Les Arts inaugurates the Galeria dels Arcs with the Cor de la Generalitat and the concert 'Missa Papæ Marcelli'

The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía opens the Galeria dels Arcs to the public. Located in the building's underground corridors, it will be inaugurated with a concert by the Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana, conducted by Francesc Perales, this Thursday, May 11, at 8:00 p.m.

The resident choral group of Les Arts performs '4 Motets' and 'Missa Papae Marcelli', by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, an Italian Renaissance composer of religious music, recognized for his polyphonic works.

The Galeria dels Arcs is the second space that Les Arts is putting at the service of music this season, after the 'Espai Los Toros', where the chamber music cycle concluded this past Saturday with the session 'Baroque Germany'.

With 'Missa Papae Marcelli', attendees will be able to discover the unique acoustics and aesthetics of the corridors on the -3 floor, one level below the old Turia riverbed, which connect the Calatrava building with the Teatre Martín i Soler.

The venue, accessible to the public from the Teatre Martín i Soler itself, houses the classrooms and rehearsal rooms of the Centre Plácido Domingo, as well as those of the Cor de la Generalitat (Choir of the Generalitat). The Galeria dels Arcs has a capacity of 200 spectators.

The arts center reports that tickets for this concert are sold out, except for the five percent of the capacity that regional law requires to be reserved for sale on the day of the performance. Tickets benefit from Les Arts' affordable pricing policy with a single price of 15 euros.

Missa Papae Marcelli

As Anselmo Alonso explains, “The 'Missa Papae Marcelli' - or Mass of Pope Marcellus - is still considered today as the work that saved polyphony from the clutches of the Council of Trent.

The Lutheran Reformation of Christianity reached the world of religious polyphonic music at a time when it had entered a period of profound morphological hybridization. This was due in part to the excessive intellectual development achieved since the Middle Ages in the realm of counterpoint and imitation, but largely to the use of popular rhythms and melodies in the form of paraphrases and quotations: a frivolous foundation for the divine word. The Catholic Counter-Reformation, with its powerful instrument of the Council of Trent, nearly eliminated elaborate music from Catholic worship in favor of a return to the purity of monophony and psalmody, codified centuries earlier by Pope Gregory the Great: Roman chant, simple and direct, intelligible and of divine origin. Chant where the music does not hinder the understanding of the word of God.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who served in the Vatican chapel during the very brief reign of Pope Marcellus II—a mere three weeks—was a direct witness to these perilous years and undoubtedly contributed with his innovative efforts to the acceptance of music by the Trentine authorities. He, who had composed in the dense and intellectual style then in vogue, wrote this crucial mass after the death of the ephemeral pope, whose short reign saw the first orders for clarity and compositional simplicity within the Church: based on the 'cantus firmus' of pure Gregorian chant.