Giaches de Wert
Giaches de Wert (* 1535 probably in Ghent ; † May 6, 1596 in Mantua ) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and conductor of the late Renaissance .
Live and act
Giaches de Wert's father lived in Ghent, from where the son was brought to Italy at a young age ("povero fiammingo") by Francesco d'Este in 1543, namely to Avellino near Naples to serve as a choirboy with Maria di Carona, the Marchesa della Padulla. He apparently did not stay there long, because in the same year a Jaches , if he is involved, is mentioned as a "family member" of the Count of Novellara and Bagnolo, Giulio Cesare Gonzaga; the latter was active at the papal court in Rome . When he died in 1550, his nephew, Count Alfonso I Gonzaga, also held high offices at the curia, who took over the further training of Giaches and speaks in a letter of August 20, 1550 of great progress of his protégé. From 1551, Wert spent most of his time in Novellara, the seat of this branch of the Gonzaga family , and from 1552 on several times in Mantua. In the mid-1550s he apparently worked temporarily in Ferrara , where he may have had lessons from Cipriano de Rore . This persuaded him in January 1556 to return to Novellara to Duke Alfonso. The following year Giaches de Wert married the wealthy noblewoman Lucrezia Gonzaga from a branch of the family; of his six children, the son Ottavio (* 1560) later worked in the father's court chapel in Mantua. The godfather of this son was the Duke of Parma , Ottavio Farnese ; Giaches dedicated his second five-part madrigal book to him in 1561 . Cipriano de Rore also worked in Parma from the beginning of 1561. From 1563 to 1565 Wert served as Kapellmeister for the imperial governors in Milan .
From September 1565 at the latest, the composer worked as Kapellmeister at the newly built Santa Barbara basilica in Mantua, the court church of the Gonzaga dukes, after sending a new mass composed by him there for the first Barbara festival on December 4, 1564 . He remained in this position until his death. He was also prefectus musicorum responsible for secular music at the court of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga in Mantua. He received an extraordinarily high annual salary, to which further gratuities and a donation of lands were added in 1580. In addition, he received the citizenship of the city of Mantua for his great services. In the following years, Giaches received an offer from various European courts to take over the direction of the court orchestra, for example the court orchestra in Prague from Emperor Maximilian II in the spring of 1566 , after the composer gave him a lecture on music theory and virtuoso singing improvisations at the Reichstag in Augsburg had impressed greatly. Ottavio Farnese also tried to bring Giaches de Wert to Parma as the successor to Cipriano de Rore, who died in 1565. In his early years in Mantua, the composer was exposed to hostilities and intrigues that emanated from his rival Agostino Bonvicino († 1576) and in which Giaches' wife Lucrezia was also involved.
Long-standing correspondence shows that Giaches de Wert from Mantua continued to maintain very good relations with his former employer in Novellara; he sent him new compositions several times, and after Alfonso Gonzaga's marriage to Vittoria di Capua in January 1568 he took care of the musical arrangement of the interludes of a comedy in the newly built theater in Novellara. From the 1570s onwards, the court of the music-loving Duke Alfonso d'Este in Ferrara became more and more interesting for Giaches, because the establishment of a private musical ensemble ( musica secreta ) set new standards for virtuoso ensemble singing and mutually inspiring interaction between song, composition and the latest poetry emerged ( Giovanni Battista Guarini and Torquato Tasso ). Giaches de Wert participated here with contributions to the anthologies for the singer Laura Peverara and with his Ottavio libro from 1586, which was dedicated to Alfonso d'Este. In addition, there were personal relationships with the singer and poet Tarquinia Molza (1542–1617), but these were ultimately not tolerated by the court in Ferrara and led to the singer's banishment.
When Vincenzo Gonzaga succeeded Mantua in 1587, a cultural boom began here because the ruler took the brilliant court culture in Ferrara as an example. He enlarged the court orchestra, employed virtuoso singers, and Wert wrote a compendium of suitable madrigals and canzonets with his three publications from 1588 to 1591 . Theater and dance were particularly encouraged, and the composer was obliged to provide music for comedies, pastorals and other theater pieces, including in 1591 the Favola boscareccia “Le nozze di Semiramis con Mennon” by Muzio Manfredini . An even more ambitious project to stage the piece “Il pastor fido” by Guarini with music of value and Francesco Rovigo in 1592 ultimately failed due to choreographic problems in the implementation of the third act. It was not performed until 1598 with music by Giovanni Gastoldi .
Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga had lessons from Giaches de Wert; It is not known whether the composer had other students. However, one can safely assume that the young Luca Marenzio as well as Giovanni Gastoldi, Benedetto Pallavicino (1550 / 51–1601) and Claudio Monteverdi were strongly influenced by him; the latter acted under worth as a violinist and singer. Wert has not only acted as a skilled musician; from his traditional correspondence it is evident that he was also a skilled businessman. From 1582 he suffered from the consequences of a malaria disease, from which he finally died in May 1596; he was buried in the Santa Barbara crypt . His successor at Santa Barbara was Gastoldi; Pallavicino was initially appointed as court conductor in Mantua, then Monteverdi from 1601/02.
meaning
Giaches de Wert was the last great Dutch composer to have worked in Italy. His high rank is based mainly on his extensive madrigals; but there are also significant spiritual works by him. Only one of his nine masses was printed because there was no general use for them, which were written specifically for the court church of Santa Barbara with its different liturgy. They are composed strictly polyphonically and in an alternative form; they are very similar to the masses that Palestrina wrote for Santa Barbara on behalf of Duke Guglielmo. The only difference is Wert's five-part parody mass on his own motet “Transeunte Domino”. The 78 mostly polyphonic hymns by Giaches de Wert cover the entire church year . Of the composer's 55 motets, some of the earlier works, with their expressive text presentation, show the clear influence of his teacher Cipriano de Rore; Otherwise they show a thoroughly imitated polyphony, only when changing to the tempus perfectum does a homophonic movement appear. The motet texts almost all come from the New Testament. In his later motets, the composer shows his entire art of pictorial-expressive text expression and can be considered an early advocate of the seconda pratica , a musical style that was only fully implemented decades later by Claudio Monteverdi.
With its artistic height, the madrigal works of Giaches de Wert reached the rank of Orlando di Lasso or Philippe de Monte ( Alfred Einstein 1949). The music researcher Ludwig Finscher even considers it possible to consider him perhaps the greatest madrigal composer, because, unlike Orlando di Lasso, Wert has always dynamically developed his madrigal style over four decades and has set new standards for virtuoso plastic and rhetorical-dramatic text setting Has. In this genre, he also became a model for Luca Marenzio and Claudio Monteverdi. He uses literarily demanding texts by Francesco Petrarca , Luigi Tansillo , Torquato Tasso and Giovanni Battista Guarini. In particular, with his 14 settings from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata , the composer effectively implemented the typical musicality and dramatic power of these poems. Wert's madrigal style is basically characterized by his sensitivity to the rhythm of speech, because the verses are not only precisely declaimed , but are even rhythmized in contrapuntal sentences rich in contrast and tension. "He shows himself to be a born playwright, works with several motifs at the same time in the set and always shows the endeavor to overcome the principle of the small-scale sequence of details typical of motets by the formation of larger, homogeneous complexes of forms" (Hartmut Schick in the source MGG).
Works (summary)
Complete edition: Giaches de Wert: Collected Works , edited by Carol MacClintock and Melvin Bernstein, 17 volumes, without location, 1961–1977 (= Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae No. 24)
- measure up
- Missa dominicalis for five voices, 1592
- Missa in festis apostolorum with five votes
- Missa in the martis to five votes
- Missa in festis Beatae Mariae Virginis to six voices
- Missa in festis duplicibus maioribus for five parts
- Missa in ferstis duplicibus minoribus for five parts
- Missa “Transeunte Domino” with five voices
- Missa defunctorum for four voices, authorship doubted, also attributed to Guglielmo Gonzaga
- Motets
- 55 compositions
- Hymns
- 78 compositions
- Psalms
- 20 compositions
- passion
- “Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum Marcum” with two to five voices, dated 1587
- Madrigals
- Il primo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1558
- Il primo libro de 'madrigali for four voices, Venice 1561
- Il secondo libro de 'madrigali for five voices, Venice 1561
- Il terzo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1563 (the foreword identifies him as maestro of the Capella de Consalvo Fernandes di Cordova, Duke of Sessa and Governor of Milan)
