The Evolution of an Error, or How Striggio’s Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno Was Lost (and Found)

It has long been said that Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium, a motet for 40 voices, was written on his hearing Alessandro Striggio’s 40-part motet Ecce beatam lucem when Striggio visited London in 1567. There appears to be no record of the Striggio motet having been performed at that time, although his Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno for 40 voices (and 60 independent voices for the final Agnus Dei) apparently was.

Cosimo de’ Medici, patron of the arts and Striggio’s employer, sent him in 1566-67 (with his Mass) on a long diplomatic journey to the courts at Vienna, Brno, Munich, Paris, and London, where the Mass was performed. Although copies were left to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, Albrecht V in Munich, and Charles IX of France, the Mass then disappeared for more than four centuries. What happened?

It seems the Missa was copied in the early 17th century, presumably from the score Striggio left to Charles IX. This was donated to Louis XV’s Royal Library in 1726 by composer Sébastien de Brossard, whose catalogue of his enormous music library describes a 17th century "Mass for five choirs of eight parts each... and a Basso continuo by Signore Alessandro Struseo if I am not mistaken, for this name is very badly written”. The years passed, the Royal Library became Napoleon’s Imperial Library, the Royal Library once again, and eventually the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with changes in location and recataloguing to accompany the changes in name.

From his difficult-to-read transcript, in which the composer was referred to as “Strigeo”, Brossard copied the name as “Struseo”. When preparing a catalogue for general use, the Royal Library’s scribe in turn read this as Strusco, and thus it remained: a nameless 17th century Mass by a non-existent composer. In 1914, a zealous corrector dealt the final blow by removing the last clue: perhaps considering 40 parts to be very improbable, he edited the reference to read “4-part Mass”. And so it goes.

In 1980, a Cambridge researcher found a 1567 Italian reference to the Missa; shortly thereafter, an Oxford scholar published two newly identified letters by Striggio alluding to the same work. Davitt Moroney, a musicologist at the University of California at Berkeley, first saw reference to the Mass in 1987, and spent nearly 20 years searching the place it had never left – the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. In 2005, he recovered and identified Striggio’s Mass, and conducted the first modern performance in July 2007 at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Much better than my explanations, though, are those of Davitt Moroney and of the music itself. The Comments box has links to a BBC discussion and the London performance of Tallis’s Spem in alium, Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem and his Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, as well as to an interview of and to a lecture by Dr. Moroney.