Benedetto Pallavicino

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Benedetto Pallavicino (* 1551 in Cremona ; † November 26, 1601 in Mantua ) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance .

Live and act

In his youth, Benedetto Pallavicino was, according to his contemporary Giuseppe Bresciani (1599–1670), organist at various churches in the province of Cremona ; he could have studied there with Marc'Antonio Ingegneri . His first publication, a book with four-part madrigals , he dedicated to the Accademia Filarmonica di Verona in 1579 . In 1581 at the latest he entered the service of Vespasiano Gonzaga in Sabbioneta near Mantua ; two years later he went to Mantua to the ducal court of Guglielmo Gonzaga , where he worked with Giaches de Wert , Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi , Salamone Rossi and Claudio Monteverdi . He remained in this position until the end of his life. The earliest evidence of his time in Mantua is a letter dated October 29, 1583, in which he is described as a singer and composer. In 1584 he was sent to Venice to improve his singing skills and to study vocal practice there; then again in 1586 to prepare and oversee the printing of Guglielmo Gonzaga's Magnificat with Antonio Gardano . His dedication of his own six-part madrigals in 1587 to Guglielmo Gonzaga testifies to his admiration for his compositions.

Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga died in August 1587 and his son Vincenzo succeeded him. Pallavicino initially had difficulties with Vincenzo Gonzaga. After he had dedicated his fourth book with five-part madrigals to the new duke with enthusiastic words in 1588, he did not seem to be particularly valued; a payroll of 1588/89 shows that he received less money than most of the other musicians at court. He therefore applied for a position at the Scuola degli Accoliti in Verona and as director of the cathedral choir there . He was unsuccessful, however, as the Veronese musician Giammateo Asola got the post, and he stayed in Mantua. After Giaches de Wert's death in 1596, he was his successor as Kapellmeister at the Gonzaga court. There is little information about the composer's last decade. The dedication in his sixth book of madrigals, which was addressed to Duke Alessandro Bevilacqua in 1600, suggests that he received frequent support from the Accademia Filarmonica in Verona. In November 1601 the composer died of fever at the age of around 50.

After his death (his successor was Claudio Monteverdi), Benedetto's son Bernardino Pallavicino , a Camaldolese monk at San Marco in Mantua, published his father's seventh and eighth five-part madrigal books in 1604 and 1612, along with two other books of sacred music. The relative similarity of the two first names led to confusion and initially to the false assumption that Benedetto Pallavicino was a member of the Camaldolese order who died after 1612.

meaning

Benedetto Pallavicino was one of the most popular madrigal composers of his time with the author of ten madrigal books (four, five and six parts). After studying the vocal music of Venice in 1584, he developed his own expressive compositional style, which was later influenced by his artistic engagement with Giaches de Wert and his contacts with the neighboring court of Ferrara . The concerto delle dame in particular inspired the brilliant coloratura that appear in his fourth book of madrigals from 1588. During the reign of Guglielmo Gonzaga, the social climate in Mantua was characterized by religious austerity. After the Duke's death, this gave way to a more open-minded atmosphere under his son and inspired Pallavicino to conduct his own musical experiments; in the following period unusual dissonances often appear in his madrigals , and there is also an increasing use of chromatics . This led to increased expressiveness and more intensive text interpretation in his madrigals, which is particularly evident in his sixth book of madrigals from 1600.

Of the spiritual works of Pallavicino, only a few were printed after his death. They were early works in the style of the prima pratica , but were nevertheless gladly accepted by his contemporaries. In the preface to his Salmo a quattro chori from 1612, the composer Lodovico Viadana explains that he owes his progressive polychoral technique in the 16-part opening parts of his Jubilate and Laudate to the Sacrae Dei laudes by Pallavicino, which came out in 1605.

Works

(All of Pallavicino's works are vocal music. Complete edition: Opera omnia , edited by P. Flanders and K. Bosi Monteath, Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1982–1996 [= Corpus mensurabilis musicae 89])

  • Spiritual works
    • Liber primus missarum for four to six voices, Venice 1603
    • Sacrae Dei laudes for eight, twelve and sixteen votes, Venice 1605
  • Secular works
    • Il primo libro de madrigali for four voices, Venice 1579
    • Il primo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1581, second and third editions 1606
    • Il secondo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1584, further editions in 1606 and 1607
    • Il terzo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1585, further editions in 1606 and 1607
    • Il primo libro de madrigali for six parts, Venice 1587, further editions in 1603 and Antwerp in 1606
    • Il quarto libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1588, further editions 1596, 1600 and 1607
    • Il quinto libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1593, further editions 1597, 1600 and 1609
    • Il sesto libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1600, further editions 1600, 1611 and Antwerp 1612
    • Il settimo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1604, further editions in 1606, 1611 and 1613
    • Madrigali a cinque voci, di nuovo stampati et corretti [= Libro 4 and 5], Antwerp 1604
    • L'ottavo libro de madrigali for five to eight voices, Venice 1612
    • Madrigals in many collective prints (a total of 30 years of publication 1583 to 1624)

Literature (selection)

  • D. Arnold: Seconda Pratica. A Background to Monteverdi's Madrigals , in: Music and Letters No. 38, 1957
  • D. Arnold: Gli allievi di Giovanni Gabrieli , in: Nuova rivista musicale italiana, Nov. – Dec. 1971, pp. 953-956
  • P. Flanders: The Madrigals of Benedetto Pallavicino , 2 volumes, dissertation at New York University 1971
  • I. Fenlon: Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua , Cambridge 1980, No. 95, pp. 143-145
  • A. Delfino: L'Opera Sacra di Benedetto Pallavicino , dissertation at the Universita di Pavia 1983/84
  • Antonio Delfino:  PALLAVICINO, Benedetto. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 80:  Ottone I-Pansa. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2014.
  • K. Fischer: Nuove tecniche della policoralità lombarda nel primo Seicento , in: La musica sacra in Lombardia nella prima metà del Seicento, Como 1985, pages 46-56
  • K. Bosi: The Ferrara Connection: Diminuition in the Early Madrigals of Benedetto Pallavicino , in: R. Charteris, Altro polo: Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, Sydney 1990, pp. 131–158

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Francesco R. Rossi: Pallavicino, Benedetto , in: Ludwig Finscher (Ed.), The Music in Past and Present , second edition, personal section, Volume 13 (Pal – Rib), Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3- 7618-1133-0 , columns 53-54
  2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil : The Great Lexicon of Music , Volume 6, Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1981, ISBN 3-451-18056-1
  3. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , edited by Stanley Sadie, 2nd Edition, Volume 19, McMillan Publishers, London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3
personal data
SURNAME Pallavicino, Benedetto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian composer of the late Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH 1551
PLACE OF BIRTH Cremona
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1601
Place of death Mantua