IDAGIO | Vecchi: Requiem – Rubens's Funeral & The Antwerp Baroque 8424562321137

Featuring

Björn Schmelzer
Graindelavoix
Orazio Vecchi
Paolo Bravusi
George de La Hèle
Pedro Rimonte

Duarte Lobo

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Compositional Technique

Vecchi's Requiem uses the pre-Tridentine graduale 'Si ambulem' instead of the usual 'Requiem aeternam' and includes a complete polyphonic 'Dies irae', allowing for a modest liturgical drama with dramatic chromatic changes and double choir structure.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The album explores a 'Baroque in disguise' in Antwerp, contrasting the grandiose style of Rubens with a more austere, complex, and lesser-known expression of the Baroque.

Historical Context

Antwerp experienced severe iconoclastic damage in 1566 and during the Calvinist Republic (1578-1585), with churches stripped of treasures and whitewashed, deeply affecting the city's cultural and religious life.

Historical Context

Orazio Vecchi's Missa pro defunctis, published in Antwerp in 1612, is the only Italian Requiem from that period considered suitable for Rubens's funeral, according to Stefanie Beghein's research.

Historical Context

Research by Stefanie Beghein on Antwerp funerary practices suggests that an eight-part polyphonic mass with polyphonic Dies irae and Libera me was the norm for venerated persons around 1640.

Composition History

The Requiem by Orazio Vecchi, an Italian composer, was likely performed at the 1640 funeral of the famous Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp.