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Gesualdo: Tenebrae

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Don Carlo Gesualdo (1560 - 1613) was an aristocrat rich, artistic, and - as the second son of a noble Neapolitan family - free to indulge his passion for music. But when his eldest brother died, it was decreed that Don Carlo should carry on the line. The bride found for him - Donna Maria d'Avalos - was the greatest beauty in town. Don Carlo fathered a son, after which he lost interest in sex. But it still interested his wife. One day his uncle confided to him that she was involved in a torrent affair with the handsome Duke of Andria, in which they would "invite each other to battle on the fields of love". Alerted to the fact that Don Carlo now knew of their liaisons, the Duke tried to persuade Donna Maria to end the affair, but she proclaimed she would sooner die. Thus was the scene set for Don Carlo's historic act.

One day in October of 1590 he secretly disabled his locks, then set out to hunt only to sneek back with a gang of henchmen in the still of night. The chronicles detail what happened next: about the night-dress Donna Maria asked to be put out on the bed, about the maid posted as sentinel, and the commotion as Don Carlo and his men kicked in the door to find the pair "in flagrante delicto di fragrante peccato". About the shots and multiple sword-thrusts, and the way Don Carlo personally skewered his wife to the floor all the while repeating to himself "I do not believe she is dead". He dragged their bodies onto the stairs, for all the horrifed towns peope to gape at next morning, posting a notice explaining why he had killed them. The Duke was still clad in a woman's night-gown, while Donna Maria's "wounds were all in her belly, and especially in those parts which ought to be kept honest".

Don Carlo withdrew to his residence in Ferrra where his nobility ensured he escaped trial, only to find himself "afflicted by a vast horde of demons which gave him no peace unless twelve young men, whom he kept specially for the purpose, were to beat him violently three times a day, during which operation he was wont to smile joyfully."

Don Carlo built a private chapel, completed in 1592. Inside hung a painting depicting the Virgin Mary and saints all pointing to the sinner, Don Carlo, while the fires of purgatory burnt below - out of which angels pull the figures of a man and a woman. Could these be the murdered lovers before which Don Carlo implored forgiveness? His music became filled with an obession with themes of guilt, sin, pity, and death - even the joy of love being mixed with a fascination with pain: 'dolorosa gioia', such 'joyous pain' being a typical musical outburst.

Never has there been a composer with a more macabre background than this, nor yet so muscially so obsessionally fascinating.

Stravinsky began his famous foreword to Glenn Watkins' biography of Gesualdo with the words "musicians may yet save Gesualdo from musicologist, but certainly the latter have had the best of it until now". This recording of Gesualdo comes closest to saving him from the musicologists. The Hilliards fearlessly journey through the vertigo inducing chromatic spirals leading into the strange, visionary world of this dark genius - a world into which other ensembles fear to treat, instead resorting to a sanitization of the music to remove its sting - though who could blame them for wanting to? Particulary important is presence of the more harshly piecing tones of a counter-tenor in place female of sopranos, whose smooth dulcet tones rob the music of its visionary strangeness. Although the Hilliard Ensemble had been singing this music for decades, David James still said: "We don't sing it the way we sing most early music - we sing it as though it was contemporary. Even if you didn't know the facts, you'd still know it couldn't have been written by a completely sane man."

Tenerbrae means darkness, and the darkest ritual of the year suited Gesualdo tempermentally in which each candle is extinguished one by one leaving only one left burning in the darkness. Although his sacred works are less ostentatious in their chromaticisms and eccentricities than his madrigals, the power of his proto-Baroque declamatory writing coupled with the audacity of the writing is quite breathtaking to listen to.

This is an extraordinary - and absolutely essential - recording that delivers in full measure. The recorded sound really is superb and amongst the finest of a capella music as I have ever heard. It quite rightly won the deutschen Schallplattenkritik award.

Diego Fischerman wrote in Goldberg early music magazine that:

"the Hilliard Ensemble's recording (on this occasion the group is made up of the countertenors David James and Ashley Stafford, the tenors John Potter, Rogers Covey-Crump and Mark Padmore, the baritone Paul Hillier and the bass David Beavan) is truly unsurpassable, both in precision and dramatic intensity. The recording, made by the engineer Peter Laenger for ECM at Douai Abbey is outstanding for its realism and spatial conception."

Iain Fenlon in Gramophone magazine wrote that "these performances reveal a rare understanding of the inherent tensions of the music, both in terms of local detail and overall shape, and explicate them with great technical and musical artistry. I doubt that they could be bettered." I tend to agree and as the only complete recording available of the Tenebrae, this is my personal first choice, despite some stiff competition from A Sei Voci, the Taverner Consort, the Tallis Scholars and the King's Singers all recording only select parts.

These performaces ensure that the Gesualdo legend lives on.

