Luca Marenzio
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
composer and singer of the late Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
. He was one of the most renowned composers of madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
, and wrote some of the most famous examples of the form in its late stage of development, prior to its early Baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
transformation by Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
. In all, Marenzio wrote around 500 madrigals, ranging from the lightest to the most serious styles, packed with word-painting, chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
, and other characteristics of the late madrigal style. Marenzio was influential as far away as England, where his earlier, lighter work appeared in 1588 in the Musica Transalpina, the collection that initiated the madrigal craze in that country. Marenzio worked in the service of several aristocratic Italian families, including the Gonzaga
House of Gonzaga
The Gonzaga family ruled Mantua in Northern Italy from 1328 to 1708.-History:In 1433, Gianfrancesco I assumed the title of Marquis of Mantua, and in 1530 Federico II received the title of Duke of Mantua. In 1531, the family acquired the Duchy of Monferrato through marriage...
, Este
Este
The House of Este is a European princely dynasty. It is split into two branches; the elder is known as the House of Welf-Este or House of Welf historically rendered in English, Guelf or Guelph...
, and Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
, and spent most of his career in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
.
Early years
According to biographer Leonardo Cozzando, writing in the late 17th century, Marenzio was born at CoccaglioCoccaglio
Coccaglio is a town and comune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy, Italy. It is approximately 20 km west of Brescia and 35 km southeast of Bergamo....
, a small town near Brescia
Brescia
Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...
, as one of seven children to a poor family. His father was a notary clerk in Brescia. A birthdate of October 18, 1553 has been proposed, based his father's stating in 1588 that his son was 35, and a suggestion that he may have been named after St. Luke, whose feast day is on October 18. He may have had some early musical training under Giovanni Contino, who was maestro di cappella at Brescia Cathedral from 1565 to 1567. He may also have gone with Contino to Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
in 1568 when Contino began serving the Mantuan Gonzaga
House of Gonzaga
The Gonzaga family ruled Mantua in Northern Italy from 1328 to 1708.-History:In 1433, Gianfrancesco I assumed the title of Marquis of Mantua, and in 1530 Federico II received the title of Duke of Mantua. In 1531, the family acquired the Duchy of Monferrato through marriage...
family; later in his life, Marenzio mentioned having spent several years in Mantua in the service of the Gonzaga family, but was unspecific as to which years.
Rome: Cardinals Cristoforo Madruzzo and Luigi d'Este
Following his time in Brescia and Mantua, he went to Rome, where he was employed by Cardinal Cristoforo MadruzzoCristoforo Madruzzo
thumb|200px|Portrait of Cristoforo Madruzzo by [[Titian]] .[[Museu de Arte de São Paulo]], [[São Paulo]].Cristoforo Madruzzo was an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal and statesman. His brother Eriprando was a mercenary captain who fought in the Italian Wars.-Biography:Madruzzo was born on July 5,...
until July 1578, evidently as a singer. Since Madruzzo had been the employer of Contino in Trent, this may have been arranged by Contino. After the cardinal's death Marenzio served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d'Este
Luigi d'Este
Luigi d'Este was an Italian Catholic cardinal, the second of the five children of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara, and Renée, daughter of Louis XII of France.-Biography:...
, who was a friend of Madruzzo; according to Marenzio himself, writing in the dedication of his first madrigal book, he was the cardinal's maestro di cappella, although Luigi's musical establishment only included a handful of musicians. Shortly after his hire, Luigi attempted to land a position for him with the papal choir, but was unable to do so for political reasons.
Marenzio had the opportunity to travel with Luigi in winter to spring 1580-1581 to Ferrara, the home of the Este
Este
The House of Este is a European princely dynasty. It is split into two branches; the elder is known as the House of Welf-Este or House of Welf historically rendered in English, Guelf or Guelph...
family and one of the principal centers for composition of progressive secular music in the late 16th century. While there he took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese
Margherita Farnese
Margherita Farnese was a daughter of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and Infanta Maria of Guimarães. She was named after her father's mother Margaret of Parma, natural daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor....
, an opulent affair requiring equally opulent music. Marenzio would have had an opportunity to hear the newly-formed Concerto delle donne
Concerto delle donne
The concerto delle donne was a group of professional female singers in the late Renaissance court of Ferrara, Italy, renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity. The ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, in 1580 and was active until the court was dissolved in 1597...
, the virtuoso female singers with the repertory of "secret music" that so influenced the course of madrigal composition at the end of the Renaissance. While in Ferrara Marenzio wrote and dedicated two entire books of new madrigals to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d'Este
Lucrezia de' Medici
Lucrezia de' Medici was the name for several women from the Medici family:*Lucrezia di Piero de' Medici , best known as Nannina de' Medici....
.
