MARENZIO, LUCA. - Musician, b. at Cocceglio (Brescia) ca. 1553, d. at Rome on 22 Aug. 1599. A pupil of Giovanni Cotino, maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Brescia, from 1586 to 1589 he was in Poland in the service of King Sigismund III, who held him in the highest esteem.
Having returned to Italy, he stayed for some time in Florence at the court of Ferdinando de' Medici; then he came to Rome (1591), where he was maestro di cappella, first of Cardinal d'Este and then of Cardinal Cintio Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII. In 1595 he was appointed singer of the Pontifical Musical Chapel; but after 4 years he died and was buried in the church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina.
A very prolific composer, much of his output has been lost; but there survive 9 books of madrigals for 5 voices (1580-89); 6 of madrigals for 6 voices (1582-91); 2 of madrigals for 4 and 6 voices (1588), as well as spiritual madrigals for 5 voices (the first book of which was printed with the benefit of a privilege of Pope Gregory XVI) and 6 books of villanelle and arie alla napoletana for 3 voices. In 1589, for the marriage of Ferdinando de' Medici to Christina of Lorraine, he composed the music for the intermezzo Il combattimento di Apolline con il serpente, on a poetic text by O. Rinuccini: a complex of dramatic madrigals in vocal counterpoint.
Of M.'s sacred compositions there are the Sacri Concentus for 5 and 7 voices, the antiphons for 6 voices, among which the famous one for St. Cecilia: Dum aurora finem darei; the motets for all the feasts of the ecclesiastical year for several voices, among which are to be noted the Innocentes pro Christo infantes and the Estee fortes in bello.
M. knew how to assimilate and rework with originality the innovations of the direct disciples of A. Willaert and to absorb, without disowning his originally Venetian formation, the teachings of the Roman school, then illuminated by G. Pierluigi da Palestrina. His refined expressiveness and his frank, passionate cantabilità earned him from his contemporaries the appellation of «divine». Of the madrigals, then held in great honor, he may be considered one of the most illustrious cultivators; they are, in fact, full of grace, pervaded with warmth and spontaneous; the madrigalisms that surface in them are balanced and graceful; and there is found in them a chromaticism that gives to the polyphony a warm breath of lyricism. And he affirms that he composed them «con maniera assai differente dalla passata, havendo, et per l'imitazione delle parole et per la proprietà dello stile, atteso a una mesta gravità».
Bibliography4 works
Lavinio Virgili