The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, the 17th century, may have been full of splendour in the fields of trade, painting and literature, but in music the situation was far from rosy. The epicentre of musical innovation lay in Italy, whose composers were admired as supreme across Europe. While this will have hurt the pride of composers in Northern Europe and elsewhere, who disputed this supremacy publicly, in private most of them sought to benefit from their Mediterranean contemporaries, studying the latest Italian music or apprenticing themselves to Italian masters. In the Netherlands, the style of Monteverdi and other Italian composers had a profound influence on the music of Jan Baptist Verrijt, who was probably born around 1600 in Oirschot and died in Rotterdam in 1650. Together with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Verrijt is perhaps the most important Dutch composer of the 17th century, an assessment based on his only surviving opus: the Flammae divinae, op.5. It consists of six two-part and twelve three-part motets along with two three-part Mass settings.

The work is believed to have been intended for use both in Roman Catholic churches in the Southern Netherlands and in clandestine Roman Catholic churches in the predominantly protestant Republic. The high level of vocal technique demanded by Verrijt would seem at first to exclude the possibility of performance by non-professional singers. However, it’s known that Verrijt’s Opp. 4 & 5 could be found in the library of Groningen’s collegium musicum, a group consisting almost entirely of amateur musicians.

In the Flammae divinae Verrijt displays consummate mastery in combining the liveliness of the new, Italian stile concertato with the polyphonic techniques of the old Franco-Flemish school. The music sounds imaginative and dramatic, but is simultaneously balanced and controlled. Like Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Grandi, for example, Verrijt enlivens his complex multi-part church music with techniques borrowed from the madrigal and from opera. For this reason, Verrijt’s Opus 5 is not only of interest as an unusual expression of Roman Catholic culture in the northern Netherlands, but also as a musically intriguing opus on an international level.

Performed by one of the most prominent and pioneering early music vocal ensembles of the 20th century, the Consort of Musicke, featuring Emma Kirkby, and directed by Anthony Rooley.

Recorded May 2000, Rotterdam