Composer: Barbara Strozzi (b. 1619 - d. 1677)
Performance date: 30/06/2019
Venue: St. Brendan’s Church
Composition Year: 1619 - 1677
Duration: 00:12:56
Recording Engineer: Gar Duffy, RTÉ
Instrumentation Category:Baroque Ensemble
Instrumentation Other: s-solo, 2vn, vc, hpd
Artists:
Ensemble Dagda (Clodagh Kinsella [soprano], Caitríona O'Mahony, Marja Gaynor [violins], Norah O'Leary [cello], Kieran Finnegan [harpsicord]) -
[baroque ensemble]
As
an illegitimate daughter and later unmarried mother-of-four, Strozzi is
the composer to whom the suggestion of courtesan clings most closely.
Some of this may be blamed on the only ascribed portrait of Strozzi, in
which she stands with her breast bared, a viol in one hand. She was
adopted to legitimize her status in the household of poet and
librettist Giulio Strozzi, and was sponsored into the artistic world by
him, in much the same way as Francesca Caccini. Taught by Francesco
Cavalli, she also found it useful to dedicate works to powerful female
patrons, including Anna de Medici and Duchess Sophie of Brunswick and
Luneburg. Barbara undoubtedly had some relationship with married
nobleman Giovanni Vidman, who fathered at least three of her four
children. No record survives to suggest that he was her financial
support – evidence suggests that after her father’s death she supported
herself and her children by means of her composition and investments. It
is also suggested that she may have had a relationship with the Count
of Mantua. Again evidence is slim – while she composed for the Count and
he often visited Venice, the highest proof lies in a few saucy lines of
a letter between the Count and his Venetian agent.
Living
in a city defined by opera, Strozzi’s mastery of the alternate (and
more print-friendly) genre, the cantata, is one of the reasons she was
the most published composer of the genre in her period. Strozzi’s work
was always at the forefront of stylistic developments from madrigal to
cantata and she is quite clearly a huge influence on composers like
Caldara and Legrenzi. Her Hor che Apollo, written as a love song
to the nymph Filli, takes the mythological background so popular in
Venetian opera and frames it in the cutting edge of cantata writing at
the time; instrumental ritornelli, emotive recitative-like passages and
occasionally moving the story along with passages in more madrigal-like
triple time.
|
Or che Apollo e |
Now that Thetis rests against Apollo’s breast |
| e il mio sol sta in grembo al sonno, |
and my sun is in sleep’s lap, |
| or ch’a lui pensand’io peno, |
now that I suffer thinking of him, |
|
ne posar |
on whom I may |
|
a questo albergo |
In this |
|
innamorato e solo. |
I come crying |
|
Si, Filli, |
Yes, Filli, |
|
a te vien supplicante |
beseeching |
|
de’ tuoi bei lumi amante. |
in love with |
|
Mira al pie’ tante catene, |
See my foot so |
|
lucidissima |
my brightest |
|
e se duolti ch’io stia in pene |
and if my |
|
sii men cruda oppur men bella. |
be less cruel |
|
Se men cruda, pietade avro del mio servir, |
if less cruel, |
|
sapro |
I would know |
|
e |
and if you |
|
io |
I could elude |
|
Vedi al core quante spine |
See with how |
|
tu mi dai, vermiglia rosa, |
you do pierce, |
|
e se sdegni mie rovine, |
and when you |
|
sii men fiera o men vezzosa. |
be less fierce |
|
Ma |
but vent |
|
spriggionatevi, |
be liberated, |
|
s’io |
for I realize |
|
che di me ride Filli anco dormendo. |
that I am |
|
Ride de’ miei lamenti certo questa crudele |
She laughs |
|
e sprezza i preghi miei, le mie querele. |
and ignores |
|
Deggio per cio partir senza conforto: |
I should |
|
se vivo non mi vuoi, mi vedrai morto. |
While to |
|
Mentre altrove il pie’ s’invia, |
I leave you in |
|
io ti lascio in dolce oblio; |
I am leaving |
|
Parto, |
may this be the last goodbye. |
|
questo |
that I am |
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