Three from Les Arts Florissants

Program: #23-36   Air Date: Sep 04, 2023

NOTE: All of the music on this program comes from the ensemble Les Arts Florissants directed by Paul Agnew. The record on the Harmonia Mundi label. For more information, click here.

I. Carlo Gesualdo: Complete Madrigals, Vol. 3. (HAF 8905311.12)

My approach to the interpretation of works of music written often hundreds of years ago is always to look first at the context in which they were performed. This context will reveal why the works were written, for whom, for what combination of musicians, the conditions in which they were performed, and, often, reveal something of the ambitions of the composer. All of these factors will affect the way in which we subsequently interpret the music. My purpose will always be to reflect, in so far as it might be possible, what the composer had in mind at the moment of composition, so as to be as faithful to his intentions as possible. I strongly believe that there is only one genius in the room and that is the composer. In order properly to respect that genius, we should make every effort to perform the music as he (or rarely she at the time) might have wished.

However, Carlo Gesualdo is very different in some respects from many of his contemporaries and answering these questions can be as confusing as it can be revealing. First and foremost, Gesualdo comes with a reputation. He murdered his first wife and he wrote highly chromatic music. True though these things are, we should examine how much the murder might have impacted his subsequent artistic pursuits, and to what extent his relatively few chromatic works were untypical of the time, or particularly original. Carlo was the second son of his parents, Fabrizio and Girolama. He was born in 1566 (making him an almost exact contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi) into a fabulously wealthy dynasty, but as the second son, he was not set to inherit the wealth of his family. It was the tradition that a second son of such a family would enter the Church. We must be careful, though, not to imagine his destiny as a poor parish priest lost somewhere in the Neapolitan countryside. His family was extremely well connected in the Church. His paternal uncle was Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo, who voted in the election of no fewer than seven popes. His maternal uncle was Carlo Borromeo (after whom Carlo Gesualdo was named). Carlo Borromeo was canonised in 1610 by Pope Paul V. Add to this the fact that Carlo’s mother, Girolama Borromeo, was niece to Pope Pius IV and we can understand that this was no ordinary family. Carlo’s progress in the church would not have been slow.

However, all such planning and tradition went for nothing when his elder brother Luigi died at the age of twenty in 1585. From that day his responsibility was no longer to the Church, but to the family, and specifically to the need for an heir to continue the dynasty. As early as 1586 Carlo’s father had arranged a marriage for Carlo, to his first cousin (daughter of his father’s sister, Donna Sveva), a woman named Maria d’Avalos. Maria was five years senior to Carlo, already twice widowed and, by all accounts, fabulously beautiful. While this marriage might have been convenient, it was destined to be deeply unhappy. Soon after the marriage, Maria began an adulterous affair with another Neapolitan nobleman, Don Fabrizio Carafa. When news of his wife’s infidelity became public knowledge Carlo was left with very few options. As head of a famous aristocratic family, he was obliged to defend the honour of his name. Since divorce was not possible, more drastic action would be required. Nonetheless, Carlo waited for as long as two years before acting. Was he waiting for the situation to resolve itself without action on his part? The adulterous couple were aware that their liaison had become known to Carlo, and were equally aware of the possible consequences but, at the insistence of Maria, they continued their relationship. On the night of 16 October 1590, having promised his wife that he would be away hunting, Carlo Gesualdo and a company of his gentlemen returned to the palace in Naples, discovered the couple together in Maria’s bedroom and brutally murdered them. Carlo immediately retired to the castle in Gesualdo for fear of reprisals from the Carafa family, but at the subsequent trial he was acquitted of any crime. Obviously, viewed through the prism of twenty-first-century morality, this was an unforgivable honour killing deserving of the most serious of punishments, but at the time, such actions were not rare and could be justified by the infidelity of the wife (although not, ironically, of the husband). Even from the point of view of Carlo Gesualdo and his apparently sincere religious convictions, it would be unlikely that he considered his actions worthy of eternal damnation. The Council of Trent had only recently come to an end, and the Catholic Reformation was in its infancy. Sins of this nature might relatively easily be assuaged by certain acts of piety and charity. (As a footnote, it is worth remembering that crimes of passion were often excused throughout Europe until late into the twentieth century. In Italy the law excusing murder on grounds of honour was only finally repealed in 1981.) However we might view Carlo Gesualdo’s actions today, they were in no way seen as an impediment to his second marriage four years later, in 1594, to Donna Leonora d’Este in Ferrara. In all the information that we have about the wedding, including letters from Alfonso Fontanelli who accompanied Gesualdo from Naples to Ferrara for the celebrations, the fate of his first wife is not mentioned once.

