Portoguese Splendour: Coelho's "Flores de Musica"
The Portuguese organist Manuel Rodrigues Coelho is considered among the most important church musicians active in the Iberian Peninsula in the early 17th century. He was born in Elvas around 1555, where he worked as an organist at the cathedral, before moving to work in Badajoz, a small Spanish town very close to the border with Portugal. Coelho’s most prestigious appointment was as principal organist at the Royal Chapel in Lisbon, where he stayed for the rest of his life. He died in Lisbon in 1635. During his time as Royal Chapel organist, he published in 1620 his only known work, called Flores de Musica . In this monumental collection of keyboard music, he did not limit himself to composing just one tento, but three for each church mode. In addition to these 24 large compositions, Coelho added a long series of verses and other compositions on liturgical and secular tunes. I decided to record Flores de Musica as a whole at the 18th century Italian organ in Karlskoga, Sweden, which pe
