Clare College Music Society
Lunchtime Recital Series
ST I LE
R A P P R E S E N TAT I V O
D R A M AT I C M U S I C F R O M
1 7 T H C E N T U R Y I TA LY & E N G L A N D
Alana Mailes Soprano
Dionysios Kyropoulos Bass
James Bramley Theorbo
Mie Ito Baroque harp
Leo Tolkin Viola da gamba
Monday 10th February 2014, 1.15pm
CLARE COLLEGE CHAPEL
S T I L E
R A P P R E S E N TAT I V O
Angelo Notari
(c.1566-1663)
Giulio Caccini
(1551-1618)
Claudio Monteverdi
(1567-1643)
Tarquinio Merula
(1595- 1665)
Henry Purcell
(1659-1695)
Hieronymus Kapsperger
(1580-1651)
Benedetto Ferrari
Che farai Meliseo
!
Filli, mirando il ciel
!
Ed è pur dunque vero
!
Hor ch’è tempo di dormire
!
She that would gain a faithful lover
!
Lost is my quiet
!
Preludio & Canario
!
Amanti, io vi sò dire
(1603-1681)
!
We begin with the founding of the fifteen year-old Prince Henry’s household in the winter of 1609-10.
As the eldest son of James I and first male heir to the throne for a century, the occasion was celebrated as
a renaissance with the latest of styles. His musicians were the first new group added to the royal music
since Henry VIII’s reign, and consisted of mixed ensembles with groups of plucked instruments - a
feature of progressive musical circles in Italy at the time. Among them was Angelo Notari who possibly
arrived in England with the prince’s Florentine architect. His Prime musiche nuove (London, 1613) is
modelled on the likes of Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1602), consisting of monodies and
canzonettas with basso continuo accompaniment for ‘la Tiorba et altri Strumenti’. Che farai Meliseo sets
a text from Sannazaro’s influential Arcadia (c.1480), and sees the protagonist lamenting the lost love of
the nymph Filli. This flourishing of new Italianate tastes around the young Prince Henry was cut short
when he died two years later at the age of eighteen. Notari, however, lived on in to his late nineties,
serving in lesser roles at the courts of Charles I and II.
In his preface to Le nuove musiche, Caccini clearly defines the new course that music was starting
to take: ‘[it] is nothing other than text, then rhythm, and lastly sound’. Filli, mirando il ciel opens with a
narrator describing the fate of a different Filli, before taking on her character. Married to Demohpon,
King of Athens and son of Theseus on his way back from the Trojan War, she was soon abandoned by
him as he left to return home to his father. It was Caccini’s fellow Florentine Camerata member Jacopo
Peri who coined the term ‘stile rappresentativo’ (theatrical style) in the preface to his L’Euridice. With
polyphony of the previous generations becoming progressively more impenetrable, it was sensed that any
real expression was lost. The Camerata looked back to ancient Greece and concluded that a single
melody line (monody) with all the inflections of human speech would serve to directly move the listener
better. And so the first ‘operas’ were born.
Claudio Monteverdi’s first book of Scherzi musicali (Venice, 1607) is often cited as a manifesto for
this new ‘second practice’. It is here he famously states that composers should ‘make the words the
mistress of the music, and not the servant’. With their strong melodic lines and repetitive strophic form,
the Scherzi had a direct emotional impact and immense popular appeal. Such songs had always existed in
more lowly forms, but had been neglected by erudite composers of high polyphony. For a composer of
Monteverdi’s standing to embrace this form was exceptional. Furthermore, there was no better place for
this than the powerful, liberal and cosmopolitan carnival city of Venice, where Monteverdi was a
fashionable name. While his first book of Scherzi contains mostly block chord bacchanalian love songs for
three voices, we find more refined models his 1632 book. Here he makes full use of the humanist trends
towards monody, but now with mostly anonymous and more profound texts. Ed è pur dunque vero
(‘And so it is true’) tells of another abandoned lover whose only solace is to face a precipitous death
without fear. Tarquinio Merula was born into a world where the ‘second practice’ was soon becoming
second nature. His remarkable and inventive instrumental works were greatly influential, but equally
creative are the mix of sacred and secular solo songs found in Curtio precipitatio et altre capricii (Venice,
1638). Hor ch’è tempo di dormire is a hauntingly simple lullaby, with Mary rocking the baby Jesus to
sleep as she tells of his troubled life that lies ahead.
