Expert: Marbeth - 7/5/2006

Question
I'm not precisely sure how this service works, but if you can help me identify a classical or baroque piece, I'd be very grateful  I and many others have been trying to identify it without luck.  Here is the piece, as background music in a clip from a documentary:

http://www.essentially.net/what-is-this.mp3

Parts of it are reminiscent of Vivaldi, but I'm personally familiar with most of Vivaldi's sacred works and can't place it among those works.  Could it be Mozart?  Pergolesi?

Many thanks for any insight you could provide.

Answer
Drop the needle, huh?  A favorite of music students all over.  Ok, let's have a look at this.

I think it's the beginning of a piece, rather than an excerpt from somewhere from the middle.  It also could be the beginning of a stand-alone section (mass, cantata, oratorio).  This could make it Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Pergolesi, or another Baroque composer, as you mentioned.  Bach wrote settings of the mass, but this is not in his style.  It's not Handel, either.  Doubt it's Vivaldi and probably not Pergolesi (his one mass is not well-known).  Not Scarlatti.  Probably not Telemann.

Orchestral opening makes it possibly Baroque, though.

As far as I can make out (I wish that woman would quit talking!), the first word is "Rex!" which perhaps makes it part of the "Gloria" from the ordinary of the mass:  Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens.  Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe.  (See music10.ucdavis.edu/TEXTS/Mass.htm for the complete text of the mass.)  

It's declamatory in nature, but it's not a recitative.  More operatic.  Handel wrote opera, but strictly Baroque in nature, so it's not Handel on this score, I believe.  Bach, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, et al. are also out.

Note:  While Bach wrote a full mass and several missae brevae and thus the text makes Bach possible, I don't think the style is right.  In general, his settings of this text are not very operatic.  

I don't think it's rococo.  Too good to be CPE or WF Bach, Graun, Graupner, etc.   Not Berlioz (romantic), certainly.

Orchestra intro but doesn't sound like a concerto grosso (not a large sample, but it doesn't seem to me to be that form; doesn't have the concerto gross instrumentation, either).

Could be Haydn, but my money's on Mozart.

Not Mass in C Minor (K427), "Coronation" (K.317), or Requiem, of course.  Mozart wrote a slew of missae brevae, and it could be any of them (K. 49, 65, 115, 116, etc.)

On the other hand, maybe the first word isn't "Rex."

Bottom line:  I can't help you name the piece, but it's not Baroque or earlier; and I am fairly sure it's not rococo.  Think classical period.  And I think the first word is "rex."  Mozart is my guess.