medieval.org
Arion ARN 68388
1996
medieval.org
Arion ARN 68388
1996
01 - Gioite voi col canto [2:59]
02 - S'io non miro non moro [2:57]
03 - Itene, o miei sospiri [3:37]
04 - Dolcissima mia vita [2:38]
05 - O dolorosa gioia [3:10]
06 - Qual fora, donna, un dolce 'ohimè' [2:06]
07 - Felicissimo sonno [2:50]
08 - Se vi duol il mio duolo [3:17]
09 - Occhi del mio cor vita [2:35]
10 - Languisce al fin chi de la vita parte [3:40]
11 - Mercè grido piangendo [4:06]
12 - O voi, troppo felice [1:39]
13 - Correte, amanti, a prova [3:01]
14 - Asciugate i begli occhi [3:41]
15 - Tu m'ucchidi, o crudele [3:01]
16 - Deh, coprite il bel seno [2:10]
17 - Poichè l'avida sete [2:39]
18 - Ma tu, cagion [2:23]
19 - O tenebroso giorno [2:12]
20 - Se tu fuggi, io non resto [2:01]
21 - 'T'amo mia vita', la mia cara vita [2:32]
ENSEMBLE MÉTAMORPHOSES
Maurice Bourbon
SOLISTES
Daphné KUPFERSTEIN, soprano - madrigaux #1-4, 11-13, 20
Claire GOUTON, soprano - madrigaux #3-10, 13-18,
Pascale COSTANTINI, mezzo-soprano - madrigaux #1-2, 5-7, 9-11, 14-16,
19-21
Jacques MAES, contreténor - madrigaux #1-21
(tous)
Éric TREMOLIÈRES, ténor - madrigaux #1-3, 8, 13,
16-18, 21
Éric RAFFARD, ténor - madrigaux #4-12, 14-15, 17-19
Maurice BOURBON, baryton - madrigaux #1-4, 10-16, 20-21
Philippe ROCHE, basse - madrigaux #5-9, 17-19
Assistance a la prononciation italienne: Annie Moreau
Avec le fidèle soutien amical de Christiane Toudoire
De gauche a droite:
Maurice Bourbon, Pascale Costantini, Daphné Kupferstein, Jacques
Mars, Claire Gouton, Éric Raffard
CARLO GESUALDO
«... I met the Prince at the ferry... He has it in mind to
beseeth Your Highness most warmly that tomorrow evening you will permit
him to see Signora Donna Leonora. In this he shows himself extremely
Neapolitan. He thinks of arriving at twenty-three o'clock, but I doubt
this because he does not stir from his bed until extremely late.
... The Prince, although at first view he does not have the presence of
the personage he is, becomes little by little more agreeable and for my
part I am sufficiently satisfied of his appearance. I have not been
able to see his figure since he wears an overcoat as long as a
nightgown; but I think that tomorrow he will be more gaily dressed. He
talks a great deal and gives no sign, except in his portrait, of being
a melancholy man. He discourses on hunting and music and declares
himself an authority on both of them. Of hunting he did not enlarge
very much since he did not find much reaction from me, but about music
he spoke at such length that I have not heard so much in a whole year.
He makes open profession of it and shows his works in score to
everybody in order to induce them to marvel at his art. He has with him
two sets of music books in five parts, all his own works, but he says
that he only has four people who can sing for which reason he will be
forced to take the fifth part himself ...
He says that he has abandoned his first style and has set himself to
the imitation of Luzzasco, a man whom he greatly admires and praises,
although he says that not all of Luzzasco's madrigals are equally well
written, as he claims to wish to point out to Luzzasco himself. This
evening after supper he sent for a cembalo so that I could hear
Scipione Stella,... But in all Argenta we could not find a cembalo for
which reason, so as not to pass an evening without music, he played the
lute for an hour and a half. Here perhaps Your Highness would not be
displeased if I were to give my opinion, but I would prefer with your
leave, to suspend my judgement until more refined ears have given
theirs. It is obvious that his art is infinite, but it is full of
attitudes, and moves in an extraordinary way. However, everything is a
matter of taste. This Prince then has himself served in a very grand
way ...
