MUSIC FOR AN ANTWERP CHURCH
International polyphony in Antwerp around 1600

01 George de la Hèle: Kyrie, Missa Praeter rerum seriem 6:48

02 George de la Hèle: Sanctus, Missa Praeter rerum seriem 7:21

03 George de la Hèle: Agnus Dei, Missa Praeter rerum seriem 5:37

04 Alard du Gaucquier: Sanctus, Missa Maeror cuncta tenet 4:40

05 Alard du Gaucquier: Agnus Dei, Missa Maeror cuncta tenet 5:58

06 Matthias Pottier: Sanctus, Missa sine nomine 4:34

07 Matthias Pottier: Agnus Dei, Missa sine nomine 5:46

08 Pedro Ruimonte: Sanctus, Missa Tota pulchra es 6:33

09 Pedro Ruimonte: Agnus Dei, Missa Tota pulchra es 5:45

10 Orazio Vecchi: Domine Jesu Christe 3:22

11 Orazio Vecchi: Lux aeterna 2:17

12 Paolo Bravusi: Libera me Domine 4:01

13 Duarte Lobo: Magnificat sexti toni 9:19

14 Tielman Susato: Salve Antverpia 10:43

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About this digital-only album

Music for an Antwerp Church is the soundtrack for the exhibition Divine Interiors (Antwerp, 2016). This production partially contains audio material which is also included on Glossa GCD P32113 Orazio Vecchi: Requiem, available both physically and digitally.

Some of the paintings of church interiors in the early Baroque show people singing in a chapel during High Mass or at Vespers, while empty church interiors devoid of staffage suggest the reverberation of sound through space. A virtual aural dimension adds to our experience of these generally Gothic spaces and their decorative interiors, but which sounds and repertoires would allow us to hear what it was like to be there?

In the late sixteenth century, Antwerp’s two most prominent printers, Christophe Plantin and Pierre Phalèse, published a local and international musical repertoire which in many ways matched these paintings of church interiors. These were compositions in a late style that stretched the spatial elasticity of polyphony to its limits. Just like the paintings, they suggest an affective three-dimensionality that, because of its retrospective nature, belongs as much to the Counter-Reformation programme as it does to the Baroque.

The Belgian ensemble, Graindelavoix, directed by Björn Schmelzer, produce another of their impressive vocal soundscapes in order to illustrate the sound which might have been heard in Baroque Antwerp churches.