- Il primo libro de madrigali […], novamente con nova giunta ristampati for five voices, Venice 1564
- Il secondo libro de madrigali […], novamente con nova giunta ristampati for five voices, Venice 1564, dedicated to Octaviano Farnese
- Il quarto libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1567
- Il quinto libro de madrigali for five to seven voices, Venice 1571
- Il sesto libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1577
- Il settimo libro de madrigali for five votes, Venice 1581
- L'ottavo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1586
- Il nono libro de madrigali for five to six voices, Venice 1588
- Il primo libro delle canzonette villanelle for five voices, Venice 1589
- Il decimo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1591
- L'undecimo libro de madrigali for five voices, Venice 1595
- Il duodecimo libro de madrigali […], con alcuni altri de diversi eccellentissimi autori for four to seven voices, posthumously Venice 1608, edited by Ottavio de Wert
(199 madrigals in total)
- Canzonettes, Villanelles and Chansons
- 29 compositions
- Instrumental music
- 4 fantasies for four voices (“di Giaches”), also as ricercare in the Bourdeney Codex, anonymous, authorship doubtful
Literature (selection)
- S. Davari: La musica a Mantova , Mantua 1884, Reprint Mantua 1975
- A. Lazzari: Le ultime tre duchesse di Ferrara e la corte Estense a 'tempi di Torquato Tasso , Florence 1913, 2nd edition 1952
- I. Bogaert: Giaches de Wert, zijn betrekkingen met bekende tijdgenoten. In: Vlaamsch jaarboeck voor muziekgeschiedenis No. 2–3, 1940, pages 61–74
- Alfred Einstein: The Italian Madrigal , 3 volumes, Princeton / New Jersey 1949, reprint ibid 1971
- Carol MacClintock: The Five-part Madrigals of Giaches de Wert , dissertation at Bloomington University Indiana 1955
- Melvin Bernstein: The Sacred Vocal Music of Giaches de Wert , dissertation Chapel Hill / North Carolina 1964
- Melvin Bernstein: The Hymns of Giaches de Wert. In: Gedenkschrift G. Haydon, edited by JW Pruett, Chapel Hill / North Carolina 1969, pp. 190–210
- A. Newcomb: The Three Anthologies for Laura Peverara, 1580-1583. In: Rivista italiana di musicologia No. 10, 1975, pages 329-345
- A. Newcomb: Form and Fantasy in Wert's Instrumental Polyphony. In: Studi musicali No. 7, 1978, pages 85-102
- G. Tomlinson: Monteverdi and the End of Renaissance , Berkeley / California 1987
- D. Sabaino: "Solo e pensoso i piu deserti campi ...": Musica e poesia nelle intonazioni di un sonetto petrarcheso. In: Luca Marenzio musicista europeo, edited by MT Barezzani and M. Sala, Brescia 1990, pages 49-90
- S. Ciroldi: Musica e mecenati alla corte dei Gonzaga di Novellara e Bagnolo nel '500. In: Documenta. Luoghi di studio e studio di luoghi: Bagnolo tra Reggio e Novellara, Bagnolo i. P. 1995, pp. 53-94
- J. Chater: "Un pasticcio di madrigaletti"? The Early Musical Fortune of "Il pastor fido". In: Guarini, la musica i musicisti, edited by A. Pompilio, Lucca 1997, pp. 139–155
- Ludwig Finscher: Giaches de Wert: Io non son pero morto (8th madrigal book, 1586). In: Chormusik und Analyze, edited by H. Poos, Mainz 1997, pages 85-91
- I. Fenlon: Giaches de Wert: The Early Years. In: Revue belge de musicologie No. 52, 1998, pages 377-399
- I. Fenlon: Giaches de Wert at Novellara. In: Early Music No. 27, 1999, pages 25-40
- SL Treloar: The Madrigals of Giaches de Wert: Patrons, Poets and Compositional Procedures , Dissertation Cambridge / Massachusetts 2003
- S. McClary: Modal Subjectivities: Self-fashioning in the Italian Madrigal , Berkeley / California 2004
Web links
- Works by and about Giaches de Wert in the catalog of the German National Library
- Sheet music and audio files from Giaches de Wert in the International Music Score Library Project
- Sheet music in the public domain by Giaches de Wert in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
- Systematic catalog of the music reading room of the Württemberg State Library
- Giaches de Wert in the Dutch online encyclopedia ENCYCLO.NL
swell
- ↑ Hartmut Schick : Worth, Giaches. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 17 (Vina - Zykan). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-7618-1137-5 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 8: Štich - Zylis-Gara. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1982, ISBN 3-451-18058-8 .
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Worth, Giaches de |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wert, Jachet de; Worth, Jacques de; Vuert, Iaches; Worth, Jaches |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Franco-Flemish composer and bandmaster of the Renaissance |
DATE OF BIRTH | 1535 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Ghent |
DATE OF DEATH | May 6, 1596 |
Place of death | Mantua |