penelope turner

Lovers of Renaissance music may like to know that I will be singing music by Carlo Gesualdo with the Laudantes Consort this coming week. 

We perform on Thursday, May 22nd, at 20:30 in the Chapelle de Linthout, Ave. des deux Tilleuls 2, 1200 Brussels; on Friday, May 23rd, at 20:00 in the Onze Lieve Vrouw van Fatima church, Bret-Gelieren, Genk 3600.

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was born around 1560.  In his twenties he married his beautiful cousin, whom he stabbed to death four years later along with her lover, the Duke of Andria, having caught them “in flagrante”.  Although he remarried, his second liaison was far from happy, and he descended further and further into melancholy until his death in 1613.  Only music seems to have been of importance to him.  In his works you can hear the torture of his soul. 

The six-voice Responsaria that we sing next week are complex and grief-ridden.  Composed two years before his death, they were intended for private performance during Holy Week, with Gesualdo alone as the audience.  They are written in a highly emotional style.  Filled with an incredible concentration of dissonance and chromaticism, the resultant harmonies are often way ahead of the times (there is even a ‘Bruckner moment’!)

Not to be missed.