Gesualdo: Sacred Music for Five Voices (Complete)

Oxford Camerata, Summerly, Jeremy

8.550742

Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza, was a murderer; he was also one of the most intriguing composers of his generation. These two statements are necessarily interrelated: the received image of a tortured soul writing idiosyncratic music in the aftermath of his wife's homicide is a powerful one. But to suggest that Gesualdo's evident state of mental unbalance affected his fundamental musical competence is both misleading and unfair.

It is difficult therefore to empathize with all of Gesualdo's work, peppered as it is with self-conscious mannerisms that are the result of psychological self-torture: it is easy to be blinded by the more superficial elements of the music.
But Gesualdo's basic style is as competent as that of Palestrina or Monteverdi; without a sound contrapuntal technique the more extreme gestures would not be as effective as they undoubtedly are. Any early-Baroque composer would surely have been proud to have written the motets 'Peccantem me', 'Laboravi', or 'O vos omnes', while the still life 'O crux benedicta' is an unparalleled model of late Renaissance fluency.

Works:

• Gesualdo: Ave, Dulcissima Maria
• Gesualdo: Ave, Regina caelorum
• Gesualdo: Deus refugium et virtus
• Gesualdo: Dignare me laudare te
• Gesualdo: Domine ne despicias
• Gesualdo: Exaudi Deus deprecationem meam
• Gesualdo: Hei mihi Domine
• Gesualdo: Illumina faciem tuam
• Gesualdo: Laboravi in gemitu meo
• Gesualdo: Maria, Mater gratiae
• Gesualdo: O Crux benedicta
• Gesualdo: O Vos Omnes
• Gesualdo: Peccantem me quotidie
• Gesualdo: Precibus et meritis
• Gesualdo: Reminiscere miserationum tuarum
• Gesualdo: Sancti Spiritus Domine
• Gesualdo: Tribularer si nescirem
• Gesualdo: Tribulationem et dolorem
• Gesualdo: Venit lumen tuum Jerusalem

CD

2.11.1993

4891030507425