1566–1613 · Baroque
Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613) was an Italian composer and Prince of Venosa, the author of madrigals and sacred music. He is known for music rich in chromaticism and for a double murder committed in Naples in 1590. The site's catalogue has his "Dolcissima mia vita" for SATB choir, at the "Medium" level.
Carlo was born in 1566 into the family of Fabrizio II Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa. The family's first lord of Gesualdo was Guglielmo d'Altavilla, a natural son of Roger I, Duke of Apulia and Calabria. His mother, Geronima Borromeo, was a niece of Pope Pius IV, and her brother, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was canonised in 1610, was the future composer's uncle. Another uncle, Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo, became Archbishop of Naples in 1596. Carlo was the youngest child: Luigi, Isabella and Vittoria had been born before him.
Carlo was named after his uncle Carlo Borromeo, who asked for him to be sent to Rome and prepared for a Church career; there the boy lived under the protection of another uncle, Alfonso. His older brother Luigi was meant to inherit their father's titles. After Luigi died while hunting in 1584, Carlo became the designated heir and turned away from the Church.
Carlo did not receive a systematic musical education. He played the lute, the harpsichord and the guitar. He had a musical relationship with Pomponio Nenna, who served at the court in Naples. It is said of Carlo that from an early age he was devoted to music and showed little interest in anything else. His circle also included other composers, among them Giovanni de Macque and Scipione Dentice, as well as the nobleman lutenist Ettore de la Marra.
In 1586 Carlo married his first cousin Maria d'Avalos. She was several years older than her husband and had been widowed twice already. In 1588 a son, Emanuele, was born to the couple. Later Maria began a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria.
In October 1590, in Naples, Carlo killed his wife and her lover. The next day representatives of the Neapolitan authorities inspected the room in Carlo's apartment where it had happened and questioned witnesses. The double murder caused a great scandal, but Carlo was not charged: the court concluded that he had not committed a crime. In recent years Italian historians have also been considering other versions of what happened.
A year after these events his father died, and Carlo became the third Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza. The rank of Grandee of Spain was added to his titles.
In 1594 he travelled to Ferrara, one of the centres of musical culture in Italy, and was especially keen to meet the composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi. There he knew Torquato Tasso and set ten of Tasso's poems to music in his early madrigals. The court composer of Ferrara, Luzzaschi, influenced the formation of Gesualdo's style and dedicated to him his fourth book of madrigals (1594). Luzzaschi also showed him the archicembalo, an instrument built by Vicentino for accompanying singing in the chromatic and enharmonic genera; the instrument itself has not survived.
In the same year, 1594, Carlo took a second wife, Leonora d'Este, a relative of Duke Alfonso II d'Este of Ferrara. In Ferrara he also had dealings with the "concerto delle donne", the three virtuoso women singers ranked among the most renowned performers of the land. In his letter dated 25 June 1594 Gesualdo says that he is composing for the three singers. Some of the music written there has probably not survived, and the lost pieces may include works in the monodic and concertato styles then taking shape.
Back from Ferrara at the family castle in Gesualdo, Carlo founded a household chapel for performing his own music. He took on singers and instrumentalists, and the castle became a place of music-making that existed for its master alone. He rarely travelled, and music was the only thing that gave him pleasure. His best-known works were printed in Naples in 1603 and at the castle in 1611, and the pages richest in chromaticism and most difficult date from the years of his seclusion.
The relationship with his second wife was poor. Leonora accused Carlo of abuse, and the Este family sought a divorce; she spent more and more of her time away from the remote estate, often staying with her brother in Modena. Carlo sent many furious letters there.
In 1600 Carlo's son by his second marriage died. Carlo spent the last years of his life in solitude. Some eyewitnesses connected this with a disorder of the mind, made worse by the death of his younger son.
Late in life Carlo suffered from depression. Campanella, writing in Lyon in 1635, reported that he kept up a persistent, fruitless correspondence with Cardinal Federico Borromeo, trying to obtain the remains of his uncle Carlo Borromeo, recently canonised, in the hope of curing his mental disorder and perhaps absolution of his sins. Among his late works is the "Miserere" on Psalm 51, in which pleading phrases are repeated insistently and lines of monophonic chant alternate with chromatic polyphony in a low vocal range.
Carlo had one son from each of his two marriages. The elder, Emanuele, bore the title Count of Conza and was married to Countess Marta Polyxena von Fürstenberg; they had three children. Emanuele died while hunting on 20 August 1613, before he could succeed his father. Besides the sons of his two marriages, Carlo had an illegitimate son, Antonio, who outlived his father and became a Knight of Malta.
Three weeks after Emanuele's death, on 8 September 1613, Carlo died in isolation at his castle of Gesualdo in the province of Avellino. He was buried in Saint Ignatius's chapel at the Gesù Nuovo church in Naples.
Gesualdo published six books of five-voice madrigals. The first two appeared in 1594 under the pseudonym Giuseppe Pilonij, the third in 1595 and the fourth in 1596, all in Ferrara. The fifth and sixth books came out in 1611 in part-books, without bar lines. In 1613 all six books were printed in Genoa as a score with bar lines; this edition, prepared by Molinaro, is the best known today. A book of six-voice madrigals, published in Naples in 1626 after the composer's death, has been lost.
The fifth and sixth books hold a special place. The madrigal texts are written in the first person, and the author is not named in the first editions; perhaps the composer wrote the verses himself. Among the well-known late madrigals are "Beltà, poi che t'assenti", "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo", "Mercé grido piangendo" and "Tu piangi, o Filli mia". Words such as "wind", "fire" and "running" are picked out with short note values and imitation, while "pain" and "torment" are sung out at a slow pace.
The most striking feature of Gesualdo's style is its saturation with chromaticism, unusual even for Italy in the second half of the 16th and the early 17th century, when music was undergoing active experiment. Vivid juxtapositions of chromatic chords rest more often on the linear logic of the voices than on tonal function. The harmony of his music has still not received a satisfactory theoretical explanation. His style is also marked by a sectional format: slow, at times shockingly chromatic passages alternate with quick diatonic ones. Some phrases contain all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, although spread across different voices.
Besides madrigals, Gesualdo wrote two collections of Latin motets, published in 1603 as "Sacrae cantiones". The collection of five-voice motets survives complete, the six-voice one only in part. He also wrote a cycle of responsories for the Holy Week services, "Responsoria et alia ad Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae spectantia" (1611). The musical rhetoric and chromatic style of his madrigals enter his sacred works, especially noticeable in the "Miserere" and "Benedictus" from the responsories collection. Several canzonettas are also attributed to him, published in a posthumous collection in Naples in 1616.
Only in the 20th century was Gesualdo's music properly appreciated. The musicologist E. Lowinsky saw in his style a parallel to atonality. Igor Stravinsky wrote "Monumentum pro Gesualdo" (1960), which includes an arrangement of the madrigal "Beltà, poi che t'assenti". Alfred Schnittke wrote the opera "Gesualdo", first staged in Vienna in 1995.
Gesualdo's best-known works are the six books of madrigals printed between 1594 and 1611 and the Holy Week responsories. The site's catalogue has "Dolcissima mia vita" for SATB choir, at the "Medium" level.