Much of Monteverdi's output, including many stage works, has been lost.
His surviving music
includes nine books of madrigals, large-scale sacred works such as his Vespro della Beata
Vergine (Vespers) of 1610, and three complete operas. His opera L'Orfeo (1607) is the earliest of
the genre still widely performed; towards the end of his life he wrote works for the commercial
theatre in Venice, including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea.
While he worked extensively in the tradition of earlier Renaissance polyphony, such as in his
madrigals, he undertook great developments in form and melody, and began to employ the basso
continuo technique, distinctive of the Baroque. No stranger to controversy, he defended his
sometimes novel techniques as elements of a seconda pratica, contrasting with the more orthodox
earlier style which he termed the prima pratica. Largely forgotten during the eighteenth and much of
the nineteenth centuries, his works enjoyed a rediscovery around the beginning of the twentieth
century. He is now established both as a significant influence in European musical history and as a
composer whose works are regularly performed and recorded.
In 1606 Vincenzo's heir Francesco commissioned from Monteverdi the opera L'Orfeo, to
a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, for the Carnivalseason of 1607. It was given two performances in
February and March 1607; the singers included, in the title role, Rasi, who had sung in the first
performance of Euridice witnessed by Vincenzo in 1600. This was followed in 1608 by the
opera L'Arianna (libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini), intended for the celebration of the marriage of
Francesco to Margherita of Savoy. All the music for this opera is lost apart from Ariadne's Lament,
which became extremely popular.[n 3] To this period also belongs the ballet entertainment Il ballo delle
ingrate.[16][26][27]
The strain of the hard work Monteverdi had been putting into these and other compositions was
exacerbated by personal tragedies. His wife died in September 1607 and the young singer Caterina
Martinelli, intended for the title role of Arianna, died of smallpox in March 1608. Monteverdi also
resented his increasingly poor financial treatment by the Gonzagas. He retired to Cremona in 1608
to convalesce.Although the Duke increased Monteverdi's salary and pension, and Monteverdi
returned to continue his work at the court, he began to seek patronage elsewhere. After publishing
his Vespers in 1610, which were dedicated to Pope Paul V, he visited Rome, ostensibly hoping to
place his son Francesco at a seminary, but apparently also seeking alternative employment.
In 1613, following the death of Giulio Cesare Martinengo, Monteverdi auditioned for his post
as maestro at the basilica of San Marco in Venice, for which he submitted music for a Mass. He was
appointed in August 1613
Monteverdi's musical direction received the attention of foreign visitors.
Despite his generally satisfactory situation in Venice, Monteverdi experienced personal problems
from time to time– the subject of an anonymous denunciation to the Venetian authorities alleging
that he supported the Habsburgs.– his son, Francesco joined the choir of San Marco in 1623. His
other son Massimiliano, who graduated in medicine, was arrested by the Inquisition in Mantua in
1627 for reading forbidden literature.
A series of disturbing events troubled Monteverdi's world in the period around 1630. Mantua was
invaded by Habsburg armies in 1630, who besieged the plague-stricken town.
By this time Monteverdi was in his sixties, and his rate of composition seems to have slowed down.
He was nominated as a member of the clergy of Cremona; this may imply that he intended to retire
there.[46][47]
The opening of the opera house of San Cassiano in 1637, the first public opera house in Europe,
stimulated the city's musical life[47] and coincided with a new burst of the composer's activity.
Monteverdi's contribution to opera at this period is notable. He revised his earlier opera L'Arianna in
1640 and wrote three new works for the commercial stage, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return
of Ulysses to his Homeland, 1640, first performed in Bologna with Venetian singers), Le nozze
d'Enea e Lavinia (The Marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia, 1641, music now lost), and L'incoronazione
di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1643).[52]
He died in Venice on 29 November 1643, after paying a brief visit to Cremona, and is buried in
the Church of the Frari. He was survived by his sons; Masimilliano died in 1661, Francesco after
1677.[29]
Music[edit]
Background: Renaissance to Baroque[edit]
Musicians of the late Renaissance/early Baroque era (Gerard van Honthorst, The Concert, 1623)
There is a consensus among music historians that a period extending from the mid-15th century to
around 1625, characterised in Lewis Lockwood's phrase by "substantial unity of outlook and
language", should be identified as the period of "Renaissance music".[55] Musical literature has also
defined the succeeding period (covering music from approximately 1580 to 1750) as the era of
"Baroque music".[56] It is in the late-16th to early-17th-century overlap of these periods that much of
Monteverdi's creativity flourished; he stands as a transitional figure between the Renaissance and
the Baroque.[57]
In the Renaissance era, music had developed as a formal discipline, a "pure science of
relationships" in the words of Lockwood.[55] In the Baroque era it became a form of aesthetic
expression, increasingly used to adorn religious, social and festive celebrations in which, in
accordance with Plato's ideal, the music was subordinated to the text.[58] Solo singing with
instrumental accompaniment, or monody, acquired greater significance towards the end of the 16th
century, replacing polyphony as the principal means of dramatic music expression.[59] This was the
