| GREEN MAN PRESS - EARLY MUSIC EDITIONS | ||
| Giovanni Legrenzi (c1626-1690) |
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| Leg 1 |
Three Cantatas for solo Bass from Cantate e canzonette, 1676
for bass and continuo. Giovanni Legrenzi was important as a composer of operas, of which most were produced for the Venice opera houses. His most esteemed work , Il Giustino, was however also performed in eight other cities in the period 1683 -97. After Legrenzi’s appointment as maestro di capella at San Marco in 1685, he returned mainly to church music, producing oratorios, a mass, motets and psalm settings, some employing large forces. Earlier in his career, he published several collections of instrumental music, and is credited with developing the form of the sonata in a way which influenced later composers such as Torelli, Vivaldi and even Bach. Legrenzi
wrote cantatas and canzonette for each of the voice ranges. These pieces
are three of the six for the bass voice in this collection. They are beautifully
written for the bass voice and do not present any great technical difficulty.
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| Leg 2 | A Cantata and 2 Canzonettas from Cantate e canzonette, 1676. for solo bass and continuo.
These are the remaining three pieces for the bass voice from the 1676 collection. The cantata Amore e virtù amusingly describes Love and Virtue in conflict, each striving to gain ascendancy over the poets heart. The two canzonettas are lighthearted portrayals of the results of falling in love. As in much of Legrenzi, the music is enlivened by the many points of imitation between the basso continuo and the voice. |
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| Leg 3 | Two Cantatas from the Munich MS for bass and continuo. Edited by Barbara Sachs
These two cantatas appear in a remarkable manuscript collection of sixteen cantatas and an arietta, all for bass voice, contained in a bound music book in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. It appears from the paper, and the copyist’s style, to be from the eighteenth century. Barbara Sachs writes: "Dal calore agitato and A piè d'eccelso monte are monologues framed by a narrator's introduction and conclusion. In Dal calore agitato, Fileno's peace and quiet is interrupted by an insistent beating on the door (perhaps his heartbeat) which he is resolved to ignore. He refuses to open, refuses to return to suffering, enslavement, and starvation in the court of Love. More humorous than bitter, the sudden changes of time reflect his wavering resistance. Illiso's monologue in A piè d’eccelso monte, is a Cavalli-like plaint in b minor in 3/2 time with insistent syncopation, which must be taken more slowly than its appearance may suggest, followed by other more contrapuntal sections in C, also to be taken with a moderate tempo according to the narrator's description. Legrenzi writes the beginning and end in e minor with many phrygian harmonies, the reason for leaving the original key signature devoid of sharps. The vocal range (bass baritone) from E to e' is mainly exploited to depict the torrents of tears which Illiso pours into the mountain's streams". |
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| Leg 4 | Che non fa, che non pùo Cantata for soprano or tenor and continuo.
His collections of secular vocal music appeared in 1676 (Cantate e canzonette) and 1678 (Idee armoniche, and Echi di riverenza). The present cantata appears in the first of these, containing works written for the voice-ranges soprano or tenor, alto and bass. The volume is dedicated to Giovanni Guiseppe Orsi. The dedication refers to the nobleman’s familiarity with Legrenzi’s previous works, and this underlines his connection with aristocratic patrons: one of these was Ippolito Bentivoglio, who contributed the libretto for at least one of his operas. As has been suggested, some of these patrons were likely to have written verse which formed the basis for the texts of cantatas and canzonas. As Count Orsi was himself a considerable poet , it is interesting to speculate that he may have made some contribution to the texts of these cantatas of Legrenzi, whose authorship has not been established. Che non fa, che non pùo is a delightful work, being both humorous and witty; the poem’s racy lines with internal rhymes – “A bocca che ride a un occhio ch’uccide” are set with corresponding humour by the composer with syllabic settings in 12/8 or 6/8 time. Its alternating arioso and recitativo passages are constantly enlivened with little points of imitation between the continuo and the voice parts. |
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