October 9, 2024 • 36 mins
Carlo Gesualdo’s madrigals are unique and captivating. But he was seen by many as a monster in his own time due to a double murder and associations with witchcraft.
Research:
- Burton-Hill, Clemency. “Gesualdo: Glorious music and grisly murder.” BBC. Oct. 21, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130905-a-16th-century-musical-badass
- Caccese, Andrea. “Carlo Gesualdo: the ‘Madman’ of the Italian Renaissance.” CMUSE. Sept. 20, 2014. https://www.cmuse.org/carlo-gesualdo-the-madman-of-the-italian-reinassance/
- “Carlo Gesuald.” Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
- DeVoto, Mark. "chromaticism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/art/chromaticism
- Gray, Cecil and Philip Heseltine. “Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer.” Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut. 1971. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/carlogesualdopri0000gray/page/n7/mode/1up
- Haar, James. “Classicism and Mannerism in 16th-Century Music.” International Review of Music Aesthetics and Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, 1970, pp. 55–68. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/836396
- LEVENBERG J. Was Carlo Gesualdo’s Honour Killing Liturgical? Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Published online 2024:1-32. doi:10.1017/rma.2023.4
- Ober, William B., M.D. “CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA: MURDER, MADRIGALS, AND MASOCHISM.” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. 1973 Jul;49(7):634-645. PMID: 4575970; PMCID: PMC1807043.
- Ross, Alex. “Prince of Darkness.’ New Yorker. December 11, 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/19/prince-of-darkness
- Stevens, Denis. “Carlo Gesualdo.” The Musical Times, vol. 131, no. 1770, 1990, pp. 410–11. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/966618
- Turci-Escobar, John. “Softening the Edges: Cadential Attenuation in Gesualdo’s Six Books of Madrigals.” Theory and Practice, vol. 32, 2007, pp. 101–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054417
- Watkins, Glenn. “The Gesualdo Hex.” W.W. Norton. 2010.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's Halloween season, which I love, and this episode is
kind of Halloween. But I feel like I need to
warn everybody who says I love your Halloween episodes that
this is not one of our more jovial Halloween ones.
We're going to cover a sixteenth century nobleman and composer
who is seen by a whole lot of people as
a monster in his own time, and that is Carlo Jesualdau.
(00:41):
If you are a music person, you probably know about him.
Gsoildo's madrigals are unique and captivating, and there are so
many stories of people hearing his work and then wanting
to know about the man who composed them, and that
man's story is intent. So heads up that this one
does contain some very intense domestic violence. I would say
(01:02):
that this is probably not one for younger history buffs.
I know every kid is different, but this one is
extra grizzly. Yeah, so if you think your kid might
be okay with it, maybe give it a preview.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Listen first yeah, Carlo Gesualdo, was born in fifteen sixty six.
His father was Don Fabrizio, and he had a wide
variety of noble titles Prince of Venosa, Duke of Cagiano,
Marquis of Lino, and Count of Cosa. Carlo was the
second son in the family, which had very influential members.
(01:37):
Carlo's uncle on his father's side was Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo,
who at one time was a candidate to be Pope.
His mother was Giroloma Boromeo, and on her side Carlo
had an uncle who had been instrumental in the counter Reformation.
His great uncle, through his mother was Pope Pious the Fourth.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We don't know a whole lot about Carlo's childhood. It's
presumed that he was born in the town of Geesualdo,
which is named for his family. The Geesualdos came to
power there in the eleven hundreds, and they built a
castle which remains today. But Carlo could have also been
born in Naples, or even in southern Italy, where the
family had property. He spent time in all of those
(02:21):
places in his youth. We do know that he had
a proclivity for and studied music with Stefano Felie and
Giovanni Demac. Sometimes there have been claims that he also
studied with Pomponia, but he and Carlo were actually very
close in age, so that claim seems very unlikely. He
(02:41):
was known to be, among other things, extremely good at
playing the lute, and the first musical composition we have
by Gisualdo is from fifteen eighty five, when he was
nineteen years old. In fifteen eighty six, Gesualdo, who was
then twenty, got married, and this was a bit of
a shift in plans for Don Fabrizio's second son, being
(03:03):
from a family with a lot of power in the
Catholic Church. As a second son, it was expected that
Carlo would follow that path. But then Carlo's older brother Luigi,
who was expected to inherit their father's titles and responsibilities,
died in fifteen eighty five at the age of twenty,
and that meant suddenly Carlo had to take on the
(03:24):
family mantle, and part of that included finding a wife,
getting married, making them heirs. His wife was Maria Davolos,
who was twenty four or twenty five, depending on the source.
Sometimes you will even see her listed as twenty one.
I will say, if you look up any of this,
all of the ages get a little blurry because there
are multiple different stories that put them at different places.
(03:47):
But the important thing here was that even though she
was still pretty young, Maria was a widow two times
over when she and Carlo married. She was also Carlo's
first cousin, and her first husband, Federico Karaza, reportedly died
during sexual intercourse with the notoriously beautiful Maria. Although that
is unsurprisingly not something that there's a lot of substantiation for,
(04:11):
it's highly possible that is a rumor that developed as
part of the Jeesualdo legend, because there are a lot
of rumors. Maria divorced her second husband, Alfonso di Giuliano,
after receiving a papal decree to do so, although you
will also see it written that he died the same
way as her first husband sometimes. Carlo and Maria's wedding
(04:31):
was a big, lavish affair, and the reception reportedly lasted
for several days. Their union also seems to have been
quite joyous, at least initially. Carlo and Maria had a son,
Don Emanuele, the year after they married, but theirs was
a marriage that started out happy and ended in a
horrific manner. A few years into the marriage, in fifteen ninety,
(04:56):
Jeesualdo discovered that Maria Davolos was having an affair, and
that it had been going on for a while and
most insulting of all, in his own home. We don't
know for certain how he discovered this information. One account
says that he was told about it by his friend
Don Julio, who incidentally had actually been trying to start
(05:18):
his own romance with Maria himself, but had been rebuked,
and in that version of the story, Maria and her
paramour put their romance on hold for a while, knowing
that they had been found out. That paramour was Fabrizio Carafa,
the Duke of Andrea. Fabrizio, like Maria, was by all accounts,
just incredibly attractive, as well as being quite courteous and
(05:40):
very charming. We don't know, though, if the story of
them knowing that Carlo had found out their secret is true.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Carlo and his friends or maybe his servants, again depending
on the source, set a trap for the lovers, and
when they knew that they were going to be alone together,
set upon them He had told Maria that he was
leaving for an overnight hunting trip, and he expected she
would take advantage of his absence to invite her lover
(06:08):
to spend the night. This she apparently did, but Gisualdo
did not actually leave Naples. He went to a friend's
house nearby, and then he returned home at midnight. Now
this is one version of the story. Hunting comes up
again in a moment, and this is where things are
going to start to get grizzly. So you can just
skip ahead a little if you'd like, maybe a lot.
(06:33):
The day after the alleged hunting trip, the Gesualdou apartment
was inspected by a group of men who had been
given that task by the city of Naples and the church.
