Between 1580 and his death in 1599, Luca Marenzio would publish no fewer than 18 books of madrigals, for between four and six vocalists – some 500 masterpieces have survived to the present day, which is testimony to the furious evolution of Marenzio's languages over the course of just a few years. As he went on, he would develop ever-darker atmospheres which grew increasingly tortured and chromatic, and only Gesualdo would pick up the torch of his harmonic searchings a few years later. The two final madrigals offered on this album from the Rossoporpora ensemble, taken from the Ninth and final Book of Madrigals for five voices in 1599, provide a striking example: no sooner does a sequence become clear than Marenzio destroys it with a dissonance, an ineffable disharmony, a perilous chromatism. The album's title says it all: we really move from "amoroso" to "crudo" – from the amorous to the cruel – across 18 years of writing; with lyrics borrowed from love poetry or pastoral verse, Marenzio steers clear of any religious temptation; indeed he wrote relatively few religious works. In fact, his art resides in the most human aspect of music and song. © SM/Qobuz