Roberta Invernizzi is joined by Franco Pavan’s Laboratorio ’600 in an intimate and intense Passiontide score from mid-17th-century Siena: Alessandro della Ciaia’s set of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Convents throughout Siena at the time boasted nuns of considerable musical talent, both in singing and in playing instruments, and it is undoubtedly for one such convent that the nobleman della Ciaia wrote his music for Holy Week matins services. His Lamentations are scored for a solo soprano possessed of a very wide range and capable of responding to the description of grief in the text over the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the terrible fate of its people.

Della Ciaia was himself a noted player of the archlute, and his instrumental facility is evident, here performed by double harp, archlute, organ and theorbo. Franco Pavan has chosen to intersperse the nine lamentations with toccatas by Michelangelo Galilei, Claudio Saracini and Vincenzo Bernia as well as Pavan’s own reworking of an appropriate motet by Della Ciaia.

Track listing:

CD1:
Feria quinta: Lamentatione prima
Michelagnolo Galilei (1575-1631) - Toccata in Do maggiore
Feria quinta: Lamentatione seconda
Michelagnolo Galilei - Toccata in Sol maggiore
Feria quinta: Lamentatione terza
Alessandro della Ciaia - Toccata sopra il mottetto Ecce Venio
Feria sesta: Lamentatione prima
Claudio Saracini (c.1586-1630) - Toccata intitolata all’illustrissimo signor Alfonso Strozzi
Feria sesta: Lamentatione seconda

CD2:
Feria sesta: Lamentatione terza
Claudio Saracini - Toccata intitolata all’illustrissimo, et eccellentissimo signor conte San Secondo
Sabato sancto: Lamentatione prima
Michelagnolo Galilei - Toccata in Sol minore
Sabato sancto: Lamentatione seconda
Michelagnolo Galilei - Toccata in Do minore
Sabato sancto: Oratione
Vincenzo Bernia (c.1570-c.1620) - Toccata Cromatica

Roberta Invernizzi (soprano)
Laboratorio ’600:
- Katerina Ghannudi (double harp)
- Craig Marchitelli (archlute)
- Francesco Moi (organ)
- Franco Pavan (theorbo, archlute & direction)