Pietro Taglia
Encyclopedia
Pietro Taglia was an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 composer of the Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

, active in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, known for his madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....

. Stylistically he was a progressive, following the innovations of more famous composers such as Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Italy...

 in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, and his music was well-known at the time.

Life

Next to nothing is known about his life but what can be inferred from his publication history and the music itself. Records show that in 1565 he was maestro di cappella, the choirmaster and general music director, at the church of Santa Maria presso San Celso
Santa Maria presso San Celso
Santa Maria dei Miracoli presso San Celso is a church and a sanctuary in Milan, Lombardy, northern Italy.-History and overview:The construction was begun by Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono and Giovanni Battagio in 1493, to house a miraculous icon of the Madonna, initially on the central plan...

 in Milan, at which post he would have been intimately involved with sacred music. Unusually for a maestro di cappella who was a composer, he seems to have written no sacred music at all, or else none has survived. His first book of madrigals was published in Milan in 1555, and his works continued to be published, reprinted, or printed in instrumental versions, until the end of the century.

Taglia had some connection with Venice, but exactly what that connection was is unknown – whether he worked there for a time, made periodic visits, or simply maintained friends there has not been documented. He seems to have been close to the most famous Venetian composer of madrigals of the middle of the 16th century, Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Italy...

, since Rore included one of Taglia's madrigals in one of his own publications in 1557, a rare tribute. In addition, Taglia contributed to Venetian poet Manoli Blessi's Greghesche in 1564, probably indicating a commission or request.

According to Alfred Einstein, writing in The Italian Madrigal (1949), Taglia was probably a member of a small society of aristocratic amateurs, as indicated by the unusual care and cost shown in the publication of his two books of madrigals in 1555 and 1557, for four and five voices, works which showed close attention to the progressive trends in other Italian cities not under Spanish rule. At the time Milan was a conquered province, and the resplendent musical and cultural institutions prevalent under the Sforza dynasty had been either neglected or abolished; while sacred music continued to be written in the cathedrals, it was largely in the simple and unadorned style as dictated by the Council of Trent
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...

 (Carlo Borromeo, who drove many of the Council's reforms, was at that time in Milan). Secular music still managed to flourish in this environment, as both madrigals and instrumental music were popular with the Spanish governors and their attendants.

Music and influence

A total of three publications by Taglia have survived: the first book of madrigals for four voices (published by the brothers Francesco and Simone Moscheni in Milan, 1555), and the first and second books of madrigals for five voices (Francesco Moscheni, Milan, 1557; Venice, 1564). Other of his madrigals appear individually both in publications elsewhere and in instrumental versions.

Taglia preferred to set poetry by the finest and most famous poets, such as Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...

 and Ariosto. In his works he used extreme contrast between chromatic
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...

 and diatonic passages, as well as between quick and slow motion; he was careful to set his texts with appropriate expression and declamation. Einstein said of him, "Taglia was himself a genius of a high order, and as such, an independent thinker." The continued appearance of reprints and instrumental versions of his madrigals until about 1600 attests to Taglia's fame.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK