Miguel Muelle wrote:

>Best is relative.  I must say that Mutter's new 4 Stagioni is beautiful!
>HOWEVER, Vivaldi's sacred music is rife with wonderful stuff, as well as
>profound meditation.  I think he made the concerti to pay the bills and
>wrote church music for more soulful purposes.  (Of course, I could be
>totally wrong...) Among the better known are his 2 Glorias, but there are
>MANY more.  I have a 5 CD set of Vittorio Negri conducting all of this
>music and it is priceless.

I think you are correct here.  Vivaldi's religious stuff is more
substantial.  Perhaps that is why I consider his music for sacred
occassions to be special.

It seems that many composers up the stakes when writing for God and King.
I included Mozart in that with his Mass in C and Haydn with the Creation
of course.

There are exceptions to this rule of thumb eg Bach who seems to write
equally for all genre and Beethoven whose religious music is of a lower
standard in my view.

Bob Draper
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