Sestetto Italiano

Given a table, tuning fork, piles of music and the Sestetto Italiano Luca Marenzio one has a delightful evening of Italian madrigals from the late sixteenth century. Add Sanders Theatre and last night's smallish but enthusiastic audience, and Adriano Banchieri's madrigal comedy La Barca di Venezia per Podova becomes the absurd and absorbing musical work it has been for three and a half centuries.

Everyone from a canorous finch to a detestitute soldier sings on the ride from Venice to Padua, and an extraordinary passenger list it must have been to supply twenty madrigals on a thirty mile trip. Even more extraordinary was the representation that the two women and four men in the sextet gave of characters in the boat. As Venetian fishermen, they echoed each other with subtle dynamic control. Director and basso Piero Cavalli led one texture smoothly into another. A Madrigale afettuoso, a bit too obvious in intent to touch the modern listener properly, followed fine contrapuntal fun on simple scale practices. In spite of a cough, soprano Liliana Rossi filled Sanders with a beautifully clear tone, while the rest of the sextet took the part of a lute.

Il Dissonante, as abbot Banchieri was known to the academic world of his day, did not hesitate to make a single pivot note the sole point of continuity in a total shift of harmony. Daring in his time, such transitions still surprise the traditionally trained ear. Banchieri also jabbed his musical elbow in the stylistic ribs of his contemporaries. But, as Banchieri himself ends the next to last madrigal, "Hail to the caprices of Banchieril"

Two madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo, far too few, introduced the second half of the program. Aldous Huxley has given Gesualdo's art the proper eulogy and analysis; one can only add that bursts of unrelated harmonies and dramatic stops and starts notwithstanding, each part flowed smoothly.

Following the probing harmonic and contrapuntal explorations of Gesualdo, the madrigals of Luca Merenzio sounded a bit parochial and stay-at-home. Yet his two villanellas for three voices offered a great and rarely heard texture: soprano, counter-tenor, and basso. (Counter-tenor Carlo Tosti's sense of humor was, incidentally, crucial for the success of several of the Banchieri and Marenzio madrigals.)

Only skillful vocal ensembles singing in the contrapuntal style of the sixteenth century Italian madrigal can share the tone of the whole concert: fluid, flexible, continuous. And although occasionally their pitches wandered and attacks scattered, in their masterful moments the madrigal singers made a good case for a revival of the form.