Programme:
Alessandro Striggio: Mass for 40 voices (a festive service for St. John’s day in Florence with Alessandro Striggio‘s »Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno«, complemented by music by Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Corteccia and Orazio Benevoli)
When the fashion for polychoral music spread from Venice to the rest of Italy in the Renaissance, the Medici in Florence, who loved displays of splendour, also used this monumental musical style to demonstrate their worldly power. On St. John’s Day (24 June), the music performed in the majestic cathedral to honour the city’s patron saint was truly magnificent. In the mid-16th century, Francesco Corteccia, the cathedral’s maestro di cappella, compiled a festive mass for this occasion. Alessandro Striggio contributed the bulk of it with his »Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno« for five eight-part choirs, commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Hervé Niquet and his outstanding vocal and instrumental ensemble Le Concert Spirituel complement this mass by adding Striggio’s motet »Ecce beatam lucem« and music by Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Corteccia and Orazio Benevoli. The result is a fictitious reconstruction of a pompous festive divine service on a spectacular scale, in which the intricately interwoven voices guarantee a captivatingly beautiful universal listening experience!
Le Concert Spirituel vocal and instrumental ensemble
Hervé Niquet conductor
Please note: Seats in category 5 have a limited view
supported by the Wolfgang und Ursula Braun Stiftung
