After I had attached myself to the court of Hanover, everyone has seen how I was present there, and everyone was able to see this by two circumstances: the first [is] that everyone saw that I came running as soon as something important had to be done; the second that those princes entrusted me with their deepest secrets without demanding even the slightest oath from me as is customary at all German courts. I left that court with the greatest qualms of conscience because the Roman Catholic religion needed me there. And indeed, I had not yet left, or the [Catholic] missionaries were forbidden to perform the two parochial acts of baptism and marriage … So I left that court out of pure necessity: because those [Protestant] princes could not use me because of my religion, either in court positions or in the governing bodies of the country, I had to live always as a courtier or rather as a gypsy, which is good up to a certain age, but not after that.
—Agostino Steffani, letter of 11 July 1706 to Count Antonio Maria Fede
Gustav Leonhardt once told me during an interview in 1990, that in the future no more major musical discoveries were to be expected. According to him, everything of real value from music history had been discovered by now. For all the admiration I have always had for Leonhardt, I must disagree. One of the finest examples of a grand master whose oeuvre is still largely unknown is Agostino Steffani, who was born in Castelfranco in 1654 and who died in Frankfurt in 1728. I suspect that Leonhardt himself came to think of this matter in more nuanced terms after the interview, in which, incidentally, he also said unusually harsh words about Handel (“one big facade, with nothing behind it”). In fact, five years later, the same Leonhardt made a successful and loving recording of Steffani’s Stabat mater. This should not surprise us. It often happens, over time, that musicians completely or partially revise their opinions. And why not? Isn’t admitting a mistake often a sign of mental strength?
Agostino Steffani was an extremely gifted man, reminiscent of the Dutchman Constantijn Huygens in terms of versatility: he excelled as a composer, diplomat and bishop. After having been trained as a choirboy in Padova for three years, he was discovered there by Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria, who was passing through Padova on his way to Rome. With the consent of his parents, in the summer of 1667, Agostino joined the Bavarian court in Munich, which employed about 55 musicians, including eleven Italians. This was nothing unusual in the 17th and 18th centuries: almost every self-respecting court in Europe employed Italian musicians, who were not infrequently among the best paid chapel members and, partly as a result, often aroused fierce feelings of jealousy among local musicians. Steffani would continue to work for the Bavarian court until 1688, when he left for Protestant (!) Hanover to become court chapel master there.
After his voice broke, Steffani focused on the study of harpsichord and organ playing and composition. Soon he also distinguished himself by his great social and organisational skills. In addition to Latin and Italian, Steffani also spoke French and German, and this made him extremely suitable for complicated diplomatic and ecclesiastical assignments. The Roman Catholic cause always took precedence for him, and he was more aware than anyone else of the function music could play in promoting the interests of the Church. In 1680, Steffani was ordained a priest, and even a bishop 27 years later. For years, he dreamed in vain of bringing Lutheran northern Germany back into the arms of the Catholic Church. As a result, music increasingly faded into the background; in a letter, Steffani even calls his compositions “juvenile sins” (delicta iuventutis). Nevertheless, even later in life, as a bishop, he continued to compose with some regularity, albeit not under his own name but under the pseudonym Gregorio Piva.
Incidentally, not everyone was convinced of the sincerity of Steffani’s ‘career switch.’ One anonymous writer remarked sarcastically: “I found this metamorphosis of an entertainer into a bishop as ridiculous as the transformation of a courtesan into a philosopher described by Lucanus.” That view does not do justice to Steffani’s lifelong passionate commitment to the Catholic cause. At most it can be said that the metamorphosis from musician to cleric was never fully completed. After having done his utmost, with no success, to detach Bavaria from the French camp during the War of the Spanish Succession, Steffani suffered a nervous breakdown in September 1702. He found necessary distraction and solace in his own vocal chamber duets, which he subjected to a thorough revision, and with brilliant results: not for nothing did Handel take these works as examples for his own chamber duets. As late as 1784, the Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland notes that Steffani’s meisterhafte Duette are still highly appreciated by true music connoisseurs. Interestingly, Steffani also insisted that the vocalists sing the duets exactly as he had written them down, i.e., without musical ornaments devised or improvised by the singers. This strict attitude was quite unusual in the Baroque era.
Just as important as Steffani’s chamber duets are the sixteen operas, which combine the best features of Italian opera—melodic richness, great vocal virtuosity, expressive harmonies—with the main achievements of contemporary French opera (an often large role for the chorus and colourful instrumentation, with prominent parts for wind instruments). During the period of 1678-1679, Steffani resided in Paris, where he immersed himself in the French musical style. By blending Italian and French musical styles, Steffani was a pioneer and a model for Handel, Telemann, and Bach.
After 1709, Steffani composed no new operas. As a bishop, however, he was still interested in composing sacred works and vocal chamber music. In the last years of his life, he wrote some of his very finest works at the instigation of the Academy of Vocal Music, a society of aristocratic music connoisseurs, composers, and singers founded in London in 1726, which elected Steffani as its president on the 1st of June, 1727. In addition to previously composed pieces, Steffani sent the Academy newly composed works, including the magnificent five-voice motet Qui diligit Mariam. But at that moment the best was yet to come. In his letter of the 11th of January, 1728—written a month before his death—Steffani offered to send his Stabat mater to the Academy in London. In the same letter, the composer himself called it his masterpiece and the conclusion of his long compositional career.
Steffani’s Stabat mater is indeed a musical miracle: the melodies are authentically Italian and utterly compelling, the harmonies as rich as those of Bach, the choruses brilliantly worked out in six voices. The moving late medieval poem about the Virgin Mary standing at the foot of the cross inspired Steffani to create a highly emotional choral work, in which Baroque sensuality and musical learning are perfectly merged. Consequently, the most alienating experience of my career was a conversation with an internationally respected choral conductor who told me he thought it was just a “weird and mediocre piece.” That comment did not stop me from organising a highly successful performance of Steffani’s Stabat mater at the Saturday Matinee Series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. To my ears, it is the resounding counterpart to Bernini’s overwhelming L’Estasi di Santa Teresa d’Avila (The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa of Avila), even though that sculpture was created almost 80 years earlier.
Recommended recordings
Several fine recordings of Steffani’s Stabat mater are available. The CD recording with the choir and orchestra of De Nederlandse Bachvereniging conducted by Gustav Leonhardt and released in 1995, is beautifully concentrated, lovely, and mystical, but also rather introverted. The contrast with the flair and drama of the 2013 recording with I Barocchisti directed by Diego Fasolis could hardly be greater: Fasolis possibly turns it a little too much into spiritual opera, but then he has star singers like Cecilia Bartoli and Franco Fagioli among his soloists! The golden mean may not yet have been found. Also, the somewhat detached recording made by Harry Christophers with his elite ensemble The Sixteen in 2009 is a bit of a disappointment. In 2015, an exemplary performance of a masterful opera by Steffani was released on Erato: Niobe, Regina di Tebe, with superb soloists (Karina Gauvin, Philippe Jaroussky, and others) and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, conducted by Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs. Unforgettable are the instrumental dances and overtures from Steffani’s operas, which Diego Fasolis recorded with I Barocchisti in 2013. Most of these were CD premieres, which is actually hardly imaginable given the extraordinarily high level of the music. Of the (mainly vocal) chamber music, there is, among others, a fine CD recording by the ensemble Fons Musicae.
