Andrea Gabrieli - La peine de mon cœur by Sébastien Wonner ECL2102E

Product details :

Artist : Sébastien Wonner, harpsichord

Program : Canzoni, Ricercari, Intonazioni, Madrigali by Andrea Gabrieli

Access to the digital booklet.

Overview :

Andrea Gabrieli was almost the exact contemporary of Veronese and they certainly collaborated toward the end of the musician’s life. On March 3, 1585, a new performance took place: Sophocles’ Oedipus rex translated into Italian by Orsatto Giustiniani. It was a remarkable event: the choruses were composed by Gabrieli and the performance inaugurated the Teatro Olimpico designed by Palladio in Vicenza. Its sumptuous perspective scenery, which still exists, was illuminated by countless oil lamps made of glass. There are also touching drawings of studies for the costumes made by Veronese himself.

In my work to bring this music to life, I confess to having been preoccupied by the question of the Venetian colorito. In the great debate between the primacy of drawing (disegno) or color, Venice has always been placed in opposition to Florence, which held il disegno as the foundation of all pictorial and sculptural achievement through the voice of its greatest chronicler, Giorgio Vasari. Faced with the suppleness of musical line and with the physical gestures of an incomparable genius like Gabrieli, it seemed to me that music could not have been external to the energy that the technique of colorito brought to art. It would be absurd to think that music would be constrained to the scholastic rigor that we sometimes misleadingly associate with strict counterpoint. There is undoubtedly a dialectical relationship between musical and pictorial flexibility.

Of Gabrieli’s six printed collections, the first and one other (lost, but copied in a later manuscript) were expressly intended for the organ and the other four simply specify that they are “to be played on keyboard instruments” (per sonar sopra istromenti da tasti). Expertly constructed harpsichords have been found in palaces and homes—even in the homes of barbers, who had a widely used right to give music concerts, and to teach music.

The harpsichord is an instrument that evokes closeness and an intimacy that expresses itself in a world that could not be more different from public performances on the organ. It invites listeners to a privileged place of private enjoyment, where poetic fury can be expressed most naturally: « Who will tell the pain of my heart? » And to say along with Willaert, chapel master of Saint Mark’s, stepping out of the basilica onto the piazzetta: “Partir da voi vorrei Tanto son dolci gli ritorni miei”. So sweet are my returns. Sébastien Wonner