Recently, I was caused to recollect the animosities of one of our fellow commenters.
It was last night, while watching television. Mike Colameco had some food blogger give him a tour of the most happening new food places in Brooklyn. Apparently, the scene is "viral."
Anyway, my impression was that many of the twenty-somethings shared in common a certain style of physical appearance, vocal mannerism, and thought process that I found somewhat unfamiliar and somewhat off-putting.
I'm not at all certain, but I think many of them might be of the social category I sometimes hear referred to as "hipster."
The composer of this little ditty, Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), was Saint Charles Borromeo's nephew. He also was Prince of Venosa and a deeply disturbed individual. I hate to quote at length, but the Wikipedia entry has about the best account of the events that made him famous in his day:
In 1586 Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara. Two years later she began a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria. Evidently, she was able to keep it secret from her husband for almost two years, even though the existence of the affair was well known elsewhere. Finally, on October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, when Gesualdo had allegedly gone away on a hunting trip, the two lovers took insufficient precaution at last (Gesualdo had arranged with his servants to have keys to the locks of his palace copied in wood so that he could gain entrance if it were locked). Gesualdo returned to the palace, caught them in flagrante delicto and murdered them both in their bed. Afterward, he left their mutilated bodies in front of the palace for all to see. Being a nobleman he was immune from prosecution, but not to revenge, so he fled to his castle at Venosa where he would be safe from any of the relatives of either his wife or her lover.
Details on the murders are not lacking, as the depositions of witnesses to the magistrates have survived in full. While they disagree on some details, they agree on the principal points, and it is apparent that Gesualdo had help from his servants, who may have done most of the killing; however, Gesualdo certainly stabbed Maria multiple times, shouting as he did, "she's not dead yet!" The Duke of Andria was found slaughtered by numerous deep sword wounds, as well as by a shot through the head. When he was found, he was dressed in women's clothing (specifically, Maria's night dress). His own clothing was found piled up by the bedside, unbloodied.
The murders were widely publicized, including in verse by poets such as Tasso and an entire flock of Neapolitan poets, eager to capitalize on the sensation. The salacious details of the murders were broadcast in print, but nothing was done to apprehend the Prince of Venosa. The police report from the scene makes for shocking reading even after more than four hundred years.
His music is very unusual for its day. It is considered the musical equivalent of contemporary Mannerism in art. He mostly wrote madrigals and some Church music, and I think a few lute pieces. His madrigals are noted for their chromatic and distorted musical language. He often set heavily S&M-tinged texts. Things like, “Where the ardent mosquito bites, I will too...” and, “She crushes and kills it...” etc. All this is in a wrenching, chromatic musical language that may simply sound pretty to our ears, accustomed as they are to industrial music and punch presses in love. At most, people think it sounds like Space Music, strangulation and cutting not being the usual subjects of even outre modern pop. I’ll put up another comment with Aldous Huxley’s take on Gesualdo, but there’s no room left here.
Anyway, these are, translated, the relatively tame words to our madrigal, except, of course, he couldn’t leave off a little torment:
Oh flower fresh and purest white, how you refresh and purify my heart with hope and faith. Wretched me; would that I could, as I see so clearly your true color; see that of my lady; then I would either enjoy the promise of my hope or of my faith the torments.
And, as promised, here's what Aldous Huxley, a musician himself and astute critic, said about Gesualdo in Doors of Perception:
Mozart's C-Minor Piano Concerto was interrupted after the first movement, and a recording of some madrigals by Gesualdo took its place.
'These voices' I said appreciatively, 'these voices – they're a kind of bridge back to the human world.'
And a bridge they remained even while singing the most startlingly chromatic of the mad prince's compositions. Through the uneven phrases of the madrigals, the music pursued its course, never sticking to the same key for two bars together. In Gesualdo, that fantastic character out of a Webster melodrama, psychological disintegration had exaggerated, had pushed to the extreme limit, a tendency inherent in modal as opposed to fully tonal music. The resulting works sounded as though they might have been written by the later Schoenberg.
