# Gabrieli: In Ecclesiis [1615]



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

This work, it seems to me, deserves wider appreciation than it has been getting here. It is currently on the 72nd tier of the the Talk Classical community's favorite and most highly recommended works even though, as the wikipedia article on it notes, it is one of Gabrieli's most famous works and Britannica refers to it as "his masterpiece."

If it's not already well-known to you, I hope you will give it a fresh listen. It's one of those "polychoral" works written for St. Mark's in Venice, so a lot of the interest lies in how various combinations of voices and/or instruments are used.

For those of you who know it well, I wonder which recordings you're fond of and why. With a work like this, there could be a lot of value to hearing different recordings and perhaps even trying different speaker arrangements to try to hear the spatial element of the music.

I've heard McCreesh (on the _Music for San Rocco_ album), Parrott (on the album _Symphoniae Sacrae II_ and I believe it may be the same recording on the _Venetian Church Music_ album, but I haven't heard that one), Hollingworth (on the _1612 Italian Vespers_ album) and Cleobury and though I've only heard the latter via youtube (where you can find a variety of live performances as well), I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. Perhaps McCreesh is my favorite, but they're all good.


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