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Artist
Carlo Gesualdo
12+ albums
renaissanceearly musicitalianClassicalsacred music
about
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. Gesualdo's published music falls into three categories: sacred vocal music
top songs
albums
Sacred Music For Five Voices (Oxford Camerata)
Gesualdo: Responsoria 1611
GESUALDO: Sacred Music for Five Voices (Complete)
Gesualdo: Madrigals, Books 5 & 6
Gesualdo: O Dolorosa Gioia
Gesualdo : Madrigaux, livre VI
Josquin Des Prez: Plaine De Deuil / Narvaez, L.: La Cancion Del Emperador / Rore, C.: O Sonno (Saturn and Polyphony)
Madrigaux a 5 voix (Les Arts Florissants)
Gesualdo: O dolce mio tesoro. Madrigali a cinque voci, Libro sesto (1611)
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Gesualdo Madrigals
Vocal Music (Renaissance) - Victoria, T.L. De / Lasso, O. Di / Josquin Des Prez / Senfl, L. / Rore, C. De / Utendal, A. (Factor Orbis)
Carlo Gesualdo: Tenebrae