An aural Isenheim altarpiece: A mad prince-composer’s sacred music

Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece depicts crucified Christ nearly green in death, hands and fingers contorted in agony, and covered with sores. Painted in the early 1500s for a hospital specializing in plague victims and skin diseases, Christ is depicted as if covered in plague sores, the fellow sufferer of the hospital’s patients.

One hundred years later, an Italian nobleman would be composing a vocal equivalent to the Isenheim Altarpiece.

The year 1611 saw the publication of the tumultuous, ingenious, and luminously twisted Tenebrae Responsories, setting texts from the Roman Rite office of Matins and Lauds for the Triduum. Composed by a mad prince, the velvet anguish of these motets twists the spirit, and, like Grünewald, offers to press our souls with a strange beauty so that the oil of contrition might pour forth.

The mad prince-composer is Carlo Gesualdo, and his turbulent life has seen much ink spilled over it: murder, sex, mental illness, and avant garde composition are an irresistible combination for modern researchers. I will briefly sketch a portrait of Gesualdo, before turning to his Lenten oeuvre.

Born in 1566, Carlo was named after his uncle, another Carlo now known as Saint Charles Borromeo. Related through his mother to Pope Pius IV, Carlo became the heir-apparent to the Principality of Venosa when his brother died. He became prince in 1591, following the death of his father. From his youth, he was obsessed with music and showed himself a virtuoso at multiple instruments.

In 1586 Carlo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d’Avalos. This was Donna Maria’s third marriage. Widowed twice before the age of thirty, she had gotten an early start on her marital career at the age of 15. Maria was entangled in an affair with the Duke of Andria only a few years into her third marriage. Perhaps Gesualdo had lost interest in her. Speculation abounds. But when Gesualdo discovered Maria and Fabrizio in flagrante on October 16th, 1590, he killed them both on the spot. The law of the time let Gesualdo off a homicidal conviction given the adulterous context. Such goings on would give modern psychologists plenty of fodder for alliterative articles titles such as “Murder, Madrigals, and Masochism.”

Four years after slaying his first wife, Gesualdo married Eleonora d’Este. More faithful than Maria, Elenora would try to obtain a divorce as this marriage too deteriorated; Gesualdo’s own faithfulness may not have been dissimilar to that of his first wife.

Unsurprisingly, Gesualdo suffered from extreme depression and perhaps some other mental conditions. Between having himself beaten by his servants and seeking relics of his uncle, it is not clear that his mental condition was helped much by turning to “spiritual practices”.

Part of Gesualdo’s “conversion” included the composition of religious music. He had already written amorous secular madrigals, and as was often the case in his day, a similar style was employed for both secular and sacred compositions. Sanctified by the sacred texts, his writing is truly breathtaking.

Free to compose as wildly as he liked without having to please a noble patron, Gesualdo’s music is highly chromatic and experimental. Strange leaps, weird rhythms, and fantastic chord progressions make it some of the most difficult vocal music composed before the advent of atonalism. The Choir of King’s Cambridge, I was once told, could sight-read anything but Gesualdo.

In Monte Oliveti opens the collection, setting Jesus’ cry to the Father: “If it be possible, let this chalice pass. The spirit is strong, the flesh weak.” I wonder what Gesualdo thought of those lines; both his spirit and flesh seemed weak. The tormented vocal lines constantly cross each other. In this, as in other responsories, line after line of flowing dissonance cascades over words like dolor meus (“my sorrow”) while the world painting changes to sweet consonances on phrases such as qui consolabatur me (“he that comforted me”).

Dip your toes into the darkness of this Holy Week music by listening to Caligaverunt oculi mei, Tristis Est Anima Mea (here sung by an ensemble named after Gesualdo), and O Vos Omnes. This last is a favorite: beginning on a low chord which, repeated, the higher voices join, the initial text is set in homophonic chords, followed by daring modulations on the words “if any sorrow be like mine.” The waves of sound crash, ebb, and return: look, look, and see if there is any sorrow like this one. The dark waves send up a silky spray of high notes in measure 19, and then settle in the following measures in a set of eerie suspensions before being joined by the low voices in the cadence.

Like his more famous, sane, and virtuous contemporary Gregorio Allegri, Gesualdo also set Psalm 50 for its use in the Lauds of Tenebrae. Rich and brooding, Gesualdo’s setting of the Miserere is filled with dark tension. Rather than the lyric transcendence of Allegri’s descant (or, at least, the descant with which we have all become familiar, though it is not from Allegri), Gesualdo is more plodding: this is a song of repentance from personal depth.

Two excellent complete recordings of this cycle of motets are Gesualdo: Responsoria 1611 (Collegium Vocale Gent, dir. Philippe Herrewege); and the album Gesualdo Tenebrae by Graindelavoix (dir. Björn Schmelzer). The impeccable Tenebrae Choir (dir. Nigel Short) has recorded just the responsories for Holy Saturday: Gesualdo/Victoria-Responsories and Lamentations For Holy Saturday. All these albums are available on streaming services.

Despite his sins and struggles, he ought to be remembered for the musical beauty he left to the world. Include the tormented prince of Venosa in your prayers; and let the soul open, through the ear, to catch a glimpse of Christ hanging on the soundscape of Gesualdo’s aural altarpiece.