And that is because there were dead bodies in it,
and those had been reported by the house staff. It
is from those officials' accounts of the scene that we
know what happened. The body of Fabrizio Carafa was found dead,
(06:58):
wearing a woman's night dress presumed Maria's. He had been
stabbed repeatedly all over his body and also shot twice,
once threw his arm and into his chest, and another
time in the head because there were cuts found on
the floor underneath cut off his body. It was determined
that he had been stabbed with swords multiple times while
(07:19):
lying prone. Maria had also been murdered. Her body was
on the bed, also wearing a nightgown. Her throat was slit,
and she too had been stabbed repeatedly, and the large,
heavy door to the room had been smashed in such
a way that it could no longer close. After the
investigators made their initial round of observations, two coffins were
(07:43):
brought to the rooms. Fabrizio's body was washed and then
examined more closely. Once blood wasn't obscuring all of the injuries.
His body was then dressed in black silk breeches and
a black velvet jerkin and placed into one of the coffins.
All of this was in accordance of the wishes of
(08:04):
his family, Maria's and the Marquisess DeVico arrived to prepare
and dress Maria's body with the aid of the servants,
and then that body was then taken to the Church
of San Domenico.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When a court assembled by the church questioned witnesses, they
got the story that Jeesualdo had led his accomplices into
the apartment, yelling that he would not be made a cuckold.
He also was seen by witnesses coming out of the
room covered in blood, saying he did not believe they
were dead, and going back in. Authorities first question Sylvia Albana,
(08:40):
a woman of twenty who had been Maria's maid. She
told investigators that she had been asked by Maria to
bring her an extra nightgown the evening of the murders.
Maria had claimed that hers was sweaty. The gown Sylvia
described bringing match the details of the one that Fabrizio
had been wearing when he was killed. She was also
(09:01):
told to leave the door unlocked and to only go
into Maria's chambers if she was specifically called for. After this,
Sylvia then went to her room and fell asleep, and
she reported being awakened by noise in the middle of
the night. The door to her room was thrown open
and she saw three men she couldn't identify passing through
the hall. She also saw Carlo Josualdo enter the house
(09:25):
in a rage, and she eventually hid under the bed
until the whole thing was over and Joswaldo's personal attendant
told her it was safe to come out and that
the two victims were dead.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Pietro Bardatti, who was Carlo's personal assistant, was the person
who had told Sylvia that it was safe to come
out and was the next to testify. He had worked
for the family for twenty eight years, and his testimony
mentions hunting, but that it was something that Carlo said
he was going to do. When he got up in
(09:56):
his own room and got dressed just before the murders,
he told Pietro to get two torches and pulled out
several weapons, including a sword, a dagger, and a gun.
Pietro stated that Carlo said, as he went up the stairs, quote,
I am going to massacre the Duke of Andrea and
the strumpet Donna Maria. Gesualdo was joined by three other
(10:18):
armed men. They all entered Maria's room together. Pietro stayed
outside and reported that he heard firearms discharged, but none
of what the men had said. It was his testimony
that includes Gesualdo coming out and saying that he didn't
think the pair were dead before stabbing them. Several additional times.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, I mentioned I included in the outline and didn't
really clarify for Tracy to read that. I wanted to
include that note that Carlo wakes up and says he's
going hunting, because that seems like it may have gotten
confused in a translation or the record, because the one
version says he's going hunting for them, and in the
(11:01):
other he tells his attendant, I'm going hunting, meaning he
is going to kill these people, and I think that
may have gotten a little bit fuzzy somewhere along the line.
But coming up, we are going to talk about the
aftermath of this brutal event. But first let's just take
a little breath and pause, and we'll have a sponsor break.
(11:30):
Here's the thing. The church determined that this double murder
was technically legal. This was considered a valid form of
revenge carried out by an aristocratic husband on a spouse
who was dishonoring him and his family's name, so it
was an honor killing. There were no legal charges, and
(11:51):
Geoswaldo faced no legal repercussions whatsoever, despite the manner of
the murder having a lot of extraneous violence and possibly
even torture.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
One of the issues that people had with the murder,
even though under the laws as Waldo was acting acceptably,
was that he had accomplices. Normally, an honor killing of
this nature was something that the wronged person was expected
to do himself. So though the church came to the
conclusion that he was justified in killing Maria and Fabrizio,
(12:24):
he had, in the eyes of the community, done something
that was considered wrong in terms of the accepted noble
etiquette of the day.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And though there were no ramifications in a court of law,
Josualdo's reputation did become quite tarnished in the court of
public opinion. The absolutely brutal details of the murder scene
were also reported all over Naples and beyond. Everyone was
eager to learn all of the horrific specifics, and some
of the more tabloid papers started to exaggerate even beyond
(12:56):
the already intense descriptions of the scene, and so soon
Carlow took on this almost mythic image, like a contemporary
wealthy boogeyman who was walking among the people of the city.
A lot of the fake details that were reported were
downright outlandish. Some sounded believable for a dramatic revenge killing.
(13:17):
For instance, that the dead lover's genitalia had been mutilated,
but other accounts emerged that described as Waldo also murdering
a baby that the pair had secretly had together, and
him leaving their corpses out in public to rot so
that everyone could see them. The list really goes on
and on, and there's no substantiation for any of these details,
(13:40):
but grizly gossip is really hard for people to resist,
so these stories were repeated over and over. There's even
one version of the story where Maria basically surprises just
Waldo with an infant son, and he only thinks that
it looks like Fabrisa and winds up killing his own child.
(14:03):
Whether there was ever an actual infanticide is really difficult
to discern. Yeah, it's told so many different ways in
so many different stories, and there's never any mention of
Maria having been pregnant, so it's like what that, I
don't really know. Once the church cleared Giswaldo of wrongdoing, though,
(14:27):
he left Naples no doubt fearing that he might become
a victim himself, particularly by either of his victim's families.
That had even more weight though than you might imagine,
because all three of the families involved were deeply connected
to one another, so in his decision to kill Maria
and Fabrizio Geoswaldo was also destroying generations of goodwill among
(14:50):
the most powerful families in Naples. And after leaving the city,
he moved about eighty five kilometers east to the town
of Goswaldo, where his family was from. We said earlier
They had a castle there, and Carlo moved in.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
In fifteen ninety one, the year after the murders. Gisualdo's
father died. So as he was becoming a villainous figure
to all of Naples, he was also under pressure to
marry again. He also became, through this inheritance, one of
the richest men in Italy, but it was in his
(15:24):
and his family's best interest to find a wealthy and
well connected wife who would further bolster his standing. He
found that woman in Ferraro, which is roughly six hundred
and twenty kilometers north of Naples. He made his way
to northern Italy with a friend, Count Fontanelli. Fontinelli kept
a journal of these travels and their stops along the way.
(15:45):
In Florence in Rome, they note that Gesualdo carried his
first two books of madrigals with him on the journey,
because Ferrero was a music city. In fifteen ninety four,
Carlo married Eleonora Deste, noble woman who was from Ferrara,
and in a classic case of double standards, Carlo was
(16:06):
not faithful to Eleonora. He kind of wasn't all that
interested in his marriage in general. But Eleonora was closely
related to Alfonso, the second Deeste, Duke of Ferrara. Some
sources call her.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
The Duke's cousin and some say that she was his sister,
but regardless, marrying her put Shoswaldo at the center of
the Ferrara music scene, which was hopping at the time,
and this is the period where he published his first
madrigals and his work as a composer became his focus.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He became close friends with a composer Luzzasco Luzzaski and Ferira.
