Cori Spezzati: Volume 2
An Anthology of Sacred Polychoral Music

This companion volume offers an anthology of seventeen complete pieces, most of which are analysed in the text of volume I.

Anthony F. Carver (Edited by)

9780521106351, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 April 2009

172 pages
24.4 x 17 x 0.9 cm, 0.28 kg

Cori Spezzati deals with polychoral church music from its beginnings in the first few decades of the sixteenth century to its climax in the work of Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Schiitz. In polychoral music the singers, sometimes with instrumentalists also, were split into two (or more) groups which often engaged in lively dialogue and joined in majestic tutti climaxes. The first volume draws on contemporary descriptions of the idiom, especially from the writings of Vicentino and Zarlino, but concentrates in the main on musical analysis, showing how antiphonal chanting (such as that of the psalms), dialogue and canon influenced the phenomenon. Polychoral music often has been considered synonymous not only with Venetian music but with impressive pomp. Anthony Carver's study shows that it was cultivated by many composers outside Venice - in Rome, all over northern Italy, in Catholic and Protestant areas of Germany, in Spain and the New World - and that it was as capable of quiet devotion or mannerist expressionism as of outgoing pomp. Perhaps most important, music by several major composers about which there is still surprisingly little in the literature is treated in depth: the Gabrielis, Lasso, Palestrina, Victoria, and several German masters. Volume I is illustrated with many musical examples. This companion volume offers an anthology of seventeen complete pieces, most of which are analysed in the text of volume I.

Acknowledgments
1. Francesco Santacroce: Ps. 133 Ecce nunc benedicite
2. Costanzo Festa: Nostra ut pura (Secunda pars of Inviolata, integra et casta es)
3. Jean Rousée: Regina caeli
4. Dominique Phinot: Sancta trinitas
5. Francisco Bonardo: Quem vidistis, pastores?
6. Alexander Utendal: Ps. 99 Jubilate Deo
7. Annibale Padovano: Agnus Dei (from Mass à 24)
8. Orlando di Lasso: Ps. 125 In convertendo Dominus
9. Orlando di Lasso: Epitaphium divi Bernardi: Mira loquor
10. Orlando di Lasso: (a) Osculetur me osculo, (b) Kyrie (from Missa super Osculetur me)
11. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Videntes stellam Magi
12. Tomás Luis de Victoria: Magnificat primi toni
13. Andrea Gabrieli: Quem vidistis, pastores?
14. Andrea Gabrieli: Benedicam Dominum
15. Giovanni Gabrieli: O Domine Jesu Christe
16. Giovanni Gabrieli: Hodie completi sunt
17. Samuel Scheidt: Nu komm der Heyden Heyland
Editorial commentary.

Subject Areas: Choral music [AVGC8]