Event

Sistine Secrets & Palindromes

Beginning in the Late Middle Ages, composers and teachers of music used ciphers and puzzles both as didactic tools of instruction and as a means of unfolding messages of deepening meaning for the listener. This practice flourished into a fullness of vivid complexity during the Renaissance era, when symmetry and proportion reigned supreme in the arts.

In this program, we interpret "hidden" and "secret" as having two layers of meaning. First, some of the most glorious music to ever emerge from the Renaissance was meant to be secret and hidden, as in the case of the spuriously attributed setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah ("Miserere Mei, Deus") by Gregorio Allegri, a secret motet performed liturgically in the Sistine Chapel only for the innermost papal circle of the Vatican. Second, we look inside some of the musical masterpieces themselves, and reveal the hidden, secret messages and puzzles embedded within the scores.