Emilio de de' Cavalieri News
Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer
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2024-03-24
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2023-10-16 13:50:53
Short Notes I, October 2023
This Week in Classical Music: October 16, 2023. Short notes. It could’ve been a pretty good week, considering the talent we could celebrate, but the horrendous events of October 7th and their aftermath overwhelmed everything else. So, we’ll go over our list very briefly. The Italian composer Luca Marenzio was born on October 18th, 1553 (or 1554) in Coccaglio, near Brescia. Marenzio was one of the most prolific (and famous) composers of madrigals of the second half of the 16th century. Marenzio was lucky in finding great benefactors. For many years he had served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, son of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara. After the cardinal’s death, Marenzio found employment with Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII, and later, with Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We can assume that while in Florence, he met the three […]
2023-10-02 15:27:29
Giulio Caccini, 2023
This Week in Classical Music: October 2, 2023. Giulio Caccini. During the last couple of months, we’ve published several entries on two subjects: one, the musical transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque and early opera, and another, about some unsavory but talented characters in music. The protagonist of today’s entry falls into both categories. Giulio Caccini was born in Rome on October 8th, 1551. One episode that puts him into the “unsavory” category happened in 1576 when Caccini was in Florence employed by the court of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. Francesco had a brother, Pietro, who was married to the beautiful Eleonora (Leonora) di Garzia di Toledo. Pietro was known to be gloomy and violent, the marriage was unhappy, and Leonora had several affairs. Caccini, attempting to curry favors from the Duke’s family, spied on Leonora and then denounced her and her lover, Bernardino Antinori, to Pietro. […]
2023-09-11 13:54:48
From Renaissance to Baroque. 2023
This Week in Classical Music: September 11, 2023. Transitions. For the last four weeks, we were preoccupied with two Florentine composers, Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri. In a way, this is unusual, as neither of them was what we would call “great,” as were, for example, Tomás Luis de Victoria, just two years older than Cavalieri, or Giovanni Gabrieli, born sometime between Cavalieri and Peri. But somehow the Florentines became instrumental in furthering one of the great shifts in classical music, from polyphony to monody of the early Baroque. This is a fascinating topic in itself: How could the relatively simplistic works of Cavalieri and Peri replace the grand and sophisticated music of the High Renaissance? How could such stunning works as Victoria’s Funeral Mass or Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis fall out of favor while the first rather clumsy attempts at opera became all the rage? As far as we […]
2023-09-04 14:58:48
Jacopo Peri, part II, 2023
This Week in Classical Music: September 4, 2023. Jacopo Peri and Florence. Last week we started the story of Jacopo Peri, an important but mostly forgotten composer. Before we get back to it, we’d like to mention a Florentine institution that was instrumental in the development of ideas that Peri followed in his work. This institution is called Camerata de’ Bardi, or Florentine Camerata. Count Giovanni de’ Bardi was a nobleman, writer, composer, and, in his younger years, a soldier. He was also an important patron of the arts and organized a society dedicated to the study of ancient Greek music in relation to the music of the day. That was in the 1570s and ‘80s, so we have to remember that the important music of the time was composed in the form of polyphony by the likes of Palestrina. We love his music, and that of Orlando Lasso or […]
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