Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony London Oratory Schola Cantorum & Charles Cole

• Giovanni Gabrieli (1554 - 1612):
• 1 Gabrieli: Jubilate Deo omnis terra, C. 136 05:19
• 2 Gabrieli: Beata es virgo Maria, C. 8 04:34
• 3 Gabrieli: Ego sum qui sum, C. 29 04:43
• 4 Gabrieli: O quam suavis a 7, C. 10 05:08
• Giovanni Bassano (1560 - 1617):
• 5 Bassano: Dic nobis Maria 04:00
• Claudio Merulo (1533 - 1604):
• 6 Merulo: Adoramus te Domine 02:55
• 7 Merulo: Beata viscera 02:55
• Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643):
• 8 Monteverdi: Adoramus te Christe, SV 289 05:53
• 9 Monteverdi: Cantate Domino a 6, SV 293 03:43
• Giacomo Finetti (1605 - 1631):
• 10 Finetti: O crux ave, spes unica 03:41
• Andrea Gabrieli (1510 - 1586):
• 11 Gabrieli: Laetare Jerusalem 03:39
• 12 Gabrieli: Maria Magdalene, Maria Jacobi, et Salome 04:36
• Giovanni Croce (1557 - 1609):
• 13 Croce: Cantate Domino 02:29
• 14 Croce: O sacrum convivium a 4 03:16
• 15 Croce: In spiritu humilitatis 05:45
• 16 Croce: Buccinate in neomenia 03:52
• Total Runtime 01:06:28

Info for Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony

It’s tempting to imagine that this is how the music might have sounded four centuries ago in the glorious surroundings of St Mark’s. Certainly, any comparisons are unlikely to be to the disadvantage of these exceptional young singers: this is repertoire in which they excel.

Although Monteverdi would ultimately dominate the early Venetian Baroque, a remarkable period immediately preceded his arrival at San Marco—the period of the ‘Three Giovannis’. It is almost impossible to imagine such great talents as Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni Bassano and Giovanni Croce all working alongside each other in the same place at the same time, but such a unique situation could only have existed at St Mark’s: Gabrieli as First Organist, Bassano as maestro of instrumental music, and Croce as the overall maestro di cappella, all three of them writing music of incredible quality.

Giovanni, the younger of the two Gabrielis, studied with Lassus in Munich during the 1570s before returning to Venice, where he was appointed Second Organist at St Mark’s in 1584, rising to First Organist the following year on the death of the incumbent, his uncle Andrea. The First and Second Organists would alternate week by week, covering all duties in the Basilica alone; however, both were required for major feasts, when the primo would accompany the choir, the secondo playing with the instruments and accompanying soloists. Giovanni Gabrieli’s famous eight-part setting of Jubilate Deo draws together a number of verses from the psalms, including the text ‘Deus Israel coniugat vos’, the word ‘coniugat’ undoubtedly recalling in the minds of the Venetians the annual conjoining of the Doge and the lagoon in the ceremonial marriage of the Serenissima and the sea. A relatively late work, not published until a year after his death, the absolute mastery of the construction and its polished craftsmanship show Gabrieli at the height of his powers. Interestingly though, it is harmonically far more conservative than the next three motets, which were published as part of Gabrieli’s earlier 1597 collection Symphoniae sacrae I. The six-part Beata es virgo Maria was intended for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, and the double-choir Ego sum qui sum is a setting of a Matins text for Easter Sunday. In these, Gabrieli is more willing to exert a gentle pressure on the tonality. The wondrous sonorities which arise are especially spectacular in the seven-part O quam suavis for Corpus Christi which includes a poignant quotation of the Gregorian second-mode Magnificat tone at ‘dimittens inanes’. The powerful downward melodic gestures in the trebles at ‘demonstrares’ meet with opposing upward force in the lower voices, bracing the harmonic structure, whilst the final cadence, arguably unsurpassed in this anthology, achieves a fragile and delicate beauty like the finest Murano vase. ....

London Oratory Schola Cantorum
Charles Cole, conductor

No biography found.

Booklet for Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony