The Brabant Ensemble, conducted by Stephen Rice
Hyperion CDA68265
79’14
The French composer Antoine de Fevin was born around 1470 probably at Arras, where his father was an Alderman (although one source describes Antoine as being of Orleans), and he seems to have died by 1512, possibly late in 1511. He is therefore of that generation of Franco-Flemish polyphonists which thrived between Josquin and Palestrina. Besides the two masses which give the disc its snappy title, the programme also includes two motets: the six-part Ascendens Christus in altum and two versions of the composer’s most popular motet Sancta trinitas, Fevin’s original in four parts and an expansion into six by his younger contemporary Arnold von Bruck.
Missa Ave Maria is based on the well-known motet by Josquin. Originally published in 1515, it appeared in an accessible modern edition put out by Annie Bank of Amsterdam in 1950 (from which your reviewer sang as a callow bass in the early 1960s). While it shares music (as at the end of the Credo) and stylistic traits (passages of paired voices) with the older composer (Fevin was noted during the sixteenth century as a follower of Josquin) there are other passages such as “qui tollis peccata mundi” in the third and final Agnus which seem to point towards the fuller polyphony and structural use of sequences in all parts developed in the music of later composers such as Gombert and particularly Clemens.
Attractive individual lines and strikingly successful sonorities, including an adroit use of homophony amongst the prevailing counterpoint, are to the fore in his motet Ascendens Christus where he exploits the possibilities of his chosen six-part scoring. This is a text that cries out to be illustrated musically, and Fevin himself rises to the occasion in depicting Christ as he was lifted up, favouring us with some of the Renaissance’s most exquisite writing for upper voices in three parts, complemented by a beautiful response from the lower voices. There had been doubt about the attribution to Antoine de Fevin of this motet but a source recently discovered has confirmed it. Although some passages sound modern for circa 1500, hence the justified uncertainty about the attribution to Fevin, there are also some mediaeval turns of phrase which peg the work to the period of Fevin’s lifetime. It is also important to mention the delightful settings of alleluia which occur in both sections of this radiantly beautiful bipartite work.
Fevin’s Sancta trinitas survives in no fewer than 41 sources, according to Grove including the abovementioned version expanded into six parts by Bruck. If Ascendens Christus sounds unlike the work of a follower of Josquin, this motet, with its prominent passages of paired voices, is most Josquinian, and is no harbinger of the innovations wrought by Gombert and his ilk a few decades later. The rather sparse initial passages give way to exultant and, within the limitations of writing for four parts, luxuriant polyphony at the final “speculum”. Bruck’s additional parts seem to gild this particular lily, though it is interesting to have the two settings juxtaposed.
A greater sense of continuity prevails in the Missa Salve sancta parens than in the Missa Ave Maria and this is perhaps it is because it is based on a plainchant rather than being tied to an entire motet, especially one by a composer from the previous generation, where structurally and stylistically there was more building upon individual episodes than, as with later composers, creating a more continuous narrative. The overall impression is still Josquinian but of a work that could only have been composed by a composer on the musical road progressing beyond Josquin. This is best illustrated in, again, the Agnus, where the austerely energetic duet which makes up Agnus II is followed by a positively luxuriant concluding Agnus III, where Fevin expressively exploits repetition and sequence in all four parts to impressive effect.
If the two masses have occasional longueurs among their many felicities, and Sancta trinitas – fine work that it is – comes across as one of those pieces which had more resonance for contemporaries than perhaps it has for posterity, nevertheless Ascendens Christus is simply stunning, and rewards repeated hearings. If it is indeed by Fevin, as seems proven, he has been insulted by having its attribution to him queried; that said, it is a work that is so striking even amongst his three other distinguished pieces on this disc, that the raising of quizzical eyebrows has perhaps been forgivable. In a venue with a slightly drier acoustic than on some of their recent recordings, the Brabant Ensemble make an excellent case for Fevin.
