Carlo Gesualdo's five-voice motets, published in 1603 under the title Sacrae Cantiones , have suffered in recording catalogs in comparison with his tortured madrigals and exquisitely gloomy Tenebrae responsories. This is a shame, for revealed here are serious sacred compositions that make use of many madrigalian devices, but are not simply madrigals with sacred texts. They come out especially madrigalian in this one-voice-per-part recording by the young Marian Consort: not always an ideal solution, but easy enough to ...
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Carlo Gesualdo's five-voice motets, published in 1603 under the title Sacrae Cantiones , have suffered in recording catalogs in comparison with his tortured madrigals and exquisitely gloomy Tenebrae responsories. This is a shame, for revealed here are serious sacred compositions that make use of many madrigalian devices, but are not simply madrigals with sacred texts. They come out especially madrigalian in this one-voice-per-part recording by the young Marian Consort: not always an ideal solution, but easy enough to imagine for Gesualdo, writing in splendid isolation in his castle after the violent events of his life, with a small troupe of virtuoso musicians on the payroll. Gesualdo uses his chromatic and extreme madrigal language as just one possibility among several; typically chromaticism will illustrate a moment of suffering, but then the polyphony will retreat to the block proto-chords of the later 16th century's motet composers or even to smooth Palestrina-like polyphony, as the text...
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Add this copy of Gesualdo: Sacrae Cantiones to cart. $39.05, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2016 by Delphian.
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