Cavalli: Missa Pro Defunctis

il Pomo d’Oro turns to the solemn splendour of two works written for the Basilica of St Mark’s in Venice. It begins with Giovanni Gabrieli’s setting of the penitential 51st Psalm, with its close-knit web of polyphony for six voices, before entering the sonorous soundworld of Francesco Cavalli’s Missa pro Defunctis, most likely written in the early 1670s for his own funeral. His great Requiem Mass for two choirs of four voices invites deep contemplation of the end of earthly life and the prospect of eternal salvation.

Programme:

A. Gabrieli Miserere mei Deus
F. Cavalli Missa pro Defunctis