Earlier in the sixteenth century, a composer named Nikola Vicentino
had invented an instrument known as the archchamblo, and Luzzatski
was one of the few people who could play it.
This was like a piano keyboard, but instead of twelve
keys assigned to each Ocdavit, he had thirty one, and
(17:01):
so this allowed music to be composed in microtnes. This
instrument clearly fascinated Gezwaldo. Honestly, it sounds fascinating to me.
He had one of his own when he died. Writing
for The New Yorker in twenty eleven, Alex Ross writes
of this instrument, quote, to modern ears, its harmonies can
(17:21):
sound either exceptionally pure or exceptionally weird, or both at once.
Having read a number of commentaries on jus Waldo's work,
the same sentiment as echoed about this.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
During his time in Ferrara, Joswalde has said to have
talked everyone's ear off about his music, and he was
always eager to show people the scores he had written.
He was among his fellow nobles, but he was unique
in his position as an artist. He was so rich
that he could write exclusively for himself. He needed no patrons.
(17:56):
He could also pay to publish his work. He didn't
need any connection help there either, and he seemed to
recognize this privilege to some degree, because he decided having
it meant that he could seek to make compositions that
were completely new.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
After two years in Ferrara, Gesualdo moved back to Naples
with the intention that he was done with travel forever
and he would only move between his home in Naples
and the family castle edge. As Waldo Alfonso the second
died that year, and since he had no heir, the
wife's family did not retain their power, Ferrara became a
(18:33):
papal duchy. There really wasn't any reason to stay there
as far as Gesualdo was concerned. He had been in
love with Alfonso the Second's court full of artists, and
without that he could just diseasily go home and compose
music there.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
He also decided that he would fund the construction of
a monastery at the family seat, and that's the Convento
de Cappuccini. It's believed that this was part of an
effort on his part to make up for the murders
of fifteen ninety. He was feeling a little bit of
guilt in his later years. The altarpiece of the chapel,
which Jesualdo commissioned, features him in the image. That image
(19:12):
is focused on Christ pardoning people for their sins, and
Gisualdo is shown kneeling in the lower left of the
image showing his penitence.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So there's more weird stuff to come, but before we
get to that, we will hear from the sponsors that
keep the show going.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
In fifteen ninety seven, Eleonora gave birth to a son,
so at that point Carlo had two heirs. The pair
also reportedly had two daughters, but there's not a whole
lot of information about them. But his son with Desta
died as a toddler in sixteen hundred, and that death,
combined with his ongoing regret about the murders of fifteen
(19:58):
ninety catalyzed a downward spiral for Schisweldo. After that, his
only source of comfort was his music. Carlo became so
obsessed with his music that apparently he just could not
cope with anything else. He was miserable when he wasn't composing,
but not just sullen or unhappy. He's described as being
(20:22):
so depressed and tortured in his non music life that
he started to dabble in distraction behaviors that were taboo. Reportedly,
he got involved with sadomasochism and hired a staff of
between ten and twelve men to live in his home,
with their sole purpose being to.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Whip and abuse him. He reportedly wanted to be whipped
three times a day. He said to have only smiled
during these sessions, and eventually developed a psychological tick in
which he could only use the bathroom if he was
being whipped. In sixteen oh three, his wife Eleonora filed
a suit again aint Joswaldo's mistress. Perhaps she may have
(21:04):
just had some meetings with people that resulted in it
and not actually taken a legal action. There was apparently
a trial. Some accounts attribute that origin to his wife,
others do not. But the important thing is two women
who lived in Joswaldo's home were accused of witchcraft or sorcery.
Their names were Aurelia Derrico and Poli Sandra Pezzella, and
(21:27):
one of them confessed under torture. Her testimony is graphic
and intense, and it includes descriptions of giving Joswaldo potions
and meals that included her bodily fluids as ingredients. This
is definitely not for the squeamish among our listeners. I
was initially going to leave it out, but there are
details that showed just how much misinformation was floating about
(21:51):
during this time about basic medical facts. So I want
to include it because it also informs how kind of
embellished his story gets. But we are not even going
to get into the grossest parts. And still, if you're squeamish,
this next section may not.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Be for you.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Several witnesses stated that Aurelia and Carlo had been involved
on and off for a decade, but that he had
been ignoring her since he married his second wife. She
decided that she would make him a love potion. Several
witnesses stated that she had given Josualdo her menstrual blood
in these potions. Four physicians testified that menstrual blood is
(22:32):
poisonous and that it would kill a man if he
wasn't given a treatment or an antidote. They also said
that they felt he was afflicted with something supernatural.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Other witnesses in the case stated that Aurelia had meetings
with a man named Antonio Paallla of Montemarano, who was
known to be a sorcerer. Aurelia apparently told several people
that she didn't give Carlo the blood to hurt him.
She wanted him to have to come back to her
to be healed.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Both women were found guilty and their sentence was house
arrest in Giswaldo's castle. This was not something that he wanted.
He actually lobbied for the women to be hanged, but
they stayed at the castle from the time of the sentencing,
at least until sixteen oh seven, when they kind of
vanished from any of the records. In sixteen oh eight,
(23:25):
Carlo and Eleanora separated. Her brothers actually petitioned the church
for Eleonora to be granted a divorce. Some accounts say
that that was granted by the church, but Eleonora did
not go through with it. There have been a variety
of contradictory accounts over the years, some suggesting she actually
did leave and live the rest of her life away
(23:46):
from him, but that doesn't appear to have really been
the case. In sixteen thirteen, Giswaldo's first son, who was
an adult at the age of twenty seven, died after
falling from a horse. He is said to have detested
his father, and he had no sons himself, only daughters.
Carlo Gesualdo died two weeks later, on September eighth, sixteen thirteen,
(24:10):
at the age of forty seven. He reportedly died during
one of his requested beatings, with no heirs to the
family remaining, the Gezualdo line ended. Folklore versions of this
story have attributed the end of the family lineage to
some kind of curse that Carlo brought upon himself when
he murdered his wife and her paramour.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Goswaldo's musical legacy, like his life, is somewhat complicated. His
work is lauded by a lot of people as being
far ahead of its time, and it's sometimes called a
sort of precursor to Wagner. Wagner didn't compose his striking
works until two hundred and fifty years later. Joswaldo's madrigals,
in particular feature harmonies that are often described as being
(24:56):
sort of unsettling. Additionally, according to a lot of musicians,
they are very hard to perform. There are in total
six books of madrigals which feature more than one hundred
and forty pieces of music. That's all in total, and
those constitute the majority of his work. Madrigals are compositions
exclusively for voice. There's no instrumental accompaniment. They are typically
(25:21):
based on secular texts. The vast majority of just Waldo's
madrigals are for five voices. These works are characterized by
the use of chromaticism, which uses a lot of half
tone steps. By contrasts in a diatonic scale, which you
might remember from music classes as do re Mi fa
sol Latido, uses five whole steps and two half steps
(25:44):
for a total of eight tones per octave. The chromatic
scale uses twelve, and in very simple terms, those extra
five half steps are why just Waldo's music is often
described as kind of eerie, particularly when he composes harmonies
of five voices and several of them are only a
half step apart. This is a very simplistic explanation. My
(26:10):
grasp of music theory is quite tenuous, and I'm frank
about that, but yeah, I did spend a lot of
time watching videos about music theory. So per wb Ober,
writing in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of
Medicine in nineteen seventy three, quote Gswaldo's expressive effects are
achieved by slow progressions of chromatic chords and short, piercing
(26:35):
cries of melody, which express pain, suffering, and thoughts of death.
