Damjan Nembri
Damjan Nembri

Brevis et facilis psalmorum

Publisher: Croatian Music Information Centre
Publish year: 2006

Edition type: score

Price: 19,24 

In stock

Medium:
printed edition
Catalogue type:
vocal-instrumental music
Instrument(s):
voices, continuo
ISMN:
M-706701-05-9
Number of pages:
126
Book height:
30 cm
Publication language:
croatian, english
About the music edition:
The Italian-Croatian composer Damjan Nembri (1584 – c. 1648) was a Benedictine monk. Born in Hvar (Dalmatia) was scriptor musices (writer of music), but there are not much information about his musical works, and his unique surviving copy of his book of psalms, published in Venice by Bartolomeo Magni in 1641, is preserved in a Polish librari (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka Wrocław). The collection Brevis et facilis psalmorum consists of six compositions: psalms Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum, Nisi Dominus, Lauda Jerusalem, and Magnificant. It was published, according to the custom of the time, in five separate volumes: Cantus, Altus, Tenor, Bassus and Bassus pro Organo. The note on the cover stating that these were 'short and easy psalms' must be regarded in the context of the practice of church music in Venice at the beginning of Seicento, i.e. as a signal to the performing musicians that the compositions are, at least on the most obvious level, written in the late-renaissance style. The texts of Nembri’s psalms however, do not belong to the narrow post-Tridentine and counter-reformational canon, which was also the case with the majority of psalms performed in Venice as well as other parts of the Croatian coast from Istria to Dubrovnik. Damjan Nembri was a master of polyphony, confident in handling complex harmonic situations, and his organ continuo is playful, demanding and inventive. The collection Brevis et facilis psalmorum is one of the most significant monuments of Croatian baroque music. (Ennio Stipčević)