Contrafacta by Claudio Monteverdi

The Barocchisti are pleased to announce the concert "Contrafacta di Claudio Monteverdi" which will be held on Sunday, May 4, 2025 at 17:00 in the church of Santa Maria in Calanca, an exceptional sacred place in Italian Graubünden characterized by excellent acoustics.

Conducted by Diego Fasolis, the Baroque and Madrigalists of the Swiss Radio and Television Choir will present a program of about an hour dedicated entirely to Claudio Monteverdi's "Contrafacta": profane madrigals arranged with sacred texts according to the practice of the "contrafactum", which accompanies the entire liturgical history of the Church.

In particular, in the Renaissance and then Baroque periods, the Church absorbed and made secular music its own, adapting it to the needs of the liturgy on the one hand and spiritual elevation on the other. "Popular themes become the basis of polyphonic compositions such as Masses and Motets and the examples of this transfer are innumerable. The people recognize the melodies and willingly assimilate them to new edifying emotions. The great seventeenth-century madrigal repertoire could not but be involved, in this specific case that of Monteverdi, which saw Aquilino Coppini collect and cloak many pieces of the fourth and fifth books of Madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi with religious Latin text," explains Diego Fasolis, who has just returned from Amsterdam, where he conducted the Easter Concert at the Concertgebouw, acclaimed for the performance of Menndelssohn's Symphony No. 2, "Lobgesang".

«In contrafacta, the climate changes completely, also because Monteverdi's perfect adherence to the poetic texts of his madrigals is inimitable. We therefore find ourselves musically with new motets and we must appreciate Coppini's effort to maintain where possible even the relative affections, whether sorrowful or festive, finding himself talking about Jesus or Mary instead of Silvio and Dorinda. We are in the principles of the Counter-Reformation where the Catholic Church must react and lead to the Faith through a devotion accessible to all," continues Fasolis.

The 2024/25 Season of the RSI Choir and Baroqueists, dedicated to Monteverdi and Bach, could not fail to illustrate a practice that the Lutheran Bach also used for himself by elevating his secular compositions to mystical and religious texts. The first choir of the Christmas Oratory would be enough where we go from "trumpets blasted" to "Jubilate and celebrate".

In the setting of the magnificent Church of Santa Maria in Calanca, surrounded by the greenery of the Val Calanca Park of the same name, in the Canton of Graubünden - where I Barocchisti return after the charity concert with Klaus Mertens in favor of the reconstruction projects after the flood - the concert presents a dozen of these "Contrafacta" which will be accompanied by instrumental pieces taken from the "Musical Flowers" of the inspiring genius of Monteverdi who was Girolamo Frescobaldi, as well as the "Musical Affections" by Biagio Marini that have already accompanied us in the performance in the Season of the Sixth Book of Monteverdi's madrigals.