Lamento della Ninfa

First recorded back in 1937 conducted by the legendary Nadia Boulanger, the Lamento della Ninfa (Lament of the Nymph) has become one of Monteverdi’s best-loved works. It was inspired by one of his own most famous works, the Lamento d’Arianna (Lament of Arianna), which fuelled a fashion for such soul-searching solos. But the Lamento della Ninfa is actually a quartet, in which three male voices describe a young girl leaving home in the morning and wandering the fields lamenting her lost love. Monteverdi published it in his Eighth Book of Madrigals (1638), but it is more than merely a madrigal, also drawing on the powerful new language of opera. In the central section (“Amor”) the girl’s lament is grafted onto the highly expressive singing of the male trio, underpinned by a relentlessly repeating bass line of four descending notes (a chaconne). Monteverdi instructs that while the men must sing strictly in time, the soprano should sing “to the speed and emotion of her soul.”