Comet Musicke, The overwhelming madrigals of Pomponio Nenna

Naples around 1580 is a powder keg of ambition, rivalry, and insane genius. When Wanneer Pomponio Nenna publishes his first book of madrigals, he enters an arena in which the boundaries of the genre are constantly being pushed. In the shadow of Carlo Gesualdo, Nenna seeks new intensity: he combines clever polyphony with fierce dissonances, sharp modulations, and a razor-sharp approach to the text. Old techniques, such as fauxbourdon, clash with new expressive freedoms – a harbinger of what will come to be called the seconda pratica. Comet Musicke seeks the slipstream of the Baroque with Nenna’s first collection of five-part songs and with the instrumental sound experiments of Giovanni de Macque, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Stefano Felis: music that explores the edge of Renaissance polyphony, unmistakably on its way to a new era.