Another Alessandro, he who bore the surname Stradella and was the hero
of Flotow's opera of that name, has figured so freely in romance that it
is not easy to separate truth from fiction in accounts of his life. Dr.
Parry says of him that he had a remarkable instinct for choral effects,
even piling progressions into a climax, that his solo music aims at
definiteness of structure, that, in 1676, he used a double orchestra
whose principal instruments were violins, and that his oratorios were
specially significant, as he cultivated all the resources of that form
of art. His most celebrated composition is an oratorio, "San Giovanni
Battista," and one of the airs attached to it "Pieta Signore," a
beautiful, symmetrical, heart-searching melody, is sung to-day, although
it is by no means as well known as it deserves.
According to tradition, its tender, worshipful strains sung in the
church of the Holy Apostles, at Rome, by the composer himself, once
stayed the hand of an assassin whom jealousy had prompted to slay the
"Apollo della Musica.
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