Concert: Splendours from the Sistine Chapel

Cultural

Location : Chapelle du Tiers-lieu de l'Ermitage

Presentation

The sacred repertoire that makes up this programme, drawn in part from the music of the Sistine Chapel, focuses on the most important time of the year in the Vatican and in Churches around the world: Holy Week.

Palm Sunday is the starting point for this musical journey in the footsteps of Christ, who returns to Jerusalem to fulfil his destiny.

Through the Dark Offices of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, your ears will hear the most beautiful musical pages from the Sistine Chapel, a major centre of sacred choral art. You will rub shoulders with the most famous composers of the period: Francesco Soriano, Felice Anerio and Giovanni Animuccia, who all worked on the reform of Gregorian chant in the 16th century; the Spaniard Tomas Luis de Victoria, who made his career in Rome, and his magnificent Répons de Ténèbres; and Firmin Lebel, the Frenchman who was the master of the most famous of them all: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the great exponent of this era of sacred music. You'll also come across Gregorio Allegri's famous Miserere, restored as faithfully as possible to the unfortunately lost original, which according to legend was copied by Mozart after just one performance!

Finally, what would a programme around the Sistine Chapel be without a reference to St Peter, the founder of the Catholic Church? His hymn, Tu es Petrus, will close this concert on a note of hope and confidence.

Works by Giovanni Palestrina, Felice Anerio, Francesco Soriano, Firmin Lebel, Giovanni Animuccia, Gregorio Allegri, Tomas Luis de Victoria

conducted by Adrien Stadler-Galand

Workforce: 11 singers
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes

General information