Preview tracks from the CD (lo fi)

The convent of Corpus Domini has no obvious repertoire or composers associated with it, therefore the music for the drama was not self-selecting. We decided to try and choose music that would, or could, have been well-known to the protagonists in the play: the Ferrarese Lucrezia, the Mantuan Camilla and the sisters themselves. As would the convent’s choir itself have been, we were also obliged to arrange the music to suit our resources. Most frequently, this means transposition of either whole pieces or individual parts, together with the use of instruments to fill out harmonies or substitute for voices in polyphony.

As Fallen begins, the audience hears the choir singing the final section of the office of Compline; the various chants heard thereafter are drawn from the Common sung at the feast of St Clare, and the Clarissan investiture rite. An aria di sonetto - a short melody suitable for singing any sonnet - sets a text by Corpus Domini’s most famous daughter, Caterina Vegri (St Catherine of Bologna), who was known for her meditative use of musical performance.

Much of the polyphony in Fallen is by the Ferrarese composer Alessandro Grandi, taken from his Motetti a cinque voci (1614). Written before Grandi went to Venice to become Monteverdi’s assistant, the book was dedicated to Margherita Gonzaga d’Este, widow of Alfonso II d’Este, who had entered the convent of Sant’Orsola in Mantua. The selection includes the voluptuous Anima mea liquefacta est, an imposing Litaniae Beatae Mariae Virginis, and a setting of one of the psalms for Lauds, Deus misereatur nostri, for five equal high voices.

Josquin des Prez served at the court of Lucrezia Borgia’s husband. His music is not normally associated with female voices, but there is no reason that it cannot, or could not, have been performed by women. Two of his most powerful prayers for (personal) peace are featured in Fallen: the Agnus Dei III from Missa l’homme armé sexti toni, and the four-voice Ave Maria, virgo serena, which closes the drama.

Three late sixteenth-century composers who frequented the courts of both Mantua and Ferrara are represented by one piece each: Lodovico Agostini’s setting of the investiture antiphon, Veni sponsa Christi; Giaches de Wert’s searing lament, Vox in Rama, performed as a solo song; and a sacred contrafactum of Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal, Si, ch’io vorrei morire, which with its Latin text becomes a passionate declaration of erotic/romantic love for Christ.