Carlo Gesualdo

Carlo Gesualdo: The Murdering Prince Who Rewrote the Rules of Harmony

On the night of 16 October 1590, in a palace on the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, a 24-year-old nobleman and a band of armed servants forced their way into his wife's bedroom. Maria d'Avalos and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria, died there. The killer was Carlo Gesualdo, heir to the principality of Venosa. No court punished him. Over the next two decades he wrote some of the most daring music of the Renaissance: madrigals so dissonant and so restless that, nearly 350 years after his death, Igor Stravinsky recomposed three of them in homage. The music and the murders have never been separated since.

A Saint's Nephew, Born to Power

Gesualdo was born, probably on 30 March 1566, at Venosa in the Kingdom of Naples, into one of the south's great landed families. His mother, Geronima Borromeo, was a niece of Pope Pius IV. He was named for her brother, Carlo Borromeo, the reforming archbishop of Milan, who was made a saint in 1610. As a second son, Carlo was not meant to rule. His elder brother's early death made him heir to the family's titles and estates.

Music claimed him early. He studied composition from boyhood and became an accomplished lutenist. Men of his rank were expected to pay composers, not to become one. Gesualdo did both.

A Marriage Between Cousins

In 1586 he married his first cousin, Maria d'Avalos. She was several years older than her new husband and had already been widowed twice. She bore him a son, Emanuele. Within a few years she had begun an affair with Fabrizio Carafa, third Duke of Andria, a member of one of the great noble houses of Naples.

The Night of 16 October 1590

Gesualdo set a trap. On the night of 16 October 1590, with armed men at his side, he burst into his wife's room in the family residence and killed Maria d'Avalos and Fabrizio Carafa. The bodies were left on the palace stairs. An official inquiry opened the next day.

Maria d'Avalos was the mother of a small boy. Four centuries of retelling have turned both into characters in someone else's legend. They were people, and their deaths are the fixed point of this story.

Justice for a Prince

The Gran Corte della Vicaria, the kingdom's high court, concluded that Gesualdo had committed no crime. The law of the day allowed a husband to kill a wife and her lover caught in adultery, and the viceroy did not step in on behalf of the Carafa family. Gesualdo withdrew from Naples to his family's estates, away from the victims' relatives.

The poets Torquato Tasso and Giambattista Marino both wrote about the affair. In 1591 Gesualdo's father died, and the killer became Prince of Venosa.

Ferrara: A Prince Among Professionals

In 1594 Gesualdo travelled north to Ferrara, seat of the d'Este dukes and a centre of new madrigal writing. He came to claim a bride, Leonora d'Este, and he came as a composer. The ducal press printed his first and second books of five-voice madrigals that year, a third in 1595 and a fourth in 1596.

The marriage was unhappy. Within months he left his new wife for long stretches, and contemporary reports describe abuse and infidelity. She followed him south, reluctantly, in 1597.

Harmony at the Edge

What makes Gesualdo matter is sound. A madrigal from his late books moves in jolts: a slow passage of grinding chromatic chords, then a burst of quick counterpoint, then a sudden halt. A single word of pain, *moro* ("I die"), can drag the harmony into regions his contemporaries did not enter. The musicologist Glenn Watkins wrote of the "dazzling harmonic style" of those final books.

The fifth and sixth books appeared in 1611, printed at Gesualdo. He claimed the pieces had been written years earlier and that he published them because faulty copies were circulating and others were borrowing his work. The sixth book contains *Moro, lasso, al mio duolo*, a five-voice lament whose opening sinks through a chain of chromatic chords.

Penance in Paint and Polyphony

In his last decade Gesualdo turned hard toward the Church. He built two churches in the town of Gesualdo, Santissimo Rosario and Santa Maria delle Grazie. In the second hangs *Il Perdono di Gesualdo* (1609), by Giovanni Balducci: the prince kneels while his sainted uncle, Carlo Borromeo, intercedes for him before Christ. In 1611 and 1612 he sought keepsakes of Borromeo from his cousin, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, and received a portrait and a sandal.

His sacred music carries the same weight. Two books of motets, the *Sacrae cantiones*, were printed in 1603. In 1611 came the *Tenebrae Responsoria* for Holy Week, which set texts of betrayal and the Passion with the same strained harmony as the madrigals.

A House Without Peace

The castle at Gesualdo was no refuge. Leonora d'Este brought witchcraft proceedings against a former mistress of her husband; two women were convicted and confined in the castle. On 20 August 1613 Emanuele, the son of his first marriage, died. Gesualdo outlived him by less than three weeks. He died at his castle on 8 September 1613. The cause of his death is not securely recorded.

Silence, Then Rediscovery

For most of the four centuries after his death, the story outran the scores. The 20th century reversed the order. Scholars and composers heard in his chromatic writing a voice unlike any other of his era, and Stravinsky became his most famous champion. He recomposed three madrigals for instruments as *Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum* and conducted the premiere in Venice on 27 September 1960. George Balanchine later made it a ballet for New York City Ballet. Today his madrigals and responsories are recorded by leading ensembles, from Collegium Vocale Gent to the Gesualdo Six.

On Screen and in Print

• Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum (1960), orchestral work by Igor Stravinsky recomposing three Gesualdo madrigals; premiered in Venice with Stravinsky conducting, later staged as a ballet by George Balanchine for New York City Ballet.
• Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995), documentary for the German public broadcaster ZDF, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog; no actor plays Gesualdo, and the singer Milva appears as the ghost of Maria d'Avalos.
• Gesualdo (1995), opera by Alfred Schnittke to a libretto by Richard Bletschacher, premiered at the Vienna State Opera on 26 May 1995 under Mstislav Rostropovich.

Why Carlo Gesualdo Is Called a Genius

Because the music is real. Gesualdo heard harmonic possibilities that his contemporaries either could not imagine or would not risk, and he committed them to paper without compromise. That originality is why he stands on Geniuses.club. It is also why his story must be told whole. Maria d'Avalos and Fabrizio Carafa were killed by a man whose rank put him above the law, and the court that cleared him protected a social order, not justice. Too many retellings have turned the two victims into props for a legend about a tortured artist. His genius explains the madrigals. It explains nothing about that night in Naples, and it excuses none of it.

Achievements

• Nearly 350 years after his death, Igor Stravinsky recomposed three of his madrigals as an orchestral tribute, Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum, premiered in Venice in 1960.
• On 16 October 1590 he killed his wife, Maria d'Avalos, and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria, in Naples; the kingdom's high court ruled he had committed no crime.
• Published six books of five-voice madrigals between 1594 and 1611, the last two among the most harmonically radical music of the Renaissance.
• Wrote Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (Sixth Book, 1611), a lament that sinks through a chain of chromatic chords.
• Published two books of sacred motets, the Sacrae cantiones, in 1603.
• Published the Tenebrae Responsoria for Holy Week in 1611, still recorded by leading early-music ensembles.
• Built two churches in the town of Gesualdo; one holds Giovanni Balducci's altarpiece Il Perdono di Gesualdo (1609), showing him kneeling beside his uncle, Saint Carlo Borromeo.
• Subject of Werner Herzog's 1995 documentary Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices and of Alfred Schnittke's opera Gesualdo, premiered in Vienna in 1995.