medieval.org
naxos.com
Naxos Early Music·Alte Musik 8.550742
1993
medieval.org
naxos.com
Naxos Early Music·Alte Musik 8.550742
1993
01 - Illumina faciem tuam [4:26]
02 - Deus refugium et virtus [2:25]
03 - Exaudi Deus deprecationem meam [2:45]
04 - Tribulationem et dolorem [4:57]
05 - Tribularer si nescirem [3:52]
06 - Precibus et meritis beatae Mariae [2:17]
07 - O Crux benedicta [4:19]
08 - O vos omnes [3:57]
09 - Dignare me laudare te [2:01]
10 - Maria mater gratiae [3:58]
11 - Laboravi in gemitu meo [4:20]
12 - Ave dulcissima Maria [4:39]
13 - Domine ne despicias [2:12]
14 - Peccantem me quotidie [5:25]
15 - Sancti Spiritus Domine [2:06]
16 - Hei mihi Domine [3:44]
17 - Venit lumen tuum Jerusalem [2:49]
18 - Reminiscere miserationum tuarum [3:55]
19 - Ave Regina coelorum [4:06]
The Oxford Camerata
Jeremy Summerly
Deborah Mackay, Rebecca Outram
Carys-Anne Lane, Janet McMullin
Andrew Olleson, Robin Blaze
James Gilchrist, Philip Cave
Michael McCarthy, Jonathan Arnold
Julian Smallbones, Julian Walker
Recorded in the Chapel of Hertford College, Oxford
from 21st to 23rd September, 1992.
Producer: Chris Craker
Engineer: Dave Harries
Music Notes: Jeremy Summerly
Carlo Gesualdo
(c.1561 - 1613)
Sacrarum Cantionum
Liber Primus [5 voices] (1603)
Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza, was a murderer;
he was also one of the most intriguing composers of his generation.
These two statements are necessarily interrelated: the received image
of a tortured soul writing idiosyncratic music in the aftermath of his
wife's homicide is a powerful one. But to suggest that Gesualdo's
evident state of mental unbalance affected his fundamental musical
competence is both misleading and unfair.
Gesualdo murdered his wife and her lover in cold blood in 1590. The
Prince's public display of the corpses represents the behaviour of a
man who was convinced by the morality of his action. When Gesualdo
remarried four years later his declining mental state drove his second
wife to attempt divorce several times, albeit unsuccessfully. These are
the facts that have led some critics to arrive at an unflattering
assessment of Gesualdo's artistic achievements. lt is regularly
asserted that the music is technically unsound and that the composer's
renown depends more on a colourful biography than on a legacy of great
music. And while Gesualdo's fame will always rely on the documentation
of his wife's murder, it is a poor musician who is incapable of
recognizing the consistency and competence of Gesualdo's surviving
works.
The nineteen five-voice motets in the Sacrae Cantiones represent a
mixture of styles. Some are unashamedly madrigalian designed for
performance by solo voices whereas others are every bit as expansive as
any late-Renaissance examples of the genre. Each motet bears the
obvious stamp of Gesualdo's individual musical language; even those
motets that make minimal use of chromaticism exhibit unusual
part-writing which is at best faintly bizarre and at worst baffling.
Gesualdo's choice of texts within the Sacrae Cantiones is similarly
self-indulgent favouring motets whose themes embrace sin, death, and
guilt. The calculated use of disturbing chromatic sidesteps at phrases
such as 'miserere mei' (have mercy on me), lacrimis meis' (my tears),
and 'dolor meus' (my sorrow) is self-piteous in the extreme.
lt is difficult therefore to empathize with all of Gesualdo's work,
peppered as it is with self-conscious mannerisms that are the result of
psychological self-torture: it is easy to be blinded by the more
superficial elements of the music. But Gesualdo's basic style is as
competent as that of Palestrina or Monteverdi; without a sound
contrapuntal technique the more extreme gestures would not be as
effective as they undoubtedly are. Any early-Baroque composer would
surely have been proud to have written the motets 'Peccantem me',
'Laboravi' or '0 vos omnes', while the still life 'O crux benedicta' is
an unparalleled model of late-Renaissance fluency.
