Carlo Gesualdo, principe di Venosa, conte di Conza

Carlo Gesualdo, principe di Venosa, conte di Conza (born March 30, 1566, Venosa [Italy]—died September 8, 1613, Gesualdo) was an Italian composer and lutenist. Until the late 20th century his fame rested chiefly on his dramatic, unhappy, and often bizarre life. Since the late 20th century, however, his reputation as a musician has grown, based on his highly individual and richly chromatic madrigals. He is especially noted for what music scholar Glenn Watkins called the “dazzling harmonic style” of his last two books of madrigals.

The title of count of Conza was awarded to Gesualdo’s ancestor Sansone II in 1452. The family further had received the principality of Venosa in what is now southern Italy from King Philip II of Spain in 1561, when Carlo’s father, Fabrizio II, married Girolama Borromeo, the niece of Pope Pius IV. Carlo was the second-born son and was named for a maternal uncle, Carlo Borromeo, who was canonized in 1610. As the second-born son, he grew up without the cares of the primary heir, but, when his elder brother died in 1584, Carlo was expected to shoulder the responsibility for the family line and for the large estate.

In 1586 he married his first cousin, the twice-widowed Maria d’Avalos, who was several years older than he. She bore a son and not long thereafter embarked on an affair with Fabrizio Carafa, duca d’Andria. Informed of her infidelity, Gesualdo laid a trap and, with the help of others, murdered his wife and her lover in bed. The double murder caused a great scandal, and what came to be seen as a tragic outcome of the affair became the subject matter of a number of writers, including Giambattista Marino and Torquato Tasso. Because such revenge was in keeping with the social code of the day, however, Gesualdo was not charged with murder. When his father died in 1591, he assumed the title of prince of Venosa.

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About two years after the demise of his first wife, the new prince of Venosa was contracted to marry Eleonora d’Este (i.e., of the house of Este) in Ferrara. Gesualdo was much interested in the widespread musical reputation of the Este court in Ferrara. In 1594 he traveled there as a composer and musician and to claim his new wife. Gesualdo likely had high expectations for this connection, but it soon became evident that he did not have the same expectations for the marriage itself; he left Ferrara without his bride a few months after the wedding and remained away for some seven months. This was a pattern of prolonged absence that he would repeat. Further, according to reports, he also abused Eleonora physically and was unfaithful to her. Yet he found the atmosphere of the Este court and his proximity to several of the leading composers of the day quite stimulating. His first two books of madrigals were published by the Ferrarese ducal press in 1594. His third book of madrigals was first published by the ducal press in 1595 and the fourth in 1596, both apparently written largely during his time in Ferrara and both showing signs of the development of his personal vision.

By early 1597 Gesualdo had again returned to his home. Reluctantly, his wife joined him in Venosa in the autumn. Early 21st-century scholarship revealed that Eleonora during the next several years initiated proceedings for witchcraft against her husband’s former concubine. Testimony was given revealing that both sorcery and love potions were involved, and ultimately two women were tried and convicted. Bizarrely, the guilty parties were sentenced to imprisonment in Gesualdo’s castle. The prince and his wife continued to live together intermittently, though both were unhappy and unwell for long periods at a time. In 1603 Gesualdo published two sacred motet collections.

Gesualdo’s last two books of madrigals (as well as a Holy Week Responsoria) were published in 1611. Although these last two books of madrigals were long considered “late” works because of their dramatic exclamations, linearly driven chromaticism, discontinuous texture, and harmonic license—that is, their generally unusual and experimental nature—Gesualdo himself claimed that they had in fact been written in the mid-to-late 1590s, near the time of his other published madrigals, and that he had been forced to publish accurate copies because inaccurate copies had been printed and some work plagiarized.