Responsories and Lamentations for Holy Saturday Tenebrae

GESUALDO VICTORIA Responsories and Lamentations fo r Holy Saturday Tenebrae – NIGEL SHORT GESUALDO VICTORIA 2 CARLO GESUALDO (c.1561–1613) TOMÁS LUIS DE VICTORIA (1548–1611) Responsories of the Office of Tenebrae for Holy Saturday Lamentations for Holy Saturday Tenebrae-Responsorien für den Karsamstag Lamentationen für den Karsamstag Répons de l’office des ténèbres du Samedi saint Lamentations pour le Samedi saint from Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia (1611) from Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae (1585) In primo nocturno In primo nocturno A Responsorium I: Sicut ovis ad occisionem 3:54 K Lectio I: Heth. Misericordiae Domini 5:52 B Responsorium II: Ierusalem, surge 3:43 L Lectio II: Aleph. Quomodo obscuratum 4:59 C Responsorium III: Plange quasi virgo 5:02 M Lectio III: Incipit oratio Ieremiae Prophetae 7:53 In secundo nocturno Exclusive digital track D Responsorium IV: Recessit pastor noster 3:56 E Responsorium V: O vos omnes 4:14 TOMÁS LUIS DE VICTORIA (attrib.) F Responsorium VI: Ecce quomodo moritur iustus 6:03 N Jesu, dulcis memoria 2:03 In tertia nocturno G Responsorium VII: Astiterunt reges terrae 2:29 H Responsorium VIII: Aestimatus sum 3:55 Tenebrae I Responsorium IX: Sepulto Domino 6:46 Soprano Zoë Brown · Grace Davidson * · Susanna Fairbairn * Emilia Hughes · Katie Trethewey · Amy Wood Alto David Allsopp · Daniel Collins · Martha McLorinan J Miserere 8:47 Tenor Benjamin Alden · Jeremy Budd * · Guy Cutting · David de Winter * from Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia (1611) Bass Gabriel Crouch * · William Gaunt · Giles Underwood * NIGEL SHORT director * denotes semi-chorus (Gesualdo) 5 3 MUSIC FOR HOLY SATURDAY BY GESUALDO AND VICTORIA n appreciation for great music is often placed on individual singers to convey emotion enhanced by an understanding of its context, through the varied powers of the human voice rather but in the case of Gesualdo, the perceived than the interaction of musical lines. Its pioneers were a significance of his troubled disposition – not Monteverdi, Peri and Caccini. By contrast, Gesualdo to mention that double murder (maybe continued to employ the old tools – five or six voices in you’ve heard?) – may just have got out of hand. The counterpoint, modal harmony (stretched to the limit, temptation to dramatize his story is understandableb– admittedly), no accompaniment – to place his eccentric witness two feature-length movies, at least six biog- autograph on the style most closely associated with raphies, ten operas and countless articles – but the the house of Este in Ferrara, and which was forged by plain truth is lurid enough and ultimately more the “Mannerists” Luca Marenzio, Luzzasco Luzzaschi instructive: although Gesualdo wrote music in outra- and Giaches de Wert. geous defiance of logic and convention, he was not Mannerism was the perfect ideology for a man of the only composer in southern Italy who favoured a Gesualdo’s volatile disposition and vivid imagination. musical shock tactic; although he lived in partial Its architecture, literature, art and music were full of estrangement from society after 1590 (the year of his whimsical folly and dramatic hyperbole, and Gesualdo crime passionnel), that didn’t stop him from enthusi- would have felt encouraged to pour out his rage, grief, astically courting the musical world; and although he guilt and ardour to the last drop. But though he was not certainly was a premier-grade sadomasochistic aris- the musical lone ranger the stories sometimes depict, tocrat, with any number of perversions, as a com- Gesualdo certainly pushed the permissive nature of poser he was actually – at least in some respects – Mannerism well beyond the posturing of his peers. considered “conservative”. Where others seasoned their music with an element of At the start of the 17th century, Italian music was surprise, Gesualdo seems intent on distorting every leading the world away from the edifices of Renais- musical line with huge intervallic leaps, shattering sance polyphony. A new era of melody and accompani- every pianissimo with a furious cascade of semiqua- ment was dawning in which the dramatic burden was vers (16th notes) and spoiling every logical harmonic 6 4 progression with some piece of chromatic invention. In cade of scales moving in contrary motion to depict the sense of drama. As a listener, fulfillment comes from predictable, that we are in the safe hands of a com- fact, the surprise comes in the perfect cadences and word “liber” – “free” – in the repeated respond section, the symmetry of his architecture, whether consciously poser who will look after our voices, our need for breath, the moments of stillness: by offering us these occa- even though the context is anything but ecstatic. The perceived or not. As a singer, it