Flores de Musica pera o instrumento de tecla & harpa is the only known work of Portugese composer Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. Printed in Lisbon in 1620 and boasting more than five hundred pages, Coelho’s Flores de Musica is one of the largest music works printed in the seventeenth century. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of its original publication, a new edition in three volumes has been published with the research being used to inform this major new recording series.
Organist Sérgio Silva performs on the 1762 Pascoal Caetano Oldovino organ of Elvas Cathedral, where Manuel Rodrigues Coelho started his musical studies and worked as an organist. Silva is joined by soprano Mariana Moldão and mezzo-soprano Maria de Fátima Nunes for the sung versos, which are accompanied on the smaller cabinet organ located near the chancel of the cathedral and built around the same time and by the same organ builder as the main instrument. © Inventa/Resonus