Monteverdi, Claudio - Tasso Madrigals - Concerto Italiano
Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano have been critically acclaimed for their recordings of Monteverdi's Madrigal. They have recorded all eight books for various labels throughout the 1990s.
Authoritative performance practice and an all Italian cast give idiomatic performances of these early Monterverdi madrigal settings.
Monteverdi, like many composers of the early Baroque, produced a sizeable body of madrigals. This was partly due to the insatiable public demand for what was high quality domestic music. Small instrumental forces, talented singers, and music set to words by some of the most popular poets of the day. Needless to say, Monteverdi's madrigals are among the very finest examples, and he was among the last composers that brought the form to its pinnacle. The later baroque had no place for the form. It was probably during his time at the court of Mantua in the 1580s that he became acquainted with the works of Torquato Tasso (1544-95). He had been working with fellow composer Giaches de Wert, an enthusiastic madrigal producer of some fame, and no doubt guided by de Wert, took to producing his own. The first set was published in 1587, the second in 1590, a third in 1592, and the fourth and final set in 1603. The madrigal was a short work lasting no more than five minutes for a small group of voices, each singing a solo part. The subject matter was nearly always of worldly matters, a speciality of Tasso. The influence of church music can be detected in the earlier books, but in the later works more freedom of expression, often highly dramatic can be heard. In essence, they become miniature operatic scenes. All of Monterverdi's Tasso settings were written prior to 1600, and all of his operas come after that year. However, in these works we can clearly detect the emergence of the first great operatic composer.