Music for San Rocco (1608) DELETED JAN 2007

Stereo & Surround Sound
Hybrid/SACD - playable on all compact disc players

On 16 August 1995, the Gabrieli Consort & Players recreated a famous musical event that took place on 16 August 1608 at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice. The programme commemorates the 700th anniversary of the birth in 1295 of St. Roch (San Rocco), a saint famed for his miraculous healing powers. The spectacular programme performed by the Gabrieli Consort & Players with their acclaimed director Paul McCreesh was recorded for release on Archiv Produktion. It features some of Giovanni Gabrieli's finest work (including a 33-part Magnificat), as well as solo vocal motets by Barbarino. The ensemble of period instruments includes no less than seven organs. The 90-minute video programme, Music for San Rocco, represents a rare opportunity to view the paintings of the Venetian Mannerist painter, Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto (c. 1518-1594), on film. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco is justly fammous for its interior decoration, featuring some 50 works executed by Tintoretto between 1564 and 1587. This programme brings together the wonderful paintings of Tintoretto (including such masterpieces as "The Crucifixion", "The Annunciation", "The Ascent to Calvary", and many others) with the kaleidoscopic music of Giovanni Gabrieli, exhibited and performed in a remarkable Venetian setting together with a commentary on Venice, Tintoretto and Gabrieli. In the following text Paul McCreesh explains the background to the recording, and the music it contains.

Thomas Coryat's description of music at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco on St. Roch's Day 1608 is one of the most detailed and vivid accounts of early 17thcentury music making. It evokes in a remarkable way a Venetian musical event which, by that time, had reached an unparalleled level of magnificence.

Although the precise programme of music played on that occasion has not survived, there is much evidence which throws light on music making in the scuola. Fortunately, bills of payment to the musicians are still preserved in the Venetian State Archive, allowing us to trace many of those involved in the 1608 performance. Armed with this evidence and fired with a little imagination, the present film and recording aims to recapture the atmosphere of that extraordinary event which left Thomas Coryat, and no doubt the brothers of the confraternity, so ecstatic.

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco
The Venetian scuole grandi originated in the 13th century as communities of flagellants. By the 16th century they had developed into large, wealthy institutions favouring less barbaric ways of seeking redemption. They undertook a variety of charitable work (usually directed towards their own members), said Masses for departed brothers, and provided for orphans and for the sick. As well as participating in Venice's frequent processions, they would celebrate feastdays, as Coryat tells us, "to laud and prayse God and his Saints with Psalmes, Hymnes, spirituall song and melodious musicke".

St. Roch (c.12951327) was revered for his miraculous healing powers; although there are widely differing versions of his biography, he was made a saint because of his ability to heal plague victims by the exposition of a crossshaped wound on the side of his thigh. According to Venetian tradition, his bones were brought to the city in 1485; whenever plague struck, the members of his confraternity were said to enjoy the saint's protection. The present confraternity building was started in 1517, and from 1564 to 1588 Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) contributed a magnificent series of paintings to the Great Hall.

On feastdays throughout the late 16th century, the confraternity often hired extra musicians, usually from the cappella of St. Mark's, but it is not entirely clear why the music of San Rocco's patronal festival became so spectacular around the turn of the century, The appointment of Giovanni Gabrieli to the position of organist in 1585 may have encouraged the confraterntiy to expand the scale of its musical celebration, but, in itself, the composer's presence is unlikely to have been the catalyst.

A more probable explanation lies in the reaction to the terrible plague that struck Venice in the years 157577. The city's immediate response was to commission the building of the Redentore church from Andrea Palladio (157782) and to institute an annual Redentore ("Redeemer") festival. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Doge's feastday procession (andata) to San Rocco also began around this time.

The Venetians regarded plague as a form of divine judgement requiring expiation. The texts of many late 16thcentury Venetian motets also reflect this sentiment, and, as David Bryant has shown, although many appear at first to be merely festive, in fact they often emphasize the message of redemption through judgement. In ecclesiis and Misericordia tua, Domine provide good examples, and while these works may have had a place at the Redentore ceremonies, they are also particularly suited to the feastday of Venice's most renowned plaguehealer.

The festival of 1608
At present we cannot be sure what form the 1608 celebrations took; writers have always assumed that Coryat was referring to a Vespers service, but there are a number of reasons why this is unlikely: certainly, no settings by Gabrieli of liturgical texts specific to the feast have come down to us. Even allowing for the Venetian passion for extraliturgical music in services, and notwithstanding a certain degree of hyberbole from Coryat, it is practically impossible to make a Vespers service last much more than an hour and a half, let alone three hours. Had the antiCatholic Coryat witnessed a fullyfledged service, he would probably have made disparaging remarks about "popish practices", however captivating the music; he does so elsewhere in his account. It is perhaps more likely, that the "Psalmes, Hymnes, Spirituall songs and melodious musicke" he heard at San Rocco comprised a sequence of music, readings and prayers, a form of "spiritual recreation" commonly practised in Roman confraternities of the time.

