GIOSEFFO ZARLINO (c.1517-1590)

Canticum Canticorum Salomonis

01 Veni sancte spiritus
02 Osculetur me
03 Nigra sum, sed formosa
04 Si ignoras
05 Ecce tu pulchra es
06 Ego rosa saron
07 Capite nobis vulpes parvulas
08 In lectulo meo
09 Adiuro vos filiæ Ierusalem
10 Ferculum fecit sibi rex Salomon
11 Ego veni in hortum meum
12 Pater noster – Ave Maria

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About this CD

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

Yet as a composer, a vocation to which he was also called, Zarlino has long remained known, if at all, not for the evident musical qualities of his works themselves, but rather merely through the references he made to them in his own theoretical writings.

In this recording, Ensemble Plus Ultra and director Michael Noone present Zarlino the composer, and introduce 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). The performers in this recording are using the first modern performing edition of these works.