'And yet,' I felt myself constrained to say, as I listened to these strange products of a Counter-reformation psychosis working upon a late medieval art form, 'and yet it does not matter that he's all in bits. The whole is disorganized. But each individual fragment is in order, is a representative of a Higher Order. The Highest Order prevails even in the disintegration. The totality is present even in the broken pieces. More clearly present, perhaps, than in a completely coherent work. At least you aren't lulled into a sense of false security by some merely human, merely fabricated order. You have to rely on your immediate perception of the ultimate order. So in a certain sense disintegration may have its advantages. But of course it's dangerous, horribly dangerous. Suppose you couldn't get back, out of the chaos...'
Fascinating, Tim, I assumed it was religious music. Now that I listen to it with added insight, it makes me think of the music of the spheres.
"The totality is present even in the broken pieces. More clearly present, perhaps, than in a completely coherent work. At least you aren't lulled into a sense of false security by some merely human, merely fabricated order. You have to rely on your immediate perception of the ultimate order."
As promised, the words are a bit more suggestive, and the musical language more out there (although not the chromatic piece Huxley was writing about):
Pesky mosquito, Bite her who breaks my heart and steeps it In such cruel torment;
Then flee, but fly back again Into that fair bosom that has stolen my heart
Then she catches it, squeezes it and gives it Death at its happy fate.
I shall bite you too, My sweet beloved.
And if you catch me, and squeeze me, ah, I shall expire At the taste of this fair bosom's sweet poison.
I will spare you both Gesualdo's religious music and his more kinky madrigals, both being fit for those who have studied their Fux, in all his, or its, homonymic species. If you're interested, look Gesualdo (if not Fux) up. It's a big internet, and an even bigger musical and perverted past.
A lot of people did not approve. When his music was current, the Prince of Venosa either exhibited a "shell-like beauty" of mind, or was a "foul and murderous madman."
In those days, before music became "classical," it was composed for the present and quickly tossed aside for the next big thing. Gesualdo's music was instantly sidetracked by the new Monteverdi-style "segunda practica," i.e., early Baroque music. As a rule, musical styles, starting in the late 14th century, changed at least as quickly as modern pop. Some of it's a little hard to spot for general modern listeners, but if you know the styles, you can reliably identify music from each decade for 500 years.
By Sir Archy's time, Gesualdo's music was an historical curiosity, the provenance of dusty libraries and antiquarians. Interestingly enough, the musical author Charles Burney (friend of both Dr. Johnson and Thomas Jefferson) wrote about Gesualdo in his The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771). Burney was shown a printed score from 1613 of Gesualdo's madrigals, and Burney promptly pronounced them "disgusting." The 18th century was scandalized by the lyrics and horrified by the bizarre, "incorrect" taste of the music. And, of course, no one would even think of singing it. In those days, "ancient" music was 40 years old, and everyone was up-to-date in the latest trendy way to play and sing things. That stands in complete contrast to today, where Early Music has been a huge influence in the classical world, and where modern classical players and singers devote themselves to trying to perform old music just as it might have been heard in Ye Olde Days when it was new.
All this says a lot about culture, but I've said enough, and so to bed.
I appreciate your insights, TT. It's a nice change from listening to me drone on night after night about popular music which happens to be in our own memory.
Well, Gesualdo's uncle was St. Carlo Borromeo, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan. Fortunately, the future saint shuffled off these mortal coils in 1584, six years before his nephew caused the ruckus. St. Carlo Borromeo was known as a great reformer who spent all of his considerable fortune as a nobleman relieving the poor.
It may have been officially a religious age, but as the then-sputtering-to-a-close Protestant Reformation showed, the Catholic Church was in a bad way everywhere, even in Italy. Just like with the Mafia until recently, the Church had more things to worry about than some bloody vendetta. This scandal was confined to a few who had reaped their reward in this world anyway, while the Church had many more souls and starved bodies to concern herself with. It was a matter of culture, numbers, and priorities.
17 comments:
Innocent green flower.
Chicke is the Italian expert here.
Flor blanca y verde.
Google translate is your friend.
white and green flower
Simply beautiful.
Recently, I was caused to recollect the animosities of one of our fellow commenters.
It was last night, while watching television. Mike Colameco had some food blogger give him a tour of the most happening new food places in Brooklyn. Apparently, the scene is "viral."
