The Consort of Musicke/Anthony Rooley/Emma Kirkby - Verrijt: Flammae Divinae Op.5, Motets

Jan Baptist Verrijt (born around 1600 in Oirschot and died in Rotterdam in 1650) was, together with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, perhaps the most important Dutch composer of the seventeenth century. His most important surviving work, Flammae divinae, Opus 5, consists of six two-part and twelve three-part motets along with two three-part settings for Mass, and was published in the period when Verrijt was employed as an organist by the Great Church of St Laurens in Rotterdam (1644-50). In this work Verrijt displays consummate mastery in combining the liveliness of the new Italian stile concertato with the polyphonic techniques of the old Franco-Flemish school. The music sounds imaginative and dramatic but is simultaneously balanced and controlled. Like Claudia Monteverdi Verrijt enlivens his complex multi-part church music with techniques borrowed from the madrigal and from opera, employing the old imitative techniques in a new way to achieve a strong emotional effect. Performed by one of the most prominent and pioneering Early Music vocal ensembles of the 20-th century, the Consort of Musicke, featuring Emma Kirkby, and directed by Anthony Rooley. A reissue from the NM Classics label, the label for music from The Netherlands.