PROGRAM NOTES

Barbara Strozzi was a composer of extraordinary creativity and distinction. Her cantatas include some of the most original and powerful writing of the early Baroque period. Strozzi was adopted by the Venetian poet Giulio Strozzi and was a regular performer at his distinguished L’Accademia degli Unisoni. Her singing was lavishly praised though her stage presence was thought to be overly provocative by some of the stodgy academicians. Strozzi studied music with the great Venetian opera composer Francesco Cavalli, whose warm, lyrical style she often emulates. Strozzi’s songs often deal with the treachery of love, running the emotional gamut from contentment to anguish to rage to sorrow to resignation. L’Astratto is a cantata exploring whether singing can help one to forget about the troubles of love, but finding the right song and text proves to be a serious challenge. Respira mio core is based on a sighing passacaglia bass with poignant sobbing and weeping motives punctuated with piquant dissonances. L’Amante Segreto is also based on a passacaglia bass, but this one is interrupted regularly by animated passages of recitative as the lover ponders his plight and struggles with the best way of coping with a secret love.Questa è la nuova, like L’Astratto deals with singing as therapy, but while theinfectious Spanish rhythms and repeated phrases should help anyone to feel better, this diva is apparently beyond help!

The greatest singers have always been confident of their ability to move the hearts of their listeners. But no one employed the power of singing more effectively than Orpheus, who used his talents to convince Pluto to give him back his beloved Euridice. Though we are accustomed to experiencing this story as a full-length opera, Scarlatti manages to fit it all into one compact, but amazingly expressive cantata.

Cesti’s hilarious Aspettate! Adesso canto! features another singer with a large ego, who commands a sizeable repertoire she is eager to show off, including cantatas by Rossi and Carissimi, popular songs and canzonettas. She begins song after song without finishing any of them. But unlike Strozzi’s L’Astratto who despairs of ever finding the right song to soothe her soul, Cesti’s cantatrice becomes fed up with the audience and storms off; it seems prime donne of the 17th century were very much like their modern counterparts.

The two most prominent theorbo virtuosi in Italy in the early 17th century were Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger and Alessandro Piccinini. They were not only consistently lauded in writings of the period, but their works often appear in manuscript with only the initials HK and AP. Kapsberger, was often referred to by his contemporaries as “Il Tedesco della Tiorba” (the German theorbo player). He was born in Venice of noble German parentage some time around 1580, but spent most of his professional life in Rome in the employ of Pope Urban VIII and Cardinal Antonio Barberini. Though known today primarily as an instrumental virtuoso, Kapsberger wrote a large amount of vocal music, both sacred and secular, including motets, masses, Vespers, monodies, villanelle, and opera, as well as ensemble sinfonie and canzoni for various combinations of instruments. By the 1620s Kapsberger had established himself as one of Rome’s premier musicians. The theorist Kircher even went so far as to promote Kapsberger as Monteverdi’s successor in the composition of highly expressive vocal music.

Kapsberger’s third book of solo music for the chitarrone, missing since the early 1950s, resurfaced a few years ago and was acquired by Yale University. This collection is particularly important since his other surviving collections, Libro Primo of 1604 and Libro Quarto of 1640, were written at opposite ends of his career. The Libro Terzo shows Kapsberger’s mature style with all of the expressive affetti (long slurred runs, slurred trills, cross-string trills and scales, expansive arpeggio figures, style brisé, and quirky, mannered triplet figures) for which he was famous. Posterity has not been so kind to Il Tedeschino however. For reasons possibly having more to do with Kapsberger’s personality than his musical abilities, the theorist Doni condemned him repeatedly in print, comments, which have formed the basis of contemporary evaluations of his work. That the personal vendetta of one man should so permanently tarnish Kapsberger’s reputation is indeed sad. Whether his works are “inept trifles...bungling and unmelodious,” or whether they are “most worthy of being imitated by all musicians” should be left to the open minds and ears of today’s audience to decide.

Alessandro Piccinini came from highly respected musical family; both his father and his two brothers were professional lutenists. Alessandro must have exhibited talent at an early age, since he was invited to join the Gonzaga court at Mantua when he was only sixteen. He went instead to Ferrara, where his father had been summoned by the Este family. With the death of his patron in 1597 and the passage of Ferrara into the Papal States, Alessandro entered the service of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the powerful nephew of Pope Clement VIII. He also visited Rome regularly in the service of the Ferrarese Marchese Enzo and Cardinal Giulio Bentivoglio, early patrons of Frescobaldi. Piccinini’s first book of lute music, published in 1623, includes detailed notes on ornamentation, arpeggiation, dynamics, and expression, information vital to the understanding of this repertoire.

But enough about the lute. The singer wants to get started—maybe she will feel better this time!

— Paul O’Dette