both thought that the Magnificat for eight voices and orchestra was composed by Bach. Kittel had a copy made of Bach's manuscript, and Poelchau added a flyleaf to it, on which he indicated Bach as its composer. In 1732, some two decades after he had published Bach's Magnificat (BWV 243.1), however, Poelchau had doubts about Bach's authorship of the Magnificat for double choir and orchestra, writing that it was likely composed by Caldara or Lotti.
The did not include the Magnificat for eight voices and orchestra in the collected edition it published of Bach's works in the second half of the 19th century. In the (BWV) it was listed among Bach's doubtful works (Anh. II), as . In 1968, Christoph Wolff mentioned Antonio Lotti as its possible composer. Before the end of the 20th century also the editors of the New Bach Edition had decided not to include the work in their complete edition of Bach's work. Only in 2012 was it discovered that, apart from Bach's modifications, was identical to Torri's Magnificat .
Publication.
In the 21st century Torri's Magnificat was recorded, and its score published.
Score.
In 2013 Carus-Verlag published Arne Thielemann's edition of Bach's version of Torri's Magnificat. The next year a facsimile of a manuscript copy of Torri's Magnificat became available on-line at the website of the Berlin State Library, in 2016 followed by a facsimile of Bach's manuscript of the BWV Anh. 30 version.