On Saturday March 25th at 7 P. M., Musica Transalpina will present Francesco Cavalli’s Messa Concertata from his Musiche Sacre concernenti, published at Venice in 1656. This mass displays many characteristics of sacred music of the 1640s, and bears a striking resemblance to Monteverdi’s setting of the Gloria published in his famous Selva Morale e Spirituale of 1641. Indeed, Cavalli—who was immensely important for the development of opera—was Monteverdi’s assistant at S. Mark’s Basilica, and this Mass demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the meaning of the text along with the rich partwriting and sudden shifts in texture between soloists & ripienists that became fashionable as the polychoral style started to condense towards the middle of the seventeenth century. As Cavalli succeeded Monteverdi after the latter died in 1643, this gives us an idea of what a complete mass by Monteverdi in the concertato style would have sounded like.
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