Giaches de Wert (1535-1596)
Flanders
publ. 1595
for five voices (ssatb)
Theatre of Voices Edition – a selection of fine choral works handpicked by Paul Hillier.
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Wert was one of the most important composers of Italian secular music between Cipriano de Rore and Claudio Monteverdi (his eventual successor as music director at the court of Mantua). Altogether Wert published eleven books of five-voice madrigals between 1538 and 1595. A twelfth, published posthumously – only the bass partbook survives – contains works by Wert and Mantuan colleagues, including Monteverdi. As music director at Mantua and frequent visitor to the court of Ferrara, Wert came into contact with the leading poets of his day. He was the first to set dramatic texts from Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (e.g., Giunto alla tomba, Seventh Book, 1581), and was involved in preparations – later abandoned – to stage Guarini’s pastoral drama, Il pastor fido, at Mantua in 1591.
Il pastor fido is admired for the grace, inventiveness and fluidity of its language. Composers, beginning with Marenzio (Sixth Book, 1594), were attracted to its pathos-laden monologues and it is the source of four texts set in Wert’s Eleventh Book of madrigals: Cruda Amarilli (from Act 1), Ah dolente partita, O primavera, gioventù de l’anno, and Udite, lagrimose spirti d’Averno (from Act 3). All of these texts are spoken by Mirtillo (the “Faithful Shepherd” of the title). It is improbable that Wert’s settings were intended for the 1591 production. The only music Guarini envisaged, apart from the intermedi which are extraneous to the action, was for the danced choruses of the Giuoco della cieca (game of blind man’s buff), the texts of which Guarini wrote only after the choreography and music had been fully worked out by the ballet master (a setting survives in Gastoldi’s Fourth Book of five-voice madrigals of 1602). Wert’s music is not “representative” in the theatrical sense but music that projects the sentiments expressed by the speaker by a process of musically mimetic “resemblances” of these.
O primavera, gioventù de l’anno sets lines 1 – 45 of the soliloquy that opens Act 3 in which Mirtillo laments the vicissitudes of his love for Amarilli. By partitioning Guarini’s continuous text into units, Wert creates a narrative cycle articulated musically by means of a sequence of five discrete yet interrelated madrigals. In the print, the prima parte of each voice is marked “CANZONE”. Its usage here does not refer to the canzone proper, a poetic form usually comprised of five to seven stanzas (e.g., Petrarch’s Vergine bella, che di sol vestita); thus the heading “canzone” probably refers more generally to the lyric expression that constitutes Mirtillo’s poetic “song.” Guarini may have conceived of “O dolcezze amarissime d’amore”, Mirtillo’s apostrophe to love, as a song: in some contemporary Italian editions this section is set off by quotation marks, a distinction disregarded in modern editions of Il pastor fido but recognizable as such in the elegiac music of Wert’s seconda parte. Wert’s setting is restrained and elegant, a mature example of the composer’s “narrative” style. His craft is perhaps best displayed in the invention of word-generated motifs, sometimes plyed simultaneously, and in the subtle yet affective turns of harmony that elucidate the shifting sands of Mirtillo’s introspective thoughts.
My transcription reproduces the music and text of the 1600 reissue of Wert’s Eleventh Book in the unique existant copy owned by the Biblioteca del Conservatorio, Bologna (where I obtained a photocopy) and where I compared it to the editio princeps of 1595. The 1600 edition, “novamente ristampato & corretto” (“newly printed and corrected”) has been reset in a slightly smaller typefont; textual variants are insignificant. I have modernized some spellings (hoggi = oggi; aventuroso = avventuroso; de gl’occhi = degl’occhi) and added punctuation after Luigi Fassò’s edition (Opere di Battista Guarini, Turin: UTET, 1950). The most poetic, though far from literal, English translation remains that of Richard Fanshawe (The Faithfull Shepherd, 1647) from which I have borrowed a few choice phrases (a parallel Italian-English edition with Fanshawe’s translation can be consulted in the Edinburgh Bilingual Library, vol. 11, ed. J.H. Whitfield, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1976). The most complete study to date of Wert is Carol MacClintock, Giaches de Wert (1535-1596): Life and Works, Musicological Studies and Documents, 17 (American Institute of Musicology, 1966). Wert’s collected music is available in Giaches de Wert: Opera omnia, eds. Carol MacClintock and Melvin Bernstein, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 24 (American Institute of Musicology, 1961 - 77); a transcription of O primavera, unfortunately marred by numerous typographical errors, appears in vol. 12, pp. 3-14. This
work, in accordance with the aims of this series, can be performed by a small choir with only the wide range of the Alto part (best sung by high tenors) posing difficulties. Singers who find this music attractive but wish to experience the more adventurous side of Wert’s music may wish test their mettle with the composer’s outrageous but stunning setting of Petrarch’s Solo e pensoso (Seventh Book, 1581; ed. in CMM 24/vii, p. 32).
