Few moments in seventeenth-century sacred music capture collective grief as powerfully as the closing chorus of Giacomo Carissimi’s oratorio Historia di Jephte. In “Plorate filii Israel,” the daughters of Israel mourn the fate of Jephte’s daughter in music of striking restraint and expressive depth — a passage often cited as one of the earliest masterpieces of the oratorio tradition.
This performance by Voces Suaves, directed by Michele Vannelli, comes from their new Arcana album dedicated to Carissimi and his Roman contemporaries. The recording places the composer’s most famous work alongside two rarely performed motets, as well as Domenico Mazzocchi’s dramatic Cristo smarrito, offering a vivid portrait of Rome’s sacred music scene in the mid-seventeenth century.
For Jephte, the performers also incorporate instrumental interludes preserved in manuscripts of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Carissimi’s pupil, creating a version of the work that may resemble how the oratorio was performed in Rome during the composer’s lifetime.
Listen to the full album: Carissimi: Historia di Jephte. Motets
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