Power, panache and a hint of mystery: that is all Dionysos Now! needs to turn a concert into an exciting event. During this year’s Laus Polyphoniae, the tenor Tore Tome Denys and his fellow singers pass on the secret messages with which one of our most illustrious Flemish polyphonists surprised his patron. The person for whom Adrian Willaert created a sound sculpture in his Missa Sine nomine (‘Unnamed mass’), with a repeated 13-note pattern in the tenor voice, was a mystery for many centuries. The work is included in Alamire’s choirbook for the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in ’s-Hertogenbosch. The meaning behind the repeated melody (cantus firmus) was only recently discovered by the musicologist Joshua Rifkin: the vowels of the note names spell ‘Primus Ippolitus Cardinalis Estensis’: a ‘soggetto cavato delle parole’ as a discreet tribute to the Cardinal of Ferrara. Rifkin’s discovery made it possible to date the work to between 1522 and 1527, when Willaert worked for the cardinal’s court chapel, and immediately led to a new nickname for the piece: Missa Ippolito.
Program
A. Willaert: Missa Ippolito
Performers
Terry Wey, altus | Bernd Fröhlich, tenor-altus | Jan Petryka, Julian Podger, tenor | Tim Scott Whiteley, bass-baritone | Joachim Hochbauer, bass | Tore Tom Denys, tenor & artistic leader
