"Lost" 450-year-old mass soars on British charts

Reuters, Mar 14, 2011

A sumptuous first recording of a long-lost 450-year-old Italian Renaissance mass written for 40 different vocal parts has soared onto British pop charts a week after its release.

The recording by British vocal group I Fagiolini of the little-known Alessandro Striggio's 1566 mass for 40 voices -- most masses are written for four -- made its debut at number 68 on the pop charts, above Bon Jovi, George Harrison and Eminem.

It was number two on the classical charts, just behind Dutch violinist waltz master Andre Rieu.

"We really worked hard so that there could be a properly magnificent and extravagant sound world for the piece to revel in," I Fagiolini's conductor and founder Robert Hollingworth, 44, who thinks the mass has a "mesmeric" quality, told Reuters in a telephone interview Sunday.

"This is not the grainy, black-and-white film, this is the full Hollywood Technicolor. I think that's why it works so well...it's like a kind of aural kaleidoscope."

The mass was performed in several major European cities when it was written but had been mis-catalogued at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where it was rediscovered a few years ago by musicologist Davitt Moroney, and given its first modern performance at the BBC Proms in London in 2007.

I Fagiolini and their label Decca Classics, a part of the Universal music group, spared no expense on the recording. It uses five choirs and a panoply of period instruments, from trombone-like sackbuts to the 11-stringed lirone, a cello precursor, as well as lutes, recorders and Renaissance strings.

The instruments play lines of music that would otherwise be sung, which Hollingworth said was accepted practice at the time.

The CD release includes a DVD which offers the Striggio mass, plus another 40-part Striggio motet, and English composer Thomas Tallis's 40-part "Spem in Alium" -- written after Striggio's works, and possibly inspired by them -- in surround sound, plus a documentary about the making of the recording.

Striggio, who lived from 1536/7 to 1592, was a court composer to the Medici family in Florence and would have written the mass in 40 parts because, as Hollingworth put it, the Medicis liked to "make a big stink and money wasn't a problem."

Musical events at the time included the use of "cloud machines" on which performers descended to the stage, costumes and oil lamps to create special visual effects -- "and finally you would hear the music," Hollingworth said.

"Music never existed in a vacuum, it was absolutely part of other things," he said, explaining that by writing a mass for 40 parts, Striggio would have hoped it would rise above the fray.

The composer had a flair for drama. The opening Kyrie uses a fraction of the forces on hand, but he lets rip in the succeeding Gloria and the conclusion is written for 60 parts.

The rediscovery and revival of interest in the Striggio mass has led to inevitable comparisons with the work by Tallis. Tallis, who lived from 1505-85, was a big favorite of England's Queen Elizabeth I, and his "Spem in Alium" (roughly, "Hope in any other") is noted for ground-breaking dissonance and often described as an astonishing technical achievement for its time.

Knowing that would be the case, Hollingworth has included the Tallis on his recording, but in a version replacing some of the voices with period instruments, giving it a twist from the usual all-vocal versions.

He thinks both pieces have their strong points and that devotees of the Tallis should open their ears to the Striggio.

"If one has to examine them in the cold light of day you might say the Tallis is better than the Striggio, but who's to say...coffee is a better drink than wine?"

The Striggio mass, he added, "is a thumping good piece of music."

(Editing by Peter Graff)

Disease risk higher for suburban swingers than prostitutes By Kate Kelland

Disease risk higher for swingers than prostitutes

Reuters – A female guest enjoys the atmosphere in a swingers club The Secession art gallery in Vienna late evening …

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists studying swingers -- straight couples who regularly swap sexual partners and indulge in group sex at organized meeting -- say they have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than prostitutes.

Dutch researchers publishing their work in the British Medical Journal showed that older swingers -- those over the age of 45 -- are particularly vulnerable and yet are a group largely ignored by healthcare services.

With estimates that the swinger population could be many millions across the world, the scientists said there was a risk this untreated group could act as an STI "transmission bridge to the entire population."

"Although exact estimates are unavailable, the swingers' population is probably large," wrote Anne-Marie Niekamp, who worked on the study with colleagues from Maastricht University.

The Dutch study analyzed the numbers of patients seeking treatment in 2007 and 2008 at three sexual health clinics in South Limburg in the Netherlands.

The clinics have recorded whether a patient is a swinger since the start of 2007, in an attempt to track infection rates among this group.

During the study period, there were just under 9,000 consultations at the three clinics. One in nine of the patients was a swinger, with an average age of 43.

Overall, combined rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were just over 10 percent among straight people, 14 percent among gay men, just under 5 percent in female prostitutes, and 10.4 percent among swingers, they found. And female swingers had higher infection rates than male swingers.

One in 10 older swingers had chlamydia and around one in 20 had gonorrhea.

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted disease among women and in 70 percent of cases causes no symptoms. The bacterial infection can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility. Gonorrhea is another bacterial infection which can also lead to infertility if left untreated.

Niekamp said that while other high risk groups, such as young straight people, gay men and prostitutes, were relatively easy for healthcare service to identify and target for advice and help, swingers were generally a hidden community.

"That makes them very hard to reach," she said in a telephone interview. "Because they are so hidden and in some ways also stigmatized, it is hard for them to come forward for STI testing and treatment."