Anyway, my impression was that many of the twenty-somethings shared in common a certain style of physical appearance, vocal mannerism, and thought process that I found somewhat unfamiliar and somewhat off-putting.
I'm not at all certain, but I think many of them might be of the social category I sometimes hear referred to as "hipster."
Here's a picture of what the Brooklyn food blogger/tour guide looked like, with what I assume is her boyfriend or husband or whatever.
Thought somebody out there might want to know.
P.S. If she were bisexual, I'd be totally okay with that, just so you know.
The composer of this little ditty, Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), was Saint Charles Borromeo's nephew. He also was Prince of Venosa and a deeply disturbed individual. I hate to quote at length, but the Wikipedia entry has about the best account of the events that made him famous in his day:
In 1586 Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara. Two years later she began a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria. Evidently, she was able to keep it secret from her husband for almost two years, even though the existence of the affair was well known elsewhere. Finally, on October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, when Gesualdo had allegedly gone away on a hunting trip, the two lovers took insufficient precaution at last (Gesualdo had arranged with his servants to have keys to the locks of his palace copied in wood so that he could gain entrance if it were locked). Gesualdo returned to the palace, caught them in flagrante delicto and murdered them both in their bed. Afterward, he left their mutilated bodies in front of the palace for all to see. Being a nobleman he was immune from prosecution, but not to revenge, so he fled to his castle at Venosa where he would be safe from any of the relatives of either his wife or her lover.
Details on the murders are not lacking, as the depositions of witnesses to the magistrates have survived in full. While they disagree on some details, they agree on the principal points, and it is apparent that Gesualdo had help from his servants, who may have done most of the killing; however, Gesualdo certainly stabbed Maria multiple times, shouting as he did, "she's not dead yet!" The Duke of Andria was found slaughtered by numerous deep sword wounds, as well as by a shot through the head. When he was found, he was dressed in women's clothing (specifically, Maria's night dress). His own clothing was found piled up by the bedside, unbloodied.
The murders were widely publicized, including in verse by poets such as Tasso and an entire flock of Neapolitan poets, eager to capitalize on the sensation. The salacious details of the murders were broadcast in print, but nothing was done to apprehend the Prince of Venosa. The police report from the scene makes for shocking reading even after more than four hundred years.
His music is very unusual for its day. It is considered the musical equivalent of contemporary Mannerism in art. He mostly wrote madrigals and some Church music, and I think a few lute pieces. His madrigals are noted for their chromatic and distorted musical language.
He often set heavily S&M-tinged texts. Things like, “Where the ardent mosquito bites, I will too...” and, “She crushes and kills it...” etc. All this is in a wrenching, chromatic musical language that may simply sound pretty to our ears, accustomed as they are to industrial music and punch presses in love. At most, people think it sounds like Space Music, strangulation and cutting not being the usual subjects of even outre modern pop. I’ll put up another comment with Aldous Huxley’s take on Gesualdo, but there’s no room left here.
Anyway, these are, translated, the relatively tame words to our madrigal, except, of course, he couldn’t leave off a little torment:
Oh flower fresh and purest white,
how you refresh and purify my heart
with hope and faith.
Wretched me; would that I could, as I see so clearly
your true color;
see that of my lady;
then I would either enjoy the promise of my hope
or of my faith the torments.
And, as promised, here's what Aldous Huxley, a musician himself and astute critic, said about Gesualdo in Doors of Perception:
Mozart's C-Minor Piano Concerto was interrupted after the first movement, and a recording of some madrigals by Gesualdo took its place.
'These voices' I said appreciatively, 'these voices – they're a kind of bridge back to the human world.'
And a bridge they remained even while singing the most startlingly chromatic of the mad prince's compositions. Through the uneven phrases of the madrigals, the music pursued its course, never sticking to the same key for two bars together. In Gesualdo, that fantastic character out of a Webster melodrama, psychological disintegration had exaggerated, had pushed to the extreme limit, a tendency inherent in modal as opposed to fully tonal music. The resulting works sounded as though they might have been written by the later Schoenberg.