Gallicantus, Gabriel Crouch
53:10
Signum SIG CD 520
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD presents the remarkable music of Lassus’ Prophetae Sibyllarum interspersed with contemporary music written in response to it with a couple of chants by Hildegard von Bingen, slightly shoe-horned into the mix, by virtue of her epithet “the Sibyll of the Rhine”. The male-voice ensemble produces a warm and beautifully polished sound, and more importantly for highly chromatic music such as Lassus writes here, they have wonderful focus and pinpoint accurate intonation. Those not familiar with this rather visionary side of Lassus will be intrigued with the daringly exploratory writing style, similar to his Lagrime di San Pietro cycle and bordering on the uniquely strange world of Gesualdo. Wisely, though, the ensemble doesn’t just rely on the strangeness of this score, but work to find the music behind the notes, producing a genuinely moving performance of some of Lassus’ most heartfelt utterances. Is a well-known fact that Lassus suffered from sometimes crippling depression, suggesting bipolarity, and this strange, otherworldly music seems to touch on some of his lowest, darkest moods as well as episodes of sublime transcendence. Resulting from a project at Princeton University which also gave rise to the contemporary compositions, this CD is evidence of an intimate understanding of this challenging music and is as fine an account of the score as has been committed to CD to date. Particular plaudits are due to the group’s wonderfully clean-voiced countertenors, David Allsopp and Mark Chambers, and to baritone, Gabriel Crouch, who charts their intelligent and expressive route through the music while also holding one of the vocal lines.
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Choeur de Chambre de Namur, Cappella Mediterranea, Doulce Mémoire
185:12 (3 CDs in a box)
Ricercar RIC 392
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a collection in three parts, with the motets sung by the Chamber Choir, the madrigals sung and played by the Cappella and the chansons by Doulce Mémoire. While I was aware of and have directed several of Arcadelt’s madrigals and chansons, I don’t think I have come across any of his motets, so it was with particular interest that I listened to them. Very smoothly crafted and with elegant part movement, they are very much the sort of sacred music one would expect from the composer of his secular music. Arcadelt was a Namur man, and the Chamber Choir de Namur appear to be at the root of this project, but it has to be said they struggle a little with the more complex passages in Arcadelt’s polyphony, particularly as they have recorded them in a rather resonant acoustic and use an organ accompaniment throughout. The music is nonetheless interesting, and the motets CD ends intriguingly with a couple of homages from Pierre-Louis Dietsch and Franz Liszt whose versions of Ave Maria based on Arcadelt’s music started the revival of interest in the composer’s own music. The Cappella Mediterranea’s beautiful account of the madrigals opens with Arcadelt’s lovely setting of Il bianco e dolce Cigno and they proceed to give us lovely accounts of a cross-section of his madrigals from several of his collections. The voices are supported severally by lute, guitar, harpsichord and organ. With the chansons CD, we come to the wonderfully professional Doulce Mémoire, whose energetic and characterful accounts of the chansons on a mixture of voices and instruments are perhaps the most successful part of this comprehensive collection. This three-CD collection performs a valuable service in drawing attention to the versatility of Jacques Arcadelt, and it was only when I came to listen to the chansons after the motets that I realised that the distinctive combination of highly animated lines combined with more sustained textures also occurs in his motets.
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Bruno Forst
135:16 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 95618
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]onzalo de Baena’s keyboard method involves intabulating polyphonic music from instrumental and vocal sources into a series of letters to allow them to be played easily on the keyboard, and as the first such book to be published on the Iberian peninsula it is doubly important as a window on how keyboard players thought and worked and also as an invaluable source of material. Unfortunately, due (of all things) to misfiling in the Palacio Real library in Madrid, it remained unknown to modern musicology until 1992. Playing the 1685 organ by Joseph de Sesma in the Church of Santa Ana, Brea de Aragón and the modern Gerhard Grenzing organ, based on 17th-century Spanish models, in the Church of San José, Navalcarnero and reading from Baena’s tablature, Bruno Forst presents a cross-section of the material in the book. This includes music by composers such as Morales who were still alive when Baena compiled his collection, as well as music by Baena himself and by his son Antonio, but includes mainly the great Flemish composers from previous generations such as Ockeghem, Compère, Josquin, Obrecht, de Fevin, Brumel, Caron and Agricola. Unlike the Scottish book of composition, “The Art of Music”, from the second half of the 16th century, Baena includes entire pieces rather than relatively brief examples, suggesting perhaps that his Method served the additional purposes of preserving the earlier repertoire and making it available to organists of the mid-century. Forst is an authoritative guide through this repertoire, making intelligent decisions on timbre and providing subtle and appropriate ornamentation.
