Gesualdo composed beautiful madrigals. He is also the perpetual outsider.

I’ll leave that to you to find out why, but here’s one of his pieces. Note his use of chromaticism (you can read along, look for the accidentals). Keep in mind that chromatic scales were relatively new in his time. Nobody — and I mean no-frickin-body — was writing like this in his time. It didn’t catch on for another 400 years. Stravinsky took pilgrimages to Gesualdo’s castle, and even erected a statue to him.

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