Project overview
My life was changed forever 35 years ago when, leafing through a 17th-century oratorio in the Vatican Library, I came to a recitative with the curious indication 'Cain con la lira'. Such a tantalising inscription would have meant very little to a musician or scholar in 1975, but today we know that the instrument referred to is the lirone, that plaintive-sounding multi string bowed intrument most often associated with grief and lamentation. That first encounter with Roman music inspired the rest of my musical life: I have made research trips to the main Italian cities, have collected, transcribed and performed much of the repertoire, and commissioned four copies of original lirones, yet in all my performing and touring as a professional musician in Europe, America and the Far East, I have been repeatedly disappointed that Roman music is still neglected by performers, promoters and recording companies.
The Roman composers of the generation after Monteverdi, led by Luigi Rossi and Marco Marazzoli, set the intense poetry of their contemporaries - of which martyrdom and death, extravagant repentance, lamenting and religious ecstasy played no small part - and intensified it to create a new musical experience that was sensual, passionate, even erotic. Both Christian and Classical narratives were exploited to put their message across. The new exaggerated and excessive musical style is what we have come to think of as 'Baroque'.
In 2007 I was awarded an AHRC fellowship which enabled me to research the lirone and its history, playing techniques, repertoire and cultural setting, and to develop projects that would promote the instrument and its remarkable repertoire. For that purpose I formed the ensemble Atalante to explore, rehearse, record, stage and film as much Roman music as possible. In 2009 I was awarded an AHRC small grant to assist with costs towards intensive rehearsal periods for two recordings to ensure optimum artistic results as well as to elucidate important performance-practice questions posed by the repertoire. The grant also supported our staged and filmed depictions of the musical narratives, with sumptuous Caravaggio-style costumes, evocative props and imaginative lighting in atmospheric settings. This made the repertoire far more accessible to the musical public, and worked to reinforce the marketing of the CDs, to promote my ensemble Atalante and to augment the effectiveness of my research and my lirone website. Our first recording (November 2009) was of Roman laments of Artemisia, Helen of Troy, Mary Magdalene and the Blessed Virgin by Rossi and Marazzoli. The second recording (July 2010) was of the Roman oratorio of Santa Caterina, whose original score we reconstructed since it had been damaged.
My current application for a further AHRC small grant is to showcase the lirone as an important member of the basso continuo family, to continue to expand its repertoire through recordings, concerts, presentations and performing editions, and to transcend language and cultural barriers for listeners through visually illustrated staged versions of the repertoire. A further objective would be to introduce large-scale Latin works for the lirone (Lamento di David by Domenico Mazzocchi) as well as laments from the generation after Rossi and Marazzoli (Alessandro Stradella, Alessandro Scarlatti and Bernardo Pasquini), including a recorded track of Cain's lament to finally enable that remarkable work to see the light of day.
My strategy in visually enhancing Roman music is modelled on the Counter-Reformation's own marketing tool for spreading their ideology far and wide. Their motto Delectare et docere - to delight while instructing - was created to attract the multitudes back to the Catholic church. The extravagant and erotic music and poetry must have had a powerful effect on its 17th-century listeners, and with visual enhancement, we endeavor to achieve a totally immersible experience for listeners today.