They alternate with brilliant contrapuntal passages to match words of joy, love,
or any sort of active movement. The first two books
of Gswaldo's compositions are the most like his contemporaries. They
(26:55):
work from existing poetry, althoughos Waldo's arrangements based on that
poetry are unlike any of the other composers writing at
the time. In his third book, he starts to mingle
original writing into the poetry, and then the last three
books of his madrigals all use entirely original texts. We
don't know if Carlo Jesualdo wrote the text or commissioned it,
(27:18):
but none of it appears to have existed before he
published his books, and their themes are very dark. They
reference death, sadness, and pain throughout, and this has led
to some people interpreting the last two books in particular
as being sort of an autobiography for the composer. His
original verses, when translated, often reference finding joy in pain.
(27:43):
One text translated into English reads quote words sweet and dear,
you make me suffer, but the wound in my heart
feels not pain, but only delight. Another says the same sentiment, quote, indeed,
my pains make me joyful. But he was not the
only composer using dark themes for madrigals. Many composers of
(28:04):
the time used the poems of Gesualdo's friend Torcado Tasso,
who wrote of the Willingness to suffer quote the Wrath
of a Beautiful Hand. Tasso and Carlo met in fifteen
eighty eight, and they remained friends for the next seven years.
Tasso died in fifteen ninety five, but in that time
he dedicated three sonnets to Jusualdo. So while other composers
(28:29):
may have used Tasso's words, Carlo it seemed, had sort
of the inside track when it came to the themes
that the poet wrote about. Jozwaldo also wrote three books
of sacred music. In sixteen eleven, he published a cycle
of prayers which is commonly called Tenebre Responsoria. It is
a series of pieces intended to be sung during Holy Week,
(28:51):
the week before Easter, and the prayers that he uses
are the ones from the Passion that tell the story
of Christ's life. Numerous essays and articles have been written
about whether people remain fascinated with Jezualdo's work because of
his turbulent and violent life, or if it's indeed something
special and unique on its own. Regarding his mental state,
(29:15):
it's easy to make assumptions based on the information that
we have. Once again, writing in nineteen seventy three, W. B. Ober,
who was a historian and pathologist, wrote of using modern
analysis to Diagnoseswaldo quote. Having examined Juswalder's life and glanced
into his workshop, can we now construct an explanation perforce?
(29:36):
Any attempt at psychobiography at a removal of three and
one half centuries has severe limitations. Important details are lacking,
and a sequential reconstruction of events cannot be attempted. Nor
is a review.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Of such data as are known, and an examination of
musical materials any sort of substitute for a doctor patient
confrontation during which so much material information is exchanged. When
events can be put into perspective and nuances of emotional
valence attached to them, then re examined and corrected in
(30:11):
the light of further discussion, any schema we construct will
be merely a broad outline, a framework upon which to
rest the case. Gizwalda was working during the period when
Mannerism dominated the music scene of Italy. In its time,
mannerism was kind of a counter to the Renaissance romance
(30:32):
and humanism that came before it. Whereas humanism had emphasized
emotion and feeling, mannerism emphasized technique. And that's a very
broad strokes way to talk about it. Obviously, as art
there is an emotional component, and there actually are a
lot of debates about how the term mannerism should actually
be used specifically in the music world. But it does
(30:54):
give some context to the descriptions of Goswaldo's music as
being difficult to perform. That it's not about him being
a madman or a psychopath or anything to do with
his mental and emotional health. He was as a composer
deliberately trying to create complex and difficult things. There have
been musicians and artists in recent centuries who have become
(31:16):
almost obsessed with Gisualdo. Writer Aldous Huxley was transfixed by him.
Igor Stravinsky often cited Giswaldo as an important influence and
called him quote one of the most personal creators ever
born to my art. Stravinsky hands copied several of Joswaldo's
madicals and also wrote a piece named for him, Monumentum
(31:40):
pro gus Waldo. Werner Herzog too became captivated by Gezuwaldo's
story and music, and in nineteen ninety five made a
TV movie that's part documentary, part speculative ghost story about
Gisualdo and Maria called Zezualdo Death for Five Voices. One
of the character who hers sort of interviews is the
(32:02):
ghost of Maria, played by an opera singer with vibrant
red hair in a full length dress with a revealing
low cut bodice. Yeah, there's some I only got to
see the trailer for that because it is not readily
available nowadays. But there are some kind of interesting approaches
he takes, like giving a baker the list of things
(32:24):
that were prepared for their wedding just to get his
opinion on it. It seems very interesting. I hope I
can get a cut of it at some point. Generally,
in the twentieth century, Giosueldo has taken on the image
of a scary but romanticized mad genius, but historians note
that this take also tends to ignore a lot of
other composers who were working in Italy in the sixteenth
(32:46):
and early seventeenth centuries who were contributing their own efforts
at upending the previous musical trends. All of that, though,
tends to become eclipsed by the murder and all of
the wild details of Waldo's life, both true and embellished.
Carlos Jeswaldo.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Uh huh, He's fascinating and also like you can't see me,
but I'm making a face that's like, sir, I have
fun listener mail, since this is a little bit of
a dark episode. Oh great, This is from our listener Tamra,
whose subject line instantly grabbed me, which was I was
(33:28):
a Levi Strauss Jean Flipper.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Oh I saw this email. I was so excited about it.
It's so good. Tama Wrights, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
was just listening to your behind the scenes and you
mentioned how Levi Strauss keeps popping up in your episodes
and that a pair of five Oho ones had been
auctioned off for over five hundred thousand dollars. I don't
know about Atlanta, but in Portland, Oregon, in the mid nineties,
(33:51):
there were little travel campers off to the side of
main city streets with big signs on the side that
read we buy used Levi's I was sent out with
a small bag of change and a key to my trailer,
and I would wait for people to show up with
their levis. I'd examine them for condition and lowball them
as much as possible. I was the high man on
the auction process totem Pole. Clearly I listened to your
(34:14):
podcast on totem Poles. It was a pretty weird and
boring job, but it paid well. I sure wish smartphones
and podcasts are around then. I love your podcast so much.
I love how much I've learned from you, and we'll
continue to learn. You to do the Lord's work, and
I'm so grateful for all your hard work. Episodes on
science and especially astronomy are my favorite. Me too.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Attached our photos of my babies, Dino, the gray one
with the magnificent tail, and my little girl Mimosa because
of her big yellow eyes the color of my favorite
brunch beverage. These cats are so beautiful, and Mimosa is gorgeous,
and I always love a black cat. So thank you,
thank you, thank you for that email, Tamera.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
If people are gonna go look for an episode we
did about totem poles, I don't think that was us.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I don't think so either. It definitely wasn't you and me?
