Agostino Agresta
Encyclopedia
Agostino Agresta was a Neapolitan
composer working at the beginning of the 17th century, who can be seen as having been strongly influenced by Carlo Gesualdo
. Agresta's only known surviving works are unaccompanied madrigals, including a complete book of six-voice pieces.
He and his elder brother Giovanni Antonio are listed together in the third book of Scipione Cerreto’s 1601 Della prattica musicale as excellent composers operating in Naples ('Compositori eccellenti della Città di Napoli, che oggi vivono'); however, no works by Giovanni Antonio survive. And a 1664 work by the Neapolitan scholar Camillo Tutini lists him as a madrigalist in a section devoted to promoting the cultural claims of Naples against Rome (Larson 1985: 916–919).
and Capitanata (today the province of Foggia) but was prosecuted in 1607 for extortion and corruption (Larson 1985: 758); his status in 1617 is unknown.
Agresta's relationship to him is similarly unclear, although Larson has speculated (1985: 758) that the composer may have been employed by Salazar as a tutor for his children, in a similar capacity to that of his brother in the household of the Count of Roccella (the records of the Banco Mari, which are contained in the Archivio di Stato in Naples, list a payment made to Giovanni Antonio Agresta on 18 March 1598).
While composers in the northern Italian peninsula were beginning to move away from what was regarded as the old-fashioned polyphonic madrigal without continuo, Naples remained the most important centre for its composition and publication. In this context, Agresta's Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo occupies an important position, as during the first 30 years of the 17th century only two books of six-part unaccompanied madrigals were published in Naples: Agresta's and Gesualdo's posthumous collection of 1626 (of which only the Quinto part-book survives). While it is impossible to speculate with any accuracy on the basis of such scant evidence, Larson suggests that Agresta's madrigals may reveal something of the style of Gesualdo’s incomplete book (2001).
Watkins labels Agresta a minor figure among those Neapolitan composers who were influenced by Gesualdo, but suggests that posterity's opinion of him (and others) might well be different if more of his works had survived (1991: 227–228). Larson goes further and declares that Agresta 'occasionally surpassed (Gesualdo) in the degree of slow chromatic durezze e ligature and diatonic, scalar points of imitation in quavers and semiquavers', claiming that 'the latter are usually longer and more lively and intricate than Gesualdo's' (2001).
The inclusion of a piece by Agresta in the Borchgrevinck collection of 1606 raises many questions. Melchior Borchgrevinck
was court organist to King Christian IV of Denmark
, and in 1599 led a party of Danish musicians to Venice
to study with Giovanni Gabrieli
, returning there in the winter of 1601–2. He was greatly respected by his contemporaries, being praised by Orazio Vecchi
in the dedication to Christian IV of Le veglie di Siena (1604), who also added that Gabrieli considered Borchgrevinck 'one of the most outstanding musicians of our time' (Lewis 2005: 372).
The two volumes of Giardino novo (the first appeared in 1605, dedicated to Christian IV) included madrigals by some of the most popular Italian composers of the day, including Claudio Monteverdi
, Benedetto Pallavicino
and Giaches de Wert
, as well as Borchgrevinck and other Danish composers. However, there are a number of works by composers who may not unfairly be deemed minor figures, including Giovanni Paolo Nodari, Curtio Valcampi and Grisostomo Rubiconi, and which Lewis suggests may not previously have been printed (2005: 373).
Apart from 'Caro dolce ben mio', all Agresta's works were published in Naples, and there is no record of him ever having worked or travelled away from Naples, thus seemingly making him very much a southern Italian composer. How then did his works find their way north to Venice, and why was he considered a composer of sufficient stature to be included in a volume of works dedicated, in a politically-charged, to King James I of England
? (Lewis 2000: 10) While it was not unusual for Neapolitan composers to have their works printed in Venice (see Larson 1985: 873–882 for a list of such works), the absence of any other evidence that links Agresta to Venice makes it hard to gauge his status and reputation during his lifetime.
