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Tenebrae Responsories Maundy Thursday
Don Carlo Gesualdo

The King's Singers

Tenebrae Responsories Maundy Thursday

Price: € 13.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212004821
Catnr: SIGCD 048
Release date: 01 January 2007
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212004821
Catalogue number
SIGCD 048
Release date
01 January 2007
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
NL

About the album

The Italian Prince, Carlos Gesualdo, is probably most famous for the obsessive double murder of his first wife along with her lover, but his music is not always accredited with the same sense of celebrity.

Gesualdo is known in traditional history books as an amateur composer. His music is characterised by wild gesticulation and abrupt starts and stops, particular to a composer who just didn’t know what he was doing. However, the 20th century has now uncovered our composer’s place in history as part of a larger movement of Neapolitan artists, and as perhaps the most forward-thinking, expressive and sensual composer of his time.

The King’s Singers were fascinated by the naked honesty that is heard within this 400 year old music. It is so startling that it keeps its freshness of surprise even on many repeated hearings. The music portrays a desperate and wretched, but also passionate and loving person who is set on composing "further out" than anyone else.

Gesualdo moved in the highest circles of Italy and was extremely wealthy. His decadent lifestyle allowed him to do and write exactly as he pleased, and at the tender age of 19 it brought him into close contact with one of the most attractive and admired women in Naples. Maria d’Avalos was twice widowed by the age of 25. Her marriage to Gesualdo was initially promising. However, Maria’s rich social life soon dominated the relationship and a profound and constant jealousy took possession of the young and highly sensitive composer. After four years of turmoil he hired professional murderers to assist him in killing wife and lover while they were in bed together. The violence and rage of the act is well-documented.

After the murder of Maria, Gesualdo suffered from severe and increasing feelings of guilt. Penitence never left him and he was moved to compose church music of a most black and self-reproachful nature. The programme on this CD represents part of the liturgy for the Matins Offices on the final three days of Holy Week, the Triduum Sacrum. Each of the Matins services is divided into three nocturns, each containing psalmody, three lessons and three responsaries.

Een verrassend eerlijk portret van Carlos Gesualdo
De Italiaanse Prins Carlos Gesualdo, is waarschijnlijk het meest bekend om de obsessieve dubbelmoord op zijn eerste vrouw Maria d’Avalos en haar geliefde. Zijn muziek wordt echter niet altijd met dezelfde vorm van roem erkend.

Gesualdo staat in de traditionele geschiedenisboeken bekend als een amateurcomponist. Zijn muziek wordt gekenmerkt door wilde gebaren en abrupte starts en eindes, die typerend zijn voor een componist die gewoon niet wist wat hij deed. In de 20e eeuw is echter ontdekt dat de componist deel uitmaakt van een grotere beweging van Napolitaanse artiesten, en hij was misschien wel de meest vooruitstrevende, expressieve, en sensuele componist van zijn tijd.

Na de moord op Maria leed Gesualdo onder ernstige en toenemende schuldgevoelens. Hij bleef berouw hebben, er werd ertoe bewogen om kerkmuziek met een zeer zwart en zelfverwijtend karakter te schrijven. Het programma op dit album bevat een deel van het officie Metten voor de laatste drie dagen van de Goede Week. Elk van de diensten is verdeeld over drie nocturnen, die elk psalmodie bevatten, drie lezingen en drie responsoria.

De King’s Singers werden gefascineerd door de naakte eerlijkheid die in deze meer dan 400 jaar oude muziek doorklinkt. Het is zo verrassend dat het zijn frisheid zelfs na herhaaldelijk luisteren behoudt. De muziek schildert een wanhopig en ellendig, maar ook hartstochtelijk en liefhebbend persoon, die zich erop richtte om ‘verder’ te componeren dan wie dan ook.