Back in England, where the planting of pure Italianate tastes had not been completely successful,
music was taking its own course in a distinctly tuneful manner. Henry Purcell’s creativity and balance of
influences led to a uniquely ‘English’ sound. His collaboration with stage writers and producers made him
a household name in London, with many of his skilfully word-painted tunes anthologised during his
lifetime and immediately after in collections such as Delitæ Musicæ and Orpheus Britannicus. The Canario,
or canaries as it became known in England, was a flirtations stamping dance of Spanish origin, popular
throughout Renaissance and early Baroque Europe. Hieronymus Kapsperger was born in Venice to
Germanic aristocratic parentage, and is considered responsible for developing the theorbo as a solo
instrument. Much of the music in his fourth and final book of tablature for chitarrone (Rome, 1640) also
contains basso continuo accompaniments. Impresario and theorbist Benedetto Ferrari was responsible
for the first commercial public performances of musical drama in Venice, and Amanti, io vi sò dire
(‘lovers, I can tell you’) is taken from the last of his three books of Musiche varie a voce sola (Venice, 1641).
These words of advice are set to an (almost) unrelenting ciaccona - a voluptuous syncopated dance
originating in West Africa which then took root in Latin America and eventually found its way back to
Europe.
James Bramley © 2014
Angelo Notari
Che farai Meliseo
!Che farai, Meliseo? Morte rifiutati
Poichè Filli t’ha posto in doglie e lagrime
Nè più, come solea, lieta salutati.
What will you do, Meliseo? Death rejects you
since Phyllis has thrown you into grief and tears
she doesn’t smile to you as she used to.
Dunque, amici pastor, ciascun consacrime
Versi sol di dolor, lamenti e ritimi;
E chi altro non può, meco collagrime.
So, shepherd friends, let each of you dedicate to me
Verses of pain, laments and rhymes;
and those who cannot, let them weep with me.
!
!
A pianger col suo pianto ognun incitimi,
Ognun la pena sua meco communiche,
Ben ch’il mio duol da sè dì e notte invittimi.
!
Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia (c.1480)
!
!
!
!
Let your tears stimulate my own,
everyone share his pain with me,
even though my own grief will torment me day and night.
Giulio Caccini
Filli, mirando il cielo
!
Filli, mirando il cielo,
Dicea doglios’e intanto
Empia di calde perl’un bianco velo:
Io mi distillo in pianto
D’amor languisco e moro,
Nè ritrovo pietat’, o ciel, o stelle!
Io son pur giovinetta e’l crin ho d’oro
E colorit’e belle,
Sembran le guancie mie rose novelle.
Ahi, qual sarà’l tormento
Quand’avrò d’oro il volto e’l crin d’argento?
!
Ottavio Rinuccini
!
Phyllis, gazing at the heavens,
spoke of her grief and
wept with tears into a white veil:
‘I dissolve in tears
From love I languish and die
Have you no pity, o heaven, o stars!
I am yet a maiden, with golden hair
And of beautiful colour
My cheeks are like new roses.
Ah, what will be my torment
When I have I yellow face and hair of silver?’
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Claudio Monteverdi
Ed è pur dunque vero
Ed è pur dunque vero,
disumanato cor, anima cruda,
che cangiando pensiero
e di fede e d’amor tu resti ignuda?
d’aver tradito me dati pur vanto,
ché la cetera mia rivolgo in pianto.
And so it is true,
inhuman heart, cruel spirit,
that by changing your mind,
you stand bereft of both fidelity and love?
You take pride in betraying me
so that I turn my lyre to weeping.
È questo il guiderdone
de l’amorose mie tante fatiche?
Così mi fa ragione
il vostro reo destin, stelle nemiche?
Ma se ’l tuo cor è d’ogni fé ribelle,
Lidia, la colpa è tua, non delle stelle.
Is this my reward
for so many loving labours?
Is it thus that your cruel will
does justice to me, hostile stars?
