Amorosi

Monteverdi - Madrigali Guerrieri Ed Amorosi - Concerto Vocale, René Jacobs (2002) {2CD Set Harmonia Mundi HMC 901736.37}
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© 2001 Harmonia Mundi | HMC 901736.37
Classical / Baroque / Vocal Music

Monteverdi was seventy-one when he published his Eighth Book of madrigals. This collection, a monumental work of remarkable beauty, is a synthesis of all Monteverdi's experience in the realm of secular music. It is the culmination of a genre, the Italian madrigal, which here achieves a rare state of perfection. INDISPENSABLE!

Jordi Savall - Monteverdi - Madrigali Guerrieri Et Amorosi, Libro Ottavo (1995) {Astrée-Auvidis E 8546}
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© 1995 Auvidis / Astrée | E 8546
Classical / Baroque / Renaissance

Monteverdi's madrigals were the laboratory in which he sought the connections between music and the emotions, and none are more moving and evocative than those of his eighth and final book, the "Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi," (1638). This release offers only a selection, but puts the music's drama in gratifyingly high relief. It's a beautifully sung, ravishingly played and lushly recorded collection, "Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi," by Jordi Savall and La Capella Reial de Catalunya (Astree E 8546). Dynamics are supple, coloration is flexible and expressive dissonances are pointed up in a way that gives works like "Lamento della Ninfa" and "Gira il nemico" an unusually vivid edge.

"Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi" ("Madrigals Warlike and Amorous") is how Claudio Monteverdi titled his eighth and largest book of madrigals–which was actually two volumes in one. The "warlike madrigals" (concerned largely with the "war of love") feature the "agitated style" Monteverdi pioneered: quick, almost nervous writing, lots of rapidly repeated notes, and more syllables than a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song. These works culminate in the famous short quasi-opera Il Combattimento de Tancredi e Clorinda. The "amorous madrigals" are no less ardent, but they are less, well, warlike–that is, more leisurely paced, with plenty of chromaticism, dissonant suspensions, and giddily virtuosic runs to depict the pain and excitement of love.

In 1587, when the Cremona native Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) offered his first book of madrigals for printing, the popularity of the genre of little vocal pieces had just reached its pinnacle. Such great madrigalists as Luca Marenzio or Philippe de Monte where among the most distinguished composers of the day, and Palestrina, the great master of counterpoint, he just published his second book of madrigals a year earlier. Three years later, Monteverdi was employed as a singer and violist at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua, and the compositions published in his second volume of madrigals immediately made him a rising star among the Italian masters. Without exaggeration, we can call madrigals like Non si levava ancor or Ecco mormorar l’onde the hits of their day. In them, Monteverdi exhibits a highly advanced use of imitation and counterpoint by Italian standards, and he is innovative in his treatment of tone painting and in his a keen feeling for sustaining a dramatic arch extending above the individual compositions.

In 1587, when the Cremona native Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) offered his first book of madrigals for printing, the popularity of the genre of little vocal pieces had just reached its pinnacle. Such great madrigalists as Luca Marenzio or Philippe de Monte where among the most distinguished composers of the day, and Palestrina, the great master of counterpoint, he just published his second book of madrigals a year earlier. Three years later, Monteverdi was employed as a singer and violist at the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua, and the compositions published in his second volume of madrigals immediately made him a rising star among the Italian masters. Without exaggeration, we can call madrigals like Non si levava ancor or Ecco mormorar l’onde the hits of their day. In them, Monteverdi exhibits a highly advanced use of imitation and counterpoint by Italian standards, and he is innovative in his treatment of tone painting and in his a keen feeling for sustaining a dramatic arch extending above the individual compositions.

In the course of the third through the fifth books of madrigals (1592-1605), we witness a gradual transformation of the composer’s style, which can serve in general as an interesting parallel to the development of music in the direction of Baroque aesthetics. This transformation is also connected with the choice of source texts. The smooth, refined sonnets of Petrarch or Tasso are gradually supplanted by passionate texts in the style of Mannerism, with the explicit expression of human emotion at the forefront. After 1600, Monteverdi became the maestro di capella at the court in Mantua, and he was also in charge of ostentatious secular celebrations accompanied by dramatic musical compositions. The crowning achievement of his creative work in this field is L’Orfeo (1605), which the composer called a favola in musica, i.e. a musical fairy tale, but after the fact, we now see it as the cornerstone of the operatic genre. Three years later, he completed L’Arianna (Ariadne), which has not been preserved as a whole, unfortunately, but according to period accounts it was at least the equal of L’Orfeo, and the only part of it that has been preserved, Arianna’s lamento Lasciatemi morire, is one of the most famous pieces in the great composer’s legacy.

Monteverdi’s dramatic works and his madrigals cannot be viewed separately. On the one hand, madrigals are an important component of his early operas, then on the other hand his madrigals serve as a kind of laboratory in which he can experiment mainly with the building of dramatic tension in music in connection with the text’s dramatic content. In his fourth book of madrigals (1603), he experiments with extremes of form and expressive resources of this small genre, bringing himself into conflict with conservative music theorists of his day. This may be one reason why his fifth book of madrigals appeared soon thereafter (1605). The foreword to that volume contains an answer to his critics. He wrote: “…believe me, there are also other rules for handling dissonance… and the modern composer is working on the foundation of truth…live happily.” The following compositions from that collection give a certain explanation. The last seven madrigals in book five have an independent thoroughbass part, and modo rapressentativo appears in them, i.e. solo passages in which the solo singer individually portrays the feelings and experiences of a particular person. Here, finally, we can speak definitively of a composition with a Baroque structure.

By the time Monteverdi published his sixth book of madrigals (1614), he was the maestro di capella at St Mark’s in Venice. Here, all of the compositions have basso continuo accompaniments, and an alternation between solo parts and the whole ensemble appears with increasing frequency. Formally speaking, the five-voice madrigal gradually gives way to the emergent Baroque cantata. The seventh book (1619) is subtitled concerto, and in it we mostly find secular solo and ensemble compositions with basso continuo accompaniment, sometimes supplemented by two solo violin parts. We no longer find the madrigal in its late-Renaissance form. In the eighth and probably best known book of madrigals (Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi, 1638), Monteverdi documents the development of his compositional style in Baroque forms. This is an extensive collection of diverse compositions ranging from solo laments to vast eight-voice compositions with instrumental accompaniment.

With Affetti amorosi Damien Guillon directs a dazzling selection of vocal works from Girolamo Frescobaldi, drawn from the Ferrara composer’s two books of Arie musicali. These arias date from 1615-1630, by which time Frescobaldi, now resident in Rome, had become a “cult” composer, and permitted great expressive freedom in the performance of his music.

Spanish soprano Núria Rial and American counter tenor Lawrence Zazzo join forces in an outstanding selection of duets and scenes from Handel operas. For most of the operas, they have included recitatives, arias, and even overtures and instrumental interludes to provide the context for the duets. The result is wonderfully effective in giving the listener a deeper understanding of the drama and the characters, as well as marvelous additional music.