The Companion Guide to Rome is a composition for string trio by the American composer Andrew Norman. The complete work was first performed on May 30, 2010, by the Scharoun Ensemble at Radialsystem V in Berlin. [1] The composition was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music. [2] [3] [4]
The Companion Guide to Rome has a duration of roughly 30 minutes and is composed in nine movements:
The ninth movement, "Sabina," was originally composed as a standalone piece in 2006 for the Janaki String Trio. It can be performed separately or as part of the complete work. [1]
The title of the work comes from the eponymous 1965 guidebook to Rome by Georgina Masson. The movements thus commemorate nine of Norman's favorite Roman churches mentioned in the text. Norman wrote in the score program note:
Like many of the buildings in Rome, this piece is the product of a long gestation marked by numerous renovations, accretions, and ground-up reconstructions. What has emerged is a collection of portraits—nine in all—of my favorite Roman churches. The music is, at different times and in different ways, informed by the proportions of the churches, the qualities of their surfaces, the patterns in their floors, the artwork on their walls, and the lives and legends of the saints whose names they bear. The more I worked on these miniatures, the less they had to do with actual buildings and the more they became character studies of imaginary people, my companions for a year of living in the Eternal City. [1]
The inspiration for each movement is as follows: [5]
Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni was an Italian organist and composer. He became one of the leading musicians in Rome during the late Baroque era, the first half of the 18th century.
The Basilica of Saint Clement is a Latin Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Pope Clement I located in Rome, Italy. Archaeologically speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings: (1) the present basilica built just before the year 1100 during the height of the Middle Ages; (2) beneath the present basilica is a 4th-century basilica that had been converted out of the home of a Roman nobleman, part of which had in the 1st century briefly served as an early church, and the basement of which had in the 2nd century briefly served as a mithraeum; (3) the home of the Roman nobleman had been built on the foundations of republican era villa and warehouse that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of AD 64.
The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Altar in Heaven is a titular basilica and conventual church of the Franciscan Convent of Aracoeli located the highest summit of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. From 1250-1798 it was the headquarters of the General Curia of the Order of Friars Minor as well as being once of the cities principal civic churches. It is still the designated church of the city council of Rome, which uses the ancient title of Senatus Populusque Romanus. The present cardinal priest of the Titulus Sanctae Mariae de Aracoeli is Salvatore De Giorgi.
Cosmatesque, or Cosmati, is a style of geometric decorative inlay stonework typical of the architecture of Medieval Italy, and especially of Rome and its surroundings. It was used most extensively for the decoration of church floors, but was also used to decorate church walls, pulpits, and bishop's thrones. The name derives from the Cosmati, the leading family workshop of craftsmen in Rome who created such geometrical marble decorations.
As the home of the Pope and the Catholic curia, as well as the locus of many sites and relics of veneration related to apostles, saints and Christian martyrs, Rome had long been a destination for pilgrims. The Via Francigena was an ancient pilgrim route from England to Rome. It was customary to end the pilgrimage with a visit to the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul. Periodically, some were moved to travel to Rome for the spiritual benefits accrued during a Jubilee. These indulgences sometimes required a visit to a specific church or churches. Pilgrims need not visit each church.
There are more than 930 churches in Rome, which makes it the city with the largest number of churches in the world. Almost all of these are Catholic.
The Cosmati were a Roman family, seven members of which, for four generations, were skilful architects, sculptors and workers in decorative geometric mosaic, mostly for church floors. Their name is commemorated in the genre of Cosmatesque work, often just called "Cosmati", a technique of opus sectile formed of elaborate inlays of small triangles and rectangles of colored stones and glass mosaics set into stone matrices or encrusted upon stone surfaces. Bands, panels and shaped reserves of intricate mosaic alternate with contrasting bands, guilloches and simple geometric shapes of plain white marble. Pavements and revetments were executed in Cosmatesque technique, columns were inlaid with fillets and bands, and immovable church furnishings like cathedras and ambones were similarly treated. Initial inspiration for the technique was Byzantine, transmitted through Ravenna and Sicily, while some of the minutely-figured tiling patterns are Islamic in origin, transmitted through Sicily.
Santi Quattro Coronati is an ancient titular and conventual minor basilica and Augustinian convent in Rome, Italy. The church dates back to the fourth or fifth century, and is devoted to four anonymous saints and martyrs. The complex of the basilica with its two courtyards, the fortified Cardinal Palace with the Saint Silvester Chapel, and the monastery with its cosmatesque cloister is built in a silent and green part of Rome, between the Colosseum and San Giovanni in Laterano.
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th-century church in Rome, Italy, in the Trastevere rione. It is dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Cecilia and serves as the conventual church for the adjacent abbey of Benedictine nuns.
San Crisogono is a church in Rome dedicated to the martyr Saint Chrysogonus. It was one of the tituli, the first parish churches of Rome, and was probably built in the 4th century under Pope Sylvester I (314–335).
Santa Maria in Via Lata is a church on the Via del Corso, in Rome, Italy. It stands diagonal from the church of San Marcello al Corso. It is the stational church for Tuesday in the fifth week of lent.
Charitable institutions attached to churches in Rome were founded right through the medieval period and included hospitals, hostels, and others providing assistance to pilgrims to Rome from a certain "nation", which thus became these nations' national churches in Rome. These institutions were generally organized as confraternities and funded through charity and legacies from rich benefactors belonging to that "nation". Often, they were also connected to national scholæ, where the clergymen of that nation were trained. The churches and their riches were a sign of the importance of their nation and of the prelates that supported them. Up to 1870 and Italian unification, these national churches also included churches of the Italian states.
Benedetto Buglioni (1459/1460–1521) was an important Italian Renaissance sculptor specialised in glazed terracotta.
Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier, nicknamed Giovannino del Violone was a Baroque Italian composer, cellist and trombone player of Spanish descent.
The 1086 papal election ended with the election of Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino as Pope Gregory VII's successor after a year-long period of sede vacante.
Leonardo Grosso della Rovere was an Italian Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal.
Andrew Norman is an American composer of contemporary classical music whose texturally complex music is influenced by architecture and the visual arts.
Finalists: Pulitzer Prize for Music (2011–2020) | ||
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