Gesualdo’s very first madrigals were published four years after the murder, in the new and stimulating surroundings at the court of Ferrara in the year of his second marriage in 1594. Much as modern historians might want to find echoes of trauma in these works, such echoes are not to be found. The poems are typical of madrigalian texts of the time and death is no more or less present than might be expected in a literary tradition where emotions were highly pictorial, and ‘death’ whether in the sexual sense or in the actual was a very common image. Analysis of these works in order to find hints as to Gesualdo’s emotional state would seem to me to be fruitless. Not to excuse in any way his appalling act, Gesualdo’s music can and should be heard and enjoyed for its beauty, and not for its imaginary macabre resonances.

If we can put the murder aside when considering the music of Gesualdo, what of the idea that his harmonic writing is extreme and unprecedented? When Gesualdo’s music was rediscovered in the early 1950s by people of such influence as Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft and Aldous Huxley, they understandably concentrated on the rare chromatic works, marvelling at a harmony that they presumed to be an attempt at ‘modernism’; modern-sounding even to the twentieth-century ear. In reality, even at the time of composing, this use of chromaticism was to an extent a homage, not to modernity, but, on the contrary, to antiquity. A circle of intellectuals and composers based in Ferrara and in particular the composer and author Nicola Vicentino (1511-75) had been researching the music of ancient Greece and were inspired by the Greeks’ apparent use of three distinct harmonic generi in musical composition – the diatonic (which would represent most of their and indeed our own music), the enharmonic and the chromatic. The enharmonic and chromatic generi offered new expressive possibilities but also practical challenges. To explore the possibilities of this new music, Vicentino invented a keyboard instrument that divided the octave into thirty-two notes rather than the habitual twelve. This allowed chords to slide from one key centre to another whilst still sounding (relatively) in tune. Much of the music inspired by these researches is lost, since it was very unlikely to be published, but the use of the instrument, called the ‘archicembalo’, continued well into the time when Gesualdo lived in Ferrara. Luzzasco Luzzaschi, who was at that time director of music at the Ferrara court and whom Gesualdo admired greatly, was said to be a virtuoso on the instrument.

It is therefore not surprising that Gesualdo was also influenced by this interest in ancient compositional practices, which inspired him in turn to write his own chromatic (or more properly enharmonic) music. But he was far from the first, and if we examine the works of such men as Cipriano de Rore (Primo Libro de Madrigali Cromatici of 1554), Adrien Willaert and indeed Orlande de Lassus (whose Prophetiae Sibyllarum composed around 1558, still some fifty years before the publication of Gesualdo’s chromatic works, are at least as chromatic as anything Gesualdo ever wrote, if not more so), we understand that Gesualdo is following an already established tradition in Ferrara and is not the first or only composer to compose in this way. Nevertheless, Gesualdo’s use of chromatic and enharmonic harmonies is enormously expressive and rare in madrigal composition, and does not need the justification of ‘modernism’ or originality to be valued for its exquisite beauty.

In interpreting these works, I have tried to put Gesualdo’s dangerous reputation out of my mind and have attempted to see the music purely in the context of his contemporaries and within a performance tradition that can be established by reference to letters and documents that describe the musical habits of the time. Monteverdi classes Gesualdo as a ‘seconda pratica’ composer, and as such we are obliged to be guided primarily by the text of each work, which is, to paraphrase Monteverdi himself, the mistress of the music. We must remind ourselves constantly that the text existed before the music and that each musical event is a reaction to a specific image in the text. Even closer to the personal experience of Gesualdo is the dedicatory epistle to the Duchess of Urbino, written by Alessandro Guarini for Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s Sixth Book of Madrigals for five voices, published in 1596 when Gesualdo was still in Ferrara.

