Ensemble
TheSan Gregorio Laudesi
Singers and period instrumentalists performing the devotional music of Filippo Neri's Rome. Every member sings.
Dentro
Inside · the Oratory
Music in four to eight parts by Razzi, Rinaldo del Mel, Arcangelo Borsaro and Lasso, sung to continuo organ.
Animuccia's eight-voice Non guardar più in terra is performed with the singers out of sight, so that the audience hears more voices than it can see.
Continuo organDi fuore
Outside · the household
The same repertoire as a household would have owned it: three-voice canzonette from Simone Verovio's engraved collections, intabulations for keyboard and lute, and songs sung self-accompanied.
Del Mel's Stabat Mater, heard in parts before the interval, returns stripped to its intabulated form.
Virginal or spinetThe ensemble
Eight musicians. All eight sing.
A laudesi company was not a choir with hired accompanists. It was a body of people who sang together, and the laude they sang were written to be sung by members rather than specialists.
The San Gregorio Laudesi is built on that principle. Eight musicians, five singers and three instrumentalists, and all eight sing. The harpist and lutenist perform self-accompanied solos as well as taking their lines in the consort, which is how this music was made in sixteenth-century Rome, and which allows eight people to perform writing in eight parts.
The ensemble takes its name from San Gregorio al Celio, one of the churches on Neri's Seven Churches pilgrimage.
Musicians
- August GuanDirector · organ, virginal, voice
- Solveig ThoroddsenTriple harp · voice
- TheorboTo be announced
- Five singers, one to a partTo be announced
The ensemble is forming now and gives its first performance in the coming season. Enquiries about future programmes are welcome.
Editions
Performing from original prints.
The ensemble performs from its own editions, prepared from the original prints.
Work is under way on Arcangelo Borsaro's Pietosi affetti. The 1597 print survives without its Canto partbook, and the basso continuo part issued with the 1616 reprint is rare. The missing voice is being reconstructed and a performing edition prepared, which will remain available to other performers after the concert.
Voices sounding inside and outside the performing space. Emilio de' Cavalieri, stage direction, Rome 1600