In the spring of 1589 the new Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando de' Medici, married a French princess, Christine of Lorraine. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that this alliance represented a distinct and dramatic change in Florentine policy, the wedding was celebrated in Florence with a magnificence that surpassed anything else that had been seen in the course of the sixteenth century. At the heart of those celebrations were a number of performances of Girolamo Bargagli's play La pellegrina (''The female pilgrim''), given together with its accompanying set of intermedi (or interludes). It is the music for the latter, which are arguably the most splendid and elaborate examples of the genre to have survived, which occupies this new record.
The six intermedi, which were performed between the acts and at the end of the play, are unified in theme and are, for the most part, the work of the poet Ottavio Rinuccini who was later to provide librettos for some of the earliest operas. The music, on the other hand, is a collaborative effort which involved not only the local composers Cristofano Malvezzi, Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, but also Luca Marenzio, the foremost madrigalist of his day, and the talented but controversial Emilio de' Cavalieri, imported from Rome. In terms of style each intermedio is made up of a sequence of choruses which underscore the high points in the action, with occasional sinfonias which were designed to mask changes of scene; there are also a number of solo songs in the new Caccinian manner, and the final intermedio closes with a spectacular and revolutionary dance on a grand scale.
Any performance of the 1589 intermedi must return to the original printed partbooks, and to the other contemporary evidence regarding those first performances. For while nearly all the music survives, it is not always clear how the instruments are to be disposed or what forces are to be used. And in addition, there are the usual choices to be made in performances of music from this period regarding the participation of continuo instruments and the role of added (i.e. improvised) embellishment in both vocal and instrumental parts. It is on the resolutions of these questions that the success or otherwise of any performance of these pieces will rest. The music on the page might seem simple, bland and even dull, after all like any music designed to project a message (in this case a political one) across the footlights, it is only one constituent element in the sound-world of late sixteenth-century Italy using the surviving part-books as a framework.
Against this background of challenge and difficulties, Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort have scored an impressive and notable success. Their approach is characterized by a number of principles, of which rhythmic vitality, the imaginative use of added ornamentation and contrasted sonorities are perhaps the most prominent. In all these respects this performance is greatly to be preferred to the only other attempt at recording the intermedi complete, that made in 1973 by Hans-Martin Linde with the Stockholm Chamber Choir (last available on EMI SLS 130114-3, 7/83—nla). Almost perversely, Linde made difficulties for himself by treating the admittedly problematic contemporary evidence about instrumentation in a rather cavalier way, but the more serious flaws in his reading have to do with a hopelessly languorous approach to the tactus and, ultimately, an uninspired and seemingly uninformed attitude towards what can be done with what are, in essence, the bare bones of the music rather than a definitive score. It is precisely in this area that Parrott's performance is so convincing because of its effective deployment of contrasts of timbre and instrumental groupings, and of added ornamentation. Above all, the music is never allowed to drag, the final ballo for example, which (in the absence of any visual excitement) usually descends into tedium, is pursued at such a brisk pace that a genuine sense of climax and summation is created. The choral sections are finely balanced with crisp, bright upper textures supported by firm and clearly-articulated bass lines. The solo songs are expertly and convincingly declaimed, above all by Emma Kirkby and Nigel Rogers, whose superb technical control of fioratura is allied, in both cases, to a keen sense of the nature of his very particular rhetorical style. From the almost overwhelming sonorous textures of the larger-scale pieces, to the breathtakingly virtuosic decoration of the solo songs, these performances are a constant revelation of the musical resources of the period, a glorious affirmation of that Power of Music which is itself the central theme of the 1589 intermedi.'