Greg Stepanich

Current obsessions II

I’ve been listening time and again over the past week or two to an older King’s Singers recording of a beautiful four-part canzone published in Antwerp in 1563 by the South Netherlands composer Séverin Cornet (1530-1582).

The song, called Parmi di star, is, I gather from Webbish research, is probably Cornet’s best-known piece; it’s a Neapolitan-style song, and the old Grove article I’m looking at says Cornet, who was a choirmaster in Malines and Antwerp for most of his professional life, might have spent some time in Italy as a young man.

Knowing he made his living as a choir director helps me understand something about the piece. The King’s Singers, in this 1991 recording of music from Renaissance Naples (La Dolce Vita), sing this work voluptuously, and I have to believe Cornet probably loved intimate music for voices, having spent his professional career listening to sonic glory unfold from a motley crew of throats assembled in front of him.

Parmi di star is a lovely, slow-moving melody harmonized with relatively simple chords, but minor-key ones at first, which give the words a special kind of ache. I’ll quote the first stanza (no idea where the words come from):

Parmi di star la nott’in Paradiso
Mentre ch’in sonno, mi tien abbracciato.
Deh, dolce sonno, tu mi fai beato.

(It seems as if I spent the night in Paradise
In sleep you embraced me.
Ah, sweet sleep, you make me happy.)

In the next stanza, the lovelorn swain kisses the face of his amour a thousand times (Baciote mille volte in sonn’il viso), but it’s clear that he’s doing this in his dreams. I love the directness of these passionate lyrics, and the gentle beauty of the song. There’s something glorious about this poor guy’s frustration, his obsession, which we feel even more strongly because of the way Cornet has set it.

I’ve been looking for a sound link for it, but can’t find one. If anyone out there knows of one that would let other people hear the song, let me know. I’m sure you can find it on iTunes otherwise.

I don’t know anything else by Séverin Cornet, but I’m grateful to him for taking some time in Antwerp back in the 1560s to write this song down, and preserve this little sliver of beauty for all of us many centuries later. Astounding, again, how music and sentiment so old can blossom anew, and sound as fresh as it did on a day impossibly long ago when the piece first was heard.