SSAA with cello and optional finger bells
Lyrics by unknown author
Duration: ca. 4:00
Premiere performance 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 cello solo, 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.