Lotti – Credo in F (1718)

Lotti – Credo in F (Crucifixus a 8) (1718)

Antonio Lotti was a Venetian composer, and a contemporary of Vivaldi. He worked at St Mark’s (where the Gabrielis and Monteverdi had worked a hundred years before), moved to Dresden, and then two years later moved back. Bach, Handel and Zelenka all had copies of his work.

Lotti’s Crucifixus a 8 (1718) comes from his setting of the Credo in F.  You may be used to hearing this unaccompanied, or just with continuo, but it would seem in the original to have been accompanied by 8 part strings and continuo, giving a more sonorous depth to the music.

The suspensions are a word-painting tool used to portray the pain of Jesus on the cross as he dies. The slow moving harmonic rhythm (the pace at which chords change) would have been designed to work in the especially long acoustic spaces of St Mark’s, and to keep singers in different galleries together during performance.

The Crucifixus is then followed by a far jollier Et Resurrexit!