Julio Segni has been identified as someone who held the position of “first organist” under Willaert and
Buus as one who, somewhat later, served under him as “second organist.” The terms were not solely
indications of rank. Since the late fifteenth century, St. Mark’s Cathedral actually had two organ lofts,
each with its designated player. It was inevitable that antiphonal music-making would be cultivated there,
with the cathedral cappella split into two groups, one standing in a hexagonal enclosure called the
pergolo (when it wasn’t occupied by the Doge and his retinue), the other across the nave in the Gospel
pulpit.
It was also inevitable that such performances took place primarily at Vespers, because that is where
the singing of full psalms was prevalent. Psalms were antiphonal by biblical tradition, after all, and were
even characteristically structured (in “hemistichs”) according to that implied performance style. Willaert
was not the first maestro di cappella to set Vespers psalms for “split choirs” (cori spezzati); he had an
important predecessor, for one, in Francesco Santacroce, the choirmaster at the nearby city of Treviso.
But, typically, it was Willaert who “classicalized” the practice and gave it an orderly procedure. In his
settings, the two four-part choirs alternate verse by verse, then come together in eight parts for the
concluding doxology, turning a formulaic termination into an impressive musical climax. Published by
Gardane in 1550 and reprinted in 1557, Willaert’s Vespers Psalms were exemplary not only from the
sonorous and formal point of view but also from the standpoint of declamation, increasingly an “issue”
for sixteenth-century church musicians, as we shall see. Here, too, “il eccelentissimo Adriano”
established a standard of perfection.
FIG. 15-6 St. Mark’s Cathedral, interior view showing the pergolo (hexagonal enclosure) and the Gospel pulpit, where two
choirs sang antiphonal psalms.ALTERNATIVES TO PERFECTION
But let us conclude this chapter with some reminders that perfection, as a standard, is a matter of attitude
and values. The ideals implicit in the ars perfecta were not universally shared at any time or in any place,