Consortium Carissimi Will Present World-Premiere Recordings of Eight Motets of Giacomo Carissimi (1604-1675) on April 24 and 26
As its final offering of the season, Consortium Carissimi will present eight motets of Giacomo Carissimi (1605 -1674)—one of the greatest Italian composers of the 17th century—on Friday, April24, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 26, at 2 p.m. in the historic Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, 1 Lourdes Place, Minneapolis, MN 55414.
original Usquequo manuscript
This concert will lead to the world-premiere recording of these motets in the summer of 2015, with the Naxos label recording them for the first time in the history of music.
While modern audiences are familiar with the form known as oratorio—such as the world-renowned Handel’s Messiah—many may not realize that the oratorio can be traced back to an antecedent in music history, the motet. In that sense, the motet is a gestational form in the history of music, giving rise to the world of music we inhabit today.
One of the motets, Usquequo peccatores, is set for three choirs and has been included in master classes with the Collegium Musicum at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN (Gerald Hoekstra, director). Another motet, Mottettum de martyribus, shows the occasional difficulty in determining what actually differentiates a motet from an oratorio. This particular motet (or oratorio) uses a variety of familiar Biblical passages that recount the course of all the Saints and Souls throughout history. The eight beautiful motets—scored for violins, mixed voices and figured bass instruments—hold a special place in Consortium Carissimi’s own history, having been featured in its inaugural season.
The singers include: Marita Link; Heather Cogswell; Linh Kaufmann; Linda Kachelmeier; Clara Osowski; Lisa Drew; Roy Heilman; Michael Tambornino; Michael Schmidt; Eric Sorum and Douglas Shambo II. Period instrumentalists include: Margaret Humphrey, violin; Teresa Elliot, violin; Mike Pettman, archlute; Garrett Lahr; sackbutt; Julieta Alvarado, organ; Bruce Jacobs; harpsichord. (Archlutes and theorbos are types of lutes; a sackbutt is an early ancestor of the trombone.) Artistic direction is by Garrick Comeaux.
Minnesota Public Radio members may take $5 off the general admission or senior ticket price by using promotional code MPR5.
Consortium Carissimi was founded in Rome, Italy in 1996 by Garrick Comeaux, Artistic Director, with the aim of presenting the sacred and secular music of early Roman Baroque. As well as works by Carissimi, the ensemble also performs pieces by his contemporaries. Consortium Carissimi also devotes much of its research and concert activity to composers such as Graziani, Monteverdi, Rossi, Pasquini and female composers such as Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, & Isabella Leonarda, thus providing a clearer picture of the extraordinary effervescence that existed in the music world during the extraordinary early Baroque period in Italy that informs so much of our music landscape today.