And I don't remember remember seeing it ever in the
back catalog. Yeah, so it might have been another another
stuff show, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I can imagine people saying I went and looked for
that and I couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure it's
not us.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
This happens to me all the time. Honestly. There will
be a thing that I'm like, I vividly remember coming
from one podcast I listen to, and it will turn
out to have been from a different podcast entirely, or
maybe even not even a podcast. Maybe it was on
NPR while I was in the car.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I don't know. It happens all the time. If you
would like to write to us and share pictures of
your babies and tell us stories of your jobs, buying
used Levi's or otherwise, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to
the show, and it's super duper easy. You can do
that in the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you're listening to
(35:50):
your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's Halloween season, which I love, and this episode is
kind of Halloween. But I feel like I need to
warn everybody who says I love your Halloween episodes that
this is not one of our more jovial Halloween ones.
We're going to cover a sixteenth century nobleman and composer
who is seen by a whole lot of people as
a monster in his own time, and that is Carlo Jesualdau.
(00:41):
If you are a music person, you probably know about him.
Gsoildo's madrigals are unique and captivating, and there are so
many stories of people hearing his work and then wanting
to know about the man who composed them, and that
man's story is intent. So heads up that this one
does contain some very intense domestic violence. I would say
(01:02):
that this is probably not one for younger history buffs.
I know every kid is different, but this one is
extra grizzly. Yeah, so if you think your kid might
be okay with it, maybe give it a preview.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Listen first yeah, Carlo Gesualdo, was born in fifteen sixty six.
His father was Don Fabrizio, and he had a wide
variety of noble titles Prince of Venosa, Duke of Cagiano,
Marquis of Lino, and Count of Cosa. Carlo was the
second son in the family, which had very influential members.
(01:37):
Carlo's uncle on his father's side was Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo,
who at one time was a candidate to be Pope.
His mother was Giroloma Boromeo, and on her side Carlo
had an uncle who had been instrumental in the counter Reformation.
His great uncle, through his mother was Pope Pious the Fourth.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We don't know a whole lot about Carlo's childhood. It's
presumed that he was born in the town of Geesualdo,
which is named for his family. The Geesualdos came to
power there in the eleven hundreds, and they built a
castle which remains today. But Carlo could have also been
born in Naples, or even in southern Italy, where the
family had property. He spent time in all of those
(02:21):
places in his youth. We do know that he had
a proclivity for and studied music with Stefano Felie and
Giovanni Demac. Sometimes there have been claims that he also
studied with Pomponia, but he and Carlo were actually very
close in age, so that claim seems very unlikely. He
(02:41):
was known to be, among other things, extremely good at
playing the lute, and the first musical composition we have
by Gisualdo is from fifteen eighty five, when he was
nineteen years old. In fifteen eighty six, Gesualdo, who was
then twenty, got married, and this was a bit of
a shift in plans for Don Fabrizio's second son, being
(03:03):
from a family with a lot of power in the
Catholic Church. As a second son, it was expected that
Carlo would follow that path. But then Carlo's older brother Luigi,
who was expected to inherit their father's titles and responsibilities,
died in fifteen eighty five at the age of twenty,
and that meant suddenly Carlo had to take on the
(03:24):
family mantle, and part of that included finding a wife,
getting married, making them heirs. His wife was Maria Davolos,
who was twenty four or twenty five, depending on the source.
Sometimes you will even see her listed as twenty one.
I will say, if you look up any of this,
all of the ages get a little blurry because there
are multiple different stories that put them at different places.
(03:47):
But the important thing here was that even though she
was still pretty young, Maria was a widow two times
over when she and Carlo married. She was also Carlo's
first cousin, and her first husband, Federico Karaza, reportedly died
during sexual intercourse with the notoriously beautiful Maria. Although that
is unsurprisingly not something that there's a lot of substantiation for,
(04:11):
it's highly possible that is a rumor that developed as
part of the Jeesualdo legend, because there are a lot
of rumors. Maria divorced her second husband, Alfonso di Giuliano,
after receiving a papal decree to do so, although you
will also see it written that he died the same
way as her first husband sometimes. Carlo and Maria's wedding
(04:31):
was a big, lavish affair, and the reception reportedly lasted
for several days. Their union also seems to have been
quite joyous, at least initially. Carlo and Maria had a son,
Don Emanuele, the year after they married, but theirs was
a marriage that started out happy and ended in a
horrific manner. A few years into the marriage, in fifteen ninety,
(04:56):
Jeesualdo discovered that Maria Davolos was having an affair, and
that it had been going on for a while and
most insulting of all, in his own home. We don't
know for certain how he discovered this information. One account
says that he was told about it by his friend
Don Julio, who incidentally had actually been trying to start
(05:18):
his own romance with Maria himself, but had been rebuked,
and in that version of the story, Maria and her
paramour put their romance on hold for a while, knowing
that they had been found out. That paramour was Fabrizio Carafa,
the Duke of Andrea. Fabrizio, like Maria, was by all accounts,
just incredibly attractive, as well as being quite courteous and
(05:40):
very charming. We don't know, though, if the story of
them knowing that Carlo had found out their secret is true.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Carlo and his friends or maybe his servants, again depending
on the source, set a trap for the lovers, and
when they knew that they were going to be alone together,
set upon them He had told Maria that he was
leaving for an overnight hunting trip, and he expected she
would take advantage of his absence to invite her lover
(06:08):
to spend the night. This she apparently did, but Gisualdo
did not actually leave Naples. He went to a friend's
house nearby, and then he returned home at midnight. Now
this is one version of the story. Hunting comes up
again in a moment, and this is where things are
going to start to get grizzly. So you can just
skip ahead a little if you'd like, maybe a lot.
(06:33):
The day after the alleged hunting trip, the Gesualdou apartment
was inspected by a group of men who had been
given that task by the city of Naples and the church.
And that is because there were dead bodies in it,
and those had been reported by the house staff. It
is from those officials' accounts of the scene that we
know what happened. The body of Fabrizio Carafa was found dead,
(06:58):
wearing a woman's night dress presumed Maria's. He had been
stabbed repeatedly all over his body and also shot twice,
once threw his arm and into his chest, and another
time in the head because there were cuts found on
the floor underneath cut off his body. It was determined
that he had been stabbed with swords multiple times while
(07:19):
lying prone. Maria had also been murdered. Her body was
on the bed, also wearing a nightgown. Her throat was slit,
and she too had been stabbed repeatedly, and the large,
heavy door to the room had been smashed in such
a way that it could no longer close. After the
investigators made their initial round of observations, two coffins were
(07:43):
brought to the rooms. Fabrizio's body was washed and then
examined more closely. Once blood wasn't obscuring all of the injuries.
His body was then dressed in black silk breeches and
a black velvet jerkin and placed into one of the coffins.
