The Monuments series is dedicated to publishing choral music from the Renaissance and Early Baroque that have particular cultural significance to Denmark.
Most of this music was found in a handwritten set of books once belonging to the school Herlufsholm founded in 1565. Among the items are vocal works by Orlando di Lasso (1532 – 1594), Marc’Antonio Ingenieri (c. 1535 – 1592), Giaches de Wert (1535 – 1596), William Byrd (1543– 1623), Orazio Vecchi (1550 – 1605) and Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554 – 1612), and of neglected composers we have Melchior Schramm (1553 – 1619), François Gallet (c. 1555 – 1585), Pietro Lappi (c. 1575 – 1630), Antonio Mortaro (c. 1570 – 1619), and Curtio Valcampi (fl. 1602). The music ranges from sacred motets to secular madrigals for a four-part choir and to large, complex polychoral works such as those performed for example in Venice around that time.
The Herlufsholm music collection is of great importance, as it is the only substantial collection of music in Denmark from around 1600, and it reveals a rich musical life that no other archive or library can match.
How this music ended up in Denmark in the first place is the subject of a major research project led by Ole Kongsted, Peter Hauge and Harold Thalange, and run by Musica Ficta Copenhagen with support from Augustinus Foundation, and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation.
The aim of this ongoing research project is not only to catalogue and describe
the collection, but also to contextualise and interpret it, providing insights into issues of performance practice, musical life and education at Herlufsholm around 1600. One important part of the project is to make the vocal repertoire available in modern, easily accessible performance editions offering ensembles a repertoire of music that is rarely performed today.
Antonio Mortaro
The works now published are Antonio Mortaro's Vesper Psalms for 12 voices, Part 1 and 2, Motets for 12 voices and Missa à 12 – super Erano e capei d’oro.
The available biographical information on Antonio Mortaro’s life is scarce and partly contradictory, and the information in the major music encyclopedias is insufficient.
Mortaro was probably born in the 1570s in Brescia (northern Italy). The earliest biographical evidence of his life dates from 1595 when he entered the Franciscan monastery in Brescia as a novice, and his earliest printed compositions date from 1587. Mortaro was recognised as a skilled organist and was a prolific composer, publishing at least four collections of secular works and around a dozen sacred works – collections that in many cases were reprinted several times. Most of his works were published by the well-known music printer Ricciardo Amadino in Venice.
The ongoing research into the material of the Herlufsholm collection is inspired by the research of Professor Dr John Bergsagel who has suggested that the Mortaro material is an important key to the understanding of the history of part of the Herlufsholm collection.
This begs the question: how and when did the works of Mortaro arrive in Denmark from Italy? The answer is: we do not know. One explanation could be that the music was bought in Italy by some of the many Danish musicians who visited Italy between 1599 and 1623. A ‘harmonic’ peculiarity in the Sanctus of Pedersøn’s five-part mass (1620), which does not appear elsewhere in Pedersøn’s sacred music, seems to be inspired by an identical phrase in Mortaro’s Gloria. This suggests that Pedersøn may have known the Mass, and possibly even met Mortaro himself. The history of Venetian music printing has documented that composers often went to the city to observe and assist with the printing process and proofreading. We do not know if this did occur in Mortaro’s case, whose works of 1606 and 1607 were published in Venice, but if so, Mortaro would indeed have had the opportunity to meet Pedersøn.