There are two other references to Agresta which appear not to have been noted by other authors. In Schofield and Dart
's article describing the contents of the British Library manuscript now known as Egerton MS 3665, believed to have been compiled by Francis Tregian
(son of the more famous Catholic exile of the same name
), Agresta is listed among the composer represented in the selection of over 700 Italian madrigals included in the manuscript; it is implied in the article, although not clearly, that Agresta’s contribution comes from his Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (Schofield and Dart 1951: 213–214).
In the mid-1990s Alfred Noe completed a comprehensive study of the contents of the library of Albert Fugger (of the famous Augsburg banking family), which was purchased by Mathias Mauchter in 1655 for Emperor Ferdinand III and now forms part of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
in Vienna
.
In the catalogue made by Mauchter at the time of purchase, there is an entry on the last page of the music section which reads 'Il Primo lib.° de Madrigali a 5. di Agostino Agresta' (Noe 1994: 650). No collection of five-part madrigals by Agresta survives, nor any reference to one elsewhere. However, Noe identifies this volume as Agresta’s 1617 Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (1997: 617) from its contents, regarding the 'a 5' as a copyist's mistake.
in Paris, the other in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella
in Naples; both are in good condition, and each is identical to the other. The print is on the large part free from errors.
Numbers 1 to 8 are written in an 'ordinary' clef combination (Canto and Sesto in C1 clef, Alto in C3 clef, Tenore and Quinto in C4, and Basso in F4), while numbers 9 to 15 are written in 'high' clefs (Canto and Sesto in G2, Alto in C2, Tenore and Quinto in C3, and Basso in F3 – commonly known as chiavette), suggesting downwards transposition.
If one follows Adriano Banchieri
's suggestion in his 1614 Cartella musicale of transposing pieces written in chiavette down by a perfect 4th when the printed key signature contains one flat and by a perfect 5th when it contains no flats, the transposed ranges of the individual voice parts of numbers 9 to 15 all become rather lower than the ranges of numbers 1 to 8. Depending on the singers involved in a performance, I suggest a downwards transposition of either a tone or a minor 3rd for numbers 9 to 15; however, all pieces are presented here in their original keys.
The last piece in the collection, 'Io penso e nel pensar' is unusual in many ways. The anonymous poem is a dense play on the words 'penso' ('I think'), 'pensar' ('to think') and 'pensier' ('thought'); most striking is its use of frequently changing time signatures, which are different in each part, including such proportions as 1:10, 14:6, 6:5 and 3:7. Larson describes it as 'an intellectual challenge to virtuoso singers' (2001), while Watkins suggests that its 'novel and highly mannered proportional complexities ... while appearing theoretical as well as anachronistic, may well be an attempt by the composer to suggest expressive tempo variability' (1991: 228).
and two by Giovanni Battista Guarini
(plus one other, number 7, which is attributed to Guarini); there are four anonymous poems.
Numbers 6, 8 and 13 are the only settings of their poems recorded in Il nuovo Vogel, while the text of number 15 (discussed above) is set elsewhere only by Francesco Mazza, in his own first book of six-part madrigals published in Venice in 1590. (A slightly different version of the poem was set by Jéhan Gero in the collection published by Costanzo Festa
in 1541 and subsequently in Gero’s own collection of 1543.)
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
composer working at the beginning of the 17th century, who can be seen as having been strongly influenced by Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
. Agresta's only known surviving works are unaccompanied madrigals, including a complete book of six-voice pieces.
Biography
Frustratingly little is known about the life and career of Agresta, including neither the circumstances of his birth or death. Apart from his works (discussed below), there are only two contemporary or near-contemporary references to him.He and his elder brother Giovanni Antonio are listed together in the third book of Scipione Cerreto’s 1601 Della prattica musicale as excellent composers operating in Naples ('Compositori eccellenti della Città di Napoli, che oggi vivono'); however, no works by Giovanni Antonio survive. And a 1664 work by the Neapolitan scholar Camillo Tutini lists him as a madrigalist in a section devoted to promoting the cultural claims of Naples against Rome (Larson 1985: 916–919).
Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (1617)
Agresta's only surviving book of madrigals, Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo, was published in Naples in 1617 by Costantino Vitale, and dedicated to Don Roderico di Salazar. Salazar had been commissioner of contraband in the provinces of Terra di BariTerra di Bari
The Terra di Bari , in antiquity Peucetia and in the Middle Ages Ager Barianus , is the region around Bari in Apulia. Historically it was one of the justiciarships of the Kingdom of Sicily and later Naples. It became a province in the Two Sicilies. Today it is a part of the Province of Bari in Italy...
and Capitanata (today the province of Foggia) but was prosecuted in 1607 for extortion and corruption (Larson 1985: 758); his status in 1617 is unknown.
Agresta's relationship to him is similarly unclear, although Larson has speculated (1985: 758) that the composer may have been employed by Salazar as a tutor for his children, in a similar capacity to that of his brother in the household of the Count of Roccella (the records of the Banco Mari, which are contained in the Archivio di Stato in Naples, list a payment made to Giovanni Antonio Agresta on 18 March 1598).
While composers in the northern Italian peninsula were beginning to move away from what was regarded as the old-fashioned polyphonic madrigal without continuo, Naples remained the most important centre for its composition and publication. In this context, Agresta's Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo occupies an important position, as during the first 30 years of the 17th century only two books of six-part unaccompanied madrigals were published in Naples: Agresta's and Gesualdo's posthumous collection of 1626 (of which only the Quinto part-book survives). While it is impossible to speculate with any accuracy on the basis of such scant evidence, Larson suggests that Agresta's madrigals may reveal something of the style of Gesualdo’s incomplete book (2001).
Watkins labels Agresta a minor figure among those Neapolitan composers who were influenced by Gesualdo, but suggests that posterity's opinion of him (and others) might well be different if more of his works had survived (1991: 227–228). Larson goes further and declares that Agresta 'occasionally surpassed (Gesualdo) in the degree of slow chromatic durezze e ligature and diatonic, scalar points of imitation in quavers and semiquavers', claiming that 'the latter are usually longer and more lively and intricate than Gesualdo's' (2001).
Agresta's other madrigals
Apart from the Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo, three other madrigals identified as being by Agresta survive, all for five voices:- 'Io mi sento morir', in Giovanni Vincenzo Macedonio di Mutio's Il secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, published in Naples in 1606 by Giovanni Giacomo Carlino. An incomplete and damaged set of part-books exists in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella in Naples (missing Quinto, incomplete Soprano).
- 'Caro dolce ben mio', in Giardino novo bellissimo di varii fiori musicali scieltissimi il secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci raccolti per Melchior Borchgrevinck organista del serenissimo re di Danemarcka, published in Copenhagen in 1606 by Heinrich Waltkirch (RISMRism-References:rism- "ree-ss-mm" loldefenition- Rism is when a noob tries to post a thread on a forum trying to sell RIMS. But since the OP does not have enough post to sell on said forum, his thread will be locked but he will get flammed in the mean time...
16065), which survives complete in the British Library, London, and incomplete (Soprano and Alto part-books only) in the Landesbibliothek Kassel. (This madrigal has previously been edited and published in Glahn 1983.)
- 'Io ard'e moro, Donna', in Teatro de madrigali a cinque voci. De diversi eccellentiss. musici napolitani (RISMRism-References:rism- "ree-ss-mm" loldefenition- Rism is when a noob tries to post a thread on a forum trying to sell RIMS. But since the OP does not have enough post to sell on said forum, his thread will be locked but he will get flammed in the mean time...
160916), published in Naples in 1609 by Giovanni Battista Gargano and Lucretio Nucci. The only surviving copy of this is in the Landesbibliothek Kassel, with an incomplete Quinto part.
