CARISSIMI, Giacomo. - Musician, b. in Milan on 18 Apr. 1605, d. in Rome on 12 Jan. 1674. Despite the fame he enjoyed in his own time, information and direct testimony about his life are scarce; his biography remains very incomplete, even after research conducted in recent decades.
At the age of eighteen he is found as a singer in the cappella of the cathedral of Tivoli (perhaps from 15 Aug. 1623, the date of its reconstruction). He then became maestro di cappella at the cathedral of S. Rufino in Assisi, where he remained in the years 1628-29. In 1630 he moved to Rome to take up the position of maestro di cappella at the church of S. Apollinare of the Collegio Germanico, with an annual salary of eighty scudi, plus board and lodging. The secure financial position thus attained by C. was further enhanced by the income provided at the time of his ordination (March 1637) by his patron Cardinal Colonna.
C.’s fame spread rapidly in Italy and abroad, as evidenced by the invitations he received to take charge of the cappella of S. Marco in Venice, succeeding Claudio Monteverdi. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm also sought to attract him to his service, employing the services of the lutenist Federico d’Alessia, a pupil and great admirer of C. Among C.’s numerous pupils were several foreigners, such as the Frenchmen Michel Farinel and Marc Antoine Charpentier, and the Germans Johann Kaspar Kerl, Bernhard Christoph, and Johann Philipp Krieger; among the Italians, it is not unlikely that Marc’Antonio Cesti studied under him. C. was buried in the same church of S. Apollinare. A portrait of him and his musical manuscripts were unfortunately lost.
Alongside Monteverdi and Frescobaldi, C. is one of the most brilliant artists of Italian musical Seicento. The forms he favored were those of the Latin oratorio and the sacred and secular cantata, in which the vocal expression of the new seventeenth-century style first attained that perfection which Monteverdi, in turn, had achieved in musical drama and more properly secular song. But C. stands above all for a sure, exemplary clarity of style, and for this reason he may perhaps be considered greater, even if less varied, than Luigi Rossi and M. A. Cesti, who alongside him excel in the melodic intonations of seventeenth-century lyricism. C.’s cantata affirms and accentuates the desire to free melody from the limits of declamation and achieves a resolute break from what would henceforth be defined as true and proper “recitative.”
But C.’s genius could be fully displayed in the Latin oratorio, which he brought to a high degree of artistic excellence, in a sense never again equaled, as if by an instinctive congeniality. His temperament, despite an inclination toward melodic effusion, entirely devoted to an intimate and fervent religiosity, unfolds with a variety and depth of expression that even his best cantatas may not fully reveal. The dramatic framework is of sober efficacy and brings to the full Seicento an authentic aura of severe biblical grandeur, in which, however, the humanity of the characters has its most evident prominence. Since the texts of the oratorios are unknown, it is possible that they come from the collaboration of the Jesuit Fathers of the Collegio, but it is not unlikely that they were composed by C. himself; and if this were the case, we would have a remarkable example of a unified dramatic-musical conception. Of this grand and effective creative synthesis, the choral parts bear witness, among the most vigorous and straightforward that Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries can boast; in some celebrated examples, such as the battle in *Iette*, the storm in *Gionata*, these are not merely external descriptive effects, but concise, powerful dramatic evocations achieved with rare simplicity of means. In the oratorios, C.’s recitative reaches penetrating expressive results in its tendency toward an arioso movement, which can only be compared to that of Monteverdi, and this alone speaks to the value it assumes in the new seventeenth-century dramatic-vocal expression. Through the ingenious variety of musical figurations, the character in C.’s oratorio usually stands out with an emphasis more often vigorous and robust, sometimes inclined to adopt accents of delicate, intimate lyricism; this emphasis is inherent in the vivid concreteness of vocal expression, and thus it is easily understood how the instrumental parts, scarcely indicated in the manuscripts, were arranged so as to preserve for the solo or choral singing its most genuine and complete prominence.
The oratorios, also called “istorici,” that have come down to us are: *Ionas*, *Iette*, *Ezechias*, *Baltazar*, *Iob*, *Abraham et Isaac*, *David et Ionathas*, *Historia divitiis* (*Dives malus*), *Diluvium universale*, *Extremum iudicium*, *Iudicium Salomonis*, *Vir frugi et pater familias*, *Lucifer*, the last without a chorus in the form of a solo cantata. C. also composed other sacred music, including masses, motets, etc., and the *Sacri concerti musicali* (Mascardi, Rome 1675); to him is also attributed an *Ars cantandi*, of which only a German translation exists, published in a *Vermehter Wegweiser* (Koppmayer, Augsburg 1689, reprinted several times).