Monteverdi Vespers – St. Luke in the Fields

The first truly large-scale masterpiece of Western music, Claudio Monteverdi’s monumental 1610 Vespers stands at the junction between Renaissance restraint and Baroque splendor. Sacred music but also high theatre, the dances and virtuosic vocal concerti, alternating with music in the ‘old style’, are performed with one singer per part accompanied by cornets, sackbuts, recorders, organs and strings.