LAMENTO

We invite you to experience Lamento, a much beloved programme exploring the expressive depths of the Italian seicento. The Italian composers of that time had a profound fascination with the concept of the ground bass—and so do we! Composers from around 1600 embraced the repeated four-note “lamento” bass line, in both sacred and secular contexts. It offered singers a dramatic palette for grief, longing, desperation—or even madness, ideal for the dramatic roles of the brand new opera genre, and an exciting and colourful playground for the basso continuo groups of that time.

In the heart of this Lamento program we present four Maria lamentations, each portraying different aspects of Mary’s suffering beneath Jesu Cross: Tarquinio Merulas Hor ch’è tempo di dormire, a spiritual canzonetta based on a lullaby. It starts as a lullaby for the baby Jesus, and moves to Mary’s visions of Jesus’ future suffering: torture, the crown of thorns, Crucifixion, and death. In a very elegant way Merula merges Christmas and Easter settings—presenting Jesus both as newborn child and as the suffering man at the Cross—all expressed through the words of a mother.

Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna (1608) remains perhaps the most famous model of the lament genre. It is the only surviving fragment of his opera Arianna, and this lament left a huge impression on their first audience, reportedly bringing the audience to tears. In Monteverdis later church music collection Selva morale (1641) we find a Latin version of the lament, a Maria lamentation («Iam moriar, mi fili») to the same music.

Our next lament,“Pianto della Madonna” is written by Giovanni Felice Sances, who was among Europe’s most established composers. Written in the same year as Merula’s canzonetta (1638), Sances uses the medieval Stabat Mater text in Latin, as did numerous composers across centuries. It describes the passion story focussing on Mary’s experience and emotions, but it is not Mary’s words we listen to (like in Merula), these are the words of an observer, but the listener becomes witness and participant in Mary’s grief.

Finally, “Queste pungenti spine” (1637), written by Benedetto Ferrari, has again four descending notes in the bass line, this time using a major tonality, unusual for a lament, and a virtuoso narrative. In a very moving way it describes Jesus’ thorn crown, and it is a dialogue of a human with his own soul, reflecting over the passion story. Ferrari was one of the prominent figures of the early opera in Venice, a singer and poet, a theorbo player, and a highly influencial person of his time.

Instrumental pieces complement the vocal laments of this programme, for example the violin sonata “La Vinciolina” by Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli, an instrumental lament in stylus phantasticus (which even might be written with inspiration from Monteverdis lament!), and sonatas and solo pieces by Marco Uccellini, Isabella Leonarda, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, further revealing the creative diversity of the period.

The programme also embraces secular sorrow: love songs and opera arias tell stories of longing and betrayal, of burning hope and lost love. Our examples are Antonio Cestis «Alma mia» from his opera L’Argia, and Claudio Monteverdi’s Si dolce é il tormento that speaks of the bittersweet agony of loving somebody who does not return our love, themes that remain as emotionally compelling now as they were in the 17th century.

Astrid Kirschner