Giovanni Battista Colonna: O Splendida Dies
Leandro Marziotte, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali (early music ensemble), Gwendoline Blondeel, Griet De Geyter, Mathieu Valfré
His music is well written and often sensitive to the painting of the text. He is also a master of easy counterpoint, wherein the lines fit together like a puzzle and yet do not avoid coloratura....
Giovanni Battista Colonna: O Splendida Dies
Leandro Marziotte, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali (early music ensemble), Gwendoline Blondeel, Griet De Geyter, Mathieu Valfré
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His music is well written and often sensitive to the painting of the text. He is also a master of easy counterpoint, wherein the lines fit together like a puzzle and yet do not avoid coloratura....
About
Giovanni Battista Colonna (1637-95) spent most of his career in Bologna as maestro di cappella of the basilica of San Petronio. Since he had at his disposal this imposing building with its two choir organs, well known to lovers of the instrument, and its very generous acoustics, Colonna wrote a large number of sacred compositions for imposing vocal and instrumental forces. But, in a more intimate vein, he also devoted two collections to the repertory of ‘small motets’. The pieces recorded here come from the 1681 set of Motetti a due e tre voci (1681). They display a wide variety of formulas, combining traditional elements and innovative aspects that were to be further developed in the following generations. These gems are highly representative of the style of small motets that heralds the stile concertante. They are characterised by various combinations of voices
(from solo recitative to a mixture of vocal duets or trios in different scorings) and a broad range of formal structures bound up with the very nature of the texts.
Contents and tracklist
- Leandro Marziotte, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Gwendoline Blondeel, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Griet De Geyter, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Gwendoline Blondeel, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Mathieu Valfré
- Leandro Marziotte, Griet De Geyter, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
- Gwendoline Blondeel, Wei-Lian Huang, Nicolas Achten, Scherzi Musicali
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Awards and reviews
May/June 2020
His music is well written and often sensitive to the painting of the text. He is also a master of easy counterpoint, wherein the lines fit together like a puzzle and yet do not avoid coloratura. To make this all happen requires the talents of a first-rate ensemble. The Scherzi Musicali
provides this interaction with ease and dexterity. The straight sound vocal lines blend easily together and with the fine continuo group that seems a bit larger than conventional.
March 2020
Renowned as a master of both stile antico counterpoint and opulent large-scale polychoral concertato works, Colonna’s adeptness at more intimate and virtuoso modern-style motets is proved here by seven diverse pieces for soloists and basso continuo selected from his Motetti à due e trè voci...Scherzi Musicali’s rotating squad of five singers varies combinations in each intricately contrapuntal and expressively rhetorical motet.
