"Chamber Vespers" is a category invented for this recording by the
Gonzaga Band, a British ensemble named for the powerful and at times arts-friendly
Gonzaga family of Mantua, Italy. The Vespers setting known to casual early Baroque listeners is likely to be the work known as the Vespers of 1610 of Claudio Monteverdi, a massive work whose very size and sumptuousness have made it into a musicological puzzle: it's not clear who would have bankrolled a performance or how it would have been used. The music on this album, by contrast, could have been and in fact was used in everyday services. The performers assemble a Vespers service from works by various composers, with psalms, hymns, and the Magnificat canticle alternating with instrumental works. Some are well-known pieces, such as the Capriccio sopra un soggetto (1626) of Frescobaldi, but many are world premieres. They are indeed chamber-sized, with one or two singers and a small ensemble with cornetts and a continuo with keyboard and theorbo. The musical language is the flexible monodic style of Monteverdi, with expressive settings of the psalm texts and plenty of surprising harmonic moves. The entire concept of the album is very strong and puts across an almost unknown repertory convincingly, with natural, clean instrumental performances. The weak point here is the singing, which is simple and clear but thin and not overly expressive; it is likely that the chapels where this music would have been sung would have had access to virtuoso singers, and the ones here could not be so characterized. Nevertheless, fans of the Monteverdi circle may well be interested in this well-recorded release.