PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Gregorio Ballabene’s Forty-eight-part Mass for Twelve Choirs

1772

Florian Bassani

$41.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Routledge
25 September 2023
Neither Spem in alium, the widely acclaimed ‘songe of fortie partes’ by Thomas Tallis, nor Alessandro Striggio’s forty-part Mass is the largest-scale counterpoint work in Western music. The actual winner is Gregorio Ballabene, a relatively unknown Roman maestro di cappella, a contemporary of Giovanni Paisiello, Joseph Haydn and Luigi Boccherini, who composed in forty-eight parts for twelve choirs. His Mass saw only a public rehearsal and was never performed liturgically despite all of Ballabene’s efforts to promote it. On closer inspection, however, the work deserves special consideration as a piece of outstanding combinatory creativity – the product of a talent able to conceive, structure and realise a project of colossal dimensions. It might even be claimed that if Charles Burney had gained knowledge of it, all derogatory comments by nineteenth-century music historians would not have succeeded in extinguishing the interest of later generations. Ballabene’s Mass has remained completely unstudied until today, even though the score survives in prominent collections. This study offers, for the first time, a historical and analytical perspective on this overlooked manifestation of a very individual musical intelligence.

By:  
Imprint:   Routledge
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 138mm, 
Weight:   453g
ISBN:   9781032128931
ISBN 10:   1032128933
Series:   Royal Musical Association Monographs
Pages:   120
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Dr Florian Bassani is a lecturer at the Institute of Musicology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

See Also