While Luigi made few demands on him, allowing him considerable time for his own musical pursuits, he paid him the tiny salary of only five scudi a month, about which Marenzio complained in the dedication (to Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany) of his Libro terzo a sei (1585). In one impassioned letter, dated 1584, Marenzio implored his employer for more prompt payment. A comment by Marenzio to the Duke of Mantua indicates that he may have had considerable other income from freelancing in Rome, either as a singer or a lutenist. Several times during his tenure with Luigi, he tried to find other work: he applied for the post of maestro di cappella at the court of Mantua; and once, in 1583, Luigi considered sending him to Paris as a gift to King Henry III of France
Henry III of France
Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...
, but the project fell through, to Marenzio's considerable relief.
During his period of employment with Cardinal Luigi d'Este Marenzio began to establish an extensive reputation as a composer. He also became known as an expert lutenist, as indicated in a letter of 1581 from a singer to Luigi d'Este; and by the time the cardinal died in 1586, Marenzio had become internationally famous as a composer, with his numerous books of madrigals published and reprinted not only in Italy, but in the Netherlands. The popularity of his work during this period is evident also in the frequency with which his madrigals appeared in anthologies.
Florence, Rome, and Poland
After the death of Luigi d'Este on December 30, 1586, Marenzio was without a patron, but probably continued to freelance in Rome; and sometime in 1587 he went to Verona where he met Count Mario Bevilacqua and attended the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica, one of the associations of musicians and humanists, dedicated to cultivating the most progressive trends, typical of the late Renaissance. By the end of 1587 Marenzio had entered into the service of Ferdinando I de' MediciFerdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1587 to 1609, having succeeded his older brother Francesco I.-Biography:...
in Florence, where he stayed for two years.
The situation in Florence was not to Marenzio's liking. According to Alfred Einstein, "...he cannot conceivably have come to terms with the Camerata
Florentine Camerata
The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama...
and with its pedantic and pretentious dilettantism." Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei...
and others in the Camerata were experimenting with monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
, and creating madrigals using a solo voice with lute; many of the composers were not professional musicians, and little if any influence from the Camerata can be found in Marenzio's late work. On November 30, 1589 Marenzio returned to Rome, where he served several patrons, while retaining considerable independence; he lived in the Orsini palace until 1593, in the service of Virginio Orsini, the nephew of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
In 1595 John Dowland came to Italy to meet Marenzio; the two had exchanged letters when Dowland was still in England. Dowland got as far as Florence, and indicated that he wanted to study with Marenzio, but it is not known if he did: the two may never have met.
Marenzio's final trip was a long one. He went to Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
in between late 1595 and early 1596, staying at least through October 1596, accepting a position as maestro di cappella at the court of Sigismund III Vasa
Sigismund III Vasa
Sigismund III Vasa was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, a monarch of the united Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1587 to 1632, and King of Sweden from 1592 until he was deposed in 1599...
in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
; his predecessor, Annibale Stabile
Annibale Stabile
Annibale Stabile was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. He was a member of the Roman School of composition, and probably was a pupil of Palestrina. He was active mainly at Rome but moved briefly to Kraków, Poland at the end of his life.-Life:Records of his early life are inexact, but he was...
, had just died after only being there two months. While in Warsaw – the location of the court, recently moved from Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
– Marenzio wrote and directed sacred music, including motets for double choir, a Te Deum
Te Deum
The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from its opening Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, rendered literally as "Thee, O God, we praise"....
for 13 voices, and a mass, the music for which has been lost. According to pre-20th-century writers, the trip to Poland, which was ordered by the Pope, ruined Marenzio's health. Marenzio returned from Poland by way of Venice, where he dedicated his eighth book of five-voice madrigals to the Gonzaga family. Marenzio did not live long after reaching Rome; he died on August 22, 1599, in the care of his brother at the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio. He was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.
Music
While Marenzio wrote some sacred music in the form of motetMotet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s, and madrigali spirituali
Madrigale spirituale
A madrigale spirituale is a madrigal, or madrigal-like piece of music, with a sacred rather than a secular text...
(madrigals based on religious texts), the vast majority of his work, and his enduring legacy, is his enormous output of madrigals. They vary enormously in style, technique and tone through the two decades of his composing career. To Marenzio, each madrigal text presented its own problem, which he solved in terms of that text alone: therefore there is no single "Marenzio style", and he used the entire repertory of harmonic, textural, and rhetorical devices available to a composer of the late sixteenth century in his work. Each madrigal text, to him, was a challenge of translation: printed word into music. By late in his career he was easily the most influential madrigal composer in Europe, and his earlier madrigals became the model for the new school
English Madrigal School
The English Madrigal School was the brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them. The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations...
of madrigal composition in England.
Marenzio published 24 books of madrigals and related forms, including one book of madrigali spirituali; one of the 24 books is lost. Ten of the collections are for five voices; six are for six voices; two are for four voices; one is for four to six voices; and the remaining five are books of villanelle
Villanella
In music, a villanella is a form of light Italian secular vocal music which originated in Italy just before the middle of the 16th century...
