The Monteverdi String Band at the Echi Lontani |
This last quotation is from Oliver Webber's programme note for a fascinating concert, The Madrigal Transformed, which Webber's group The Monteverdi String Band performed at the Echi Lontani Festival in Cagliari in Sardinia on 30 May 2014, in which the group explored the influence of ornamentation and the seconda pratica on contemporary madrigals. The performers were Oliver Webber (violin), Teresa Caudle (violin), Wendi Kelly (contralto viola), David Brooker (tenor viola) and Christopher Suckling (bass violin).
This list of performers might, at first, cause a slight jolt. If this is a programme of madrigals, where were the singers? Well, there weren't any. The 16th century had a far more flexible attitude to music than we do, and the mixing of vocal and instrumental forces was far more common than now. The style of the four or five part madrigal lent itself to performance by a consort of string instruments, and the various bowing techniques can be used to emulate the vocal effects, dynamic shapes, articulation and phrasing.
Oliver Webber and Teresa Caudle The Monteverdi String Band at the Echi Lontani |
In performances like those of the Monteverdi String Band, such a programme was never going to be dry but to vary the diet and to illuminate things a bit more, Webber and his colleagues gave readings (in Italian) from contemporary writings, treatises and letter. There are some charming and fascinating finds. Emanuele Tesauro in his Vocabulario Italiano of 1612-54 includes a description of singer production sound which concludes with 'finally resolves it with the sweetest sigh. Doesn’t this seem to you like the description, not of a voice, but a sweet pastry?' Webber has also found a series of letters from Galileo writing from Arcetri in 1637 to Fulgenzio Micanzio in Venice about trying to buy a violin, with Micanzio informing him which were best (those from Cremona), soliciting the help of Monteverdi (whose nephew lives in Cremona) and finally, the violin is despatched!
The programme started with Monteverdi's Cruda Amarilli and Cipriano de Rore's A la dolc'ombra, interspersed with instrumental movements by Merulo and Lassus. Cipriano de Rore's madrigal was performed in an instrumental transformation by Girolamo dalla Casa which introduces cascades of diminutions. The rest of the programme follows the plan with madrigals by Monteverdi and his contemporary Gastoldi, diminutions on madrigals by older composers such as de Rore, Emilio de Cavalieri and Palestrina, plus instrumental pieces by Gastoldi, Gabrieli, Gioseffo Guami and Giovanni Merulo. The effect of the simpler, dance-based instrumental pieces is to set off nicely the rather more grand complexities of Monteverdi's madrigals and the elaborate diminutions.
Monteverdi's madrigals in the programme included Cruda Amarilli, Era l'anima mia, M'è più dolce il penar, and Lamento d'Arianna, plus there were some fascinating sequences. There was a selection of music from Monteverdi's Ballo dell'ingrate, which mixes the instrumental movements with transcriptions of the vocal ones, including the entrate, ballo and Dolente partita. We got a sequence of Gastoldi's balletti which were vocal dances, each one typifying a different type of lover, published in 1591. The final sequence is a lovely selection from Monteverdi's Orfeo with the opening toccata sounding fascinating on the strings.
The performances from the Monteverdi String Band are wonderfully vivid and vital. Technically superb, but in a highly expressive way so that you do not miss the words. The players articulate, shape and phrase in such an immediate way that the music takes wing. These are performances of great intensity, but there is charm too and a wonderful rhythmic vitality with brings the individual notes to life. Clearly this is intimate chamber music, played by with sympathy.
I listened and watched the performance thanks to the wonders of the internet. It was vividly engrossing watched this way, so experienced live it must be a great delight.
You can watch selected excerpts from the programme on the Monteverdi String Band's website and a full recording of the concert at the Global Art Village website. The group also has plans to repeat the programme in the UK next year.
Elsewhere on this blog:
- Summer Listening: Craig Ogden's Summer Guitar - CD review
- Prom 47: Britten's War Requiem - concert review
- Chamber intensity: Werther at Grimeborn - opera reveiw
- Princely splendour: Sacred music from 18th century Rome - CD review
- The Rite as you've never heard it: Rite of Spring from Les Siecles - CD review
- Don't you know who I am: Preventing attacks of Grumpy Critic - feature article
- My beloved's voice: Sacred songs of Love from Jesus College - CD review
- Prom 37: Steve Reich - concert review
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