Carlo Gesualdo

Arde il mio cor

 

Pronunciation: CAR-lo  jez-WAL-do

Dates: 1567-1613

Nationality: Italian

Testable Title: Arde il mio cor * audio excerpt

Date Composed: 1596

Genre: Late Italian Madrigal

Instrumentation: 5-Voices

Listen for: word painting, uses of chromaticism

Compare with: Busnois, Peri, Vivaldi, Wagner

Carlo Gesualdo was the Prince of Venosa, a southern Italian region near Naples.  Being a nobleman, he was not encouraged to devote his life to music as that was deemed an occupation for the lower classes.  In 1590 his life dramatically changed forever.  As the story goes, he caught his wife and her lover together.  Gesualdo flew into such a rage that he murdered them both.  This event did nothing to endear him to his public, so in 1594 he moved north to Ferrara and married Leonora d’Este, the daughter of Duke Alfonso II.

 

Because of the high regard for music and musicians in Ferrara, Gesualdo was free to compose and still maintain his aristocratic status.  While in Ferrara he published four books of his madrigals.  He returned to his castle in Naples in 1597 and published his last two books of madrigals there in 1611. 

 

Late Renaissance Madrigal

The late Renaissance Madrigal is not your familiar Thomas Morley, light and delicate English madrigal with homophonic verses and fa la la choruses. It is instead a rather complicated secular work which takes word-painting to the extreme.  In this style, three composers stand out, the Englishman Thomas Weelkes and the two Italians, Luca Marenzio and Carlo Gesualdo.

 

Gesualdo’s music, like so many of the late madrigalists, marks a transitional stage between Renaissance modal polyphony and early Baroque triadic harmony.  He will often contrast sections of fiery imitative polyphony with sweet homophony.  It is his innovative use of chromaticism, however, which makes his music so intriguing, as well as difficult to sing.  The resulting sound is that of unconventional “chord progressions” which stood unparalleled until the music of Richard Wagner in the mid to late 19^th century.

 

Arde il mio cor

Arde il mio cor roughly translated, My Heart Burns, appears as the eighteenth composition in Gesualdo’s Fourth Book of Madrigals published in Ferrara in 1596.  Read through the translation of the text and familiarize yourself with the corresponding words in the original Italian.  You will find that practically every word and sentiment is treated with a musical device, be it fluttering rising lines of polyphony imitating the flickering flames of fire, lush homophonic triadic harmonies representing sweetness or strange harmonic progressions relating the ironic sentiments of the poem.

 

Arde il mio cor

min:sec	Text of the Madrigal	Translation	Event
0:00	Arde il mio cor ed e si dolce il foco Che vive nell’ardore,	My heart burns and so sweet is the fire That it lives in the blaze,	flickering imitative polyphony
0:12	Onde lieto si more.	And thus dies happily.	homophony
0:14	repeat text		variation on music
0:43	O mia felice sorte	O my happy fate	staggered entrances
0:49	O dolce,	O sweet,	sweet homophony
0:54	e strana morte!	and strange death!	strange chord progression
	repeat text		variation on music

 

Note that in the first section, the initial excitement of the music fades away on the words e si dolce il foco.  Aside from the sweet treatment of the word dolce, the immediate unsettling harmonic shift on the word strana sounds “strange” indeed.

 

One final word about Italian madrigal texts, the syllable count of each line in each stanza must be either 11 or 7.  Unless you speak Italian (and understand the rules of eliding vowels, it will be difficult to read the poetic text properly.  So I have, just for fun provided a more or less phonetic rendition below.

 

 

Notice that in lines 2 through 5, the 6^th and 7^th syllables rhyme.

 

Transition to the Baroque

Eventually this style of music fell out of fashion and, as you will read in the Opera chapter, was thought to be ridiculous.  Gesualdo died before he could make any more musical contributions.  His contemporary, Claudio Monteverdi easily made the transition between the old style of the Renaissance to the new style of the Baroque.