Lagrime dolorose

No 5 of 6 Scherzi

Agostino Steffani (1654-1728)

Editor: Cedric Lee

for bass solo (G-e'), 2 recorders (flauti) and continuo

Ref. no Ste 5 (in 'cantatas')      Price £ 9.50      sample page      cover page      To order:     

The subject of Lagrime dolorose is as the title suggests, mourning: the lover is lamenting, but the cause of his grief is not his love being spurned, but, as is revealed in the second recitative, that his adored Phyllis is in fact dead. After roundly cursing his fate, Amyntas, being a hard-headed young man, resolves to shed his memories and his longing, because ‘to have the eyes always brimming with tears, torments the living, but does not restore the dead to life’!