Laura Williams Macy, Ph.D. 1991

Advisor: James Haar

Dissertation Title: The Late Madrigals of Luca Marenzio: Studies in the Interactions of Music, Literature, and Patronage at the End of the Sixteenth Century

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Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation is designed as four independent but interrelated essays on Luca Marenzio’s late madrigals. After a general introduction to the various channels of traditional music patronage available in late sixteenth-century Rome, Chapter I reconsiders Marenzio’s unorthodox career in the broader perspective of Roman intellectual patronage. The three other essays address issues surrounding the music itself. Chapter II places Marenzio’s Quinto libro à sei (1591) in the context of Medici Florence–comparing it to the composer’s contributions to the wedding festivities of 1589. Chapter III considers the sixth and seventh books for five voices, both of which are dominated by texts drawn from Giambattista Guarini’s Il pastor fido. Marenzio’s Pastor fido madrigals are stylistically distinct from those of his northern contemporaries Giaches Wert and Claudio Monteverdi. It is argued here that Marenzio’s Pastor fido style reflects the play’s reception in Rome as opposed to the northern courts. In Chapter IV, Marenzio’s striking use of Petrarch’s poetry in three late publications is placed in the context of late Renaissance poetics. The books discussed in this chapter are the Madrigali (1588), the Sesto libro à sei (1595), and his last book, the Nono libro à 5 (1599).

Laura Macy became the editor of Grove Music. She has edited the Grove Book of Opera Singers, published in 2008, and revised the second edition of Stanley Sadie’s Grove Book of Operas.