Gesualdo : the man and his music / Glenn Watkins ; preface by Igor Stravinsky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watkins, Glenn, 1927-2021.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gesualdo, Carlo, principe di Venosa, approximately 1560-1613.

Gesualdo, Carlo.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 414 pages, 3 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, music ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1991.

Summary:

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa (1566-1613), is equally celebrated as the composer of madrigals of great power and tortured complexity, and as the murderer of his wife and her lover. His life and compositions are not unconnected. His neurotic sensibility found an ideal outlet in the Mannerist tendencies of Late Renaissance music, and his works are the most extreme examples of those tendencies.

Glenn Watkins' definitive study of Gesualdo's life and works was originally published in 1973. While the first edition culled the material for Gesualdo's portrait from a variety of previously unexplored sources, researching inspired by its publication immediately began to shed additional light upon the question of patronage, the aesthetic of Renaissance 'imitation,' and Gesualdo's link with incipient Baroque rhetorical ideals. The second edition now provides not only minor revisions to the original text but in a newly written chapter, 'Aggiornamenti', brings these more recent perspectives into play. Finally, the alternating puzzlement and awe which Gesualdo's music has continued to inspire is also reassessed in a newly structured Epilogue.

Contents:

Preface Gesualdo di Venosa: New Perspective / Igor Stravinsky v

List of Plates xvii

Part 1 The Man

Chapter I The Early Years: 1560-1590 3

Family origins and connections 3

Birth and youth 4

The first marriage and tragedy 6

Literary reflections on the murder 23

A painting at S. Maria delle Grazie 31

The end of the affair 35

Chapter 2 Ferrara: 1594-1596 37

The situation at Ferrara 37

The second marriage 40

Marriage festivities and court life 48

The musical scene: Madrigal Books 1 and 2 published 53

Tasso and Gesualdo 57

The return to Gesualdo 60

Residence in Ferrara 70

Chapter 3 The Last Years: 1597-1613 73

Domestic crisis 73

Gesualdo's death 81

Burial and will 84

Part 2 The Music

Chapter 4 The Question of Mannerism 95

The crisis of the Ars Perfecta 96

The elements of Mannerism 99

Nature and genius 102

Gesualdo and Mannerism 105

Chapter 5 Text and Form 111

Poetic form 111

The canzone 111

The ballata 112

The multi-stanza canzone and sestina 113

The sonnet 114

The madrigal 114

Musical form 116

The verse/phrase 116

Larger structural features 120

Poetic subjects 123

The problem of textual identification 125

Chapter 6 The Madrigals: Books I and II 133

Contrapuntal foundations 134

Some comparisons 140

Chapter 7 The Madrigals: Books III and IV 149

Backgrounds 149

Transitions 150

Chapter 8 The Madrigals: Books V and VI 165

Text and music: disruption and contrast 170

Gesualdo and the dissonance 179

Double counterpoint 183

Tonality and cadence 185

Accidentals and chromaticism 194

Harmonic progression 201

Chapter 9 The Late Style: Models and Successors 213

Pomponio Nenna 213

Luzzaschi and Macque 224

Minor Neapolitan figures 227

Chapter 10 The Sacrae Cantiones 245

Sources; Comparisons; liturgical considerations 257

Chapter II The Responsoria 259

Form and style: liturgical backgrounds 259

Tridentine ideals and post-Council practice 263

Renaissance traditions of Holy Week polyphony 267

Form and tonality 271

Text, texture, and figuration 272

Harmony and dissonance 281

Chapter 12 Miscellanea 285

Canzotte 285

Psalms of Compline 286

The Naples Gagliarde manuscript 288

The Canzon francese del Principe 291

Aggiornamenti 296

Epilogue The Controversy 365

Postscript 384.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [385]-399) and index.

ISBN:

0198162162 :

0198161972

OCLC:

27684581