You may have heard about Austria winning the Eurovision Song Contest. No, I promise I won't praise our latest star or talk about Mother's Day in Austria.
These days I went to the preparation course for the music A-levels. Our professor who said months ago that it won't be much brought us +200 pages to read, for only 3 chapters out of 10.
Naturally students are overwhelmed by such an amount at once. However, I managed to work through that staple in 1 day and voilá! Luckily I did, I found out more about an impressive masterpiece:
Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli. On this album you'll find Allegri's Miserere, technically beautiful psalm settings that were performed in the Sistine Chapel. I'd like to focus on the Mass this time.
Allegri's Miserere & Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli - The Tallis Scholars
I know, music of the Renaissance is so inspiring. However, I never enlarged upon the mass music because I thought I would know that. Never!
Once I was performing a mass when I was a member of church choir, but that would've been not even half as good as this performance
by the Tallis Scholars, a British professional early music vocal ensemble formed by Peter Phillips.
Traditionally, a mass for the ordinary contains:
Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei.
That are basically all the tracks of the Missa Papae Marcelli; The mass composed for Pope Marcellus, who only reigned for 3 weeks in 1555.
The composition was matter under discussion at Council of Trent, mostly because of the polyphony. You'll hear 6 voices on this mass.
Nowadays this revolutionary and complex mass is one of the most famous in music history.
Kyrie is the first movement, structured ABA usually. What is remarkable here is the stepwise motion of voices.
Gloria is a celebratory passage. This specific piece was called a new form of expression, because of the precision of word-setting.
Credo is the longest sung text of the mass. You won't notice the 9 minutes because of the dynamic flow and gapless vocals.
Sanctus et Benedictus Sanctus is a short hymn and the continuation is Benedictus. You'll hear typical block chords very well.
Agnus Dei 1 et 2 - the final setting. Perhaps the mathematically most complex movement of Palestrina. I couldn't connumerate, can you?
I'm not going to teach people about religion etc. I just wanted to inform you about my latest musical discovery! Hope you enjoy!