Gabrieli, A: Gloria a 16

From the eleventh century, Venetian mariners gathered together once each year to offer prayers to San Nicolò, the patron saint of sailors, asking for his continued protection. Initially the service was a simple benediction in which the Adriatic Sea was blessed with holy water. By the late-sixteenth century the ceremony had evolved into one of the most lavish and important dates in the Venetian calendar. Ascension Day now launched a large spring festival which was headed by the symbolic wedding of Venice to the Adriatic—the Sposalizio.

Robert King and his serried ranks of instrumentalists and singers recreate this glorious event in the grandest style. Giovanni Gabrieli’s twenty-two-part Sonata (his largest-scale instrumental work), Andrea Gabrieli’s ‘Battle’ Canzona, the church bells of Venice, fanfares for trumpets and drums, the massive sixteen-part madrigal Udite, chiari—the catalogue of riches goes on …

An exuberant period of rebirth, emerging from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance brought an artistic flowering exemplified in the glories of Italy: painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music.

The splendid choral works of Palestrina and Allegri, composing in Rome and Gabrieli and Monteverdi, active in Venice, are noble and intricate, serene and exhilarating.

While Allegri’s soaring Miserere was composed for the Sistine Chapel, Monteverdi’s epically conceived Vespers evoke the grandeur of the domed basilica of St Mark’s.