Le Divin Arcadelt: Candlemas in Renaissance

Imagine walking through the streets of the city at Candlemas, the Day of Purification - in the Catholic
Church, this day celebrates the Purification of Mary and the official presentation of Christ at the Temple forty
days after his birth - and at each church we come to we stop and listen to a piece of music. In one church we might
find a single falsetto voice accompanied by sackbuts, in the next an unaccompanied choir, and elsewhere a full choir
with wind instruments.

The reason for this diversity was that Rome, despite being the main exporter of religious customs, was musically very
open to external influences. In a melting-pot of national styles, one of the strongest of these influences came from
Iberian musicians such as Andreas de Silva. For a period of two years, de Silva held the position of 'cantor et
compositor' of the Cappella Sistina in Rome, and it is here, in the Sistine Chapel, that his motet Ave Regina caelorum
(recorded here) survives today.

The other great influence on Italian Renaissance music came from Northern France and the Low Countries. Between
1539 and 1551, Jacques Arcadelt was a member of the Cappella Sistina, where he would have come across de Silva's
motet, which he used as the basis for his Ave Regina caelorum mass (also recorded here). A case of plagiarism in
today's eyes, perhaps, but in the Renaissance, Arcadelt's gesture would have been seen as paying de Silva the highest
compliment. Truth be told, there are clear differences between the two: de Silva's work is more tonally focused, and
Arcadelt made several changes to the texture and word-setting. Also on this disc are two of Arcadelt's motets, the
sumptuous Pater noster and the emotionally charged Hodie beata virgo Maria.

In the year that Arcadelt left Rome to return to France, Palestrina arrived in the city. Part of a growing wave of native
Italian musical talent, Palestrina enhanced the religious music scene in Rome with hundreds of compositions,
including 105 masses, sixty-eight offertories, including Diffusa est gratia, at least 140 madrigals, and more than 300
motets, among them Senex puerum portabat.