Music of Empire and Faith: The Gulbenkian Choir

The Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Choir performed sacred music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in conjunction with the 2007 Sackler exhibition Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries. The program included works by Portuguese composers Pero de Bamboa (1563?–1638) and Francisco António de Almeida (died ca. 1755), as well as Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), who spent nine years as royal chapel master to King João V of Portugal. These compositions—with lyrics taken from the Psalms, the New Testament, and medieval monastic poetry—reflect the same religious inspirations that informed Christian artwork created under Portuguese influence in India, China, and Japan.

Two works on this podcast are by Portuguese priest and composer Pero de Gamboa, who lived at a time when Jesuit missionaries from Portugal were active in the Mughal empire of South Asia. In 1578, Emperor Akbar invited Jesuits to his court to engage in debates with representatives of other religions. Though the emperor was never converted, some of the artwork created during his reign reflects the Mughal interest in Roman Catholic imagery and European styles of representation.

The border surrounding the calligraphy on this Islamic folio depicts God the Father (upper left), Christ and the Ship of Salvation (lower right), Madonna with Christ and St. John (lower left), and St. Anthony (right center).

Folio from the Gulshan (Rose Garden) Album; verso borders: Mughal dynasty, ca. 1600; verso calligraphy by Mir Ali al-Katib (Bukhara, ca. 1540); opaque watercolor, gold and ink on paper; purchase, F1956.12.

These figures from the border of an Islamic folio from India, ca. 1600 (see previous image), depict St.Anthony (left), Christ and the Ship of Salvation (center), God the Father (upper right), and Madonna with Christ and St. John (lower right).

Details from the Gulshan (Rose Garden) Album; verso borders: Mughal dynasty, ca. 1600; verso calligraphy by Mir Ali al-Katib (Bukhara, ca. 1540); opaque watercolor, gold and ink on paper; purchase, F1956.12.

Conductor Michel Corboz leads the Gulbenkian Choir at the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium, in conjunction with the 2007 Sackler exhibition Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Corboz launched his international career with award-winning recordings of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine and L'Orfeo in 1965 and 1966. Since, he has recorded Bach's Passions and B-minor Mass, Mozart's C-minor Mass and Requiem, Mendelssohn's Elias and Paulus, Puccini's Messa di Gloria, and the Requiem of Brahms, Verdi, Fauré, and Duruflé. He has been honored by the French Republic with the title of Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and with the Order of the Infante Don Henrique by the Portuguese president.

During the lifetime of Portuguese priest and composer Pero de Gamboa, whose works are heard on this podcast, many of his fellow priests traveled to Japan as missionaries. In this detail from a seventeenth-century Japanese folding screen, three European missionaries in Nagasaki are shown reverencing a sacred image. From the mid-sixteenth century until 1639, missionaries from Portugal, Spain, and Italy accompanied Portuguese traders shipping goods from China to Japan. These missionaries were highly educated bearers of broad information about Western learning.

Detail, Southern Barbarians in Japan; Edo period; 17th century; pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on paper; purchase, F1965.22–23.

The Gulbenkian Choir and conductor Michel Corboz acknowledge applause during their performance at the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium, held in conjunction with the 2007 exhibition Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries. The instruments shown are the theorbo, violone, and organ (left to right). One of Europe's finest vocal ensembles, the Gulbenkian Choir has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, and the Royal Concertbebouw Orchestra, among many others. Their international tours have taken them to both India and Japan, more than 400 years after the first Portuguese missionaries traveled to those same destinations.