by Tim Rayborn
Returning to the palace earlier than expected from a hunting trip, Gesualdo caught them in a rather compromising position (we don’t know exactly which one). Enraged, he didn’t just kill them; with the help of servants, he stabbed both of them with a sword multiple times. He killed his wife first, and then, forcing Fabrizio to don her nightshirt, he killed her lover second, shooting him in the head with a pistol to be sure.
The thing about all of this is that, being a nobleman, Gesualdo was immune from any official prosecution—it’s always good to be stinking rich and have family connections! However, he knew that his life was still in danger from members of his victims’ families seeking revenge. So he fled to the castle that was his namesake—Gesualdo, that is—for safety.
Such a lurid tale spread across the land at a rapid pace, becoming the tabloid sensation of its day. People loved a good bloody tale as much then as now. Rumors circulated that he also murdered his infant son by Maria, swinging him about wildly until the child was dead, because he suspected him of being Fabrizio’s. But why stop there? More grotesque stories soon appeared: that he mutilated their genitalia, that an insane monk violated Donna Maria’s corpse, and that Gesualdo placed their bloody bodies in front of the palace in a kind of perverse public display. He is said to have also murdered Donna Maria’s father after the latter sought vengeance for her death. This was unlikely, though, as Gesualdo hired a whole team of men-at-arms as bodyguards to prevent revenge-seekers from getting anywhere near him.
Gesualdo never stood trial for the two murders he definitely did commit. He remarried in 1594 and is said to have beaten his new wife, though thankfully for her, his murderous impulses did not return.
In 1603, two women from his household were tried for witchcraft and confessed after being tortured, adding that he had taken part in their activities. They were imprisoned, but again, it seems he escaped punishment.
He did seem to suffer guilt from his actions toward the end of his life and ordered himself to be beaten every day. He endured this flagellation to drive out his demons and tried to obtain holy relics, such as skeletal remains, that he hoped would cure him of his deteriorating mental condition. The poems to his musical works, many of which were likely written by him, are revealing for their images of pain; they may well have been autobiographical. While mostly concerned with the hurtfulness of love, there is darkness in them that betrays much deeper personal torments. In 1611’s madrigal Poichè l’avida sete (“Since the insatiable thirst”), we read:
Since the insatiable thirst
You have for my sad and tearful humor
Is not yet quenched, o pitiless heart,
Let my blood quench it,
For now it will pour out from my pierced breast
A river of sorrow
In Se la mia morte brami (“If you long for my death”), also from 1611, he declares:
If you long for my death,
Cruel one, happily shall I die,
And after death shall still adore you alone
But if you want me to stop loving you,
Alas, if I even think of such a thing,
Grief kills me and my soul takes flight.
Death is a constant theme, as in Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (“I am dying, alas, of sorrow”):
I am dying, alas, of sorrow.
And the one who might save me,
Alas, is killing me and will not help me.
O sad fate,
The one who might save me, alas, is bringing about my death.
Are these the words of a man expressing remorse? It is certainly possible. These later madrigals also contain some texts expressing happiness, though they seem muted by comparison to the excessive gloom of the majority of the works surrounding them. The music for these later pieces is remarkable for its experimental harmonies and progressions, quite unlike anything else at the time.
Gesualdo died in 1613, and his second wife, Eleonora, was whispered to be responsible. I doubt that anyone would blame her.
Tobias Hume (ca. 1569–1645)
Soldier of Fortune
Captain Tobias Hume was a peculiar eccentric—okay, he was rather weird—a long-lived fellow who saw the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. Undoubtedly a virtuoso on the viol (rather like an early version of the cello, though they are not technically related), he was also a soldier of fortune who traveled widely across Europe in the service of various monarchs and factions. He was something of a master of flowery speech, declaring of himself:
I doe not studie Eloquence, or professe Musicke, although I doe love Sense, and affect Harmony: My Profession being, as my Education hath beene, Armes, the onely effeminate part of me, hath beene Musicke; which in mee hath beene alwayes Generous, because never Mercenarie.
He championed the viol as being superior to the lute and published two collections of music, both with colorful names: The First Part of Ayres or Musicall Humors (1605) and Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke (1607). One piece, “An Invention for Two to Play upone one Viole,” does indeed require two players, each with a bow. The smaller musician is to sit in the lap of the larger one so that both play one instrument. Apparently it can be done.
Among Hume’s employers were the King of Sweden and the Emperor of Russia, and he served in various battles and squabbles. He seems to have spent many years on the continent before returning to England in 1629. Once back in London, he applied to be admitted to the Charterhouse, a former priory that served as a kind of retirement home for men over the age of fifty “such as had been servants to the King’s Majestie or could bring good testimony of their good behavior and soundness in religion.”
Tobias didn’t seem to take to retirement well, though, even with all that time to write his music. Ever the soldier, he was eager to get out into the field and fight again, though it seems that his mind was going by then. He petitioned Charles I to go on a mission for the King of Sweden, but was apparently turned down (in all likelihood, ignored), probably due to his age and his mental state.
