When Monteverdi pub­lished his Vespro del­la bea­ta Vergine in 1610, he was clear­ly in search of a new chal­lenge. With its effer­ves­cent har­monies, vocal and instru­men­tal vir­tu­os­i­ty, in which the clar­i­ty of the texts always takes cen­tre stage, Monteverdi cre­at­ed what at the time was an unprece­dent­ed sound­scape with­in the reli­gious reper­toire. In the lat­ter Younger than Jesus, Albach dis­sects Monteverdi’s Vespers for the Blessed Virgin with just sev­en singers and nine instru­men­tal­ists. In con­trast to this, she has cho­sen Vespers for A New Dark Age by the American com­pos­er Missy Mazzoli.