But since Poetry was born first, Music reveres and honours her like her mistress. So much so that, having become almost Poetry’s shadow, she does not dare stir her feet anywhere that her elder sister has not preceded her. From this it follows that if the poet elevates his style, the musician elevates his in his turn. Music weeps if the verse weeps, smiles if it smiles; and if it runs, if it rests, if it prays, if it denies, if it shouts, if it is silent, if it lives, if it dies, all these affects and effects are so vividly expressed by Music that it is more correct to speak of emulation than of imitation. (Translation: Charles Johnston)

The poems chosen by Gesualdo abound in oxymorons that allow him to flit between consonance and dissonance, and between extremes of tempi; and, as interpreters, we try to find vocal colours that complement these myriad shifts. Not all singing can be beautiful if the text is describing ugliness. Gesualdo’s consummate and startling control of dissonance must sometimes be expressed in vocal colours that do not flatter but emote. For speeds we should be guided by speech rhythm and of course by the intentions of the text even in chromatic music. The use of chromatic harmonies is necessarily and essentially related to the expression of the text. To indulge those moments purely for their sonic quality rather than for their emotional impact risks making them irrelevant and changing the nature of the music and the intentions of the composer.

In terms of sound, we should be unashamedly secular. Our twenty-first-century ear has a habit of relating polyphony to the church, and therefore to a generous and enveloping acoustic. As an ensemble we had the opportunity to visit and perform in Carlo’s home, the town of Gesualdo. The castle has no vast rooms. The music making would have been intimate and immediate and so the sound picture in Gesualdo’s mind as he wrote must have reflected that experience. For singers we should have personality. Madrigals are not proto ‘close-harmony’ compositions. A perfect blend of voices is sometimes important, but a capacity to express text in music is of much greater importance. The singers employed in the great courts of northern Italy who practised this music were not anonymous; they were among the most celebrated singers of their time .

I am forever indebted to the marvellous team of singers who have participated in this project and with whom I have shared so many wonderful moments, on the concert hall stage of course, but equally in so many many restaurants, bars and airports throughout the world. They are second to none. To attempt to free ourselves from Gesualdo’s scandalous reputation is a liberating experience. There is so much freshness and joy in the music that must be brought to the fore, and no apparent ‘madman’ could ever have achieved the technical mastery that Gesualdo achieves in his final books of madrigals. It is interesting to reflect on the fact that the composer himself would have chosen the order in which the individual works were eventually printed. His final madrigal, his very last testament, which brings to a close the magnificent sixth and last book, is a moment of unalloyed happiness: I rejoice greatly, and am so filled with joy That at my joy the world rejoices.

It cannot be by chance that Gesualdo chose to take his leave with an effusive expression of pleasure. There is no doubt that Carlo Gesualdo was a compromised human being, but he was also complicated  and multi-faceted. In these recordings I would like to celebrate the beauty and originality of his talent. After all, Gesualdo was a man of immense fortune; he had absolutely no need to compose to earn enough to pay for his house or to feed himself and his family. We must ask ourselves why he sat down day after day to compose such intricate and complicated works. He did it for pleasure and of course, out of an intense love of that most ephemeral of arts, Music.

PAUL AGNEW

II. Carlo Gesualdo: Tenebrae Responsoria (HAF 8905363)

For the entire duration of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church forged an intense, solemn ritual, which was redefined by the Counter-Reformation at the dawn of the seventeenth century. The ‘Tenebrae’ Responsories were among the essential elements of the Offices of Matins and Lauds in the Triduum Sacrum, sung in the middle of the nights preceding Holy (Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Their liturgy followed a rigorous Trinitarian architecture. Each of the three Matins services of the Triduum comprised three Nocturns. Each of these included three psalms, three responsories and three lessons: readings from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (for the First Nocturn), from Saint Augustine’s Commentaries on the Psalms (Second Nocturn) and from the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Hebrews (Third Nocturn). Matins was followed without interruption by Lauds, also divided into tripartite sequences. For each celebration, a triangular candle-holder (the hearse) with fifteen branches was placed on the altar along with six individual candlesticks. During the three Nocturns, one candle on the hearse was extinguished at the end of each of the three psalms: thus nine candles had been extinguished by the conclusion of Matins. Lauds then opened with three psalms: the Miserere (Psalm 51 (50)) begins each of the three Offices, followed by two more psalms (different ones each day). Three more candles were extinguished each time. Then a canticle was heard, followed by the extinction of a further candle; and one more candle was snuffed out after a recitation of Psalms 148-50. The Office continued with the Canticle of Zachary (Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel), during which, after each pair of verses, one of the six individual candlesticks was extinguished. Now only the top candle of the triangular hearse remained lit: ‘This last candle, which is not extinguished, represents the Body of the Saviour.’1 At the end, this candle was concealed by moving it behind the altar. Once the church was plunged into darkness, the Miserere was repeated. Following the final prayer, the celebrants made a loud commotion, the strepitus: ‘The noise that is made at the end of the Office represents the darkness and the earthquake that occurred upon the Saviour’s death, or else the noise and tumult of the soldiers at the Passion.

