Top of the Pops 1542

A Kansas State grad student has reconstructed a piece of Vatican music that's not been heard since 1542


Nearly 500 years ago, the complex harmonies of “Missa Ad te levavi” were last performed in the Sistine Chapel. Then the music disappeared, for centuries, into the Vatican archives.

Torn and heavily damaged, this mass — created by Renaissance composer Bartolome Escobedo — was never transcribed into modern notation. Then, last year, a Kansas State University graduate student named Patrick Dittamo set about reviving it, spending the next six months transcribing Escobedo’s work.

“It's not often you get to bring something [like this] to life,” Dittamo says.

Dittamo came to the project after learning that the Kansas City Chorale was looking to perform a piece that hadn’t been done in modern times. He started researching underserved composers and came across Escobedo. Only a handful of his pieces had survived, but “Missa Ad te levavi” was one of them, and it had been digitized in the Vatican’s online library. Despite the damage to the document, Dittamo was confident he could transcribe the manuscript. (Last summer, Dittamo completed Yale and Cornell University’s Historical Notation Bootcamp, and he’s currently wrapping up his master’s in music history and compositions.)

Read more: https://www.thepitchkc.com/culture/article/21066747/kstate-grad-student-patrick-dittamo-has-reconstructed-a-piece-of-vatican-music-unheard-for-480-years

The Kansas City Chorale performs Kyrie from Bartolome Escobedo's Missa ad te levavi at the annual Springsong concert, April 20 at Kirkwood Hall in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
https://www.facebook.com/KCChorale/videos/kyrie-from-escobedos-missa-ad-te-levavi-the-kansas-city-chorale/2180466088950677/