Ardo per te, mio bene

Carlo Gesualdo's Ardo per te, mio bene is a secular madrigal for SSATB voices. The music opens with an immediate intensity, the voices weaving together to express the text's central paradox: that the suffering of love is also its greatest joy. Gesualdo uses his characteristic harmonic language to reflect the extreme emotions of the text. The Italian lyrics speak of burning with love, yet finding sweetness in the ardor, and of dying for one's beloved, yet experiencing that death as a blissful languishing. This is part-music of the highest expressive power, characteristic of the late Renaissance.