Gioseffo Zarlino - Canticum Cantorum Salomonis & Motets

In 1541, a young musician, scholar, and recently ordained priest, Gioseffo Zarlino left his native Chioggia for Venice, where he embarked on advanced studies in music, logic and philosophy, Greek and Hebrew. Such was his zealous quest for knowledge that he became known to later scholars of the Renaissance as the most highly regarded music theorist of the 16th century. Following in the footsteps of his teacher Adriano Willaert, he also held the post of maestro di cappella at San Marco during the Venetian basilica's most glorious musical epoch.

In this recording, Ensemble Plus Ultra and director Michael Noone present, for the first time on disc, twelve motets composed by him in the late 1540s.Ten of these motets form part of a most remarkable undertaking, an attempt to provide a complete and continuous musical setting of the biblical Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (Song of Songs of Solomon), using the first modern performing edition of these works.