Content
Giulio Caccini: Dalla porta d’oriente
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger: Toccata Prima
Giulio Caccini: Amor io parto
Giovanni G. Kapsberger: Seconda Arpeggiata
Alessandro Piccinini: Toccata V
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ti lascio anima mia
Giulio Caccini: Odi Euterpe
Sigismondo d’India: Ma che? Squallido e oscuro
Sigismondo d’India: Piange Madonna
Sigismondo d’India: Piangono al pianger mio
Benedetto Ferrari: Voglio di vita uscir
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger: Gagliarda
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ardo e taccio
Domenico Pellegrini: Chiaccona
Benedetto Ferrari: Amanti io vi so dire
About this CD
Seldom ever have ‘new musics’ demonstrated the freshness and boldness as shown at the beginning of the 17th century. In 1602 Giulio Caccini proposed, in the essay prefacing his Le Nuove Musiche, a new relationship between music and text; this could be summed up in the term sprezzatura, according to which the text moves to a primary position of importance. In combination with the emergent basso continuo, Caccini thus sowed the seed for the startling development of vocal genres in subsequent centuries.
This recording presents various facets of the new vocal art, beginning with works by Caccini himself, moving via stylish composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi or the madrigalian miracles of Sigismondo d’India to exhilarating works by the poet-composer Benedetto Ferrari, active in Venice and Vienna in the middle of the 17th century.
Rosa Domínguez interprets these works placing special emphasis on the text, prominently and enthusiastically stressing the ‘I’ of these poetic creations, generally the victim of amorous sufferings. The plentiful stanzas of these songs, dressed by an extremely flexible and imaginative basso continuo permit the telling of complete stories. By utilizing a limited means of support (just the two plucked strings instruments), the full deployment of vocal expressivity is encouraged, bringing into existence as a result new musical spaces in the line of what was imagined by Caccini and his ‘nuove musiche’.