Gagliano: Madrigals, Part 4

Series: Baroque Era  Publisher: A-R Editions
This edition is part of the collection Gagliano: Madrigals
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Marco da Gagliano
Madrigals, Part 4
Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1606)

Edited by Edmond Strainchamps

B221 Gagliano: Madrigals, Part 4
978-1-9872-0671-5 Full Score (2021) 9x12, xix + 92 pp.
$150.00
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B221
Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, the fourth of six books of madrigals by the Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, was published in 1606. The book is distinguished by the excellence of its music as well as by its varied settings of texts by some of the most celebrated poets of the day. Five of the madrigals use texts by Giovanni Battista Guarini, three by Giambattista Marino, one each by Gabriello Chiabrera, Cosimo Galletti, and Alsaldo Cebà, and a final two-part madrigal for six voices sets a sonnet by the great fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarca. In addition to fourteen madrigals by Gagliano, the book contains three by guest composers Luca Bati and Giovanni and Lorenzo Del Turco. Gagliano’s madrigals in book 4, in contrast with those of his earlier books, are lighter and show the clear influence of the contemporary canzonetta, which is manifested in their brevity; the discrete sectioning of the music, frequently with concurrent rests in all the voices that separate the presentation of individual poetic lines; the omnipresent syllabic setting of words; and the simpler and shorter motives that are most often presented in a homophonic texture. In some of these madrigals, motives shaped by the melody and rhythm of spoken language might serve well in monodies. Indeed, in his magisterial study of the madrigal, Alfred Einstein went so far as to suggest that some of these madrigals have the effect of polyphonic, imitative arrangements of Florentine monodies.
Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci
 Dedication
1. Luci vezzose e belle (Cosimo Galletti)
2. Troppo ben può questo tiranno Amore (Giovanni Battista Guarini)
3. Perfidissimo volto (Guarini)
4. Occhi, un tempo mia vita (Guarini)
5. Tutt’eri foco, Amore (Guarini)
6. O chiome erranti, o chiome (Giambattista Marino)
7. Ben quel puro candore (Marino)
8. Lumi, miei cari lumi (Guarini)
9. Hor che lunge da voi (Gabriello Chiabrera)
10. Fugge dal tuo bel viso (Ansaldo Cebà), Giovanni Del Turco
11. Per far nova rapina (Marino), Lorenzo Del Turco
12. Neve tu mi rassembri il mio bel ghiaccio, Luca Bati
13. Ecco l’alba, ecco il giorno hor ti risveglia
14. Ove sì lieti, o bel drappel d’amanti
15. Quel vivo sole ardente
16. I’ vo piangendo i miei passati tempi (Francesco Petrarca)
Edmond Strainchamps is an emeritus professor of music at the State University of New York and holds an appointment as resident scholar at Dartmouth College. His education, which was at Columbia University, led to his career in teaching (principally at NYU, Rutgers, and SUNY/Buffalo), which he combined with musicological research. He was for some years active as a serious jazz musician in Europe and the US, but ultimately preferred to make a career in academia. He has lived in both France and Italy and has returned to Europe, most often to Italy, for research into music and culture in the small princely courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially those of Mantua, Ferrara, and Florence. His research has been funded by a variety of grants, the most notable of which was a two-year appointment as a fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. His publications include five books and a number of scholarly articles, the most recent of which comprises an inventory of the historical music extant in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence and a partial inventory and study of music in the Florence duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore. “Madrigal,” his history of the madrigal in three centuries and the scholarly literature pertaining to it, is available in Oxford Bibliographies Online. At present he is at work on a book on music in Florence during the seicento.