, a lighter form popular in the late 16th century, for three voices only. In addition to secular music, he published two books of motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s, one of which is lost, a book of antiphons (now lost), and a book of Sacrae cantiones for five to seven voices. Almost all of his works were initially published in Venice, except for the madrigali spirituali, which appeared in Rome.
Marenzio produced seventeen books of madrigals between 1580 and 1589, all of which show the most expressive, varied and important works in madrigal literature. Most of the madrigals are for five voices, but he also wrote many four and five voice pieces. In all of his madrigals Marenzio shows the closest relationship of text and music by using Imitative counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, chordal texture and recitatives. He produces mostly madrigals but also canzonette and villanelle
Villanella
In music, a villanella is a form of light Italian secular vocal music which originated in Italy just before the middle of the 16th century...
(related secular a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
forms very much like madrigals, but usually a bit lighter in character). Close to 500 separate compositions survive. Stylistically, his compositions show a generally increasing seriousness of tone throughout his life, but in all periods he was capable of the most astonishing mood-shifts within a single composition, sometimes within a single phrase; rarely does the music seem disunified, since he closely follows the texts of the poems being sung. During his last decade he not only wrote more serious, even sombre music, but experimented with chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
in a daring manner surpassed only by Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
. In one madrigal (O voi che sospirate a miglior note) he modulated completely around the circle of fifths
Circle of fifths
In music theory, the circle of fifths shows the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys...
within a single phrase, using enharmonic
Enharmonic
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently...
spellings within single chords
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
(for instance, simultaneous C sharp
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....
and D flat
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....
), impossible to sing without either pitch drift or tempering intervals such that singers would approximate a sort of circulating temperament.
Even more characteristic of his style, and a defining characteristic of the madrigal as a genre, is his use of word-painting: the technique of mirroring in the music a specific word, phrase, implication or pun on what is being sung. An obvious example would be a setting of the phrase "sinking in the sea" to a descending series of notes, or accompanying the word "anguish" with a dissonant chord followed by an unsatisfying resolution.
Marenzio was often referred to as "the divine composer" or "the sweetest swan" by his successors. Like many of his contemporaries, he used pastoral and love poems from well-known Italian poets, such as Dante
DANTE
Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
and Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, but few set texts as attentively to their full expressive potential as did Marenzio. Using vivid imagery expressed through text-painting, he highlighted the specific emotions and moods contained in the poem. Consequently, historians claim Marenzio brought the Italian madrigal to its highest point of artistic and technical development.
Influence
Luca Marenzio was hugely influential on composers in Italy, as well as in the rest of Europe, particularly in England, as his madrigals from the 1580s were among the favorites of English composers, who adapted his techniques of word-painting, textural contrast, and chromaticism to an English idiom. As an example, when Nicholas YongeNicholas Yonge
Nicholas Yonge was an English singer and publisher. He is most famous for publishing the Musica transalpina , a collection of Italian madrigals with their words translated into English...
published his Musica transalpina in 1588 in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the first collection of Italian madrigals to be published there, Marenzio had the second-largest number of madrigals in the collection (after Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder
Alfonso Ferrabosco (I)
Alfonso Ferrabosco was an Italian composer. While mostly famous as the solitary Italian madrigalist working in England, and the one mainly responsible for the growth of the madrigal there, he also composed much sacred music...
); and the second collection of Italian madrigals published in England had more works by Marenzio than anyone else. Some English composers who admired Marenzio's expressiveness and learned from him, gradually developing their own style from that seed, included Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England and an organist at St Paul's Cathedral...
, John Wilbye
John Wilbye
John Wilbye , was an English madrigal composer. The son of a tanner, he was born at Brome, Suffolk, near Diss, and received the patronage of the Cornwallis family. It is thought that he accompanied Elizabeth Cornwallis to Hengrave Hall near Bury St...
, and Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes was an English composer and organist. He became organist of Winchester College in 1598, moving to Chichester Cathedral. His works are chiefly vocal, and include madrigals, anthems and services.-Life:Weelkes was baptised in the little village church of Elsted in Sussex on 25...
. Outside of England, Marenzio's madrigals also influenced composers as widely distributed as Hans Leo Hassler
Hans Leo Hassler
Hans Leo Hassler was a German composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, elder brother of the less-famous Jakob Hassler...
in South Germany and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and his work as a teacher helped establish the north German organ...
in the Low Countries. In 1622 Henry Peacham wrote, "for delicious aires and sweet invention in madrigals, Luca Marenzio excelleth all others." This quote by Peacham illustrates the effect Luca Marenzio had on later development of the madrigal, and the admiration he elicited from other composers from that period. Even in the mid-sixteenth century, Italian and English commentators continued to extol the virtues of Marenzio's compositions; his music appeared in arrangements for viols late in the century; and his music has continued to be sung almost without interruption to the present day by madrigal groups – one of very few Renaissance composers for whom that is true.