Sistine Chapel
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CORO The Sixteen Edition CORO The Sixteen Edition Other Sixteen Edition recordings available on CORO Allegri - Miserere Victoria - Requiem 1605 Music Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli, Stabat Mater Priest, scholar and singer, this remarkable Lotti: Crucifixus Spaniard epitomised the emotion from the ALLEGRI "Christophers draws and fervour of brilliant performances Renaissance Europe. from his singers, both Victoria's lavish ANERIO technically assured and Requiem became Sistine vividly impassioned." his most famous and PALESTRINA the guardian revered work. cor16014 corsacd16033 Chapel MARENZIO Recording Producer: Mark Brown 2007 The Sixteen Productions Ltd. Recording Engineer: Mike Hatch (Floating Earth Ltd) © 2007 The Sixteen Productions Ltd. Recorded in the church of St Silas the Martyr, For further information about recordings on CORO Kentish Town, London in November 2006 or live performances and tours by The Sixteen, includes 44 (0) 20 7488 2629 Italian Coach: Karen Fodor call + or email [email protected] Editions - Mapa Mundi, transcribed and edited by world premiere Martyn Imrie and Nigel Davison - J & W Chester: Assumpta est Maria, www.thesixteen.com recordings transcribed and edited by Nigel Davison THE VOICES OF Cover image: Eyalos, Shutterstock Inc. The Sixteen Design: Andrew Giles THE VOICES OF ��������������������� HARRY CHRISTOPHERS To find out more about The Sixteen, concert tours, and to buy CDs, visit www.thesixteen.com cor16047 1 “The whole plan of singing in musical modes shall be constituted Ave Regina caelorum a 8 4.44 Masters of not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but in such a way that the Felice Anerio (1560-1614) words may be clearly understood by all, and the hearts of the 2 Ascendit Deus a 5 1.49 the Papal Chapels listeners be drawn to the desire of heavenly harmonies, in the G.P. da Palestrina (1525-1594) contemplation of the joys of the blessed” 3 Ave Maria a 5 3.16 he Church of Rome has had a long Palestrina and turbulent history, most famously Thus decreed the Council of Trent in 1562, and what better 4 Angelus Domini descendit 3.14 Twith the great schisms of the late dictum for us to attempt to emulate? This recording will give de caelo a 5 Palestrina Middle Ages: the final separation of the you a rare insight into the world of the Papal chapels and in 5 Regina caeli laetare a 8 2.11 Eastern and Western Christians after many particular the most famous of all, that of the Sistine Chapel. Anerio centuries of dispute, by the rejection of The music can all be found in the Vatican library, where 6 the Council of Florence in 1472; and that Stabat Mater a 12 7.35 precipitated by Urban VI, elected in 1378, there is a wealth of scores often chaotically catalogued and Anerio inaccessible to scholars. Some of the manuscripts are so fragile resulting in the dual Papacies of Avignon 7 4.13 that they can neither be safely handled nor photographed. Christus resurgens ex mortuis and Rome, resolved in 1417 in favour of the Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) latter city. Allegri is one of those composers whose reputation and 8 Che fa oggi il mio sole 1.10 However by the end of the 15th century renown rests on a single work - the Miserere*. However, he wrote other motets and masses Luca Marenzio (1553?-1599) the Church had achieved a degree of and here we will give you the opportunity to see Allegri in another light. Felice Anerio was Missa 'Che fa oggi il mio sole' stability, wealth and prestige which enabled another true master of composition. His music has, quite frankly, been a revelation to me and Allegri it, in addition to its pastoral role, to be I hope it will be the same for you. at the forefront of patronage of the Arts 9 Kyrie 4.05 bl (painting, music and architecture), as If, like Allegri and Anerio, you were associated with the Papal chapels in the sixteenth century Gloria 4.30 well as a political power of considerable or early seventeenth century, you could not fail to come under the magisterial influence of bm Credo 6.48 influence. Polyphonic music was well Palestrina. Without doubt he was the great master of all Papal composers and his spiritual craft bn Sanctus 2.26 established, alongside the ancient chants, as and harmonic vitality fulfilled the needs of the Vatican. Just listen to his glorious motet for the bo Benedictus 2.31 an essential part of the ritual observances Assumption, Assumpta est Maria, at the end of this disc, and you will understand completely. bp Agnus Dei 4.21 of the Church; singers and composers were bq in ever greater demand throughout the Magnificat secundi toni a 8 7.09 hegemony of the Roman religion, and the Anerio churches and choir schools of what are now br Assumpta est Maria a 6 6.36 the Low Countries and France were a great Palestrina source of these for the great Italian city *available on the coro label as cor16014 Total playing time 67.49 states as well as the Vatican. 