Cori Spezzati: acousmatic music in 8 channels

At the turn of the 17th century, composers in Venice were perfecting many years of experiments in spatial music. Their sonic laboratory was St Mark’s Basilica, and the most famous and accomplished of them was Giovanni Gabrieli.

Cori Spezzati is the second of three works inspired Gabrieli’s spatial music, the first being ‘Canzon in Double Echo’ (2020). The title (literally ‘broken choirs’), refers not only to the distribution of musical material across multiple spaces, but also to the increasing fragmentation currently evident within and between societies across the globe. It is possible for broken choirs to sing together?