So much and no more shall I say for the time being to Your Highness,
reserving to relate in person the most important discourses made to me
by His Excellency... (1)»
From Count Alfonso Fontanelli,
to Duke of Ferrara, 18 February 1594
«As to music, he sings his part by the book in as pleasing a
manner as a gentleman can. He has rather a good tenor voice. He also
sings the soprano part, but the voice is not so pure in this range,
even though graceful. He plays the basso di viola exquisitely, however,
and he touches the strings with much grace ...» (1)
From Count Alfonso Fontanelli
to Duke of Ferrara, 9 October 1594
CARLO GESUALDO: HIS LIFE
Were it not for his two marriages, which, for very different reasons
and, in both cases, only for a short period of time, brought him very
much into the public eye, we today would know very little about Carlo
Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa—apart, perhaps, from his music.
Indeed, Gesualdo's life may be divided into four periods, the two
shortest of which (the second and the third) were the richest and are
also the best-known.
C. 1560 to 1590: youth and first marriage
Carlo Gesualdo was born in about 1560, probably in Gesualdo, near
Naples. Although he showed signs of an aptitude for music, there was
nothing to hint, in those early years, that he was later to become such
a brilliant composer: by the age of thirty, in 1590, he had composed
practically nothing. Only two important events punctuated that period:
in 1585, his elder brother died, leaving him heir to the family title,
and in 1586 he married the lovely Donna Maria d'Avalos, who, at the age
of twenty-five, had already been widowed three times.
16 October 1590 - 18 February 1594: assassination of his first wife
and plans for a second wedding
Aware that his wife was unfaithful, Gesualdo artfully laid a trap, and,
on the night of 16 October 1590, he had both her and her lover brutally
murdered, then left their bodies on show on the palace steps for
several days. Even for a prince, it was probably not good form to kill
one's wife at that time, and Gesualdo seems to have kept a low profile
for the next three years. We know only that he had a chapel (dedicated
to Santa Maria delle Grazie) built on his estate, no doubt in atonement
for the incident. The altarpiece from this chapel includes a very
detailed portrait of Gesualdo, the only one that is known. He also
composed his first and second books of madrigals during that time.
Meanwhile, for reasons of interest, his uncle, Cardinal Alfonso
Gesualdo did his utmost to arrange a second marriage between his nephew
(who was at first clearly unkeen on the idea) and Leonora d'Este, the
daughter of the Duke of Ferrara. The marriage was finally contracted on
20 March 1593 and the wedding took place on 19 February 1594.
19 February 1594 - 1596: second marriage; a period of interesting
encounters
On 18 February 1594 Carlo Gesualdo thus approached Ferrara. He was met
and accompanied on the last stretch of the journey by Count Alfonso
Fontanelli, who had been appointed his equerry by the Duke of Ferrara
and who wrote his first 'report' on that day: Gesualdo is shown as a
man of rather uncouth appearance, clearly an authority on music, a man
of many parts, boastful, extravagant, indolent, no doubt temperamental,
and in any case extremely original.
The wedding to Leonora d'Este took place on the following day, 19
February 1594, and the next two years were the most brilliant and most
fruitful of Gesualdo's life. During that time, the 'poor' nobleman from
the South discovered the wealth, munificence and intense intellectual
and cultural activity of one of the great courts of Italy.
Gesualdo had already become friends with Torquato Tasso several years
previously. In Ferrara he met other poets, and, above all, other
musicians, including Luzzasco Luzzaschi for whom he had great
admiration and whose influence was to be clearly felt in his third and
fourth books of madrigals, composed in Ferrara and published in 1596.
In 1594, during visits to Venice and Naples, and in 1595-96, during a
second stay in Ferrara, Gesualdo was to meet a whole host of musicians,
including Giovanni Gabrieli, for certain, and probably also De Wert,
Monteverdi, Vecchi and Caccini.
1597 - 1613: his return to Gesualdo, neurasthenia and death
In 1597 Carlo Gesualdo entered a much greyer period, with a succession
of unhappy events, changes in his financial position, and fits of ill
humour and aggressive behaviour. On his return to Gesualdo, he
gradually withdrew into his neurasthenia. His health was rather
fragile, he was apparently asthmatic, and in his fits of madness he
would vent his anger on his wife, beating her, then seeking redemption
by inflicting corporal punishment on himself. To make matter worse, his
four-year-old son died in 1600. From then on, he seems to have lived
the sombre life of a recluse until his death in 1613, punctuated only
by the publication of his Sacrae Cantiones (1603), his fifth
and sixth books of madrigals and his set of Responsoria (1611).
