Deh! dove senza me, dolce mia vita

The text expresses a plaintive lament, taken from Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso. The speaker questions how their beloved can be left alone while so young and beautiful, comparing her situation to a lost lamb bleating in the woods, unheard by its shepherd, and preyed upon by a wolf. Marco Antonio de Pordenon sets this dramatic text for SATTB voices. This secular Italian madrigal captures the pathos of the poem's imagery, with the voices weaving a rich and mournful texture to convey the shepherd's vain grief.