board77

What does that mean, Jude?

(And do you know any Gesualdo? I would have said Monteverdi was my favourite early composer until I heard Gesualdo...)

[further osgilliation]Gesualdo was an interesting type. He came home one day and found his wife in bed with another man. So he killed his wife.

Then, he made the lover dress up in his wife's clothes, and kileed him.

Then, the uncertainty as to whether his baby son was actually his or the lover's drove him to kill the son.

Because he was an aristocrat, he got away with it, but the wife's family drove him to Venice.

He lived out the rest of his days in Venice, and because of his guilt over his son, he paid three servants to beat him up every day.

Great man. His music is about 500 years ahead of its time![/further osgilliation]

But the question I asked Jude at the start still stands, just to come back from Osgilliath at the end.

Oh yeah, I love Gesualdo's music. Such daring chromaticism, so ahead of his time.

But I still like Monteverdi better.

The bit I posted means:

Quote:

Fair eyes, to arms, to arms!
I'm ready for you to strike me in the heart!
Rejoice, rejoice in wounding me
So that I fade away.
And if your arrows
Succeed in overcoming me
Let your glance wound me,
But let your smile heal me.

For sheer naked, raw emotion, you just can't beat Monteverdi.

Didn't kill anyone though, did he?

That's a point in his favour.

Jude wrote:

For sheer naked, raw emotion, you just can't beat Monteverdi.

Every woman I've ever slept with would disagree.

Have any of them ever slept with Monteverdi as well? I doubt it.

Spousicide, followed by lover-dressed-in-spouse's-clothes-icide, followed by infanticide, followed by self flagellation and paying one's servants to beat one isn't raw emotion?



:p

Who said it wasn't?

Quote:

For sheer naked, raw emotion, you just can't beat Monteverdi.

Didn't kill anyone though, did he? So maybe not so raw and passionate as Gesualdo?

I was referring to his music, not his biography.

But Monteverdi didn't write those words. He just set them to music. Gesualdo has some pretty amazing words too. You know the dying bit in "Io Parto"? Where the chord progression sounds like something from 1930? Now there's word painting.

Would you happen to have an .mp3 recording?

And maybe we should take this to a new thread...

I do indeed.

And maybe we should. Would you do the honours?

Welcome to the new thread

Is this .mp3 a copyrighted performance, or a recording of you and your choir?

Speaking of which, does that weird musical director who doesn't like Monteverdi also not like Gesualdo?

I don't know if it's copyrighted... I suspect I have it illegally. Personally, I've never sung any Gesualdo. (More's the pity!)

I also don't know whether or not she likes Gesualdo. I haven't mentioned him in her presence yet.