Mystic Madrigali

Our coming concert at the end of June sees a welcome return for an Oriana favourite – Lauridsen’s Madrigali. The Madrigali, or “Fire songs” are based on poems that describe the pain of unrequited love, and the music depicts this through some gorgeous dissonant clashes. They’re very satisfying to sing, and we’ll be pairing them with Monteverdi settings of the same poems so there will be some exciting contrasts of style.

Difficult though the Madrigali are, we did them in concert only last year, so lots of us already know them well and hopefully they’ll only need a bit of tweaking to get them back up to scratch. There was some struggling at this week’s rehearsal to maintain the semitone clashes without blending into one note – the basses in particular were being seduced into consonance by the altos – but by the end of rehearsal we were getting the notes well under control. So now the most challenging bit is trying to fit all the words in to the musical line. The songs are pretty fast, and my Italian is restricted to “ciao” and “cappuccino”, so I was rather letting the side down on clear diction. My contributions were along the lines of “ng, ng ng ng ng –o-re, ng, ng ng ng ng - vi-o”. But I made up for my shortcomings by ostentatiously rolling every “r” for a good two bars, and I’m pretty sure David-the-Conductor was fooled.

Lauridsen is an American composer of Dutch parentage, born in 1943. According to “Choral Music in the Twentieth Century” Lauridsen is the most frequently performed American choral composer, but also, rather surprisingly, the only American composer who can also be called a mystic. I’m not sure what that means. Do you suppose he has the gift of prophecy through composition? To test the theory I have been painstakingly translating the first Madrigal, which goes as follows:

“Ov’e, lass’, il bel viso?” (oy vey, lass, do you take visa?)
“Dov’il mio sol?” (Is that my Dover Sole?)
Lasso, che velo s’e post’inanti et rend’oscur’il? (Alas, what veil drapes itself and renders the heavens dark?)

Wow – hold the presses - Mystic Morten has predicted the ash cloud! And a day in the life of a kosher restaurant in York! Truly he is the new Nostradamus. So get your tickets for our concert now – not only will you hear great music, you’ll also learn the future.