Ensemble les nations for VI Note senza tempo festival Sassari
From 22 June 2024 to 22 June 2024/ Italy / URI
ENSEMBLE LES NATIONES
Anna Simboli, soprano
David Brutti, cornet
Mauro Morini, trombone
Maria Luisa Baldassari, harpsichord and conducting
AN (ALMOST FORGOTTEN) VIRTUOSO
Monteverdi does not need anniversaries to be celebrated and this program pays homage to him through a special instrumentation: some of his beautiful duets, both sacred and profane, will be performed by a soprano and a cornetto instead of a second voice.
“Quel lascivissimo cornetto” is Benvenuto Cellini's definition of the instrument he himself played when he was not busy creating his splendid works of art.
The cornetto was a much-loved instrument in Monteverdi's time and its way of "singing" and expressing feelings in the same way as the human voice makes it a perfect substitute for the second voice in duets. The instrument almost completely disappears after the period of great popularity it had enjoyed between the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, when it reached a high degree of virtuosity and was considered a rival to the voice in the new music in concertante style and for solo voices. Its range and sound characteristics make it an instrument "halfway" between the sacred and the profane style, capable of singing like an angel and seducing like a devil, with a voice strong enough to fill the vaults of a large Venetian church when it was performed together with trombones, but sweet and delicate in music intended for the small rooms of a noble palace. The trombone itself, an ideal companion to the cornetto, presents the same characteristics of ductility: the ensemble is here completed by the keyboard that completes the harmonies, adds brilliance to the sound, emphasizes the dissonances and reinforces the rhythmic impulse. Claudio Monteverdi's duets are found scattered among various publications: the sacred ones come above all from miscellaneous collections of music by different authors in the new concertato style for a few voices; only Pulchra es is taken from that incredible catalogue of musical forms that is the Vespro della Beata Vergine. The profane duets belong instead to another "vocabulary" of modern music, the revolutionary Seventh Book of Madrigals, whose title of "Concerto" clearly announces the program that Monteverdi had in mind: we no longer find polyphonic madrigals but virtuoso and expressive duets, solo pieces sometimes accompanied by a considerable mass of instruments; even canzonette, like the two that close the collection.
The instrumental compositions that alternate with the vocal pieces were composed in the same period; some authors, such as Barbarino, lived and worked in Venice and we can imagine that their music was known to Monteverdi, just as we can also think that he was familiar with the keyboard works of Frescobaldi, another innovator on the scene in the early seventeenth century. Or that he was well aware of the very famous madrigal "Ancor che col partire", still a basis for improvisations a good 100 years after its composition.
David Brutti, cornet
Mauro Morini, trombone
Maria Luisa Baldassari, harpsichord and conducting
AN (ALMOST FORGOTTEN) VIRTUOSO
Monteverdi does not need anniversaries to be celebrated and this program pays homage to him through a special instrumentation: some of his beautiful duets, both sacred and profane, will be performed by a soprano and a cornetto instead of a second voice.
“Quel lascivissimo cornetto” is Benvenuto Cellini's definition of the instrument he himself played when he was not busy creating his splendid works of art.
The cornetto was a much-loved instrument in Monteverdi's time and its way of "singing" and expressing feelings in the same way as the human voice makes it a perfect substitute for the second voice in duets. The instrument almost completely disappears after the period of great popularity it had enjoyed between the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, when it reached a high degree of virtuosity and was considered a rival to the voice in the new music in concertante style and for solo voices. Its range and sound characteristics make it an instrument "halfway" between the sacred and the profane style, capable of singing like an angel and seducing like a devil, with a voice strong enough to fill the vaults of a large Venetian church when it was performed together with trombones, but sweet and delicate in music intended for the small rooms of a noble palace. The trombone itself, an ideal companion to the cornetto, presents the same characteristics of ductility: the ensemble is here completed by the keyboard that completes the harmonies, adds brilliance to the sound, emphasizes the dissonances and reinforces the rhythmic impulse. Claudio Monteverdi's duets are found scattered among various publications: the sacred ones come above all from miscellaneous collections of music by different authors in the new concertato style for a few voices; only Pulchra es is taken from that incredible catalogue of musical forms that is the Vespro della Beata Vergine. The profane duets belong instead to another "vocabulary" of modern music, the revolutionary Seventh Book of Madrigals, whose title of "Concerto" clearly announces the program that Monteverdi had in mind: we no longer find polyphonic madrigals but virtuoso and expressive duets, solo pieces sometimes accompanied by a considerable mass of instruments; even canzonette, like the two that close the collection.
The instrumental compositions that alternate with the vocal pieces were composed in the same period; some authors, such as Barbarino, lived and worked in Venice and we can imagine that their music was known to Monteverdi, just as we can also think that he was familiar with the keyboard works of Frescobaldi, another innovator on the scene in the early seventeenth century. Or that he was well aware of the very famous madrigal "Ancor che col partire", still a basis for improvisations a good 100 years after its composition.
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