Gregorio Ballabene’s Forty-eight-part Mass for Twelve Choirs

1772

Florian Bassani

$41.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Routledge
25 September 2023

Baroque music (c 1600 to c 1750); Classical music (c 1750 to c 1830); Individual composers & musicians, bands & groups

Series: Royal Musical Association Monographs

Neither Spem in alium, the widely acclaimed ‘songe of fortie partes’ by Thomas Tallis, nor Alessandro Striggio’s forty-part Mass is the largest-scale counterpoint work in Western music. The actual winner is Gregorio Ballabene, a relatively unknown Roman maestro di cappella, a contemporary of Giovanni Paisiello, Joseph Haydn and Luigi Boccherini, who composed in forty-eight parts for twelve choirs. His Mass saw only a public rehearsal and was never performed liturgically despite all of Ballabene’s efforts to promote it. On closer inspection, however, the work deserves special consideration as a piece of outstanding combinatory creativity – the product of a talent able to conceive, structure and realise a project of colossal dimensions. It might even be claimed that if Charles Burney had gained knowledge of it, all derogatory comments by nineteenth-century music historians would not have succeeded in extinguishing the interest of later generations. Ballabene’s Mass has remained completely unstudied until today, even though the score survives in prominent collections. This study offers, for the first time, a historical and analytical perspective on this overlooked manifestation of a very individual musical intelligence.

By: Florian Bassani
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032128931
ISBN 10: 1032128933
Series: Royal Musical Association Monographs
Pages: 120
Publication Date: 25 September 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction 1. Twelve-choir performances 2. The presence of a glorious past 3. Burney’s ‘Mass’ 4. Ballabene and his Mass in Martini’s correspondence 5. The ‘rehearsal’ and its outcome 6. Consequences for Ballabene’s professional advancement 7. Martini’s approbation 8. Important compositional features 9. Pitoni’s Mass 10. Ballabene and the twilight of an era 11. Fame and posthumous fame 12. The history of the score 13. Unfortunate anachronism or accomplishment of the Roman Baroque? Appendix I: Documents (in chronological order) Appendix II: Documented copies of Ballabene’s Mass Bibliography

Dr Florian Bassani is a lecturer at the Institute of Musicology, University of Bern, Switzerland.