Processions imploring for rain (ad petendam pluviam) are a constant occurrence in the Early Modern World. During the extended periods of extreme drought Man turned to the divine forces to […]
The Church of Santo Antão (dedicated to St Anthony, Abbot) was one of the main construction projects of the Cardinal D. Henrique during his government as Archbishop of Évora. During […]
When speaking of Cecilian music, one generally has the idea of the nineteenth-century movement, mostly centred in Germany, that pushed a reformation of Catholic church music, aiming to restore a […]
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina died on 2 February 1594. Several months earlier, a collection of 68 motets was published. Although it appeared at the end of 1593 it is generally […]
Not much is known about the Portuguese composer António de Oliveira, besides that he was active in the last decades of the sixteenth century. Much of what is known about […]
Most of the published studies about the history of music in the Portuguese city of Évora have begin chronologically in the first decades of the sixteenth century onwards. This period […]
The city of Évora, Alentejo, Portugal, is known for its musical history regarding the great Portuguese masters of polyphony of the first half of the seventeenth century. Names like Fr. […]
In 1626 the Portuguese theorist Antonio Fernandes dedicated his Arte de Musica to his former master Duarte Lobo praising him as one of the most illustrious Portuguese masters. Duarte Lobo […]
Flemish composer and singer Cornelis Verdonck was born in Turnhout sometime during the year 1563 and died in Antwerp on 5 July 1625. He was a choirboy at Antwerp Cathedral […]
Most of the posts on the Cantum Mensurable blog have focused on sacred music, in particular Latin polyphony. The corpus of Portuguese music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is […]
Many sixteenth and seventeenth-century composers have set the text O Magnum mysterium with wonderful polyphonic results, such as Willaert, Gabrieli, Palestrina, Victoria, and, Morales only to name a few. In […]
Francesco Soriano is one of the cases where composers of the same generation become lesser known than the popular composers of the time, and the last decades of the sixteenth […]