Denis Arnold's research into the San Rocco archives revealed much information about the performers involved in the confraternity's music making, and bills of payment help identify some of the performers involved. A "Father Bortolo", for example, is Bortolo Morosini, the vice maestro di cappella of San Marco, who perhaps directed the music, and provided two companies of singers, undoubtedly St. Mark's choir, which was divided into two groups for work outside the basilica. (By the terms of his contract the maestro was forbidden to take on outside engagements.) Giovanni Bassano, another musician listed, was the virtuoso cornettist and maestro di concerti at St. Mark's; and the second company was probably led by another instrumentalist from the basilica, Nicolò Dalla Casa.
Unusually at this time, the scuola seems to have drawn musicians from further afield, including a company of players from Udine (which may have included the Cesare brothers, virtuoso trombonist and cornettist). But it was the singers who seem to have been most in demand, and who certainly commanded high fees. A group from Padua first appeared in 1604, and we can identify some of the singers and their music in 1608. "Il Pesarino", alias Bartolomeo Barbarino, was a virtuoso falsettist and prolific monodist. His elaborately ornamented motets were published with a simple version for less able (or more inventive) singers. In the preface to one of his motet books he describes his singing of these works "to the chitarrone, with my raucous and unpleasant voice" with all the mockmodesty of a star.

Special payments to violinists (Coryat's "treble viols") are a consistent feature of these festivals, and there can be little doubt that Gabrieli's sonata for three violins was written for the confraternity. Gabrieli himself frequently received payment for the hiring of several chamber organs, suggesting that the polychoral pieces were most probably accompanied with at least one organ to each choir.

The music in the present recording
The music on this video/compact disc is built around later works of Giovanni Gabrieli, with two motets by Bartolomeo Barbarino, the virtuoso falsettist who sang at the festival in 1608.

According to traditional music history books, Gabrieli's music is supposed to have been written for St. Mark's, but recent performing experience has underlined the problems of playing many of these works with divided choirs in the basilica. The enormous complexities of the virtuoso instrumental music which, for all its occasional grandeur, is often chamberlike in character are far better suited to San Rocco's Great Hall, with its warm but clear acoustic.

All the instrumental ensemble pieces are taken from Gabrieli's posthumously published Canzoni e sonate of 1615, a landmark collection in the development of instrumental music, towering above anything else written in the period. Canzona No. 14 a 10 is a cheerful doublechoir piece of great rhythmic subtlety and irresistible drive. Sonata No. 19 a 15 is a more solemn work for three equal groups: the top lines of each choir (here given to violins) have a certain prominence, but the lower parts (almost certainly intended for trombones, as here) provide a characteristically rich and sombre counterpoint. Perhaps most astonishing is Sonata No. 18 a 14 (for four cornetts, and ten trombones the published instrumentation), where four virtuoso cornett parts, complete with writtenout ornamentation and echo effects, are superimposed upon an oldstyle contrapuntal fantasia. Sonata No. 20 a 22 is no less amazing, its five choirs discoursing in endlessly kaleidoscopic variation between massive tuttis; but even here the range is low, reflecting a typically Venetian preference for solemnity over brilliance. The famous Sonata con tre violini is perhaps the first work to exploit the vocal qualities of the violin; it was an instrument which almost entirely superseded the cornett of the famed Venetian virtuosi within the next quartercentury.

The vocal pieces, too, encompass a great variety of musical technique and expression. In ecclesiis has long been regarded as the archetypical Gabrielian work; in fact it is unrepresentative, as one of only two works with printed basso continuo accompaniment. Whether this represents the composer's original version of the work is open to question, but the dramatic late entry of the instrumental sinfonia, and the masterly use of the general pause all point to a work of his maturity. Suscipe, clementissime Deus is a consummate exercise in sonority, an almost unbelievable mixture of six low sackbuts and six low voices two each of (high) tenor, baritones and basses. The text, as published, is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, but it takes only the slightest (and historically justified) liberty to convert this motet to one in honour of blessed Roch. Buccinate in neomenia tuba is a classic of the cori spezzati style, with four dialoguing choirs, three of solo voices with instruments, and one allvocal cappella.

Jubilate Deo is another rousing festive motet, allowing several performance options; the published version contains a number of errors which have been corrected here. More sophisticated is Misericordia tua, Domine for three solo voices and nine low instruments, in three choirs, where Gabrieli perfectly captures the metamorphosis from intense introspection to boundless joy. Two smallerscale motets, Domine Deus meus and Timor et tremor, represent a less wellknown side of Gabrieli's oeuvre. Both are written in the affective style of the late madrigal, the former depicting ignorantia with musical accidentals (musica ficta) that seem to be deliberately incorrect; the latter explores extreme forms of musical expression to capture the sinner's fear and trembling.

It proved impossible, however, to resist the temptation to indulge in the rare luxury of a dozen sackbuts, six cornetts and seven organs and perform the most spectacular of Gabrieli's works! The programme concludes, therefore, with a 33part Magnificat, preserved in choirbooks at Graz. In fact, only the music for the first two choirs exists, and it was a happy day in 1987 when I first discovered that the 33part setting is a different version of the wellknown 17part Magnificat published in 1615, making it a reasonable proposition to attempt a reconstruction. Close examination of both works strongly suggests that the 17part setting is a reduction of the larger version, which was probably scored down (and the ending revised) for publication. Hugh Keyte has completed this giant musical crossword, basing the reconstructed parts largely on preexistent material. The huge tapestry of seven discoursing choirs is a polychoral tour de force; and if this piece wasn't written for performance beneath those wonderful Tintorettos, why else would the confraternity have shipped seven organs along the canals of La Serenissima?