Output details

Il Cor Tristo : For male vocal quartet

Composed for the Hilliard Ensemble (ATTB) 25 minutes. Commissioned by the festival Sagra Musicale Umbra and the Hilliard Ensemble. Setting of Dante: Inferno, cantos xxxii/xxxiii. First performance Perugia, Italy, September 15th 2008. Published by Peters Edition, London. CD recording ECM 2013.

It has become commonplace in vocal music to accept that full comprehensibility of text is an impossible goal when words are set to music. This is equally the case in classical and popular musics. A central concern in my work over thirty years has been to enable the clear presentation of narrative in musical form. Various combinations of spoken and sung text characterized earlier pieces, culminating in the 2 hour setting of Giraud’s _Pierrot Lunaire_ in 2001, in which French text and English translation featured together throughout in varying combinations. This approach aimed to ensure clarity of poetic communication and faithful musical setting of original text simultaneously. In this work for the Hilliard Ensemble I turned to Dante, and to a lengthy and serious passage of narrative in verse. This time, encouraged by the fact that I was composing for an Italian audience initially, I made the decision to use only the original Italian text, but challenged myself to ensure that clarity of text took precedence at all times over purely musical considerations. The setting is entirely syllabic throughout, and incorporates substantial passages of ‘quasi recitative’. Formally the piece is divided into three movements which, while continuous in terms of narrative, are designed to be separated in performance, with Italian madrigals interspersed between the movements. Thus each section picks up from where the last left off, harmonies and motives remaining constant throughout, while at the same time developing and mutating as the narrative darkens.