Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Italian madrigals, secular and spiritual

2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/em/caw019

1741-7260

Noel O’Regan,

Music History and Culture

There has been a healthy flow of recent recordings of madrigals and other music written by Italian composers between c .1580 and c .1640, a problematic period for music historians in not fitting neatly into either the Renaissance or Baroque. Attempts to introduce an intermediate Mannerist period have not been successful, but there is no doubt that much of the secular vocal music of composers from Marenzio to late Monteverdi has particular characteristics which challenge performers. Each of the groups reviewed here responds to those challenges in its own way, seeking to bring the music to life for a modern audience while reflecting the ethos of the period and building a coherent programme for a single disc or group of CDs. Among those challenges are coping with the somewhat exaggerated Italian language of poets like Giovanni Battista Guarini and Giambattista Marini, assigning voices and vocal ranges to the parts on the page, and deciding on pitch and transposition. Approaches to the text have been helped by the genre’s repatriation over the past 20 years or so by Italian groups who have brought new insights to interpretation, based on their intimate knowledge of the language. There are three Italian groups reviewed here, as well as ensembles based in England, France and Israel/Switzerland; they range from the long-established to the relatively new, with members coming from an international pool whose cross-fertilization is an important factor in their success.