Gesualdo, the master of late-Renaissance mannerism, is given a spectacular reading here, with the Hilliard Ensemble in full flower. The tightly-bent harmonies will have you squirming delightfully in your headphones. A word of advice: Listen to these alone, unless your friends and family enjoy sudden outbursts of harmonies you'll be tempted to try. Don't worry though: If you have any troubles, the rock-solid Hilliards will carry you through.

This CD was my introduction to the music of Gesualdo. It has been written that Gesualdo was 300 years ahead of his time with his intricate and dissonant harmonies, and I have to agree. It is not a stretch of the imagination to place his music in the 1950s. The music perfectly matches the dreary Latin texts dealing with the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ. I defy anyone to hear CD#1, track 2, and not get chills at the words "et ego vadim". The accompanying booklet, although more poetic and less biographic, contains some beautiful, appropriate photographs which express the mood of the music perfectly.

Anyone familiar with the recordings of the Hilliards needs not be told of their rich harmonies and precise intonation-it just needs to be heard. My favorite aspect of this recording is the cavernous sound of the church, the reverberation in the hall brings a power to the 6-man group that one might expect from a 30 piece choir. I can imagine that this is the way it was heard 300 years ago.

Although the music of Gesualdo may not be to the taste of someone tentatively delving into the Renaissance for the first time, it may deepen the appreciation of this period more than the myriads of recordings of instrumental dances and part-songs ever will. Next rainy day, put this CD on, sit back, and relax. You will pray for more rain.

I've had the original release of this performance in my collection for years, but I'd forgotten about it until reminded of the Tenebrae by another amaozon reviewer. This is as musically sophisticated and artful a performance of Gesualdo's eccentric music as you can find on CD, far better to my ear than performances of Gesualdo's sacred music by the Oxford Camerata or other multi-voice choirs. I might prefer a little less reverberance - a more face-to-ear sound - and a little less uniformity of tempo, but those choices were the Hilliard's, and the results are good. I also find Gesualdo's secular madrigals more interesting than his sacred works. He was in a sense the ultimate "short story writer" of music. That doesn't detract, however, from my respect for this performance.
Mr "josquin" has narrated everything you need to know about Gesualdo, if you are a neophyte, so read his review also.

Postscript, a month later: I've just listened carefully to the Taverner Consort recording of the Tenebrae, conducted by Andrew Parrott. It's at least as good as the Hilliard, perhaps better on the most chromatic of the Responses. I'm still left wondering why there should be so many recordings of the Tenebrae in comparison to Gesualdo's other works...

I agree with those reviewers that emphasize the gutsiness of the Hillards' take on the in-you-face contrapuntal/harmonic twists this music exacts from the singers. I've heard Gesualdo by other groups, and, yes, they do swerve away from "doing the notes on the page" to some extent. If these are the sounds Gesualdo heard in his head, then there is some credibility to the testimony of those who thought he was crazy. What is important in these performances is that the Hilliards have made the effort to penetrate to the "art" in the musical pain and have managed to express it with a sharpness of phrasal articulation unparalleled in anything I have ever heard by any other singers doing any other composer. As I said: there's literally nothing like it.

Gesualdo's music, in and of itself, is breathtaking in every way. The harmonics are clearly of the composer's time, yet in places leap forward to the 20th century.

The Hilliard Ensemble is up to the usual high standard of performance I've come to expect. For me, this is one of those very few desert-island recordings.

The Hilliard Ensemble (DAVID JAMES countertenor, ROGERS COVEY-CRUMP tenor, STEVEN HARROLD tenor, GORDON JONES baritone) is one of the most sophisticated music groups of the day. The degree of their musicality is the pinnacle of perfection and they are able to move from composer to composer with utter ease and understanding of the performing principles of the days when that music was composed. They are the perfect choice for the recording of this huge work by Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza (1561 - 1613). The Tenebrae (The Complete Responsoria) is a long and very complex musical work written for the evening service before Maundy Thursday and the rest of the ending of Holy Week. It is a work in which gradually all of the candles lighting the church where it is being performed are extinguished, plunging the atmosphere into complete darkness - the mood of the events of Good Friday to Easter Sunday are thus set.

Though there are many settings of the Tenebrae, by far the most haunting is that of Gesualdo heard here. Gesualdo was as bizarre a genus as the musical world has ever known: he murdered his adulterous wife and lover, leaving their skewered bodies on the steps for all the town to see. He was considered insane, plagued by demons and required thrashings of his body nightly to rid him of this malady. There are many stories of this tortured man but the most amazing aspect of Gesualdo is that despite his mental anguish he was able to compose some of the most brilliant music of his day. His madrigals remain examples of advanced creative musicality even today.

The Hilliard Ensemble may be only four men in number, but the acoustical ambience captured in this recording makes them sound like a massive cathedral choir - rich and responsive to space. This is period singing at its best and the manner in which they approach the Tenebrae is breathtakingly beautiful and apropos of the meaning of the music. It transports us to another time and another world and another realm that can only be called truly spiritual. Brilliant! Grady Harp, June 10