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• Festa, Sebastiano: 2 Madrigals

Festa, Sebastiano: 2 Madrigals

for 4 voices or instruments.

These two early madrigals are taken from Canzone frottole et capitoli da diversi eccellentissimi musici composti nuovamente stampati et correcti, Libro primo. De la Croce, published by Pasoti and Dorico of Rome in 1526. It is thought that this collection is a reprint of a lost earlier print. Certainly some of the repertoire goes back to the beginning of the century. While in theory it is a collection of frottole, several of the pieces are really villotte, and others, including those by Sebastiano Festa, are really early madrigals.
Little is known about Sebastiano Festa (c. 1495-1524): he is assumed to be related to the more famous Costanzo Festa (c. 1490-1545), but even this is uncertain. He seems to have spent his short working life in the Emilia area, in the service of the Fieschi family. His work shows a taste for serious poetry, especially that of Petrarch; his most famous setting of this poet, O passi sparsi, turns up in many manuscript and printed sources up to at least 1566.
In these early madrigals the whole of the text is set in each part. This, combined with the relatively simple texture, means that the pieces work very well with only one part sung (preferably the cantus), with the other parts played on sustaining instruments and/or intabulated for lute. In a purely instrumental performance it is often a good idea to replace the pairs of crotchets (quarter notes) at the end of phrases with a single minim (half note); the relatively simple harmonic language also provides many opportunites for improvised divisions.
In this edition, the original note values have been halved. Editorial accidentals appear in the usual way, printed small above the stave, applying to the one note only; original accidentals are taken as applying to the whole bar. The first piece, Come senz costei, has been transposed up a fourth, though the original version is available as EML 277a.