Laudate Dominum : Monteverdi, Grandi, Campra

Presented by Sacred Music Notre Dame of Paris. In seventeenth-century Italy (the 1600s), sacred vocal music becomes a true theatre of faith.

With Monteverdi, Cavalli and Grandi, emerges the seconda prattica: a new art founded on the expressivity of the text and the freedom of musical discourse.

While constituting the aesthetic foundation of opera, these innovations revolutionize religious music, infusing it with new humanity and unprecedented dramatic intensity. This stylistic revolution spreads throughout Europe and influences many generations of composers.

In Germany, musicians appropriate these contributions to integrate them into writing often more dense, turned toward meditation and Lutheran fervor. In France, the supple vocality inherited from the Italian style is assimilated into a language marked by elegance and balance.