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The Choir of Westminster Abbey, James O’Donnell
62:40
hyperion CDA68192
+Alleluia Ora pro nobis, Hac clara die turma, Ninefold Kyrie
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his selection of Marian music by Nicholas Ludford usefully presents his polyphony in a semi-liturgical context. For example, his Ninefold Kyrie, a so-called ‘square’, appears in alternatim with an anonymous two-part organ piece on the same ‘square’ played by James O’Donnell. Extra ‘verses’ appear in modern organ elaborations by Magnus Williamson. Similarly Ludford’s polyphonic setting of Alleluia. Ora pro nobis appears in alternatim with chant verses, as does his setting of Hac clara die turma. His mouth-watering setting of Ave Maria, ancilla Trinitas represents his more typically flamboyant polyphonic side, opening with two- and three part polyphony before the full choral forces are unleashed on the verse Ave Maria suor angelorum – clearly Ludford’s singers represent the voices of the angels. The Westminster Abbey Choir sing this music with considerable authority and commitment, and there is a fine balance between the adult and children’s voices. I can still remember the stir when the Cardinall’s Musick released their ground-breaking series of recordings of Ludford’s Masses on ASV in the early 1990s, bringing his music to a wider audience for the first time in modern times and instantly restoring the composer’s name to the list of first rank Renaissance English composers. Something of that wonder still lingers on hearing his imaginative and utterly assured setting of Ave Maria and being reminded of the virtues of his Mass Videte miraculum. The present performances capture well his lithe vocal lines with their smooth transitions between reduced forces episodes and declamatory full choir sections and glorious concluding perorations. Gold stars to the choir’s excellent trebles who cope admirably with the work’s two complex treble lines. In glancing back at the ASV recordings, I recall the golden days when masses were presented in a rudimentary liturgical framework – it seems regrettably as if these days are past, but this CD with its nod in that direction is probably the next best thing.
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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the penultimate disc in Pieter-Jan Belder’s admirable project recording the entire contents of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB), the most voluminous source of early English keyboard music from the Tudor and Jacobean period. The manuscript’s uncertain origins and provenance have been discussed many times, most authoritatively of late by David Smith in his article “Francis Tregian the Younger as music copyist: a legend?” in Musical Times 143 (Summer 2002): 7-16. About half of this double album is given over to music by John Bull and, besides the other composers named in the disc’s subtitle, there are works by John Blitheman, Thomas Oldfield, Robert Parsons, Martin Peerson, Jehan Oystermayre, John Marchant and “Galeazzo”, possibly Galeazzo Sabatini, plus a number of anonymous works.
The attributed works on the shorter first disc are all by Bull. The previous discs in this series have tended either to be collections of works by various composers, or to be focused on one or two individuals. Both such approaches can be relished, and with this disc, we have the best of both worlds: an initial focus on Bull – which continues onto the earlier part of the second disc – followed by a miscellany of composers known and unknown to complete the contents. Belder plays modern harpsichords by Titus Crijnen and Adlam Burnett both after Ruckers (2014/1624 and 1980/1638 respectively) and a muselar of 2016 by Gerhard Boogaard after an original of 1650 by Couchet.
And so to the music itself and Belder’s interpretations. There are many anonymous works in FVB. Some such pieces are impressive, and others are not. It would be good to know the identities of all those who composed these anonymous works, but particularly those who composed the impressive ones. This is broadly illustrated on the first disc of this double album. It runs for only 48 minutes, and with one possible exception the central dozen pieces are all by Bull. They are bookended by three anonymous works at the beginning of the disc, with ten more to conclude it, and they fall into the two categories noted above: the first three works – Galiarda, Alman and Praeludium – are impressive pieces (which is of course why they were selected to begin the album) – sufficiently to make this listener want to know who composed them, particularly the fine, technically demanding and audibly Bullish Galiarda. The concluding ten obviously have to be included on what is a complete recording, but are like the fillers on old-style rock or pop LPs, which used to consist of one or two strong items plus several other less interesting tracks for padding. A few of them are at least inoffensive, and the final track, Martin sayd to his man, inexplicably picked up an attribution to Byrd during his tercentenary in 1923, in a pamphlet compiled by Gerald Cooper, who should have known better. The works by Bull vary between dances and pieces of a more ecclesiastical bent. The former all come across as very sprightly, especially the Regina Galliard, while both the Trumpet and Spanish Pavans have some pleasantly plangent moments, besides the characteristic touches – respectively military and elegant – implied by their titles. The ecclesiastical pieces sound well on the harpsichord. In Belder’s performances there is clarity and a comprehensible narrative, whereas many performances on the organ sound relentless and constipated, more of a harangue than a narrative (not difficult with Bull, to be fair) but Bull’s figurations around the cantus firmi are better suited to the harpsichord, and although an organ can sustain the cantus firmus, in practice the sustained notes can have the effect of clotting the texture. This is also true of two venerable pieces on the second disc which Belder releases from the oppression of the organ.