But if your heart rebels against all fidelity,
Lydia, the fault is yours, not the stars’.
!
Beverò, sfortunato,
gl’assassinati miei torbidi pianti,
e sempre adolorato
a tutti gl’altri abandonati amanti.
E scolpirò sul marmo alla mia fede:
Sciocco è quel cor ch’in bella donna crede.
!
Povero di conforto,
mendìco di speranza andrò ramingo;
e senza salma o porto,
fra tempeste vivrò mesto e solingo.
Né avrò la morte di precipizia schivo,
perché non può morir chi non è vivo.
!
Il numero degli anni,
ch’al sol di tue bellezze io fui di neve,
il colmo degl’affanni,
che non mi diero mai riposo breve,
insegnerano a mormorar i venti
le tue perfidie, o cruda, e i miei tormenti.
!
Vivi col cor di giaccio
e l’inconstanza tua l’aure difidi;
stringi il tuo ben in braccio
e del mio mal con lui trionfa e ridi;
ed ambi in union dolce gradita
fabricate il sepolcro alla mia vita.
!
!
Abissi, udite, udite
di mia disperazion gli ultimi accenti;
da poi che son fornite
le mie gioie, e gl’amor e i miei contenti,
tanto è ’l mio mal che nominar io voglio
emulo de l’inferno il mio cordoglio.
!
!
Unhappy me, I shall drink
my broken troubled tears,
for ever saddened
for all other abandoned lovers.
And I shall carve on marble [in memory] of my fidelity:
‘Foolish is that heart that trusts in a beautiful woman.’
!
Needy for comfort,
a beggar for hope, I shall go wandering;
And without baggage or harbour,
amid storms I shall live sad and solitary.
Nor shall I fear a precipitous death,
for he who is not alive cannot die.
!
The many years
in which I was snow in the sun of your beauty,
the height of my suffering
without even a brief respite,
will teach the winds to murmur
of your treachery, O cruel one, and of my torments.
!
Live with a heart of ice,
and your changeableness might warn the winds;
hold your beloved tightly in your arms
and laugh at and triumph over my suffering;
and both in sweet pleasant union
make a grave for my life.
!
Hear, you abysses, hear
the last accents of my despair;
since my joys are ended
and my loves and my pleasures,
so great is my woe that I would call
my anguish the equal of Hell.
Tarquinio Merula
Hor ch’è tempo di dormire
!
Hor ch’è tempo di dormire
Now it is time to sleep,
Dormi dormi figlio e non vagire, Sleep, my son, and do not cry,
Perchè, tempo ancor verrà
For the time will come
Che vagir bisognerà.
When you will need to weep.
Deh ben mio deh cor mio,
Oh my love, oh my heart,
Fa la ninna ninna na.
Sing ninna ninna na.
!Chiudi,quei lumi divini
!Close those heavenly eyes,
Come fan gl’altri bambini,
Perchè tosto oscuro velo
Priverà di lume il cielo.
Deh ben mio …
As other children do,
For soon a dark veil
Will dim the light sky
Oh my love, oh my heart …
Dalle mie mammelle intatte
Perchè ministro crudele
Ti prepara aceto e fiele.
Deh ben mio …
At my immaculate breast,
For the cruel minister
Is preparing vinegar and gall.
Oh my love, oh my heart …
!Over prendi questo latte
!Take this milk
Queste mani e questi piedi
Ch’or con gusto e gaudio vedi
Ahimè com’in varij modi
Passeran acuti chiodi.
These hands and these feet
We now contemplate
With pleasure and joy
Will, alas, be pierced by sharp nails.
Rubiconda hor più di rosa
Sputi e schiaffi sporcheranno
Con tormento e grand’aff
ano.
Ruddier than a rose,
Will be sullied by spit and cuffs,
With torture and great suffering
!Questa faccia gratiosa
!Ah con quanto tuo dolore
Sola speme del mio core
Questo capo e questi crini
Passeran acuti spini.
!Ah ch’in questo divin petto
!My love take this breast
Amor mio dolce diletto
Vi farà piaga mortale
empia lancia e disleale.
