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Striggio
Alessandro Striggio (c. 1536/1537 – 29 February 1592) was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of madrigal comedy. His son, also named Alessandro Striggio, wrote the libretto for Monteverdi's ''Orfeo''. Life Striggio senior was born in Mantua, evidently to an aristocratic family. Records of his early life are sparse, but he must have gone to Florence as a young man. He began working for Cosimo de' Medici on 1 March 1559 as a musician, eventually to replace Francesco Corteccia as the principal musician to the Medici court. In 1560 he visited Venice, and produced two books of madrigals in response to the musical styles he encountered there. In 1567 the Medici sent him on a diplomatic mission to England. Throughout the 1560s Striggio composed numerous intermedi for the Medici, for weddings, visits, and other state occasions. In the 1570s he con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'Orfeo
''L'Orfeo'' ( SV 318) (), sometimes called ''La favola d'Orfeo'' , is a late Renaissance/early Baroque ''favola in musica'', or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's ''Dafne'' is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's '' Euridice'', ''L'Orfeo'' is the earliest that is still regularly performed. By the early 17th century the traditional intermedio—a musical sequence between the acts of a straight play—was evolving into the form of a complete musical drama or "opera". Monteverdi's ''L'Orfeo'' moved this process out of its experimental era and provided the first fully developed example of the new genre. After i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Missa Sopra Ecco Sì Beato Giorno
The ''Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno'' is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, for 40 and 60 voices, by Florentine Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio. It probably dates from 1565–6, during the reign of his employer, Cosimo I de' Medici. Lost for more than 400 years, it was recently rediscovered in Paris. Most of the mass is for five separate choirs of 8 voices each, with the closing Agnus Dei being for five separate choirs of 12 voices each; all of the voice parts are fully independent. With its huge polychoral forces, climaxing on sixty fully independent parts, it is the largest known polyphonic composition from the entire era. Background The court of the Medici was long known for its patronage of the arts, including music, and the Medici rulers, from Lorenzo the Magnificent to Cosimo I de' Medici, were particularly noted for their love of music. Keenly aware that their status depended on not only employing the most talented artists and musicians, but hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alessandro Striggio (ii)
Alessandro Striggio the Younger (ca. 1573 – 8 June 1630) was an Italian librettist, the son of the composer Alessandro Striggio. The younger Striggio is most famous for his association with the composer Claudio Monteverdi. He wrote the libretto for Monteverdi's first opera ''Orfeo'' (1607), a landmark in the history of the genre, as well as the ''ballo'' (sung ballet) ''Tirsi e Clori''. Striggio worked at the court of Mantua and died of the plague while on a diplomatic mission to Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 .... Sources *Timothy Dickey"Alessandro Striggio (ii)" Allmusic. 1570s births 1630 deaths Italian opera librettists 17th-century Italian writers 17th-century Italian male writers 17th-century deaths from plague (disease) Infectious disease ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history. Born in Cremona, where he undertook his first musical studies and compositions, Monteverdi developed his career first at the court of Mantua () and then until his death in the Republic of Venice where he was ''maestro di cappella'' at the basilica of San Marco. His surviving letters give insight into the life of a professional musician in Italy of the period, including problems of income, patronage and politics. Much of Monteverdi's output, including many stage works, has been lost. His surviving music includes nine books of madrigals, large-scale religious works, such as his ''Vespro della Beata Vergine'' (''Vespers for the Blessed Virgin'') ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spem In Alium
''Spem in alium'' (Latin for "Hope in any other") is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis's "crowning achievement", along with his ''Lamentations''.Boychoir (film) History The work's early history is obscure, though there are some clues as to where it may have been first performed. It is listed in a catalogue of the library at Nonsuch Palace, a royal palace sold in the 1550s to the Earl of Arundel before returning to the crown in the 1590s. The listing, from 1596, describes it as "a song of fortie partes, made by Mr. Tallys". The earliest surviving manuscripts are those prepared in 1610 for the investiture as Prince of Wales of Henry Frederick, the son of James I. A 1611 commonplace book by the law student Thomas Wateridge contains the following anecdote: In Queen Elizabeths time þer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Corteccia
