Concert
in the Cathedral of Lucca Marking the Restoration of a Painting
Last evening, in the cathedral of
Lucca, an incredibly beautiful concert was given by the relatively newly-formed
group VoxAlia. What I found especially
notable was the integration of the visual and aural, first by the presentation
of the newly restored painting and altar of The
Visitation (the painting by Jacopo Ligozzi, 1596), the altar surround a
revised version of a design by Giorgio Vasari. Standing by the altar, adjacent
to the chapel of the Volto Santo, the new cathedral
rector Don Mauro Lucchesi first introduced Archbishop Benvenuto Italo
Castellani with some apposite words on the arts and culture in the church;
after the bishop spoke, the scholar in charge of the restoration, Dott.ssa Antonia
D'Aniello presented a bit of its history; she was followed by a spokesman for
the restoration team. Then we moved on to the pews for the concert, under the
direction of Livio Picotti.
The
singers entered from the sacristy singing a solemn chant (not in the program),
after which they assembled at the altar in a circle to sing Hildegard von
Bingen’s O Viridissima Virga, the
musical quality highlighted as much aurally as visually by their formation. The
program was organized around readings from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life of Mary, and while the music was
mostly Monteverdi and before a discordant note was introduced with Poulenc’s Litanies a la Vierge Noire (why must
modern sacred music be so anguished and harsh, even ugly?). Each section of the program
was introduced by the readings, which were accompanied by the presentation of a
relevant icon painting to the assembled, processed from the altar down the
central aisle. Finally, with the inevitable encore (they are de rigueur in Italy) the group moved
again, singing as they went, to the altar to conclude the evening.
Maestro
Picotti’s credits list him as
architect-musician, and his dual background showed in his attention to the
spatial and visual dimensions of the music. With Early Music the recovery of
something like the original effect of the music is usually confined to the
musical, but the spatial and visual accompaniment are no less essential to
revivifying music that deserves to be heard as often, and as well-performed, as
possible. To imitate the lost original sense of the music one almost must,
perforce, emulate—attempt to rival by working to integrate as much information
and sense experience as possible.
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