comes from the sense and our desire to sing beautiful lines. sional moments of musical reprieve Gesualdo is able savage contrasts which adorn all of Gesualdo’s works that everything is “where it should be” without being Gabriel Crouch to create a pathos no other composer of his era could are never more masterfully employed than here. match. We may notice the unhinged moments first, but Take also the mind-bending shifts of tonality in ultimately it is the craft that lingers. “Destruxit quidem claustra”, the verse section of the The Tenebrae Responsories, which he published in fourth responsory Recessit pastor noster, in which the 1611, are his masterpiece. In these settings of the nine composer depicts the destructive battle between Christ responsories for each of the three most solemn days of and the Devil. The sense of chaos is all the more pal- Holy Week, he uses his vivid madrigalian language, pable because of the relative gentility of the responso- honed by a quarter-century of practice, to capture ry’s opening, which depicts Christ as “fons aquae vivae” Christ’s Passion with almost unbearable directness. The (“the fount of living water”) in almost pastoral tones. settings for Maundy Thursday are the most tortured, And where solemnity and resignation are the only plau- lingering repeatedly on the betrayal of Judas and, by sible approach, as in the final responsory Sepulto association, the guilt of all mankind. And whilst the Domino, which contemplates the interred body of twisting harmonies and jagged emotional threads con- Christ, Gesualdo shakes off all the furtive twitches and tinue through the next two days, Gesualdo adds a pro- restlessness of previous passages and writes such sus- found and tangible darkness to the responsories for tained and exquisite polyphony that we cannot possibly Holy Saturday recorded here. This is nowhere more doubt either the seriousness of his intent or the full evident than in the extraordinary verse “Posuerunt me” extent of his genius. that separates the respond sections (“Factus sum sicut Victoria’s Lamentations, also for Holy Saturday, sit homo”) of the eighth responsory Aestimatus sum. Four conveniently adjacent to Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Respon- voices at the extremes of the register depict the lower- sories in this recording, and since he died only two ing of the soul into the deepest lake of darkness. At the years earlier (in the year of the Gesualdo’s publication), word “darkness” (“tenebrosis”) Gesualdo employs a it forms a worthy point of polar comparison. The wonder simple little slide from E minor to E flat major, and in of Victoria’s music lies in his perfection of everything doing so pulls us into the grave and holds us there for Gesualdo flouted: it is ideally in proportion and woven all four of the word’s painfully slow syllables. In a few in immaculate counterpoint; there is beauty in the shape seconds, we are launched again into the ecstatic cas- of every line and, here and there, a discreet and tasteful 5 lische Einzelgänger war, als den man ihn vielfach port- jedes Pianissimo mit furiosen Sechzehntel-Kaskaden Musik zum Karsamstag rätiert, führte Gesualdo den eigentlich doch flexiblen zu überhäufen und jede logische harmonische Fort- von Gesualdo und Victoria Manierismus bis an seine Grenzen, weit mehr noch als schreitung mit chromatischen Einfällen zu stören. Der seine Zeitgenossen. Während andere ihre Kompositio- eigentliche Überraschungseffekt stellt sich aber in den nen mit Überraschungselementen würzten, scheint vollkommenen Kadenzen und in den Momenten der as Wissen um die biografischen Hintergrün- Zu Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts führte Italien die Gesualdo darauf erpicht gewesen zu sein, jede musika- Ruhe ein: Da Gesualdo seinem Zuhörer diese gelegent- de eines Musikwerks trägt bestimmt zu bes- Musik aus dem Reich der Renaissance-Polyfonie in eine lische Linie mit großen Intervallsprüngen zu verzerren, lichen musikalischen Erholungspausen gönnt, klingen serem Verständnis und größerer Wertschät- neue Welt. Eine Ära der Melodie und ihrer Begleitung seine Werke weitaus pathetischer als die anderer D zung bei. In Gesualdos Fall jedoch hat man brach an, in der einzelne Sänger die Last des Ausdrucks Nigel Short Komponisten dieser Zeit. Die verstörenden Elemente die schwierige Persönlichkeit des Kompo- auf ihren Schultern trugen und die Emotionen stärker bemerken wir zuerst, letztlich ist es aber die Kunst- nisten sicherlich etwas überbewertet, ganz zu schwei- über die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten der menschlichen fertigkeit, die nachwirkt. gen von der immer wieder gern zitierten Geschichte Stimme als über die Interaktion musikalischer Linien Die 1611 veröffentlichten Tenebrae-Responsorien des von ihm begangenen Doppelmordes. Die

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