Laudator Temporis Acti

A sonnet by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621; tr. Denis Stevens):

Zephyr returns, and with sweet accents
enchants the air and awakens the waves,
and murmuring his way through green leaves
he invites the meadow flowers to dance to his tune.

With garlanded hair, Phyllis and Cloris
sing joyful love songs so dear to them,
while from high hills and deep valleys
the echoing caves redouble their music.

Dawn rises more lovely in the sky, and the sun
pours down gold yet brighter, embellishing
the sky-blue mantle of Thetis with purer silver.

Alone I wander through lonely and deserted woods,
and, as my fortune demands, now weep, now sing
the brightness of two lovely eyes and my torment.

---

Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti
l'aer fa grato e'il pié discioglie a l'onde
e, mormoranda tra le verdi fronde,
fa danzar al bel suon su'l prato i fiori.

Inghirlandato il crin Fillide e Clori
note temprando lor care e gioconde
e da monti e da valli ime e profonde
raddoppian l'armonia gli antri canori.

Sorge più vaga in ciel l'aurora, e'l sole,
sparge più luci d'or; più puro argento
fregia di Teti il bel ceruleo manto.

Sol io, per selve abbandonate e sole,
l'ardor di due belli occhi e'l mio tormento,
come vuol mia ventura, hor piango hor canto.

Set to music by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), score here, performance by Núria Rial and Philippe Jaroussky, with L'Arpeggiata here.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for drawing to my attention the remarks of Denis Arnold, Monteverdi (London: Dent, 1990), p. 86:

Of the other duets from this period, 'Zefiro torna, e di soavi accenti' (in the 1632 Scherzi madrigali) is deservedly famous. The poem is not the usual one by Petrarch, which Monteverdi had set in Book VI. It is a sort of 'parody' in the sixteenth century sense, by Ottavio Rinuccini and, most important, keeps the same contrast between joyful nature and the lover abandoned to his doleful thoughts. Monteverdi sets this as a chaconne, using an ostinato bass pattern very popular about this time:

The form is a difficult one. The shortness of the bass pattern (compared with others such as the romanesca) means short phrase-lengths which can become tiresome,  and the harmonies are not easily varied enough for an extended piece. Monteverdi conquers these problems magnificently. His first paragraph lasts a dozen bars, as each voice replies with a variant of the initial theme; and then the sweetness of the breeze, slightly syncopated, is expressed by a succession of pure consonances. There are gentle roulades for the murmuring waves, pictorial motifs for the valleys and mountains (complete with the echo device), in fact all the imagery of 'Ecco mormorar l'onde' in the form of a duet. Then, as the lover speaks of his plight, a piece of recitative with dissonances is ushered in with a great chromatic change, brought to a peaceful end as the lover sings praise of his lady's eyes in an ornamental, sonorous passage with trills and scales in thirds. The technical mastery of the piece is astonishing. Out of conventional features — the ostinato bass, the by now customary division into speech-rhythm recitative and dance-rhythm aria, echo music and so on — Monteverdi builds up a vivid picture, and one which proves him to be a composer by no means semper dolens.