Baci soavi e cari

Paolo Masnelli, active in the mid-16th century, composed this SSATB madrigal in Italian. It is a secular work reflecting the typical Renaissance fascination with the expressive possibilities of polyphony. The text explores the paradoxical nature of love's embrace: sweet kisses that simultaneously sustain and steal the heart. The lover, consumed by this rapture, becomes insensible to pain, even finding a kind of death in the very act of living. The composer captures this intensity through vivid word-painting, contrasting moments of ecstatic union with the overwhelming sweetness of this beloved experience, where the final desire is to expire amidst such tender affection.