Cavalieri, Emilio de (EN)

Cavalieri Emilio de, *before 1550 Rome, †11 March 1602, an Italian amateur artist active mainly in the fields of music and theatre.

He came from a wealthy Roman noble family. The first record of his musical activity is his leadership of the Oratorio del SS Crocifisso choir at the Church of S Marcello in Rome, which performed a repertoire of Lenten lauds; he took over this role in 1578 from his brother, Mario, who had served there from 1568 to 1578. Cavalieri showed great initiative in this role.

In Rome, he met Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who, upon ascending the Grand Ducal throne of Tuscany, appointed him as the administrator of artistic events and organiser of court ceremonies in Florence on 3 September 1588 (a role previously held by G.M. Bardi). Cavalieri held this post until the end of 1600, organising and co-organising performances of great significance to the history of musical drama.

In 1589, during the grand wedding celebrations of Prince Ferdinand, he collaborated with Giovanni Bardi to stage an elaborate, visually rich and musically unconventional series of interludes for Bargagli’s La Pellegrina, which had been conceived by Bardi. Cavalieri composed the madrigal Godi turba mortal and the final dance passage O che nuovo miracolo, for which he also designed the choreography. In 1590, Cavalieri organised a performance of Tasso’s Aminta during the carnival, featuring sung interludes for which he probably composed the music. That same year, in collaboration with the poet Laura Giudiccioni Lucchesini, he staged two short pastoral dramas: Satiro and Disperazione di Fileno. On 29 October 1595, Cavalieri staged Il gioco della cieca, set to his own music and based on the second scene of the third act of G.B. Guarini’s Il pastor fido (in an adaptation by L. Giudiccioni), and on 5 October 1600, on the occasion of the marriage of Maria de’ Medici to Henry IV, King of France, Dialogo di Giunone e Minerva. Whilst still in Rome, and also during his time in Florence, Cavalieri initiated and supervised the construction of organs (he brought in the organ-builder F. Palmieri from Rome to carry out the work). He himself designed enharmonic organs which, by dividing the whole tone into 10 segments, made it possible to perform Greek modes – both chromatic and enharmonic. Three such instruments were built for Florence and Pisa. Between 1590 and 1600, Cavalieri stayed in Rome on at least six occasions, partly on diplomatic missions for the Tuscan court; at the same time, at the same time, he was involved in musical activities there, including at the Oratorio del SS Crocefisso. In the second half of 1600, he staged Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo at the Oratorio di S. Maria in Vallicella in the Philippines, an original, entirely sung performance which, in terms of the text’s form (based on Agostino Manni’s lauda), drew on the tradition of the morality play. Dissatisfied with the state of affairs at the court, Cavalieri left Florence at the end of that year and returned to Rome, where he died a few months later.

Given Cavalieri’s wide-ranging interests and responsibilities, composition was only a minor part of his activities; his output is modest, but it is of fundamental importance to the history of music. Cavalieri was the first to create a dramatic spectacle (1590) in which the entire text was sung in accordance with the principles of imitating ancient practice, whilst his Rappresentazione is the first printed work (1600) to employ the stile recitativo and a developed basso continuo. Cavalieri’s pastoral dramas from 1590 and 1595 have not survived. It has been suggested that Io piango Filli, an aria cantata et sonata al modo antico, may offer a glimpse of their style in the non-recitative parts. Godi turba mortal from the sixth intermezzo contained in Intermedii et concerti represents the typical style of the last quarter of the 16th century. This is a four-part polyphonic structure performed entirely on instruments, with the highest part also intended (in the ornamented version) for a vocal solo. The first piece from the first intermedio – Dalle più alte sfere – displays the same stylistic characteristics, although its authorship is uncertain (attributed in print to Antonio Archilei, but described by Bartolomeo di Rossi in accounts of Florentine festivities as a work by Cavalieri). The best-known and most widespread composition was the ballo O che nuovo miracolo, included as the final piece of the sixth intermedio. Its bass line became widely known under the titles: Ballo del Gran Duca, Aria di Firenze or Ballo di palazzo. W. Kirkendale identified 128 anonymous and non-anonymous compositions based precisely on this bass line and associated with a melody featuring a fixed harmonic pattern. It is a melody set to a six-line octosyllable. Cavalieri himself subjects this melody to intricate rhythmic variations, which lend it the characteristics of various dances: the pavane, the galliard and the courante. Forty years later, G.B. Doni would describe O che nuouo miracolo as the finest realisation of the ancient style in the realm of dance. The printed edition of Intermedii et concerti includes a detailed description and choreographic diagram of this dance, compiled by Cavalieri himself. Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo, which draws its inspiration from the rappresentazione sacra genre, is a truly unique phenomenon in the history of music, which has inspired all forms of dramatic music. The preface to the printed score sets out the principles for staging the work, covering the issues of the venue, the acting and singing performance, and the music, particularly the instruments. This is a particularly valuable testimony to the understanding of stage music as an integral part of the performance. Cavalieri’s guiding principle in composing the music for the Rappresentazione was “that this form of music [renewed by him] should stir up a range of emotions.” In this influence on the affetti, Cavalieri saw the essence of the connection to ancient music. A distinctive feature of Cavalieri’s melodic style is the distinctly descending nature of individual phrases, further emphasised by the relatively frequent use of downward leaps ranging from a fourth to a seventh. About 40% of the text in Rappresentazione is performed in 40% is performed chorally or by ensemble. These are almost exclusively homorhythmic arrangements with a relatively high proportion of dance rhythms. The melodics of the solo parts can be reduced to five basic musical phrases (usually of seven notes, which is linked to the heptasyllabic line of the text), which are repeated numerous times and varied across all solo parts. Only a small percentage of phrases deviate from these patterns, taking on a more exaggerated or illustrative character.

