Carlo Gesualdo

Philippe Herreweghe, respected elder of the early choral music world, directs a pared-down version of his choir Collegium Vocale Gent in delectably careful performances of music that in less careful hands can sound plain crazy. The slippery harmonies of Carlo Gesualdo’s sixth book of madrigals, written in 1611 but sounding centuries ahead of their time, are nailed down with the sharpest, slenderest of pins thanks to the perfect tuning and clear tone of Herreweghe’s ensemble. One to each line, the singers maintain a finely balanced blend, emerging briefly as soloists at moments of emphasis. Some may find the ambience a bit churchified for these texts, in which images of frolicking cupids are heavily outweighed by the laments of unbedded lovers miserably invoking death; but the performances are full of subtle nuance, and you’re unlikely to hear passages such as the end of Io Pur Respiro, with its sliding, viscous harmonies, better done.

The second project of Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe for Phi to focus on Renaissance music is devoted to one of the most remarkable of all composers: Carlo Gesualdo. Both his life, characterised by extravagant and excessive behaviour, and his compositions left their mark on the history of music. Although best known for his secular music, he also wrote an almost equivalent number of sacred works that demonstrate his fervent faith.

When you want music filled to the brim with despair and death, Carlo Gesualdo is the composer you want. Consider opening lines like those of the first four of his third collection of madrigals: "You want me to die," "Whether I die or not," "Alas, life of despair," and "I languish and die": even Dowland and Shostakovich are cheerier than Gesualdo. But, however dark his texts, it cannot be denied that Gesualdo set them with absolute fidelity and utmost sincerity. His lines are twisted, his harmonies are tortured, and his counterpoint is agonizing, but they suit his morbid and morose texts like George Gershwin's music fit his brother Ira.

For twenty-first century ears accustomed to every type of music imaginable, it can be hard to hear Gesualdo's later madrigals as the shocking and revolutionary pieces they are or imagine the reaction of their original audiences, but sometimes the music is so supremely odd that it inevitably elicits a double-take. This is sometimes the result of Gesualdo's brilliant/cavalier disregard for the late Renaissance conventions of harmony, tonality, and voice leading, but just as often it's the intensity of emotional affect in his response to the texts, which can create music that seems alarmingly disjunct, even schizophrenic, in its mood swings. In any case, Gesualdo is a composer who's most appealing to listeners who like wild rides and lots of aural surprises.

Concerto Italiano, founded and directed by Renaissance and Baroque specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini, is an outstanding vocal and instrumental ensemble. Each of its singers has an exceptionally lovely voice: strong, pure, focused, and full of character. Together, they produce a fabulously rich blend that is warm and sensual without sacrificing purity. The individuality of the members and their ability to meld into a seamless unity are characteristics ideal for late Renaissance madrigals, especially the idiosyncratic madrigals of Gesualdo, where the distinctiveness of each voice is essential for music that is essentially driven by its counterpoint, and the unanimity of the blend allows the eccentricities of harmony to make their maximum impact.

The Tenebrae Responsories have been recorded three times before; once by a full choir, once by solo voices and, most recently and successfully, by The Tallis Scholars directed by Peter Phillips on Gimell. Like Phillips, Philippe Herreweghe uses a medium-sized ensemble, producing a rich and sonorous tone, but despite that is still able to achieve a clean and clear overall sound with an attractively luminous quality in the upper voices. The performances of these pieces, and of the four motets which round off the Gesualdo sequence, are characterized by a firm sense of their architecture (or at least of an architecture since the composer's block technique often confounds symmetry), and by sensitive attention to details of attack and articulation particularly in the more dissonant moments.

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, murderer in 1590 of his guilty wife and her lover, later took a wife from the d’Este family, rulers of Ferrara, whose musical interests coincided with his own. He wrote a quantity of sacred and secular vocal music and a relatively small number of instrumental pieces. In style his music is unusual in its sudden changes of tonality, its harmony and its intensity of feeling, qualities that have found particular favour among some modern theorists.

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general: Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate: to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

Gesualdo is now known to have composed some of the most intensely expressive music ever written – and is also known for the lurid details of his private life. The French ensemble A Sei Voci has rich-toned voices which illuminate this extraordinary music; this release is among the ‘second generation’ of Gesualdo recordings following the pioneering work of the Deller Consort in the 1970s. Their success paved the way for a wider recognition of Gesualdo’s genius in the 1990s.