Pomponio Nenna

Pomponio Nenna (baptized 13 June 1556 – 25 July 1608) was a Neapolitan Italian composer of the Renaissance. He is mainly remembered for his madrigals, which were influenced by Gesualdo, and for his polychoral sacred motets, posthumously published as Sacrae Hebdomadae Responsoria in 1622.

Pomponio Nenna was born in Bari, in Apulia and the Kingdom of Naples, now near the southeastern extremity of the "heel" of Italy. His father, Giovanni Battista Nenna, was a city official in Bari and was the author of "Il Nennio : nel quale si ragiona di nobilta", a book about nobility and virtuous character, published in 1542.

Pomponio Nenna probably studied with Stefano Felis in Bari. In 1574 his first pieces of music to be published were four villanellas which were included in the collections of "Villanelle alla Napolitana", edited by Giovanni Jacopo de Antiquis, who may also have been one of Nenna's teachers. In 1582 Nenna dedicated his first book of madrigals to Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, near Bari. Carafa had nominated Nenna to be his successor. and is also the man found in flagrante delicto with the composer Don Carlo Gesualdo's wife, both of whom were killed in 1590 by Gesualdo's own hand in one of the most famous murders in the history of music. Nenna seems nonetheless to have been on terms of friendship with Gesualdo, and had dedicated music to him. As Gesualdo was also Prince of Venosa, this may have been the most prudent political stance for Nenna to assume.

Nenna worked at the court of Gesualdo between 1594 and 1599, at which time it was once thought that Gesualdo, himself an amateur composer, studied with Nenna; but more recent musicological study suggests that the influence may have gone the other way.

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