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Tainted Love

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Love is patient; love is kind…except when it’s anything but! Some sweet nothings have sour endings, and sometimes that box of chocolates proves to be a bitter pill. Love’s gone bad this hour on Harmonia, as we explore music by—and for—the brokenhearted: Toil and trouble in cupid’s domain, plus a sweet featured release called Doulce Memoire.

I burn, I burn, in flames I melt
Claudio Monteverdi wrote nine books of madrigals, many of which describe the turbulence of love. In his madrigal “Ardo, Ardo, Avvampo mi Struggo” (“I burn, I burn, in flames I melt.”) love is, quite literally, a disaster: “Bring ladders, axes, hammers, water,” the singers urge, “tell everyone of the danger!”

According to the text, there’s only one cure for tainted love: “Let your heart become ashes, and be silent.”

Misadventures in love

If seventeenth-century Italian composer Alessandro Stradella had been alive today, he might have been a regular in the tabloids. Stradella’s amorous adventures included consorting with actresses, running away with, (and then being forced to marry), another man’s mistress, and extorting money from a rich and elderly woman by promising to find her a husband.

At the age of 42, Stradella was found dead. He’d been stabbed, his body mutilated. The assassin was never found, but evidence suggests the motive was a woman. (No surprise there!)

Stradella’s music is almost as stormy as his love life, as you can hear from the opening notes of our next piece, the Sinfonia No. 22 for violin, violone, and continuo in D minor.

From death by love to love as pain: Medieval poet and musician Guillame de Machaut’s masterpiece Remede de Fortune, or “The Cure for Ill Fortune,” depicts the poet’s titanic struggle with his love for an unnamed woman. He tries to profess his love but isn’t brave enough.

Eventually things look up for our hero, but there’s trouble along the way, including an episode of bitter jealously. Love, Machaut asserts, is “a sweet pain to bear.”

Let’s hear music from Remede de Fortune, a Baladelle, “En Amer A Douce Vie”.

 
Love gone bad…or love that was never very good in the first place?
By all accounts, the marriages of Carlo Gesualdo, the Italian aristocrat and composer, were spectacularly unhappy. A difficult man who whipped himself for recreation, Gesualdo conducted multiple affairs, so many that his second wife, fed up, had two of Gesualdo’s mistresses prosecuted for witchcraft.

Of course, Gesualdo held his wives to a rigorous double standard: the story goes that he murdered his first wife after discovering her in bed with her lover.

Complexity and contradiction are obvious in Gesualdo’s music; his madrigals, especially, are filled with jagged harmonies. We’ll hear a madrigal by Gesualdo, “Tu m’uccidi, oh crudel,” along with some sacred music from the so-called dark prince.

From tainted love to forbidden love: the middle-aged French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully’s affair with a young page in royal service, conducted none too quietly, was frowned upon by King Louis the Fourteenth. In an attempt to distance himself from scandal, the King failed to invite Lully, his former darling and one of the founders of French opera, to perform the composer’s latest tragedy, Armide, at Versailles. Lully oversaw the successful premiere of his opera elsewhere, but the king never would attend.

Let’s hear the finale from Armide, Le perfide Renaud me fuit. The enchantress Armide, helplessly in love with the knight Renaud, laments that he is gone and she is left alone.

Love forbidden 

Composer Giaches de Wert couldn’t win! After his wife, Lucrezia, was seduced by a fellow composer as part of a political plot and died in prison, de Wert was censured as a cuckold. Soon after, he began a lengthy affair with widow and lady-in-waiting Tarquinia Molza, a talented musician in her own right.

But this romance was frowned upon for crossing class lines; de Wert, a poor man of no family, was considered an inappropriate match for minor aristocrat Molza. Their liaison may have been scandalous, but de Wert cared deeply for his forbidden lady, composing many love letters and—that ultimate sign of affection—jousting while wearing her colors.

Sometimes, after love, comes heartbreak, and there are few more poignant musical heartbreaks than Monteverdi’s madrigal “Lamento della Ninfa,” or the nymph’s lament, based on a text by Ottavio Rinuccini. A chorus of shepherds provides commentary as a solo soprano voice bewails her lover’s faithlessness: “A more serene eyebrow has she than mine,” the nymph says of her rival. The shepherds sum up love’s paradox: “Thus, in loving hearts, love mingles flame and ice.”

