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Inspired by statements by Robert Craft, Claudio Abbado and Glenn Watkins, this article explores the presence of tonal order within the apparently disordered context of Gesualdo's music, using as a case study the Tenebrae Responsories of 1611. Pitch-based devices of 'order' include uses of cadence tones, harmonic patterns, underlying stepwise lines, and the musical association of similar concepts between responsories, though these tend to be small in scope. A comparison of Responsories 1 and 3 for Maundy Thursday shows how order and disorder contribute to their theological interpretation and performance. The description of devices and the analyses show that disorder is potentially present everywhere, but that order coalesces at certain crucial moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During his last decade Carlo Gesualdo published two similar settings of O vos omnes: a motet in the Sacrae Cantiones a5 (1603) and a more elaborate responsory in the Tenebrae Responsoria (1611). The revisions he made when reusing materials from the motet for the responsory have significant implications for understanding the music of his last decade and late Renaissance chromaticism in general. To date, a consensus has not been reached over how the pre-tonal chromaticism epitomized in Gesualdo’s late works was conceived or should be analysed. Taking a cue from the oft-overlooked modal ordering of Gesualdo’s late publications, however, I argue for the relevance of modal theory in analysing his chromatic works—especially the theory of Gioseffo Zarlino, with which Gesualdo showed particular familiarity in the modal ordering of his publications. A close reading of Zarlino’s Le Istitutioni harmoniche (1558/1573) reveals an understanding of chromaticism from the perspective of the modes: pitch inflections alter the modal quality of a passage on a local level, which may in turn affect the modal character of the entire composition. My analysis of the two O vos omnes settings shows that while Gesualdo retained most of the chromaticism of the 1603 motet, he presented a much more consistent modal framework in the 1611 responsory. It shows the possible compositional and theoretical links between mode and chromaticism in Renaissance polyphony and suggests that during his final decade—albeit now marred with myths of madness and sadomasochism—Gesualdo increasingly engaged with modal theory and adopted a model of rational modal coherence in his chromatic music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Carlo Gesualdo’s second book of Sacrae Cantiones a6 e 7 (1603) contains 20 motets and represents about one-third of the composer’s sacred music. Regrettably, two of its partbooks (Sextus and Bassus) have been lost, rendering these motets unperformable in modern times. Now, for first the first time in over 400 years, the collection has been painstakingly reconstructed. This article explains that process, including the crucial choice of clefs and voice-types used in the reconstruction, highlights the historical context of Gesualdo’s music, and examines some very different attitudes to Gesualdo over the ages by such figures as Charles Burney and Igor Stravinsky, which have contributed to so much mythology about Gesualdo’s style. The article also covers historical performance practice, and suggests modern-day solutions to the choice of voices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]