Carlo Gesualdo

Its life

Birth

Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa, was probably born with Naples, towards 1566, within an aristocratic family having close links with the Church - one finds, among his uncles, the Archevêque S Alphonso Gesualdo and saint Charles Boromée , as well as the Pape Pie IV among his great-uncles.

Musical education

His/her father surrounded himself by a kind of academy musical, made up inter alia musicians Dentice and Filomarino, and theorists Effrem, Nenna, and Brakes. Carlo Gesualdo was thus initiated as of its more young age with the music - in particular with the Luth and the composition - and quickly became obsessed about it. It composed first of all under the pseudonym of Gioseppe Pilonij , but the recognition of its talent, and the interest carried by the public, were right of his anonymity.

First marriage

This marriage with Maria d' Avalose, girl of the duke of Pescara and cousin of the type-setter, finished sordidly four years afterwards by the assassination of Maria and her lover, and the tragic exit of these weddings contributed to the posterity of Gesualdo, which became the fatal type-setter of the history of the music.

This scene was held the October 16th 1590: Gesualdo made accept a shooting party, and returned in order to surprise his wife in red-handed of adultery with Fabrizio Carafa, duke of Andria, and to punish it. The myth wants that the wounds carried with Maria were only with the area of the stomach, and that the lover remained hung until the too advanced rot of its body obliges Gesualdo to bury in order to avoid an epidemic.

This so severe judgment of adultery, authorized at the time, however obliged it to be withdrawn in the town of Gesualdo, in its field, which it hardly any more left, to secure anger of one of the two families.

Second marriage

Gesualdo married, in second wedding, Leonora d' Este, niece of the Duke Alphonse II of Ferrare, in 1594, with Ferrare, where it met Luzzasco Luzzaschi, which influenced it (it made appear his the first two books madrigaux this same year.).

This marriage was a new failure, because of the inaccuracy of Gesualdo, which went until dividing its layer with a servant, and who ended with the scenes of scourging which contributed to its celebrity.

Two children

Gesualdo had two wire, including one per marriage, which will die one after the other in low age. The death of the first, by smothering, would be ascribable in Gesualdo. That of the second, in October 1600, strongly marked it, and could be the starting point of the so particular meetings of penitence, which it inflicted thereafter.

Scenes of scourging

The crimes of Gesulado returned to haunt it towards the end of its life. Was the death of its second wire regarded by this mystic as the work of divine justice, the judgment of its sins, which started in him the need for expier his faults? That would explain the practices Masochiste S, the scenes of Flagellation with young boys for, according to his own expression, “to drive out the demons”.

In the same spirit, Gesualdo, strong pious, offered to its vault, after its double crime, a table on the last Judgment where it had been represented begging the Christ, and in which also Marie-madeleine was (having had light manners…). One can thus find, symbolized, all the other protagonists of this crime.

A suspect death

Carlo Gesualdo would have been found died, naked, the September 8th 1613, following one of the meetings of penitence, with the so particular character, which it affectionnait. According to certain sources, this death could have been voluntary, desired - inter alia - by these beautiful young men who were forced to lend itself to the meetings scourging.

Work

Impunity

Its row and the bonds of its family with the Church enabled him to carry out its life and its compositions, at the very least original and dérangeantes, without any form of censure and in all impunity. Its compositions leave the guns of the time, because had to like Gesualdo nobody of other but with itself, which gave to final one the most original works, strange and surprising Renaissance.

Between rebirth and Baroque music

Gesualdo is however a “traditional” type-setter. With the difference of Monteverdi, its contemporary, true hinge between Rebirth and Baroque, regarded as the father of the opera, at which one sees, for example, a revolution between the first books of madrigaux, has cappella, and the last, with the disconcerting style (which do not have for all to say more any common point with the first), Gesualdo did not modify the preexistent forms. It composed with the manner growing old of the time, but with a very personal style, reflecting its exacerbated personality: rich person in Chromatism S, Dissonance S and rhythmic ruptures.

Inspiration

Gesualdo put a great care in the choice of the texts of its madrigaux, which often have a bond with the episodes of its life. It found the poems to illustrate at the Cup, for example, its friend, excessive and impassioned like him, with which it owes nine madrigaux, and which will finish insane. Its music sticks to text, accompanies it, and can to pass from extreme to other (of the light to the darkness, joy with sadness, with the adequate changes on the level of the harmony, of the tempo) in some notes, if the text requires it - what is contrary to the tastes of the time, where the melodies were mainly to be beautiful, and could be plated on any text (or almost.).

Gesualdo also drew from the texts of Giovanni Battista Guarini.

Influences

Luzzasco Luzzaschi, which he knew during its second marriage, probably influenced Gesualdo in its manner “expressionnist” of composition of madrigaux, with the music close to the text, starting from its fourth book the madrigaux one. In Ferrare were also the Cup and the Concerto delle Donne , who were of some importance in the manner of composing of Gesualdo.

In addition, Gesualdo made a stopover with Florence, during a voyage in Ferrare, and it is possible that it maintained then the relations with the camerata Bardi .

Work crowned

Being by no means held to compose of the Sacred music, because of his row and of his protections, one could be astonished, after having read the history of his life, if distant from that awaited of a believer, and after having listened to his profane works, if sensual, to find works crowned with the catalog of Gesualdo. Their existence can be explained only by one need, a personal choice, Gesualdo being as impassioned in its profane loves as in its love of god.

Crowned works of Gesualdo:

two books of Sacræ Cantiones (five to seven votes);
of the Respons of Darkness for the Holy Week;
four Motets in Marie .

Work layman

The madrigaux ones of Gesualdo, with the sensual contents contrasting with its sacred music, are at the origin of its posterity. One distinguishes his the first four books the madrigaux one with five votes, the conventional writing and the style close to those of Marenzio and first of Monteverdi of later works where unusual harmonies, chromatisms and figuralisms abound. Let us quote inter alia:

six books of madrigaux with five votes (1594-1611);
a book of madrigaux with six votes, posthumous (1626).

Posterity

The glances related to Gesualdo largely changed during the 20th century. Of marginal type-setter, unbalanced, whose music sank gradually in the lapse of memory, it reached for some a statute of visionary, the first 300 years before Wagner and theromantic ones to make an important use of chromatisms and Dissonance S, while being a modern precursor of the S by its use of extreme contrasts and unusual rhythmic ruptures.

Gesualdo inspired certain large type-setters of the 20th century thus Alfred Schnittke wrote an opera sobrement entitled Gesualdo treating life of this last whereas Stravinski with as for him made up a Monumentum pro Gesualdo with his honor.

Lastly, Anatole France evoked the murder of the first woman of Gesualdo in the Well of Holy-Claire (1875), its life was then fictionalized in the Witness of dust of Michel Breitman (Prix of the Two-Nest eggs 1986) and told in Mort in five votes Docu-fiction carried out by Werner Herzog in 1995.

To listen

Random links:

Josy Dubié | National center of Arts | Hane | Jerome Leroy (type-setter) | Passes (bullfight)