This is the first recording of the original D major version of Bononcini’s Te Deum: he later revised the piece in Vienna, as a commission from the Empress Maria Theresa. The work has been newly edited here from its English eighteenth-century sources, one of which is in Boyce’s hand. In its use of the Latin text, Bononcini’s setting—while perfectly acceptable to the Academy’s members—contrasted with the English-texted Te Deum settings by Handel and by English composers used ceremonially and liturgically in the Chapel Royal and elsewhere. The use of Latin in Bononcini’s work signals that it could only have been used as a concert piece in England. Handel’s and Bononcini’s settings are likewise clearly contrasted in their approach to how the text should be set. Handel gave the bulk of it to the choir, with solo passages alternating with writing for the full ensemble in many sections, but with few independent or substantial movements for solo voice. Bononcini, however, throws the spotlight on solo singing, and divides the work into many more self-contained movements than was Handel’s practice, but as was common in Te Deum settings for the French court. Handel’s settings for the Peace of Utrecht (1713), for Princess (later Queen) Caroline (1714), and for James Brydges (later Duke of Chandos), subsequently adapted for the Chapel Royal, have between six and nine main movements, whereas Bononcini divides the text into no fewer than thirteen, of which just five are predominantly choral. This approach allows Bononcini to exploit every opportunity for contrast within the text, producing a succession of clearly characterised items distinct in tonality, texture, and spirit. One correspondence of approach with Handel’s might be more than coincidence: Bononcini gave the verse ‘Dignare Domine’ to the alto soloist, writing a prayerful largo cantabile movement in G minor; Handel had likewise assigned the equivalent English text (‘Vouchsafe O Lord to keep us this day without sin’) to the alto soloist in his ‘Caroline’ Te Deum, setting this originally as an accompanied recitative, but later replacing the recitative with a largo alto aria in B minor which inhabits a similar affective vein to Bononcini’s. This movement was then adapted (transposed to G minor, as in Bononcini’s piece) for Handel’s Chandos Te Deum, while the A major revision of that work has another plaintive alto aria for this part of the text.

Bononcini frames his Te Deum with a pair of grand movements for chorus (with solo interjections) using the same opening orchestral theme, made memorable by its use of sweeping short-notes scales (tirades) drawn from the French overture style. He constructed the extended ‘Sanctus’ acclamations in the opening movement from the rising and falling figure sung at this point in the Te Deum plainchant. The composer’s desire to highlight variety of affect—reflecting not least his long operatic experience—is seen in particularly dramatic fashion where the text first turns from praise to penitence: the exuberant choral setting of ‘Tu ad dexteram Dei sedes’ (‘Thou sittest at the right hand of God’) suddenly dissolves at ‘Te ergo quaesumus … miserere nobis’ (‘We therefore pray thee … have mercy on us’) into lugubrious counterpoint sung at first by the soloists and then transforming—as the choir joins the soloists on each line—into collective supplication. The brief chorus ‘Miserere nostri’ (‘have mercy on us’) is an extraordinarily unsettling passage, for voices and continuo only, in which the expected harmonies are repeatedly side-stepped.

The inclusion of an extended canonic trio—‘Aeterne fac cum sanctis tuis’—may again reflect Bononcini’s desire to please the connoisseurs of the Academy of Ancient Music. The cello has its own prominent role in the counterpoint here, and this and other instances of memorable obbligato writing for the cello in the Te Deum (‘Tu ad liberandum’) and Laudate pueri (‘A solis ortu’) recall the fact that this was Bononcini’s own instrument: in 1716 Johann Ernst Galliard praised Bononcini’s finely crafted bass lines. The Academy’s members would likewise doubtless have relished the grand alla breve fugue (setting ‘pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua’: ‘heaven and earth are full of thy glory’) which forms the second section of the opening movement of the Te Deum, during which Bononcini displayed his contrapuntal skill through such devices as inverting the fugue subject. The composer might here have hoped also to arouse—in the ears and minds of his Academy colleagues—echoes of Handel’s choral fugues in his Te Deum settings and other sacred works.

from notes by Owen Rees © 2024