The Many Faces of Love
In the words of Tennyson, "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Our thoughts have likewise turned to love, and it has become the theme of our latest concert video, to be aired May 15th.
The Lovers, School of Fontainebleau, c. 1600
Renaissance music depicted the many faces of love: humans’ love of God and God's love for humanity, as represented in sacred music of the era, and love of a secular kind, found in English and Italian madrigals, French chansons, and the like. Below are a few examples of how love was depicted in lyrics from secular music of the time.
Some poets wrote of an idealized, beautiful loved one. Romantic love, and particularly love at first sight, is described in the 17th century song, Since First I Saw Your Face published by Thomas Ford in 1607:
"Where beauty moves and wit delights
And signs of kindness find me
There, oh there, where'er I go
I'll leave my heart behind me."
Three dancing nymphs and a reclining cupid in a landscape by Zucchi ca. 1772
Madrigals of the period were replete with references to nymphs and shepherds, to maidens and swains, and to frolicking in the countryside. For example, Thomas Morley's Now Is The Month of Maying, writes of "merry lads" each with his "bonny lass." He wonders, "Why sit we musing, love's sweet delights refusing" and asks "dainty nymphs" if they would like to play "barley break". While indeed a game played by young couples, barley break also came to have a sexual connotation, akin to "a roll in the hay".
Morley's composition features many "Fa-la-la's". Often seen as nonsense syllables or 'spacers', they were used to represent subjects that could not be expressed explicitly, whether satirical or sexual. Our beloved conductor, Jane Perry, often smilingly asserts that Fa-la-la's can be seen as a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge". Another madrigal in the same vein is Thomas Greaves' Come Away, Sweet Love, which is to be included in our concert video. Nymphs also feature here, and the scene appears to include outdoor lovemaking, where the nymphs are invited to leave their cares aside and come to play, with lots of "running in and out".
Hero mourning over the body of Leander by Edward Bramwell, 1908
The Renaissance was a period characterized by a renewed interest in classical subjects, which regularly made their way into poems and song lyrics. One of these is Weep, Weep, Weep Mine Eyes by John Wilbye. This beautiful madrigal, which CRSP recorded virtually in 2021, is about Leander and Hero, two lovers from Greek mythology who lived on either side of the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles, one of the waterways linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean), and who would meet nightly when Leander swam across the strait. One night he drowned, and the song describes Hero's inconsolable grief. Without her great love, she laments, "Ah, cruel Fortune!" and cries, "Death, do thy worst, I care not." This dramatic outpouring is but one example of the intensity of feeling expressed in many songs of the period where love is unrequited, or destroyed through infidelity, or lost through death.