Hilliard Ensemble English and Italian Renaissance Madrigals

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\"Then broadside to broadside and at it they went, for fully two hours or three, the good ships Madrigal and Madrigale, head to head the English and the Italian, nor would either yield until the last quaver...\"

It\'s not a fair battle of course, a handful of English composers against the whole continent. Of the composers of these \"Italian\" madrigals, only six are bona fide Italiani. Compere, Verdelot, Arcadelt, da Rore, Willaert, Bell\'Haver, and di Lasso are all French or Flemish. Likewise, the majority of these Italian \"madrigals\" aren\'t madrigals at all in their contemporary sense; they are villanelle or canzonette, the light-hearted less polyphonic little sisters of the mature madrigali.

The two CDs in this box were recorded four years apart. The Italian CD features only the male voices listed in the notes, with countertenor David James singing treble, The English CD includes sopranos Lynne Dawson and Gillian Fisher; I hate to concede it but the mixed ensemble has a more pleasing blend of voices, and the English madrigals profit from it. However, the French and Italian composers included here have a much larger battery of harmonic and rhythmic resources. If the \"big guns\" of the true Italian madrigalists - Luzzaschi, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Palestrina, d\'India - were included the English barques would be sunk in a trice.

The English madrigalists tended to write jolly jouncy fa-la-la ditties, with the exception on this disk of the ambitious \"O Care Thou Wilt Dispatch Me\" by Thomas Weelkes. Jolly music is not to be scorned; there\'s a good deal of art and wit in these seemingly innocent pieces. John Wilbye\'s \"Sweet Honey Sucking Bees\" is one of the slyest metaphors of amorous climax in all of music, and the Hilliards make that climactic metaphor lushly obvious.

The Parisian composers Verdelot and Arcadelt were major innovators in the genre of the \"chanson\" and their Italian-language madrigals manage to sound quite French. Judging by these two CDs, the English composers learned more of their musical vocabulary from the French than from the Italians. Several of the Italian selections are properly \"carnival\" music, particularly those by the Neapolitan Giovan Domenico da Nola. Such pieces are often comedic, in the spirit of puppet-show commedia dell\'arte. The well-known \"Matona Mia Cara\" by Orlando di Lasso is a hilarious mockery of the accent and manner of a German mercenary trying to serenade an Italian \'Madonna.\'

This is music for frolics and flirtations, sweet honey sucking moments, patio parties and wedding receptions in modern terms. The Hilliards do it very well. Another reviewer declares querulously that the Ensemble Giles Binchois does it better; that may be so, but this 2-CD package is a unique selection.



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