The spiritual madrigals of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Music by Pier Luigi da Palestrina

Lunaensemble
Sofia Borraccino, soprano I
Celina Lanz, soprano II
Nicolò Accarpio, alto
Alessandro Borrini, tenor
Davide Lucchi, Giovanni Delvecchio, basses
Davide Merello, harpsichord

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Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Spiritual Madrigals represent a seminal collection of Italian Renaissance polyphony. Published primarily between 1581 and 1594, these pieces are essential for understanding the musical dualism of the era, combining refined secular madrigal technique with texts of profound religious devotion. The sensuality of the madrigal texts fails to appear as a literary digression on the pains of love, but is a lacerating pain that digs deep within. A gripping pain that clashes with the longed-for images of a friendly and persuasive nature, with the search for a blissful and captivating love. Paradoxically, if we read the incipits of these short madrigals one after the other, we obtain a new poetic text that circumscribes a state of profound spiritual crisis. We could define it, as Petrarch described Accidia, as “a fatal disease of the soul.” But what other feeling can animate man in a situation like the one we are experiencing today