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Reading: Il mal mi preme, et mi spaventa il peggio

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

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    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.

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lyrics

Il mal mi preme, et mi spaventa il peggio,
Al qual veggio sì larga et piana via,
Ch’i’ son intrato in simil frenesia,
Et con duro pensier teco vaneggio.

Né so se guerra o pace a Dio mi cheggio,
Ché ’l danno è grave, et la vergogna è ria.
Ma perché più languir? Di noi pur fia
Quel ch’ordinato è già nel sommo seggio.

Ben ch’i’ non sia di quel grande honor degno
Che tu mi fai, che te ne ’nganna amore,
Che spesso occhio ben san fa veder torto,

Pur d’alzar l’alma a quel celeste regno
È ’l mio consiglio, et di spronare il core,
Perché ’l camin è lungo, e ’l tempo è corto.

Petrarch, Canzoniere 244

Ill oppresses me, and I am terrified by the worst,
toward which I see so broad and smooth a way
that I have entered into frenzy like yours
and with hard thoughts rave with you.

I do not know whether to ask God for war or peace,
for the danger is grave and the shame is cruel.
But why languish any more? It shall be with us
as is already ordained at the highest throne.

Although I am not worthy of that great honor
which you do me—for love deceives you
which oft makes a healthy eye see crooked—

still, my counsel is to lift your soul
to that heavenly kingdom, and spur your heart,
for the road is long and the time is short.

(Response to a sonnet addressed to Petrarch by his friend and doctor, Giovanni Dondi dall’Orologio: see Canzoniere ed. Santagata, p. 988-9.)

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

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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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