Italian survivals

Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Complete unaccompanied madrigals, part 1 : Quinto libro de' madrigali a cinque voci (Ferrara, 1595 ), Sesto libro de' madrigali a cinque voci (Ferrara, 1596 ), Settimo libro de' madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1604 ) , ed. Anthony Newcomb, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, cxxxvi (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2003 ), $93

Domenico Allegri, Music for an academic defense (Rome, 1617 ), ed. Anthony John, with historical and textual commentary by Louise Rice and Clare Woods, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, cxxxiv (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2004 ), $44

Famously, Luzzasco Luzzaschi's music written for Ferrara's legendary concerto delle donne was deliberately kept from the presses as a form of musica secreta by Alfonso II d'Este, appearing in print only after the duke's death. It is less well known that much of Luzzaschi's instrumental music (for the court's renowned balletti and the celebrated concerto grande) was also 'reserved' in this way, and has been subsequently lost. However, Luzzaschi was allowed to publish six books of madrigals while employed by the Este, over half of them in editions produced by Ferrara's ducal printer. As rare survivals, and as works whose presentation in print was sanctioned by an over-protective court, these unaccompanied madrigals form a notable part of Luzzaschi's output. The fifth, sixth and seventh books of madrigals have now been expertly edited by Anthony Newcomb for A-R Editions' series Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance. Together with Durante and Martellotti's publication of Le due 'scelte' napoletane of Luzzaschi's work (SPES, 1998 ) and Newcomb's editions of music by the Ferrarese courtier and nobleman Alfonso Fontanelli (A-R Editions, 1999 and 2000), the meticulously produced Luzzasco Luzzaschi: complete unaccompanied madrigals, part 1 permits us finally to assess for ourselves the importance of the late 16 th-century Ferrarese madrigal.

The madrigal books selected by Newcomb fall into two groups: the fifth and sixth originally formed part of a prestigious series of 'courtly' musical editions produced during Gesualdo's stay at the Ferrarese court in the mid-1590s, which did not enjoy wide commercial circulation, while the seventh was clearly a profit-making venture brought out by the Venetian printer Giacomo Vincenti at the end of Luzzaschi's career. This difference is clearly reflected in the repertory they contain. The earlier two feature works composed by Luzzaschi in the mid- to late-1580s and 1590s, setting the poesia secreta that Duke Alfonso was also anxious to restrict. Largely written within the sphere of the Ferrarese court, there are few contemporary concordances in musical or poetic sources. On the other hand, Vincenti's compilation includes works setting more conventional texts frequently employed by other composers, some of them up to 25 years old. Newcomb's edition pays close attention to this poetry, which is given both in Italian and in English translation. In addition to providing a thorough analysis of the relationship between music and text for each piece, he includes detailed comparisons with settings of identical or related texts by other composers. (Nine of these, previously unpublished, are transcribed in a useful appendix.) Luzzaschi is revealed to have set an unusually large number of poems with a female speaker, possibly because of the prominence of Ferrara's singing ladies. Indeed, Newcomb demonstrates that the sequence of pieces in the fifth book in particular appears to be dictated by the topics of the texts, rather than the more customary musical considerations of key signature, clef combinations or final.

A welcome feature of this edition is its inclusion of pieces that survive incomplete. Where only one or two partbooks exist for a madrigal, he gives these voices alone; he reconstructs missing parts to create a performable version only where three out of five parts survive (a solution, he stresses, that is open to emendation and variation). Although it is painful to see a solitary quinto part presented in this way, even this fragmentary view of Luzzaschi's writing enables us to...