Madonna mia: sacred and secular music by Philippe Verdelot — with I Profeti della Quinta
08 September 2024/ France / Verdelot
One of the most highly-regarded composers of the mid sixteenth century, Philippe Verdelot is perhaps best known for his highly expressive and declamatory madrigal settings, famously arranged for lute and voice by Adrian Willaert. However, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the success of his madrigals, Verdelot’s sacred works are equally worthy of praise, combining the rhetorically driven drama of his secular settings with the fluid and supple counterpoint typical of Franco-Flemish sacred music of the time.
This program aims to explore the similarities and differences between the genres by bringing together two specialised ensembles—Cappella Pratensis and Profeti della Quinta—in a program of sacred and secular music addressed to ‘My Lady’. The program is structured around an anonymous Missa Inviolata contained in the so- called Cancionero de Gandia, which has been convincingly attributed to Verdelot by musicologist Bernadette Nelson. Among the contrapuntally intricate movements of the mass are interweaved a selection of Verdelot’s rhetorically-driven madrigals dedicated to an unnamed lady.
This program aims to explore the similarities and differences between the genres by bringing together two specialised ensembles—Cappella Pratensis and Profeti della Quinta—in a program of sacred and secular music addressed to ‘My Lady’. The program is structured around an anonymous Missa Inviolata contained in the so- called Cancionero de Gandia, which has been convincingly attributed to Verdelot by musicologist Bernadette Nelson. Among the contrapuntally intricate movements of the mass are interweaved a selection of Verdelot’s rhetorically-driven madrigals dedicated to an unnamed lady.
As is the practice of both ensembles, the program is sung directly from reproductions of historical sources—the mass from a single choirbook, and the madrigals from individual partbooks.
