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US.$ 84.95 "Muti una volta quel suo antico stile / Ch'ogni uom attrista e me po far sì lieto." In setting this phrase from Petrarch's famous sestina Mia benigna fortuna (Rime, 332), sixteenth-century composer Luca Marenzio underscored the contradiction between the grief that death brings to all men, and the happiness that it might bring the poet, by juxtaposing slow moving, unusual vertical progressions and linear chromaticism with lively tunefulness and harmonic sweetness. This kind of word painting is an integral part of the sixteenth-century madrigal. To Marenzio, however, goes the distinction of a musical style that most artfully mirrors the contrast between piacevolezza and gravità so popular with sixteenth-century poets and composers. Marco Bizzarini's study of Marenzio is itself grounded in this idea of contrast, suggesting that such varietà characterises not only Marenzio's music, but also a "musical career suspended between the glittering worldliness of the late Renaissance and the more introspective spirit of the Counter Reformation" (p. ix).This book is a translation (revised and expanded) from the original Italian version published in 1998. Several book-length studies of Marenzio's music already exist and, perhaps for this reason, Bizzarini forgoes detailed musical analysis in favour of a close study of the web of personal and professional connections that influenced the course of Marenzio's career. Luca Marenzio (ca.1553 to 1599) was one of the more prolific composers of the sixteenth century, and his works had perhaps the greatest international circulation of any composer in that period. He was born in Coccaglio, near Brescia, but passed the greater part of his life in the service of various Roman prelates. The politics of Rome, with its complex network of local, national and international alliances, thus informs a major portion of this study.With a delicate touch, Bizzarini carefully analyses all existing evidence, as well as a few documents previously unknown to musicologists, and introduces the reader most vividly into the social and political milieu of Counter Reformation Rome. He teases out the relations between the various figures encountered in the dedications, letters, and court documents relating to Marenzio's service. Bizzarini weaves musical and political events together into a convincing narrative. For example, the correspondence concerning Marenzio's possible transfer to France brings to light the network of diplomatic and family relations that complicated Luigi d'Este's professional and personal life in the 1580s, related as he was to the rebellious Duke of Guise and yet devoted to serving the interests of the French crown in Rome on account of his relation to the late King Louis XII. Bizzarini

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