CONCERT STREAM AVAILABLE – Viva Italia: 17th Century Music from the Collegio Germanico in Rome (works by Victoria, Palestrina, Charpentier, Carissimi, and Sances)

Listen to a live performance by the Duke Vespers Ensemble and period-instrument orchestra made up of the Mallarmé Chamber Players and Washington Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, conducted by Brian A. Schmidt. Available at the following link until 4/27. 

 

 

Some of Europe’s most famous Renaissance and Baroque composers lived and worked in Rome during the 1600s. In Viva Italia, the Duke Vespers Ensemble — in collaboration with Mallarme Chamber Players and the Washington Cornett and Sackbutt ensemble — presents a selection of music influenced by these composers. The music represents the beauty and majesty that was being cultivated in worship in 17th century Rome.

 

An important location for talented European composers of the 17th century was Rome’s Collegio Germanico, the Vatican’s training center for German-speaking priests. Musicians connected to the center include Tomás Luis de Victoria, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giacomo Carissimi, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Giovanni Felice Sances. This confluence of talent led to a golden age of sacred music in Rome and the emergence of creative performance practices that have remained relatively unknown. For example, the Collegio Germanico and other churches in Rome were beginning to add instrument doublings to their performances in the late 16th century and throughout the 17th century – so much that people started referring to this practice as the “uso di Roma,” or the “use in Rome.”

The Viva Italia concert represents much of what one would have heard in Mass or Vespers worship services at the Collegio Germanico and elsewhere in Rome in the 17th century. Selections include:

• Ave regina caelorum by Tomás Luis de Victoria
• Regina Caeli by Tomás Luis de Victoria
• Salve Regina by Tomás Luis de Victoria
• Alma redemptoris mater by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
• Dixit Dominus by Marc-Antoine Charpentier
• O Dulcissima Mariae Domine by Giacomo Carissimi
• Ave maris stella by Giovanni Felice Sances
• Vulnerasti cor meum by Giovanni Felice Sances
• Missa Sancta Mariae Magdalenae by Giovanni Felice Sances (2nd performance ever in North America)