Life
Pomponio Nenna was born in Bari, in the province of Puglia, at the southeastern extremity of Italy. His father, Giovanni Battista Nenna, was a city official of Bari, and was the author of "Il Nennio : nel quale si ragiona di nobilta", a book on nobility and character, published in 1542.
Pomponio Nenna most likely studied with Stefano Felis in Bari. In 1574 he published his first music, four villanellas which were included in collections of "Villanelle alla Napolitana", edited by Giovanni Jacopo de Antiquis, who may also have been one of his teachers. In 1582 Nenna dedicated his first book of madrigals to Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, near Bari. Fabrizio had nominated Nenna to be his successor. Fabrizio Carafa is also the man found in flagrante delicto with the composer Don Carlo Gesualdo's wife, both of whom were killed by Gesualdo's own hand in one of music history's most famous murders (1590). Nenna seems nonetheless to have been on terms of friendship with Gesualdo, and had dedicated music to him. As Gesualdo was also Prince of Venosa, it may have been the most prudent political stance for Nenna to assume.
Nenna worked in the court of Gesualdo, between 1594 and 1599, at which time it was once thought that Gesualdo, then an amateur composer, studied with Nenna; but more recent musicological study suggests that the influence may have gone the other way.
Nenna's activities in the first decade of the 17th century are obscure, but he most likely was in Naples from 1606 to 1607 and in Rome in 1608. A curious remark concerning his skilled participation in a certain chess game in Naples in 1606 is recorded in a manuscript book of discourses.
In April 1600, Leonora d'Este, the more fortunate second wife of Gesualdo, wrote a letter to her brother, then Cardinal Alessandro d'Este in Rome, in which she recommends Pomponio Nenna to him. Thus it may have been his d'Este family connection that enabled him to profitably travel to Rome.
He died 25 July 1608 in Rome.
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