BREMF before Christmas buy tickets Saturday 5th December The Christmas Vespers Revelation is too small a word..........Birmingham Post (Cozzolani Vespers, Jan 23 2001 St Mary's Warwick There can be few music lovers who have not heard the magnificent Vespers setting by Monteverdi. This work has now become a standard fare for music societies and promoters throughout the world, yet fifty years ago it was virtually unknown. Chiara Margarita Cozzolani is a composer whose work is only recently being explored, but its quality will surely lead to her ultimate recognition as one of the finest and most original composers of sacred music in the 17th century. As a composing nun she was far from unique, but again, it is only recently that this surprisingly large repertoire of 17th – century music is gaining the recognition it justly deserves. Her Vespers has now been recorded by at least 4 ensembles, so the word is certainly spreading!
In style Cozzolani's setting borrows much from Monteverdi. It is scored for double choir and employs all the richness, expressiveness and sonority of Monteverdi’s great work. In other respects, though, the unique nature of its original performing context, a convent of nuns with no access to male performers, lends it a very different colour. Although the music was published with tenor and bass parts, this was a really a matter of reaching a wider market. Within the convent the nuns would sing the music with women only and could transpose parts to suite the available voices. Some convents may have had some really low altos who could sing tenor parts at pitch, while other may have had more soprano voices - so that both the tenor and bass parts would go up the octave. The sense of the harmony is never lost as the true bass is in the organ part.
One of its most attractive qualities is the sense of energy that runs through the whole work: rapid fire alternation between the 2 choirs, dancing rythms, searing chromaticisms, moments of great delicacy, and ,above all, great tunefulness.
It is a work rarely performed, so an opportunity not to miss- at £10 (£8 conc) for tickets, there is also little to lose!
Only Musica Secreta has ever performed this work professionally in the UK; one notable performance being in honour of the 400th anniversary of the composers birth, when Arts Council funding made possible a concert in St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield. This was broadscast on BBC Radio 3. To tempt you further here are some reviews of other, earlier, performances of Cozzolani's work with Musica Secreta:
The eight voices of Musica Secreta produced a potent, robust sound, relishing the long interweaving lines, the explosive outbursts of rapid counterpoint and the yearning, often chromatic and clashing harmonies...a beguiling concert......The Observer Ravishing music of restrained passion….The Independent on Sunday (Dialogues with Heaven motets by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani recorded by Musica Secreta |