Complete Unaccompanied Madrigals, Part 1

Abstract

This edition presents, in four volumes, the complete unaccompanied madrigals of Luzzasco Luzzaschi, director of music at the Ferrarese court at the end of the sixteenth century. Luzzaschi was among the most important and most admired musicians of the period, the teacher of Girolamo Frescobaldi, the mentor of Carlo Gesualdo, and the object of explicit admiration from Claudio Monteverdi, Claudio Merulo, Alfonso Fontanelli, Adriano Banchieri, and many others. Given Luzzaschi's importance, all surviving parts of his seven books of five-voice madrigals are transcribed. Given the importance of the Ferrarese school of literary madrigals, whose (otherwise usually unpublished) texts Luzzaschi was given to set, these texts have been transcribed and translated. Each setting by Luzzaschi is given a critical commentary by the editor, which often includes discussion of settings of the same texts by Luzzaschi's near contemporaries—settings which, if unpublished in modern edition are included in the present edition. Part 1 of the unaccompanied madrigals of Luzzaschi incorporates all surviving parts of his last three books of madrigals—his Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Books of 1595–1604. The Fifth and Sixth Books seem to include recent pieces from the late 1590s; the Seventh Book seems to be a retrospective collection, including madrigals from ca. 1580 to ca. 1604. The edition includes transcriptions and translations of the poems set, often anonymous and usually otherwise unpublished. The poetry appears to be the product of the significant school of contemporary Ferrarase poetry, usually in the form of the late-century poetic madrigal, whose principal founders were the Ferrarese poets Torquato Tasso and Battista Guarini. The edition also includes nine settings by his near contemporaries of texts set by Luzzaschi in these three books.