Claudio Pari (1574 – after 1619) was a Sicilian composer, of Burgundian birth, of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was a competent madrigalist, well regarded by his peers, as well as a late representative of the musical style/ethos known as musica reservata. Events April 14 - Battle of Mookerheyde. ... Events May 13 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason. ... Sicily (Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,700 sq. ... Coat of arms of the 2nd duchy of Burgundy and later of the French province of Burgundy Burgundy (French: Bourgogne) is a historic region of France, inhabited in turn by Pre-Indo-European people, Celts (Gauls), Romans (Gallo-Romans), and various Germanic tribes, most importantly the Burgundians and the Franks. ... Renaissance music is classical music written during the Renaissance period, approximately 1400 to 1600 CE. Defining the end of the period is easier than defining the beginning, since there were no revolutionary shifts in musical thinking at the beginning of the 15th century corresponding to the sudden development of the... Baroque music is Western classical music from the Baroque era, after the Renaissance music era and before the Classical music era proper. ... A madrigal is a setting for 4–6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. ... In music history, musica reservata is a term referring to either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text. ...

Life

As has been recently established, he was born in Salines (Salins-les-Bains), Burgundy. While little is known about his early life, he probably came to Italy or Sicily early in his life. He was at the monastery of S. Domingo in Palermo in 1598, where he fell afoul of the Inquisition; at an auto-da-fé there he was sentenced to row in the galleys for five years, on a charge of heresy. By 1611 at the latest he was back in Palermo, since he published a book of madrigals there. Coat of arms of the 2nd duchy of Burgundy and later of the French province of Burgundy Burgundy (French: Bourgogne) is a historic region of France, inhabited in turn by Pre-Indo-European people, Celts (Gauls), Romans (Gallo-Romans), and various Germanic tribes, most importantly the Burgundians and the Franks. ... Location within Italy Palermo (Palermo in Italian) (Palermu or Palemmu in Sicilian) (population 680,000) is the principal city and administrative seat of the autonomous region of Sicily, Italy. ... Events January 7 - Boris Godunov seizes the throne of Russia following the death of his brother-in-law, Tsar Feodor I April 13 - Edict of Nantes - Henry IV of France grants French Huguenots equal rights with Catholics. ... Pedro Berruguete. ... Pedro Berruguete. ... A French galley and Dutch men-of-war off a port by Abraham Willaerts, painted 17th century. ... Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ... Events November 1 - At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeares romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time. ...

Whatever his history as a heretic may have been, he must have been forgiven, for he was appointed to be music director at a Jesuit institution at Salemi (in western Sicily) in 1615. His final publication — his fourth book of madrigals — was in 1619 and nothing further is known about his life. The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... Events June 2 - First Récollet missionaries arrive at Quebec City, from Rouen, France. ... Events May 13 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason. ...

Music and influence

Much of Pari's music is in the manneristic style which was characteristic of the transformation of Renaissance into Baroque, and in addition conforms closely to the idea of musica reservata: music of intense expressiveness, careful text setting, and elaborate contrapuntal techniques, most likely intended for an audience of connoisseurs. In this regard it resembles that of some of his contemporaries, including the madrigalists Gesualdo, Sigismondo d'India, Pomponio Nenna, and Giovanni de Macque, although Pari avoids the extreme chromaticism used by Gesualdo and never attained his fame. Mannerism is the usual English term for an approach to all the arts, particularly painting but not exclusive to it, a reaction to the High Renaissance, emerging after the Sack of Rome in 1527 shook Renaissance confidence, humanism and rationality to their foundations, and even Religion had split apart. ... In music history, musica reservata is a term referring to either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text. ... Counterpoint is a very general feature of music (especially prominent in much Western music) whereby two or more melodic strands occur simultaneously - in separate voices, either literally or metaphorically (if the music is instrumental). ... Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa Carlo Gesualdo (?March 8, ?1566 – September 8, 1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian composer, lutenist, nobleman, and notorious murderer of the late Renaissance. ... Sigismondo dIndia (c. ... Pomponio Nenna (1550-1555 – before October 22, 1613) was an Italian composer of the Renaissance. ... In music, chromatic indicates the inclusion of notes not in the prevailing scale and is also used for those notes themselves (Shir-Cliff et al 1965, p. ...

Pari's only surviving music are three books of madrigals, all published in Palermo between 1611 and 1619. Three other books of madrigals written prior to 1611 are lost. The collection published in 1611 includes a setting of Guarini's famous Il pastor fido, and the 1619 collection is subtitled Lamento d'Arianna; it is clearly influenced by the famous composition by Monteverdi. In the Lamento d'Arianna collection, Pari derived most of the motivic material directly from Monteverdi, but worked it into a dense, archaic contrapuntal texture more akin to Gombert, who had died sixty years earlier, than to the currently popular style of monody. Giovanni Battista Guarini (December 10, 1538 – October 7, 1612) was an Italian poet and diplomat. ... Portrait of Claudio Monteverdi in Venice, 1640, by Bernardo Strozzi Claudio Monteverdi (May 15, 1567 (baptised) – November 29, 1643) was an Italian composer, violinist and singer. ... Nicolas Gombert (c. ... Caccini, Le Nuove musiche, 1601, title page Monody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. ...

The connection with Gombert may not have been coincidental. Gombert also spent time in the galleys, only being pardoned, according to one story, after the publication of a set of Magnificats dedicated to Emperor Charles V. It is possible that Pari not only knew Gombert's music but looked to his experience as inspiration to survive his own hard years of slavery; and the music akin to the dense contrapuntal style of Gombert was all composed after the end of Pari's sentence. Magnificat is the Latin name of the canticle of Mary, the mother of Jesus, which she speaks to Elisabeth, the wife of Zechariah. ... Charles (February 24, 1500 – September 21, 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles V) from 1519-1558; he was also King of Spain from 1516-1556, officially as Charles I of Spain, although often referred to as Charles V (Carlos Quinto or Carlos V) in Spain and Latin America. ...

Although Pari had a liking for the dense counterpoint of the middle of the 16th century, he experimented with piquant dissonances, and also with the concertato style, features which were quite contemporary; he also varied the texture widely within individual pieces as a way to highlight the dramatic contents of the text. (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... In poetry, dissonance is the deliberate avoidance of patterns of repeated vowel sounds (see assonance). ... Concertato (sometimes called stile concertato) is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. ...

Publications

• First book of madrigals (five voices), lost
• First book of madrigals (six voices), lost
• Il pastor fido, second book of madrigals (five voices), Palermo, 1611
• Third book of madrigals (five voices), Palermo, 1617
• Il lamento d'Arianna, fourth book of madrigals (five voices), Palermo, 1619

References and further reading

• Paolo Emilio Carapezza, "Claudio Pari", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
• Paolo Emilio Carapezza/Giuseppe Collisani, "Claudio Pari", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 30, 2005), (subscription access) (http://www.grovemusic.com)
• Paolo Emilio Carapezza, "Madrigalisti siciliani", Nuove effemeridi, no.11 (1990), 97–106
• F. Renda, "L'Inquisizione in Sicilia: i fatti, le persone" (Palermo, 1996)