Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Benevoli, Orazio

Benevoli, Orazio, chapel-master of St. Peter's, at Rome, was one of the greatest composers of the seventeenth century, and a pupil of Bernardo Nanini. Liberati asserts that Benevoli was superior to his master, and all other composers, in the art of writing fugue and counterpoint for four and six choirs, each of four parts. Dr. Burney cites a mass of this kind, composed by Benevoli, which surpasses, in effect, every thing he had known of the same description. This is probably the mass which Benevoli composed for the cessation of the plague at Rome, for six choirs, of four parts each, the score consisting of twenty-four different parts. It was performed at St. Peter's church, of which he was maestro di capella; and the singers, amounting to more than two hundred, were arranged in different circles of the dome, the sixth choir occupying the summit of the cupola.