It’s not every day I get to combine three of my favorite topics in one article, but this one has it all – music, history, and true crime. Sometimes, to understand the music someone makes, it helps to have context, and this story is dripping in context.
The life of a musician can be tumultuous, and it can feed into the lore of the artist and give the music a certain mystique. This has been the case for a multitude of rock stars and blues artists, where their lore feeds the legend and somehow heightens the music. Their music was different and broke rules because the artist was different and broke rules – this genuine type of mirroring can drive more people to listen to the music. In this article, we’ll discuss one composer from the 16th century who created haunting music, made even more haunting by his personal life, which was marred by murder, mayhem, and madness – that composer is Carlo Gesualdo.
The Noble Origins of Carlo Gesualdo
Gesualdo was born into a very powerful family in Italy. His uncle was a Cardinal in the Catholic Church and was a candidate for Pope at one point. His family lived in a castle, in a town called… Gesualdo. That’s right, his family was so affluent that they had a town named after them. His family castle still stands and is a popular tourist destination, not because of the reverence for their nobility, but because of the heinous murders that took place there.
A Crime That Shook Renaissance Italy
According to a narrative of his crimes at the Cambridge Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Gesualdo was married for several years before finding out that his wife was having an affair with another man. He caught them red-handed and killed them both on the spot in a very grizzly manner that involved shooting them and stabbing them repeatedly. It was a heinous murder, and there were witnesses, but because of the laws at the time, the murder was deemed an honor killing, and Gesualdo was found not guilty.
From Blood to Music: Gesualdo’s Chromatic Madrigals
After the murder trial, Gesualdo married again and sired an heir, as noblemen at the time were expected to do. Still, he found his true solace in creating music, specifically, madrigals. Madrigals are songs composed for vocals only, and often feature between two and eight vocalists. Gesualdo seemed to channel his intense feelings about his first marriage into the music he composed. Those intense feelings also resulted in abuse in his second marriage and some affairs.
His second marriage didn’t go well, and she would often leave him at the castle alone. This, coupled with his fall from grace in the public eye after the murder of his first wife, sent Gesualdo into a deep depression. Critics and the dozens of books, plays, and movies written about his life theorize that these feelings channeled into his madrigals.
The madrigals Gesualdo composed were unsettling, which is why many people attribute their inspiration to the unsettling thoughts swirling in his head. Compositionally, looking at these compositions, we can see why they were structurally unsettling and learn from that.
His madrigals are challenging to perform and were quite different from those of his contemporaries. This likely had to do with his wealth, which enabled him to write music for himself rather than for other noblemen who would commission pieces from musicians at the time.
According to Oxford University, Gesualdo composed over 140 works in his lifetime, spanning six books. He generally wrote for five vocalists. The vast majority of madrigals are characterized by chromatic steps in a diatonic scale, which consists of five whole steps and three half steps for a total of eight tones (Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Da). Gesualdo’s madrigals, by contrast, used the chromatic scale, which has extra half steps. The use of those extra half-steps is what often sets Gesualdo’s works apart.
The “eeriness” that most critics associate with his work is generally the result of the five vocal parts often being only a half step apart. This is the theory put forth by Cedarville University and many others.
The Search for Forgiveness and Redemption
As Gesualdo was composing his madrigals, his life was falling to shambles. He truly wanted forgiveness for the murder of his first wife. Had the murder occurred a few decades earlier, he would have simply been able to purchase forgiveness from the Catholic Church through a policy known as “indulgences,” where wealthy members of society could literally buy forgiveness from the church. The practice of indulgences was condemned by the church in 1567, just before Gesualdo was born, but that doesn’t mean the practice was no longer in use – it became more of a veiled quid pro quo for those who could afford it. According to multiple sources, including Boston University, Gesualdo built a church that was completed in 1592 and began construction on another that was not completed before his death.
Both churches still stand today. The second church, the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, features a famous piece of art, called “The Forgiveness of Gesualdo”. His quest for forgiveness didn’t stop at commissioning churches. According to multiple sources, such as Britannica, he also subjected himself to daily whippings and beatings as a form of penitence. He hired a group of 10-12 young men to live in his castle and flagellate him three times per day. His masochism became so severe that witnesses claimed that he could only use the bathroom while being whipped. It was during one of these beating sessions that Gesualdo is believed to have died at the age of 47.
This complex relationship with pain and guilt led many to believe that he was involved in the occult, and there is some evidence in the Encyclopedia Britannica that he consorted with men and women accused of witchcraft.
Legacy: Why Gesualdo Still Fascinates Musicians and Historians
In any case, the relationship between his unorthodox compositions and the gory lore of Carlo Gesualdo has fascinated musicians, historians, and true crime nerds for centuries. To research this more, check out some of his more haunting works, “Moro, lasso, al mio duolo” (“I die, alas, in my grief”), “O Vos Omnes“, and “Beltà poi che t’assenti“.
