Giovanni Battista Guarini (10 December 1538 – 7 October 1612) was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.

Life

Guarini was born in Ferrara. On the termination of his studies at the universities of Pisa,

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

and Ferrara, he was appointed professor of literature at Ferrara. Soon after his appointment, he published some sonnets which obtained for him great popularity as a poet. In 1567, he entered the service of Alfonso II d'Este,

Duke of Ferrara Emperor Frederick III conferred Borso d'Este, Lord of Ferrara, with the Duchy of Modena and Reggio in 1452, while Pope Paul II formally elevated him in 1471 as Duke of Ferrara, over which the family had in fact long presided. This latter territ ...

. After about 20 years of service, differences with the Duke led him to resign. After residing successively in Savoy,

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

and

Urbino Urbino ( ; ; Romagnol: ''Urbìn'') is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of F ...

, he returned to his native Ferrara. There he discharged one final public mission, that of congratulating

Pope Paul V Pope Paul V ( la, Paulus V; it, Paolo V) (17 September 1550 – 28 January 1621), born Camillo Borghese, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 16 May 1605 to his death in January 1621. In 1611, he honored ...

on his election (1605). He died in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, where he had been summoned to attend a lawsuit, aged 73. He was the father of

Anna Guarini Anna Guarini, Contessa Trotti (1563 – 3 May 1598) was an Italian virtuoso singer of the late Renaissance. She was one of the most renowned singers of the age, and was one of the four '' concerto di donne'' at the Ferrara court of the d' Este ...

, one of the famous ''virtuose'' singers of the Ferrara court, the three women of the '' concerto di donne''. She was murdered by her husband in 1598, with the assistance of her brother Girolamo.

Work and influence

His most notable work, ''

Il pastor fido ''Il pastor fido'' (''The Faithfull Shepherd'' in Richard Fanshawe's 1647 English translation) is a pastoral tragicomedy set in Arcadia by Giovanni Battista Guarini, first published in 1590 in Venice. Plot summary To redress an ancient wron ...

'', had its first dramatic representation in honor of the nuptials of the

Duke of Savoy The titles of count, then of duke of Savoy are titles of nobility attached to the historical territory of Savoy. Since its creation, in the 11th century, the county was held by the House of Savoy. The County of Savoy was elevated to a duchy at ...

and Catalina Michaela of Austria in 1585 (published in 1590 in Venice; 20th rev. ed., 1602, Venice; Eng. trans. ''The Faithful Shepherd'', 1647). This play, a pastoral tragicomedy about the loves and fates of shepherds and hunters, polished in style, was translated into many languages and became popular during the 17th century. It set the pattern for a code of refinement and gallantry that lasted until the late 18th century. No poet played a larger role in the flowering of the

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance music, Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque music, Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The Polyphony, polyphoni ...

in the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

and early Baroque eras than Guarini. His poems were set more often by madrigal composers than the work of any other poet, even

Tasso TASSO (Two Arm Spectrometer SOlenoid) was a particle detector at the PETRA particle accelerator at the German national laboratory DESY. The TASSO collaboration is best known for having discovered the gluon, the mediator of the strong interaction an ...

, who came in a close second; the prolific madrigal composer

Philippe de Monte Philippe de Monte (1521 – 4 July 1603), sometimes known as Philippus de Monte, was a Flemish composer of the late Renaissance active all over Europe. He was a member of the 3rd generation madrigalists and wrote more madrigals than any other comp ...

even named one of his collections ''Il pastor fido'' after Guarini's most famous work. His popularity was due to his providing texts to composers which were rich with possibilities for

word-painting Word painting, also known as tone painting or text painting, is the musical technique of composing music that reflects the literal meaning of a song's lyrics or story elements in programmatic music. Historical development Tone painting of words ...

and other easy translations of emotion into music. One of his poems, the erotic ''Tirsi morir volea'', recounting the amorous encounter of a shepherd and a nymph, was set to music as a madrigal by more composers than any other pastoral poem of the era, including, among others,

Andrea Gabrieli Andrea Gabrieli (1532/1533Bryant, Grove online – August 30, 1585) was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance. The uncle of the somewhat more famous Giovanni Gabrieli, he was the first internationally renowned member of the V ...

Gioseppe Caimo Gioseppe Caimo (also Giuseppe) (c. 1545 – between September 6, 1584 and October 31, 1584) was an Italian composer and organist of the Renaissance, mainly active in Milan. He was a prolific composer of madrigals and other secular vocal musi ...

, Carlo Gesualdo,

Luca Marenzio Luca Marenzio (also Marentio; October 18, 1553 or 1554 – August 22, 1599) was an Italian composer and singer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the most renowned composers of madrigals, and wrote some of the most famous examples of the fo ...

Benedetto Pallavicino Benedetto Pallavicino (c. 1551 – 26 November 1601) was an Italian composer and organist of the late Renaissance. A prolific composer of madrigals, he was resident at the Gonzaga court of Mantua in the 1590s, where he was a close associate of Gia ...

, and

Giaches de Wert Giaches de Wert (also Jacques/Jaches de Wert, Giaches de Vuert; 1535 – 6 May 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the lea ...

.Einstein, Vol. II p. 539. Another of Guarini's poems which was set by numerous madrigalists was ''Cor mio, deh non languire'' ("Dear heart, I prithee do not waste away"). In addition to his decisive influence on madrigal composers, he was the single largest influence on opera librettists up until the time of

Metastasio Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782), better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio (), was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of ''opera seria'' libretti. Early life Me ...

in the 18th century. He therefore plays an important role in the

history of music Although definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world, every known culture partakes in it, and it is thus considered a cultural universal. The origins of music remain highly contentious; commentators often relate it to the origin of ...

. While Guarini's work may be seen as lacking the deep feeling and sentiment of another poet at the Este court,

Torquato Tasso Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' ( Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between ...

, it was precisely this quality which commended it to musical setting at a time when excessive emotionalism had become unfashionable. An example of a setting of his work would be ''"O come è gran martire"'' from ''Libro Terzo dei Madrigali'' (1592) by

Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is consider ...

. Other works are: * ''Compendio della poesia tragicomica'' (1601; published again in the 1602 edition of ''Pastor fido'') * ''Il segretario'', a dialog on the duties of a secretary, and on matters of logic, rhetoric, etc. (1594) * ''La idropica'', a prose comedy (written about 1584; published 1613) * ''Lettere'' (1593) * ''Trattato della politica libertà'' (Venice, 1818)

Works

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Notes

References

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External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Guarini, Giovanni Battista Italian Renaissance writers Italian diplomats Italian dramatists and playwrights Italian poets Italian male poets Writers from Ferrara 16th-century Italian writers 16th-century male writers 17th-century Italian writers 17th-century Italian male writers 1538 births 1612 deaths Italian-language poets Italian male dramatists and playwrights 16th-century Italian poets 16th-century dramatists and playwrights 17th-century Italian poets 17th-century Italian dramatists and playwrights