Italian composer and lutenist whose fame rests on his highly individual madrigals (madrigal).

Born of a noble family from southern Italy, Gesualdo lived most of his life in Naples. After ordering the murder of his unfaithful first wife and her lover (in 1590), he married Donna Eleonora d'Este in 1594. His six books of madrigals were published between 1594 and 1611 in part-books and in 1613 in score—one of the first instances of vocal music printed in score. The madrigals in the first four books are conventional pieces of competent workmanship. Those in the last two books are unusual for their dramatic exclamations, linearly driven chromaticism, discontinuous texture, and harmonic license.