Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli or Pope Marcellus Mass is the Renaissance composition you know if you know only one, and the Sistine Chapel Choir has 400-plus years of experience in performing it. So this release, on the rather conservative Deutsche Grammophon label, might seem a stodgy exercise in tradition. In fact it is nothing of the sort. Director Massimo Palombella readily admits the necessity of not "simply mirroring existing versions," and he has forged a reading shaped by modern discoveries concerning ...
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Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli or Pope Marcellus Mass is the Renaissance composition you know if you know only one, and the Sistine Chapel Choir has 400-plus years of experience in performing it. So this release, on the rather conservative Deutsche Grammophon label, might seem a stodgy exercise in tradition. In fact it is nothing of the sort. Director Massimo Palombella readily admits the necessity of not "simply mirroring existing versions," and he has forged a reading shaped by modern discoveries concerning Renaissance performance practice. The choir (men and boys) is shaved down to a force of about 30, and Palombella gets a remarkable sound that is clean yet intimate. The registrally complex polyphony of the Missa Papae Marcelli comes through unscathed, and the mass gets a clearer stylistic differentiation from the short motets included than was possible under the more homogeneous, large-choir approach that has been so common with this music. The biggest thing listeners familiar with the...
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