Featured CD: The Sweet Memory

Our featured release is a 2014 recording from viola da gambist Margaret Little and lutenist Sylvain Bergeron. The CD takes as its title, Doulce Memoire—a 16th-century chanson by Pierre Sandrin whose text tells of the sweet memory (the doulce memoire) of steadfast love now lost.

The enormously popular song was revamped and elaborated by numerous composers who arranged versions of it for all sorts of instruments. Coming up, we’ll hear two of those arrangements: first, a 1539 duo by Francois Layolle, and then some early 17th-century diminutions on the “doulce memoire” tune by Vincenzo Bonizzi.

Flower heart, broken.

Love is patient; love is kind…except when it’s anything but! Some sweet nothings have sour endings, and sometimes that box of chocolates proves to be a bitter pill. Love’s gone bad this hour on Harmonia, as we explore music by—and for—the brokenhearted: Toil and trouble in cupid’s domain, plus a sweet featured release called Doulce Memoire.


I burn, I burn, in flames I melt

Claudio Monteverdi wrote nine books of madrigals, many of which describe the turbulence of love. In his madrigal “Ardo, Ardo, Avvampo mi Struggo” (“I burn, I burn, in flames I melt.”) love is, quite literally, a disaster: “Bring ladders, axes, hammers, water,” the singers urge, “tell everyone of the danger!”

MUSIC TRACK
Claudio Monteverd: Lamento della Ninfa
Concerto Italiano
Naïve 2008
Claudio Monteverdi:
Tr. 17 Ardo, Ardo, Avvampo, mi Struggo (4:18)

According to the text, there’s only one cure for tainted love: “Let your heart become ashes, and be silent.”


Misadventures in love

If seventeenth-century Italian composer Alessandro Stradella had been alive today, he might have been a regular in the tabloids. Stradella’s amorous adventures included consorting with actresses, running away with, (and then being forced to marry), another man’s mistress, and extorting money from a rich and elderly woman by promising to find her a husband.

At the age of 42, Stradella was found dead. He’d been stabbed, his body mutilated. The assassin was never found, but evidence suggests the motive was a woman. (No surprise there!)

Stradella’s music is almost as stormy as his love life, as you can hear from the opening notes of our next piece, the Sinfonia No. 22 for violin, violone, and continuo in D minor.

MUSIC TRACK
Simfoniae Romanae
Accademia per Musica
Capriccio 2003
Alessandro Stradella
Tr. 2 Sinfonia No. 22 for violin, violone or cello and Continuo in D (8:23)

From death by love to love as pain: Medieval poet and musician Guillame de Machaut’s masterpiece Remede de Fortune, or “The Cure for Ill Fortune,” depicts the poet’s titanic struggle with his love for an unnamed woman. He tries to profess his love but isn’t brave enough.

Eventually things look up for our hero, but there’s trouble along the way, including an episode of bitter jealously. Love, Machaut asserts, is “a sweet pain to bear.”

Let’s hear music from Remede de Fortune, a Baladelle, “En Amer A Douce Vie”.

MUSIC TRACK
Machaut: Remede de Fortune
Ensemble Project Ars Nova
New Albion 2009 B000QZW8ZE / B000000R3S
Guillame de Machaut
6. Baladelle: En Amer A Douce Vie (4'13'')


:29 Floating Break Music Bed: Love, Revelry and The Dance in Medieval Music, Millenarium, Ricercar 2012, D1, Tr 8: La nova estampida real (Anon.) (excerpt of 4:42) 


Love gone bad…or love that was never very good in the first place?

By all accounts, the marriages of Carlo Gesualdo, the Italian aristocrat and composer, were spectacularly unhappy. A difficult man who whipped himself for recreation, Gesualdo conducted multiple affairs, so many that his second wife, fed up, had two of Gesualdo’s mistresses prosecuted for witchcraft.

Of course, Gesualdo held his wives to a rigorous double standard: the story goes that he murdered his first wife after discovering her in bed with her lover.

Complexity and contradiction are obvious in Gesualdo’s music; his madrigals, especially, are filled with jagged harmonies. We’ll hear a madrigal by Gesualdo, “Tu m’uccidi, oh crudel,” along with some sacred music from the so-called dark prince.

