Giacomo Carissimi

Giacomo Carissimi was an Italian composer and teacher of the early Baroque, one of the most celebrated figures of the Roman School of music. He established the characteristic form of the Latin oratorio, was prolific in composing masses, motets and cantatas, and influenced the musical developments of northern Europe through both his pupils and the wide dissemination of his works.

Baptized in 1605 in Marino near Rome, Carissimi was the youngest child of Amico and Livia Carissimi. His early musical career began in Tivoli Cathedral, where he first sang in the choir and later served as organist, before becoming maestro di cappella in Assisi and subsequently at Sant’Apollinare in Rome, a position he held until his death. He was ordained a priest in 1637 and famously remained in Italy throughout his life despite receiving prestigious offers, including one to succeed Monteverdi in Venice.

In 1656 Carissimi entered the circle of Christina of Sweden, then living in Rome, who appointed him maestro di cappella del concerto di camera and inspired several of his compositions. Many of his works circulated widely, though the authorship of some masses, magnificats and motets is now disputed. Notable oratorios attributed to him include Jephte, Jonas, Judicium Salomonis and Vanitas vanitatum, which helped establish the oratorio as a genre without dramatic staging.

Carissimi’s successors described him as tall, thin, frugal and noble in manner, with a propensity for melancholy. His development of the recitative and the chamber cantata, as well as his innovations in instrumental accompaniment for vocal works, placed him at the center of the transition from the sacred musical traditions of earlier Roman composers to the emerging dominance of secular and operatic forms in Italy. His music was admired by contemporaries such as Samuel Pepys, and extensive collections of his works survive in libraries in Oxford, Paris and London.

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