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{{short description|Italian composer (c. 1536/1537–1592)}}

'''Alessandro Striggio''' (c. 1536/1537 – 29 February 1592) was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the [[Renaissance music|Renaissance]]. He composed numerous [[madrigal (music)|madrigals]] as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of [[madrigal comedy]]. His compositions include the monumental ''[[Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno]]'' for up to 60 voices, rediscovered in 2005 after being lost for 400 years.

His son, also named [[Alessandro Striggio (ii)|Alessandro Striggio]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.answers.com/topic/alessandro-striggio-ii|title=Answers – The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions|website=[[Answers.com]] |access-date=1 November 2016}}</ref> wrote the libretto for [[Claudio Monteverdi|Monteverdi's]] ''[[L'Orfeo|Orfeo]]''.

==Life==
Striggio senior was born in [[Mantua]], evidently to an aristocratic family. Records of his early life are sparse, but he must have gone to [[Florence]] as a young man.  He began working for Cosimo de' Medici on 1 March 1559 as a musician, eventually to replace [[Francesco Corteccia]] as the principal musician to the Medici court.  In 1560 he visited Venice, and produced two books of madrigals in response to the musical styles he encountered there.<ref>Butchart, 46</ref>  In 1567 the Medici sent him on a diplomatic mission to England.  Throughout the 1560s Striggio composed numerous [[intermedio|intermedi]] for the Medici, for weddings, visits, and other state occasions. In the 1570s he continued to work for the Medici, but there is some evidence he began to travel away from Florence. He had some connection to the [[Bavaria]]n court in [[Munich]], and may have gone there on more than one occasion (possibly for the performance of his 40-voice motet ''Ecce beatam lucem'' which he wrote for a royal marriage there). He became friends with [[Vincenzo Galilei]], the father of the astronomer, during the 1570s; whether or not he was a member of the [[Florentine Camerata]] is uncertain.

During the 1580s he began an association with the [[House of Este|Este]] court in [[Ferrara]]. Ferrara was one of Italy's [[avant-garde]] centers of musical composition in the 1580s and 1590s, and Striggio composed music in the progressive madrigal style he heard there, evidently commissioned by the Medici. This music is unfortunately lost. In 1586 Striggio moved to [[Mantua]] where he remained for the rest of his life, although he retained a close association with the Medici, composing music for them at least as late as 1589.

The late madrigals are not lost. Twenty-eight madrigals from Striggio's Late Period, were transcribed from microfilm for a graduate seminar at the University of California at Berkeley (under the tutelage of Dr. Anthony Newcomb in 1974). The full notation (120  pages in score form notebooks in pencil) will be available after August 1, 2024. (Contact Music Chair, David Milnes, at 104 Morrison Hall #1200,Berkeley, CA 94720.) A typed list of first-line poetry titles will be included.

==Works==
Striggio wrote both sacred and secular music, and all his surviving music is vocal, although sometimes with instrumental accompaniment. He published seven books of madrigals, in addition to two versions of his most famous composition, the madrigal comedy ''Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato et la caccia...'' ("The gossip of the women at the laundry").

The madrigal comedy, either invented by Striggio or made famous by him, was long considered to be a forerunner of opera, but contemporary [[musicology|musicological]] scholarship tends to see this as just one of many strands in late 16th-century Italian music which adapt prevailing musical forms to dramatic presentation. In the madrigal comedy, there is no acting: the five individual madrigals in ''cicalamento'' tell a story, but entirely in words and music. Entertainments such as the madrigal comedy were not far different from other musical forms one could see at a contemporary [[intermedio]].

One of his most impressive works, and one of the most impressive achievements in Renaissance [[polyphony]], is his [[motet]] ''Ecce beatam lucem'' for forty independent voices, which may have been performed in 1568 in Munich.<ref>Iain Fenlon, Grove online</ref>  There is some evidence that he may have had the music for either this piece or his 40/60 voice mass, ''[[Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno]]'', with him on his diplomatic visit to London in 1567, since [[Thomas Tallis]] seems to have been inspired and challenged by it, and shortly afterwards wrote his own 40-voice tour-de-force ''[[Spem in alium]]'', commissioned by [[Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk]]. Unlike the setting by Tallis, Striggio specifically indicates for the voices to be doubled by instruments. In the Bavarian performance in 1568 of Striggio's motet the forces included eight [[flute]]s, eight [[viola]]s, eight [[trombone]]s, [[harpsichord]] and bass [[lute]]. The motet is a [[polychoral]] composition for four choirs, which include sixteen, ten, eight and six voices respectively, all spatially separated.

