Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder

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Alfonso Ferrabosco, called the Elder (baptized January 18, 1543 , † August 12, 1588 in Bologna ) was an Italian composer . He brought the Italian madrigal art to England , where he worked for many years. He also left numerous sacred works. He may have worked as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I in Italy . His son was the composer and viol player Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger .

Life

There is little surviving evidence of Ferrabosco's early years. It is known that he was in Rome and in the service of the cardinal and diplomat Charles de Guise in Lorraine . In 1562 he probably came to England for the first time with his uncle. Here he was employed by Queen Elizabeth I. He traveled to Italy repeatedly. This was not without controversy, neither the Pope nor the Roman Inquisition approved his stay in England, which at the end of the 16th century was in fact at war with the Roman Catholic countries after the Church of England renounced Rome under Henry VIII would have. In England, Ferrabosco lost its Italian heritage; while in Italy he was charged with a number of crimes committed in England, robbery and murder of another foreigner. When he had restored his reputation, he left England for good in 1578 and never returned.

It is often claimed that Ferrabosco worked as an agent for Elizabeth I when intelligence was urgently needed. However, this claim can only be derived from incidental matters; Ferrabosco was paid unusually well for a court musician. The Queen's attempts to bring him back to England after 1580 were unsuccessful.

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Ferrabosco brought the Italian madrigal to England. However, he had only given the initial impetus for the enormous popularity of this genre; it only began with Nicholas Yonges' collection Musica transalpina (1588) and led to the madrigal rapidly becoming the predominant type of vocal composition. Ferrabosco's style may appear moderate and conservative compared to his contemporaries Luca Marenzio or Luzzasco Luzzaschi , but it met English musical tastes. Most of his madrigals were five or six voices, had a transparent sound and largely ignored the more recent developments in the Italian style, such as expressive chromatics and text interpretation . However, they were composed technically skillfully, which impressed the English contemporaries most. In 1598, ten years after Ferrabosco's death, Thomas Morley published some of his works and certified him deep skill ( English "high mastery").

In addition to the madrigals, Ferrabosco wrote sacred a cappella music such as motets , lamentos and several hymns . On instrumental works he left behind fantasies , dance movements such as pavans , passamezzi and gaillarden as well as in-nomine scoring for different instrumental scoring with lutes or viols .

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