Hor per te morbido letto
Pria che rendi ad alta voce
L’alma al Padre su la croce.
Deh ben mio del …
A soft bed for you
Before commending aloud
Your soul to the father on the cross.
Oh my love, oh my heart …
Dormi pur redentor mio
Perchè poi con lieto viso
Ci vedrem in Paradiso.
Vezzosette e tenerelle
Perchè poi ferri e catene
Gli daran acerbe pene.
Deh ben mio …
Graceful and delicate,
Because irons and chains
Will bring them harsh pains.
Oh my love, oh my heart …
!Amor mio sia questo petto
!Posa hor queste membra belle !Now rest those beautiful limbs,
!
!
!
Henry Purcell
She that would gain a faithful lover
!
She that would gain a faithful lover
Must at a distance keep the slave;
Not by a look her heart discover,
Men should but guess the thoughts we have.
Whilst they’re in doubt their flame increases,
And all attendance they will pay;
When once confess’d their ardour ceases,
And vows like smoke soon fly away.
!Then, fond Aurelia, cease complaining,
All thy reproaches useless prove;
Beauties may conquer whilst disdaining,
But lose their value when they love.
So when a comet does appear,
Men do with trembling view the blaze;
The sun too common none does fear,
Nor on his beams with wonder gaze.
!Dormi dunque figliol mio
!Hor che dorme la mia vita
Del mio cor gioia compita
Taccia ognun con puro zelo
Taccian sin la terra e’l Cielo.
!e fra tanto io che farò
Il mio ben contemplerò
ne starò col capo chino
Sin che dorme il mio
Bambino.
!This pretty face,
!Oh,with what pain,
Only hope of my heart,
Will this head and this hair
Be pierced by sharp thorns.
!Oh in this heavenly breast,
My sweet, my precious,
Treacherous, villainous spears
Will cause mortal wounds.
!So sleep,my son,
So sleep, my Saviour,
For then with a happy face,
We shall meet again in Paradise.
!Now you are sleeping,my life,
Joy of my heart,
Let all be silent with pure
devotion,
Let heaven and earth fall silent.
!And,meanwhile,what shall I do
I will watch over my love
And remain with bowed head
So long as my child sleeps.
Lost is my quiet
Lost is my quiet for ever,
Lost is life’s happiest part;
Lost all my tender endeavours,
To touch an insensible heart.
!But tho’ my despair is past curing,
And much undeserv’d is my fate,
I’ll show by a patient enduring
My love is unmov’d as her hate.
!
Benedetto Ferrari
Amanti, io vi sò dire
Amanti, io vi so dire
ch’è meglio assai fuggire
bella Donna vezzosa
ò sia cruda ò pietosa
ad ogni modo e via
il morir per amor è una pazzia.
Lovers, I can tell you
that it’s much better to flee
from a beautiful woman
whether she’s cruel or kind
in each and every way
dying for love is madness.
Non accade pensare
di gioir in amare,
amoroso contento
dedicato è al momento
e bella Donna al fine
rose non dona mai senza le spine.
Do not think
to rejoice in love,
the contented lover
lives for the moment
and a beautiful woman, in the end,
never gives roses without thorns.
!
!
La speme del gioire
fondata è sù’l martire,
bellezza e cortesia
non stanno in compagnia,
sò ben dir con mio danno
che la morte ed’amor insieme vanno.
!
Vi vuol pianti a diluvi
Per spegner i vesuvi
D’un cor innamorato,
D’un spirito infiammato;
Pria che si giunga in porto,
Quante volte si dice:
Ohimè son morto.
!
Credete’l à costui che per prova può dir
io vidi io fui. Se creder no’l volete
lasciate star che poco importa à me.
Seguitate ad’amar ad’ogni modo,
chi dè rompersi il collo.
Non accade che schivi.
Od’erta ò fondo
che per proverbio senti sempre dire
dal destinato non si può fuggire.
!
Donna so chi tu sei,
amor so i fatti miei.
Non tresco più con voi,
alla larga ambi doi.
S’ogn’un fosse com’io
saria un balordo Amor e non un Dio.
!
!
