Early Music America Spring 2013 - (Page 25)

Qual musico gentil, prima che chiara altamente la voce al canto snodi, a l’armonia gli animi altrui prepara con dolci ricercate in bassi modi, cosí costei, che ne la doglia amara già tutte non oblia l’arti e le frodi, fa di sospir breve concento in prima per dispor l’alma in cui le voci imprima. As a skilled singer, before clearly unleashing his voice on high in song, prepares his hearers’ souls for the harmony with sweet passages in a low register: So she, who in her bitter pain had not yet forgotten all her arts and wiles, first made a little concert of sighs, to prepare his soul in whom she would imprint her words. Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata (published 1581); XVI, 43 “Skillful”Singing and the Prelude in Renaissance Italy ITH THE VERSES ABOVE, the sorceress Armida prepares to address her lover, the warrior Rinaldo, who, after an amorous sojourn on her enchanted pleasure island, has been brought to his right senses by two fellow knights, and is escaping to take ship back to the battle for Jerusalem. Tasso’s epic account of the First Crusade is replete with wonderful episodes that inspired composers and painters: the sword fight between Clorinda and Tancredi, dramatized in music by Claudio Monteverdi; Erminia among the shepherds, painted by several important artists; and many stanzas set as madrigals by such masters as Luca Marenzio and Giaches de Wert. But what is fascinating about this particular passage, for early musicians, is Tasso’s simile comparing Armida’s delivery of her lament to that of a skilled, refined singer, who prepares the audience before he sings, softens their hearts with some improvised instrumental (or vocal) passages, a brief fantasy or prelude that does more than simply set the mood and mode of the song. Armida’s prelude to her own virtuosic performance (her speech goes on for eight stanzas!) consists of a little “concert of sighs”; might an accomplished singer’s moving lament be preceded by a polyphony of similar musical gestures, or some evocative chords in a “low register”? Examples from the stage come to mind: In Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo (1607), the instrumental ritornello introducing La Musica’s aria PHOTO: KATHY WITTMAN W Aaron Sheehan as Orfeo enchants Caronte in the Boston Early Music Festival production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in Boston’s Jordan Hall in November 2012. explores the cadences of its mode, preparing the listeners for her song, and Orfeo’s moving enchantment of Caronte is also introduced by a ritornello representing the sound of his lyre. In Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Monteverdi precedes Penelope’s moving lament with a prelude of a single C-minor chord repeated until she is on stage, ready to sing; his instructions read: “s’incomincia la seguente [sinfonia] mesta, alla bassa…” There begins the following sad sinfonia “alla bassa” (“in a bass register”, but also “by the basso continuo”): By Grant Herreid Early Music America Spring 2013 25

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Spring 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Profile: Peter Nothnagle Early Music Engineer
Musings: Best of the Year
Recording Reviews
"Skillful Singing" and the Prelude in Renaissance Italy
Almira: Handel's Fountain of Youth?
Tempesta di Mare: Making a Splash with Fasch
2013 Guide: Workshops & Festivals
What I Did at Summer Camp
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Teaching Recitative in Mexico

Early Music America Spring 2013