Motet: O fideles, modicum sustinete tempus

Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) was the reputed father of the instrumental concerto, yet he also composed sacred vocal music. Discovered in 2001, when the Berlin Sing-Akademie’s archive was returned from Kiev (where it had been hidden away since the Second World War), his five-movement motet O fideles, modicum sustinete tempus (‘O ye faithful, pause a short while’), for alto (contralto), two violins and continuo, is a splendid example of its genre. Torelli probably wrote it at Ansbach during a brief interregnum around 1700 when his employer, the Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna, temporarily suspended its orchestra, leaving its members to seek their fortune elsewhere. Like the four-movement Ite, procul abite, maestitiae (Edition HH, December 2016), this is a vibrant, technically challenging work full of exquisite touches that reaches the level of similar motets by Alessandro Scarlatti and looks forward to Vivaldi.