O Primavera by Giaches de Wert
Yesterday morning, waiting for the coffee shop at Asilomar to open, I was casting about for today's madrigal, and lighted upon a very unusual video featuring 'O Primavera', by Giaches de Wert. The madrigal features an alternate version of the eponymous Guarini poem, which (in its setting by Claudio Monteverdi) was the very first of this series of Monday Madrigals, almost a year ago.
This one is by Monteverdi's senior colleague at Mantua. Unlike Monteverdi, Wert (1535-1596) chose to set the entire 'canzone' (an extended poetic form) rather than the first verse only. The entire piece is a thing of wonder, as demonstrated by the attached score, recording and text-translation sheet. (The translation was done by our friend Marty Morell, who came out here a few years to do a workshop in Italian madrigals.)
But what really caught my fancy was this YouTube video of the first verse of Wert's setting. It's a performance by a group called Concerto di Margherita, founded in 2014 by a number of students at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, a renowned early-music hotbed in the Swiss city of Basel. What makes the group absolutely unique (in my experience, at any rate) is the fact that all them perform simultaneously on string instruments--lute, theorbo, Renaissance guitar, viola da gamba and the like.
Check out the video and I think you'll hear--and see--what I mean. As many of you know, it's quite a feat to sing and play at the same time. And here are five young people who do both very well indeed, and have discovered ways to combine the sounds of their voices and instruments in an intimate rendition which wonderfully brings to life Guarini's words and Wert's music.
For another take on their interpretation of this great madrigal, here's another video. It doesn't show them playing, but the audio is better and gives a clearer sense of what they are up to musically.
All of this got me exploring further, and I think we'll have more Wert--and more Concerto di Margherita--in our mutual future!
Yesterday morning, waiting for the coffee shop at Asilomar to open, I was casting about for today's madrigal, and lighted upon a very unusual video featuring 'O Primavera', by Giaches de Wert. The madrigal features an alternate version of the eponymous Guarini poem, which (in its setting by Claudio Monteverdi) was the very first of this series of Monday Madrigals, almost a year ago.
This one is by Monteverdi's senior colleague at Mantua. Unlike Monteverdi, Wert (1535-1596) chose to set the entire 'canzone' (an extended poetic form) rather than the first verse only. The entire piece is a thing of wonder, as demonstrated by the attached score, recording and text-translation sheet. (The translation was done by our friend Marty Morell, who came out here a few years to do a workshop in Italian madrigals.)
But what really caught my fancy was this YouTube video of the first verse of Wert's setting. It's a performance by a group called Concerto di Margherita, founded in 2014 by a number of students at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, a renowned early-music hotbed in the Swiss city of Basel. What makes the group absolutely unique (in my experience, at any rate) is the fact that all them perform simultaneously on string instruments--lute, theorbo, Renaissance guitar, viola da gamba and the like.
Check out the video and I think you'll hear--and see--what I mean. As many of you know, it's quite a feat to sing and play at the same time. And here are five young people who do both very well indeed, and have discovered ways to combine the sounds of their voices and instruments in an intimate rendition which wonderfully brings to life Guarini's words and Wert's music.
For another take on their interpretation of this great madrigal, here's another video. It doesn't show them playing, but the audio is better and gives a clearer sense of what they are up to musically.
All of this got me exploring further, and I think we'll have more Wert--and more Concerto di Margherita--in our mutual future!