Have you sung Gesualdo?
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    We've never done anything by Gesualdo, and I was looking around for something and found this O Vos Omnes (midi here) which seems odd but beautiful (or maybe not). It does raise doubts in my mind about its singability and whether it would come across properly in a regular liturgy.

    Have any of you ever sung his music? Which piece? What was the effect/reaction?
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    I sang some of his secular music in undergrad, but I believe it was some of the more conservative stuff, not the harmonically wacked-out material for which he’s become well-known.
  • Felipe Gasper
    Posts: 804
    Oh, and, as I recall, it took the choir (a pretty decent college choir) a while to pick up.
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    We aren't looking to entertain of course but I wonder if this stuff would just cause a distraction. The midi file is beginning to hurt my ears actually.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,848
    i could be wrong, but i don't think that score is the same one as the midi file.
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    My undergrad enfatuation with the murderous Carlo (after whom I named one of my cats, still living 16 years later) my attention moved towards an equally innovative, but more coherent Luzzachi. I think the only text I'd ever consider using CG for would be "Absalom," if he set it!
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    The Tallis Scholars recorded his Holy Saturday tenebrae. The religious music is a bit conservative by his standards, but still very difficult. In all honesty, you need a superb group to pull off Gesualdo. The chromaticism of the lines and harmony along with the pitches you have to simply "pick out of the air", so to speak, make it music for professionals/graduate student vocalists. If you can do it, it is really remarkably expressive stuff.
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,486
    It's great stuff, but has do be really done in mannerist style.
  • Michael O'Connor
    Posts: 1,637
    What's mannerist style of singing? I only know this as a compositional trait (e.g., focusing on one particular trait of a long established style).

    It is really difficult to sing, though. The sacred music is a bit easier, but still...
  • OlbashOlbash
    Posts: 314
    I sang that "O Vos" in college. Wacky. Scholars seem to be divided about whether Gesualdo was a visionary or just a kook. I'm not sure it has a liturgical use -- it strikes me as rather "experimental" in nature, an interesting musiciological study, striking for the manner in which it anticipates twentieth-century compositional style. For liturgical use, if I had a hankering for something a bit more adventurous, I'd crack open those Poulenc motets (but they're so darned expensive!).
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