Mazzocchi, Domenico

(b Civita Castellana, bap. 8 Nov 1592; d Rome, 21 Jan 1665). Italian composer, brother of Virgilio Mazzocchi.

1. Life.

After studying at the seminary at Civita Castellana, Mazzocchi took lower orders in 1606 and was ordained priest on 30 March 1619. In 1614 he went to Rome, where he obtained the right of citizenship, and in, or shortly before, 1619 he was made a Doctor of Laws. He entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, probably in 1621. Mazzocchi has sometimes been wrongly described as a musical dilettante. He acted as secretary to the cardinal (a type of position often occupied by poets), and was free to write music on special occasions for the Aldobrandini and other noble Roman families. His professionalism is exemplified by the fact that his brother Virgilio, who served as maestro di cappella at prominent Roman churches from 1626, would delegate to him the composition of music for certain important religious feasts.

The entrance of Domenico into the household of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini was the start of a long association with that family. His opera La catena d'Adone, performed during Carnival 1626 at the palace of Evandro Conti, Duke of Poli, was commissioned by the cardinal's brother Prince Giovanni Giorgio Aldobrandini. From spring to autumn 1626 Mazzocchi undertook a journey to Parma and Milan, accompanying Cardinal Ippolito. From this period we have a series of important letters written by Domenico to the wife of Prince Aldobrandini, revealing the exact itinerary of the excursion. In June or July 1626, at Parma, single scenes of Mazzocchi's Catena d'Adone were performed for Odoardo Farnese and his mother, born an Aldobrandini. Perhaps in late summer Mazzocchi went to Venice to oversee the printing of his opera, which was published in October 1626. After the death of Cardinal Ippolito in 1638, Mazzocchi became a familiar of the latter's niece Princess Olimpia Aldobrandini-Borghese-Pamphili. Important also is the protection that the Barberini family extended to him. In 1637 Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) secured a lifelong benefice for the composer, who in the following year dedicated to him his Poemata, settings of Latin poems by the pope himself. Around this time, in the famous academies that Cardinal Francesco Barberini arranged for the papal court, there were performances of Mazzocchi's madrigals, accompanied in part by a consort of viols. Mazzocchi also received financial support from the next pope, Innocent X (Giambattista Pamphili), and the Aldobrandini family arranged to get him an additional benefice. Thus he was able to live in some style in the four rooms he occupied with his servant in the Palazzo Aldobrandini-Pamphili, and he kept also two additional rooms for his adopted son in the Palazzo Mancini opposite. Mazzocchi acquired considerable wealth, but his financial obligations were multiple: he was generous to his family in Civita Castellana and to the young Roman boy he adopted about 1640. According to G.B. Doni (Annotazioni sopra il Compendio, Rome, 1640, p.339) he had a ‘natural modesty and gentleness of manner’.

It was unfortunate for his musical productivity that Mazzocchi became involved in controversy and spent more than ten years, from 1642 at the latest to 1653, trying to prove that Civita Castellana was the site of the ancient Etruscan town of Veii; during this period he published polemical writings on this subject but virtually no music. Eventually he returned to music and published his Sacrae concertationes in 1664. But even this collection seems to date, at least in part, from a much earlier period; some of the works were apparently composed in the 1630s or early 1640s. The motets and oratorios contained in the print were written mainly for Roman oratories, including the Oratorio del SS Crocifisso, and perhaps also for the Confraternita della SS Trinità dei Pellegrini, beloved of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, and the houses of the Augustinian nuns of S Maria Maddalena delle Convertite al Corso favoured by Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

2. Works.

Mazzocchi's one surviving opera, La catena d'Adone (1626), to a libretto by Ottavio Tronsarelli, is based on sections 12 and 13 of the Adone by Giambattista Marino. It has been suggested on insubstantial grounds (by Reiner) that the music may be not all by Mazzocchi, but his authorship of all of it is well affirmed by Witzenmann (1970, pp.13ff) and can be taken as established. The opera consists of a prologue and five acts. Mazzocchi's recitative style is still close to that of early Florentine monody, but the distinction between the narrative and the lyrical elements is more pronounced. Declamation is expressive and highly rhetorical. Arias, made up of short phrases sensitively linked together, serve to ‘break the tedium of recitative’. Mazzocchi did not describe recitative as tedious in itself (as is often asserted), but criticized recitative that lasted too long without interruption. The chorus performs an important function, creating imposing blocks of texture at the ends of each act.