2 3 Built by Pope Sixtus IV (1471 - 1484), Choir became significant, so much so that international, post-Josquin style, perhaps clarity in text setting. the Sistine Chapel is famous primarily for by 1512 there were nine in a choir of about best exemplified in the works of Morales, Likewise Palestrina and his younger its magnificant decorations, notably the twenty. In contrast, a hundred odd years who was a widely admired composer associates proceeded to rewrite much of ceiling frescoes of Michelangelo. But just later, the personnel was almost exclusively throughout Europe as well as in Spain the repertoire, with the revised texts of the as magnificent, but more transient, was Italian: the Liber Missarum of Archangelo and the New World. A later Italian was Council of Trent, in a more transparent the music written in the next century and Crivelli (1546-1617), copied as Sistine Giovanni Animuccia, a Florentine born in and text-orientated fashion. Ideally suited a half and sung by the Papal Choir within Chapel codex 25, in the year of his death, 1520, who worked mostly in Rome, and to the new needs of the revised Liturgy its walls. Notated in often richly-decorated lists the 31 singers who (presumably) were whose career straddled the period of the were pieces in double choir format, their manuscripts and sometimes issued in the performers of his six-voice Missa Canite Council of Trent. He was Palestrina’s most declamatory style favouring intelligible prints, preserved in the choir library tuba. Among them are three Spaniards, important Roman contemporary from 1550 projection of the text. Foremost in the until our time, this repertoire changed including Francisco Soto, (c.1533 - 1619), a on. Indeed in January 1555 he succeeded composition of such music were the significantly in style throughout the 16th castrato; one other is French, D. Theophilus Palestrina (who had been admitted to the Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria, and century. Initially dominated by Franco- Garganus Gallicanus; the rest seem all to Sistine Choir that month) at St. Peter’s Palestrina himself, as well as a host of Flemish composers, its flavour later swung be Italians, mostly Romans. Interestingly, as master of the Cappella Giulia, a post younger composers, dominantly Italians, in favour of native Italians, particularly the Italians generally have the town of he held until his death in 1571, when he Romans such as the Nanino and Anerio when the Counter Reformation gained their origin appended to their name, such was in turn succeeded by Palestrina, who brothers. strength after the Council of Trent (1545- as D. Horatius Crescentius Neapolitanus then held the post until his death in 1594. The elder Anerio brother, Felice, was 1563), which had been set up mainly for the (Naples), R. Archangelus Crivellus Palestrina, in the interim, had been ejected born in 1560, began his career in 1568 as definitive determination of the doctrines of Beramensis (Bergamo), or R. Jacobus from the Sistine Choir in July 1555, in that a choirboy at S. Maria Maggiore under the Church in response to the heresies of Razzius Perusinus (Perugia). Of course year of the three Popes, because he was Giovanni Maria Nanino (1545-1607, who the Protestants. we must remember that the most famous married. Stylistically, Animuccia’s music was a Papal singer from 1577); and he sang Such a pattern was also evident in the Italian composer of the Renaissance called is very much continuing in the traditions under Palestrina in the Cappella Giulia national make-up of the singers in the himself Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, of Morales, Gombert, Festa and their from 1575 to 1579. He wrote the usual Choir, although there was a more even after his birthplace. contemporaries: the 1552 book of Motets range of music for a composer of the time: balance in the early years. Since the late The first Italian composer of stature are backward looking, favouring deep, rich, madrigals both secular and sacred, music 15th century the Choir members had whose works appear in the Papal archives sonorous textures, with long and often for the Liturgy, some of it issued in print. considered themselves to be made up of was Costanzo Festa. Like his contemporary, complex, but elegant, vocal lines. However But the great achievement of his life three national groupings: the Franco- Cristóbal Morales, he was a singer in his later Masses, published in 1567, were to was his appointment as official Papal Flemish; the Italians; and the Spanish. With the Sistine Chapel choir. Festa became a show the influence of the Council of Trent composer, on 3rd April 1594, on the death the accession of Alexander VI (Rodrigo member in 1517 and died in 1545.