Scuola San Rocco, after John Singer Sargent

Coryats Crudities and Gabrieli’s Delicacies
CD Review: Music for San Rocco, 1608. Gabrieli Consort and Players. Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, 1996.

“...to laud and prayse God and His Saints with Psalmes, Hymnes, spirituall songs and melodious musicke...”

—Coryats Crudities, London, 1611

The Gabrieli Consort’s Music for San Rocco, 1608 was the third CD I bought when I began my love-affair with early music about two years ago. It’s a splendid recording, both wonderful as an introduction to the music of Baroque Venice and as an addition to a much larger collection. It reconstructs a concert given at the Scuola San Rocco in honor of their patron saint (whose feast came only a few days ago, on 16 August) which was described with great gusto by the English traveler Thomas Coryat in his book Coryats Crudities. Indeed, this CD was recorded on-site at the Scuola itself! Talk about authentic. It doesn't get much better than this.

Many historians have traditionally interpreted this event as a Vespers service, but the Gabrieli Consort decides here instead to treat it as a “spiritual recreation,” or sacred concert, a distinctly Venetian para-liturgical practice. Recreated here, it gives us a marvelous window into the life of the Scuola. Thus we are treated to a program simply of music, rather than one of the Gabrieli Consort’s liturgical reconstructions with their chanted prayers and clacking thuribles. While I derive great pleasure from these atmospheric additions, they’re a bit perplexing to the laymen. Furthermore, it’s hard to resist the unadulterated Italian joy of just hearing one marvelous Gabrieli piece after another.

Though they won’t wear you out, I promise. The star attractions, Giovanni Gabrieli’s motets, are interspersed with instrumental toccatas and canzonas dominated that serve to cleanse the palate and soothe the ears with their gentle festivity. Gabrieli’s occasional bombast can wear thin if overdone, but the Consort does an admirable job of balancing extravagance with subtlety within the choral pieces. There are quite a few elegantly understated works here. We can hear the sonorous sound of Suscipe, clementissime Deus, where six low voices are paired with six sackbutts (a splendid but rare combination showing off the elegance of the Renaissance proto-trombone) in praise of San Rocco, as well as two subtle and sweet Bartolomeo Barbarino countertenor solos sung to the delicate pluckings of a lute.

The CD’s highlights, however, are wonderfully grandiose. There’s the Gabrieli staple In Ecclesiis, played here with an exciting raw vigor lacking in other recordings. There is also the concert’s final piece, a 33-part Magnificat. It's a wonder. It exists only in partial form in a choirbook discovered in Graz, Austria, though Paul McCreesh, the Consort’s director, has lovingly reconstructed the missing parts from a comparable and more famous 17-part Magnificat. However, that smaller version (which has been recorded by the Taverner Consort in their pleasant albeit timid Venetian Church Music compilation) pales next to this glorious hymn of the Virgin, sung to the extravagant accompaniment of a dozen sackbutts and seven chamber organs. This piece alone makes the CD worth the cost.

Every time I listen to this recording, I find a new favorite piece on it. Gabrieli’s sacred music is timeless, and never fails to uplift the soul with its joyous and infinite variety.