The Vatican Library houses the most important and extensive collection of sacred music manuscripts in the world, and the Sistine Chapel Choir has unlimited access to this extraordinary archive. The Sistine Chapel Choir, the oldest in the world, has been singing this music for centuries, and in recent years has reached new heights of musical excellence. The director of the Sistine Chapel, Monsignor Massimo Palombella, has taken on an exciting double challenge. On the one hand, he is presenting polyphonic works from the Vatican Library in new editions that reflect the highest standards of contemporary academic scholarship in polyphony. On the other hand, he is also developing performance practices for the choir, in order to bring even the most intricate and impossibly difficult motets to life in a way that respects and clarifies the liturgical significance of the music.

Many of the works on this recording, written by such famous names as Palestrina and Allegri for the papal celebrations of Advent and Christmas, are previously unpublished. Allegri's complex and mysterious motet Nascers alme Puer is an unpublished recording. So is Marenzio's extraordinary Christmas hymn Christe Redemptor omnium. Likewise, Guillaume Dufay's motet Conditor alme siderum is unpublished. Nanino's impossibly difficult motet Hodie nobis caelorum rex is presented in this recording for the first time with florid ‘minor colour’ ornamentation, as current scholarship indicates it would have been performed in the composer's time. We also hear for the first time Palestrina's Dies Sanctificatus with ‘minor colour’ ornamentation and with sopranos singing instead of boy choristers.

Available only for subscribers in Spain and Latin America.