Orazio Michi between public and private: Spiritual music, devotional practices and their contexts

Orazio Michi’s extensive vocal production includes around a hundred compositions (canzonettas, arias, madrigals, cantatas, properly recitativi per musica), mostly for voice and continuo; it is very significant that about a third of these are of a spiritual or moral genre. After delineating Michi’s portrait, not only as a court musician in the service of Cardinal Montalto, but as a member of a broader and structured system, the so-called corte di Roma, the article aims to reconstruct the contexts to which his spiritual music was destined. During the 1620s Michi took part in the music for the Marian devotions of the confraternity of Santissima Concezione in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso. As a harp player as well as a composer he also had to collaborate to the music which was performed at the Santa Maria in Vallicella (the so-called Chiesa Nuova) oratory, and at the churches of Holy House of Virgin Mary in Loreto of the confraternity of Marchigiani and Santa Maria della Scala of the Discalced Carmelites.