Cara la vita mia

Giulio Eremita's Cara la vita mia is a secular madrigal for SSATTB voices in Italian. The text expresses a profound sense of betrayal and pain. The speaker laments that anyone who desires another's death truly hates and does not love. They accuse their beloved of wishing to depart, which is equivalent to wishing the speaker's death. The speaker's heart cannot live without their beloved, their soul, and thus they feel deceived, loved in pretence but hated in reality. This poignant expression of unrequited or lost love is set with rich, imitative vocal writing, characteristic of the Renaissance madrigal tradition.