Madrigaux - Monteverdi, Gesualdo

Following the success of their concert cycles devoted to Italian composers Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo, Paul Agnew and his madrigal singers continue their exploration of this fascinating 16th-century repertoire. 

Born less than a year apart, Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo took musical creation in two radically different directions: opera for the former, and the more traditional a cappella form for the latter. Monteverdi's Madrigals, composed from the 1580s onwards, are for him a laboratory for dramatic experimentation, in which instrumental accompaniment becomes indispensable, while the traditional five-voice texture dissolves. Gesualdo, for his part, continued to write for the five-voice a cappella format until the end of his life, pushing back the limits of chromatic writing.