Pomponio Nenna (baptized 13 June 1556 – 25 July 1608) was a Neapolitan Italian composer of the Renaissance. He is mainly remembered for his madrigals, which were influenced by Gesualdo, and for his polychoral sacred motets, posthumously published as Sacrae Hebdomadae Responsoria in 1622. Pomponio Nenna was born in Bari, located in Puglia at the southeastern extremity of Italy. His father, Giovanni Battista Nenna, was a city official of Bari, and was the author of Il Nennio : nel quale si ragiona di nobilta, a book on nobility and character, published in 1542. Pomponio Nenna most likely studied with Stefano Felis in Bari. In 1574 he published his first music, four villanellas which were included in collections of Villanelle alla Napolitana, edited by Giovanni Jacopo de Antiquis, who may also have been one of his teachers. In 1582 Nenna dedicated his first book of madrigals to Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, near Bari. Fabrizio had nominated Nenna to be his successor. Fabrizio Carafa is also the man found in flagrante delicto with the composer Don Carlo Gesualdos wife, both of whom were killed by Gesualdos own hand in one of music historys most famous murders (1590). Nenna seems nonetheless to have been on terms of friendship with Gesualdo, and had dedicated music to him. As Gesualdo was also Prince of Venosa, it may have been the most prudent political stance for Nenna to assume. Nenna worked in the court of Gesualdo, between 1594 and 1599, at which time it was once thought that Gesualdo, then an amateur composer, studied with Nenna; but more recent musicological study[citation needed] suggests that the influence may have gone the other way. Nennas activities in the first decade of the 17th century are obscure, but he most likely was in Naples from 1606 to 1607 and in Rome in 1608. A curious remark concerning his skilled participation in a certain chess game in Naples in 1606 is recorded in a manuscript book of discourses. In April 1600, Leonora dEste, the more fortunate second wife of Gesualdo, wrote a letter to her brother, then Cardinal Alessandro dEste in Rome, in which she recommends Pomponio Nenna to him. Thus it may have been his dEste family connection that enabled him to profitably travel to Rome. He died 25 July 1608 in Rome. Nenna followed the Neapolitan stylistic trends of the time. He borrowed from the work of Giulio Caccini, and certainly he exchanged musical ideas with Gesualdo. Some of Nennas madrigals also make use of the antiphonal style of Andrea Gabrieli. Nenna wrote eight books of madrigals; however, copies of the second and third books are no longer extant. Because of this, the change from his earlier style as exhibited in the first book of madrigals to that of his more mature style of the fourth might appear startling. His use of chromaticism and a highly imitative musical language is experimental for its time, and mirrored in the work of Gesualdo, indicating a close working relationship between the two. Nenna uses dissonance to build tensions that intimately reflect the passions expressed in the texts, and he employs imitative melodic and rhythmic patterns among the parts as they move towards points of conflict that then frequently resolve suddenly. The chromatic structures are sometimes surprising, as in the beginning of La mia doglia savanza, whose opening chords move from G minor to F-sharp major then D minor and finally C-sharp major, commencing a series of descending chromatic figures. In Lamoroso veleno, the voices use small, chromatic ascending scales to mimic the poison which slowly creeps up to the victims heart. Interestingly, in more than one madrigal, he uses a repeated musical phrase, composed to the text, Vita de la mia vita (Light of my Life), apparently as a kind of aural signature, or perhaps as a veiled reference to a specific individual. The fifth book of madrigals was dedicated to Nennas patron, Fabritio Branciforte, while the sixth was dedicated to Diana Vittoria Carafa, the spouse of the seducer of Gesualdos wife. The eighth book, published in 1618, was edited by Ferdinando Archilei, a doctor of laws, amateur musician and friend of Nennas in Rome, and this fact might suggest that Nenna did not live to see its publication. He also wrote sacred choral music, including Tenebrae responsories for use during Easter and a psalm setting, all of which show a dignified and restrained approach, much in keeping with the Neapolitan style for liturgical music, and reflective of the work of the brothers Anerio and Gesualdo.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 23:39:44 +0000
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