Emilio de' Cavalieri called Gesualdo an "ardent musician," but left it to later interpretors do define whether or not this was a compliment. Certainly Cavalieri thought Gesualdo's music fascinating, and his judgement has been reiterated by many who encounter it. On at least one occasion, he also found Gesualdo's music too much to take: after an evening in which the Prince of Venosa kept Cavalieri for seven hours, the latter said, "I will hear no music for two months." This judgement on Gesualdo, as well, has been echoed in our own time. The ardent madrigals of the eccentric prince, as well as his mystically erratic religious music, both excite our ears and tax them. Indeed, in a madrigal such as his five-voiced Languisce al fin, from the 1611 Fifth Book of Madrigals, listener and singer alike must concentrate moment by moment to follow the radical shifts of Gesualdo's musical gesture.



As in so much of Gesualdo's music, the overt and striking succession of musical gestures in Languisce al fin reflects the composer's reaction to a succession of "trigger words" in his text. From the opening words of the madrigal, Gesualdo carefully reflects their most passionate meanings. The first line, for instance, moralizes that "He languishes to the end, who gives away a part of his life." Gesualdo literally divides the musical life of this line in two, with some voices singing a highly awkward downward leap and chromatic descent on "languish," and the others responding with the divided life. The voices sing passages which are a bit more straightforward, yet relapse into chromaticicm and unusual voice-leading as the text describes the "crude pains of death." Finally, the poet gives the answer: the one who is suffering is himself; Gesualdo twice passes the voices through a rich (almost Romantic) harmonic progression as the poet calls out to his "sweetest heart." Yet the poet is parting from her, and once again, Gesualdo separates the voices into smaller groups. "And for this cruel fate," the poet claims he must leave this life; the music at this pronouncement bursts into ornamental passaggi; each singer acts as an operatic soloist. The concluding line of text, "and I must instead go to death," draws the pain out for fully a fifth of the piece's length; each voice sings a relentless and somewhat awkward descent over and over until coming to a completely final, yet unsettling cadence.



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