Mazzocchi was more prolific as an oratorio composer. Seven Latin oratorios, published in his Sacrae concertationes, probably date from the 1630s. Some were perhaps performed in Lent 1634 at the oratory of S Marcello, under the direction of Virgilio Mazzocchi. Domenico also composed (perhaps in collaboration with Virgilio) an Italian oratorio, the Coro di profeti, which survives incomplete: it was written about 1635 for a Marian feast at the oratory of the Filippini, directed presumably by Virgilio Mazzocchi. The texts of Domenico's Latin oratorios are based on biblical passages, usually from the New Testament. In each there are parts for the different characters, a narrator sung by one or more voices, and a double choir. Recitative and arioso prevail in the solo writing; the ensembles and choruses are well varied in size, style and texture. The settings of Latin works by Pope Urban VIII (1638) are not pieces for the Church: they belong rather to the realm of vocal chamber music, though the subject matter is religious or moral.

Mazzocchi's other collections of vocal chamber music date from about the same time as the Poemata. The Dialoghi, e sonetti (1638) contain two Latin dialogues taken from Virgil's Aeneid (a third was printed separately in 1641). The remaining pieces have Italian texts written mostly by authors of the time, including Prince Giovanni Giorgio Aldobrandini; one comes from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. The print ends with the sonnet Lagrime amare, a lament of Mary Magdalene famous in its day: the entire second section is quoted in Kircher's Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650). The lament is written in a flexible arioso style, the highly expressive vocal part being supported by most affective harmonies.

The Madrigali (1638) consist of settings of poems by Marino, Guarini, Tasso and authors contemporary with Mazzocchi. In the preface he indicated the signs for piano, forte, echo and messa di voce, as well as others for less familiar devices. There are 24 madrigals altogether, arranged in three groups of eight: for five voices and continuo; five voices without continuo; and four to eight voices and continuo. On the whole, they are a successful blend of old and new techniques. Mazzocchi's mastery of textures is matched by his careful rendering of the text. His tribute to the ideals and traditions of the Renaissance madrigal is sincere – at a time when, as he said, madrigals generally had been almost completely removed from academies. The influence of Gesualdo appears to be strong, but chromaticism is more rationally handled by Mazzocchi. It is important to mention that the cultivation of Gesualdo's music was paramount in the academies of Cardinal Francesco Barberini.

It is a feature of all Mazzocchi's published collections that indications are given for changes of dynamics and tempo. In a similarly careful spirit he tried to indicate all the accidentals that he wished to be applied. His signs are not always as clear or as complete as he intended, but his attempt to indicate such details is exceptional.

WORKS

dramatic

other vocal

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

SmitherHO, i

H. Goldschmidt: Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Oper im 17. Jahrhundert, i (Leipzig, 1901/R), 8–29

H. Kretzschmar: Geschichte der Oper (Leipzig, 1919)

A. Cardinali: Cenni biografici di Domenico e Virgilio Mazzocchi (Subiaco, 1926)

W.O. Strunk: ‘Vergil in Music’, MQ, xvi (1930), 482–92

N. Pirrotta: ‘Falsirena e la più antica delle cavatine’, CHM, ii (1957), 355–66

H. Osthoff: ‘Domenico Mazzocchis Vergil-Kompositionen’, Festschrift Karl Gustav Fellerer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. H. Hüschen (Regensburg, 1962/R), 407–16

C. Gallico: ‘Musicalità di Domenico Mazzocchi: “Olindo e Sofronia” dal Tasso’, Chigiana, xxii, new ser. ii (1965), 59–74

C. Gallico: ‘La “Querimonia” di Maddalena di D. Mazzocchi e l’interpretazione di L. Vittori’, CHM, iv (1966), 133–48

G. Rose: ‘Polyphonic Italian Madrigals of the Seventeenth Century’, ML, xlvii (1966), 153–9

S. Reiner: ‘“Vi sono molt'altre mezz'Arie …”’, Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk, ed. H. Powers (Princeton, NJ, 1968), 241–8

W. Witzenmann: Domenico Mazzocchi, 1592–1665: Dokumente und Interpretationen, AnMc, no.8 (1970); review by L. Bianconi, NRMI, vi (1972), 275–8

W. Witzenmann: ‘Zum Oratorienstil bei Domenico Mazzocchi und Marco Marazzoli’, AnMc, no.19 (1979), 52–93

W. Witzenmann: ‘Viene alla luce il primo autografo musicale di Domenico Mazzocchi’, NRMI, xxvii (1993), 263–80

W. Witzenmann: ‘Beiträge der Brüder Mazzocchi zu den musikalischen Akademien Kardinal Francesco Barberinis’, Akademie und Musik: … Festschrift für Werner Braun, ed. W. Frobenius and others (Saarbrücken, 1993), 181–214

GLORIA ROSE/WOLFGANG WITZENMANN