A work on a yet larger scale, and long reputed to be lost, is Striggio's [[Mass (music)|mass]] composed in 40 parts, and which included a 60-voice setting of the final ''Agnus Dei''. The work was recently unearthed by Berkeley musicologist [[Davitt Moroney]] and identified as a [[parody mass]], ''[[Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno]]'', and received its first modern performance at the Royal Albert Hall during the London [[The Proms|Proms]] on 17 July 2007 by the BBC Singers and [[The Tallis Scholars]] conducted by Moroney. This work was most likely composed in 1565/6, and carried by Striggio on a journey across Europe in late winter and spring 1567, for performances at Mantua, Munich and Paris.<ref>Moroney, p. 8-16</ref> The first commercial recording of the Mass, by the British group [[I Fagiolini]], was released in March 2011, and won a Gramophone Award,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gramophone.co.uk/awards/2011/early-music|title=Early Music|first=Martin|last=Cullingford|date=12 August 2011|access-date=1 November 2016}}</ref> and a Diapason D'Or de L'Année<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.diapasonmag.fr/news.php?id%3D1067 |title=Diapason - Diapason d'or de l'année 2011 : Demandez le palmarès ! |access-date=2011-11-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120325044124/http://www.diapasonmag.fr/news.php?id=1067 |archive-date=2012-03-25 }}</ref> A second recording followed in 2012 directed by [[Hervé Niquet]] and prepared by [[Dominique Visse]].

Striggio was highly influential, as can be seen by the wide distribution of his music in Europe in the late 16th century. His influence was especially large in England; this may have been due in part to his 1567 visit, and also may have been related to the activities of [[Alfonso Ferrabosco (I)|Alfonso Ferrabosco]], the Italian madrigalist who was resident in England for most of his life, and helped popularize the Italian style there.

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References and further reading==
*{{cite journal | last = Butchart| first = David S.| title = The Festive Madrigals of Alessandro Striggio| journal = Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association | volume = 107 | issue = 1980–1981 | pages = 46–59 | publisher = Taylor & Francis, Ltd. | year = 1981 | jstor = 766114 | doi=10.1093/jrma/107.1.46}}
*[[Iain Fenlon]]: "Alessandro Striggio", in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. {{ISBN|1-56159-174-2}}
*Iain Fenlon: "Alessandro Striggio", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 21, 2007), [http://www.grovemusic.com (subscription access)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516041031/http://www.grovemusic.com/ |date=2008-05-16 }}
*[[Gustave Reese]], ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. {{ISBN|0-393-09530-4}}
*Iain Fenlon and Hugh Keyte, 'Early Music' July 1980. Reference in CD liner notes to ''Spem in Alium'' by Tallis Scholars, Gimell CDGIM 006.
*Davitt Moroney, "Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts". Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60 No. 1., pp.&nbsp;1–69. Spring 2007. ISSN 0003-0139

===Recording===
*{{YouTube|L6gyxbBvmTY|Alessandro Striggio and others, Mass for 40 & 60 voices}}
*"La Caccia". "Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato" – on Banchieri ''Festino''	R. Alessandrini 1995 (Opus111)
*"Il gioco di primiera", about the perils of gambling – performed by [[Kings Singers]] on [[Madrigal History Tour]] documentary

==External links==
*[http://www.ifagiolini.com/striggio "www.ifagiolini.com/striggio"] A microsite dedicated to the new recording of the Mass in 40 Parts by I Fagiolini
*[[BBC]] website for the [https://www.bbc.co.uk/proms Proms], listing the first performance of Striggio's ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20070526142421/http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2007/whatson/1707.shtml#prom6 Missa Ecco si beato giorno]'' since the sixteenth century.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930185553/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=39&EventId=613 "The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke"], lecture by Moroney on the piece at [[Gresham College]], 18 June 2007 (available for download as an audio or video file, as well as a text file)
*{{ChoralWiki|cname=Alessandro Striggio}}
*{{IMSLP|id=Striggio, Alessandro}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Striggio, Alessandro}}
[[Category:Italian Renaissance composers]]
[[Category:Italian male classical composers]]
[[Category:1530s births]]
[[Category:1592 deaths]]
[[Category:Musicians from Mantua]]
[[Category:People from the Duchy of Mantua]]