The performance was based on Guerrero's selection of music for the Feast of the Assumption, circa 1575. (Very prescient if the Assumption was something Pope Pius XII pulled out of his tiara in 1950). Can't fault the composer. Guerrero's music was in use for two centuries after his death. Can't fault the esthetics of the venue, Luther Memorial Church. Can't fault the able performers. Something seemed not quite right; maybe it was the lack of the Mass itself. Or maybe it was listening to liturgical music on a full stomach.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Early Music from the Iberian Peninsula
is the theme of this year's Madison Early Music Festival. We went to hear The Baltimore Consort last Saturday, and enjoyed it enough to return last night for an assembly of many of the week's artists performing "Missa Sancta et Immaculata Virginitas and Motets - Music of Francisco Guerrero".
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The authorized Old Rite sung masses (11:30 AM, Mary Help of Christians Church) also uses old polyphonic settings.
ReplyDeleteNone by Guerrero. However, Vittoria was a near-contemporary and they use his stuff.
Also some early German, as well as good ol' Palestrina.
And yes, hearing the Ordinary without the Mass is not...quite...right.