ABSTRACT
Luca Marenzio's large output of madrigals has mostly been examined with the focus on literary issues: identification of sources, attribution of individual texts, poetic choices, the role of patrons. According to Alfred Einstein, Torquato Tasso avoided naming Marenzio in order not to provoke the jealousy of the other three musicians active at the Ferrarese court: Alessandro Striggio, Giaches de Wert and Luzzasco Luzzaschi. Biographers have looked in vain for explicit references to Tasso in the surviving papers of Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, but there is no doubt that from the end of 1594 the poet was staying in the Vatican, in an apartment not far from Marenzio's room. It is not very probable, in any case, that Tasso and Marenzio should have worked together on a common project, because, among other reasons, the poet was notoriously shy and moody. Though present in numerous collections of Marenzio, Tasso's poetry did not enjoy the same extraordinary musical fortune as Battista Guarini's poetry.
