Crudel, acerba et inexorabil morte by Luca Marenzio
It's incredibly crisp and clear outside this morning; but I hear we're about to be slammed with some sort of atmospheric river which will bring a lot of rain, winds and other dramatic meteorological manifestations.
I hope you are braced for the onslaught.
In the meantime, you must check out this incredible madrigal by Luca Marenzio: 'Crudel, acerba et inexorabil morte'. It's from his ninth book of madrigals, published in 1599, the year of his death. I discovered it a few years ago, on a recital CD of Marenzio madrigals by the wonderful quintet Rossoporpora. When I first heard it, I almost drove off the road. Further familiarity has only increased my admiration for this tiny masterpiece.
Marenzio's text is from Petrarch's 'Canzoniere', indeed from the same double-sestina, 'Mia benigna fortuna', which we encountered a few weeks back. As a quick reminder: A sestina consists of six verses of six lines each; the lines of the first verse end in six different non-rhyming words. These same words must end the lines in all succeeding verses, but in a different order, prescribed by a sort of cabalistic formula. The sestina concludes with a three-line postscript, called the envoi. A double-sestina has 12 verses, all of which must follow the ending-word scheme.
Can you imagine a more challenging (and irritating) form into which to pour your emotions? And that's exactly what Petrarch was doing. 'Mia benigna fortuna' is a passionate outcry at the tragedy and injustice of the loss of his beloved Laura, his muse, worshiped for many years from a distance, and finally lost to a fatal illness. Yet, somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) operating within a veritable straitjacket of a structure, Petrarch created a masterpiece of human expression, perhaps never equaled in its deep exploration of the anatomy of loss and of despair.
Marenzio, composing 200 years and more after the death of the poet, returned again and again to the Canzoniere, as he does here in his setting of the second stanza of 'Mia benigna fortuna'. He reaches deep into his musical quiver for means to perfectly embody the specific suffering expressed in the poem. I've been listening to the piece over and over with the score, and have derived a sort of catalogue of techniques and approaches which reflect, and, as we listen, deeply enhance our perception of and empathy for the poetic lines. See if you can see/hear some of these as you listen. (It's like hunting for Easter eggs.) You may well find new ones I haven't mentioned.
--Large leaps, ascending and descending
--Biting dissonance
--Unexpected and strange harmonic shifts
--Expansion and compression of total range
--'Stacking' of voices
--'Bridged' cadences (no repose)
--Rich 7th chords
--Suspensions and chains of suspensions (again, no repose)
--Lots of voice-crossing, sometimes extreme
--Tutti ascents and descents
--Chromatic motion, including two versions of a pitch in close proximity (eg. B and B-flat)
--Compression of imitative entrances
--Dramatic contrary motion, widening and contracting space
Now, of course, it's not any one of these techniques, nor even the sum of all of them, that makes the piece great. The ultimate test of that is not a catalog of means but rather, quite simply, are you moved? If you are, an inquiry into how this most difficult task--the transfer of deep thoughts or feelings from one human mind to another (in this case, over centuries and half a planet)--is accomplished is well worth undertaking.
Petrarch and Marenzio, people whom none of us can know and who could not have imagined our lives, have left us a record of human truth: the suffering occasioned by great loss. If we zero in on how they sought to do this, we can then zoom back out to perceive the whole more clearly and poignantly, and each time we do this, we become more ready to perceive such more fully both in art and in our fellow travelers here on this earth.
I believe this with all my heart: Art can make us better people, more sensitive to and aware of our own inner lives and the lives of those around us. Any effort expended in this pursuit repays us a thousand-fold; and as we become more fully human, we enrich a world which has given us so much.
It's incredibly crisp and clear outside this morning; but I hear we're about to be slammed with some sort of atmospheric river which will bring a lot of rain, winds and other dramatic meteorological manifestations.
I hope you are braced for the onslaught.
In the meantime, you must check out this incredible madrigal by Luca Marenzio: 'Crudel, acerba et inexorabil morte'. It's from his ninth book of madrigals, published in 1599, the year of his death. I discovered it a few years ago, on a recital CD of Marenzio madrigals by the wonderful quintet Rossoporpora. When I first heard it, I almost drove off the road. Further familiarity has only increased my admiration for this tiny masterpiece.
Marenzio's text is from Petrarch's 'Canzoniere', indeed from the same double-sestina, 'Mia benigna fortuna', which we encountered a few weeks back. As a quick reminder: A sestina consists of six verses of six lines each; the lines of the first verse end in six different non-rhyming words. These same words must end the lines in all succeeding verses, but in a different order, prescribed by a sort of cabalistic formula. The sestina concludes with a three-line postscript, called the envoi. A double-sestina has 12 verses, all of which must follow the ending-word scheme.
Can you imagine a more challenging (and irritating) form into which to pour your emotions? And that's exactly what Petrarch was doing. 'Mia benigna fortuna' is a passionate outcry at the tragedy and injustice of the loss of his beloved Laura, his muse, worshiped for many years from a distance, and finally lost to a fatal illness. Yet, somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) operating within a veritable straitjacket of a structure, Petrarch created a masterpiece of human expression, perhaps never equaled in its deep exploration of the anatomy of loss and of despair.
Marenzio, composing 200 years and more after the death of the poet, returned again and again to the Canzoniere, as he does here in his setting of the second stanza of 'Mia benigna fortuna'. He reaches deep into his musical quiver for means to perfectly embody the specific suffering expressed in the poem. I've been listening to the piece over and over with the score, and have derived a sort of catalogue of techniques and approaches which reflect, and, as we listen, deeply enhance our perception of and empathy for the poetic lines. See if you can see/hear some of these as you listen. (It's like hunting for Easter eggs.) You may well find new ones I haven't mentioned.
--Large leaps, ascending and descending
--Biting dissonance
--Unexpected and strange harmonic shifts
--Expansion and compression of total range
--'Stacking' of voices
--'Bridged' cadences (no repose)
--Rich 7th chords
--Suspensions and chains of suspensions (again, no repose)
--Lots of voice-crossing, sometimes extreme
--Tutti ascents and descents
--Chromatic motion, including two versions of a pitch in close proximity (eg. B and B-flat)
--Compression of imitative entrances
--Dramatic contrary motion, widening and contracting space
Now, of course, it's not any one of these techniques, nor even the sum of all of them, that makes the piece great. The ultimate test of that is not a catalog of means but rather, quite simply, are you moved? If you are, an inquiry into how this most difficult task--the transfer of deep thoughts or feelings from one human mind to another (in this case, over centuries and half a planet)--is accomplished is well worth undertaking.
Petrarch and Marenzio, people whom none of us can know and who could not have imagined our lives, have left us a record of human truth: the suffering occasioned by great loss. If we zero in on how they sought to do this, we can then zoom back out to perceive the whole more clearly and poignantly, and each time we do this, we become more ready to perceive such more fully both in art and in our fellow travelers here on this earth.
I believe this with all my heart: Art can make us better people, more sensitive to and aware of our own inner lives and the lives of those around us. Any effort expended in this pursuit repays us a thousand-fold; and as we become more fully human, we enrich a world which has given us so much.