Three from Tactus

NOTE: All of the recordings on this program are part of the Italian label Tactus. For more information about their US availability:

https://www.naxos.com/labels/tactus-cd.htm

I. Camillo Cortellini—Le Messe (various ensembles). Tactus CD TC 560380.

The grandeur of the Italian Renaissance polyphonic school does not need an introduction, but this set focuses on the work of a very little known and performed composer from Bologna: Camillo Cortellini. The complete collection of his masses gives us a correct understanding of the historical reassessment of the Bologna music school (as compared to the celebrated Roman or Venetian schools). The “Messa Bolognese” by Cortellini (first to be composed in concert style) will in fact be an important link between the late Renaissance and the Baroque. The edition of this CD was made possible thanks to the participation of Bolognese choirs (Coro Euridice, Coro Eclectica, Coro of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna Chamber Choir) and other highly qualified Italian choirs (Coro Histonium di Vasto, Coro Super partes di Roseto degli Abruzzi, Coro Città di Roma and Vocalia Consort di Roma, Studium Canticum di Cagliari, Coro Polifonico S. Antonio Abate di Cordenons) that completed this huge work with great variety of organic performances.

II. Giovanni Battista Fasolo—Annuale Opera Ottava (Luca Scandali, o./Ensemble Bella Gerit). Tactus CD TC 590701.

Giovanni Battista Fasolo most probably composed its Annuale (organ music for the whole liturgical year) simultaneously to the famous “Fiori Musicali” by Girolamo Frescobaldi; the Annual, however, was delivered to printing only ten years later, in 1645, possibly for editorial reasons because it was the same Venetian printer - Alessandro Vincenti - specialized in keyboard music, to publish both collections. The goal pursued by Fasolo with his Annuale was to provide «tutto quello, che deve far un Organista, per risponder al Choro tutto l’Anno» (everything that an organist has to do, responding to the Choir throughout the year). More than an artistic stand-alone product, the collection was an example of the repertoire suitable to the liturgical service of the time: a compilation of models and forms, styles and modes of composition that had to be learned for finally being reused in the daily practice. Unlike Frescobaldi, Fasolo does not provide any toccata intro: a genre completely absent in the Annuale. On this album organist Luca Scandali is performing three complete masses at the historic Luca di Bernardino da Cortona (1547) organ accompanied in alternatim by the ensemble Bella Gerit.

III. Bonaventure Rubino—Messa de Morti (Cappella Musicale S. Maria in Campitelli/Studio di Musica Antica “Antonio il Verso”/Vincenzo di Betta). Tactus CD TC 601803

Bonaventura Rubino was one of the protagonists of the musical life of Palermo, where he was Kapellmeister in the Cathedral for more than twenty-five years. In Palermo, Rubino found a stimulating environment, to which he adjusted very easily, soon becoming one of its most admired and appreciated musicians. Bonaventura Rubino’s Missa de Morti (Requiem Mass) is presented here within the liturgical and musical context that is peculiar to this friar from Bergamo. In the Mass, the polyphonic sections for voices and basso continuo alternate with the liturgical monodies of the ancient Roman rite, in keeping with the melodic and textual codification of St. Pius V’s Missal and the Medicean Gradual. This seemed necessary to us not so much for abstract philological reasons as because we aim to make it possible for present-day listeners (who are mostly lacking in experience in this area) to enjoy this extraordinary seventeenth-century music within the setting of the complex “event” that originated it and for which it was conceived. The recording of this Mass was carried out in several points of the church, in order to give the listener the physical sensation of the various spots where the ceremony was taking place and the music was being performed.