Il Pomo d'Oro & Giuseppe Maletto - Gesualdo: Sacræ Cantiones (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

The year 1603 marked a turning point for Carlo Gesualdo: at the age of thirty-seven, the Prince of Venosa, having made a name for himself with his first four books of madrigals, turned to sacred compositions with two substantial collections of Sacræ Cantiones, published that year in Naples by Costantino Vitale. The first volume (presented here) consists of nineteen five-part motets, while the second one, which has not survived in its entirety, contains the same number of six- part motets and a motet for seven voices. The references to sin and the pleas for forgiveness might suggest a personal desire for atonement: thirteen years previously, in 1590, Gesualdo had ordered the murder of his wife Maria d’Avalos and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, caught in flagrante delicto. But it is perhaps unwise to gauge the possible consequences of that tragic event four centuries later, when mentalities are not at all the same. Religion was very important to Gesualdo, and it was present in his own family, with a maternal uncle, Carlo Borromeo, who was canonised in 1610, and a paternal uncle, Alfonso Gesualdo, who was a Cardinal from 1561 until his death in 1603. In 1585, five years before the honour killing, Gesualdo, then aged nineteen, had published his first motet, Ne reminiscaris Domine delicta nostra (Remember not our faults, O Lord). Although this early attempt at sacred music displays no harmonic audacity, it already shows a subjective adherence to the penitential text. So, if we were unaware that the piece was written in the 1580s, we would tend to associate it with the guilt of having organised the killing of his wife – an interpretation that would be historically unfounded.

The two books of Sacræ Cantiones of 1603 pick up the thread of that early motet, but show a more mature style. We notice first of all Gesualdo’s desire to assert his technical mastery, then to infuse his polyphony with a highly subjective pathos that was generally absent from religious music of that time.

Tracklist:
01. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Ave Regina cœlorum
02. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Venit lumen tuum
03. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Ave, dulcissima Maria
04. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Reminiscere miserationum tuarum
05. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Dignare me laudare te
06. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Sancti Spiritus, Domine
07. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Domine, ne despicias deprecationem meam
08. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Hei mihi Domine
09. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Laboravi in gemitu meo
10. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Peccantem me quotidie
11. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: O vos omnes
12. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Exaudi, Deus, deprecationem meam
13. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Precibus et meritis
14. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: O Crux benedicta
15. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Tribularer si nescirem
16. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Deus, refugium et virtus
17. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Tribulationem et dolorem
18. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Illumina faciem tuam
19. Gesualdo: Sacrarum cantionum quinque vocibus, Liber primus: Maria, mater gratiæ


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