Nota Bene - Pietro Vinci: Quattordeci Sonetti Spirituali

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 stylised 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.