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SSAA with piano and finger bells

Lyrics by unknown author

Duration: ca. 4:00

Premiere performance with cello by In Mulieribus

 

Inspired by virtuosic Venetian composer and singer Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), Sospira, respira features text she set and perhaps wrote for a duet of treble voices with continuo and further expands on her powerful artistic vision of featuring the voice as pure sound, freed from the bounds of text and released into the emotional realm. Modal scales, select chromaticism, the allusion to continuo in the piano, and modern vocal techniques and textures bring a fresh perspective to Strozzi's alliterative, rhythmic, sound-based lyrics, while paying tribute, more than four centuries after her birth, to this original, potent voice as wielded by a mistress of her craft.

 

Sospira, respira
Amato,
sprezzato,
mio core,
traditore,
chi t'inganno?
chi ti fidò?
No, no pene non più!
è sprezzata d'amor la servitù.

 

Chi mi tiene?
catene
desiri
sospiri
contenti
tormenti
chi m'inganna?
una tiranna.

 

"Sospira, respira." Ariette a Voce Sola: Opera Sesta, no. 17, by Barbara Strozzi, Francesco Magni, Called Gardano, Venice, 1657.

 

Sospira, respira with piano

SKU: 157p
$2.00Price
  • Your score will be delivered immediately by email as a print-ready 8.5"x11" PDF licensed for the number of singers in your ensemble. Thank you for purchasing the correct number of scores, so we can mutually support each other's music-making. All sales final.

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