Moro, lasso, al mio duolo

Gesualdo was one of the most individual voices of the late Renaissance. He published six books of madrigals: a popular form of secular music in which short poems, usually about love, were set to music for up to six voices singing in close harmony. The most famous, “Moro, lasso”, appeared in his sixth and final book (1611), containing some of Gesualdo’s most extreme creations. Just as the Italian painter Parmigianino famously exaggerated the features of the Madonna to accentuate her elegance (Madonna with the Long Neck, c.1540), so too Gesualdo musically exaggerated every powerful word, image and sentiment in his text to intensify the overall mood of pained love. He opens with a shocking progression of four slow, unrelated chords to illustrate the phrase “I die, alas, of my grief”—death and dying were highly charged sexual metaphors; he then speeds up for the words “she who can give me life”. The madrigal ends with the unresolved paradox that “She who can give me life, alas, brings me death”.