Carissimi: Jephte · Judicium Salomonis · Motets

How the reputation of a musician could spread throughout Europe without today’s means of communication is something the modern mind can scarcely comprehend. This is all the more remarkable in the case of Giacomo Carissimi, who spent his career in the service of a single Roman institution devoted to education and worship. Yet by the middle of the seventeenth century, he was attracting visitors from across Europe, drawn by his incomparable mastery in giving musical expression to every emotion and every word. In their current production, the members of the Boston Early Music Festival-fresh from winning the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for their most recent Telemann recording-follow in the footsteps of this extraordinary composer. Alongside Latin motets and an Italian cantata, the program features two intimate oratorios whose influence long outlived their creator. Even decades after Carissimi’s death, George Frideric Handel could not resist reworking substantial portions of the famous Jephte for his own purposes.