Carlo Gesualdo’s madrigals are unique and captivating. But he was seen by many as a monster in his own time due to a double murder and associations with witchcraft. 

Research:

• Burton-Hill, Clemency. “Gesualdo: Glorious music and grisly murder.” BBC. Oct. 21, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130905-a-16th-century-musical-badass
• Caccese, Andrea. “Carlo Gesualdo: the ‘Madman’ of the Italian Renaissance.” CMUSE. Sept. 20, 2014. https://www.cmuse.org/carlo-gesualdo-the-madman-of-the-italian-reinassance/
• “Carlo Gesuald.” Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
• DeVoto, Mark. "chromaticism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/art/chromaticism
• Gray, Cecil and Philip Heseltine. “Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer.” Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut. 1971. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/carlogesualdopri0000gray/page/n7/mode/1up
• Haar, James. “Classicism and Mannerism in 16th-Century Music.” International Review of Music Aesthetics and Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, 1970, pp. 55–68. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/836396
• LEVENBERG J. Was Carlo Gesualdo’s Honour Killing Liturgical? Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Published online 2024:1-32. doi:10.1017/rma.2023.4
• Ober, William B., M.D. “CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA: MURDER, MADRIGALS, AND MASOCHISM.” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. 1973 Jul;49(7):634-645. PMID: 4575970; PMCID: PMC1807043.
• Ross, Alex. “Prince of Darkness.’ New Yorker. December 11, 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/19/prince-of-darkness
• Stevens, Denis. “Carlo Gesualdo.” The Musical Times, vol. 131, no. 1770, 1990, pp. 410–11. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/966618
• Turci-Escobar, John. “Softening the Edges: Cadential Attenuation in Gesualdo’s Six Books of Madrigals.” Theory and Practice, vol. 32, 2007, pp. 101–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41054417
• Watkins, Glenn. “The Gesualdo Hex.” W.W. Norton. 2010.