GESUALDO'S SECULAR
WORKS
Gesualdo was truly a musician of his time and a perfect Italian
madrigalist, in that he observed the rules of the genre, central to
which was the art of text-painting: high notes for a cry, low notes for
silence, irregular melodies and harmonies to express torment and
suffering, sombre colours for death, bright, light colours for joy and
for fire, etc. Only love is ambiguous, providing Gesualdo with an
excuse to indulge in his favourite pastime: the expression of
'exquisite heartbreak'.
Gesualdo would thus be very similar to his contemporaries if he did not
leave his own personal stamp on every phrase and every detail. He
discovered mannerism and chromaticism through Nenna and Luzzaschi, in
particular, but not only did he adopt that movement, but he also
transcended it, leaving behind the mark of his genius. He was extremely
keen on harmony, which is why his works have such appeal. At very first
sight, however—in this field as in others—he seems to be
quite tame: like any other composer of his time, he uses either no
chromatic alteration at all in his key-signatures or just one flat. But
this apparent simplicity opens up the door to real freedom, and we then
find a deluge of accidentals (he uses practically all the sharps and
all the flats), which enables him to build up a harmony, a veritable
musical poetry, the like of which is not to be found elsewhere in the
whole of the history of music.
THE FIFTH BOOK OF
MADRIGALS
Gesualdo's first two books of madrigals, published before his arrival
in Ferrara, are quite conventional. Innovation and originality appear
with the third and—especially—the fourth books, written in
Ferrara between 1594 and 1596. For this interpretation, however, our
choice fell quite naturally on the fifth book—a real masterpiece,
possibly written in 1596 (as the introduction to the edition of 1611
seems to attest), i.e., just after Book Four. This interval of fifteen
years between the composition of the madrigals and their publication,
and the short space of time that it would suppose between the
composition of the fourth and fifth books, is very surprising, for
there is a great difference in style and skill between the two works.
The origin of the texts is unknown, with the exception of 'T'amo mia
vita', which is by Guarini. Other unattributed poems were set to music
by other composers of the time, including Monteverdi (Occhi del mio cor
vita). Others still may have been written by Gesualdo himself.
The pieces in the set are well-balanced, with a perfectly coherent key
sequence and a practically unflagging intensity in the scoring. Among
the culminations of Gesualdo's passion and originality, we may mention
the 'death' at the end of the madrigal no. 4 ('Dolcissimo...'); the
'painful joy, sweet pain' at the beginning of the no. 5 ('O0
dolorosa...'); the whole of the magnificent madrigal no. 8 ('Se vi
duol...'), in which sorrow, joy and, finally, fire lead to peace;
another amazing death at the end of no. 11 ('Mercè...'); the
tears and unhappiness of the second part of no. 14 ('Asciugate...');
the sumptuous harmonic progression in no. 17 ('Poi che...'); the
shadows at the beginning of no. 19 ('O tenebroso...'); the brisk flight
at the end of no 20 ('Se tu fuggi...').
OUR READING
Each madrigal is sung by five soloists a cappella. In our opinion, this
was the only formula that was capable of doing justice to the
complexity of the music and, above all, to its harmony. Indeed, the
endless changes of key mean that the performer has to be constantly in
touch with the 'verticality' (harmony) of the pieces; and in this the
soloist has an advantage over a group of singers, in having greater
flexibility and being able to make very swift adjustments.
Within each madrigal, each tessitura is quite well-defined and can
easily be held by one singer. However, as the tessitura varies greatly
from one madrigal to another, a team of eight singers was required for
the performance of the whole set. In order to preserve the obvious
tonal balance of the book, none of the madrigals have been transposed.
We have chosen the frequency of A=440 hertz.
Maurice BOURBON
Translation. Mary PARDOE
.......
(1) In Gesualdo, The Man and His Music, by Glenn Watkins
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991)