, The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Nuper rosarum flores
Guillaume Du Fay
Recording
Pomerium, Alexander Blachly
- Album
- Dufay: The Virgin and the Temple - Chants and Motets
- Year
- 1997
- Length
- Period
- Renaissance polyphony
- Listen
Painting
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
St. Giovanni in Laterano, Interior, from "Vedute di Roma" (Views of Rome), ca. 1768
The piece
Du Fay wrote this four-voice motet for the consecration of Florence Cathedral by Pope Eugene IV on 25 March 1436. The two lower voices sing the Introit of the Mass for the dedication of a church, Terribilis est locus iste (Genesis 28:17), in long notes a fifth apart, beneath a Latin poem on the Pope's gift of a golden rose to the city.
The recording
Pomerium, the early-music choir Alexander Blachly founded in 1972, recorded it for Archiv Produktion on an album released in 1997 that sets Du Fay's motets beside the plainchant Vespers of the Recollectio festorum beate Marie virginis.
Other recordings
The Orlando Consort (Hyperion, 2022) and the Huelgas Ensemble under Paul Van Nevel (Harmonia Mundi) have also recorded it.