114 early music february 2011 Gregory Camp Gesualdo myths on disc Of all musical myths, those surrounding Carlo Gesualdo are among the most lurid, fascinating and persistent. Of course the murder of his wife Maria d’Avalos and her lover really did happen, and there is much documenta- tion from which to reconstruct the events of that fateful evening. Was this an isolated crime of passion, or was it only one particularly public incident in a life of private perversities? Was Gesualdo truly the tortured soul that has subsequently been constructed? The controversy over his music is even more persistent: was he really the avant- garde composer that Stravinsky and others have claimed him to be, or are their judgements based on only a narrow sampling of his work and a misunderstanding of his mu- sical context? Perhaps most problematic for our present- day receptions is the question of whether the real and rumoured incidents of Gesualdo’s life have any bearing on his music. Anyone wishing to perform or listen to Gesualdo’s music must somehow come to terms with these accumulated myths, and the recordings here offer a wide spectrum of interpretations. by guest on March 6, 2013 http://em.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from