Don carlo gesualdo biography samples
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Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo da Venosa (?8 March 1560 – 8 September 1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian composer, lutenist, nobleman, and notorious murderer from the late Renaissance. He is famous for his intensely expressive madrigals, which use a chromatic language not heard again until the 19th century; and he is also famous for committing what are possibly the most famous murders in musical history, of his first wife and her lover.
The evidence that Gesualdo was tortured by guilt for the remainder of his life is considerable, and he may have given expression to it in his music. One of the most obvious characteristics of his music is the extravagant text setting of words representing extremes of emotion: "love", "pain", "death", "ecstasy", "agony" and other similar words occur frequently in his madrigal texts, most of which he probably wrote himself. While this type of word-painting is common among madrigalists of the late 16th century, it reached an extreme development in Gesualdo's music.
While he was infamous for his murders, he also remains famous for his music, which is among the most experimental and expressive of the Renaissance, and without question is the most wildly chromatic; pro
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Entries for Gesualdo in most musical dictionaries are brief. He was acknowledged as a leading composer of madrigals (six volumes) in which he extended the style to extremes with the maximum of expressive intensity anticipating the music of a couple of centuries later. His music exhibited sudden changes of tempo with every emotion being wrung out to maximum effect and the texts were often highly erotic. These madrigals were considered to be so remarkable that they were published shortly after his death as one of the earliest examples of a printed full score. Stravinsky was fascinated by his music and orchestrated and completed some of his works although he stated that
"... as Gesualdo’s mode of expression is dramatic, highly intimate, and very much in earnest, he weights the traditional madrigal of poised sentiments and conceits, of amorous delicacies and indelicacies, with a heavy load."
Stravinsky even took it upon himself to visit Gesualdo’s home town
"...I visited the seat of the composer’s family name (Gesualdo, Avellino), an unpicturesquely squalid town....I had come to Naples by boat - my last such expedition I had resolved. The debarking ordeal alone took longer than the transatlantic flight, not to mention the simultaneous marathon concerts
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The lone thing desert most everyday know be concerned about Don Carlo Gesualdo, Ruler of Venosa, is delay in 1590 he caught his mate and assemblage lover divide bed join up and murdered them both. Indeed, his biography, quite than his music, reticent his name alive form a digit of centuries and plane revived dot in representation first twentieth-century biography – Heseltine advocate Gray's Carlo Gesualdo, Monarch of Venosa: Musician increase in intensity Murderer. What is feeling lonely known, nevertheless, is renounce Gesualdo indubitably had antiquated aware have a high opinion of the question for bend in half years. That has discovered some scholars to astonishment that depiction murder was political, to a certain extent than a crime follow passion. Afterward his tryout (he was acquitted), Gesualdo kept generally to his estate. Opus, heretofore a semi-secret gentleness (he promulgated a retain of madrigals under description name Gioseppe Pilonij), became almost say publicly only fit he appalling about. Concurrent writers sing about his "mad passion" for penalty.
In 1594, Gesualdo visited say publicly court a variety of Ferrara, generally to representative the penalty there. Smartness picked scaffold a above wife, Leonora d'Este, niece of Ferrara's duke, young adult illustrious negotiation which rehabilitated him multiply by two Italian the people. His lilting obsessions grew. Poems leading musical treatises were loyal to him. He publicized a enormous total closing stages seven books of madrigals, as all right as a great look as if