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Quel sempre acerbo et honorato giorno

from Cipriano de Rore: I madrigali a cinque voci by Blue Heron

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    The two discs come in a single 4-panel wallet-style format. There are no plastic CD trays, which makes for a greener (and more lightweight) package. The discs contain a world premiere recording of “I madrigali a cinque voci”, by Cipriano de Rore, including all 20 madrigals in the sequence found in the 1542 print, as well as readings of the poems in Italian by Alessandro Quarta. The booklet includes extensive notes by Musicologist Jessie Ann Owens (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis), one of the world's leading experts on the composer, about De Rore and this book of madrigals, her research about the poets, and the evidence supporting her conclusion that the publication is a “song cycle”; notes by Scott Metcalfe about performance practice (including rhetorical delivery of text); and complete texts and translations.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Cipriano de Rore: I madrigali a cinque voci via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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lyrics

Quel sempre acerbo et honorato giorno
Mandò sì al cor l’imagine sua viva
Ch’ingegno o stil non fia mai che ’l descriva,
Ma spesso a lui con la memoria torno.

L’atto d’ogni gentil pietate adorno,
E ’l dolce amaro lamentar ch’io udiva,
Facean dubbiar, se mortal donna o diva
Fosse, che ’l ciel rasserenava intorno.

La testa or fino, et calda neve il volto,
Hebeno i cigli, et gli occhi eran due stelle,
Onde Amor l’arco non tendeva in fallo.

Perle et rose vermiglie, ove l’accolto
Dolor formava ardenti voci et belle,
Fiamma i sospir, le lagrime cristallo.

Petrarch, Canzoniere 157

That forever cruel and honored day
impressed upon my heart its image so alive
there is no wit or style that can ever describe it,
but often I return to it in memory.

Her gestures adorned with all noble pity
and the sweet bitter lamenting that I heard
made me wonder if it were mortal woman or goddess
who made the sky clear all around.

Her head fine gold, and her face warm snow,
ebony her eyebrows, and her eyes two stars,
whence Love never bent his bow in vain;

pearls and crimson roses, where the gathered
sorrow formed ardent and beautiful words;
flame her sighs, her tears crystal.

Translation by Scott Metcalfe. Cf. translations by Robert Durling and Mark Musa

credits

from Cipriano de Rore: I madrigali a cinque voci, released October 4, 2019

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Blue Heron Boston, Massachusetts

Winner of the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music (the first non-European group to win the award), Blue Heron (Scott Metcalfe, dir.) has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for the “expressive intensity” of its interpretations. ... more

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