The layout of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, with its lateral galleries and organ lofts, significantly influenced the development of the antiphonal and later polychoral compositional style.
Recording & Production
This album was recorded in two London venues: St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, in January 1992, and St John's, Smith Square, in October 1991.
Compositional Technique
Lassus's motet Tui sunt coeli, a setting of the Christmas Day Offertory, uses a Venetian double-choir style with a high choir representing the heavens and a normal-pitched one the earth.
Historical Context
Venice, known as La Serenissima, maintained its independence and prominence among Italian city-states despite setbacks like the Ottoman Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 and the loss of Cyprus in 1570.
Historical Context
The free Republic of Venice, a major European power for centuries, was extinguished without a fight and engulfed by Napoleon little more than 60 years after Caldara's death in 1736.
Composer Biography
Orlandus Lassus, a Flemish composer, was reportedly kidnapped at least twice in his youth for the beauty of his voice and worked in various European cities including Rome, where he was choirmaster at St John Lateran before Palestrina.
Composition History
Andrea Gabrieli's De profundis, part of his Penitential Psalms published in Venice in 1583, was considered by him to be his finest work, composed in a polyphonic style related to Lassus.
You might also enjoy...
Introitus · Vokalmusik von Dufay bis Palestrina
Renaissance & Baroque Music
The Magic of Polyphony
1612 Italian Vespers
Masters of Imitation
Lamentations
Ockeghem: Missa De plus en plus
Praetorius and Italy
Allegri: Miserere; Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah & other Renaissance Masterpieces
