Gesualdo: 10 madrigals

Day 296

Gesualdo: 10 madrigals from book 6

Delitiae Musicae 

Gesualdo is know for two things - the fact that he murdered his wife and the extreme chromaticism in his music. I had heard the odd snippet from some of his madrigals as examples of his harmonic daring but I don’t think that I had ever properly listened to any of his music.

I found these madrigals very tiring to listen to. I had planned to listen to the whole of book 6 (it contains 23 madrigals) but after ten of them I had had enough. The extremes of dissonance that Gesualdo are astonishing even now - goodness knows  what they must have sounded like to listeners in the early 17th century. But the problem I had was that the actual music invention seemed quite thin. There was no real shape to the music, no obviously attractive melodic material and the rhythms seemed all over the place.

My appreciation was not helped by the performance I listened to. This CD has been widely praised in reviews but it seemed to me that in trying to squeeze the last ounce of expression out of the music the performers sucked any life out of these scores. It would I think have been better to have left the music to speak for itself. The very dramatic pauses, rhythmic shapelessness and extremes of dynamic contrast did the music no favours. And the rather ‘hooting’ sound of the countertenor on the top line started to be grating very quickly.

This music will always have a fascination because of its harmonic daring, but I am not sure that it is music that I would want to hear very often.