Carlo Gesualdo is known for killing his first wife and her aristocratic lover upon finding them in flagrante delicto.
25 Facts About Carlo Gesualdo
2.
Carlo Gesualdo's mother was the niece of Pope Pius IV.
3.
Carlo Gesualdo had a musical relationship with Pomponio Nenna, though whether it was student to teacher, or colleague to colleague, is uncertain.
4.
The delegation's report did not lack in gruesome details, including the mutilation of the corpses and, according to the witnesses, Carlo Gesualdo going into the bedroom a second time "because he wasn't certain yet they were dead".
5.
The Gran Corte della Vicaria found Carlo Gesualdo had not committed a crime.
6.
About a year after the gruesome end of his first marriage, Carlo Gesualdo's father died and he thus became the third Prince of Venosa and eighth Count of Conza.
7.
That year, Carlo Gesualdo ventured to Ferrara, the home of the d'Este court and one of the centers of progressive musical activity in Italy, especially the madrigal; Carlo Gesualdo was especially interested in meeting Luzzasco Luzzaschi, one of the most forward-looking composers in the genre.
8.
Leonora was married to Carlo Gesualdo and moved with him back to his estate in 1597.
9.
Carlo Gesualdo worked with the concerto delle donne, the three virtuoso female singers who were among the most renowned performers in the country, and for whom many other composers wrote music.
10.
Carlo Gesualdo rarely left his castle, taking delight in nothing but music.
11.
Carlo Gesualdo spent more and more time away from the isolated estate.
12.
Carlo Gesualdo wrote many angry letters to Modena where she often went to stay with her brother.
13.
Carlo Gesualdo's late setting of Psalm 51, the Miserere, is distinguished by its insistent and imploring musical repetitions, alternating lines of monophonic chant with pungently chromatic polyphony in a low vocal tessitura.
14.
Carlo Gesualdo died in isolation, at his castle Carlo Gesualdo in Avellino, three weeks after the death of his son Emanuele, his first son by his marriage to Maria.
15.
Carlo Gesualdo was buried in the chapel, in the Church of the Gesu Nuovo, in Naples.
16.
Carlo Gesualdo's music is among the most experimental and expressive of the Renaissance, and without question is the most wildly chromatic.
17.
Progressions such as those written by Carlo Gesualdo did not appear again in Western music until the 19th century, and then in a context of tonality.
18.
Carlo Gesualdo's published music falls into three categories: sacred vocal music, secular vocal music, and instrumental music.
19.
The first books of madrigals that Carlo Gesualdo published are close in style to the work of other contemporary madrigalists.
20.
Characteristic of the Carlo Gesualdo style is a sectional format in which relatively slow-tempo passages of wild, occasionally shocking chromaticism alternate with quick-tempo diatonic passages.
21.
Carlo Gesualdo was particularly fond of chromatic third relations, for instance juxtaposing the chords of A major and F major, or even C-sharp major and A minor, as he does at the beginning of "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo".
22.
The fascination for Carlo Gesualdo's music has been fuelled by the sensational aspects of his biography.
23.
The life of Carlo Gesualdo provided inspiration for numerous works of fiction and musical drama, including a novel by Anatole France and a short story by Julio Cortazar.
24.
Mozart's C-Minor Piano Concerto was interrupted after the first movement, and a recording of some madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo took its place.
25.
Carlo Gesualdo was an Italian composer who, because of mental illness, murdered his wife and her lover, and wrote music in the 16th century that was so progressive and extreme that no one attempted to recreate his style until the 20th century.