The fourteen Sonetti Spirituali (1580) of the Sicilian-born Pietro Vinci (c. 1525–84) manifest an extraordinary blend of the secular and the religious in a narrative largely concerned with the birth, death and transfiguration of Christ. Setting Petrarchan texts by the aristocratic Vittoria Colonna (c. 1490–1547), a close friend of Michelangelo, in five parts, Vinci marries the stylized gestures of the Mannerist madrigal and the spiritual sincerity of the Latin motet, creating an unusually expressive hybrid that manages to be both texturally complex and emotionally direct. Here the Boston-based viol consort Nota Bene is joined by some of the best early-music voices in New England.
