Sigismondo D'India was an Italian composer. Probably born in Palermo—he described himself as
"nobile palermitano" in the prefaces to his works—he spent his
adolescence in Naples, where there are recoirds of a Don Carlo D'India, a
relative or possibly his father. Following a musical education in that
city, he would have done so as part of a musical scene that included
Jean de Macque who lived in Naples from 1587 and who counted amongts his
pupils Gesualdo, Maione and Trabaci.
During the first decade of the Seventeenth Century,
D'India traveled around some of the most important courts of northern
and central Italy: Mantua, Florence and Rome. He published his first
printed work in 1606: Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci.
In the preface to his Musiche of 1609, he recounts that in Florence he
sang alogside two of the most celebrated figures in music, Giulio
Caccini and the acclaimed virtuoso singer Vittoria Archilei.
In 1611 he settled in Turin as director of chamber music
at the ducal court of Savoy, in the service of Carlo Emanuele I,
devoting himself to composing the music for the sumptuous festivities at
court, testimony of which has come down to posterity by way of his Musiche e balli a quattro voci (Venice,
1621). In the spring of 1623, however, he hurriedly left the Savoy
court to avoid the exposure by malicious court gossips of a scandal. He
found refuge at the court of Alfonso II d'Este, Prince of Modena, who
was the son-in-law of the Duke of Savoy, and was thereafter called to
Rome to take up service with Cardinal Maurizio of Savoy, the son of
Carlo Emanuele I, staying there for two years. In the winter of 1626,
he was summoned back to Modena by Alfonso d'Este; however, on the death
of Isabella, the wife of Alfonso, he returned to Rome. He thereafter
left the service of the Cardinal for good, and returned to Modena, where
he spent his last years. His death there in 1629 prevented him from
taking up a post offered him by the Prince-Elector of Bavaria,
Maximilian I.
There exist no portraits of D'India. A Roman
correspondent of Alfonso d'Este describes him as "ugly of body and
shabbily dressed," though the Duke himslef noted that he was replete
with "good qualities and good manners."
Over the course of twenty years he published three volumes of motets, eight of madrigals and two of villanelle alla napolitana, but he was most notable as a follower of the Florentine monodists, issuing five books of Musiche
for one or two voices and continuo, and introducing into the solo
madrigal some radical experiments in chromatic writing new to that
medium (though well-tried, of course, in polyphonic composition). His O dolcezze amarissime is one of several powerful and distinctive songs, and his longer laments rival Monteverdi in their expressive inventiveness.
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