The program presents music for Easter time, and especially for the Resurrection, without a liturgical context.
It is meant to give insight into the various compositional possibilities explored in a remarkably inventive way in music
from the Trent Codices, written around 1450-1465, and preserved in the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trent.
A first group of 6 pieces is based on the chant melody "Pange Lingua", a hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) for the Feast of Corpus Christi . It is also sung on Maundy Thursday, during the procession from the church to the place where the Blessed Sacrament is kept until Good Friday. Most of these composition are anonymous, but two are by Johannes Touront and Guillaume Dufay.
Secondly, there is an anonymous Mass built on the cantus firmus "Surrexit Christus", in the German speaking Sudtirol to which Trent belonged at the time, known under the title “Christ ist erstanden”. This melody was popular in German speaking countries until the times of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Mass is interlaced with various motets built on the same melody, again by various anonymous composers probably of southern German and Austrian provenance.
The program is completed by two Introitus compositions by Heinrich Isaac, whose birthday fell somewhere in the period that the Trent repertoire was composed. A 4-voice version from his famous collection of Propria, "Choralis Constantinus" combines the “Resurrexi” chant with that of the "Surrexit Christus" on which the mass is built. The monumental 6-voice version that closes the program, is from a manuscript now in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