The inclusion of a piece by Agresta in the Borchgrevinck collection of 1606 raises many questions. Melchior Borchgrevinck
Melchior Borchgrevinck
Melchior Borchgrevinck was a Dutch-Danish musician, composer, and court Kapellmeister. He was born to Bonaventura Borchgrevinck, a Dutch-Danish musician and court Kapellmeister...
was court organist to King Christian IV of Denmark
Christian IV of Denmark
Christian IV was the king of Denmark-Norway from 1588 until his death. With a reign of more than 59 years, he is the longest-reigning monarch of Denmark, and he is frequently remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious and proactive Danish kings, having initiated many reforms and projects...
, and in 1599 led a party of Danish musicians to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
to study with Giovanni Gabrieli
Giovanni Gabrieli
Giovanni Gabrieli was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance to Baroque idioms.-Biography:Gabrieli was born in Venice...
, returning there in the winter of 1601–2. He was greatly respected by his contemporaries, being praised by Orazio Vecchi
Orazio Vecchi
Orazio Vecchi was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance. He is most famous for his madrigal comedies, particularly L'Amfiparnaso.- Life :...
in the dedication to Christian IV of Le veglie di Siena (1604), who also added that Gabrieli considered Borchgrevinck 'one of the most outstanding musicians of our time' (Lewis 2005: 372).
The two volumes of Giardino novo (the first appeared in 1605, dedicated to Christian IV) included madrigals by some of the most popular Italian composers of the day, including Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, Benedetto Pallavicino
Benedetto Pallavicino
Benedetto Pallavicino was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance. A prolific composer of madrigals, he was resident at the Gonzaga court of Mantua in the 1590s, where he was a close associate of Giaches de Wert, and a competitor of his considerably more famous contemporary...
and Giaches de Wert
Giaches de Wert
Giaches de Wert was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal...
, as well as Borchgrevinck and other Danish composers. However, there are a number of works by composers who may not unfairly be deemed minor figures, including Giovanni Paolo Nodari, Curtio Valcampi and Grisostomo Rubiconi, and which Lewis suggests may not previously have been printed (2005: 373).
Apart from 'Caro dolce ben mio', all Agresta's works were published in Naples, and there is no record of him ever having worked or travelled away from Naples, thus seemingly making him very much a southern Italian composer. How then did his works find their way north to Venice, and why was he considered a composer of sufficient stature to be included in a volume of works dedicated, in a politically-charged, to King James I of England
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
? (Lewis 2000: 10) While it was not unusual for Neapolitan composers to have their works printed in Venice (see Larson 1985: 873–882 for a list of such works), the absence of any other evidence that links Agresta to Venice makes it hard to gauge his status and reputation during his lifetime.
There are two other references to Agresta which appear not to have been noted by other authors. In Schofield and Dart
Thurston Dart
Robert Thurston Dart , was a British musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. From 1964 he was Professor of Music at King's College London....
's article describing the contents of the British Library manuscript now known as Egerton MS 3665, believed to have been compiled by Francis Tregian
Francis Tregian the Younger
Francis Tregian the Younger was the son of the Catholic exile Francis Tregian the Elder .He was educated in France, and in 1592 obtained a position in Rome as chamberlain to Cardinal William Allen...
(son of the more famous Catholic exile of the same name
Francis Tregian the Elder
Francis Tregian the Elder was the son of Thomas Tregian of Wolvenden of Probus, Cornwall and Catherine Arundell. A staunch Catholic, he inherited substantial estates on the death of his father, including the manors of Bedock, Landegy, Lanner and Carvolghe, and the family home, 'Golden', in the...
), Agresta is listed among the composer represented in the selection of over 700 Italian madrigals included in the manuscript; it is implied in the article, although not clearly, that Agresta’s contribution comes from his Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (Schofield and Dart 1951: 213–214).
