Il Festino

by Adriano Banchieri with English translation by Jodie O’Regan

Il Festino is renaissance magic and nonsense at its finest - an acapella work for 5 parts by Bolognan Monk Adriano Banchieri. I translated the text into English for my community choir.

I am in love with the music of this work. The harmonic language sounds so fresh and new to my ears - just thrilling. What a piece of music. It's raucous and rowdy and cheeky and beautiful. The text ranges from the most sublime love poetry, to a canon of ridiculous animal noises.

The whole work is a romp of joyful silliness mixed with stunning choral writing. The work is a collection of madrigals, woven together with commentary and interjections from the ridiculous character Modern Pleasure. Madrigal comedies come from late renaissance Italy and draw on the characters and ideas of commedia dell'arte. They were written to be sung but not fully dramatised. They are playful, theatrical and raucous. There were only about two dozen ever composed - evolution favoured the rise of opera! So this piece holds a special little spot in musical history.

Here is the sheet music for the full work. Rehearsal tracks are below for every part. I rearranged some of the more challenging movements to SATB.

  1. Modern Pleasure Makes An Introduction (and 20)

2. The Old Men Of Chioggia Prepare To Dance

3. The Masquerade Of The Peasant Girls

4. After The Masquerade

5. Madrigal To A Nightingale

6. Masquerade Of The Lovers

Audio Block
Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

7. The Lovers Dance The Spindle

8. The Sad Madrigal Of The Lovers

9. The Lover’s Farewell

10. Aunt Bernadina’s Story

11. Caprice For Three Voices

12. The Animals In Counterpoint

13. A Rather Lovely Madrigal

14. The Swindling Spindle Sellers

15. The Spindle Sellers Madrigal

16. The Fountain And The Count

17. The Feasters

18. Drinking And Thinking

19. A Rather Foolish Moment To Sell Treasures