Lamenti Barocchi, Vol. 2

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Lamenti Barocchi Vol. 2 Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643): [1] Lamento della Ninfa Giovanni Battista Bassani (c.1647 -1716): [2] Il musico svogliato Luigi Rossi (1598 - 1653): [3] Lamento di Zaida mora Fabrizio Fontana (?c.1620 - 1695) [4] Lamento dell'impotente (parole del signor Melosi) Luigi Rossi: [5] Ingordo, human desio Barbara Strozzi (1619 -1664): [6] Merce di voi Anonymous (sec.XVII): [7] Lamento del castrato Benedetto Marcello (1686 -1739): [8] Lamento dei castrati The lament plays an important part in Baroque vocal repertoire, with an earlier literary and musical counterpart in the sixteenth century madrigal. In early opera one of the most influential such compositions was Monteverdi's Lament of Arianna, a work that survives from a lost opera on the subject of Ariadne, deserted by Theseus on the island of Naxos. Monteverdi adapted the lament as a madrigal, following contemporary practice, and later, towards the end of his life, gave it a sacred text. In 1638, in his eighth book of madrigals, he provided another notable lament in his Lamento della ninja, one of his Canti amorosi, the counterpart of the Canti guerrieri that form the first part of the collection. The lament itself, based on the distinctive and increasingly customary descending four notes in the bass, is framed by sections for two tenors and bass. The text is by Rinuccini, the author of Arianna and ballo delle ingrate. The violinist, organist and composer Giovanni Battista Bassani was born in Padua about the year 1657. He had an early connection with Ferrara and in 1677 was accepted as a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna, taking a position as organist to a religious confraternity in Modena, three years later entering the service of Duke Alessandro II della Mirandola. A brief period as principe of the Accademia Filarmonica was followed by a return to Ferrara as maestro di cappella of the Accademia della Morte, where he had earlier served as organist, succeeding Tosi in this position and soon also as organist at Ferrara Cathedral. In 1712 he moved to Bergamo as director of music at S Maria Maggiore and died there in 1716. He won contemporary and posthumous fame for his violin compositions, but was also a composer of opera, oratorio, church music and a quantity of secular vocal music. In this last category falls Il musico svogliato, an amusing scene in which a musician makes every apology for not performing. The plaintive and ornamented song he is eventually persuaded to attempt and which he refuses to finish is in contrast to the recitative in which he makes his excuses of thirst, cold, draught, indisposition and finally of loss of memory and not having the book to hand. The Lamento di Zaida mora by Luigi Rossi sets a lament by the Moorish girl Zaida for the loss of her lover Mustafa, seized by a Christian marauder and taken as a prisoner to Italy, a characteristic treatment of a subject drawn from the neighbouring Islamic world. The lament, in which Zaida inveig