Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (c. 1566 – 1613) was
Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza. As a composer he
is known for writing madrigals and pieces of sacred
music that use a chromatic language not heard again
until the late 19th century. He is also known for
killing his first wife and her aristocratic lover upon
finding them in flagrante delicto. There is evidence
that Gesualdo was tortured by guilt for the remainder
of his life, and he may have given expression to it in
his music. One of the mos...(+)
Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (c. 1566 – 1613) was
Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza. As a composer he
is known for writing madrigals and pieces of sacred
music that use a chromatic language not heard again
until the late 19th century. He is also known for
killing his first wife and her aristocratic lover upon
finding them in flagrante delicto. There is evidence
that Gesualdo was tortured by guilt for the remainder
of his life, 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.
His music 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 Western music until
the 19th century, and then in a context of tonality
Gesualdo was born in the south of Italy, probably in
Naples, around 1561. He was socially very well
connected both with the Church and with the
aristocracy. One of his uncles was Saint Carlo
Borromeo, another was the Archbishop of Naples, and a
great-uncle had been Pope Pius IV. He married Maria
d’Avalos, daughter of the Marquis of Pescara, whom he
eventually assassinated in Naples on 16 October 1590
when he surprised her ‘in flagrante delicto di
fragrante peccato’ with the Duke of Andria. This
murder made Gesualdo widely renowned both in his own
time and ever since. It also, as it were, sets the
scene for his music which, in its passionate style,
seems to confirm the sensibilities of such behaviour.
Although the deed was not technically against the law,
Gesualdo inevitably became a potential victim of
revenge from the two offended families involved, and he
retired to his estates at the town of Gesualdo, where
he largely remained until his death in 1613. In 1594 he
married Leonora d’Este, niece of the Duke of
Ferrara.
From an early age Gesualdo was obsessed with music. To
begin with it seems that he was ashamed of this,
perhaps for social reasons, and cultivated a pseudonym
(Gioseppe Pilonij). However, public interest in him
brought his secret into the open, and there are many
contemporary testimonies to his abilities as a
composer. One of the strongest influences on him was
the musical establishment of Alfonso II d’Este in
Ferrara, especially the virtuoso singing of ‘the
three ladies’ and the avant-garde compositions of
such court composers as Luzzaschi. Through his
publications Gesualdo became respected as more than an
accomplished amateur at composition and, from about
1595, he tried to establish his own group of court
musicians at his castle of Gesualdo, near Naples. The
last years of his life were spent in seclusion at
Gesualdo where his intense melancholia drove him to the
verge of insanity. His second wife tried several times
to obtain a divorce from him.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo)
Although originally composed for Chorus (SATTB), I
created this Interpretation of "O vos omnes, qui
transitis per viam" (O all you who walk by on the road)
for String Ensemble (2 Violins, 2 Violas & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC