A voi che l'accendeste: for solo voice and continuo

The seven settings of Francesco Maria Paglia’s A voi che l’accendeste, a cantata per musica, form an intriguing cluster of works in the late seventeenth-century Italian solo cantata repertoire. The most notable of the settings is that by Alessandro Scarlatti, of which six manuscript sources are currently known—two more than the next most numerous, by the Bolognese composer Giacomo Perti. Scarlatti’s setting arguably touches the profound vein of Paglia’s text with a richness and originality surpassing that of his contemporaries: the survival of Scarlatti’s work in six sources, including one copied by the French collector Sébastien de Brossard, points to the high regard in which it was held. However, each of the settings shows skill, imagination, and in several cases, some intriguing links with the setting of Alessandro Scarlatti, suggesting that they were not composed entirely in isolation from each other.