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Marianna von Martines's Dixit Dominus

7 Robert Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York: 19 See, for example, movement 4 of Handel’s Dixit Dominus.
Oxford University Press, 2007), 5. 20 Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 6.
8 Ibid., 6. 21 Ibid., 8.

9 Martines describes her education and influences in a letter 22 Burstein, “Grace and Genius,” 131.
to Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, 16 December 23 Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 33 and 39.
1773. Godt prints a full translation of this letter in the 24 Godt, Marianna Martines, 144-6.
introduction to his edition of the Dixit. See Marianna 25 Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 89.

von Martines, Dixit Dominus, ed. Irving Godt. Recent 26 Ibid., 62. Gjerdingen later identifies a specifi c melody/
Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, vol. 48. bass voice leading pattern underlying the typical fonte
Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1997, vii-viii. (63); this pattern is missing from Martines’s orchestral
10 See Georg Friedrich Handel, Dixit Dominus, ed. Hans writing in the example provided here, but is present in
Joachim Marx. Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, Ser. III, vol. the choral writing, largely in inner voices (tenor and alto
1. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2012. in mm. 92-93, tenor and soprano 1 in mm. 96-97); in
11 Antonio Vivaldi, Dixit Dominus RV 594 and 595; Antonio any event, the example clearly exhibits the basic melodic
Lotti, Dixit Dominus. Vivaldi’s use of a similar cantata- and harmonic features of a fonte.
like structure in his Beatus Vir settings, RV 597 and 598, 27 Ibid., 63.
suggests that this practice was especially common in 28 Ibid., 71.
setting the Vespers psalms. 29 Burstein, “Grace and Genius,” 131-133.
12 Examples include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 193 30 Godt notes, for instance, a “Prinner” in movement 2, mm.
(Dixit Dominus and Magnifi cat), K. 321 and 339 35-42 (see 146), and a “Sol-Fa-Mi” in movement 5, mm.
(complete Vespers settings that include a single- 21-25 (see 151).
movement Dixit); and Michael Haydn, MH321 (Dixit 31 See Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, chapters 2, 6,
Dominus). While these works were all written shortly 3, and 4, respectively, for discussions of these four
after Martines’s Dixit Dominus, they provide a suggestion schemata.
of the most current trend in Martines’s musical world 32 See Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Dixit Dominus and
and where this trend was headed. Magnifi cat, K. 193/186g, ed. Maynard Klein. New York:
13 As neither composer numbered the movements in these G. Schirmer, 1972.
two works, the discussion here follows Godt and 33 Patrick McCreless, “Music and Rhetoric” in Thomas
Marx in their editorial division and numbering of the Christensen, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Music
movements. Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
14 Handel notated the two C minor movements with a 854-867.
key signature of two flats; Marx’s edition uses three. 34 Bettina Varwig, “‘Mutato semper habitu’: Heinrich Schütz

The discussion in this paper concerns tonal centers, and the Culture of Rhetoric.” Music and Letters, Vol. 90,
not pitch collections (and A-flats far outnumber no. 2 (May 2009), 216-217.
A-naturals anyway). This analysis, therefore, treats 35 Joel Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century
these movements as bearing the modern C minor key (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 259.
signature of three fl ats. 36 McCreless, “Music and Rhetoric,” 868.
15 This varied approach, framed by movements in the tonic,
is also reminiscent of the tonal progression in Mozart’s
Vespers settings K. 321 (where the sequence of keys is

C, e, B-flat, F, A, C) and K. 339 (where the sequences of

keys is C, E-flat, G, D, F, C).
16 Godt, Marianna Martines, 76.
17 Ibid., 144.
18 Ibid.

24 CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9