Gesualdo, Carlo, prince of Venosa

Gesualdo, Carlo, prince of Venosa

(born March 8, 1566, Venosa —died Sept. 8, 1613, Naples) Italian composer. Nobly born, he was a passionate musical dilettante. In 1590 he had his first wife and her lover (a duke) murdered, which earned him great notoriety but no punishment. His later marriage to the duke of Ferrara's niece made the cosmopolitan Ferrara court his second home. His steadily deepening melancholia was reflected in his music, which included some 125 madrigals and about 75 sacred vocal works. His six books of madrigals were published between 1594 and 1611 in part-books and in 1613 in score. Those in the last two books are unusual for their dramatic exclamations, discontinuous texture, and harmonic license. His extreme chromaticism and abrupt changes in tempo and dynamics, exaggerating such traits in the madrigals of his time, would have no rival until the 20th century.