Che fai, alma? che pensi? (Orlando di Lasso)

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• (Posted 2025-04-01)  CPDL #84393: 

• Original key (high chiavette):      

• Transposed down a fourth:      

Editor: Pothárn Imre (submitted 2025-04-01).   Score information: A4, 6 pages, 100 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: Transcribed from 1569 print. We only changed the position of Alto and Alto secondo, as the latter sings together with the two sopranos, whereas the Alto sings together with the 3 deeper voices. A semibreve note in Soprano in bar 77-78 is missing from both the 1569 and the 1590 print. We have followed the Lasso Sämmtliche Werke edition by inserting an F natural (not F sharp) semibreve into bar 78, though it's unclear whether they had another source with this F note, or this was just a conjecture from the part of the editor of Sämmtliche Werke. F natural (a D minor chord) sounds much better, and anyway in a descending scale you'd expect the composer to put a sharp sign if he wanted an F sharp to be sung here. Interestingly, although the Sämmtliche Werke claims to have produced the edition from the 1569 print in Brussels, the names of the individual voices seem completely random. The 1569 print has Canto, Canto secondo in the Canto partbook, Alto and Alto secondo in the Alto partbook, Tenore and Tenor secondo in the Tenore partbook and Basso in the Basso partbook. Yet Sämmtliche Werke calls the voices: Canto, Canto sec. Alto, Quinto, Tenore, Sesta (!) and Basso, which Editions 51338 and 82880 strangely took over.

• (Posted 2024-11-26)  CPDL #82880:         

Editor: Ulrich Alpers (submitted 2024-11-26).   Score information: A4, 6 pages   Copyright: CC BY SA

Edition notes:

• (Posted 2018-09-20)  CPDL #51338:       

Editor: Willem Verkaik (submitted 2018-09-20).   Score information: Letter, 9 pages, 457 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Che fai, alma? che pensi?
Composer: Orlando di Lasso
Lyricist: Francesco Petrarca

Number of voices: 7vv   Voicing: SSAATTB
Genre: Secular, Madrigal

Language: Italian
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1569 in Il terzo libro delle muse a cinque voci (Gardano), Edition 2, no. 22
    2nd published: 1590 in Dialoghi musicali (Angelo Gardano), no. 20
Description: 

Original text and translations

Italian text - Che fai alma? che pensi? havrem mai pace? havrem mai tregua? od havrem guerra eterna? - - Che fia di noi, non so; ma in quel ch'io scerna, a suoi begli occhi il mal nostro non piace. - - Che pro, se con quelli occhi ella ne face di state un ghiaccio, un foco quando inverna? - - Ella non, ma colui che gli governa. - - Questo ch'è a noi, s'ella s'el vede, e tace? - - Tal hor tace la lingua, e 'l cor si lagna ad alta voce, e 'n vista asciutta e lieta, piange dove mirando altri non vede. - - Per tutto ciò la mente non s'acqueta, rompendo il duol che in lei s'accoglie e stagna, ch'a gran speranza huom misero non crede.  Petrarca Canzoniere 150

English translation ‘What do you think, my soul? Will I ever have peace? Will I ever know truce? Or will I have endless war?’ ‘I don’t know what will arise for us: but I think that seeing our ills will not please her eyes.’ ‘What help is that, when with those eyes she makes us ice in summer, fire in winter?’ ‘It is not her, but the one who rules her.’ ‘What matter, if she sees, and yet is silent?’ ‘Sometimes her tongue is silent, and her heart complains aloud, and with face dry-eyed and happy, she weeps within where no gaze can see.’ ‘For all that my mind is not at peace, aching with grief that gathers there and stays, an unhappy man’s no faith in wild hopes.  Translation A.S.Kline