Search - Carlo Gesualdo, Sandro Gorli (b. 1948), Philippe Herreweghe :: Gesualdo: Sabbato Sancto Responsoria (Tenebrae Responses for Holy Saturday)/ Sandro Gorli: Requiem - Ensemble Vocal Europeen de la Chapelle Royale, Philippe Herreweghe

Final renaissance stravaganza

Leonardo | Argentina | 03/09/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For those who want to introduce to renaissance, please don`t begin with these. There are other options eg. madrigal history tour (king sngers), palestrina, lasso, josquin, victoria ... and then compare with gesualdo. Gesualdo writes in polyphonic style when renaissance was dying. But he does against all "formal" theory (palestrinian): he does not shape a constant sonic landscape (as palestrina does) but phrases every word, independing from other passages. This makes this the very first example of cubism IN THE BEGINNING OF XVII CENTURY !!!! Add that he charges everything with the saddests chromatisms possible in music!! Don`t listen to it if you are depressed: you even can commit suicide (the composer suffered from heavy melancholy and ordered him being flagellated). This is the epitome of a tortured soul. yes, music can be fascinating but not to begginers. Also note he wrote responsories for thursday, friday and saturday, here are only saturday settings. The rest of the disc offers 4 motets: while the first are (relatively) interesting, the others are dull. And there is a modern requiem, ohhhh, horrible. In ancient music there were big space in concerts and music playing to contemporary music. Now there is not (in general). Why? thanks to Schoenberg, atonalists, and those who wanted to write to differentiate from the past, be "original", "modern". All that got is a huge gap between common public and them. Who wants those horriblke effects??? Plesae, schoenberg died, atonalism should be only a musical resource together with tonality, if you can blend them in a novel but a universal way you can make high art and also popularity. In short this requiem is a work to forget. To sum up from 71 minutes only 40 (responsoria) are interesting (for the initiated). The performances could not be better: in ancient music, with Herreweghe you are in safe hands. I put 4 stars: he could have chosen more interesting fillers."