The Music, The Life - The Contrast

It may seem incongruous to begin December with a disk of music written for Easter but that's the way the ordering on the shelf works out sometimes. This is a BBC Music mag cover disk from 2004 titled Sacred Music For Easter and featuring Motets and Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday by Gesualdo, sung by the BBC Singers directed by Bo Holten. Gesualdo is of course one of the most notorious of composers, having murdered his wife and her lover after catching them in a compromising situation. These events took place about four hundred years ago and just add colour to the life and times. I wonder what the reaction would subsequently be to the music of a composer closer to our own time who was involved in such actions ? The other response is to put undue emphasis on the effect such a deed might have had on Gesualdo's music, looking for excessive piety or repentance. The music here is certainly very expressive and moving but it is also firmly within the traditions of church music at the time, stretching from Spain, through France and England to the low countries and down to Italy. The responsories are from the service of Matins on Good Friday, prior to the light and triumph of Easter Day. Gesualdo's settings are suitably solemn but with a quiet beauty.