Recordings
|
Monteverdi: Masses
CDH55145
Helios (Hyperion's budget label)
|
|
Monteverdi: Vespers
This album is not yet available for download
SACDA67531/2
2CDs Super-Audio CD — 2CDs Deleted
|
|
Details
|
|
Movement 1: Kyrie
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 2: Gloria
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 3: Credo
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 4: Sanctus
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 5: Benedictus
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 6: Agnus Dei I
author of text Ordinary of the Mass
Movement 7: Agnus Dei II
|
And yet, despite the relentlessly contrapuntal writing and dense textures, the adoption of an old style a cappella framework, and the tribute to a respected composer of a much earlier generation, the Mass is still recognizably by Monteverdi. Its energy and the modern-sounding major tonality contribute to this. But there are moments too when the writing is clearly related to that found in the ostensibly more modern Vespers music. There is frequent sequential writing—in the last section of the Kyrie, for example, and in the Sanctus and Benedictus—and some passages have exact parallels in the Psalms: compare, for example, the close imitation in dotted rhythms heard in descending form at ‘in gloria Dei Patris’ (Gloria) and in the last Agnus Dei, and in ascending form at ‘Et in Spiritum Sanctum’ (Creed), with the ‘Amen’ of Laudate pueri and the ‘Gloria Patri’ of Laetatus sum (both ascending), the ‘Gloria Patri’ of the six-part Magnificat (descending), and, more generally, with the close canonic entries that open and close Nisi Dominus. As so often, Monteverdi leaves us with a question: is the Mass more forward-looking than it at first appears?
from notes by John Whenham © 2006
