Messa e salmi, parte concertati, Part 1

Published in Venice in 1640, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti's Messa e salmi, parte concertati is a typical Italian church music collection of the seventeenth century, containing a Mass setting, Vesper psalms, and two Marian antiphons. Its scope, however, is quite unusual: Rigatti unites sumptuous large-scale settings, small-scale concertato music, and da capella compositions in a volume that surpasses the standard collection of sacred music at that time. The three musical styles exposed in these settings are indicative of the stylistic development in mid-century Italian sacred music: while large-scale settings aim at the greatest possible sonority, combining up to eight vocal parts with up to six instruments and basso continuo, the concertato music is conceived as small-scale chamber music, and written either in the modern aria style or in the virtuoso style developed in the first half of the seicento. The da capella settings, on the other hand, illustrate the effort to write in a retrospective church style that nevertheless betrays the taste of modern times.