Reactions to music are funny. Since the second Concentus concert, I've talked to several audience members about it, and many have said about the Gesualdo that they "couldn't digest it" or "didn't quite get it." But to me there's not really anything to "get": when I listen to a recording, the effect on me is very immediate and direct. Even those wild chord changes seem to make sense, perhaps because so often the directed motion is so strong. If there's anything we sang that I didn't get, it was the Marenzio madrigal that has seemingly random chord changes and, to me, much stranger passages. It (the Gesualdo) could, of course, have had something to do with our performance: we all thought it was perhaps our best time through, but it's so hard that maybe that wasn't quite good enough to carry it off with conviction. (And there were of course problems: I know I for one was kind of wildly off-pitch at least twice.)

But they're such beautiful pieces, and treat the texts so wonderfully. There are tons of wonderful moments. The beginning of the second responsory (these are mini-pieces sung in between the lamentations of Jeremiah at Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday in Lent) begins with:

Tristis est anima mea usque mortem.

The words of Jesus before his betrayal, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." Although a more literal translation would be "Sorrow is my soul even unto death." That would be an incorrect translation, of course, meaning-wise, but it's really interesting to think about. It's beautifully, delicately set, in very loosely imitative entries, with the motive of two descending steps appearing all throughout the texture. It's a ridiculously simple motive, without even an interesting rhythm, but for some reason it's all I want to listen to there, more color than melody.


sustinete hic, et vigilate mecum: nunc videbitis turbam, quae circumdabit me:

"Stay here, and watch with me: now you will see the crowd which will encircle me."

Throughout this section, the motion increases steadily, leading to a climax on:

vos fugam capietis.

"You will flee."

And finally a dramatic change of texture, moving from a D major chord to E major; a full, disjointed polyphonic texture to a thin, high, legato monophonic texture; playing around with one chord to chromatic windings:

et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.

"and I will go to be offered up for you."

My favorite moment, though, is at the end of the third responsory, the last for this set. It ends with the words:

cuius livore sanati sumus.

"By his wounds we are healed."

This is the text that Handel, in his Messiah oratorio, sets as "and with his stripes we are healed," with the dramatic, painful downward leap of a diminished seventh to "stripes." (My dictionary has "livor" as "leaden color; bluish color; black-and-blue mark," so I think Handel's translation is better than the more common one. It's related, of course, to "livid.") But here, as with "vos fugam capietis" vs. "et ego vadam," Gesualdo breaks the line up. Rather than one severe affect for the whole line, as in the Messiah, "cuius livore" is set to a twisted, chromatic ascent in limited imitation moving from D major through wild chords including an augmented chord up a step to E major, and it looks like it's going to stop there:


But Gesualdo, as always seeming to seek cleansing for his twisted conscience, seems to suggest that that isn't all: the third line down hasn't finished its word yet, and what sounded like a resolution was merely preparing a dramatic shift directly up a half step (though he cleverly avoids literal parallel fifths and octaves) to the true resolution on F major!


To me, Gesualdo shows his mastery here. It's a madrigalian characteristic to chop up lines and do specific text-painting for each part, often destroying the sense of continuity (of the piece and even the poetry) in the process. But here the technique doesn't have this effect. The twisted, chromatic "cuius livore" (that's where I was out of tune in the concert... oh well, it just sounds more painful, right? Plus, we did it three times, and only once was bad) resolves to the contrasting "sanati sumus," and the contrast shows that the whole point of the phrase, to Gesualdo, is that we are healed. And from there to the end of the piece he just continues these wild, glorious flourishes up and down the scale, reveling in the healing effect of F sort-of-lydian. Isn't that beautiful, and as immediate as music gets?