All of this was in accordance of the wishes of
(08:04):
his family, Maria's and the Marquisess DeVico arrived to prepare
and dress Maria's body with the aid of the servants,
and then that body was then taken to the Church
of San Domenico.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
When a court assembled by the church questioned witnesses, they
got the story that Jeesualdo had led his accomplices into
the apartment, yelling that he would not be made a cuckold.
He also was seen by witnesses coming out of the
room covered in blood, saying he did not believe they
were dead, and going back in. Authorities first question Sylvia Albana,
(08:40):
a woman of twenty who had been Maria's maid. She
told investigators that she had been asked by Maria to
bring her an extra nightgown the evening of the murders.
Maria had claimed that hers was sweaty. The gown Sylvia
described bringing match the details of the one that Fabrizio
had been wearing when he was killed. She was also
(09:01):
told to leave the door unlocked and to only go
into Maria's chambers if she was specifically called for. After this,
Sylvia then went to her room and fell asleep, and
she reported being awakened by noise in the middle of
the night. The door to her room was thrown open
and she saw three men she couldn't identify passing through
the hall. She also saw Carlo Josualdo enter the house
(09:25):
in a rage, and she eventually hid under the bed
until the whole thing was over and Joswaldo's personal attendant
told her it was safe to come out and that
the two victims were dead.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Pietro Bardatti, who was Carlo's personal assistant, was the person
who had told Sylvia that it was safe to come
out and was the next to testify. He had worked
for the family for twenty eight years, and his testimony
mentions hunting, but that it was something that Carlo said
he was going to do. When he got up in
(09:56):
his own room and got dressed just before the murders,
he told Pietro to get two torches and pulled out
several weapons, including a sword, a dagger, and a gun.
Pietro stated that Carlo said, as he went up the stairs, quote,
I am going to massacre the Duke of Andrea and
the strumpet Donna Maria. Gesualdo was joined by three other
(10:18):
armed men. They all entered Maria's room together. Pietro stayed
outside and reported that he heard firearms discharged, but none
of what the men had said. It was his testimony
that includes Gesualdo coming out and saying that he didn't
think the pair were dead before stabbing them. Several additional times.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, I mentioned I included in the outline and didn't
really clarify for Tracy to read that. I wanted to
include that note that Carlo wakes up and says he's
going hunting, because that seems like it may have gotten
confused in a translation or the record, because the one
version says he's going hunting for them, and in the
(11:01):
other he tells his attendant, I'm going hunting, meaning he
is going to kill these people, and I think that
may have gotten a little bit fuzzy somewhere along the line.
But coming up, we are going to talk about the
aftermath of this brutal event. But first let's just take
a little breath and pause, and we'll have a sponsor break.
(11:30):
Here's the thing. The church determined that this double murder
was technically legal. This was considered a valid form of
revenge carried out by an aristocratic husband on a spouse
who was dishonoring him and his family's name, so it
was an honor killing. There were no legal charges, and
(11:51):
Geoswaldo faced no legal repercussions whatsoever, despite the manner of
the murder having a lot of extraneous violence and possibly
even torture.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
One of the issues that people had with the murder,
even though under the laws as Waldo was acting acceptably,
was that he had accomplices. Normally, an honor killing of
this nature was something that the wronged person was expected
to do himself. So though the church came to the
conclusion that he was justified in killing Maria and Fabrizio,
(12:24):
he had, in the eyes of the community, done something
that was considered wrong in terms of the accepted noble
etiquette of the day.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And though there were no ramifications in a court of law,
Josualdo's reputation did become quite tarnished in the court of
public opinion. The absolutely brutal details of the murder scene
were also reported all over Naples and beyond. Everyone was
eager to learn all of the horrific specifics, and some
of the more tabloid papers started to exaggerate even beyond
(12:56):
the already intense descriptions of the scene, and so soon
Carlow took on this almost mythic image, like a contemporary
wealthy boogeyman who was walking among the people of the city.
A lot of the fake details that were reported were
downright outlandish. Some sounded believable for a dramatic revenge killing.
(13:17):
For instance, that the dead lover's genitalia had been mutilated,
but other accounts emerged that described as Waldo also murdering
a baby that the pair had secretly had together, and
him leaving their corpses out in public to rot so
that everyone could see them. The list really goes on
and on, and there's no substantiation for any of these details,
(13:40):
but grizly gossip is really hard for people to resist,
so these stories were repeated over and over. There's even
one version of the story where Maria basically surprises just
Waldo with an infant son, and he only thinks that
it looks like Fabrisa and winds up killing his own child.
(14:03):
Whether there was ever an actual infanticide is really difficult
to discern. Yeah, it's told so many different ways in
so many different stories, and there's never any mention of
Maria having been pregnant, so it's like what that, I
don't really know. Once the church cleared Giswaldo of wrongdoing, though,
(14:27):
he left Naples no doubt fearing that he might become
a victim himself, particularly by either of his victim's families.
That had even more weight though than you might imagine,
because all three of the families involved were deeply connected
to one another, so in his decision to kill Maria
and Fabrizio Geoswaldo was also destroying generations of goodwill among
(14:50):
the most powerful families in Naples. And after leaving the city,
he moved about eighty five kilometers east to the town
of Goswaldo, where his family was from. We said earlier
They had a castle there, and Carlo moved in.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
In fifteen ninety one, the year after the murders. Gisualdo's
father died. So as he was becoming a villainous figure
to all of Naples, he was also under pressure to
marry again. He also became, through this inheritance, one of
the richest men in Italy, but it was in his
(15:24):
and his family's best interest to find a wealthy and
well connected wife who would further bolster his standing. He
found that woman in Ferraro, which is roughly six hundred
and twenty kilometers north of Naples. He made his way
to northern Italy with a friend, Count Fontanelli. Fontinelli kept
a journal of these travels and their stops along the way.
(15:45):
In Florence in Rome, they note that Gesualdo carried his
first two books of madrigals with him on the journey,
because Ferrero was a music city. In fifteen ninety four,
Carlo married Eleonora Deste, noble woman who was from Ferrara,
and in a classic case of double standards, Carlo was
(16:06):
not faithful to Eleonora. He kind of wasn't all that
interested in his marriage in general. But Eleonora was closely
related to Alfonso, the second Deeste, Duke of Ferrara. Some
sources call her.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
The Duke's cousin and some say that she was his sister,
but regardless, marrying her put Shoswaldo at the center of
the Ferrara music scene, which was hopping at the time,
and this is the period where he published his first
madrigals and his work as a composer became his focus.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
He became close friends with a composer Luzzasco Luzzaski and Ferira.
Earlier in the sixteenth century, a composer named Nikola Vicentino
had invented an instrument known as the archchamblo, and Luzzatski
was one of the few people who could play it.
This was like a piano keyboard, but instead of twelve
keys assigned to each Ocdavit, he had thirty one, and
(17:01):
so this allowed music to be composed in microtnes. This
instrument clearly fascinated Gezwaldo. Honestly, it sounds fascinating to me.
He had one of his own when he died. Writing
for The New Yorker in twenty eleven, Alex Ross writes
of this instrument, quote, to modern ears, its harmonies can
(17:21):
sound either exceptionally pure or exceptionally weird, or both at once.
