Massed voices

The news that Decca will release a recording of Striggio’s colossal Missa Ecco sì beato giorno on 7 March promises an oxymoronic treat for some of us.

The news that Decca will release a recording of Striggio’s colossal Missa Ecco sì beato giorno on 7 March promises an oxymoronic treat for some of us. There we were, on the stage of the Albert Hall in the 2007 Proms, the new scores in hand, giving the world première of just this piece. A recording was repeatedly discussed at the time, but in the end it was decided that the cost of such an endeavour was too high for the quality of the music. It was thought it would flop.

Now Robert Hollingworth has bitten the bullet and, to celebrate 25 years of his group I Fagiolini, has not only made the first recording of the mass, but also recorded Tallis’s Spem in alium alongside it, in a new way with instruments as well as voices, all in 5.1 surround sound.

It is a very large bullet to bite. Striggio’s mass is scored for 40 voices for most of its length, but goes into 60 for the final ‘Agnus dei’. This makes it by far the biggest piece written up to that time (around 1566) and it probably gave the cue for Tallis to write his 40-part motet Spem in alium: either the mass itself or Striggio’s own 40-part motet Ecce beatam lucem on which the mass seems to be based. Both the mass and this motet were performed together on a European tour Striggio undertook in 1567, bringing them to London as well as to Paris and Vienna. It is thought that Tallis (and the Duke of Norfolk) heard the London performance and decided to rival the scale of it.

The music for the mass disappeared soon after Striggio’s tour, after which it was only known from contemporary written descriptions, and from the survival of Ecce beatam lucem. The hero of its recent rediscovery is Davitt Moroney, the English harpsichordist, who was acute enough to question a miswritten entry in a library catalogue, thereby stumbling upon the missing music. How one conceals the existence of a piece that at its largest requires 60 separate hand-written parts for more than 400 years is a mystery to me, but that is what happened and I have often wondered how Davitt felt when he realised what he had found. Discoveries like that don’t even come once a lifetime. By his own account he then spent a year writing it out and scoring it up.

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Robert Hollingworth

February 20th, 2011 5:18pm Report this comment

Any reason not to post my comment? The rhyme about the Tallis and Striggio pieces is beautifully apt and rather witty.

Robert Hollingworth

February 21st, 2011 11:32am Report this comment

‘Milord Striggio’, scowl’d Tallis, ‘admit that my Spem
Eclypseth yon vast quadragesimal gemme,
Thy much vaunted mottetus magnus!’
‘Master Tallis,’ sighed Striggio, I can but agree.
By-the-bye, I believe I forgot (silly me!)
To show you my sixty-part Agnus’.

Hugh Keyte

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