But first, there are eight more pieces by Bull to consider, which begin this second disc. Herein is some more variety, with jigs, fantasias on plainsong and the hexachord, and galliards. It is the hexachord fantasia Ut re mi fa sol la which most challenges Belder’s capabilities. The figuration is relentless but Belder creates his narrative by responding sensitively to Bull’s implied changes of tempo, and by knowing either when to go at the figuration like a [pun alert] bull at a gate, or when to back off, like a good improviser in a blues guitar solo, with the result that he sustains interest over the near eleven minutes of what can, in the wrong hands, be a dry or exhibitionist exercise. Speaking of which, not even Belder make much of what the listing for the sleeve and booklet call the “Misere in three parts”; significantly Belder either forgot to write about this Miserere, or his thoughts were fortuitously omitted. In any event, it is difficult to make much of a positive case for it.
The final group of pieces to be considered are those that close the second disc and which are not by Bull. A few are by composers with established reputations, such as Gibbons, Robert Johnson and Peerson who flourished in the Jacobean period, and Parsons and Blitheman whose music was originally Marian and only subsequently Elizabethan. Another clutch of composers are unknown or obscure apart from their appearances in FVB: Oystermayre, Oldfield and Sabatini; Warrack and Marchant. Allowed to give a particularly good account of themselves are Tisdall and Inglott, two known but hardly familiar names. They certainly provide the two most striking pieces from this closing group. Tisdall’s Pavana Chromatica Mrs Katherin Tregians Pavan is dignified and full of fine and unexpected harmonies; it is well structured and altogether impressive. William Inglott was the organist of Norwich then Hereford then again Norwich Cathedrals, having been a chorister at Norwich under his father Edmund. A career as a practising musician does not guarantee quality as a composer, but Inglott’s Galliard Ground is another of the outstanding pieces on this album. I participated with Michael Walsh in reconstructing his Short Service for publication (by The Early Music Company, which publishes EMR) and performance (two morning canticles can be heard on Norwich Cathedral Choir’s outstanding CD Elizabethan Church Music Priory PRCD5044), and it is a fine example of its type. Of the “name” composers, Gibbons is represented by The woods so wild which is perhaps not out of his top drawer. Belder responds to the hectic, almost aggressive, figuration especially in the quite Bullish section numbered 5 (his version is all but a minute shorter than John Toll’s on the eponymous CD, Linn CKD 125, significant in a work lasting only 4-5 minutes) amongst some more reflective moments. It depicts a different landscape from the set of variations by Byrd, albeit the older composer’s deceptively bucolic opening leads to sterner stuff. While Johnson’s two almans are delightful, Peerson’s merely comes and goes, but his The Primerose is one of the classics of the virginalist genre. Of the unknowns. Marchant’s Allemanda is the most striking, appropriately for a man who taught James I’s eldest daughter “to play upon the virginalles”, though the single anonymous piece from this section, an Alman, deserves an honourable mention. Much more than an honourable mention is required by the two most venerable pieces on this album: Parsons’ In nomine, the most popular consort work of its day, arranged for keyboard by Byrd, his successor in the Chapel Royal, and who, like Tallis, seems to have quoted Parsons’ piece in an In nomine; and Blitheman’s “In nomine”, originally the third of a sequence of six settings titled Gloria tibi trinitas (the alternative designation for the In nomine) by Blitheman in the Mulliner Book. For reasons given above, these two pieces come over very well on the harpsichord thanks to Belder, with clarity and momentum, but it also helps that, in their own spheres, they are two of the finest examples of the In nomine in the entire Tudor instrumental repertory. Meanwhile one wonders whether Byrd “heard” his arrangement as being for the virginals, or for the organ, or for either, and if the last, whether he harboured a preference.
This is another fine contribution to a well-executed project. Purchasers of the preceding albums will be amply rewarded with this release, and unless one has reservations about consuming generous helpings of Bull, it is worth the attention of anyone with an interest in the English virginalists, as it contains uniformly fine performances of many interesting and intriguing pieces, beside a few masterpieces.
