THIS LAST LAMENTING KISS

ALFONSO FERRABOSCO: So, So, Leave Off this Last Lamenting Kiss with Ann Marie Morgan, viola da gamba

For Day 21 of this challenge, I’m sharing a video: Another song from the mini-concert I filmed in Denver in 2017 with my dear friend, violist da gamba Ann Marie Morgan.

This song by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger is one of my favorites from A Painted Tale. Ferrabosco was the song of the Italian composer, Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder, who became well-known as being highly influential in furthering the art of the madrigal in England during his sojourn there. He eventually returned to Italy, where he was purported to be a spy for Queen Elizabeth I. Upon his return south, he placed his son in the care of one Elizabeth’s courtiers. Ferrabosco junior eventually became a court musician, where he gained fame for his master of the viol and his compositions, notably some settings of the poetry of his contemporary, John Donne.

While I was assembling the program for A Painted Tale, the greatest challenge was discerning which songs would make the cut as I whittled down to the twenty songs that form the tale I concocted, which told of a young man who falls in love with a mysterious woman named Celia, only to have his heart broken. At one point during the process, I found that I had roughly fifty print-outs of poems storyboarded on my living room floor in New York City, where I was based at the time. Excising beautiful song after beautiful song was torture, but I knew I needed to make sacrifices in order to hone the narrative and ensure it had maximum emotional impact. This miniature masterpiece was one of the few songs I was certain would be a part of my pastiche song-cycle from the very beginning.

What I find so fascinating about this song is how directly it conveys the messiness and torture of ending a relationship. There is something modern about the frankness with which John Donne depicts love, sex, grief, and death in his poem. He aptly captures the immense strength of the sensual power that can draw two people close, and how one almost needs to savor it when it is clear that the relationship needs to end. How it can feel so necessary to have one final passionate encounter for old time’s sake before saying goodbye. How it can feel like you need to smother a part of yourself in order to move on, and how impossible that task can feel.

Touring the program a couple of years later, I found myself going through my own break-up, and this piece always stopped me in my tracks in performance. Each time we arrived at this point in concert, I was grateful for the chance to pour my entire being into this music and these words and process my own grief.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this little tune. It’s a moving reminder for me of the power of song and the consolation it can provide.

TEXT:

So, so leave off this last lamenting kiss

Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;

Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this,

And let ourselves benight our happy day,

We ask none leave to love, nor will we owe

Any so cheap a death as saying "Go."

Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,

Ease me with death by bidding me go too.

Or, if it have, let my word work on me,

And a just office on a murderer do.

Except it be too late, to kill me so,

Being double dead, going, and bidding, "Go."

– John Donne

Many thanks to the generous donors who made the production of this video possible, as well as to the wonderful people at Epiphany Lutheran and Happy Hour Chamber Concerts (especially Dan Seger, Ron Roschke, and Russell Pierce) for hosting this private concert back in May of 2017.