He tried one more time in 1642, having a pamphlet printed wherein he entreated Parliament to allow him to lead an army into Ireland to put down a Catholic rebellion. Entitled The True Petition of Colonel Hume (he gave himself a promotion), it makes clear that his grasp on reality was getting looser all the time. He writes:
I do humbly intreat to know why your Lordships do slight me, as if I were a fool or an ass…. I have pawned all my best clothes, and have now no good garment to wear…. I have not one penny to help me at this time to buy me bread, so that I am like to be starved for want of meat and drink, and did walk into the fields lately to gather snails in the netles, and brought a bag of them home to eat, and do now feed on them for want of other meat, to the great shame of this land and those that do not help me …
If given a navy, he declared, he would bring “twenty millions of money” back to the king. His plea went unheeded, and he died in Charterhouse on April 16, 1645, while the Civil War between Oliver Cromwell and Charles I raged.
Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623)
I drink, therefore I am
Weelkes was a noted composer of madrigals whose works are still performed frequently by madrigal enthusiasts today. His church anthems are also highly regarded. Like Morley, who was his friend when he was a young man, he took his bachelor’s degree in music in 1602 from Oxford and moved on to a permanent position at Chichester Cathedral.
Weelkes appears to have lived a fairly unassuming life until he was in his thirties. He was apparently quite fond of drink, a love that gradually increased as he got older. Naturally, this led to some problems with his employer. He was noted for unauthorized and unexplained absences from the cathedral as early as 1609, but by 1613, there is a disapproving record of his drunkenness. By 1616 his behavior was brought to the Bishop’s attention, and it was mentioned that he was “noted and famed for a common drunckard and notorious swearer & blasphemer.”
The Dean and Chapter eventually dismissed him for being drunk
at the organ and swearing during the service—what an experience that must have been!
He convinced them that he would mend his ways, for he was reinstated and kept the position until his death. He soon lapsed, however, being reported once again in 1619 for the same behavior:
Dyvers tymes & very often come so disguised eyther from the Taverne or Ale house into the quire as is muche to be lamented, for in these humoures he will bothe curse & sweare most dreadfully, & so profane the service of God … and though he hath bene often tymes admonished … to refrayne theis humors and reforme hym selfe, yett he daylye continuse the same, & is rather worse than better therein.
It doesn’t seem quite so bad when it’s written in such language, does it? Somehow he managed to hold on to his employment in spite of these many offenses; he either had sympathetic employers or was a good bluffer.
Alfonso Fontanelli (1557–1622)
Here we go with the whole wife-killing thing again
Fontanelli, while technically a “Renaissance” composer, nevertheless embraced the evolving musical styles toward the end of his life; there’s a lot of overlap in successive musical eras, and aggravation, since we tend to like things in nice neat packages. When a composer straddles more than one era, it makes it trickier to classify the style. We will encounter this issue again in the Baroque chapter.
A skilled madrigalist, Fontanelli was born in northern Italy, and like so many composers, moved around from court to court, also acting in a diplomatic fashion on various occasions. His travels brought him into contact with the notorious Gesualdo, and the two traveled together for a time around Italy.
Maybe it was the association with Gesualdo, maybe it was overly strong Italian grappa, maybe it was heatstroke, but at some point Fontanelli acquired Gesualdo’s murderous impulses. In 1601 he discovered that his wife, Maria, was having an affair. However, unlike Gesualdo, he spared his wife and “only” murdered her lover.
He also seems to have suffered consequences, at least initially. If he had hoped that the murder would somehow go unnoticed, he was seriously mistaken. Banished from his patron’s lands and stripped of all of his possessions, he found a new home as a butler to Cardinal Alessandro d’Este—interestingly, the younger brother of Duke Cesare, who had banished him. Apparently the cardinal didn’t give a fig about murder and overlooked the whole thing. While living at the cardinal’s palace, Fontanelli hosted popular Thursday evening musical gatherings and composed an important collection of madrigals.
He ended his life, as was oddly common for these criminals, as a priest, and even more strangely, he died as the result of an insect bite that became infected shortly thereafter. Maybe it was divine judgment. Maybe he was allergic.
Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)
Brain trust
Gibbons was a short-lived but very talented musician and composer, famous for his works for virginals, organ, and choir. Born into the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan England, he eventually served King James and was the organist at Westminster Abbey. All was going reasonably well for him, when he died suddenly in June 1625. There was some fear that he was a victim of plague, but it seems that stroke was the cause. He merits an inclusion here for the extensive autopsy report preserved in Britain’s National Archives. It goes into some detail and is rather gruesome, which makes it perfect to quote at length:
In the time of his late and sudden sickness, which we found in the beginning lethargical, or a profound sleep; out of which, we could never recover him, neither by inward nor outward medicines, & then instantly he fell in most strong, & sharp convulsions; which did wring his mouth up to his ears, & his eyes were distorted, as though they would have been thrust out of his head & then suddenly he lost both speech, sight and hearing, & so grew apoplectical & lost the whole motion of every part of his body, & so died.
