Early seventeenth century Italy was essentially a Catholic police state and nothing that had anything to do with the Church was left unsupervised. After the Sack of Rome and the Reformation, in Milan as elsewhere in Italy, music was directed to be simple, solemn, and sublime in that order. In response (as this splendid disc by Le Poeme Harmonique directed by Vincent Dumestre demonstrates) Vincenzo Ruffo, maestro di cappella of the Duomo, dissimulated the elegantly ornate madrigal style into an austerely beautiful Missa Quarti Toni imbued with an evident sense of rapturous ecstasy. Subsequently the Roman Curia ordered that only fauxbourdon, false bass or two-part harmony, was to be sung in church and musicians evolved the fauxbourdon into richly ornamented (and trascendent) bliss. This sumptuously executed performance (in which harmony and melody proves to be unexpectedly modern) still proves that even the Church could not eliminate luminous joy from church music. youtu.be/dAbrA5Y6hhE
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 05:58:11 +0000
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