Tenebrae Responsories Maundy Thursday by The King's Singers

Don Carlo Gesualdo

The King's Singers

Tenebrae Responsories Maundy Thursday

Price: € 13.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212004821
Catnr: SIGCD 048
Release date: 01 January 2007
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Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212004821

Catalogue number
SIGCD 048

Release date
01 January 2007

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

The Italian Prince, Carlos Gesualdo, is probably most famous for the obsessive double murder of his first wife along with her lover, but his music is not always accredited with the same sense of celebrity.

Gesualdo is known in traditional history books as an amateur composer. His music is characterised by wild gesticulation and abrupt starts and stops, particular to a composer who just didn’t know what he was doing. However, the 20th century has now uncovered our composer’s place in history as part of a larger movement of Neapolitan artists, and as perhaps the most forward-thinking, expressive and sensual composer of his time.

The King’s Singers were fascinated by the naked honesty that is heard within this 400 year old music. It is so startling that it keeps its freshness of surprise even on many repeated hearings. The music portrays a desperate and wretched, but also passionate and loving person who is set on composing "further out" than anyone else.

Gesualdo moved in the highest circles of Italy and was extremely wealthy. His decadent lifestyle allowed him to do and write exactly as he pleased, and at the tender age of 19 it brought him into close contact with one of the most attractive and admired women in Naples. Maria d’Avalos was twice widowed by the age of 25. Her marriage to Gesualdo was initially promising. However, Maria’s rich social life soon dominated the relationship and a profound and constant jealousy took possession of the young and highly sensitive composer. After four years of turmoil he hired professional murderers to assist him in killing wife and lover while they were in bed together. The violence and rage of the act is well-documented.

After the murder of Maria, Gesualdo suffered from severe and increasing feelings of guilt. Penitence never left him and he was moved to compose church music of a most black and self-reproachful nature. The programme on this CD represents part of the liturgy for the Matins Offices on the final three days of Holy Week, the Triduum Sacrum. Each of the Matins services is divided into three nocturns, each containing psalmody, three lessons and three responsaries.

Een verrassend eerlijk portret van Carlos Gesualdo
De Italiaanse Prins Carlos Gesualdo, is waarschijnlijk het meest bekend om de obsessieve dubbelmoord op zijn eerste vrouw Maria d’Avalos en haar geliefde. Zijn muziek wordt echter niet altijd met dezelfde vorm van roem erkend.

Gesualdo staat in de traditionele geschiedenisboeken bekend als een amateurcomponist. Zijn muziek wordt gekenmerkt door wilde gebaren en abrupte starts en eindes, die typerend zijn voor een componist die gewoon niet wist wat hij deed. In de 20e eeuw is echter ontdekt dat de componist deel uitmaakt van een grotere beweging van Napolitaanse artiesten, en hij was misschien wel de meest vooruitstrevende, expressieve, en sensuele componist van zijn tijd.

Na de moord op Maria leed Gesualdo onder ernstige en toenemende schuldgevoelens. Hij bleef berouw hebben, er werd ertoe bewogen om kerkmuziek met een zeer zwart en zelfverwijtend karakter te schrijven. Het programma op dit album bevat een deel van het officie Metten voor de laatste drie dagen van de Goede Week. Elk van de diensten is verdeeld over drie nocturnen, die elk psalmodie bevatten, drie lezingen en drie responsoria.

De King’s Singers werden gefascineerd door de naakte eerlijkheid die in deze meer dan 400 jaar oude muziek doorklinkt. Het is zo verrassend dat het zijn frisheid zelfs na herhaaldelijk luisteren behoudt. De muziek schildert een wanhopig en ellendig, maar ook hartstochtelijk en liefhebbend persoon, die zich erop richtte om ‘verder’ te componeren dan wie dan ook.

Artist(s)

The King's Singers

THE KING’S SINGERS have set the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over fifty years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, musicianship and versatility, which stem from both the group’s rich heritage and its drive to bring an extraordinary range of new and unique works, collaborations and recordings to life.
The King’s Singers’ extensive discography has led to numerous awards, including two Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a place in Gramophone magazine’s inaugural Hall of Fame.
Over the course of 2023, the group has released three diverse, collaborative albums that showcase the breadth of their repertoire. One marks 400 years since the deaths of two great Renaissance composers, Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd. Another celebrates their body of commissioned music, including the six Nonsense Madrigals written for the group by György Ligeti (who would have turned 100 in 2023). And the third honours 100 years of Disney, with almost thirty brand-new arrangements of songs from its iconic films.
Growing the global canon of choral music has always been one of the group’s key aims, and The King’s Singers have now commissioned more than 200 works by many of the most prominent composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. These composers include John Tavener, Joe Hisaishi, Judith Bingham, Eric Whitacre, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki and Toru Takemitsu. All of this new music joins their unique body of close-harmony and a cappella arrangements, including those by individual King’s Singers past and present.
The King’s Singers were officially formed in 1968 when six recent choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge gave a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. By chance, the group was made up of two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has stuck to this singular formation ever since that debut.
Alongside their demanding performing and recording schedule – with over 100 concerts worldwide every season – the group also leads educational workshops and residential courses across the globe, working with both ensembles and individuals on their approaches to group singing. To mark their 50th anniversary in 2018, they founded The King’s Singers Global Foundation in the USA to provide a platform to support the creation of new music across multiple disciplines, to coach a new generation of performers, and to provide musical opportunities to people of all backgrounds.

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Composer(s)

Don Carlo Gesualdo

If only Gesualdo would have known how his image today is still much decided by his infamous murder of his cheating wife and the bed-partner he found with her in october 1590. After all, the story fits effortlessly within the extreme music Gesualdo composed - and he must have known that for sure as he actively sought out provocation. His body of works is quite straightforward and it has been fully published during his own lifetime: six books of madrigals, two collections Sacrarum cantionum and a collection of responsories for the Holy Week. In his madrigals, Gesualdo follows the text closely and uses every opportunity to express the lyrics musically. This led to fragmented, capricious, complex and above all chromatic madrigals. Gesualdo's...

If only Gesualdo would have known how his image today is still much decided by his infamous murder of his cheating wife and the bed-partner he found with her in october 1590. After all, the story fits effortlessly within the extreme music Gesualdo composed - and he must have known that for sure as he actively sought out provocation. His body of works is quite straightforward and it has been fully published during his own lifetime: six books of madrigals, two collections Sacrarum cantionum and a collection of responsories for the Holy Week.

In his madrigals, Gesualdo follows the text closely and uses every opportunity to express the lyrics musically. This led to fragmented, capricious, complex and above all chromatic madrigals. Gesualdo's religious music is comparable to his madrigals, but the chromaticism is less extreme and his lines are more fluent.

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