The Lamentations and Responsories, most likely composed in 1599, consist of solo passages with basso continuo accompaniment and choral passages in a five-part, chordal texture, traditionally simple in works of this type. There are no recitative elements in the melodics of the solo parts. Here, the composer introduces emphatic phrases, employing the musical rhetoric of the time. He also introduces enharmonic passages in the Greek style, that is, using quarter tones, in both the vocal and basso continuo parts. These works were performed in Pisa, where the Medici court spent the period of Lent and where Cavalieri had built a suitable enharmonic organ of his own design. Cavalieri’s Lamentations are the earliest example of the use of basso continuo in liturgical music.

Literature: A. Solerti L. Giudiccioni ed E. de Cavalieri, “Rivista Musicale Italiana” IX, 1902; A. Solerti Le origini del melodramma, Turin 1903, 2nd ed. Bologna 1969; A. Solerti Gli albori del melodramma, Milan 1905, 2nd ed. Bologna 1969; D. Alaleona Studi su la storia dell’oratorio in Italia, Turin 1908, 2nd ed. entitled Storia dell’oratorio musicale in Italia, Milan 1945; H. Prunières Une lettre inédite d’E. de Cavalieri, “La Revue Musicale” IV 1923; U. Rolandi E. de’ Cavalieri, il Granduca Ferdinando e l’ “Inferigno”, “Rivista Musicale Italiana” XXXVI, 1929; N. Pirrotta Temperaments and Tendencies in the Florentine Camerata, “The Musical Quarterly” XL, 1954; C.V. Palisca Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of E. de’Cavalieri, “The Musical Quarterly” XLIV, 1963; T. Antonicek E. de’ Cavalieri und seine “Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo”, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift XXIX, 1969; W. Kirkendale E. de Cavalieri a Roman Gentleman at the Florentine Court, in: Memorie e contributi alla musica dal medioeoo all’ età moderna offerti a F. Ghisi nel settantesimo compleanno, vol. 2, Bologna 1971; W Kirkendale L’aria di Fiorenza, id est il Ballo del Gran Duca, Florence 1972; W. Kirkendale Cavalieri, in: Dizionario Biografico dei Italiani, vol. 17, Rome 1973; R. Scholz, H. Scholz-Michelitsch E. de Cavalieris “Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo”, in: De ratione in musica, commemorative book of E. Schenk, Kassel 1975; H.E. Smither A History of the Oratorio, vol. 1, Chapel Hill 1977; A. Szweykowska and Z.M. Szweykowski “Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo” E. dei Cavalieri – muzyka dla sceny, “Muzyka” XXVII, 1983 No. 1 (it also includes a Polish translation of Cavalieri’s foreword); Z.M. Szweykowski, A. Szweykowska Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo Cavalieriego. Muzyka dla sceny, “Muzyka” 1983 No. 1; M.C. Bradshaw Cavalieri and Early Monody, “The Journal of Musicology” IX, 1991; M.C. Bradshaw Text and Tonality in Early Sacred Monody (1599–1603), “Musica Disciplina” XLVII, 1993; W. Kirkendale The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici, Florence 1993; W. Kirkendale L’opera in musica prima del Peri. Le pastorali perdute di Laura Guidiccioni ed E. de’ Cavalieri, in: Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del ’500, ed. N. Pirrotta, Florence 1993; C.V. Palisca Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of E. De’Cavalieri, New York 1994; W. Kirkendale E. de’ Cavalieri “Gentiluomo Romano.” His Life and Letters, His Role as Superintendent of All the Arts at the Medici Court, and His Musical Compositions, Florence 2001.