Gagliano: Madrigals, Part 5
Series: Baroque Era Publisher: A-R Editions
This edition is part of the collection Gagliano: Madrigals
Madrigals, Part 5
Il quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1608)
Edited by Edmond Strainchamps
B222 Gagliano: Madrigals, Part 5
978-1-9872-0673-9
Full Score (2021)
9x12, xviii + 72 pp.
$120.00
In stock
SKU
B222
Marco da Gagliano’s Quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci was published in October 1608, a little less than two years after his previous book. It contains fourteen madrigals for five voices and one for seven, all composed by Gagliano. The poets represented include Giambattista Marino, Giovanbattista Strozzi, both the older and the younger, Cosimo Galletti, and Ottavio Rinuccini. The madrigals of book 5 are quite varied in their style and their treatment of text. Many are light and remarkably concise, like the canzonetta-influenced madrigals of the Quarto libro, and most often set text syllabically to shorter rhythmic values in motives that alternate between homophony (or near homophony) and polyphony, imitative or nonimitative. Some, however, set poetry very differently. A three-part setting of a Marino sonnet, for instance, is filled with virtuoso melisma, probably intended for the professional singers of the Medici court. Book 5 also includes a concertato madrigal for seven singers and basso continuo that bears the prescriptive direction “per cantare e sonare" (for voices and instruments) in the basso partbook. Although there is no notational indication of instruments, the basso part lacks text for several measures, and it is likely that it was performed with improvised chords on an instrument. The book also contains two threnodies for Count Cammillo della Gheradesca that are in a somber and more traditional polyphony and contrast with the rest of the book’s contents.
Il quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci
Dedication
1. Vago, amoroso dio (Giovanbattista Strozzi the older)
2. Qui rise, o Tirsi, e qui ver me rivolse (Giambattista Marino)
3. Fuss’io pur degno, Amore (Giovanbattista Strozzi the younger)
4. Care pupille amate
5. Sospir fugace e leve (Ottavio Rinuccini)
6. Spera, infelice, spera (Cosimo Galletti)
7. Fuggi tua speme, fuggi
8. Mori, mi dici, e mentre (Giambattista Marino)
9. Hor ch’io t’ho dato ’l core
10. Felicissimo fiore
11. Se già ritrosa mi fuggisti e schiva
12. Su la sponda del Tebro humida herbosa (Giambattista Marino)
13. Vattene o felic’alma
14. Seccassi, giunta a sera, in un momento
15. Altri, di beltà vaga
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.