This was an indication of the radical approach taken to the music here, an impression soon born out by a male alto Clorinda and dramatic changes in tempo. Longhini employs a veritable army of thirty musicians for these CDs, providing a wonderful choice of textures. He has a complete consort of viols as well as a quartet of Baroque strings to choose between, while his continuo instruments include harpsichords, organs, theorbo, lirone, harp, guitar and trombone. The result is a much more operatic and suitably epic account of the work than I have ever heard before. The part of Cupid is taken appropriately by an excellent boy soprano Beniamino Borciani, although I found that the falsetto account of Venus grated. Notwithstanding, this expansive account of these proto-operas brings them firmly into the orbit of the great operatic masterpieces, and I found the approach utterly convincing.
Monteverdi Madrigals, Book 8
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M onteverdi's eighth and last book of madrigals, published in Venice in , differed significantly in scale and scope from all its predecessors. The 24 pieces contained in it went far beyond the conventional idea of what a madrigal was or could be and brought together pieces composed over the previous two decades; his seventh collection had appeared in The eighth book was intended as a statement of artistic principles and compositional authority as much as a homogeneous collection - musical language was then evolving rapidly and Monteverdi was keen to claim his priority over some technical devices. The symmetrical division of the series into "war-like" madrigals followed by the madrigals of love, was to a large extent artificial, though each half begins with large-scale settings of Marino and Petrarch and both go on to include a theatrical piece - the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda in the first part, the Lamento della Ninfa in the second.
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Composer or Director: Claudio Monteverdi. Madrigals, Book 8 Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi. Taking their cue from the prominent position allocated to his cherished genere concitato in both the preface and contents of the collection, Rinaldo Alessandrini has made an unusual selection of pieces in which this kind of writing, which in practice involves much rapid chordal repetition, triadic formulas and scale passages to imitate the sounds of war, is prominent. It is a brave choice. The rhetorical gestures of the genere concitato are few, simple, obvious and rapidly pall when over-used. Nor are they confined to the madrigali guerrieri alone, since the agitation caused by the pains of love can also call them up. Some of the speeds are surprising, almost extreme.
Madrigals, Book 8, SV — Monteverdi, Claudio This page is only for complete editions and multiple selections from the collection here. For arrangements, new editions, etc. Naxos Javascript not enabled. Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3. Work Title Madrigals, Book 8 Alt ernative. Ardo, avvampo, mi struggo, SV 8vv, 2vn 8.
