The exhibition of the famous Italian Baroque painter, Michelangelo di Caravaggio, opens at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow on November 26, 2011.
The works on display will aim to showcase the impact of Caravaggio on the 17th c. painting. In total, the Muscovites and city visitors will see 11 paintings, among which – A Boy with a Basket of Fruit (Galleria Borghese), a 1606 version of Supper at Emmaus (Galleria Brera), The Conversion of Saul (Santa Maria del Popolo). The centrepiece of the exhibition – The Entombment (1602-1604) from Pinacoteca Vaticana in Rome.
Considering that not many Caravaggio’s paintings have reached us, they are normally stored in museums and private collections as very precious objects. An exhibition of his works previously attracted multitudes of visitors to the National Gallery in London in 2005. Now it is Moscow that will play a host to the show of artistic legacy of enfant terrible of the Italian Baroque.
The Caravaggio exhibition runs until February 19, 2012.
I visited a similar exhibition in London in March 2005. It was accompanied with a film season exploring Love and Pain, and I actually went to London twice, first to see In the Mood for Love, and then for Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. The exhibition was held in Sainsbury’s Wing, and its low ceilings and dark walls suited Caravaggio better than Raphael in November 2004.
I’m not sure, however, I manage to get to Caravaggio exhibition in Moscow, and it’s not because of “I’ve seen him already” kind of thing. Rather it is the fact that we have to queue for a long time to get into the museum, and I’m not prepared to do this in winter.
The sheet music to a popular madrigal O Felici Occhi Miei by Diego Ortiz and Jacob Arcadelt can be seen in The Musicians by Caravaggio
Our fascination with Renaissance Italy never ceases. This time we have unambiguous evidence of what music the contemporaries of Caravaggio preferred. One piece that was quite popular was a madrigal by Jacques Arcadelt O Felici Occhi Miei.
(As a matter of fact, last year the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted two exhibitions that were linked together thematically, as geographically, and were of immense importance to all “Italianised Englishmen”, if we are to use the 16th c. slang. One was on Leonardo da Vinci; another on Italian Renaissance household; and I wrote about both on my blog in early November).
Now, I got somewhat interested in the piece of music that I recommended in the mentioned post purely because it was composed in the 16th c., which I studied in great depth. The piece is called Divisions of Arcadelt’s O felici occhi miei, and was composed by Diego Ortiz.
The piece in question is a madrigal by Jacob Arcadelt, a Flemish composer born between 1504 and 1505, who spent a lot of his time in Rome and then in Paris, where he died in 1568. Immensely popular for his madrigals and chansons, he also composed masses and motets. The very first printed madrigals appeared in 1537, and the year 1539 saw the publication of four out of six volumes of Arcadelt’s madrigals.
The madrigal in question is called O felici occhi miei (Oh, my happy eyes), and this is the text:
O felic’ occhi miei, felici voi,
che sete car’ al mio sol
perche sembianz’ havete
de gliocchi che gli fu si dolc’e rei.
voi ben voi sete voi, voi, voi felici et io,
io no, che per quetar vostro desio,
corr’ amirar l’onde mi struggo poi.
(My word-for-word translation:
Oh my happy eyes, happy you are
That you can dearly behold my sun,
For [this is what] the face
To the eyes, to which it was so sweet and regal.
You are beautiful, glowing,
You are happy, and I,
And I am not, for to quieten my longing desire for you,
I look up at you whereby I then suffer).
The comparisons we find in this madrigal are typical of the Renaissance poetry. The most prominent poet who comes to my mind is certainly Petrarch (Canzoniere); but similar motives we can find in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 24. Face is the Sun (the term can be extended to include God); a lover cannot stop looking at the face of his beloved, like a man cannot stop looking at the sun; but the beauty of both bedazzles the viewer, bringing him to tears (strictly, as figuratively, speaking). Such motive, I am sure, goes well back in the dawn of history of literary figures.
In this painting by Caravaggio we see one of the boys holding a sheet music with Diego Ortiz’s work
You can follow the links below to see the score sheets for this madrigal. What is interesting, however, is that a few years ago art historians have identified the Arcadelt’s manuscripts as being included in Caravaggio’s paintings. O felici occhi miei apparently features in painting above, The Musicians (1595, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Which only proves how popular was the madrigal O Felici Occhi Miei by Arcadelt even quarter of a century after his death.
Below is a video with the madrigal recorded by Ernst Stolz and Trond Bengston, featuring the piece of art by Andrea Previtali. It is followed by Pro Musica Antiqua ensemble from Milan singing O Felic’ Occhi Miei a-capella.
Previously on this post there was a link to O felici occhi miei music score in a .pdf file. I discovered recently that the link was no longer working, but the file is still available on the original site. Flauto Dolce has been created by Andrea Bornstein and has already amassed a marvellous collection of music score sheets and ‘is dedicated to the publication of original music and arrangements for recorder made available in various formats‘. Students of both Renaissance and Baroque music will be pleased to find a wide selection of compositions from these periods, some available in MP3. Mr Bornstein also indicated on his website that he was interested in collaborating with musicians who would consider to ‘realise the continuo of pieces from the XVII and XVIII centuries‘. No money offered, but the work will be licensed under the Creative Commons Licence. If you are such musician reading this post, don’t hesitate to contact Flauto Dolce.
You can go to Jacob Arcadelt’s page on Flauto Dolce, where you will find not one, but five of his compositions. Please note that you will need to register on the site to access any content.
