Resmusica – Comet Musicke revives the first madrigals of Pomponio Nenna

Comet Musicke revives the first madrigals of Pomponio Nenna (ResMusica, 18 August 2026 – Cécile Glaenzer).

For its third recording, the young ensemble led by Francisco Mañalich immerses itself in the world of the late-16th-century Neapolitan madrigal.

“Originally from Bari, in Apulia, the knight Pomponio Nenna belongs to that generation of gentleman-composers whose best-known member is Carlo Gesualdo. Nenna’s biography actually crosses that of the Prince of Venosa, since his first patron, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria, was none other than the lover of Gesualdo’s wife — the man Gesualdo would have murdered together with his mistress a few years later. But before this drama, Nenna’s First Book of Madrigals for Five Voices celebrates the birth of Carafa’s eldest son, a happy circumstance that gives rise to joyful, luminous music with sprightly rhythms. After Carafa’s tragic death, Nenna settled in Naples at Gesualdo’s court, with whom he would share a great stylistic closeness in the art of the stravaganza. But the First Book still belongs to lightness and pastoral inspiration, although the dark side surfaces at times in the chromaticisms and dissonances that are like an anticipation of the rest of the story.

The ensemble Comet Musicke here brings together eleven musicians and singers, often multi-instrumentalists like their artistic director Francisco Mañalich, himself a tenor and viol player, here playing the vihuela (see the portrait ResMusica devoted to him on the release of their previous recording). This original way of blending voices and instruments is the ensemble’s hallmark: here they vary the scoring of these five-voice madrigals, moving from a cappella versions to ones in which the viols play colla parte to vary the colours. A few instrumental pieces by Giovanni de Macque and Trabaci judiciously punctuate the programme, transcriptions of organ pieces played here by the viol consort. One finds refined counterpoint and the chromaticisms typical of Gesualdo’s circle. The expressiveness of the dissonances that season this entire programme highlights the contrasts attached to the meaning of the text, between descriptions of nature at its most festive and the first stirrings of amorous torment. Comet Musicke once again demonstrates its qualities of eloquence in a limpid polyphony, as if sculpted in the ductile, shimmering substance of a highly homogeneous sound. A true jewel.”

Comet Musicke ressuscite les premiers madrigaux de Pomponio Nenna