A musical representation of invisible things

Cipriano De Rore: I madrigali a cinque voci

Once again the Boston-based choir Blue Heron brings obscure ancient music to life in the most immediately satisfying way. This time the composer is Cipriano De Rore, a Flemish immigrant to northern Italy who published his Madrigali A Cinque Voci in 1542. The music is beautifully sung by a choir in perfect concord with itself and with this fascinating music from nearly 500 years ago. There's more to this album than this music, though. In a profusely illustrated 60-page liner notes booklet, we're treated to a full description of Cipriano's life, and a complete explanation by the distinguished scholar Jessie Ann Owens of how a complex puzzle, with many missing pieces, was assembled to allow a fuller understanding of this music. As well, Blue Heron Director Scott Metcalfe lets us in on the many decisions he had to make in interpreting Cipriano for this recording. There are details that only a choral scholar might understand, but the stories of both the genesis of the music and its modern performance are of great interest for even an amateur music lover. Metcalfe discusses, for example, the question of the high part in the madrigali. Though there are no records of how Cipriano's music was sung at the time, Metcalfe sets forth the options: "The Cantus might be sung by a woman, a man singing in falsetto, a castrato, or a boy." He then provides a detailed description of the performance context in mid-16th century Venice, with reference to the major singers of the time. In the end, for this performance, he splits the difference: half of the songs are sung by a soprano, and half by a counter-tenor.

One of the special things about this book of madrigals is the importance of the words; the literary merit of the poems Cipriano chose (or had chosen for him) to set to music is very high. Again, this is reflected in the liner notes, which include the complete poems in Italian and English. As well, each poem is read in Italian by Alessandro Quarta. This would be of primary interest to someone who understands Italian, of course, but even for those of us who don't, the readings are so expressive that one still gets some value. Metcalfe credits Quarta as well as a linguistic coach, who helped the singers "give the verses their proper rhetorical shape and force." Here is Quarta reading Petrarch's "La vita fuge", "Life is fleeting":



In his essay on Performance Style, Metcalfe includes a quote from Leonardo da Vinci's Paragone:

"Music, within its harmonious time, produces the sweet melodies generated by its various voices, while the poet is deprived of their specific harmonic action, and although poetry reaches the seat of judgment through the sense of hearing, like music, it cannot describe musical harmony, because the poet is not able to say different things at the same time, as is achieved in painting by the harmonious proportionality created by the various parts at the same time, so that their sweetness can be perceived at the same time, as a whole and in its parts, as a whole with regard to the composition, in particular with regard to the component parts. For these reasons the poet remains, in the representation of corporeal things, far behind the painter and, in the representation of invisible things, he remains behind the musician."

Metcalfe concludes that "a density of literal and non-literal meaning is, perhaps, a unique property of polyphonic music," and that is certainly in evidence in this marvellous album.