Striggio: Mass in 40 Parts (CD & DVD)

Robert Hollingworth (Artist), Alessandro Striggio (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Alessandro Striggio
• Audio CD (March 29, 2011)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Decca
• ASIN: B004EQ1424
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,607 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Ecce beatam lucem

2. Kyrie

3. Gloria

4. Credo

5. Sanctus

6. Benedictus

7. Agnus Dei I

8. Agnus Dei II

9. Contrapunto Secondo di BM (1584)

10. Fuggi, spene mia (1565)

See all 18 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Striggio: Ecce beatam lucem

2. Striggio: Missa Ecco sì beato giorno

3. Spem in alium (Plainchant and Tallis)

4. The Making of Striggio

Editorial Reviews

Celebrating the rediscovery of a long-lost mass in forty parts - a feast of Renaissance choral music from Italy and England, the album (and bonus DVD) reveals a work by the Italian, Alessandro Striggio - believed lost until the recent discovery of vocal parts, in Paris. Striggio travelled extensively to the courts of Europe and it was probably a performance during his visit to Elizabethan England in 1567 that inspired Tallis to write "Spem in alium", which is performed here with rarely heard instrumental accompaniment and the benefit of a major piece of textual change reinforcing the message of forgiveness.

The DVD includes a short documentary about the rediscovery of the mass, as well as excerpts from the recording in 5.1 Surround Sound.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars DVD included is in PAL format, April 7, 2011

By 

Ginny - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Striggio: Mass in 40 Parts (CD & DVD) (Audio CD)

Both the sound quality and performance are excellent. However, the DVD that comes with this package is in PAL format, which will not play on North American DVD systems. The additional DVD was one of the reasons I bought this package. Amazon should put a notice on this product so future buyers won't be disappointed.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Curiosity? Or a Dogged Faith in Miracles?, July 6, 2011

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Striggio: Mass in 40 Parts (CD & DVD) (Audio CD)

The rediscovery of the parts for Alessandro Striggio's forty-voice "Missa ecco si beato giorno", by Davitt Moroney in Paris in 2006, certainly amounts to a miracle. This was hardly an obscure or forgotten piece of music! It had been widely known in the 16th Century, the era of its composition, and often mentioned in subsequent musicology, and despite its fame, despite its magnitude, despite its musical genius, it had been lost for several hundred years. Naturally, such a miraculous recovery of a major piece of musical history has excited both performers and audiences around the world. It was the centerpiece of the 2010 Berkeley Early Music Festival, performed under Dr. Moroney's own leadership by the combined forces of nearly every ensemble involved in the Festival.

This performance, the first ever recorded, also employs the combined forces of several prominent ensembles: the viols of Fretwork and the Rose Consort, The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, and the continuo instruments of The City Musick, all doubling or augmenting the voices of I Fagiolini, expanded to 40 (forty!) singers, plus one cantor, under the direction of singer Robert Hollingworth. This is not a 'choir' in the usual sense; very rarely do two singers ever sing the same passage of notes together. The performance requires five "antiphonal" choirs, physically separated, each including SATB voices and instruments. The instruments differ from choir to choir. This is, in short, a massive construction of polyphony in the manner associated with the later Gabrielis and other Venetians. It wasn't the only such multi-choir polyphonic composition; this disk also presents the famous "Spem in alium" by Thomas Tallis, and the Huelgas Consort has recorded two full CDs of similar gigantic polyphony.

What's to be gained by writing polyphony for 40 separate voices? Grandeur, of course, but not volume! The truth is that more singers are not proportionately louder. And not harmonic complexity! The harmonic idiom of the 16th Century narrowly constrains and precludes the sort of heterophony of, for example, a Mahler symphony. What distinguishes this compositional edifice from any four-part mass is the use of acoustical space and 'direction'. Unless one hears the five choirs from five distinct directions, frankly, the music is fatally incomplete.

And that's the problem with this or any recording of it. The spatial complexity of the music is utterly lost. It's impossible to 'hear' which choir is singing what (and yes, I do know the score). Indeed, it's impossible to hear the relationships between the choirs. This was sadly already true in the live performance in Berkeley, since the separation between the choirs was minimal. Really, my friends, can you and/or should you hear the separate notes of all 40 voices, during those passages when all five choirs are singing? (Actually, there are many more passages when only one or two of the choirs are singing.) Well, yes, ideally, you could and should ... if the spatial distribution were adequate.

There are, however, even more reasons why this recording can't possibly do justice to the music. Very simply, the technology isn't adequate. The sound you hear, even on very high-end playback equipment, is stifled and compressed, a rumble of 'white noise' that I couldn't describe as beautiful, tuneful, or enjoyable. There's almost no chance that I will ever listen to this CD again; it's simply not satisfying to my ears.

"I Fagiolini" is a bold and original ensemble, and deserves applause for assembling the forces for this monumental undertaking. The core ensemble, nevertheless, has audible weaknesses; the sopranos in particular are seldom entirely flawless in tuning. They are not flawless in their most exposed passages on this CD. I would love to give the recording a full five stars for effort, but that would perhaps be misleading to the 'curious' music shoppers. But to expect more than what you get, in terms of musical delight, would truly be expecting a miracle. I doubt that any other emsenble could do it much better.

***

A few days later, I had time and the will to listen to the DVD "surround sound" versions of the motet, the mass, and Tallis's "Spem". It was well worth doing so. The 'sound' is better in several ways; the choirs are more separated in acoustic geometry, the frequencies are less filtered or compressed (or whatever "they" do to make music sound metallic on so many CDs). Hence I've raised my rating from three to four stars. But the voices still don't sound quite human, and the details of timbre are still too obscured by the massive blending of sound. The portion of the DVD that supposedly describes the "making of Striggio" is disappointingly thin. It does reveal one thing for certain; the best place to hear the performance was precisely where Robert Hollingworth heard it... dead center among the five choirs in a circle.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific disc, June 10, 2011

By 

Sid Nuncius (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Striggio: Mass in 40 Parts (CD & DVD) (Audio CD)

I think this is a terrific disc. A great deal of scholarship has gone into finding and editing the colossal mass by Striggio which is at its heart, the recording itself must have been a huge undertaking and the result fully justifies the work that has gone into it. The works on this disc are musically very fine and the performances are excellent, making the whole thing fascinating, beautiful and hugely enjoyable.

Robert Hollingworth has chosen to perform the works on this disc with some parts taken by voices and some by a range of contemporary instruments such as sackbuts, shawms and viols. He makes a convincing and interesting case for this in the excellent notes and the effect is remarkable, often creating a thrilling Renaissance Wall of Sound but also beautifully delicate and intimate in places. Striggio structures his mass very cleverly to allow these effects to offset each other and I thought the whole thing - both the large- and small-scale works - was fantastic. This use of instruments also sheds a fascinating new light on Tallis's wonderful Spem in alium and I found this version of it riveting.

Hollingworth has assembled a wonderful group of singers to augment the excellent I Fagiolini, many of whom are regular members of such outstanding ensembles as The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, Stile Antico and others. The instrumentalists are just as good, including members of Fretwork and other world-class period ensembles. They give an outstanding performance together; technically flawless and with a wonderful empathy for the music, they are powerful and delicate, passionate and tender as required and really bring this wonderful music to life.

The recorded sound is excellent, the presentation attractive and the notes very interesting. You also get a DVD which includes three surround-sound tracks and a video on the making of the CD. It's an excellent set all round and very warmly recommended.