Lotti, a composer of the late baroque in Italy, was in the generation of Bach's or Handel's parents. In 1683, he studied a good deal from Giovanni Legrenzi, who was the principal of Mendicanti music school and well known for his operas in Venice. He was given a position of singer at St. Marco cathedral in 1687, and from 1704 to 1736 he played as a principal organist. Afier 1736, he was offerd the post as director. In the meantime, he stayed in Germany to write operas for Doresden court from 1717 to 1719. He is no less than A. Scarlatti in the point of his beautiful melodies which has much feature of Venetian school. In addition to operas, he composed vocal works such as oratrio, cantata, madrigal and also instrumental works including trio sonata. The meaning of 'Crucifixus' is a figure of a cross but some religious vocal works are called the same when mainly written by a passage of the Credo, "Crucifixes euam pro nobis / sub Pontio Pilato passus, / et sepultus est". This work is written with eight parts in splended Venetian style.
Jack Body's music covers almost all genres, including solo, chamber and orchestral music, music-theatre, music for dance and film as well as electro acoustic music. Carol to St Stephan (1975) is a recomposition of an anonymous 16th century English carol about the death by stoning of St Stephan, who, according to tradition, was the first Christian martyr. The original carol is sung first. In my "deconstruction" I had the idea of allowing the listener to have more time to experience different aspects of the original by recycling fragments of the music over and over, so that each fragment could be savored before passing on to the next. The image is, perhaps, of eddies in water - a river flows continuously even though it contains within it little whirl-pools and countercurrents. Perhaps another association suggest d by this "recycling" technique was the reverberation that one hears in large cathedrals, where the sound can echo around the space for many seconds. In a sense the listener has an opportunity to resample the music each time the echo comes back.