Luca Marenzio

Luca Marenzio

Source: Los Angeles Master Chorale

Born on 18 October of 1553/54 near Brescia in northern Italy, Luca Marenzio emphasizes the significance of the Roman school during the latter musical Renaissance. Most of the (secular) music of the Renaissance had been under sway of the Franco-Flemish school, an expansion of the earlier Burgundian school. The sacred Venetian school had been founded by Adrian Willaert upon becoming maestro di cappella at St. Mark's in 1527. The Roman circle of composers fashioned themselves after edicts on taste pronounced by the Council of Trent held from 1545-63. The Council of Trent had been the brain trust of the Counter-reformation in competition with the Reformation in producing some of the most austere and somber music to heard at a time when various methods of polyphony were deemed impious. The matter of polyphonic propriety in sacred music spilled as well into secular composition based in humanistic ideology (classical Greece), the latter couple decades of the 16th century a contest toward the counterpoint of baroque.

Though Marenzio wrote sacred music we focus herein on his madrigals, as the madrigal was his bag, completing some 500 of them published in numerous of 23 books by Marenzio much celebrated throughout Europe. Marenzio is thought to have been composing by 1575, but we pick up his life in 1578 when he went to Rome to work for Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo as a vocalist. Madruzzo died that year, but Marenzio had come to the notice of the Este family, among the more significant patrons of the Renaissance period.

'Dolorosi martir, fieri tormenti'   Madrigal intended a 5 by Luca Marenzio

'Sad Martyrdoms, Fierce Torments'

No.6 of 'Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci' 1580

La Compagnia del Madrigale   Album: 'Primo Libro di Madrigali 1580'   2013

'Veggo, dolce mio bene'   Madrigal intended a 4 by Luca Marenzio

'Farewell, cruel and unkind'

No.3 of 'Madrigali a quattro voci, libro primo' 1585

Qvinta Essençia   Album: 'Marenzio, Madrigals'   La Ma de Guido 2019

'Madonna, sua mercè, pur una sera'   Madrigal intended a 4 by Luca Marenzio

'Madonna, his mercy, only one evening'

No.13 of 'Madrigali a quattro voci, libro primo' 1585

Ensemble Theater Ulm directed by Hendrik Haas

'Vezzosi Augelli'   Madrigal intended a 4 by Luca Marenzio

'Charming Birds'   Text from Torquato Tasso's 'Gerusalemme Liberata' of 1581

No.14 of 'Madrigali a quattro voci, libro primo' 1585

The Amaryllis Consort   Album: 'Italian Madrigals'   1986

'O Rex Gloriae'   Motet intended a 4 by Luca Marenzio

'O King of Glory'

No.10 of 'Motectorum pro festis totius anni' 1585

Claritas   Album: 'Missa supero Iniquos odio habui & motets'   1999

Upon the death of Cardinal Luigi d'Este in 1586 Marensio left Ferrara for Verona where he attended the Accademia Filarmonica, then found employment with Ferdinando I de' Medici in Florence.

'Amatemi Ben Mio'   Madrigal intended a 3 by Luca Marenzio

'Love me my dear'

No.24 of 'Il quarto libro delle villanelle a tre voci' 1587

Embla   Album: 'Utsyn'   2019

Returning to Rome in 1589, Marenzio acquired the patronage of various until making a trip in 1595, the importance of which we one might surmise upon a brief history of classical music up to that point: Excluding the classical Greeks (the root humanist "classical" in "classical music"), classical music commences circa 500 AD in realms under the umbrella of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The next six centuries pass far from emptily, but with relatively little happening compared to later periods until the French troubadour comes on the scene circa 1100 AD (Guillaume (William) IX) followed by 13th century Notre Dame, France where both secular and sacred music in Western Europe began to notably burgeon. Come the Burgundian school expanding into the Franco-Flemish in the 15th century, giving rise to the musical Renaissance. The Franco-Flemish school early arrived to Italy by such as Alexander Agricola. The Franco-Flemish influence early arrived to Germany via such as Heinrich Isaac. Come the Venetian school founded by Franco-Flemish composer, Adrian Willaert, followed by the Roman school of the Counter-reformation. Such as Nicolas Gombert took the Franco-Flemish style to Spain. John Dunstaple well represents the early Renaissance in England, come to full bloom with Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Russia was yet much buried in a snow bank during the Renaissance, but Poland joined the rest of Europe with a Renaissance of its own. Thus the significance of Marenzio's appointment as maestro di cappella at the court of Sigismund III Vasa in Warsaw in 1595, remarking on Poland's entrance into the European theater of classical music. As for Marenzio, he returned to Rome via Venice in 1598 where he published his eighth book of five-voice madrigals before later arriving in Rome in 1599 to publish his ninth, 'Il nono libro de madrigali a cinque voci'.

'Cruda Amarilli'   Madrigal intended a 5 by Luca Marenzio

'Cruel Amaryllis'   Text from Giambattista Guarini's 'Il Pastor fido' of 1589

No.3 of 'Il settimo libro de madrigali a cinque voci' 1595

La Compagnia del Madrigale

'Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro'   Madrigal intended a 5 by Luca Marenzio

'So I wish my speech to be as harsh'   Text from Petrarch & Dante Alighieri

No.1 of 'Il nono libro de madrigali a cinque voci' 1599

La Venexiana   Album: 'Il Nono Libro De Madrigali'

'Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi'   Madrigal intended a 5 by Luca Marenzio

'Alone and pensive through the most desolate fields'   Text from Petrarch 14th century

No.8 of 'Il nono libro de madrigali a cinque voci' 1599

La Venexiana   Album: 'Il Nono Libro De Madrigali'

'Crudele acerba inexorabil morte'   Madrigal intended a 5 by Luca Marenzio

'Cruel bitter inexorable death'   Text from Petrarch 14th century

No.13 of 'Il nono libro de madrigali a cinque voci' 1599

La Venexiana   Album: 'Il Nono Libro De Madrigali'

A few months after Marenzio's return to Rome he died on 22 August 1599. That was the year after Jacopo Peri's 'Dafne' of 1598, generally credited as the first opera, and not long before Giulio Caccini's baroque works in 'Le Nuove Musiche' of 1602.