Alessandro Striggio

Alessandro Striggio (c.1540 – February 29, 1592) was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of madrigal comedy. His son, also named Alessandro Striggio, wrote the libretto for Monteverdi's Orfeo.

Works

Striggio wrote both sacred and secular music, and all his surviving music is vocal, although sometimes with instrumental accompaniment. He published seven books of madrigals, in addition to two versions of his most famous composition, the madrigal comedy Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato et la caccia... (The gossip of the women at the laundry).

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The madrigal comedy, either invented by Striggio or made famous by him, was long considered to be a forerunner of opera, but contemporary musicological scholarship tends to see this as just one of many strands in late 16th century Italian music which adapt prevailing musical forms to dramatic presentation. In the madrigal comedy, there is no acting: the 15 individual madrigals in cicalamento tell a story, but entirely in words and music. Entertainments such as the madrigal comedy were not far different from other musical forms one could see at a contemporary intermedio.

Related Topics:
Musicological - 16th century - Intermedio

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One of his most impressive works, and one of the most impressive achievements in Renaissance polyphony, is his motet Ecce beatam lucem for 40 independent voices, which he wrote for the marriage of a Bavarian duke and which was first performed in Munich in 1568. There is some evidence that he may have had the music for this piece with him on his diplomatic visit to London in 1567, and Thomas Tallis may have seen it and been either inspired or challenged by it, for shortly afterwards Tallis wrote his own 40-voice tour-de-force Spem in alium for Queen Elizabeth. Unlike the setting by Tallis, Striggio specifically indicates for the voices to be doubled by instruments. In the premiere of Striggio's motet the forces included eight flutes, eight violas, eight trombones, harpsichord and theorbo. The motet is a polychoral composition for four choirs, which include sixteen, ten, eight and six voices respectively, all spatially separated.

Related Topics:
Polyphony - Motet - 1568 - 1567 - Thomas Tallis - Queen Elizabeth - Flute - Viola - Trombone - Harpsichord - Theorbo - Polychoral

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Striggio was widely influential, as can be seen by the wide distribution of his music in Europe in the late 16th century. His influence was especially large in England; this may have been due in part to his 1567 visit, and also may have been related to the activities of Alfonso Ferrabosco, the Italian madrigalist who was resident in England for most of his life, and helped popularize the Italian style there.

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