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Marenzio amp Monteverdi Madrigals on texts from quotIl Pastor Fidoquot
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Madrigals on texts from Il Pastor Fido , by Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612) • Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) • 00:00 Quell’ augellin che canta • 02:21 Cruda Amarilli! • 05:01 Ah, dolente partita • 09:16 O Mirtillo, Mirtillo • 12:19 Deh, Mirtillo - Che se fu sei’l cor mio • Luca Marenzio (1553-1599) • 18:50 Quell’ augellin che canta • 21:12 Cruda Amarilli! • 23:49 Ah, dolente partita • 26:36 O Mirtillo, Mirtillo • 29:56 Deh, Mirtillo - Che se fu sei’l cor mio • The Golden Age Singers, directed by Margaret Field-Hyde • Margaret Field-Hyde, Elizabeth Osborn: sopranos • John Whitworth: counter-tenor • Rene Soames: tenor • Gordon Clinton: baritone • Recorded in Westminster’s London studios in 1954 • Luca Marenzio and Claudio Monteverdi were the two most distinguished composers who turned to Guarini’s verses. The madrigals by Marenzio on this record come from his sixth or seventh books of five-part madrigals, first published in 1594 and 1595 respectively, those by Monteverdi from his fourth or fifth madrigal books, first published in 1603 and 1605 respectively. Marenzio (1553-1599) was living in Rome after a period spent in Poland; Monteverdi (1567-1643) was a musician at the court of Mantua, where Guarini lived for a time. • The settings by Marenzio represent the flowering of the Renaissance style with highly-developed counterpoint and independence of voice lines. The settings by Monteverdi show the transition to the style of the seventeenth century with a subordination of the lower voices to the solo line or monody. These two groups of madrigals are interesting not only for the contrast in style but also for a comparison of characteristic work of these two great composers. • ‘Cruda Amarilli’ was one of the Monteverdi madrigals that the pedant Artusi attacked for their “imperfections, which could not possibly be more absurd” and as “castles in the air, chimeras founded upon sand” that “deserve blame, not praise”. The setting begins, likMarenzio’s, with a downward scale figure, but here the suggestion is of a duet for two sopranos over a bass, with the counter-tenor and tenor completing the harmony: the monodic revolution was by this time in full swing. In Marenzio’s setting, on the other hand, all the voices are still of equal status and all share in the scale figure. Also there are none of the unprepared dissonances that are so striking in Monteverdi. • Marenzio, for all his restraint and refinement was not unaffected by the taste for declamation and for decorated cadences, two notable features of the monodies. Listen, for example, to the beginning (for the three upper voices only) of his “Quell’ augellin”. Monte-verdi also begins with three voices, but unlike Marenzio he keeps up to the end the contrast between his upper and lower voices: the top three have plenty of roulades, but only once does the tenor join them, and when the roulades are at their most brilliant the bass moves along in note-values typical of the basses found in the monodies of the new century. It is worth remembering that the increasing prominence of the upper voices in late 16th century madrigals, singing elaborate passages singly or together over a firm bass, was as important in preparing the way for the ‘new music’ of the seventeenth century as any theorizing by the Florentine Camerata. • The pathos of Marenzio’s “O Mirtillo” is enhanced by the suggestion of a soprano solo at the beginning, by the occasional arresting declamation and by the unusual harmonic progressions. The tendency toward prominence of the high solo voice is much more pronounced in Monteverdi’s setting of “O Mirtillo”, which could be performed as an accompanied monody. In particular, the pathetic exclamation at the very beginning (which Artusi called an impertinence) has with justice been compared with the lament in Monteverdi’s Arianna. • In certain phrases of “Ah, dolente partita” Monteverdi shows his debt to Marenzio. The difference, however, between Monteverdi’s passionate declamation (with the voices again dividing into groups) and Marenzio’s simple, radiant lyricism is not merely the contrast between an exemplar of the seventeenth century and one of the sixteenth: Monteverdi stands in relation to Marenzio as does Beethoven to Haydn and Mozart. He is, in Alfred Einstein’s words, “a man of destiny in the history of music, bent on destruction”. But for all that, we do not regard Haydn and Mozart as somehow less ‘important’ than Beethoven, and the same goes for Marenzio. • Nigel Fortune
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