Having read a number of commentaries on jus Waldo's work,
the same sentiment as echoed about this.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
During his time in Ferrara, Joswalde has said to have
talked everyone's ear off about his music, and he was
always eager to show people the scores he had written.
He was among his fellow nobles, but he was unique
in his position as an artist. He was so rich
that he could write exclusively for himself. He needed no patrons.
(17:56):
He could also pay to publish his work. He didn't
need any connection help there either, and he seemed to
recognize this privilege to some degree, because he decided having
it meant that he could seek to make compositions that
were completely new.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
After two years in Ferrara, Gesualdo moved back to Naples
with the intention that he was done with travel forever
and he would only move between his home in Naples
and the family castle edge. As Waldo Alfonso the second
died that year, and since he had no heir, the
wife's family did not retain their power, Ferrara became a
(18:33):
papal duchy. There really wasn't any reason to stay there
as far as Gesualdo was concerned. He had been in
love with Alfonso the Second's court full of artists, and
without that he could just diseasily go home and compose
music there.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
He also decided that he would fund the construction of
a monastery at the family seat, and that's the Convento
de Cappuccini. It's believed that this was part of an
effort on his part to make up for the murders
of fifteen ninety. He was feeling a little bit of
guilt in his later years. The altarpiece of the chapel,
which Jesualdo commissioned, features him in the image. That image
(19:12):
is focused on Christ pardoning people for their sins, and
Gisualdo is shown kneeling in the lower left of the
image showing his penitence.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So there's more weird stuff to come, but before we
get to that, we will hear from the sponsors that
keep the show going.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
In fifteen ninety seven, Eleonora gave birth to a son,
so at that point Carlo had two heirs. The pair
also reportedly had two daughters, but there's not a whole
lot of information about them. But his son with Desta
died as a toddler in sixteen hundred, and that death,
combined with his ongoing regret about the murders of fifteen
(19:58):
ninety catalyzed a downward spiral for Schisweldo. After that, his
only source of comfort was his music. Carlo became so
obsessed with his music that apparently he just could not
cope with anything else. He was miserable when he wasn't composing,
but not just sullen or unhappy. He's described as being
(20:22):
so depressed and tortured in his non music life that
he started to dabble in distraction behaviors that were taboo. Reportedly,
he got involved with sadomasochism and hired a staff of
between ten and twelve men to live in his home,
with their sole purpose being to.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Whip and abuse him. He reportedly wanted to be whipped
three times a day. He said to have only smiled
during these sessions, and eventually developed a psychological tick in
which he could only use the bathroom if he was
being whipped. In sixteen oh three, his wife Eleonora filed
a suit again aint Joswaldo's mistress. Perhaps she may have
(21:04):
just had some meetings with people that resulted in it
and not actually taken a legal action. There was apparently
a trial. Some accounts attribute that origin to his wife,
others do not. But the important thing is two women
who lived in Joswaldo's home were accused of witchcraft or sorcery.
Their names were Aurelia Derrico and Poli Sandra Pezzella, and
(21:27):
one of them confessed under torture. Her testimony is graphic
and intense, and it includes descriptions of giving Joswaldo potions
and meals that included her bodily fluids as ingredients. This
is definitely not for the squeamish among our listeners. I
was initially going to leave it out, but there are
details that showed just how much misinformation was floating about
(21:51):
during this time about basic medical facts. So I want
to include it because it also informs how kind of
embellished his story gets. But we are not even going
to get into the grossest parts. And still, if you're squeamish,
this next section may not.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Be for you.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Several witnesses stated that Aurelia and Carlo had been involved
on and off for a decade, but that he had
been ignoring her since he married his second wife. She
decided that she would make him a love potion. Several
witnesses stated that she had given Josualdo her menstrual blood
in these potions. Four physicians testified that menstrual blood is
(22:32):
poisonous and that it would kill a man if he
wasn't given a treatment or an antidote. They also said
that they felt he was afflicted with something supernatural.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Other witnesses in the case stated that Aurelia had meetings
with a man named Antonio Paallla of Montemarano, who was
known to be a sorcerer. Aurelia apparently told several people
that she didn't give Carlo the blood to hurt him.
She wanted him to have to come back to her
to be healed.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Both women were found guilty and their sentence was house
arrest in Giswaldo's castle. This was not something that he wanted.
He actually lobbied for the women to be hanged, but
they stayed at the castle from the time of the sentencing,
at least until sixteen oh seven, when they kind of
vanished from any of the records. In sixteen oh eight,
(23:25):
Carlo and Eleanora separated. Her brothers actually petitioned the church
for Eleonora to be granted a divorce. Some accounts say
that that was granted by the church, but Eleonora did
not go through with it. There have been a variety
of contradictory accounts over the years, some suggesting she actually
did leave and live the rest of her life away
(23:46):
from him, but that doesn't appear to have really been
the case. In sixteen thirteen, Giswaldo's first son, who was
an adult at the age of twenty seven, died after
falling from a horse. He is said to have detested
his father, and he had no sons himself, only daughters.
Carlo Gesualdo died two weeks later, on September eighth, sixteen thirteen,
(24:10):
at the age of forty seven. He reportedly died during
one of his requested beatings, with no heirs to the
family remaining, the Gezualdo line ended. Folklore versions of this
story have attributed the end of the family lineage to
some kind of curse that Carlo brought upon himself when
he murdered his wife and her paramour.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Goswaldo's musical legacy, like his life, is somewhat complicated. His
work is lauded by a lot of people as being
far ahead of its time, and it's sometimes called a
sort of precursor to Wagner. Wagner didn't compose his striking
works until two hundred and fifty years later. Joswaldo's madrigals,
in particular feature harmonies that are often described as being
(24:56):
sort of unsettling. Additionally, according to a lot of musicians,
they are very hard to perform. There are in total
six books of madrigals which feature more than one hundred
and forty pieces of music. That's all in total, and
those constitute the majority of his work. Madrigals are compositions
exclusively for voice. There's no instrumental accompaniment. They are typically
(25:21):
based on secular texts. The vast majority of just Waldo's
madrigals are for five voices. These works are characterized by
the use of chromaticism, which uses a lot of half
tone steps. By contrasts in a diatonic scale, which you
might remember from music classes as do re Mi fa
sol Latido, uses five whole steps and two half steps
(25:44):
for a total of eight tones per octave. The chromatic
scale uses twelve, and in very simple terms, those extra
five half steps are why just Waldo's music is often
described as kind of eerie, particularly when he composes harmonies
of five voices and several of them are only a
half step apart. This is a very simplistic explanation. My
(26:10):
grasp of music theory is quite tenuous, and I'm frank
about that, but yeah, I did spend a lot of
time watching videos about music theory. So per wb Ober,
writing in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of
Medicine in nineteen seventy three, quote Gswaldo's expressive effects are
achieved by slow progressions of chromatic chords and short, piercing
(26:35):
cries of melody, which express pain, suffering, and thoughts of death.