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De Profundis, Robert Hollingworth
70:49
hyperion 68257
+Assumpsit Jesus Petrum, Assumpta est Maria, De profundis, Magnificat primi toni, Surge propera amica mea, Veni dilecte mi & Versa est in luctum
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or those of us more used to hearing Renaissance and early baroque Spanish polyphony sung by mixed choirs and at relatively high pitch, this recording comes as both a surprise and something of a revelation. De Profundis is a relatively large group for this music: six or seven singers per voice part in an all-male line-up with falsetto voices on the top line. Its name reflects its ethos in performing at low pitch and, on this recording, is directed by Robert Hollingsworth who uses the opportunity to aim for a more balanced and inter-dependent sound than that of other groups. The result is a very homogenous texture with excellent tuning and close attention to the text. A bassoon adds depth to the bottom line, both in the polyphony and in the tutti sections of the plainchant, as was customary in Spanish cathedrals. The Mass movements are broken up with idiomatically-sung plainchant and offertory and communion motets. Then come five further motets and an alternatim Magnificat. It is a well-chosen programme which shows the breadth of Vivanco’s achievement, from the expressive depths of the motets De Profundis and Versa est in luctum to the riotous counterpoint of the Mass’s Osanna and the motet Assumpta est Maria. My own favourites were the two Song of Songs motets, Surge propera and Veni dilecte mi which, while largely homophonic, are particularly fine examples of word-setting and expression. The choir sings with great commitment and forward momentum, maybe too much of the latter at times in the Mass where a bit more contrast would not have come amiss. Bruno Turner has given a guiding hand throughout and has written his usual highly informative liner notes. The group is to be congratulated on a very well-planned and successfully executed project.
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Ensemble L’Amorosa Caccia, Fabio Antonio Falcone
73:43
Brilliant Classics 95326
+Crequillon, de Monte & Willaert
[dropcap]V[/dropcap]alente’s 1576 Intavolatura made use of a unique number-tablature which doesn’t specify all note durations, or how the parts relate polyphonically, features which it shares with lute tablatures. This recording, like earlier ones by Rebecca Maurer and Francesco Cera, makes use of the edition published in 1973 by Charles Jacobs. What distinguishes it is the use of an ensemble of two singers and four instrumentalists to perform some of Valente’s pieces, rather than playing all twenty-one on the keyboard. The ensemble also performs three chansons on which pieces by Valente are based: Willaert’s Qui la dira, Crecquillon’s Pis ne me peut venir and Monte’s Sortez mes pleurs. These demonstrate the range of his influences and this recording brings out, more than previous ones, the variety of styles in the publication. There are dances in which a recorder takes the top line, adding some idiomatic ornamentation, as well as ground-bass variations, contrapuntal fantasias and ricercars, and arrangements of vocal pieces with diminutions. Using the ensemble in this way helps us appreciate that Valente’s keyboard tablature is just a way of presenting this music for publication, and that it can work just as well with other forces. Particularly informative in this regard are the two arrangements of Sortez mes pleurs, both by Valente. The first is lightly ornamented in the top voice but otherwise sticks closely to the polyphony (labelled ‘con alcuni fioretti’); in this recording, the top voice of the chanson is sung over this first keyboard arrangement, making the relationship very clear and embedding the melody in the mind before the second, much more ornamented version (labelled ‘disminuita’) is played. Falcone plays on a harpsichord after Trasuntino and a virginal after Domenico da Pesaro, both constructed by Robert Livi; these, or similar instruments by the same maker, were also used by Francesco Cera in his 2004 Tactus recording (TC 532201). Falcone is persuasive in his interpretations, adding some convincing inequality to groups of short notes. Occasionally he could have followed the recorder player in treating the ornamental figuration a bit more freely – I would suggest that it is not always necessary to take this tablature quite so literally. Recording quality is excellent throughout. The Neapolitan Valente’s is an interesting voice and this recording certainly helps to promote his importance.
