Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Here is “Il bianco e dolce cigno” by Jacques Arcadelt, from our album Wishing Tree. 🌳
🎧 Stream, spin, and discover: https://linktr.ee/TheGesualdoSix
*****
“Il bianco e dolce cigno” by Jacques Arcadelt is one of the most celebrated madrigals of the Renaissance, epitomizing the elegance and emotional subtlety of Italian secular vocal music in the mid-sixteenth century. The poem evokes the swan’s fabled dying song, intertwining images of love and mortality in language that is at once tender and sensuous. Arcadelt mirrors this poetic ambiguity with music of gentle rise and fall: phrases glide and settle like the bird itself upon the water, while moments of harmonic warmth and suspension linger poignantly on words of sighing and release. Beneath the surface calm lies a knowing play of double meanings, typical of the madrigal tradition, in which death becomes a metaphor for sexual fulfilment. [Owain Park © 2026]
*****
💿 Order your copy: thegesualdosix.co.uk/shop/wishing-tree-2026
Performed by The Gesualdo Six
Directed by Owain Park
Video by Alexander Barnes (@appleandbiscuit)
Audio by David Hinitt & Adrian Peacock for Hyperion Records
#ChoralMusic #folksong
Here is “Il bianco e dolce cigno” by Jacques Arcadelt, from our album Wishing Tree. 🌳
🎧 Stream, spin, and discover: https://linktr.ee/TheGesualdoSix
*****
“Il bianco e dolce cigno” by Jacques Arcadelt is one of the most celebrated madrigals of the Renaissance, epitomizing the elegance and emotional subtlety of Italian secular vocal music in the mid-sixteenth century. The poem evokes the swan’s fabled dying song, intertwining images of love and mortality in language that is at once tender and sensuous. Arcadelt mirrors this poetic ambiguity with music of gentle rise and fall: phrases glide and settle like the bird itself upon the water, while moments of harmonic warmth and suspension linger poignantly on words of sighing and release. Beneath the surface calm lies a knowing play of double meanings, typical of the madrigal tradition, in which death becomes a metaphor for sexual fulfilment. [Owain Park © 2026]
*****
💿 Order your copy: thegesualdosix.co.uk/shop/wishing-tree-2026
Performed by The Gesualdo Six
Directed by Owain Park
Video by Alexander Barnes (@appleandbiscuit)
Audio by David Hinitt & Adrian Peacock for Hyperion Records
#ChoralMusic #folksong
