Domenico Mazzocchi (baptised 1592 in

Civita Castellana Civita Castellana is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Viterbo, north of Rome. Mount Soracte lies about to the south-east. History Civita Castellana was settled during the Iron Age by the Italic people of the Falisci, who called it "Fa ...

21 January 1665 in Veja) was an Italian

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

composer of only vocal music, of the generation after

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 ...

. He was a learned Roman lawyer, studied music with

Giovanni Maria Nanino Giovanni Maria Nanino (also Nanini; 1543 or 1544 – 11 March 1607) was an Italian composer and teacher of the late Renaissance. He was a member of the Roman School of composers, and was the most influential music teacher in Rome in the late 16t ...

(or Nanini), also in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, and entered the service of

cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

Ippolito Aldobrandini in 1621. He is associated with providing music for the popes, particularly Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, later

Pope Urban VIII Pope Urban VIII ( la, Urbanus VIII; it, Urbano VIII; baptised 5 April 1568 – 29 July 1644), born Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 6 August 1623 to his death in July 1644. As po ...

, until Mazzocchi's death in Rome on 21 January 1665. His younger brother,

Virgilio Mazzocchi Virgilio Mazzocchi (22 July 1597 bapt. – 3 October 1646) was an Italian baroque composer. Biography He was born in Veja, near Civita Castellana, where he was baptized, as the younger brother of the more famous composer and learned lawyer ...

, was a less notable Roman composer and had a similar career as a Vatican music provider.

Works

Operas

*''

La catena d'Adone ''La catena d'Adone'' (''The Chain of Adonis'') is the only surviving opera by the Italian composer Domenico Mazzocchi. It was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini and first performed at the Palazzo Conti, Rome on February 12, 1626. The ...

'' (1626) *''L'innocenza difesa''

Other

* ''Madrigali a 5 voci in partitura'' (1638),

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number o ...

s which have

Basso continuo Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...

, similar to the late Monteverdi; these contain the first notations, as explained in the preface, of the persisting conventional musical symbols < 'crescendo', > 'decrescendo', p(iano), f(orte) and tr(illo) * Oratorio **David **Maddalena * church music, notably

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...

Notes

References

* Entry under Domenico Mazzocchi in the ''

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

''. * Entry under Mazzocchi, Domenico & Virgilio, in the ''Concise Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Composers''. * Cardinali A., 1926, ''Cenni biografici di Domenico e Virgilio Mazzocchi''.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mazzocchi, Domenico 1592 births 1665 deaths Italian Baroque composers Italian male classical composers 17th-century Italian composers 17th-century male musicians