The hope of joy
is founded only on suffering,
beauty and kindness
are not compatible,
and I can only say with my disdain
that death and love go together.
!
It takes floods of tears
to extinguish the volcanoes
of a heart that is in love,
of a soul that is on fire;
before anchoring safely
how many times one says:
‘Alas, I am dead.’
!
Believe this from somebody who can say
‘I saw, I was there’. If you don’t want to
let it be, it makes no difference to me.
Go ahead and fall in love anyway,
go and break your neck.
It will be unavoidable.
And when you fall, from high or from low,
you will always hear the proverb
that you cannot run from destiny.
!
Woman, I know who you are,
Love, I know your business.
I’ll no longer flirt with you,
Stay away, both of you.
If everyone were like me,
Love would be a fool and not a God.
Alana Mailes is an MPhil student in Musicology at Clare College. She graduated with high distinction and
honours from the University of California, Berkeley, in Music and Italian Studies. Prior to this she studied piano
and sang with Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, regularly performing with LA Opera and LA Philharmonic.
At UC Berkeley, she was a soloist with several university and San Francisco Bay Area ensembles. Alana has
participated in workshops for the Dartington International Summer School, Early Music Vancouver, and
Amherst Early Music. She currently sings with a number of Cambridge choirs, and upcoming solo projects
include a recital for the Cambridge University Opera Society and the premiere of Andrew Goldman’s Science!
The Musical at the Corpus Playroom. Alana’s studies are supported by the Cambridge Trusts, the EnglishSpeaking Union, and the UC Berkeley Hertz Traveling Scholarship. !
Dionysios Kyropoulos read music at City University London while having performance tuition at the
Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Robert Dean. He is currently studying for the MPhil in Music
Studies at Clare College, University of Cambridge, funded by a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation and
grants from the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the South Square Trust. His performance studies are funded
by the Hellenic College Trust. He recently directed Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Handel’s Rodelinda, and operatic
roles include Uberto in Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, Plutone in Peri’s L’Euridice and Polyphemus in Handel’s
Acis and Galatea. Dionysios has worked with Cambridge Handel Opera, Barefoot Opera, Lucid
Arts, MidAmerica Productions, Riverside Opera and Longborough Festival Opera. He participated in the
British Youth Opera 2011 Easter Workshops and their 2012 production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride.
!
James Bramley performs throughout the UK and abroad as a soloist and accompanist, in ensembles and as a
continuo player. He began studying lute with Manuel Minguillón in London and Madrid, and has also taken
lessons and masterclasses with Paul O’Dette, Nigel North, Elizabeth Kenny, Jacob Heringman, Evangelina
Mascardi and Michael Fields. He is currently continuing his studies with William Carter and David Miller at
the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Recent performances include Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at
the Teatro Principal in Burgos, Spain, as well as recitals and concerts at the Wigmore Hall, the Foundling
Museum, St Martin-in-the-Fields,The Lute Society and the London Handel Festival.
!
Mie Ito was born in Kobe, Japan, and started her musical journey on the piano at the age of three. She studied
singing and organ at the Tokyo College of Music and graduated with a distinction. She also took part in
masterclasses with Emma Kirkby, Agnes Mellon, and Evelyn Tubb. From 2000 to 2010 Mie was an organist at
Maita Church, Yokohama, and in 2011 moved to London to study Baroque harp with Andrew LawrenceKing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is supported by the Worshipful Guild of Freemen and
the Christopher Kite Memorial Fund. Mie has performed at The London Handel Festival, The Cobbe
Collection, King’s College Chapel, Wigmore Hall, with Ex Cathedra and side-by-side with the Academy of
Ancient Music. She has also played live on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune and recently recorded Daniel Purcell’s The
Judgment of Paris with Spiritato and Julian Perkins. In January she performed in Handel Festival Japan’s
production of Saul at Hamarikyu Asahi Hall,Tokyo.
!
LeoTolkin has recently arrived from Los Angeles to study the viol at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
!
Defleo was formed in 2011 and specialises in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoires. By exploring
historical sources and contexts, Defleo unites instruments, voices, gesture and staging to captivate, involve and
move today’s audiences. For more information visit www.defleo.com or follow us on twitter at @Defleo.