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• Priuli, Giovanni: Adoramus te Christe

Priuli, Giovanni: Adoramus te Christe

for 8 voices or instruments in 2 choirs.

This wonderful but regrettably short motet comes from Giovanni Priuli´s Sacrorum concentuum of 1618, the first of two collection of motets and instrumental works demonstrating a consistently high level of brilliance and originality (all of the 8- and 12-part instrumental pieces have been or will be published in our A Due Cori series).
Giovanni Priuli was born in Venice around 1575, and studied there with Giovanni Gabrieli: by the early 1600s he was deputising for his teacher at the organ in St. Marco; he also worked at another important church in Venice, San Rocco. But by 1614 he had moved to Austria, where he was Kappellmeister to Archduke Ferdinand, initially at Graz, and then (from 1619) in Vienna, where he died in 1629.
Priuli seems to have liked the opening phrase first made popular in Giulio Caccini´s Amarilli, as he used it an his solo motet Ave dulcissima Maria of 1625. All of Priuli´s seem to show a strong sense of musical structure, or a feeling for a central idea. In this piece the interest turns on the idea of modified repetition, which he uses to remarkable effect.