Massimo Troiano

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Massimo Troiano, engraving by Nicolaus Nellius from Dialoghi , 1568

Massimo Troiano († after April 1570) was an Italian composer, poet and reporter of life at the court of the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V around 1568.

Life

Nothing is known about Troiano's early years, except that he comes from the Naples area , as he calls himself “Massimo Troiano di Corduba da Napoli” in the collections of his canzoni . In this case, Corduba not to the Spanish city out but a relationship with Gonzalo de Cordova, Duke of Sessa , a small duchy in the vicinity of the then Spanish Naples.

Only his work in the years from 1567 to 1570 has been handed down, but in some cases it is very detailed. In 1567 he published a collection of canzoni , secular songs with his own texts in Treviso . At the beginning of 1568 he was in the service of the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V in Munich , where he worked as a singer in the court orchestra under Orlando di Lasso . He moved at least twice between Munich and Venice , with a longer stay in Venice in 1569, where he waited for money and a new job from the Bavarian duke. He can be traced back to Munich by Easter 1570, when he killed a colleague, the Genoese Johann Baptista Romano, together with another singer from the court orchestra, and then fled Bavaria. Although the duke had searched for him, especially at the Italian courts, nothing is known about his further life.

In 1571 a Giovanni Troiano appeared in Rome, only a few months after Massimo's disappearance from Munich. There is no evidence of a relationship between Giovanni and Massimo, however, other than that both were composers of secular vocal music. Giovanni died in 1622.

Works

Massimo Troiano published four books of secular songs in three collections, 1567, 1568 and 1570. Nevertheless, he is best known for his Dialoghi , a lively and colorful description of life at the Bavarian court and, above all, the famous wedding of the Hereditary Prince Wilhelm with Renata of Lorraine . Troianos Dialoghi were printed in Munich in 1568, published in Venice in 1569 and shortly afterwards in a Spanish translation. The book is the clearest description of Orlando di Lasso's musical productions. “The singers [serve] every morning at Holy Mass , on Saturday Vespers and at the vigils before the great church festivals. The wind instruments are played on Sundays, and on feast days at Mass and Vespers together with the singers. ”Troiano also describes unusually precisely how Mass was celebrated and which parts were sung polyphonically . This is valuable information for the reconstruction of Renaissance music . We also have a description of the performance of the greatest polyphonic composition of the Renaissance, the 40- and 60-part Missa sopra Ecco sì beata giorno by Alessandro Striggio , from 1567 by Troiano.

Troiano's own music belongs to the light Neapolitan style of canzon villanesca alla napolitana . These songs are often simply called canzonets , three-part vocal compositions similar to madrigals , but of a lighter nature. All of his books were published in Venice, which makes it understandable that his works contain both Neapolitan and Venetian elements. He probably wrote most of his texts himself, and in some he tells wistfully about his native Naples.

Fonts (selection)

  • Discorsi delli trionfi, giostre, apparatie delle cose più notabili fatte nelle sontuose nozze del […] Duca Guglielmo […]. Monaco 1568.
  • Dialoghi, ne 'quali si narrano le cose piu notabili fatte nelle nozze […] di principe Guglielmo V. Venice 1569.

literature

  • Alfred Einstein : The Italian Madrigal. 3 volumes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1949, ISBN 0-691-09112-9 .
  • Berndt Ph. Baader: The Bavarian Renaissance courtyard, Duke Wilhelm V. Heitz & Co., Leipzig 1943.
  • Massimo Troiano: The Munich princely wedding of 1568. Discussions about the festivities at the wedding of the Bavarian Hereditary Duke Wilhelm V with Renata von Lothringen, in Munich, in February 1568. - Edited in facsimile, translated into German, with afterword, notes and registers by Horst Leuchtmann , Munich / Salzburg 1980, ISBN 3-87397-503-3 .

Remarks

  1. see the comments on Troianos Dialoghi by Horst Leuchtmann, p. 437 f.
  2. see the comments on Troianos Dialoghi by Horst Leuchtmann, p. 432 ff.
  3. Einstein, Vol. II, pp. 580ff.