With Il pianto della Madonna, a collection of spiritual compositions by Claudio Monteverdi, La Compagnia del Madrigale creates a vivid sound picture of the desire in Monteverdi’s own time to bring the “heavenly harmony” of the composer’s secular works into the service of the religious domain (and that despite Post-Tridentine restrictions on such secular “intrusions”).

This was the delicate operation carried out by the professor of rethoric at the University of Pavia, Aquilino Coppini, in his three collections entitled Musica tolta da i madrigali di Claudio Monteverde e fatta spirituale (Milan, 1607-1609). What Coppini was to do was to select certain madrigals by well-known contemporary composers, with a preference for those from the Quinto libro and Quarto libro of Monteverdi: whilst reproducing the musical notes exactly, he expressly created new Latin texts and took care to ensure that their formal and rethorical mode of expression would not be in conflict with the original poems.

(Marco Bizzarini)

We have been particularly moved to discover in the Pianto della Madonna a remarkable expressive charge that the new sacred context seems, at different points, almost to increase. Monteverdi’s own choice of including this re-elaboration in his final sacred collection was therefore not by chance.

For this recording, we have prepared a new edition by adapting the text – which comes to us in the single-voice version found in the Selva morale – to the polyphonic working of the Lamento d’Arianna from the Sesto libro.

(Giuseppe Maletto)

LA COMPAGNIA DEL MADRIGALE

Rossana Bertini, soprano
Francesca Cassinari, soprano
Elena Carzaniga, alto
Giuseppe Maletto, tenor
Raffaele Giordani, tenor
Marco Scavazza, baritone
Daniele Carnovich, bass
Luca Guglielmi, organ
Marta Graziolino, harp

with:
Paolo Borgonovo, tenor
Marco Ricagno, bass

Production details

Total playing time: 68:34
Recorded in Roletto (Chiesa al Colletto), Italy, in July-September 2014
Engineered by Giuseppe Maletto
Produced by CDM
Booklet essay by Marco Bizzarini
English – Français – Italiano – Deutsc

TRACKS

1 Pianto della Madonna – Iam moriar, mi fili
(Spiritual contrafactum of Lamento d’Arianna. Music: Sesto libro, 1614. Text: Selva Morale e Spirituale, 1640)
2 È questa vita un lampo
(Spiritual madrigal. Selva Morale e Spirituale, 1640)
3 Stabat virgo Maria
(Spiritual contrafactum of Era l’anima mia. Quinto libro, 1605)
4 Rutilante in nocte
(Spiritual contrafactum of Io mi son giovinetta. Quarto libro, 1603)
5 Toccata (Girolamo Frescobaldi)
(Fragment of Altro Recercar, Messa delli Apostolli. Fiori musicali, 1635)
6 Domine, ne in furore tuo
(Motet. Giulio Cesare Bianchi, Libro primo de’ motetti in lode d’Iddio, 1620)
7 Christe, adoramus te
(Motet. G. C. Bianchi, Libro primo de’ motetti in lode d’Iddio, 1620)
8 Cantate Domino
(Motet. G. C. Bianchi, Libro primo de’ motetti in lode d’Iddio, 1620)
9 Qui pependit in cruce
(Spiritual contrafactum of Ecco Silvio. Quinto libro, 1605)
10 Qui pietate tua
(Spiritual contrafactum of Ma se con la pietà. Quinto libro, 1605)
11 Maria, quid ploras
(Spiritual contrafactum of Dorinda ah! dirò mia. Quinto libro, 1605)
12 Te, Iesu Christe
(Spiritual contrafactum of Ecco piegando. Quinto libro, 1605)
13 Pulchrae sunt genae tuae
(Spiritual contrafactum of Ferir quel petto. Quinto libro, 1605)
14 Toccata (Girolamo Frescobaldi)
(Christe I, Messa delli Apostolli. Fiori musicali, 1635)
15 Adoramus te, Christe
(Motet. G. C. Bianchi, Libro primo de’ motetti in lode d’Iddio, 1620)
16 Letanie della Beata Vergine
(Motet. G. C. Bianchi, Libro secondo de’ motetti in lode della gloriosissima Vergine Maria, 1620)