Ex Tenebris ad Lucem

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the Concerto Palatino directed by Bruce Dickey. It is on Passacaille label and is 1135.

In the years 1575-77, Venice was struck by a plague of unusual violence, killing a third of the population in just two years. To stave off the plague which the Venetians felt was caused by the wrath of God, they began already in 1575 with the construction of the beautiful Chiesa del Redentore. At the consecration of this church and at later ceremonies, music by the best composers linked to St Mark’s, such as Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, was performed. Some of these works can be heard on the present recording. Furthermore, the American composer Robert Kyr was commissioned to contribute a new work intended to create a musical and emotional link between the plague in the 16th as well as the pandemic in the 21st centuries: Vigil: Darkness into light, is a bridge from our days to the music of the Renaissance.

This evocative music is presented by the outstanding singers and instrumentalists of the ensemble Concerto Palatino, including Hana Blažíková, Alex Potter and Veronika Skuplik, under the direction of Bruce Dickey.

In response to the COVID pandemic of 2020–2020, Concerto Palatino has produced a program reflecting on the Venetian plague of 1575–1577 and attempting to make a spiritual connection to our COVID pandemic. Though our situation is very different, we think that linking our experience to the struggle of the Venetian populace can create a spiritual resonance with a power to help us bring peace and solace into our lives. The Venetians felt that the plague was an expression of the wrath of God, visited on them for their sins. They hoped to placate God’s wrath with a grandiose penitential gesture vowing to build, at the peak of the plague, a huge church named for the Redeemer (il Redentore), to which the Doge and his rentinue would pay a visit to give thanks in each year that Venice remained free of pestilence. This was the origin of the Chiesa del Redentore, that magnificent Palladian temple which looks across the waters of the lagoon toward the Piazza San Marco, and the Feast of the Redentore, which still takes place every year on the third Sunday of July. In our program we offer a hypothetical sampling of music that might have been heard during the various phases of the Redentore project from its conception and construction, to its dedication and to the celebrations in years following the end of the plague. We will focus on the little-known but gorgeous 6-part penitential Psalms of Andrea Gabrieli and other motets from six to twelve voices by Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni Croce and Giovanni Battista Grillo.

We make the link to our time with a new composition commissioned from the renowned American composer Robert Kyr, professor of composition and theory at the University of Oregon. His piece, entitled “Vigil: From Darkness into Light”, responds to the music of the two Gabrielis and the texts they set, and creates a conversation between an ensemble reflecting the theistic focus of 16th century Venice and a soloist expressing the secularism and dislocation of the present day in its attitude toward the pandemic. The dialog juxtaposes increasingly reworked versions of motets of Andrea Gabrieli with brief intensely lyrical arias sung in English by Hana Blažíková, accomplanied by cornetto, violin, violone and organ. The work, like the entire program, moves slowly from penitence to jubilation and thanksgiving.