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Luca Scandali (Graziadio Antegnati organ 1565)
79:59
Brilliant Classics 95259
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Graziadio Antegnati 1565 organ in the Basilica of Santa Barbara, Mantua, survives largely intact in its original configuration. Designed for Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga and his organist-composer Girolamo Cavazzoni, it has nine ripieno stops, two flutes and a fiffaro, as well as two sets of split keys in each octave. It was also designed to fit the acoustics of the basilica, something captured well on this recording, from the arresting organo pieno used for the opening Padavano toccata to the lighter-registered canzonas by Pellegrini. Neither composer was associated with Mantua – Padavano worked mainly in Venice and Pellegrini in Milan – but their music was certainly written with instruments of this kind in mind. Padavano’s four surviving toccatas (one attributed) are based largely on slow-moving harmonies decorated by quick figurations, with some imitative sections. His two ricercars are complex contrapuntal constructions. Published in 1604, all are quite serious pieces demanding concentrated listening. It works well to break them up, as here, with groups of Pellegrini’s sectional canzonas published in 1599 which show a lighter idiom and some fine inspiration. Scandali uses the canzonas effectively to demonstrate the variety of registrations possible on the organ. Overall this is an excellent match of instrument and repertoire, and a convincing demonstration of this highly significant organ’s possibilities.
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Rossoporpora, Walter Testolin dir
79:30
Arcana A 449
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nce in a while – rather more rarely than some would have us believe – a truly exceptional recording comes along, a recording of such musical merit and artistic quality that it stops us in our tracks. This is such a CD. It represents a debut for the Italian vocal ensemble Rossoporpora, which has perhaps unwisely chosen to call itself by the same name as an Italian underwear firm (if you want to see what I mean, google it). For their programme they have turned to Luca Marenzio, arguably the greatest of all ‘pure’ madrigal composers.
Marenzio’s extensive output is dominated by his secular works, in particular no fewer than 18 books of madrigals for five or six voices, published in Venice between 1580 and 1599, the year of his death. A single book of four-part madrigals appeared in Rome in 1585. A dozen of these books are represented on the present CD, performed in roughly chronological order, excellent planning that allows us to follow Marenzio’s development as a composer. Such evolution is concerned more with emotional weight and substance than with significant stylistic change, for Marenzio showed little inclination to break the mould of the unaccompanied polyphonic madrigal in the manner Monteverdi would do so dramatically just a few years later. Neither, despite his contribution to the famous 1589 Florentine wedding intermedio, did Marenzio show any interest in the emergence of the revolutionary stile recitativo.
It is customary to divide Marenzio’s madrigal output into two distinctive phases. The first, characterised by an easy grace, mellifluous elegance and ‘sweetness’ was widely praised by his contemporaries both in Italy and further afield. It was what won him his reputation throughout Europe. The second, heralded by the composer himself as being composed ‘in a quite different manner from the past, tending […] towards – I shall say – a sorrowful gravity’, is the ‘crudo (cruel) stile’ of the present disc’s title. This was marked, starting with the seminal Madrigali a 4, 5 et 6 voci of 1588, by a new concentration on serious texts by the great Italian poets of the past, above all the peerless sonnets of Petrarch. This division serves as a handy reference, but is also simplistic, as the CD shows, for as well as beguiling examples of Marenzio’s earlier style such as ‘Come inanti de l’alba’, with its ravishing ethereal opening, the dissonant pain of pieces such as ‘Dolorosi martir’ (from the 5-part Madrigals, Book 1 of 1580) plumb depths of emotion as searing as do such great Petrarchan madrigals as ‘Solo e pensoso’ or ‘Crudele, acerba’.
As suggested at the outset the performances are outstanding, indeed they are near-exemplary on both technical and interpretative grounds. The seven voices of Rossoporpora, all excellent in their own right, blend beautifully in whatever combination they are employed, being superbly balanced in contrapuntal writing, while perfectly chorded in the homophonic passages with which the composer so skilfully employs contrast. The realisation of the texts, so acutely understood and set by Marenzio, is achieved with a complete understanding of both musical and literary syntax perhaps only achievable fully in this repertoire by singing in one’s native language. Neither are the performances frightened of employing tempo fluctuations to expressive means, which to my mind pays big dividends in a long text like ‘Cruda Amarilli’ (from Guarini’s Il pastor fido). But these are performances not to analyse, but rather to admire, to savour, to delight in, to share exquisite suffering in.
A couple of practical points. Two of the madrigals are performed in intabulations for two lutes, common practice at the time with popular pieces, while two others are given by solo voices and two lutes. Less successful is the addition of the two lutes to ‘Non vidi’, one of the 4vv madrigals, since they distract attention from the vocal polyphony. The loss of a star from ‘overall presentation’ is accounted for by booklet text of a size that would severely test the eyes of even an owl. But there can be no doubting that this is now unquestionably the finest available recording of a selection of Marenzio madrigals. It is, in a single word, magnificent.
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