Coro Musicanova - Palestrina (Messe a doppio coro) (2019)

"Palestrina: Double Choir Masses" is the new album by Coro Musicanova, published by Armel Music. In the vast vocal production of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, almost entirely dedicated to sacred music, a non-negligible place is occupied by multi-choir compositions in which the classical layout of the 4 voices (Cantus, Altus, Tenor and Bassus) is split into two "broken" or "flying" choirs.
The presence in the Palestrinian musical corpus of over fifty motets with 8 voices and six triple choir motets testifies to the interesting flowering also in Rome of the plurivocal art of Venetian origin developed in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The setting of the double choir increases the general complexity of the language: on the counterpoint-horizontal reading the harmonic-vertical one prevails. This genre opens up, in a fascinating way, towards baroque, rich, complex and ingenious architectures. The alternation of the two dialoguing teams - an ante litteram stereophony - envelops the listener in amazement; the dialogue between the two choirs, each in its own right, is wisely alternated to reach its peak in the choro pleno interaction of the 8 voices.
The only four 8-voice masses in two choirs composed by Palestrina were published posthumously between 1599 and 1601. Each of these masses is built on the motet from which it takes its name and in this album you can listen to the "Missa Fratres ego enim accepi" and the "Missa Laudate Dominum omnes gentes".