Italian composer. He is recorded as a
singer at Tivoli in 1623; two years later he was organist
there. His first appointment as
maestro di cappella
came in 1628, at the S. Rufino Cathedral in Assisi. The
following year he was callcd on by Bernardino Castorio in Rome
to fill the post of
maestro
at the German College there, a prestigious post in which
Victoria
and
Agazzari
had served earlier. Carissimi spent the rest of his life at
the college; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1637. His
responsibilities included training the choirs and providing
liturgical music for the adjoining S. Apollinare chapel; his
official salary of 5 scudi (in 1634) probably reflects only a
fraction of his actual income. In 1655-56 he was given the
title
maestro di cappella del concerto di camera
by the Queen of Sweden in exile in Rome; also during the 1650s
he composed and conducted for the Oratorio del S. Crocifisso.
Among his prominent pupils were
Marc-Antoine
Charpentier,
Johann Kaspar
Kerll,
Christoph
Bemhard,
and possibly also
Johann Philipp
Krieger.
That he was in a comfortable situation, both financially and
professionally, is suggested by his rejection of several
opportunities for prestigious employment, including the post at
St. Mark's in Venice on
Monteverdi
's death in 1643 and the position of
maestro
for the emperor's son, Leopold Wilhelm of Brussels. Carissimi
chose to remain in Rome, and after 44 years of service to the
College he died a rich man.
The first major composer of oratorios,
Carissimi helped form the modern notion of the genre. He also
composed hundreds of motets and cantatas in addition to Masses
and other sacred works. Because no autograph manuscripts
survive, problems of attribution in his oeuvre are especially
difficult, as are problems of genre, especially in
distinguishing between motet and oratorio. Among the oratorios
are
Damnatorum lamentatio
(1666),
Jephte
(before 1650),
Jonas,
and
Judicium Salomonis.