Carlo Gesualdo: A Tortured Soul

Michael Martin

11/18/18
 Carlo Gesualdo was born in the town of Venosa, Italy on March 8, 1566. Born to

a noble family, Gesualdo lived his life as the prince of Venosa.1 While he was given a

very opulent life at a young age, he was always noted as a very eccentric and almost

manic person throughout his life, which reflected in his music. Gesualdo broke almost

every rule in the book, devoted to bringing his own raw emotion to his art, regardless of

what was considered to be normal of proper.

In his later teenage years, Gesualdo was married to Maria d’Avalos. After their

marriage, he discovered Maria in bed with Fabrizio Carafa, a man known to be her

lover.2 In response to this, Gesualdo murdered both Maria and Fabrizio, mutilating their

bodies, setting the house aflame, and dragging both bodies out onto the front lawn to be

displayed for all to survey. This is not something that is accomplished by a sane person.

After this, Carlo’s mental state declined further into its insanity.

In the years that followed, starting around 1595, he attempted to form a group of

composers to write and operate from within the walls of his castle, away from the prying

eyes of others who might frown upon their dissociation with the musical status quo.

While this attempt mainly failed, Gesualdo kept mostly to himself for the rest of his life.

Prior to 1595, he had written almost exclusively secular music, considering it to be the

best way to express his tortured soul. Afterward, he had written three books of secular

madrigals, from which our piece “O dolce mio tesoro” is taken.3 However, once he

moved back into Gesualdo Castle, he turned towards sacred music, which was

1
Bianconi, ​Gesualdo, p​ gh 1
2
​ gh 2
Bianconi, ​Gesualdo p
3
Bianconi, ​Gesualdo p​ gh 6
seemingly an attempt to find purpose in his life.4 It is not known what his true religious

affiliation was, but it seems that he had some sort of spiritual rebirth towards the end of

his life.

Interestingly, Gesualdo does not seem to have had many musical inspirations at

all, as his work seems to be constantly pushing away from everything that preceded it.

The piece covered in this paper, “O dolce mio tesoro,” is about a tortured, fiery love that

is as much hateful as it is affectionate. I can easily Imagine that this was inspired by his

wife’s adultery, which only fueled the fiery feeling of the piece.

It is unknown when “O dolce mio tesoro” was written, but it was published in ​Il

Sesto Libro di Madrigali ​in 1613, the year of Gesualdo’s death.5 As is common for

Gesualdo, the piece does not fit the genre of the era almost at all. In fact, it sounds

almost like something that could have been written today. It is full of unprepared

dissonances and unexpected modulations, something that never would have been, and

largely was not, accepted in its time. Gesualdo was widely regarded as a musical

degenerate, whose style was offensive to the ear and to God. There are stories written

of conductors, after hearing the dissonances in his music, tossing out the partbooks

altogether.6

The most striking part of this piece is the connection to the text. For example the

section “non mirar s’io mi moro,” or “do not look at me as I die” conveys an intense

despair and raw pain that would not have been possible without the modulated picardy

4
Bianconi, ​Gesualdo​ pgh 7
5
Bianconi, ​Gesualdo p​ gh 7
6
​ g. 4
Deutsch, ​Antico or Moderno p
cadence that ends the phrase, completely against the style of its time.7 The text painting

is not all different from the normal, however. The “il foco” section lends itself to the likes

of Byrd in its canon style, also using text painting to dictate the cackling of a blazing fire8

. The middle section completely throws away polyphony, embracing a chordal

homophony for a while, before returning to polyphony with “che vita allor mi fia”, before

ending with a resolution that could only have been written by Gesualdo’s species of

tortured genius.9

It is unknown who the first performers of this piece were, but it can be imagined

that it went untouched for many years, as its style was considered unacceptable for a

number of centuries. It seems that the text was written by gesualdo himself, as the

original poet is nowhere to be found. This painful, blissful text is the like that can only

have been written by Gesualdo himself, almost indiscernible in meaning. The original

text and corresponding translation is as follows:

O dolce mio tesoro,

non mirar s'io mi mòro,

ché il tuo vitale sguardo

non fa che mi consumi il foco ond'ardo.

Ah no, mìrami pur, anima mia,

che vita allor mi fia la morte mia.

7
Gesualdo, “O dolce” pg 1
8
Gesualdo, “O dolce” pg 2
9
Gesualdo, “O dolce” pg 3-4
Oh, sweet treasure of mine,

do no look at me while I die,

for your life-giving gaze

will make the fire that burns me, consume me.

Ah, no, look at me, my soul—

may my death be life to me.

It seems to say that a simple glance from the object of Gesualdo’s desire would

drive him into a sweet, irreparable insanity, a blissful hell. He wants so much the one

thing he knows will destroy him. Carlo Gesualdo was a sick, tortured man, with no

regard for the musical world that surrounded him, and totally obsessed with his work.

Perhaps all of these things created the perfect storm that gave birth to this genius who

was 400 years ahead of his time.

 Bibliography 

Bianconi, Lorenzo, and Glenn Watkins. "Gesualdo, Carlo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza."

Oxford Music Online,​ 2001. Accessed November 18, 2018.

doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.10994.

Deutsch, Catherine. "AnticoorModerno? Reception of Gesualdo’s Madrigals in the Early

Seventeenth Century." ​The Journal of Musicology​ 30, no. 1 (2013): 28-48.

doi:10.1525/jm.2013.30.1.28.

Gesualdo, Carlo. "O Dolce Mio Tesoro." Digital image. IMSLP. Accessed November 18, 2018.

http://ks4.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/d/df/IMSLP153076-WIMA.7c69-ges-6-08.pdf.