Claudio Monteverdi, sacred or secular?

L’Homme Armé
Giovanna Baviera, cantus
Marta Fumagalli, sextus
Andrés Montilla Acurero, altus
Paolo Fanciullacci, tenor
Riccardo Pisani, quintus
Gabriele Lombardi, bassus

La Pifarescha
Bruce Dickey, cornetto
Andrea Inghisciano, cornetto
Davide Brutti, cornetto
Mauro Morini, trombone
Andrea Perugi, organo

Fabio Lombardo, direttore

Tickets € 20 to be bought at the ticket office of the Teatro del Maggio or at https://www.maggiofiorentino.com/events/lume-alla-terra

The program is built around two important works by Monteverdi: the Missa in illo tempore, published in 1610 together with the very famous Vespro della Beata Vergine; the Sestina. Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata, a cycle of madrigals on a text by Scipione Agnelli, composed in memory of Caterina Martinelli, published in 1614 in the VI book of madrigals. Two different works in which the sacred and the profane take on different connotations. In the case of the mass, composed in the ancient style (but published together with the Vespro – the most modern composition conceivable at the time), we witness a true explosion of contrapuntal fantasy that seems aimed at creating the new with ancient instruments. In the cycle of madrigals for the death of Martinelli, a young singer who died prematurely during her stay at the court of Mantua, we are in the presence of a musical lament in dramatic form, but the particularities of the polyphonic writing are influenced by the whole new way of conceiving musical composition that in those years took the form of melodrama. To crown the program, conceived as an imaginary liturgy, a series of instrumental pieces by contemporary authors, colleagues or students of Monteverdi, entrusted to the magnificence of sound of the cornetto, the instrument that at the time was deemed closest to the human voice.