GESUALDO, DON CARLOS, PRINCE OF VENOSA (c. 1560-1613), Italian composer, was born in Naples about the year 1560. He was a nephew of Alfonso Gesualdo, archbishop of Naples, and probably a pupil of Pomponio Nenna of Bari. His fame as a lutenist in his own day was great and spread over all Italy; his madrigals have a peculiar interest to-day in view of their extreme modernness. A dramatic incident in his life was the murder, in 1590, of his wife with her lover by his orders. He afterwards went to the court of Alfonso d'Este at Ferrara, and in 1594 married Donna Eleonore d'Este. In the same year he published his first two books of five-part madrigals. These were followed at intervals by the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth books, and in 1613 there appeared the complete edition: Partitura delli sei libri de Madrigali a Cinque Voci. The first four books were masterly in style, but the fifth and sixth showed an extraordi nary advance in the direction of modern harmony and close affinity between music and words. Gesualdo seems to have been a law unto himself, and to have written down such progressions and modulations as pleased him. His instinct for harmonic effect was marvellous; not less wonderful was his grasp of the emotional possibilities in his texts. The union of words and music was complete. Short, exclamatory phrases and compressed harmony in the dramatic portions contrasted vividly with the smooth contrapuntal writing of quieter moments. One of his most char acteristic madrigals, Moro lasso al mio duolo, is printed in Dr. Burney's General History of Music. A volume of Sacrae Can tiones for five, six, and seven voices appeared in 1603.
See Hawkins, Hist. of Music (1776) ; Kroyer, Anfange der Chromatik im italienischen Madrigal des XVI. Jahrhunderts (1902) ; Gray and Hesseltine, Carlo Gesualdo (1926) ; and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edit. "Gesualdo," by Scott Goddard (on which the present article is based) .
Modern reprints of the madrigals will be found in Raccolta nazionale (Riccordi, Milan), vols. lix.—lxii.; Barclay Squire, Ausgewahlte Madri gale (Breitkopf, Leipzig) ; L. Torchi, L'Arte musicale in Italia, vol. iv.; Pr. de la Moskova, Recueil des morceaux de musique ancienne.