Early seventeenth century Italy was essentially a Catholic police state and nothing that had anything to do with the Church was left unsupervised. After the Sack of Rome and the Reformation, in Milan as elsewhere in Italy, music was directed to be simple, solemn, and sublime in that order. In response, as this splendid disc by
Le Poème Harmonique directed by
Vincent Dumestre demonstrates, the composers of Milan dissimulated. Vincenzo Ruffo, maestro di cappella of the Duomo, dropped his elegantly ornate madrigal style and wrote the austerely beautiful Missa Quarti Toni but imbued with the same sense of luminous joy. The Archbishop of Milan told Aquilino Coppini to provide contrafacta -- new words for pre-composed music -- for the glory of the God and Coppini turned in sanctified versions of Monteverdi's erotic madrigals but with the same sense of rapturous ecstasy. The Cardinal from Rome ordered that only fauxbourdon -- "false bass" or two-part harmony -- was to be sung in church and musicians evolved the fauxbourdon into richly ornamented but absolutely lucid and with the same sense of the transcendent bliss. As these sumptuously executed and passionately dedicated performances prove, even the Church could not eliminate spirituality from church music. Alpha's sound, notes, and graphics are, as always, executed at the highest possible level.