Gabrieli Consort and Players / Paul McCreesh
rec. live, 9 December 2017, La Chapelle Royale du Château de Versailles
Michael Praetorius was the most prolific German composer of his generation, making use of a beauty of sound and an abundance of instruments worthy of his contemporary Monteverdi. His works include the nine volume Musae Sioniae (1605–10), a collection of more than twelve hundred (ca. 1244) chorale and song arrangements; volume eleven of twenty is called Missodia Sionia and contains sacred music in Latin for church services for two to eight voices. He wrote many other works for the Lutheran church; and Terpsichore, a compendium of more than 300 instrumental dances, which is both his most widely known work, and his sole surviving secular work.
Many of Praetorius' choral compositions were scored for several mini-choirs situated in several locations in the church for multi-phonic effect.
Here we have a festive Christmas Mass as it might have been heard in a great Lutheran church in the North of Germany in around 1620. Spatialising this Christmas Morning Mass in the exceptional architecture of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, Paul McCreesh alternates these monumental pieces and the soloist's airs in a rich instrumental decoration, giving the work the popular and festive dimension of a brilliant fresco.