Francesco Corteccia, ''Hinnarium'', Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Francesco Corteccia (July 27, 1502 – June 7, 1571) was an Italian composer, organist, and teacher of the Renaissance. Not only was he one of the best known of the early composers of madrigals, and an important native Italian composer during a period of domination by composers from the Low Countries, but he was the most prominent musician in Florence for several decades during the reign of Cosimo I de' Medici.D'Accone, Grove online Life He was born in Florence. By 1515 he was a choirboy and was enrolled in the cathedral school; around this time he probably studied organ with Bartolomeo degli Organi, and composition with Bernardo Pisano. On October 22, 1527, he became chaplain at the baptistry, and in 1531 entered indirectly into the employ of the Medici as both chaplain and organist at the church of San Lorenzo, the Medici family church. From 1535 to 1539 he was organist at San Lorenzo, and from 1540 until h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madrigal Comedy
Madrigal comedy is a term for a kind of entertainment music of the late 16th century in Italy, in which groups of related, generally ''a cappella'' madrigals were sung consecutively, generally telling a story, and sometimes having a loose dramatic plot. It is an important element in the origins of opera. The term is of 20th-century origin, popularised by Alfred Einstein. The first collection of madrigals, sung as a set and telling a coherent (and highly comic) story, was ''Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato'' (the gossip of wives in the laundry), by Alessandro Striggio, which was written in 1567. Later madrigal comedies are sometimes divided into acts, including a prologue, and while not "acted" in the sense of an opera, they may have been performed on stage with elaborate painted backdrops (for example, the woodcut showing the prologue of Orazio Vecchi's ''L'Amfiparnaso'' (1597): a singer is evidently in costume in a backdrop showing a city street). Vecchi's direction in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florentine Camerata
The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de' Bardi, were a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. They met at the house of Giovanni de' Bardi, and their gatherings had the reputation of having all the most famous men of Florence as frequent guests. After first meeting in 1573, the activity of the Camerata reached its height between 1577 and 1582. While propounding a revival of the Greek dramatic style, the Camerata's musical experiments led to the development of the '' stile recitativo''. In this way it facilitated the composition of dramatic music and the development of opera. Membership The term ''camerata'' is entirely a new construct coined by the members of Bardi's circle, although apparently based on the Italian word for "chamber", ''camera'', a term used for a room where important meetings we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance music, Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque music, Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The Polyphony, polyphonic madrigal is Accompaniment, unaccompanied, and the number of voices varies from two to eight, but usually features three to six voices, whilst the Metre (music), metre of the madrigal varies between two or three tercets, followed by one or two couplets. Unlike the verse-repeating strophic forms sung to the same music, most madrigals are through-composed, featuring different music for each stanza of lyrics, whereby the composer expresses the emotions contained in each line and in single words of the poem being sung. As written by Italianized Franco–Flemish composers in the 1520s in music, 1520s, the madrigal partly originated from the three-to-four voice frottola (1470–1530); partly from composers' renewed interest in poetry written in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polychoral
An antiphon (Greek ἀντίφωνον, ἀντί "opposite" and φωνή "voice") is a short chant in Christian ritual, sung as a refrain. The texts of antiphons are the Psalms. Their form was favored by St Ambrose and they feature prominently in Ambrosian chant, but they are used widely in Gregorian chant as well. They may be used during Mass, for the Introit, the Offertory or the Communion. They may also be used in the Liturgy of the Hours, typically for Lauds or Vespers. They should not be confused with Marian antiphons or processional antiphons. When a chant consists of alternating verses (usually sung by a cantor) and responds (usually sung by the congregation), a refrain is needed. The looser term antiphony is generally used for any call and response style of singing, such as the kirtan or the sea shanty and other work songs, and songs and worship in African and African-American culture. Antiphonal music is that performed by two choirs in interaction, often singing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system). The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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