Rossi, Michelangelo

Michelangelo Rossi was born in Genoa, he studied music with his uncle, Lelio Rossi (1601-1638), in the Cathedral of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo). Around 1624 he moved to Rome, where in 1624–29 he served as a musician at the court of Cardinal Mauricio of Savoy. There he met with the composer Sigismondo d'India, who influenced the formation of Rossi’s creative style, notable primarily in the chromatic style of his five-voice madrigals (for example, “Per non mi dir ch'io moia” and “ O miseria d'amante "). Due to the chromatic “audacity” of the madrigals (32 in total), during the life of Russia they were not printed (preserved in manuscripts).

In the years 1630–32. Rossi served as organist and violinist in the Roman Church of St. Louis of France ( San Luigi dei Francesi ), and also worked at the court of the Roman aristocrat, nephew of Pope Urban VIII Taddeo Barberini. During this period, in the composer's style, a decisive turn was made from the “second practice” (see the article on Artuzi ) to the fashioned “monody” with a basso continuo (that is, music of a homophonic-harmonic warehouse). Rossi wrote an opera (on the plot of the poem “Liberated Jerusalem” by T. Tasso ) “Herminia on the Jordan” (“Erminia sul Giordano”, the author's designation of the genre is “dramma musicale”). The opera premiered during the Roman Carnival of 1633, with the composer himself playing the part of Apollo. The score was luxuriously printed in Rome in 1637.

In 1634–38, Rossi served at the court of Francesco d'Este in Modena , where he wrote another opera entitled Andromeda (premiered in Ferrara , in 1638; only the libretto has survived to this day). Upon his return to Rome in 1639, he continued to write music. Judging by indirect evidence, by that time he already had a reputation as a recognized musician and was a very wealthy person. In 1650–55, Rossi lived and worked in the newly built Palazzo Pamfili , where his companions included the composer J.J. Kapsberger , the humanist and encyclopedist J. B. Doni , the writer and traveler Pietro della Valla . In this setting, Rossi wrote a number of madrigals, probably ordered by Kristina Shvedskaya for her lover (later cardinal) Decio Azzolini ^[2] . Later madrigals were made in the "outdated" mannerist style (like the earlier ones, all five voices without basso continuo , with an abundance of chromatism). Despite the fact that love-lyric poetry traditionally dominates madrigals, more unusual plots are occasionally found, such as, for example, the madrigal Mentre d'ampia voragine tonante (“From the wide roaring abyss”), which describes the poet’s dramatic impressions after the eruption of Vesuvius in 1531 .

From Rossi’s instrumental music, only one collection of clavier music “Toccats and Chimes” was published (posthumously) in 1657. The most famous is the toccata No. 7 d-moll (now performed on harpsichord and organ), in which quite banal sequences alternate with incredible “linear” chromatisms.

• Silbiger A. Michelangelo Rossi and his 'Toccate e Correnti' // Journal of the American Musicological Society 36 (1983), pp. 18–38.
• Toccate e correnti, ed. K. Gilbert. Padua, 1991 (edition of the collection of clavier music)
• The madrigals of Michelangelo Rossi, ed. B. Mann. [sl], 1999 // Monuments of Renaissance Music, 10 (critical edition of the madrigals)
• Moore C. The composer Michelangelo Rossi: A "diligent fantasy-maker" in seventeenth-century Rome. New York; London: Garland, 1993 (Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities).
• Mann B. The madrigals of Michelangelo Rossi. Chicago, 2002.

• Toccata No. 7 for harpsichord (audio file synchronized with musical text)
• Madrigal "O miseria d'amante" (audio recording and sheet music)