Artist(s)

The King's Singers

The King’s Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over fifty years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, versatility and skill in performance, and for their consummate musicianship, drawing both on the group’s rich heritage and its pioneering spirit to create an extraordinary wealth of original works and unique collaborations. What has always distinguished the group is their comfort in an unprecedented range of styles and genres, pushing the boundaries of their repertoire, while at the same time honouring their origins in the British choral tradition. They are known and loved around the world, and appear regularly in major cities, festivals and venues across Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, including Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mozarteum Salzburg, Tonhalle Zurich, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Edinburgh International Festival, Helsinki Music Centre, Sydney Opera...
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The King’s Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over fifty years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, versatility and skill in performance, and for their consummate musicianship, drawing both on the group’s rich heritage and its pioneering spirit to create an extraordinary wealth of original works and unique collaborations.
What has always distinguished the group is their comfort in an unprecedented range of styles and genres, pushing the boundaries of their repertoire, while at the same time honouring their origins in the British choral tradition. They are known and loved around the world, and appear regularly in major cities, festivals and venues across Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, including Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mozarteum Salzburg, Tonhalle Zurich, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Edinburgh International Festival, Helsinki Music Centre, Sydney Opera House, Tokyo Opera City and the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing. They also work with orchestras, recently including the NDR Radiophilharmonie and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with whom they performed a specially commissioned work by Sir James MacMillan.
9 The King’s Singers’ extensive discography has led to numerous awards including two Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a place in Gramophone magazine’s inaugural Hall of Fame. As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations in 2018, the group undertook a series of major tours worldwide, supporting the release of a special anniversary album GOLD (also nominated for a Grammy Award), which featured important works in the group’s history and new commissions by Bob Chilcott, John Rutter and Nico Muhly.
This commitment to creating a new repertoire has always been central to the group, with over 200 commissioned works by many leading composers of the 20th and 21st Centuries, including John Tavener, Judith Bingham, Eric Whitacre, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki and Toru Takemitsu. These join a unique body of close-harmony and a cappella arrangements, including those by individual King’s Singers past and present. Many of their early collaborators’ own experience with brass bands helped to inform the distinct ‘King’s Singers sound’ and a large number of their commissioned works and arrangements are available in their own signature series with Hal Leonard, selling over two million copies worldwide. A key to the group’s success has been their ability to evolve and innovate over many years – and through 28 individual members – while always retaining this special sound and musical integrity.
They also lead educational workshops and residential courses across the world, working with groups and individuals on their techniques and approaches to ensemble singing. In 2018 they founded The King’s Singers Global Foundation to provide a platform for the creation of new music across multiple disciplines, coach a new generation of performers and provide musical opportunities to people of all backgrounds.
The King’s Singers were formed in 1968, when six recent choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge gave a concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. By chance, the group was made up of two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has maintained this formation ever since that debut.
Patrick Dunachie countertenor Edward Button countertenor Julian Gregory tenor Christopher Bruerton baritone Nick Ashby baritone Jonathan Howard bass
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Composer(s)

Don Carlo Gesualdo

If only Gesualdo would have known how his image today is still much decided by his infamous murder of his cheating wife and the bed-partner he found with her in october 1590. After all, the story fits effortlessly within the extreme music Gesualdo composed - and he must have known that for sure as he actively sought out provocation. His body of works is quite straightforward and it has been fully published during his own lifetime: six books of madrigals, two collections Sacrarum cantionum and a collection of responsories for the Holy Week.  In his madrigals, Gesualdo follows the text closely and uses every opportunity to express the lyrics musically. This led to fragmented, capricious, complex and above all chromatic madrigals. Gesualdo's...
more

If only Gesualdo would have known how his image today is still much decided by his infamous murder of his cheating wife and the bed-partner he found with her in october 1590. After all, the story fits effortlessly within the extreme music Gesualdo composed - and he must have known that for sure as he actively sought out provocation. His body of works is quite straightforward and it has been fully published during his own lifetime: six books of madrigals, two collections Sacrarum cantionum and a collection of responsories for the Holy Week.

In his madrigals, Gesualdo follows the text closely and uses every opportunity to express the lyrics musically. This led to fragmented, capricious, complex and above all chromatic madrigals. Gesualdo's religious music is comparable to his madrigals, but the chromaticism is less extreme and his lines are more fluent.


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