A Venetian Coronation 1565
Gabrieli, Paul McCreesh
Temple Church, 19 May 2026

photo: Frances Marshall, from 2022 St John’s, Smith Square rehearsals

Under the auspices of Temple Music, Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli (formally Gabrieli Consort) brought their large-scale liturgical reconstruction of the 1595 Coronation Mass for the Venetian Doge Marino Grimani. This was first performed in St John’s, Smith Square, in 1990 and has since been recorded twice and performed numerous times around the world, most recently in London in 2022 in a return to St John’s, Smith Square. I have heard this on several occasions, including the 2022 performance and during the reopening of Christ Church Spitalfields in 2005. The big advantage of those performances was the layout of the churches, both having galleries running the full length of the church, allowing the multidimensional aspects of the event to be portrayed in a manner that could be considered close to the original performance. That was in St Mark’s, Venice, the Doge’s private chapel as well as the state church of Venice. The music for such ceremonial events would have been focused on the central seats for the Doge and his entourage rather than the wider audience spaced around the rest of the church. Organs, instruments and singers were positioned on galleries on either side of the Doge’s central space.

In Temple Church, as spectacular as the setting was, the lack of side galleries meant that, apart from the processional music and the occasional instrumental piece, the focus was entirely on the musicians gathered in a group at the far east end of the church. I was sitting in what I assume would have been the equivalent of being close to the main door of St Mark’s, well away from the Doge and the musicians, although well positioned for the processional music and the occasional blast of music from the west end.

We don’t know exactly what music was performed in St Mark’s for the event, but the music chosen for this re-creation has a feel of authenticity and atmosphere, even though quite a few of the pieces were composed after 1595. It was centred around a Mass setting by Andrea Gabrieli, including a sumptuous four-choir Gloria that may have been intended for the 1585 Mass of the Japanese Princes. The bulk of the instrumental music was from Andrea’s nephew, Giovanni Gabrieli, who also contributed Deus qui beatum Marcum for the Offertory and the powerful concluding motet Omnes Gentes – the first time that the full force of the combined forces was really unleashed.

The ceremony started with Giovanni Gabrieli’s finger-twisting Toccata del second tono, elegantly played by the principal organist, William Whiteead. Organ intonations by the two Gabrieli’s introduced several of the vocal pieces, and at the end, two organs combined for an arrangement of the Sonata La Leona by Cesario Gussago. After the chanted processional Introit, the Doge’s procession was heralded by a fanfare from trumpets and a military drum, rather than the 24 trumpeters that were probably used for the original occasion. They started from the courtyard before slowly walking through the west door and down the full length of the church.

The key singers in many of the pieces were the two countertenors, Mark Chambers and David Allsopp, both with beautifully pure and focused voices. In the polychoral pieces, each instrumental group had at least one singer, and the blend of those with the cornetts and sackbuts was excellent. One particularly impressive example was in the Offertory Deus qui beatum Marcum. Unforgivably, the Temple Music programme mentioned more than 200 names of supporters and patrons but failed to mention any of the actual performers! To counter that rather insulting approach to musicians, I list here the complete list of all the performers, courtesy of Gabrieli’s Development & Communications Coordinator. I was too far back to see who sang what, but the principal singers and instrumentalists are starred in the list.

I am sure this will not be the last time this spectacular reconstruction is presented – catch it if you can.