Carlo Gesualdo – Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday
Maundy Thursday of Holy Week is responsible for inspiring some of the most emotionally powerful and iconic works of art ever made, chief amongst them Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. But there are countless incredible musical depictions to choose from too, not least Carlo Gesualdo’s setting of the Tenebrae Responsories.
Gesualdo is as famous for his music and he is infamous for murdering his wife and her lover. He was born in 1560, his mother a niece of Pope Pius IV who died when Gesualdo was only seven years old. He was then sent off to join the Jesuits in Rome, but when his older brother Luigi died, he returned home to become the next Prince of Venosa, marrying his first cousin Maria d’Avalos shortly after. She soon began an affair, which Gesualdo brought to a gruesome end after news of it spread, murdering them both in bed having caught them in flagrante.
Many have romanticised the link between his horrific act of murder and his tortured-sounding music. It has certainly intrigued many, and inspired plays, operas, musical works, and films, including Werner Herzog’s weird documentary, Death for Five Voices.
For a Prince, Gesualdo was a prolific composer, writing six books of madrigals, a form which typically sets secular texts about love, death, pain, and suffering to intricate and elaborate musical textures. He applied this same approach to sacred works (madrigali spirituali), so there is a freeness in the structure that allows for incredible levels of expression that he wouldn’t have gotten away with had he been writing as an employed composer. Comparing his settings of the Tenebrae Responsories to those of his contemporaries writing for the church, his use of jarring dissonance and juxtaposed harmonies as he expresses Jesus’s passion, is incredibly striking.
Gesualdo’s music is amongst the most shocking in the whole canon of Western art music. His word-painting is more vivid and his harmonic shifts more twisted and uncomfortable than any composer’s for another 300 years. It’s infinitely rich, intoxicating music, and it wouldn’t do to listen to it every day, much like you wouldn’t eat foie gras with truffles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But if you are to listen to it once, make it today.
