Palestrina: Alma Redemptoris Mater (Julian Podger, Monteverdi Choir)

Disclaimer: I don’t own this. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526[1] 2 February 1594) was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. He was the most famous sixteenth-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. Palestrina became famous through his output of sacred music.[2] He had a vast influence on the development of Roman Catholic church music, and his work can be seen as a summation of Renaissance polyphony. Alma Redemptoris Mater or, in English, “Loving Mother of our Savior,“ is one of four liturgical Marian antiphons (the other three being: Ave Regina caelorum, Regina coeli and Salve Regina), and sung at the end of the office of Compline. Hermannus Contractus (Herman the Cripple) (1013 - 1054) is said to have authored the hymn based on the writings of Ss. Fulgentius, Epiphanius, and Irenaeus of Lyon. It is mentioned in “The Prioress’s Tale“, one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Formerly it was recited at compline only from the fi