David Nutter
University of California, Davis August, 1995 / 2008
Vocal Text
Il pastor fido, Atto III, scena 1
Mirtillo
O primavera, gioventù de l’anno
The Faithful Shepherd, Act Three, Scene 1
O Spring, the year’s youth, Bella madre di fiori, fair mother of flowers, D’erbe novelle e di novelli amori, of new leaves and of new loves, Tu torni ben, ma teco you have returned, but with you Non tornano i sereni the serene and fortunate days of E fortunati dì de le mie gioie; my joys have not returned.
Tu torni ben, tu torni, You have returned, and welcome, Ma teco altro non torna but with you naught returns
Che del perduto mio caro tesoro the unhappy and painful remembrance
La remembranza misera e dolente. of the dear treasure I have lost.
Tu quella se’, tu quella Spring, you are unchanged, you who Ch’eri pur dianzi sì vezzosa e bella; remain as fair and jocund as before;
Ma non son io già quel ch’un tempo fui, but am no more what once I was,
Sì caro agl’occhi altrui. when I was dear to her [Amarilli].
O dolcezze amarissime d’amore,
O bitter sweets of love,
Quanto è più duro perdervi, che mai how much harder to lose you than never
Non v’aver o provate o possedute. to have tried or possessed you.
Come saria l’amar felice stato, What a blessed state love would be
Se ’l già goduto ben non si perdesse; if, once enjoyed, it could never be lost;
O, quand’egli si perde, Or, when lost,
Ogni memoria ancora all memory
Del dileguato ben si dileguasse. of vanished love itself might vanish.
Ma, se le mie speranze oggi non sono,
But if today my hopes (as mine are wont to be)
Com’è l’usato lor, di fragil vetro, are not of brittle glass,
O se maggior del vero or (beyond truth itself) my hope not
Non fa la speme il desiar soverchio, spring from immoderate desire,
Qui pur vedrò colei here again I shall see that woman
Ch’è ’l sol degl’occhi miei. who is the sun of my eyes.
E, s’altri non m’inganna,
And, unless I am deceived,
Qui pur vedrolla al suon de’ miei sospiri here again I shall see her swift
Fermar il piè fugace. feet stayed by the sound of my sighs.
Qui pur da le dolcezze Here again will my long fast
Di quel bel volto avrà soave cibo be broken by the sight
Nel suo lungo digiun l’avida vista; of her sweet face;
Qui pur vedrò quell’empia
Here again I shall see that cruel one
Girar inverso me le luci altère turn on me her proud eyes,
Se non dolci, almen fère, if not to light, to burn,
E, se non carche d’amorosa gioia, and, if not laden with amorous delight, Sì crude almen, ch’io moia. cruel enough to kill me outright.
O lungamente sospirato invano
O day long sighed for in vain, Avventuroso dì, se, dopo tanti auspicious indeed if today, after Foschi giorni di pianti, all my dark days of weeping, Tu mi concedi, Amor, di veder oggi
Love may let me see
Ne’ begl’occhi di lei in her bright eyes
Girar sereno il sol degl’occhi miei. my love looking on me with love again.
Battista Guarini (1538-1612)
Translation: David Nutter
œ œ œ
cr u de I al men, ch’io œ œ Ó gio ia, œ œ J œ J œ J œ J œ gio ia, d’a mo ro sa
œ œ œ mo ia, ch’io mo
œ œ Sì cr u de I al
˙ gio ia,
cr u de I al men, ch’io
œ œ Sì cr u de I al ˙ ˙ mo ia,
œ ˙ œ I
œ ˙ men, ch’io mo
œ J œ J œ E, se non
œ b ˙ men, ch’io mo
Ó œ J œ J œ E, se non ˙ ˙ mo ia,
œ œ Œ œ gio ia, Sì œ œ Œ œ gio ia, Sì Ó J œ J œ J œ J œ d’a mo ro sa
œ œ œj œj œj œj gio ia, d’a mo ro sa w mo
œ cr u de I al men, ch’io
ch’io
Œ œ gio ia, Sì
˙ mo ia,
˙ ia,
˙ men, ch’io mo
ch’io
ve der og
ve der
ve der