*** Vinyl LP ***

A rediscovered untitled Mass by Adriaen Willaert, Missa Ippolito, a hidden ode to the Cardinal of Ferrara, Willaert's patron.


In an article about the Mass, the musicologist Joshua Rifkin claims to have discovered a sogetto cavato delle parole in this sequence of notes. This is a compositional technique common for the time in which the notes of a melody, in this case the cantus firmus, are derived from the vowels of certain words. The notes used for the tone poetry are those of the Guidonian hexachord, a series of the 6 notes ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la.

For example, the word Maria (Ma-ri-a) can be "translated" into the notes la mi la. The cantus firmus of the Mass, according to Rifkin, fits the words "Primus Ippolitus Cardinalis Estensis" (Ippolito I, Cardinal d'Este) perfectly. The Mass is thus almost certainly (via a hidden message in the music) an ode to the Cardinal of Ferrara who was Willaert's patron. This rediscovered untitled Mass by Adriaen Willaert, which we have now sung as a world premiere, can therefore rightly bear the name Missa Ippolito.