Henry Dehlinger | Composer - Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa

Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa

COMPOSER'S NOTE

I wrote Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa ("Love and the gentle heart are one and the same") as a wedding gift for two very special friends, Jennifer Warren and Edward Vernon.

The ceremony was in Florence, Italy. So what better text could I set than a love sonnet from La vita nuova by Dante Alighieri, the Florentine philosopher-poet par excellence?

Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes and bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson would be among the guests. So I composed Amore as a love duet for soprano and baritone. Naturally, it is sung in the original Italian.

Danielle and Kerry premiered the piece in the summer of 2019 at the High Peaks Music Festival in Great Barrington, MA in the Berkshires.

The chamber instrumentation calls for string quintet (2 violins, 1 viola, and 2 violoncellos) and piano.

It is also every bit as effective sung unaccompanied, or accompanied by a single piano or organ.

THE TEXT

Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa,
Sì come il saggio in suo dittare pone,
E così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa
Com/alma razional sanza ragione.

Falli natura quand'è amorosa,
Amor per sire e 'l cor per sua magione,
Dentro la qual dormendo si riposa
Tal volta poca e tal lunga stagione.

Bieltate appare in saggia donna pui,
Che piace a gli occhi sì, che dentro al core
Nasce un disio de la cosa piacente;

E tanto dura talora in costui,
Che fa svegliar lo spirito d'Amore.
E simil face in donna omo valente.

TRANSLATION

Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,
Even as the wise man in his ditty saith:
Each, of itself, would be such life in death
As rational soul bereft of reasoning.

'Tis nature makes them when she loves: a king
Love is, whose palace where he sojourneth
Is called the heart; there draws he quiet breath
At first, with brief or longer slumbering.

Then beauty seen in virtuous womankind
Will make the eyes desire, and through the heart
Send the desiring of the eyes again;

Where often it abides so long enshrin'd
That Love at length out of his sleep will start.
And women feel the same for worthy men.

Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321
(Trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

DURATION
4 minutes

YEAR OF COMPOSITION
2019

LICENSING
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)

VERSIONS
Soprano, Baritone, Strings & Piano
Soprano, Baritone & Piano

PURCHASE
US: TBA
World: TBA