Samuel Motter, cornetto
Andrew Hatfield, baroque violin
Eva Kennedy, baroque viola         
James Starkey, Jocelyn Edgar, and Sean McGhee, sackbuts
James Bates, bass viola da gamba
Joshua Brodbeck, organ continuo

Dr. Stephen Caracciolo, conductor

With this grand program the ensemble explores and contrasts the music of two towering figures of the Italian Renaissance, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, active in the more musically conservative churches of Rome, and Giovanni Gabrieli, working in the musically forward-looking Basilica San Marco in Venice! The program has been thoughtfully curated for audiences to experience both the elegant beauty of traditional a cappella polyphony as would have been heard in Rome’s Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica as well as the emerging declamatory style of composition and performance as heard in Venice’s Basilica San Marco supported by instruments.

Ohio citizens are rarely afforded the opportunity to hear vocal ensemble concerts with cornetto, sackbuts, and gut strings as performed in the high Renaissance and early Baroque. Such a program is a first for the ensemble as it performs under its new banner, ProArteOHIO!

Preparing to attend this extraordinary musical event, note how the intertwining polyphony of the ‘Kyrie’ from Palestrina’s mass might be compared to the serene reverence, perfection, and flowing drapery of Michelangelo Pieta in Rome, while Gabrieli’s extended motet In ecclesiis reflects the opulence and exuberant civic pride of Venice’s byzantine ‘jewel box’, San Marco where the this motet was first heard.

Program

Glories of Rome
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1591)     

As in the Sistine Chapel 

Exsultate Deo a5                                  
Missa Papae Marcelli a6, ‘Kyrie’ & ‘Gloria’                               
Hodie Christus natus est, Gregorian chant                                          
Magnificat Primi Toni a5      
Hodie Christus natus est a8 

INTERMISSION

Splendors of Venice
Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1556 – 1612)

As in the grand piazza San Marco

‘Toccata’ (from L’Orfeo) – Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)
O Che felice giorno a8

As in the Basilica San Marco.

Ricercare for Organ 
Kyrie and Gloria a12
O magnum mysterium a8                                         
In Ecclesiis a15                                                        
Canzon VI a7 instruments                                                  
Jubilate Deo a8