DE' CAVALIERI (DEL CAVALIERE), EMILIO

DE' CAVALIERI (DEL CAVALIERE), EMILIO. — Musician, born in Rome ca. 1550, died there in 1602. Educated in music out of youthful passion, and not for professional purposes, his name appears from 1578 to 1584 in the musical activities of the oratory of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix in S. Marcello. Having moved to Florence to join the Medici, in 1589 he collaborated in the musical composition and performance of the Intermedi on the occasion of the marriage of Ferdinando de' Medici to Cristina di Lorena. The importance of his functions may be inferred from the performance (1590) of Tasso’s Aminta, which he organized, and from the composition of music for the pastorals Il satiro and La disperazione di Fileno (1590), to poetic texts by Laura Guidicioni Lucchesini, and for Guarini’s Dialogo di Giunone e Minerva (1600), as well as from the spectacle Il gioco della cieca (1595), again based on poetry by Guidicioni. But his name is especially associated with the Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo, performed at the Oratory of the Vallicella in Rome (February 1600), with music written to a text by Fr. Agostino Manni; in it, that new monodic style receives its first effective affirmation in the religious sphere, and E. de' C. may rightly be recognized as one of its first inspired practitioners. The simplicity, almost ascetic, of the dramatic-musical conception achieves effects of penetrating expressive intensity. He also wrote other religious music, in collaboration with Dorisio Isorelli, for the Lamentations and Responsories of Holy Week, again for the Oratory of the Vallicella.

Luigi Ronga