Gesualdo carlo biography

Prince of Venosa, progressive Renaissance composer; b. Naples, c. Naples, Sept. He lived chiefly at his country estate of Venosa, although his travels in Italy especially a three-year sojourn in Ferrara brought him into contact with poets and musicians of the highest rank. He knew Tasso and set several of his poems as madrigals, of which seven books have been preserved.

At Ferrara he probably met marenzio, Luzzaschi, and vicentino, whose experiments with subtleties of tuning and temperament may have influenced Gesualdo's sometimes bizarre harmonic vocabulary. This he used as a means of heightening expression in already vivid verbal texts, applying this in some degree to his religious music, most of which he had published in two books of Sacrae cantiones and a volume of Responsories and other compositions for Holy Week These are all of excellent quality, although somewhat eclipsed by the subsequent fame of the madrigal books.

Carlo gesualdo fun facts

His reputation has always been clouded by the story, based on substantial evidence, that he ordered the murder of his wife and her lover. Bibliography: Gesamtausgabe , ed. Hamburg —.