Descripción
Ángeles o Calandrias
Singing with the organ in 16th and 17th century Spain
Mark Chambers (counter tenor), Andrés Cea (claviorgan).
Whit Bárbara Sela (bassoon) and Arnau Rodón (cornett)
The keystones of this recital are the motets by Victoria and Palestrina published in an ornamented version by Bovicelli in his Regole of 1594. Vadam et circuibo civitatem is taken from the 1572 Venician edition of Victoria’s motets while Ave verum corpus is a sacred setting of the Palestrina madrigal Io son ferito, hai lasso which appeared in 1561.
There is also one 5 part motet by Francisco Guerrero, Ave Virgo Sanctissima. The two treble voices are written in canon, and one of them, on this recording, is played by Arnau Rodón on the cornett. Like wise, the cornett and countertenor alternate in Alonso Lobo’s six part motet Versa est in luctum, published in his book of masses which appeared in Madrid in 1602.
The Royal organist Manoel Rodrigues Coelho published a series of verses for the Magnificat “pera se cantar ao orgão” (to be sung with the organ) in his collection Flores de música, printed in Lisbon in 1620. For the Magnificat in the first mode, he only sets verses 2, 4, 6, & 8 so that the canticle had to be completed here with a few verses of plainsong and a few others for the organ. These are found as anonymous pieces in the manuscript Pensil deleitoso by friar Antonio Martín y Coll which is preserved in the Spanish National Library in Madrid.
As a later example of this same tradition in the Court in Madrid we have included a Lamentación for Maundy Thursday by the Royal Chapel Master, José de Torres, played here on the bassoon by Bárbara Sela. We complete the program with a few polyphonic pieces, intabulations and glosses by Antonio Cabezón, found in his Obras de música printed in Madrid in 1578 and in the Libro de cifra nueva, published in Alcalà in 1557.
