Hyperion Records

This motet was written for the feast of St Antony of Padua in the second part of Vivaldi’s career. Although its autograph manuscript survives today in the library of the basilica of St Francis in Assisi, the work was probably first heard on the saint’s feast-day (13 June) in the basilica of St Antony in Padua itself. The manuscript’s present location in Assisi is probably due to the common practice of loaning or exchanging musical manuscripts practised by churches or convents belonging to the same monastic order.

Padua was the Republic of Venice’s ‘second city’ and the seat of its university. When the Venetian nobility went, for their summer vacation, to their country seats on the mainland, they often travelled via Padua, attending the basilica’s patronal festival on the way. Vivaldi was very familiar with this ceremony, since both he, and before him his father, were on several occasions recruited to the orchestra that participated in it. Indeed, in 1712 he wrote a violin concerto for the feast (RV212) in which he himself took the solo part.

The opening aria depicts the gentle wafting of the breezes in terms familiar to those who remember the first movement of Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ Concerto from The Four Seasons, testing the vocal soloist’s virtuosity. The recitative focuses on the miraculous tongue of the saint, uncorrupted even after his death. A second aria calls on the whole of nature to recount Antony’s deeds, and an exuberant, concerto-like ‘Alleluia’ rounds off the work.

from notes by Michael Talbot © 2003