In both his life as a Campanian aristocrat and his output as a composer, Gesualdo displayed a demonstrative religious fervour. During the last ten years of his life, he devoted himself to the construction or renovation of religious buildings on his estates. For example, in 1609 he commissioned Giovanni Balducci to paint for the chapel of Santa Maria delle Grazie in the village of Gesualdo a Last Judgment that appears to immortalise a depiction of his repentance. Furthermore, Don Carlo composed liturgical music from his early years onwards. His first publication, in 1585, was a motet called Ne reminiscaris, Domine. In 1603, he had two collections of Sacrae Cantiones printed by Costantino Vitale in Naples: a Liber primus for five voices and a Liber secundus for six and seven voices (the Bassus and Sextus parts of the latter book are no longer extant). In 1611 Gesualdo installed the press of the Neapolitan printer Carlino in his castello and entrusted him with the publication of his final compositions: the last two books of madrigals (Libro Quinto and Libro Sesto) and the Tenebrae Responsories (Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia.

The last-named collection comprises six-part settings of twenty-seven responsories, the canticle Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel (Canticle of Zachary) and the Miserere, all intended for use at Matins and Lauds of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (this recording, however, is limited to the Office of Holy Thursday). The verses of the responsories paraphrase the Passion and agony of Christ, inviting the faithful to meditate on death, guilt, repentance and redemption. On these words of contrition so charged with meaning, the composer elaborated skilful a cappella polyphony, emblematic of his style founded on paradox. For these compositions are at once visionary and conservative: eccentric in language and conventional in form. In their rigorous contrapuntal structures, chromaticisms frequently occur. While some of these are made necessary by contrapuntal motion (the cadential formulas of the Miserere), most possess an eminently expressive character, denoting, for example, the deliberate self- sacrifice of Christ (Tristis est anima mea) or Judas’ betrayal (Judas mercator pessimus). In accordance with the canonical rules of counterpoint, the dissonances are carefully prepared by the part-writing. They are striking, nonetheless, especially when they evoke the sorrow of Christ forgotten by his own people (the pathetic ‘mori pro me’ in Una hora), betrayed and finally abandoned (the chilling durezze of Unus ex discipulis meis tradet me hodie). These rhetorical effects are devoid of all grandiloquence and impose their presence as self-evident in the context. The interweaving of the voices creates a musical discourse as learned as it is erratic, with a mysticism darkened by sorrowful mysteries and unacknowledged doubts. A crepuscular light, gentle and meditative, traversed by sudden flashes of anxiety and pain, illuminates these chiaroscuro masterpieces, their interiority as poignant as it is unfathomable.

DENIS MORRIER

III. Schütz: Italian Madrigals (HAF 8905374)

Schütz's collection of Italian Madrigals (his first book of madrigals) owes its existence to the composer's two apprenticeship trips to Italy, during which he received advice from Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi. Published in Venice in 1611, they constitute the basis of all his future sacred works. Based on descriptive intentions characteristic of the madrigal style, they already show "the independence of thought and the authority of a true creator", as Roger Tellart notes about them. They possess all the qualities that testify to the creative genius of their author, considered the greatest German musician before Bach.

Composer Info

Don Carlo Gesualdo, Heinrich Schutz

CD Info

HAF 8905311.12, HAF 8905363, HAF 8905374