Le Concert Spirituel review – a sumptuous musical journey to late Renaissance Florence

Royal Albert Hall, LondonStriggio’s mass, lost for 400 years, was the centrepiece of this imaginative concert of 16th- and 17th-century music that possibly worked best for radio listenersCourt composers working for the Medicis in 16th-century Florence were expected to think big, and no one set their

Royal Albert Hall, London
Striggio’s mass, lost for 400 years, was the centrepiece of this imaginative concert of 16th- and 17th-century music that possibly worked best for radio listeners

Court composers working for the Medicis in 16th-century Florence were expected to think big, and no one set their sights higher than Alessandro Striggio. Born in Mantua around 1536, he became something of a musical propagandist for the regime, touring his ambitious choral works around Europe as a kind of composer-cum-diplomat in the hope that their acoustical magnificence would sway hearts and minds in his bosses’ favour. The pièce de résistance was his monumental Missa Sopra Ecco Sì Beato Giorno, a mass setting for 40 to 60 voices, rediscovered in 2005 having been lost for 400 years.

Striggio’s mass was the centrepiece of this imaginative concert recreating the kind of liturgical event visitors to late Renaissance Florence might have been lucky enough to catch. Opening with theatrical flair, instrumentalists and singers filed on stage to a plainchant in praise of the Virgin Mary. The shift from salty medieval harmonies to the opulent warmth of Orazio Benevolo’s Laetatus Sum signalled the riches to come.