The Art of Melancholy

• Main performer: Ensemble Daedalus
• Booklet languages: English, French, German
• Libretto languages: Italian, English, French, German, Latin
• Time: 124:09
• Release Date: 2006

Review

This ambitious German release takes an unusual cross section of music from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which is conventionally divided up by composer, country, genre, or patron. Here the Ensemble Daedalus and its director Roberto Festa instead examine a single affect, melancholy, as it manifested itself in various places and contexts. Their findings are buttressed by a real intellectual heavyweight of a booklet, with several essays ranging from Aristotle through the medieval theory of the bodily humors up to Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus, and even beyond, touching in a detour on Renaissance conceptions of madness. The groupings of music made here are nevertheless likely to be controversial ones, but for the listener, especially one who is already in a melancholy mood, they're very exciting. There are two CDs in the package, one devoted entirely to instrumental music and the other vocal, accompanied in some cases by viols and occasionally by lute and/or recorder. The second disc contains madrigals from various places and times, with a version by Luis de Narvez of the canonical text in this discourse, Josquin's Mille regretz. All the music has that dolorous general mood, which might not be the thing for a peppy garden party but is likely to make a strong cumulative impact under the influence of intoxicants at three o'clock in the morning. The playing and singing are superb, flawlessly intoned, and smooth in the instrumental pieces, emotionally involved without going over the top.

The first CD is more problematical. It opens with the Dowland tune known variously as Lachrimae or Seven Teares, reworked into seven different versions -- to use Dowland's words, "figured in seaven passionate pauans, set for the Lute, Viols, or Violons by John Dowland," and introduced as a long meditation on melancholy. Many recordings contain one or two of these pieces; to hear all seven in a row is quite intense. The questionable move comes next; Festa introduces pieces written in the so-called Stile Fantastico, although he concedes that "we cannot maintain with certainty that the Stile Fantastico is derived from the musical grammar of the madrigal." Certainly works like the Consonante stravaganze of Giovanni Trabaci are related to the idea of melancholy, but there is also an aspect of intellectual play to them -- hinted at in the title of Francesco Soriano Romano's Il soprano scherzo col cromatico -- that is coming from somewhere else. A Gesualdo madrigal on the second disc might have tied the program together a bit more tightly -- but then, melancholy is not quite the word for Gesualdo, either. All of which goes to show the simultaneous slipperiness and fascination of the concepts involved on a disc that should probably be on any shelf of Renaissance music, if only for its sheer adventurousness. ~ James Manheim, Rovi

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae antiquae)	5:44
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae antiquae novae)	5:15
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae gementes)	5:15
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae tristes)	5:47
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae coactae)	5:15
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae amantis)	5:29
John Dowland	Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, for 5 viols/violins & lute (Lachrimae verae)	6:01
Giovanni Maria Trabaci	Conzonanze Stravaganti, for keyboard or ensemble	3:23
Giovanni Maria Trabaci	Gagliarda quinta cromatica à 5 detta Trabacina, for keyboard (Book 2)	2:17
Girolamo Frescobaldi	Capricci ... et arie in partitura, Vol.1 No.9, Capriccio Nono di durezze, for keyboard	2:53
Giovanni Salvatore	Durezze e ligature	3:37
Soriano Romano	Il soprano scherza col cromatico	1:43
Maurizio Cazzati	Alemana "detta la Ghisilardi", for ensemble	2:55
Maurizio Cazzati	Giga detta la Bargellina	4:07
Anonymous	Cor mio volonturioso	5:06
Josquin Desprez	Plaine de dueil, song for 5 parts	5:26
Luys de Narváez	Cancion del emperador, for vihuela	2:40
Cipriano de Rore	O sonno, madrigal	3:34
Juan Blas de Castro	Je suis tellement langoureus	5:58
Luca Marenzio	Se quel dolor che va inanzi al morire, madrigal for 6 voices (Il sesto libro de madrigali a 6 voci)	2:40
Orlande de Lassus	Work(s) (Christ, Dei soboles, prima pars / Accipe daque mihi, secunda pars (Magnus Opus Musicum))	3:40
Gioseppe Caimo	Piangete Valli	2:59
Orlande de Lassus	Work(s) (Timor tremor, prima pars / Exaudi Deus, secunda pars (Thesauri musicae tomus tertius; Nürnberg, J.)	4:00
Vincenzo Galilei	Così nel mio cantar	1:02
Vincenzo Galilei	Dura mia pietra viva	2:21
Nicola Vicentino	Solo e pensoso	2:16
John Wilbye	Draw On, Sweet Night, Best Friend unto Those Cares, madrigal	4:28
Luca Marenzio	Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi, madrigal for 5 voices (Il nono libro de madrigali a 5 voci)	4:37
Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger	Sonata seconda arpeggiata, for guitar & theorbo	2:01
Salomone Rossi	Queste lagrime amare	2:29
Maurizio Cazzati	Ballo "delle Ombre", for ensemble	4:20
Carlo Gesualdo	Mercè grido piangendo, madrigal for 5 voices (Book 5), W. 5/49	4:51

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