Les Arts inaugurates the Galeria dels Arcs with the Cor de la Generalitat and the concert 'Missa Papæ Marcelli'
09.05.2017
The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía opened the Galeria dels Arcs to the public. Located in the underground corridors of the building, it opens with a concert by the Choir of the Generalitat Valenciana conducted by Francesc Perales here, May 11, at 8:00 p.m.
The main choral group of Les Arts performs '4 Motets' and 'Missa Papae Marcelli', by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Italian composer and ixth artist of religious music, recognized by his various polyphonic works.
The Galeria dels Arcs is the second space that Les Arts presents to the service of music this season, after the Espai Los Toros, on which the cycle of chamber music has passed with the session 'Alemanya Barroca'.
With 'Missa Papae Marcelli', attendees will be able to discover the particular acoustics and aesthetics of the corridors on floor -3, a level along the eastern side of the Túria River, which connects the Calatrava building with the Martín i Soler Theatre.
The location is accessible to the public from the Martín i Soler Theater, along with the classrooms and assembly halls of the Plácido Domingo Center, along with the Cor de la Generalitat. The capacity of the Galeria dels Arcs allows the attendance of 200 spectators.
The arts center reports that the seats for this concert are sold out, except for the five percent of the capacity that the regional law requires to be reserved for the sale on the day of the show. The tickets benefit from the popular price policy of Les Arts with a single price of 15 euros.
Missa Papae Marcelli
As Anselmo Alonso explains, the “Missa Papae Marcelli' - or missa of Pope Marcel - is considered to face hours of work that will save the polyphony of the urpes of the Council of Trent.
The Reformation of Christianity in a Lutheran version comes to the fore of religious polyphonic music at a time when this had entered the most complete morphological mestizatge, degut in part by the excessive intellectual elaboration achieved from the mitjana age in the field of counterpunt and imitation, but largely caused way for the use of popular rhythms and melodies in the form of paraphrases and quotes: a frivolous support for the verb diví. The Catholic Counter-Reformation, with its most powerful conciliar instrument of Trent, will be about to eliminate the elaborate music of the Catholic cult in favor of a return to the purity of monody and psalmdy codified in the centuries abans by Pope Gregori Magne: the Roman song, simple and direct, intelligible and of divine origin. Singing the music does not hinder the understanding of Déu's paraula.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who served in the Vatican capella during the brief regnat of Pope Marcel II - at least three weeks -, will be a direct witness to these events and, obviously, will contribute to his renewing efforts towards the acceptance of music by the Trentine authorities. He, who had composted in the dense and intellectual style in vogue at the time, wrote this crucial mass after the death of the ephemeral pope, under the curt mandate of which he had donated the first orders of claredat and compositional simplicity in the field of the church: on the 'cantus firmus' of the pure Gregorian melodies.
