To celebrate their 25th anniversary, I Fagiolini, director Robert Hollingworth, are releasing a new disc of music for 40-part choir. The centre-piece will be Antonio Striggio's 40-part mass Missa Ecco sì beato giorno, which was memorably performed at the Proms in 2007. It is this piece which a diarist, writing some decades later, remembered as inspiring the composition of Tallis's Spem in Alium, when a Duke (probably the Duke of Norfolk) heard the Striggio composition and challenged an English composer to do as good.
In fact, with Spem in Alium Tallis did far better. As anyone who heard the Proms performance of Striggio's Mass, Striggio does not handle his large scale forces as imaginatively as Tallis. But it will be good to get the piece on disc.
I Fagiolini's disc includes not only Striggio's Missa Ecco sì beato giorno, but the motet on which it is based along with a selection of Striggio's other motets. Plus Tallis's Spem in Alium. This latter is given in a new edition by Hugh Keyte, with instrumental accompaniment for the first time. Spem in Alium is of course a problematic work as the only manuscript we have for it, is in fact the contrafactum, with English words, which was produced for Prince Henry of Wales (elder son of James I). And the only reference to the work's first performance is the diarist writing some decades after the original performance.
Saturday 15 January 2011
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Whoa there. Spem has been recorded how many times? The Striggio has been heard once - at the Proms and this is its first recording. Shall we wait for a chance to examine the recording in detail before comparing the two? As one of only two people who have conducted both, I'd say it's less a question of better: more different. Wine and coffee are different drinks but I love both! The appearance of this mass Sally Dunkley describes as one of the most important discoveries of the last few decades. So we hope the disc will not just fill a hole but genuinely inspire! Robert Hollingworth
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