In the mid-1990s Alfred Noe completed a comprehensive study of the contents of the library of Albert Fugger (of the famous Augsburg banking family), which was purchased by Mathias Mauchter in 1655 for Emperor Ferdinand III and now forms part of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
Austrian National Library
The Austrian National Library , is the largest library in Austria, with 7.4 million items in its collections. It is located in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna; since 2005 some of the collections are located in the baroque Palais Mollard-Clary...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
In the catalogue made by Mauchter at the time of purchase, there is an entry on the last page of the music section which reads 'Il Primo lib.° de Madrigali a 5. di Agostino Agresta' (Noe 1994: 650). No collection of five-part madrigals by Agresta survives, nor any reference to one elsewhere. However, Noe identifies this volume as Agresta’s 1617 Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (1997: 617) from its contents, regarding the 'a 5' as a copyist's mistake.
Sources
Two complete copies of Agresta’s Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo survive, one in the Collection 'G. Thibault' of the Bibliothèque nationale de FranceBibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
in Paris, the other in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella
Music Conservatories of Naples
The Music Conservatory of Naples is a music institution in Naples, southern Italy. It is currently located in the complex of San Pietro a Majella.-San Pietro a Majella:...
in Naples; both are in good condition, and each is identical to the other. The print is on the large part free from errors.
The contents of Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo
Keith Larson has dealt extensively with the contents of Agresta's Madrigali a sei voci ... Libro primo (1985: 757–764); here are some extra details to his analysis.Numbers 1 to 8 are written in an 'ordinary' clef combination (Canto and Sesto in C1 clef, Alto in C3 clef, Tenore and Quinto in C4, and Basso in F4), while numbers 9 to 15 are written in 'high' clefs (Canto and Sesto in G2, Alto in C2, Tenore and Quinto in C3, and Basso in F3 – commonly known as chiavette), suggesting downwards transposition.
If one follows Adriano Banchieri
Adriano Banchieri
Adriano Banchieri was an Italian composer, music theorist, organist and poet of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He founded the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna.-Biography:...
's suggestion in his 1614 Cartella musicale of transposing pieces written in chiavette down by a perfect 4th when the printed key signature contains one flat and by a perfect 5th when it contains no flats, the transposed ranges of the individual voice parts of numbers 9 to 15 all become rather lower than the ranges of numbers 1 to 8. Depending on the singers involved in a performance, I suggest a downwards transposition of either a tone or a minor 3rd for numbers 9 to 15; however, all pieces are presented here in their original keys.
The last piece in the collection, 'Io penso e nel pensar' is unusual in many ways. The anonymous poem is a dense play on the words 'penso' ('I think'), 'pensar' ('to think') and 'pensier' ('thought'); most striking is its use of frequently changing time signatures, which are different in each part, including such proportions as 1:10, 14:6, 6:5 and 3:7. Larson describes it as 'an intellectual challenge to virtuoso singers' (2001), while Watkins suggests that its 'novel and highly mannered proportional complexities ... while appearing theoretical as well as anachronistic, may well be an attempt by the composer to suggest expressive tempo variability' (1991: 228).
The texts
The choice of poetry comprises both old and new authors, and the majority of the texts are also set by many other composers. These include four by Giambattista Marino, four by PetrarchPetrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
and two by Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.- Life :He was born in Ferrara, and spent his early life both in Padua and Ferrara, entering the service of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1567...
(plus one other, number 7, which is attributed to Guarini); there are four anonymous poems.
Numbers 6, 8 and 13 are the only settings of their poems recorded in Il nuovo Vogel, while the text of number 15 (discussed above) is set elsewhere only by Francesco Mazza, in his own first book of six-part madrigals published in Venice in 1590. (A slightly different version of the poem was set by Jéhan Gero in the collection published by Costanzo Festa
Costanzo Festa
Costanzo Festa was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. While he is best known for his madrigals, he also wrote sacred vocal music...
in 1541 and subsequently in Gero’s own collection of 1543.)