Monteverdi: Mass for four voices; Mass for Six voices 'In Illo Tempore'
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CD Details
Composer: Claudio MonteverdiConductor: Harry Christophers
Performer: The Sixteen
Performer: Margaret Phillips
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import, Original recording reissued
CD Release Date: 2003-10-14
Music Label: Hyperion UK
Soundtracks:
- Kyrie
- Gloria
- Credo
- Sanctus
- Benedictus
- Agnus Dei
- Kyrie
- Gloria
- Credo
- Sanctus
- Benedictus
- Agnus Dei - I
- Agnus Dei - II
Music reviews of Monteverdi: Mass for four voices; Mass for Six voices 'In Illo Tempore'
Music Review: Monteverdi Looks Backward
Rating: 5 Stars
If I played this CD blind (skipping the two motets) for almost any aficionado of 'early music' and asked who the composer was, I doubt many listeners would guess Claudio Monteverdi. The two masses recorded here are pure 'Franco-Flemish' polyphony, composed in what Monteverdi himself retrospectively called "prima prattica" - first practice - constructed around the tenor and without a hint of basso continuo. Such music was totally out of fashion by the beginning of the 17th Century, replaced as the standard of composition by the new forms of the oratorio, and displaced from the liturgical celebration of the mass by the theological mandates of the Counter-reformation. In a letter written in 1634, Monteverdi claimed that he had written a mass for Christmas every year of his career in Mantua. If so, those masses are all lost; they were never published simply because there was no market for such old-fashioned stuff.
Around 1610, the year when Monteverdi wrote his most famous music, the Vespers of the Virgin Mary, he also set himself the task of re-composing the polyphonic motet In Illo Tempore, by Nicholas Gombert, already half a century old. A letter exists, from a Mantuan singer to Cardinal Gonzaga, which states: "Monteverdi is having printed an a capella mass for six voices written with much study and toil..." The toil certainly paid off! This is a much finer piece of music than anything Gombert ever produced. Like Gombert, however, Monteverdi seldom thins the voices of his six-part polyphony. The result is a dense choral texture of awesome majesty. Monteverdi in one stroke proved himself as skillful a polyphonist as any before or after, even including Josquin and Brumel.
The four-voice mass recorded here is one of two others by Monteverdi that have survived. Its date of composition is unknown, though musicologists assume that it was written after 1610. It's a work of great thematic economy, quite reminiscent of Josquin at his best, though somewhat more florid in decoration and closer to Monteverdi's madrigal style. It also is a sublime piece of music, probably the best Renaissance mass written in the Baroque era.
Since this is the only recording of these masses, it's a huge relief to be able to say that Harry Christophers and The Sixteen sing them extremely well. Their performance is a big-space big-choir sound, something that's often prone to stodginess and distortion, but The Sixteen are a disciplined ensemble and etch the lines of polyphony in acoustic ear-space with energy and elegance.
A must-have CD for all Monteverdi lovers!
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