Carlo Gesualdo

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(1560 – 1613)

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; progressions such as those written by Gesualdo did not appear again in music until the 19th century, and then in a context of tonality that prevents them from being directly comparable.
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  • skinnydrifter

    Oh my god this is beautiful

    February 2012

  • wisbech

    "chromaticism ≠ atonality" - This I understand, but what I don't grasp is how chromaticism and dissonance differ. Is there an objective way to define dissonance?

    February 2012

  • catholicbird

    chromaticism ≠ atonality

    November 2011

  • joshsiret

    Anyone else like this?

    November 2011

  • DaddyPobbin

    <3

    October 2011

  • Freund_Hein_

    Varg Vikernes of the renaissance? ... wtf? Gesualdo may have been a murderer, but he was surely no xenophobic lunatic ... not to speak about the complete lack of any musical commensurability ... change the record, please.

    October 2011

  • Seavas

    Using "atonal" to describe music is only slightly less problematic than using "anti-Semitic" to describe anti-Jewish sentiment. :/

    October 2011

  • blackless

    His music is more or less atonal (non-tonal), sometimes dissonant, always strange. He was a genius.

    October 2011
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