Death wasn’t the end, however. Things were about to get weirder:
Then here upon (his death being so sudden) rumours were cast out that he did die of the plague, whereupon we … caused his body to be searched by certain women that were sworn to deliver the truth, who did affirm that they never saw a fairer corpse. Yet notwithstanding we to give full satisfaction to all did cause the skull to be opened in our presence & we carefully viewed the body, which we found also to be very clean without any show or spot of any contagious matter.
But just when they thought they were in the clear:
In the brain we found the whole & sole cause of his sickness namely a great admirable blackness & syderation in the outside of the brain. Within the brain (being opened) there did issue out abundance of water intermixed with blood & this we affirm to be the only cause of his sudden death.
Wow. I suppose they had to be thorough, but “too much information” comes to mind. He was buried hastily at Canterbury for unknown reasons, where a monument to him was also placed in the cathedral. The suddenness of the whole thing came as quite a shock to his friends, but nothing more seems to have been said about the death, leaving it all rather suspicious.
4
The Baroque Era
“Baroque” is actually a slightly derogatory term, originally meaning a “rough or imperfect pearl.” In the past it was used to describe art and architecture that were overly ornate, even a bit garish and grotesque.
However, it also refers to a period of music (and art) from the early seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century, which many consider to be the finest in the history of classical music. It was not a term normally used by the composers of that time, and one of its first appearances was in a negative review of an opera by the eighteenth-century Frenchman Jean-Philippe Rameau. From our contemporary perspective, however, the composers who wrote during these decades form a veritable who’s who list of greats: Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Pachelbel, Telemann, Monteverdi, and more. Even non-specialists have heard of most of them. Collectively, these fellows have sold untold millions of recordings and concert tickets over the years. To the dismay of music historians and purists, their music also fills countless relaxation CDs.
Music from this era is among the most popular with modern listeners and is often the first introduction for many to the world of classical music, given its great beauty and sheer listenability. Detractors sometimes criticize the repertoire for a repetitive sound or sameness to many pieces. I am reminded of the quip made by a college teacher of mine about a composer who wrote “music by the yard.” It is true that sometimes lesser-known Baroque works can seem more like craft than art, but this is precisely why they are lesser known. Those pieces actually were works-for-hire, and might have been intended only as background music for a single occasion (a wedding, a party, a coronation, etc.), after which they were shelved and forgotten. The composers who wrote them moved on to other projects, and their B-grade pieces were left to be discovered by musicologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some of whom probably attached more importance to these works than their own composers did.
By contrast, the masterpieces by Bach, Handel, and others are now thought to be among the greatest glories of Western music history, but even these were sometimes forgotten for decades after their composers’ deaths. Bach’s music was largely ignored for the remainder of the century; Mozart and Beethoven were said to have admired it, but they did little to popularize it. This sad situation continued until Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1829 and re-ignited the interest of both the music-loving public and other composers. Handel fared somewhat better in the fame department after his death; no less a composer than Beethoven wrote variations on one of Handel’s works in 1797, and Haydn is said to have wept in joy during a performance of the Messiah, proclaiming Handel to be the master of them all.
So, read on and see some of the scandalous stories behind the delicious music. And there will be no miserable, overused puns like “going for Baroque” or “if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.” In fact, it’s rather appalling how many times these have shown up as album or concert titles
over the years. It needs to stop.
Giulio Caccini (1551–1618)
A snitch in time
Caccini, though born at the height of the Renaissance, is more often connected with the emerging Baroque style of the early seventeenth century. As we saw in the previous chapter, there is a lot of overlap between these eras, so there is some confusion and irritation as to how to classify composers. One sometimes simply has to make a call as to where to place a given composer historically—and then end up defending it from the inevitable criticisms of musicologists in tweed jackets.
Back to Caccini. He was a gifted tenor who was influential in the development of the new Baroque style that embraced a different sound than what had been common during the Renaissance. An important feature was the use of solo vocal lines of great emotional depth, accompanied by simpler harmonic chords. This contrasted sharply with the rich, polyphonic music of the Renaissance, with its complex, interweaving melody lines that had their own identities but blended together in dazzling ways. Indeed, it was those innovations in early seventeenth-century Italy that laid the foundations for the standards of modern music theory and composition. Most music students today begin by studying theory that was basically developed at this time.
Giulio was important and he knew it, claiming to have invented a new kind of music. He was also not above spreading news of scandal or stabbing others in the back if he thought he could advance himself. He was able to have some people squeezed out of positions of importance and even tried to head off rivals by having his own works published first. One example of his quest for the musical finish line had bloody consequences: he had learned of an affair between a young noble woman, Eleonora de Medici, and her poet lover, Bernardino Antinori. Eleonora’s husband, Don Pietro de’ Medici, was a nasty, evil little man who didn’t care for her at all and doted on his own mistresses instead—the old double standard.