HERVÉ NIQUET MESSE À 40 VOIX

As part of the Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier

To recreate a Midsummer service in Florence, Hervé Niquet resurrects a spectacular mass by Alessandro Striggio, at the crossroads of Renaissance refinement and Baroque extravagance.

THE PROGRAM
"Italian Renaissance and Baroque extravagance?
Mass for 40 solo voices by Striggio

Re-creation of an Office of St. John in Florence

Procession: Beata viscera (plain chant)

Orazio BENEVOLO 1605-1672
Laetatus sum ? Miserere

Francesco CORTECCIA 1502-1571
Bonum est confiteri ? Gloria Patri (doxology)

Alessandro STRIGGIO c1536-1592
Mass for 40 solo voices: Kyrie ? Gloria

Francesco CORTECCIA 1502-1571
Alleluia (gradual)

Alessandro STRIGGIO c1536-1592
Mass for 40 solo voices: Credo

Orazio BENEVOLO
Magnificat (offertory)

Alessandro STRIGGIO c1536-1592
Mass for 40 solo voices ? Sanctus

Claudio MONTEVERDI 1567-1643
Memento for 8 voices (elevation)

Alessandro STRIGGIO c1536-1592
Mass for 40 solo voices ? Agnus dei

Francesco CORTECCIA 1502-1571
Tu puer prophetas altissimi (communion)

Alessandro STRIGGIO
Motet Ecce beatam lucem

This concert will rediscover the music of Alessandro Striggio (1537-1592), the composer behind a musical style that flourished in Italy in the first half of the 17th century, now commonly referred to as the "monumental" or "colossal" Baroque style.

His Messe à 40 voix (Mass for 40 voices), whose score was considered lost until a few years ago, is, according to Hervé Niquet, "the greatest work in Western musical literature: no doubling, only real parts, with instrumental continuo".

Pieces by other Italian composers, both earlier and later than Striggio (Corteccia, Benevolo and Monteverdi), are interspersed throughout this dizzying mass.

It's a way of bringing together, from a distance, music united by a similar inspiration, and of imagining how a mass sung in Florence cathedral could celebrate the magnificence of the Medici.