CAPELLA DE MINISTRERS & Carles Magraner (ES)

Arie & lamenti

Beatriz Lafont, soprano & baroque guitar*
Carles Magraner, viola da gamba
Manuel Minguillón, baroque guitar & theorbo

Music by Sigismondo d´India, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Diego Ortiz, Luigi Rossi

The Camerata Fiorentina began meeting in 1573 at Count Bardi's house to imagine what theatre would have been like in classical antiquity. Its members included Giulio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei). They were influenced by the Greek antiquity scholar Girolamo Mai, who argued that Greek tragedy had been predominantly sung, which led them to try to recreate its sound. It was there that Sigismondo D'India was inspired, as he reflects in the preface that introduces the gentle reader to his first book of music for solo singing published in Milan in February 1609.

Moved by that desire, which naturally nestles in us, from my earliest childhood I sought to converse with intelligent men about music and, from their learned conversation, to learn what I wished to know, both about composing for several voices and for solo songs. I discovered that one could truly compose with extraordinary intervals, passing with the greatest possible novelty from one consonance to another, according to the variety of meanings in the words, and that by this method the songs had a greater effect and a greater power to move the passions of the soul.

The ‘Nobile Palermitano’ began his life in the Sicilian capital probably in 1582, receiving a musical education in Naples at the end of the 16th century, when Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni de Macque, masters of the chromatic style, were active in the city. The music we hear in this concert comes from the five books that Sigismondo described as ‘music for solo singing’. These books offer an exploration of all forms of accompanied monody and duets: arias, bass ostinato, laments, sonnets and canzonets. Perhaps no one has gone as far as Sigismondo in expressing the dramatic power of words through the use of extreme chromaticism in compositions for solo voice and continuo. Especially in the lamentations of unfortunate lovers, he twists melody and harmony by stretching them by a semitone to give power and reality to the sense of pain. His dramatic and theatrical feeling places him among the great Italian composers of the time and his long, tormented laments (Olympia, Dido) would fit perfectly into an opera. Sigismondo was also the author of some of the texts he set to music, but he was mainly inspired by the best contemporary poets (Rinuccini, Guarini and Marino) and, naturally, by Petrarch. At the end of the 16th century, the desire - eternally present in Western culture - was to return to the grandeur and power of the music of the ancient Greeks; the dream of Orpheus' renaissance took the form of accompanied monodies. The concert is complemented by an inspiration in the manner of Frescobaldi's early music and other instrumental works by Kapsberger, Diego Ortiz and Luigi Rossi.

Tickets: 220 DKK / students 120 DKK online or in the door from 15.30.

COPENHAGEN RENAISSANCE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2024 støttes af Statens Kunstfond, Københavns Kommune, William Demant Fonden, Augustinus Fonden, Nørrebro Lokaludvalg.

Samarbejdspartnere: Musica Ficta, KoncertKirken, Reformert kirke, Danmarks Radio.

Netværk: REMA.