'And yet,' I felt myself constrained to say, as I listened to these strange products of a Counter-reformation psychosis working upon a late medieval art form, 'and yet it does not matter that he's all in bits. The whole is disorganized. But each individual fragment is in order, is a representative of a Higher Order. The Highest Order prevails even in the disintegration. The totality is present even in the broken pieces. More clearly present, perhaps, than in a completely coherent work. At least you aren't lulled into a sense of false security by some merely human, merely fabricated order. You have to rely on your immediate perception of the ultimate order. So in a certain sense disintegration may have its advantages. But of course it's dangerous, horribly dangerous. Suppose you couldn't get back, out of the chaos...'
Fascinating, Tim, I assumed it was religious music. Now that I listen to it with added insight, it makes me think of the music of the spheres.
"The totality is present even in the broken pieces. More clearly present, perhaps, than in a completely coherent work. At least you aren't lulled into a sense of false security by some merely human, merely fabricated order. You have to rely on your immediate perception of the ultimate order."
Too cool.
Here is the "Ardent ( or Pesky) Mosquito" madrigal. It seems to be the next one on the playlist after our Green and White lady.
As promised, the words are a bit more suggestive, and the musical language more out there (although not the chromatic piece Huxley was writing about):
Pesky mosquito,
Bite her who breaks my heart and steeps it
In such cruel torment;
Then flee, but fly back again
Into that fair bosom that has stolen my heart
Then she catches it, squeezes it and gives it
Death at its happy fate.
I shall bite you too,
My sweet beloved.
And if you catch me, and squeeze me, ah, I shall expire
At the taste of this fair bosom's sweet poison.
I will spare you both Gesualdo's religious music and his more kinky madrigals, both being fit for those who have studied their Fux, in all his, or its, homonymic species. If you're interested, look Gesualdo (if not Fux) up. It's a big internet, and an even bigger musical and perverted past.
Galateo (1503-56) would not approve. Would Sir Archy?
A lot of people did not approve. When his music was current, the Prince of Venosa either exhibited a "shell-like beauty" of mind, or was a "foul and murderous madman."
In those days, before music became "classical," it was composed for the present and quickly tossed aside for the next big thing. Gesualdo's music was instantly sidetracked by the new Monteverdi-style "segunda practica," i.e., early Baroque music. As a rule, musical styles, starting in the late 14th century, changed at least as quickly as modern pop. Some of it's a little hard to spot for general modern listeners, but if you know the styles, you can reliably identify music from each decade for 500 years.
By Sir Archy's time, Gesualdo's music was an historical curiosity, the provenance of dusty libraries and antiquarians. Interestingly enough, the musical author Charles Burney (friend of both Dr. Johnson and Thomas Jefferson) wrote about Gesualdo in his The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771). Burney was shown a printed score from 1613 of Gesualdo's madrigals, and Burney promptly pronounced them "disgusting." The 18th century was scandalized by the lyrics and horrified by the bizarre, "incorrect" taste of the music. And, of course, no one would even think of singing it. In those days, "ancient" music was 40 years old, and everyone was up-to-date in the latest trendy way to play and sing things. That stands in complete contrast to today, where Early Music has been a huge influence in the classical world, and where modern classical players and singers devote themselves to trying to perform old music just as it might have been heard in Ye Olde Days when it was new.
All this says a lot about culture, but I've said enough, and so to bed.
I appreciate your insights, TT. It's a nice change from listening to me drone on night after night about popular music which happens to be in our own memory.
Interesting and informative stuff, TTBurnett. Thank you.
I particularly like "punch presses in love."
How bizarre that such lyrics would be written at such a religious time. Did the Roman Catholic church attempt to repress or otherwise sanction him?
Chick, apples and oranges, rock on :)
Well, Gesualdo's uncle was St. Carlo Borromeo, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan. Fortunately, the future saint shuffled off these mortal coils in 1584, six years before his nephew caused the ruckus. St. Carlo Borromeo was known as a great reformer who spent all of his considerable fortune as a nobleman relieving the poor.
It may have been officially a religious age, but as the then-sputtering-to-a-close Protestant Reformation showed, the Catholic Church was in a bad way everywhere, even in Italy. Just like with the Mafia until recently, the Church had more things to worry about than some bloody vendetta. This scandal was confined to a few who had reaped their reward in this world anyway, while the Church had many more souls and starved bodies to concern herself with. It was a matter of culture, numbers, and priorities.
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