MUSIC TRACK
Gesualdo: Madrigals Book 5
La Venexiana
Glossa 2005 B0007IP5HI CD
Carlo Gesualdo
Tr. 15 Tu m'uccidi, oh crudele (3'47'')

MUSIC TRACK
Gesualdo: Complete Sacred Music for Five Voices
Oxford Camerata, Jeremy Summerly
Naxos 1996 B000QQR0TW / B0000013XI
Carlo Gesualdo
19. Ave Regina coelorum (4'06'')

From tainted love to forbidden love: the middle-aged French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully’s affair with a young page in royal service, conducted none too quietly, was frowned upon by King Louis the Fourteenth. In an attempt to distance himself from scandal, the King failed to invite Lully, his former darling and one of the founders of French opera, to perform the composer’s latest tragedy, Armide, at Versailles. Lully oversaw the successful premiere of his opera elsewhere, but the king never would attend.

Let’s hear the finale from Armide, Le perfide Renaud me fuit. The enchantress Armide, helplessly in love with the knight Renaud, laments that he is gone and she is left alone.

MUSIC TRACK
Armide
Opera Lafayette
Naxos 2008 B001F1YBYY CD
Jean-Baptiste Lully
D. 2, Tr. 14Armide: Act V Scene 5: Le perfide Renaud me fuit (Armide) (4'43'')


MIDPOINT BREAK

Theme Music Bed: Danse Royale, Ensemble Alcatraz, Elektra Nonesuch 79240-2 1992 B000005J0B, T.12: La Prime Estampie Royal

:59 Midpoint Break Music Bed: Love, Revelry and The Dance in Medieval Music, Millenarium, Ricercar 2012, D1, Tr 4: Comminciamento di gioia (Anon.) (excerpt of 5:19)


Love forbidden

Composer Giaches de Wert couldn’t win! After his wife, Lucrezia, was seduced by a fellow composer as part of a political plot and died in prison, de Wert was censured as a cuckold. Soon after, he began a lengthy affair with widow and lady-in-waiting Tarquinia Molza, a talented musician in her own right.

But this romance was frowned upon for crossing class lines; de Wert, a poor man of no family, was considered an inappropriate match for minor aristocrat Molza. Their liaison may have been scandalous, but de Wert cared deeply for his forbidden lady, composing many love letters and—that ultimate sign of affection—jousting while wearing her colors.

MUSIC TRACK
De La Rue, De Wert
Ars Nova
1986 Kontrapunkt B002RA5W6S / B000027TRA
Giaches de Wert
Tr. 6 Vox in Rama (4:08)

Sometimes, after love, comes heartbreak, and there are few more poignant musical heartbreaks than Monteverdi’s madrigal “Lamento della Ninfa,” or the nymph’s lament, based on a text by Ottavio Rinuccini. A chorus of shepherds provides commentary as a solo soprano voice bewails her lover’s faithlessness: “A more serene eyebrow has she than mine,” the nymph says of her rival. The shepherds sum up love’s paradox: “Thus, in loving hearts, love mingles flame and ice.”

MUSIC TRACKS
Claudio Monteverd: Lamento della Ninfa
Concerto Italiano
Naïve 2008 B002EUSQLE / B0014GIZ4C
Claudio Monteverdi:
Tr. 3 Lamento della Ninfa (Non Avea Febo Ancora) (1'25'')
Tr. 4 Lamento della Ninfa ("Amor", Dicea / Si Tra Sdegnosi Pianti) (3'19'')


:29 Floating Break Music Bed: Love, Revelry and The Dance in Medieval Music, Millenarium, Ricercar 2012, D1, Tr 1: Dananza amorosa (Anon.) (excerpt of 4:20)


Featured CD: The Sweet Memory

Our featured release is a 2014 recording from viola da gambist Margaret Little and lutenist Sylvain Bergeron. The CD takes as its title, Doulce Memoire—a 16th-century chanson by Pierre Sandrin whose text tells of the sweet memory (the doulce memoire) of steadfast love now lost.

The enormously popular song was revamped and elaborated by numerous composers who arranged versions of it for all sorts of instruments. Coming up, we’ll hear two of those arrangements: first, a 1539 duo by Francois Layolle, and then some early 17th-century diminutions on the “doulce memoire” tune by Vincenzo Bonizzi.

MUSIC TRACKS
Doulce Memoire
Sylvain Bergeron and Margaret Little
ATMA Classique (2014) B00I0VTP1Q
Tr. 5 (Francois de Layolle) Duo: Doulce Memoire (2:01)
Tr. 16 (Vincenzo Bonizzi) Dolce Memoy (6:03) 


Conclusion

The writers for this edition of Harmonia are Anne Timberlake and Janelle Davis.

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