They alternate with brilliant contrapuntal passages to match words of joy, love,
or any sort of active movement. The first two books
of Gswaldo's compositions are the most like his contemporaries. They
(26:55):
work from existing poetry, althoughos Waldo's arrangements based on that
poetry are unlike any of the other composers writing at
the time. In his third book, he starts to mingle
original writing into the poetry, and then the last three
books of his madrigals all use entirely original texts. We
don't know if Carlo Jesualdo wrote the text or commissioned it,
(27:18):
but none of it appears to have existed before he
published his books, and their themes are very dark. They
reference death, sadness, and pain throughout, and this has led
to some people interpreting the last two books in particular
as being sort of an autobiography for the composer. His
original verses, when translated, often reference finding joy in pain.
(27:43):
One text translated into English reads quote words sweet and dear,
you make me suffer, but the wound in my heart
feels not pain, but only delight. Another says the same sentiment, quote, indeed,
my pains make me joyful. But he was not the
only composer using dark themes for madrigals. Many composers of
(28:04):
the time used the poems of Gesualdo's friend Torcado Tasso,
who wrote of the Willingness to suffer quote the Wrath
of a Beautiful Hand. Tasso and Carlo met in fifteen
eighty eight, and they remained friends for the next seven years.
Tasso died in fifteen ninety five, but in that time
he dedicated three sonnets to Jusualdo. So while other composers
(28:29):
may have used Tasso's words, Carlo it seemed, had sort
of the inside track when it came to the themes
that the poet wrote about. Jozwaldo also wrote three books
of sacred music. In sixteen eleven, he published a cycle
of prayers which is commonly called Tenebre Responsoria. It is
a series of pieces intended to be sung during Holy Week,
(28:51):
the week before Easter, and the prayers that he uses
are the ones from the Passion that tell the story
of Christ's life. Numerous essays and articles have been written
about whether people remain fascinated with Jezualdo's work because of
his turbulent and violent life, or if it's indeed something
special and unique on its own. Regarding his mental state,
(29:15):
it's easy to make assumptions based on the information that
we have. Once again, writing in nineteen seventy three, W. B. Ober,
who was a historian and pathologist, wrote of using modern
analysis to Diagnoseswaldo quote. Having examined Juswalder's life and glanced
into his workshop, can we now construct an explanation perforce?
(29:36):
Any attempt at psychobiography at a removal of three and
one half centuries has severe limitations. Important details are lacking,
and a sequential reconstruction of events cannot be attempted. Nor
is a review.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Of such data as are known, and an examination of
musical materials any sort of substitute for a doctor patient
confrontation during which so much material information is exchanged. When
events can be put into perspective and nuances of emotional
valence attached to them, then re examined and corrected in
(30:11):
the light of further discussion, any schema we construct will
be merely a broad outline, a framework upon which to
rest the case. Gizwalda was working during the period when
Mannerism dominated the music scene of Italy. In its time,
mannerism was kind of a counter to the Renaissance romance
(30:32):
and humanism that came before it. Whereas humanism had emphasized
emotion and feeling, mannerism emphasized technique. And that's a very
broad strokes way to talk about it. Obviously, as art
there is an emotional component, and there actually are a
lot of debates about how the term mannerism should actually
be used specifically in the music world. But it does
(30:54):
give some context to the descriptions of Goswaldo's music as
being difficult to perform. That it's not about him being
a madman or a psychopath or anything to do with
his mental and emotional health. He was as a composer
deliberately trying to create complex and difficult things. There have
been musicians and artists in recent centuries who have become
(31:16):
almost obsessed with Gisualdo. Writer Aldous Huxley was transfixed by him.
Igor Stravinsky often cited Giswaldo as an important influence and
called him quote one of the most personal creators ever
born to my art. Stravinsky hands copied several of Joswaldo's
madicals and also wrote a piece named for him, Monumentum
(31:40):
pro gus Waldo. Werner Herzog too became captivated by Gezuwaldo's
story and music, and in nineteen ninety five made a
TV movie that's part documentary, part speculative ghost story about
Gisualdo and Maria called Zezualdo Death for Five Voices. One
of the character who hers sort of interviews is the
(32:02):
ghost of Maria, played by an opera singer with vibrant
red hair in a full length dress with a revealing
low cut bodice. Yeah, there's some I only got to
see the trailer for that because it is not readily
available nowadays. But there are some kind of interesting approaches
he takes, like giving a baker the list of things
(32:24):
that were prepared for their wedding just to get his
opinion on it. It seems very interesting. I hope I
can get a cut of it at some point. Generally,
in the twentieth century, Giosueldo has taken on the image
of a scary but romanticized mad genius, but historians note
that this take also tends to ignore a lot of
other composers who were working in Italy in the sixteenth
(32:46):
and early seventeenth centuries who were contributing their own efforts
at upending the previous musical trends. All of that, though,
tends to become eclipsed by the murder and all of
the wild details of Waldo's life, both true and embellished.
Carlos Jeswaldo.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Uh huh, He's fascinating and also like you can't see me,
but I'm making a face that's like, sir, I have
fun listener mail, since this is a little bit of
a dark episode. Oh great, This is from our listener Tamra,
whose subject line instantly grabbed me, which was I was
(33:28):
a Levi Strauss Jean Flipper.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Oh I saw this email. I was so excited about it.
It's so good. Tama Wrights, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I
was just listening to your behind the scenes and you
mentioned how Levi Strauss keeps popping up in your episodes
and that a pair of five Oho ones had been
auctioned off for over five hundred thousand dollars. I don't
know about Atlanta, but in Portland, Oregon, in the mid nineties,
(33:51):
there were little travel campers off to the side of
main city streets with big signs on the side that
read we buy used Levi's I was sent out with
a small bag of change and a key to my trailer,
and I would wait for people to show up with
their levis. I'd examine them for condition and lowball them
as much as possible. I was the high man on
the auction process totem Pole. Clearly I listened to your
(34:14):
podcast on totem Poles. It was a pretty weird and
boring job, but it paid well. I sure wish smartphones
and podcasts are around then. I love your podcast so much.
I love how much I've learned from you, and we'll
continue to learn. You to do the Lord's work, and
I'm so grateful for all your hard work. Episodes on
science and especially astronomy are my favorite. Me too.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Attached our photos of my babies, Dino, the gray one
with the magnificent tail, and my little girl Mimosa because
of her big yellow eyes the color of my favorite
brunch beverage. These cats are so beautiful, and Mimosa is gorgeous,
and I always love a black cat. So thank you,
thank you, thank you for that email, Tamera.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
If people are gonna go look for an episode we
did about totem poles, I don't think that was us.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I don't think so either. It definitely wasn't you and me?
And I don't remember remember seeing it ever in the
back catalog. Yeah, so it might have been another another
stuff show, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I can imagine people saying I went and looked for
that and I couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure it's
not us.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
This happens to me all the time. Honestly. There will
be a thing that I'm like, I vividly remember coming
from one podcast I listen to, and it will turn
out to have been from a different podcast entirely, or
maybe even not even a podcast. Maybe it was on
NPR while I was in the car.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I don't know. It happens all the time. If you
would like to write to us and share pictures of
your babies and tell us stories of your jobs, buying
used Levi's or otherwise, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to
the show, and it's super duper easy. You can do
that in the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you're listening to
(35:50):
your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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