Cozzolani's Confitebor tibi Domine

from Salmi Otto A Voci (1650)

If the first psalm, Dixit Dominus, with its unusual refrain, constantly varying textures and martial affect represents one side of Cozzolani’s 1650 collection, Confitebor tibi displays another. The concertato duet and trio writing found in the first psalm are present here as well as are the tutti declamatory, martial and antiphonal sections.

The difference begins on the structural level: there are no refrains in the strict sense. Instead, the common pun of the return of the opening at ‘Sicut erat in principio’ (‘as it was in the beginning’) is employed; this feature seems to be  normal for Milanese settings of this text in the 1640s. However, one feature that distinguishes Confitebor tibi: the return of this opening’s ‘walking’ bass at two points: in a triple time form at verse 7, ‘Ut det illis’, and at the canto duet ‘Redemptionem misit’ (verse 9.) Thus Confitebor represents a more subtle recurrence of the refrain idea that characterizes almost all the eight-voice settings.

Second are smaller-scale features: the declamation in the tuttis is rather quicker than in Dixit; and there is more interest in local solo-tutti contrast. Cozzolani highlights the ‘fearful’ affect of the half-verse ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ by a syncopatio and a turn to cantus mollis. The whole effect is to move Confitebor tibi closer to the salmo corrente, without however falling into a largely antiphonal homophonic declamation characteristic of that sub-genre. Only at the end of the text, with the long melodic periods on ‘Laudatio eius manet in sæculum sæculi’, does Cozzolani revert to the more expansive manner of Dixit Dominus.