Stile Antico

Dante Alighieri’s Commedia (‘The Divine Comedy’) is widely considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written. It helped to establish vernacular Italian as a literary language at a time when most serious writing was in Latin, and to ensure that Dante’s native Tuscan dialect would become its pre-eminent form. Its remarkable imagery has shaped Western understanding of the afterlife for more than seven centuries, and inspired an immense body of scholarship, philosophy, art, and music. Our program traces Dante’s epic journey in a sequence of Renaissance motets which reflect the music heard within the Commedia, and madrigals which set Dante’s words directly.

Born in Florence in 1265, Dante was a prominent figure in civic life, and became embroiled in disputes about the extent of Papal authority in the city’s affairs. He traveled to Rome as a delegate, but in his absence a change of government in Florence saw him declared an absconder, and he was eventually sentenced to perpetual exile, dying in Ravenna in 1321. It was during his exile that Dante began to write the Commedia, which contains many references to both his friends and enemies in Florence. The work is divided into three sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, each consisting of thirty-three cantos. The poet is guided through the first two realms by the shade of the Roman poet Virgil; in the third, it is his muse Beatrice who leads him through the spheres of Heaven. Throughout Dante’s pilgrimage, music abounds—most particularly in Purgatorio, where hymns and psalms appear as a structure for the soul’s ascent of Mount Purgatory. Only in Hell is there no music, but only cacophonous sound, reflecting the disorder of the souls found imprisoned there.

Inferno begins on Maundy Thursday, when Dante finds himself lost in an obscure wood representing sin, and so begins his great journey. His immortal opening line, ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,’ references the Christian text Media vita in morte sumus (‘in the midst of life, we are in death’), particularly apt during Lent and Holy Week. We sing these words in an appropriately gloomy setting by the early sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish composer Nicolas Gombert, employed as a singer at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Then we descend with Dante and Virgil into the hopelessness of Hell to the strains of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s penitential motet Peccantem me quotidie (‘I who sin every day’), written in the Phrygian mode, often associated with intensity and darkness.

Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s breathtaking madrigal Quivi sospiri pianti ed alti guai (‘There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud’) sets text taken directly from the Commedia, describing the sighing and wailing of those that the poet encounters in Hell. Luzzaschi, employed by the d’Este family in Ferrara in the second half of the sixteenth century, conjures a harmonic language every bit as tortured as the poor souls that Dante describes. At the climax of Inferno, Dante glimpses the icebound figure of Satan, the ‘Emperor of Hell,’ who is introduced by Virgil with the Latin words ‘Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni.’ This is a deliberate corruption of the famous Holy Week hymn Vexilla Regis (‘The banners of the King’), which we sing in a setting by Francisco Guerrero, alternating robust plainchant with expansive polyphony built over a cantus firmus.

We now move into Purgatory, where the exhausted Dante, deprived of sleep for three nights, finally rests after hearing the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum (‘To thee before the close of day’), sung here in a gentle setting by Tomás Luís de Victoria. It is here too that the poet hears the Marian antiphon Salve Regina (‘Hail, Holy Queen’), which alludes aptly to ‘mourning and weeping in this vale of tears’; Palestrina’s fervent five-voiced setting is particularly fine. As Dante passes through the gates to begin his ascent of Mount Purgatory, the Te Deum is sung: we perform its final verses, Salvum fac populum tuum (‘O Lord, save thy people’), rendered in grand style for twelve voices by Claudio Merulo, one of Claudio Monteverdi’s predecessors at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

Each of the terraces of Mount Purgatory corresponds to one of the seven deadly sins. Passing through the Terrace of the Wrathful, Dante hears the Agnus Dei. We choose here to pay homage to Beatrice, the object of Dante’s courtly love, by singing a setting from Cristóbal de Morales’ Missa Mille Regretz, based on Josquin’s celebrated lovesick chanson, ‘a thousand regrets at leaving you.’ When Dante hears the Beatitudes being sung—one for each of the seven terraces—we are surely intended to recall Beatrice’s name; we perform these words in a setting by Orlande de Lassus, Beati pauperes spiritu (‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’). At the conclusion of Purgatorio, Dante is reunited with Beatrice. At her urging he bathes in the River Lethe, receiving final absolution for his sin to the accompaniment of the Asperges me (‘Purge me’), clothed here in sonorous five-part polyphony by Morales.

As we arrive at the gates of Heaven, we are greeted by the sounds of Venite a laudere (‘Come to praise’), a thirteenth-century Florentine hymn to the Virgin which Dante himself could well have known. The music that Dante hears in Paradise is almost exclusively in praise of Mary. Merulo’s madrigal Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio (‘Virgin mother, daughter of your son’) paraphrases the opening line of Dante’s last canto—a prayer offered to the Virgin by Dante’s final guide Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, as the poet encounters God in a mystical vision of circles of light. Mary is often called Queen of Heaven; we reflect this with a five-part setting of Regina caeli by Vicente Lusitano, the Portuguese musician now believed to have been Europe’s first black composer. Here too Dante witnesses a reenactment of the Annunciation, and so it is fitting that we celebrate the end of his pilgrimage with a setting of Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel. Victoria’s Magnificat sexti toni is an opulent, triple-choir setting of the canticle, concluding our own journey in a rich tapestry of choral color.

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