Monteverdi was maestro di cappella of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice for more than thirty years, and during that time he wrote a good deal of church music, much of which was published in two collections, the Selva morale (1641) and the posthumous Messa e psalmi (1651). From these we have assembled a sumptuous sequence of vespers music as it might have been heard in St Mark’s at Christmas around 1640.

Psalms by Monteverdi and his great eight-part setting of the Magnificat are contrasted with Christmas motets and sonatas by his colleagues and contemporaries, including Tarquinio Merula, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Francesco Cavalli and his German follower Heinrich Schütz.

This passionate and operatic music will come as a revelation to those who only know Monteverdi’s early Vespers of 1610.