Bolzano Festival Bozen 2026 - João Vaz

João Vaz — Four Centuries of Portuguese Organ Music



The Parish Church of Gries hosts an organ concert spanning four centuries of Portuguese musical history, from the Royal Chapel of the sixteenth century to the dawn of the nineteenth.



João Vaz, organist at São Vicente de Fora on the Alfama hill in Lisbon, guides the audience through the key moments of a musical tradition born and nurtured in the Capela Real of the Portuguese kings. The journey begins in the sixteenth century, an age of great explorations and riches, when composers such as António Carreira and later Manuel Rodrigues Coelho began experimenting with new forms freed from vocal polyphony — among them the "tiento", which, not unlike the toccata, virtuosically explores the possibilities of the keyboard. From this tradition grew a musical language that gradually mingled with the idiom of Italian musical theatre, tracing a path through Carlos Seixas to Marcos Portugal in the final decades of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. A musical journey performed on the historic organ of the Parish Church of Gries, one of the most evocative Baroque settings in the region.



Free admission.



Programme:



António Carreira (ca. 1530–ca. 1594)

Fantasia em Lá-Ré

Canção



Manuel Rodrigues Coelho (ca. 1555–1635)

Tento de 4º tom



Frei Diogo da Conceição (17th century)

Meio registo de 2º tom



Manuel Rodrigues Coelho

Ave maris stella sobre o cantochão de tiple em mínimas

Outra Ave maris stella sobre o cantochão do contralto de semibreves

Outra Ave maris stella sobre o cantochão do tenor de semibreves

Outra Ave maris stella sobre o cantochão de contrabaixo de semibreves



Frei Diogo da Conceição

Batalha de 5º tom



Frei Domingos de São José (17th century)

Obra de 5º tom



Carlos Seixas (1704–1742)

Organ Sonata in G major — Moderato

Sonata in C minor — Moderato in tempo di siciliano — Minuet

Organ Sonata in A minor — Largo



Frei Francisco de São Boaventura (fl. 1773–1802)

Toccata I — Andante con moto



Marcos Portugal (1762–1830)

Organ Sonata in D major — Allegro marcial