ABSTRACT
Testament to the influence of Don Carlo Gesualdo on twentieth-century composition, the list of works in which composers from the past 110 years pay homage to his music is vast, covering a wide variety of movements and countries. 1 Through modern analytical methods, in this case pitch class set theory analysis, this chapter examines the parallels between Gesualdo’s compositional processes and those of the twentieth century. For this the madrigal ‘Mercè grido piangendo’ (from the sixth book of madrigals printed in 1611) will be taken as an example. By bringing twentieth-century analytical techniques to Gesualdo’s music, it is possible to see where the attraction lay for twentieth-century composers.
