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| Composers Biography - Languages - |  |
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Carlo Gesualdo
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In 1590, the nobleman, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, surprised his wife with her lover and had them both killed by his servants. Later he married Eleonora d'Este, the niece of Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, whose musical interests coincided with his own. He composed devotional works and six books of madrigals which are considered to be of a very advanced chromatic complexity and sensitivity. The sudden changes of tonality, the harmony and intensity of feeling in his music have found particular favour among some modern theorists. 
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Gesualdo’s six books of madrigals include some remarkable and striking compositions, such as the five-voice Moro, lasso, al mio duolo, and the earlier Ahi, disperata vita. His numerous sacred compositions include works intended for the liturgy of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, as well as Marian compositions such as Ave, dulcissima Maria and Ave, regina caelorum. Volumes of sacred music in a Sacrarum cantionum liber primus (First Book of Sacred Songs) of works in five parts and another of works in six and seven parts were published in Naples in 1603.
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