- Stefano Rossetto
Stefano Rossetto (also Rossetti) (fl. 1560 – 1580) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, born in
Nice , who worked mainly in Florence for the powerfulMedici family, and in Munich.Life
His life has not yet been thoroughly studied. The earliest information available shows that he may have lived and worked on
Chios , an island in the Aegean, in the service of the GenoeseGiustiniani family; the connection can be made from the dedication to one of his 1560 books of madrigals. In 1560 he assisted at the wedding ofEmmanuel Philibert of Savoy andMarguerite of Valois , which took place in Nice. [Haar, Grove online]In the mid 1560s he went to
Florence , where he servedFerdinando I de' Medici as a composer, alongsideAlessandro Striggio , andFrancesco Corteccia , whose career by then had begun to wane. By 1579 he was in the employ of either Albrecht V, or William V (Albrecht died in 1579). Theintermedio performed in Florence in 1583 alongside Fedini's play "Le due Persile" may have been his work. Connections between the Medici and Bavarian courts were close through the period, and composers often passed between them. Nothing certain is yet known of Rossetto's career after 1580. [Haar, Grove online]Music
All of his surviving music is vocal, and includes madrigals and
motet s, some of which were probably intended for performance as intermedii, musical interludes between acts of plays.Along with the other Medici composers, taking part in a trend of the time, he wrote gigantic
polychoral compositions. One of the largest polychoral works ever composed, at least prior to modern times, was his huge 50-voice motet "Consolamini popule meus". The date of the composition is unknown, but the manuscript is at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, suggesting he wrote it while in the service of the Bavarian court. Only a handful of larger compositions are known: Alessandro Striggio's colossal 40 and 60 voice "Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno ", and the 17th century 53-voice "Missa Salisburgensis" attributed toHeinrich Ignaz Biber . [Moroney, p. 5-7] [Haar, Grove online]Rossetto also composed three books of madrigals, for four, five, and six voices, respectively (all published in Venice in 1560 and 1566), and an ambitious setting of the "Lamento d'Olimpia", in 17 parts, for from four to ten voices, which he published in Venice in 1567. (Florence, for all its opulence, lacked publishing houses, and most of the Medici composers published their works in Venice, a city with a long publishing history.) In addition to his secular music, he published a book of motets in Nuremberg in 1573, "Novae quaedam sacrae cantiones, quas vulgo motetas vocant", for five and six voices. [Haar, Grove online]
In his madrigals he uses chromaticism creatively, and he liked to write both madrigals and motets in groups, as did the other Medici composers (such as Corteccia and Striggio). Much of his music is intended to be accompanied by instruments, another characteristic of Florentine
polyphony of the period. [Haar, Grove online]References and further reading
* James Haar: "Stefano Rossetto", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed
May 14 ,2007 ), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)]
*Gustave Reese , "Music in the Renaissance". New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0-393-09530-4
* Davitt Moroney, "Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts". Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60 No. 1., pp. 1-69. Spring 2007. ISSN 0003-0139Notes
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