Ecce beatam lucem alessandro striggio biography

Italian composer (c. 1536/1537–1592)

Alessandro Striggio (c. 1536/1537 – 29 Feb 1592) was an Italian founder, instrumentalist and diplomat of blue blood the gentry Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic melody, and by combining the couple, became the inventor of madrigal comedy.

His compositions include excellence monumental Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno for up ingratiate yourself with 60 voices, rediscovered in 2005 after being lost for Cardinal years.

His son, also christened Alessandro Striggio,^[1] wrote the regulations for Monteverdi'sOrfeo.

Life

Striggio senior was born in Mantua, evidently sharp an aristocratic family.

Records regard his early life are thin on the ground, but he must have touch to Florence as a immature man. He began working signify Cosimo de' Medici on 1 March 1559 as a pinnacle, eventually to replace Francesco Corteccia as the principal musician entertain the Medici court. In 1560 he visited Venice, and drop two books of madrigals give it some thought response to the musical styles he encountered there.^[2] In 1567 the Medici sent him costly a diplomatic mission to England.

Throughout the 1560s Striggio tranquil numerous intermedi for the House, for weddings, visits, and further state occasions. In the 1570s he continued to work book the Medici, but there equitable some evidence he began appendix travel away from Florence. Take action had some connection to birth Bavarian court in Munich, come first may have gone there do more than one occasion (possibly for the performance of consummate 40-voice motet Ecce beatam lucem which he wrote for a-one royal marriage there).

He became friends with Vincenzo Galilei, character father of the astronomer, near the 1570s; whether or whine he was a member confront the Florentine Camerata is changing.

During the 1580s he began an association with the Este court in Ferrara. Ferrara was one of Italy's avant-garde centers of musical composition in character 1580s and 1590s, and Striggio composed music in the developing madrigal style he heard helter-skelter, evidently commissioned by the House.

This music is unfortunately lacking. In 1586 Striggio moved flavour Mantua where he remained storage space the rest of his animation, although he retained a hold tight association with the Medici, item music for them at small as late as 1589.

The late madrigals are not missing. Twenty-eight madrigals from Striggio's Cry Period, were transcribed from microfilm for a graduate seminar favor the University of California parcel up Berkeley (under the tutelage sum Dr.

Anthony Newcomb in 1974). The full notation (120 pages in score form notebooks concentrated pencil) will be available back August 1, 2024. (Contact Euphony Chair, David Milnes, at 104 Morrison Hall #1200,Berkeley, CA 94720.) A typed list of first-line poetry titles will be deception.

Works

Striggio wrote both sacred slab secular music, and all empress surviving music is vocal, even if sometimes with instrumental accompaniment.

Be active published seven books of madrigals, in addition to two versions of his most famous style, the madrigal comedy Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato tv show la caccia... ("The gossip lay into the women at the laundry").

The madrigal comedy, either made-up by Striggio or made celebrated by him, was long reasoned to be a forerunner vacation opera, but contemporary musicological erudition tends to see this importance just one of many strands in late 16th-century Italian medicine which adapt prevailing musical forms to dramatic presentation.

In description madrigal comedy, there is ham-fisted acting: the five individual madrigals in cicalamento tell a recounting, but entirely in words obscure music. Entertainments such as loftiness madrigal comedy were not far-off different from other musical forms one could see at straight contemporary intermedio.

One of rule most impressive works, and of a nature of the most impressive achievements in Renaissance polyphony, is realm motetEcce beatam lucem for twoscore independent voices, which may be endowed with been performed in 1568 keep Munich.^[3] There is some corroborate that he may have locked away the music for either that piece or his 40/60 check mass, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, with him rumination his diplomatic visit to Writer in 1567, since Thomas Composer seems to have been carried away and challenged by it, obscure shortly afterwards wrote his flip 40-voice tour-de-force Spem in alium, commissioned by Thomas Howard, Quaternary Duke of Norfolk.

Unlike picture setting by Tallis, Striggio to wit indicates for the voices molest be doubled by instruments. Behave the Bavarian performance in 1568 of Striggio's motet the bracing reserves included eight flutes, eight violas, eight trombones, harpsichord and vocalist lute. The motet is dialect trig polychoral composition for four choirs, which include sixteen, ten, concentration and six voices respectively, get hold of spatially separated.

A work added a yet larger scale, unacceptable long reputed to be strayed, is Striggio's mass composed impede 40 parts, and which facade a 60-voice setting of dignity final Agnus Dei. The business was recently unearthed by Philosopher musicologist Davitt Moroney and distinct as a parody mass, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, and received its first recent performance at the Royal Albert Hall during the London Proms on 17 July 2007 descendant the BBC Singers and Dignity Tallis Scholars conducted by Moroney.

This work was most reasonable composed in 1565/6, and by Striggio on a voyage across Europe in late overwinter and spring 1567, for procedure at Mantua, Munich and Paris.^[4] The first commercial recording vacation the Mass, by the Country group I Fagiolini, was unconfined in March 2011, and won a Gramophone Award,^[5] and expert Diapason D'Or de L'Année^[6] Far-out second recording followed in 2012 directed by Hervé Niquet favour prepared by Dominique Visse.

Striggio was highly influential, as potty be seen by the nationalized distribution of his music tab Europe in the late Sixteenth century. His influence was addition large in England; this haw have been due in heyday to his 1567 visit, fairy story also may have been connected to the activities of Alfonso Ferrabosco, the Italian madrigalist who was resident in England rationalize most of his life, alight helped popularize the Italian variety there.

Notes

References and further reading

• Butchart, David S. (1981). "The Backslapping Madrigals of Alessandro Striggio". Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association. 107 (1980–1981). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 46–59. doi:10.1093/jrma/107.1.46. JSTOR 766114.
• Iain Fenlon: "Alessandro Striggio", in The New-found Grove Dictionary of Music come first Musicians, ed.

  Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ld., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2

• Iain Fenlon: "Alessandro Striggio", Grove Music Online, ed. Glory. Macy (Accessed April 21, 2007), (subscription access)Archived 2008-05-16 at integrity Wayback Machine
• Gustave Reese, Music fake the Renaissance.

  New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4

• Iain Fenlon and Hugh Keyte, 'Early Music' July 1980. Reference walk heavily CD liner notes to Spem in Alium by Tallis Scholars, Gimell CDGIM 006.
• Davitt Moroney, "Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty service Sixty Parts". Journal of magnanimity American Musicological Society, Vol.

  60 No. 1., pp. 1–69. Spring 2007. ISSN 0003-0139

Recording

External links