SPE and TENUTA DELLO SCOMPIGLIO AT 17.00
15 SEPTEMBER 2018
Il Bosco delle Passioni
(The Forest of Passions)
PROJECT BY GUIDO BARBIERI AND PAMELA LUCCIARINI
I Station “Sadness”
for two sopranos
Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690) Dialogo delle due Marie
II Station “Joy”
Pamela Lucciarini
Sigismondo D’India (about 1582 - 1629) Vorrei baciarti, o Filli
Marcantonio Cesti (1623 - 1669) Languia già l'alba
III Station “Hate”
Silvia Vajente
Giacomo Carissimi (1605 - 1674) Lamento della Regina di Scozia
IV Station “Desire”
Pamela Lucciarini
Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643) Voglio di vita uscir
V Station “Astonishment”
Silvia Vajente
Marcantonio Cesti (1623 - 1669) Amanti io vi disfido
VI Station “Love”
duet
Barolomeo Barbarino (1568 circa -1617 circa) Son morto, ahi lasso
Barbara Strozzi (1619 - 1677) L’Eraclito amoroso
Barbara Strozzi Begl'occhi
Along the path
Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) Syrinx (1913)
Toshio Hosokawa (1955 - ) Vertical song (1995)
Giacinto Scelsi (1905 -1988) Mantram – song by anonymous author (1987)
Recitarcantando Ensemble
Pamela Lucciarini soprano and spinet
Silvia Vajente soprano
Cristiano Contadin viola da gamba
Ugo Nastrucci theorbo and lute
Gianni Trovalusci flute
Guido Barbieri narrating voice
A project by Guido Barbieri with the soloists of the Recitarcantando Ensemble and Gianni Trovalusci on flute.
The image of death is a pervasive and recurring feature, almost an obsession, of Italian poetry for music in the seventeenth century. Together with Eros, his inseparable double, Thanatos passes through, wearing a different mask each time, for each of the “primary passions” described and catalogued in the Doctrine of Affections. The epiphany of death, for example, presents itself as an allegory of leaving, of separation and the distance in the texts that move the affections of Melancholy and Nostalgia, children of the primary passion that Descartes calls Sorrow. Alternatively, it assumes the appearance of Eros where “dying” represents, in the restrained language of court poetry, sexual enjoyment. It is, therefore, drawn into the sphere of two other fundamental passions identified by Descartes, Desire and Love. But in the hortus conclusus of seventeenth century music, Death is capable of innumerable other masks; it is the daughter of Admiration where, in the well-known “Mors stupebit” in the Dies Irae, it is associated with the feeling of wonder, incredulity, enchantment in the face of the miracle of “rebirth”; or it entertains obscure relationships with alchemic arts when it presents itself as an allegory of metamorphosis and transformation, for example, Joy in Hatred or Hatred in Joy.
Thanatos appears and disappears, wearing ever-changing clothes, in all six stations of the Bosco delle Passioni, sometimes the companion of Joy and Sorrow, Hatred and Love, Desire and Admiration. We meet it at every step, therefore, but do not see its face. In the vocal music of the seventeenth century, the appearance of death never coincides with the physical representation of passing away; according to a precise ethical and aesthetic rule, it was banished from both the boards of the stage and the “forests” of poetry. On the contrary, the icon of “eternal sleep” almost always carries an allusive, symbolic dimension; death is always, in any case, a disguise. Each one of us, however, passing through the Forest of Passions cannot but carry it, inevitably, on their own shoulder, like the lords of past centuries, who kept a falcon on their arms during hunts, according to Montaigne.
Guido Barbieri
Il Bosco delle Passioni
