Thou Wilt Despatch Me

A most unusual cabinet of curiosities: “Finding pleasure even in meditating on what causes one’s pain”: that neatly defines the theme of this album of music from the cusp of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Here Italian and English madrigals rub shoulders with motets and Tenebrae responsories.

Melancholic poetry provided endless nourishment for musical creativity in the late Renaissance. In his first recording for harmonia mundi, Geoffroy Jourdain leads Les Cris de Paris in music from the cusp of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From Bryd to Gesualdo, Italian and English madrigals rub shoulders with motets and Tenebrae responsories, finding pleasure even in meditating on what causes one's pain.