“Extremely shocking and disgusting to the ear”—that is how English historian Charles Burney described the music of Italian late Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo (c. 1561–1613) in his 1776 book, A General History of Music.
With its wrenching chromaticism, raw dissonances, and strange, wandering harmonies, Gesualdo’s music still sounds edgy to 21st-century ears. The five-voice secular madrigal Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (“I die, languishing, from grief”) was published in Gesualdo’s Sixth Book of Madrigals in 1611, two years before his death. In response to the text, polyphonic lines evoking the vitality of life contrast with a grim undertone. Through Gesualdo’s harmony, we get a visceral sense of pain and grief.
Gesualdo, who was both Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, famously murdered his first wife and her aristocratic lover after catching them in flagrante delicto.
Here is an English translation of the text:
I am dying, wretched, in my grief,
And [the one] who is able to give me life,
Alas, is killing me and is not willing to give me aid!O painful fate,
[The one] who is able to give me life, gives me death!
Recordings
- Gesualdo: Moro, lasso, al mio duolo, Paul Agnew, Les Arts Florissants harmonia mundi
Featured Image: Palazzo de Sangro di Sansevero in Naples, the residence of Carlo Gesualdo, photograph by IlSistemone