It is no secret that the Bay Area loves its choirs. And it’s nice when we really get to flex our choral muscles.
This weekend, back in the Bay by popular demand, Cal Performances presents “The Polychoral Splendors of Renaissance Florence” Alessandro Striggio's Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno for 40 and 60 voices. The piece was last performed in 2008 at the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition. This mass is the largest known contrapuntal choral work in Western music.
UC Berkeley Musicology Professor Davitt Moroney spent twenty years looking for the 16th century manuscript and finally found it in 2005; it was miscataloged, filed under the wrong composer name and the wrong title.
Watch and listen to UC Berkeley musicologist and conductor Davitt Moroney as he discusses this work.
The mass has five, eight part choirs, or five, double choirs, or ten choirs; or, an easier way to think about it, 40 independent moving parts. I’ve only seen one performance using polyphony like that, by the Tallis Scholars, and the effect with that many parts weaving in and out of each other is mesmerizing.
According to Professor Moroney, Striggio’s mass is composed to take advantage of physical space and singer placement, much like a stereo sound system. When the choirs are placed in specific locations, the sound will move across the stage.
Striggio’s mass was called "a masterpiece...not just the choral event of the year but possibly of the decade" by the London Guardian.
Program: Cavazzoni: Intonazione for organ • Rossetto: Consolamini popule meus for 50 voices • Four instrumental canzonas • Anonymous: Unum cole deum, ne iures vana per eum, canon for 40 voices • Striggio: Motet Ecce beatam lucem for 40 voices; Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, for 40 and 60 voice.
Preconcert talk: Friday, February 3, 5-6 pm , First Congregational Church with Professor Davitt Moroney. Free and open to the public.
Performances: Fri, Feb 3, 8pm & Sat, Feb 4, 8pm
First Congregational Church 2345 Channing Way in Berkeley.
Tickets: start at $56
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