Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno
Keenly aware that their status depended on not only employing the most talented artists and musicians, but having them create spectacular works and having them disseminated, they encouraged composers to write music which exceeded that of their contemporaries in size and scope.
[1] During the 1530s and 1540s, Francesco Corteccia, who was the principal composer for the first part of Cosimo's reign, wrote series of elaborate intermedii—groups of madrigals designed to be performed between the acts of plays, sung by actors in costume and accompanied by instruments.
Instead of decorating plays with madrigals interspersed between the acts, however, the Medici's court composer – who was Striggio by the 1560s – chose to create works for larger groups of voices than had been attempted before, and to accompany these already massive vocal forces with instruments.
[3] His first attempt was apparently the Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, and some time later he followed this with a 40-voice motet setting, Ecce beatam lucem, a piece which has long been known.
[4] When Striggio completed the enormous mass setting, he carried it with him during a diplomatic trip across Europe to strengthen the dynastic relation brought on by the recent marriage of Francesco de' Medici to Johanna of Austria, who was a Habsburg.
In June 1567 he made his way to London with the specific purpose of meeting "the virtuosos in the profession of music that were there" (as he wrote in a letter to Francesco I de' Medici, dated 18 May 1567).
[7] What was subsequently publicised as its first performance in modern times was on 17 July 2007 at a Proms concert in Royal Albert Hall in London, where it was sung by the BBC Singers and Tallis Scholars, with His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, conducted by Moroney.
Unlike the massive polychoral compositions of the Venetian School, in which performance groupings were positioned in lofts across from each other in a large space, the choirs in Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno were probably not meant to be significantly spatially separated.
Presumably Striggio used this as a compositional tool, to keep track of the harmonies as he wrote forty to sixty voice parts above it; it also foreshadowed the development of the basso continuo in the 17th century.
[15] The enormous work impressed many of its listeners, beginning in Munich, where Orlande de Lassus was in attendance; the event was similar to one a year later, described by Massimo Troiano, in which another Striggio piece for 40 voices was heard.
