Processions, both round the Piazza San Marco, and to churches elsewhere in Venice often included the singing of litanies like that of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, in which a series of petitions to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and to the Virgin in all her guises to ‘pray for us’ is framed by an initial Kyrie and a concluding Agnus Dei. The music used in processional litanies would have been of the simplest kind only—usually plainsong. A complex setting like Gabrieli’s for eight voices, might have been used for devotional purposes by a confraternity, or it may have been linked with the annual celebration of the victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), a moment of the greatest significance in Venetian history and a victory that was attributed by Pope Pius V to the intervention of the Madonna of the Rosary; in Venice it was celebrated by the doge and choir of St Mark’s at the church of Santa Giustina.
from notes by John Whenham © 2012
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