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I'd like to find and purchase a score of this piece, which is mostly in 40 parts and has a 60-part Agnus Dei. It was rediscovered by Davitt Moroney a few years ago. Does anyone know where I could find a copy (or if it was ever published)?

I'm suprised that our own intrepid PML (Phillip Legge) hasn't done an edition, in light of his very fine one for Tallis' 40-part motet Spem in alium nunquam habui à 40, which I'm thinking about getting my local chorus to at least read through.

Off topic, but my college's concert choir just performed Spem In Alium.
On topic, it may be that the piece isn't PD, as it was recently rediscovered?

Davitt Moroney's edition being the only one of this work available, since he rediscovered it, I can't see anyone going to the effort of retranscribing it from the 42 separate parts in the National Library of France. The work is substantial, around 30 minutes long: even if Striggio's style lends itself to more rapid typesetting than Tallis' it would still be a lot of work!

I had a chat to Peter Phillips about the work (as the Tallis Scholars had been involved in the modern premiére at the Proms); he thought that like the motet, it was fairly boring compared to the example by Tallis! One example being the repetition of block phrases from choir to choir, or the same phrase of music being deployed to two different sets of words, which are handled much more interestingly by Tallis.

Presumably there would have been performance scores prepared for the Proms, so I'll see if these have been published anywhere.

Regards, PML

I've talked to Professor Moroney, and found that there is no published score, unfortunately. Thanks anyway for your help. And yes, I agree that the Striggio works are not nearly as interesting as Spem in Alium, which I had the privilege of performing last weekend!

Just a follow-up to this thread to say that there is now an edition of the Striggio Mass which was made for the new recording by I Fagiolini released by Decca in March. The edition by Robert Hollingworth and Brian Clark is available from the Early Music Company in the UK. You can find out more - and see a sample of the score - at www.ifagiolini.com/striggio

pml wrote:Davitt Moroney's edition being the only one of this work available, since he rediscovered it, I can't see anyone going to the effort of retranscribing it from the 42 separate parts in the National Library of France.

And yet, that is exactly what Robert Hollingworth and Brian Clark did, since Moroney essentially sat on his edition for several years too long. Just goes to show that even I completely fail at prognostication in the world of early music megalomania...

Thanks Kieran for posting this follow-up. I was aware that a new edition and recording were released – back in Feb. a friend alerted me Peter Phillips’ public views in the Spectator which I was amused to find were a little different to the opinions I heard from his own lips not long after the modern première; though it is always possible the work has “grown” on him a little in the intervening time. I'll be looking to acquire a copy of score and recording to add to my bootleg of the 2007 Proms broadcast!

Cheers, Philip