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Music

Sources used for collation: AnGa-1594; AnGa-1603; Ma-Ga-1614

Other sources: Ka-1601; Ph-1609; Ph-heirs-1632

Text
Lines Sources – Voices Variants
6

AnGa-1603 – Q

cudel
13

AnGa-1603 – all voices

mort'il
cudel (AnGa-1603 – Q)
mort'il (AnGa-1603 – all voices)

Edition and commentary

Udite, lagrimosi

Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido, III, 6, 814–826

Unrhymed eleven- and seven-syllable lines (endecasillabi e settenari sciolti)

Udite, lagrimosiHear, o tearful spirits of Avernus,
Spirti d’Averno, uditehear of a new kind of pain and torment;
Nova sorte di pena e di tormento;
Mirate crudo affettobehold a ruthless sentiment
5In sembiante pietoso:in compassionate guise:
La mia donna, crudel più dell’inferno,my lady, more cruel than Hell,
Perch’una sola mortesince one death alone
Non può far sazia la sua ingorda vogliacannot satisfy her voracious lust
(E la mia vita è quasi(and my life is almost
10Una perpetua morte),a perpetual death)
Mi comanda ch’io vivacommands me to live,
Perché la vita miaso that my life should be
Di mille morti il dì ricetto sia.the abode of a thousand deaths a day.

English translations of madrigal texts based with permission on those by Kathryn Bosi, The complete five voice madrigals: for mixed voices / IV, The sixth and seventh books. New York: Gaudia Music and Arts, 1996.

Contemporary editions

Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido, tragicommedia pastorale, Venice: G.B. Ciotti, 1602, 192.

Notes

The 1602 edition of Il pastor fido has “fiera voglia” at line 8 (as well as other minor variants). On the problem of variants and adaptations in Marenzio’s settings from Il pastor fido, see Cecchi, “List of Secular and Devotional Compositions by Luca Marenzio,” 490, n. XLVI, and the literature quoted there.