My introduction to the works of the great madrigal maser, Luca Marenzio (c. 1553-1599), came when I was a teenager via his terrific "Chi vuol udir." Perhaps only Gesualdo surpasses him in expressiveness and in compulsive word-painting as a madrigalist. Listen here as his beautiful chromaticism paints a vivid picture of death, which has left him to spend his life in "weeping, in days of darkness and nights of anguish; all [his] sorrows, [his] sighs, yield no more verses..." in "Crudele acerba," taken from his ninth book of madrigals for 5 voices (1599).