The Madrigal Reimagined
Hannah Ely (soprano); Toby Carr (lute, theorbo)
Monteverdi String Band/Oliver Webber
rec. 2023, St Michael’s Church, Highgate, London
Texts and translations included
Reviewed as a 24/96 download
Resonus Classics RES10341 [64]

Times of change are always interesting, and sometimes even exciting. That certainly goes for the decades around 1600, when a new style was born, known as seconda pratica. It resulted in a large repertoire of vocal and instrumental music much of which is technically challenging. What the different genres had in common is that they aimed to move the audience: music should express human emotions (affetti) and performers should use every possible means to communicate these emotions to the audience.

As the title of the disc under review indicates, the core of the programme is the madrigal. This was the most important genre of secular music in Italy from the mid-16th century to the first decades of the 17th century. With time, it changed in style: in the second half of the 16th century composers wrote madrigals in the stile antico, in which all the voices were treated on equal footing. With the introduction of the seconda pratica, composers started to write madrigals for one or several solo voices, singing in declamatory manner, and basso continuo. The present disc is devoted to the latter style, but one of the composers who plays a key role in the programme is Cipriano de Rore, a representative of the stile antico. There are good reasons for that.

Rore was famous for his madrigals, which were expressive, partly due to a close connection between text and music. Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, the brother of Claudio, saw in them the origins of the seconda pratica. It is not surprising that some of them were often the subject of diminutions, a practice of treating an existing vocal piece with considerable freedom, which was very popular in the decades around 1600.

“[Diminutions] served to decorate the transition from one note of a melody to the next with passage-work, giving scope for virtuoso display”, according to New Grove. Several treatises were published with instructions on how to improvise diminutions, illustrated with written-out examples. The programme includes a specimen of diminutions on Rore’s most famous madrigal, Anchor che col partire, written by Giovanni Battista Bovicelli. Another piece by Rore, Vergine bella, is performed here with diminutions by Orazio Bassani and Oliver Webber. The latter brings us to one of the notable features of this disc, and of modern performance practice that has established itself recently. Webber is one of those performers who take the diminution treatises of the time according to their intentions: not to play the written-out examples, but to use them as models for diminutions of their own. Examples of Webber’s creations are two further madrigals by Rore: Hor che ‘l ciel e la terra and Ben qui si mostra il ciel.

The former bears witness to a second feature of this disc. Whereas diminutions are mostly performed instrumentally, here several are sung by Hannah Ely. One of them is the madrigal by Rore, another Webber’s diminutions on Vestiva i colli, a madrigal by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina that was often used as a subject of diminutions. The madrigal Cruda Amarilli by Johann Nauwach receives the same treatment. This is a piece in the modern style; the diminutions are by Nauwach himself.

Cipriano de Rore can be considered one of the trailblazers of the style that was to conquer the music world around 1600. The introduction of the latter is often connected with two works: Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo and Giulio Caccini’s collection of songs of 1601/02, Le nuove musiche. However, the first manifestations of the new style are rather the six intermedi of 1589 which were part of the wedding celebrations of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine. Two of the first representatives of the new style were involved in the creation of these pieces: Emilio de’ Cavalieri and the above-mentioned Caccini. Three excerpts are included here. The best-known is Cavalieri’s O che nuovo miracolo, which comes at the end of the cycle, and works like a kind of motto for the entire work.

It is performed here instrumentally. I have always been sceptical about instrumental performances of vocal music in which there is a close connection between text and music, as I feel that this connection is lost. However, one could also look at this issue differently: instrumental music in the new style was not fundamentally different from vocal music, as both aimed at expressing human emotions. I have to say that here and in Monteverdi’s Cruda Amarilli it works rather well.

This explains why some instrumental pieces by Monteverdi are included. Webber, in his liner-notes, points out that dances “could elicit particular emotional responses. The dances featured in this programme run the gamut of emotions from sombre and apprehensive to celebratory and raucous.” This is illustrated with extracts from Monteverdi’s Il ballo delle ingrate.

The latter’s opera L’Orfeo has already been mentioned as a specimen of the new style. Given that expression and the stirring of the emotions of the audiences was the main aim of music, one could hardly think of a more suitable way to close the programme than with excerpts from this work. After all, the mythological Orpheus was the example of someone who could move anyone with his music and his singing. The opera is showing what can be achieved with music; the extracts start with a solo by Musica from the Prologue, who says, “I am Music, who, with sweet accents, knows how to sooth every troubled heart, and now with noble anger, now with love can inflame the iciest of minds.”

That perfectly sums up the substance of this programme. It is a nice mixture of familiar and less familiar pieces in often unusual performances. They show the variety of performance practice in the decades around 1600 and the inexhaustible creativity of composers and performers. It also bears witness to what can be achieved by performers who study both the repertoire of that time and the way it was performed. Hannah Ely makes a great impression here, which is no surprise given her credentials in early music. In this case, her performances with her own Fieri Consort are especially relevant. Oliver Webber’s diminutions are great examples of an exciting practice, and one can only hope that his forays in this genre inspire young artists to do the same.

This disc is a great achievement and a model of creative programming and performance.

Johan van Veen
www.musica-dei-donum.org
twitter.com/johanvanveen

Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free

Contents
Claudio Merulo (1533-1604)
Canzon XVIII
Johann Nauwach (1595-1630)
Cruda Amarilli
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
Cruda Amarilli (SV 94)
Cipriano de Rore (c1515-1565)
Anchor che col partire (intabulated by Emanuel Adriaenssen, 1540/55-1604)
Anchor che col partire (diminutions by Giovanni Battista Bovicelli, 1545-1618)
Vergine bella (diminutions by Orazio Bassani, bef. 1570-1615) & Oliver Webber, *1969)
Claudio Monteverdi
Il ballo dell’ingrate (SV 167): 
Entrata & Ballo
Ah, dolente partita (SV 75)
Il ballo dell’ingrate (SV 167): 
Ahi, troppo è duro
Cristofano Malvezzi (1547-1599)
Sinfonia a 6 [Quarto Intermedio]
Giulio Caccini (1551-1618)
Io che dal ciel [Quarto Intermedio]
Emilio de’ Cavalieri (c1550-1602)
O che nuovo miracolo [Sesto Intermedio]
Giovanni Gabrieli (c1554/57-1612)
Canzon I à 5 (C 195)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
Vestiva i colli (diminutions by Oliver Webber)
Lorenzo Tracetti (1555-1590)
Preludium in G
Cipriano de Rore
Hor che’l ciel e la terra (diminutions by Oliver Webber)
Ben qui si mostra il ciel (diminutions by Oliver Webber)
Claudio Monteverdi
L’Orfeo (SV 318):
Toccata
Prologue: Dal mio permesso amato
Lasciate i monti
Ahi caso acerbo
Ma io ch’in questa lingua
Sinfonia act 2
Sinfonia act 3
Vanne Orfeo
Moresca