Musica para las Cuarenta Horas

The Forty Hours Devotion is a mystical celebration in which the Holy Sacrament is displayed on the altar for the time Christ spent in the grave. In Spain, this extraordinary prayer, which lasts three days, includes siestas in which vocal chamber music is sung and alternated with instrumental pieces. This album focuses on the music of Sebastián Durón and reproduces the sound of one of these siestas using sources from the cathedral and the characteristic sonority of the dulcians. It contains mainly tonos and villancicos, whose popular texts are a beautiful mix of simplicity and refinement. It was undoubtedly the art of the composer to express religious emotions with the same means as profane emotions: We are in a church and at the same time surrounded by nature, as in a poem by Francis of Assisi.