More madrigals

At the Tabaret Hall on Sunday afternoon I heard some once "very popular pieces of music ... their composers were almost the equivalent of today's pop and rock stars." That's what the choral director Antonio Llaca said about his choice of music for this Coro Vivo concert. It was madrigals again, not only English ones by Dowland, Morley, Ward and Weelkes, but also French madrigals by Claudin de Sermisy and early Spanish ones by Juan del Encina (a dramatist as well as a composer, who died in León around 1530).

The music

Tant que vivray was the first one on the programme, sung a capella; apparently Claudin's pieces always begin with a distinctive rhythm (this the choir demonstrated by singing "long-short-short-long" to us). The composer may have studied with Josquin des Prez, a name I remember from my old A-level Music textbook. Later on we heard two more of these French renaissance part-songs, accompanied by a trio of harp (Joanne Griffin playing what's reputedly "the only renaissance harp in Ottawa"), tenor recorder and viola da gamba. The song Au joli bois was deliberately sung in the old French pronunciation ("Au joli bouais ...").

Come again, by Dowland, was the first of the English madrigals, and for this, a sub-group of the 40-strong choir sang the verses while the remainder hummed along. (Madrigals should really all be performed by a very small number of singers.) The rock singer Sting likes this one! The words and music are quite explicit, the fourth line, for instance, a breathless, panting rise of pitch that goes over the top, as it were, on the word "die" ...

Come again! sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.

The Morley, Ward and Weelkes numbers were full of "fa-la-las," especially when the music became contrapuntal, and word-painting. The choir was asked to demonstrate the sound of the horns in Ward's A Satyr once did run away. Though their singing was good, this item was spoiled for me by the choir's peculiar pronunciation of "satyr" as say-tor. Maybe the Spanish-speaking director wasn't sure about it, although he did give a good translation for one of the Spanish madrigals, Qu'es de ti, desconsolado? –– "What happened to you, sad little guy?" This was a piece written in remembrance of the conquest of Granada from the Moors by the conquistadores, in the 1490s. Triste España sin ventura was a political one too, though not Hoy comamos y bebamos, meaning: let's feast and drink today (for tomorrow we fast), during which the choir pretended to be a noisy rabble between verses (although they hadn't dressed up like the people in this recording.)

That song would have been a good one to conclude with, but Coro Vivo's concert programme had been structured under headings––Armonía dell'amore, Armonía della festa, Armonía della tristezza, Armonía della patría––so in order to finish with a flourish, they gave us a repetition of Now is the month of Maying as an encore.

Footnote:

The word madrigal probably comes from "matricale" meaning “in the mother tongue” (rather than Latin).