ABSTRACT
Alessandro Scarlatti's music shows similar strategies to Francesco Provenzale's setting, which includes among others chromatic patterns and violins echoing the voice. The metrical scheme of the music, like that of the text, is most irregular and varied. The scheme includes just one aria with three recitatives (recitative–aria–recitative–recitative). From 1660 to 1680, a group of Neapolitan musicians seems to have specialized in compositions such as cantatas and serenatas with violins (the two genres coexist in the manuscript sources), presumably as a result of noble commissions. This group includes Antonio Farina, Lorenzo Minei, Francesco Antonio Boerio and Giovan Cesare Netti. No pieces of purely instrumental music can with any certainty be attributed to Francesco Provenzale. The style of the music for organ and that of the sacred vocal music is not foreign to that used in Naples in Provenzale's time.
