Luigi Dentice

Luigi Dentice (1510 in Naples – 1566 in Naples) was an Italian composer, musical theorist, singer and lutenist who served the powerful Sanseverino family,[1] and was father of Fabrizio Dentice (1539 – 1581), also a composer and lutenist.[2] He was grandfather of Scipione Dentice (1560–1633).

Biography

[edit]

Dentice came from the noble Dentice family. When his father died in 1561 he inherited the title of Baron of Viggiano. He married Vincenza Caracciolo, who in 1566 was left a widow with two young children. In the 1550s the Dentices travelled extensively in Spain.[3] As a singer, Luigi Dentice appears to have sung as a male soprano falsettist.[4]

His main work of music theory Duo dialoghi della musica, Rome 1553, was a collection of classical Greek and Latin writings on music, translated into Italian, with Dentice's own commentary.[5] The title promises one dialogue on theory, another on practice.[6] The text is interspersed with a few comments on contemporary music and musicians.[7] It also includes Dentice's opinions on inflection in musica ficta,,[8] and the practice of monody later developed by Giulio Caccini and others.[9]

Works

[edit]
  • Songs in posthumous collection Arie Raccolti, printed Rocco Rodio, Naples 1577.

Selected discography

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ T. Crawford, "Lute counterpoint from Naples" in Early Music, Oxford Journals 2006
  2. ^ Dinko Fabris, 'Vita e opere di Fabrizio Dentice, nobile napoletano, compositore del secondo Cinquecento', Studi musicali,
  3. ^ Jeanice Brooks, Courtly song in late sixteenth-century France p. 53
  4. ^ Richard Wistreich, Warrior, courtier, singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance, p. 138-139
  5. ^ Duo dialoghi della musica Edition 1988 81 pages
  6. ^ Ann Elizabeth Moyer Musica scientia: musical scholarship in the Italian Renaissance 1992, p. 147
  7. ^ James Haar in Iain Fenlon, Early Music History: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music 2009 p. 50
  8. ^ Karol Berger, Musica Ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony
  9. ^ Wistreich op.cit. p. 139