Rinaldo del Mel

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Rinaldo del Mel (* around 1554 in Mechelen , † around 1598 in the Netherlands) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and conductor of the late Renaissance .

Live and act

Rinaldo del Mel's parents had lived in Mechlin since 1547; the father was a bailiff and chamberlain at the Habsburg court of the Duchess Christine of Lorraine . In his hometown, Rinaldo entered the singing school of the Saint-Rombaud cathedral on March 3, 1562 ; there he received lessons from the choir regent Séverin Cornet . After completing his musical training, he left his homeland and turned to Portugal, where he was presumably from 1572 at the royal court in Lisbon as maestro under King Sebastian (until 1578) and then under Henry I.(until 1580) was employed. After the death of Henry I and after Portugal was annexed by the Kingdom of Spain, Rinaldo del Mel left the country and entered the service of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti in Rome ; this enabled him to continue his studies with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina . He wrote his first works here, which appeared in the Liber primus mottectorum in 1581. The composer lived in Chieti between April 1583 and the beginning of 1584 and was employed here. On July 6, 1584 he got the position of Kapellmeister at the cathedral in Rieti ; there, however, he has so annoyed his employers by frequent absences that he was removed from office after less than a year, on May 14, 1585. That year he stayed in Rome and in L'Aquila , the following year in Magliano Sabina and in 1587 in Venice .

The Liege prince-bishop Ernst von Bayern convened in 1587, the composer as conductor at the local cathedral St. Lambertus , where it remained about four years long. In 1591 he returned to Italy in the service of Cardinal Paleotti in Magliano. In his Madrigaletti spirituali collection (1596) his wish to go to Tortona is noted ; it is unclear whether he was able to achieve this. It is possible that he remained in his service until the death of his patron Paleotti on July 23, 1597. In the later year 1597, Rinaldo del Mel published eight more chansons françaises with the publisher Pierre Phalèse in Antwerp , which is why music historical researchers assume that he returned to his homeland and probably died there the following year.

meaning

After Rinaldo del Mel wrote dedications in Italian and Latin and also set French, Italian, Latin and Flemish texts to music, he can be considered a particularly educated person. He left 4 books of motets and 14 books of madrigals , the latter also containing the madrigaletti . His sacred works show the influence of the Palestrina style that was imparted to him by his teacher Séverin Cornet. His secular works for singing voices are of greater importance. The composer and music theorist Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni (1657–1743) called del Mel the “loveliest composer of his time” and called him a great imitator of nature. The Madrigals del Mels go well beyond the conservative models of their time and are often based on particularly progressive texts and poems ( Giovanni Battista Guarini , Torquato Tasso , Giambattista Marino ). less on texts by Petrarch . As one of the few composers, he has also taken into account the type of madrigaletti , in which a serious text is set to music in a way that is otherwise customary for “easy” and popular genres.

Works

  • Sacred vocal works
    • “Liber primus mottectorum” with four to eight voices, Venice 1581
    • “Liber tertius motectorum” with five to six voices, Venice 1585
    • “Sacrae cantiones” with five to twelve voices, Antwerp 1588
    • “Liber quintus motectorum” with six to twelve voices, Venice 1595
    • Various pieces included in collective prints published between 1585 and 1610
    • 4 pieces in tablature , 1592 and 1595
  • Secular vocal works
    • “Madrigali” with four to six voices, Venice 1583
    • "Il primo libro de madrigali a sei voci", Venice 1584
    • "Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci", Venice 1584
    • "Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque e sei voci", Venice 1585
    • "Il secondo libro delli madrigaletti a tre voci", Venice 1585
    • "Il terzo libro de madrigali a cinque voci", Venice 1587
    • “Madrigali a sei voci”, Antwerp 1588
    • "Il primo libro delli madrigaletti a tre voci novamente rimessi insieme", Milan 1590 (not identical to the Primo libro delli madrigaletti from 1593)
    • "Il secondo libro de madrigali a sei voci", Venice 1593
    • "Il primo libro delli madrigaletti a tre voci novamente ristampato", Venice 1593 (first edition unknown)
    • "Il quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci", Venice 1594
    • "Il terzo libro delli madrigaletti a tre voci", Venice 1594
    • “Il terzo libro delli madrigali a sei voci”, Venice 1595
    • “Madrigaletti spirituali a tre voci”, Lib. 4, Venice 1596
    • 8 “Chansons françaises”, Antwerp 1597

Literature (selection)

  • G. van Doorslaer: Rinaldo del Mel, compositeur du XVIe siècle. In: Annales de l'Académie Royale d'Archéologie de Belgique No. 9, 1921, pages 221-288
  • Antoine Auda: La Musique et les musiciens de l'ancien pays de Liège , Brussels 1930
  • Alfred Einstein: The Italian Madrigal , 3 volumes, Princeton 1949
  • Patricia Ann Myers: An Analytical Study of the Italian Cyclic Madrigals Published by Composers Working in Rome, ca. 1540–1614 , dissertation at Urbana University / Illinois 1971
  • J. Chater: Article Del Mel, Rinaldo. In: A. Basso (editor), Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, Turin 1985, volume 2, page 451
  • Sylvie Janssens: Il secondo libro delli madrigaletti a tre voci (1586) di Rinaldo del Mel. Analyze et transscriptions , Brussels 1995

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Sylvie Janssens:  Mel, Rinaldo del. In: Ludwig Finscher (Ed.): The music in history and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 11 (Lesage - Menuhin). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1121-7  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 5: Köth - Mystical Chord. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1981, ISBN 3-451-18055-3 .
  3. ↑ Thierry Levaux: Le Dictionnaire des Compositeurs de Belgique du Moyen Age à nos jours , Edition Art in Belgium in 2006, ISBN 2-930338-37-7 , page 427-428
personal data
SURNAME Mel, Rinaldo del
ALTERNATIVE NAMES del Mel, René; del Melle, Rinaldo; del Mel, Renatus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-Flemish composer and bandmaster of the Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH around 1554
PLACE OF BIRTH Mechlin
DATE OF DEATH around 1598