changing world in which Monteverdi was active. Percy Scholes in his Oxford Companion to
Music describes the "new music" thus: "[Composers] discarded the choral polyphony of the madrigal
style as barbaric, and set dialogue or soliloquy for single voices, imitating more or less the inflexions
of speech and accompanying the voice by playing mere supporting chords. Short choruses were
interspersed, but they too were homophonic rather than polyphonic."[60]
Novice years: Madrigal books 1 and 2[edit]
Luca Marenzio, an early influence on Monteverdi
Ingegneri, Monteverdi's first tutor, was a master of the musica reservata vocal style, which involved
the use of chromatic progressions and word-painting;[61] Monteverdi's early compositions were
grounded in this style.[3] Ingegneri was a traditional Renaissance composer, "something of an
anachronism" according to Arnold,[62] but Monteverdi also studied the work of more "modern"
composers such as Luca Marenzio, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, and a little later, Giaches de Wert, from
whom he would learn the art of expressing passion.[63] He was a precocious and productive student,
as indicated by his youthful publications of 1582–83. Paul Ringer writes that "these teenaged efforts
reveal palpable ambition matched with a convincing mastery of contemporary style", but at this stage
they display their creator's competence rather than any striking originality.[64] Geoffrey
Chew classifies them as "not in the most modern vein for the period", acceptable but out-of-
date.[65] Chew rates the Canzonette collection of 1584 much more highly than the earlier juvenilia:
"These brief three-voice pieces draw on the airy, modern style of the villanellas of Marenzio,
[drawing on] a substantial vocabulary of text-related madrigalisms".[65]
The canzonetta form was much used by composers of the day as a technical exercise, and is a
prominent element in Monteverdi's first book of madrigals published in 1587. In this book, the playful,
pastoral settings again reflect the style of Marenzio, while Luzzaschi's influence is evident in
Monteverdi's use of dissonance.[65] The second book (1590) begins with a setting modelled on
Marenzio of a modern verse, Torquato Tasso's "Non si levav' ancor", and concludes with a text from
50 years earlier: Pietro Bembo's "Cantai un tempo". Monteverdi set the latter to music in an archaic
style reminiscent of the long-dead Cipriano de Rore. Between them is "Ecco mormorar l'onde",
strongly influenced by de Wert and hailed by Chew as the great masterpiece of the second book.[66]
A thread common throughout these early works is Monteverdi's use of the technique of imitatio, a
general practice among composers of the period whereby material from earlier or contemporary
composers was used as models for their own work. Monteverdi continued to use this procedure well
beyond his apprentice years, a factor that in some critics' eyes has compromised his reputation for
originality.[67]
Madrigals 1590–1605: books 3, 4, 5[edit]
Monteverdi's first fifteen years of service in Mantua are bracketed by his publications of the third
book of Madrigals in 1592 and the fourth and fifth books in 1603 and 1605. Between 1592 and 1603
he made minor contributions to other anthologies.[68] How much he composed in this period is a
matter of conjecture; his many duties in the Mantuan court may have limited his opportunities,[69] but
several of the madrigals that he published in the fourth and fifth books were written and performed
during the 1590s, some figuring prominently in the Artusi controversy.[70]
The third book shows strongly the increased influence of Wert,[70] by that time Monteverdi's direct
superior as maestro de capellaat Mantua. Two poets dominate the collection: Tasso, whose lyrical
poetry had figured prominently in the second book but is here represented through the more epic,
heroic verses from Gerusalemme liberata,[71] and Giovanni Battista Guarini, whose verses had
appeared sporadically in Monteverdi's earlier publications, but form around half of the contents of the
third book. Wert's influence is reflected in Monteverdi's forthrightly modern approach, and his
expressive and chromatic settings of Tasso's verses.[70] Of the Guarini settings Chew writes: "The
epigrammatic style ... closely matches a poetic and musical ideal of the period ... [and] often
depends on strong, final cadential progressions, with or without the intensification provided by chains
of suspended dissonances". Chew cites the setting of "Stracciami pur il core" as "a prime example of
Monteverdi's irregular dissonance practice".[70] Tasso and Guarini were both regular visitors to the
Mantuan court; Monteverdi's association with them and his absorption of their ideas may have
helped lay the foundations of his own approach to the musical dramas that he would create a
decade later.[71]
As the 1590s progressed, Monteverdi moved closer towards the form that he would identify in due
course as the seconda pratica. Claude V. Palisca quotes the madrigal Ohimè, se tanto amate,
published in the fourth book but written before 1600 – it is among the works attacked by Artusi – as a
typical example of the composer's developing powers of invention. In this madrigal Monteverdi again
departs from the established practice in the use of dissonance, by means of a vocal ornament
Palisca describes as échappé. Monteverdi's daring use of this device is, says Palisca, "like a
forbidden pleasure".[72] In this and in other settings the poet's images were supreme, even at the
expense of musical consistency.[73]
The fourth book includes madrigals to which Artusi objected on the grounds of their "modernism".
However, Ossi describes it as "an anthology of disparate works firmly rooted in the 16th
century",[74] closer in nature to the third book than to the fifth. There is evidence of the composer's
familiarity with the works of Carlo Gesualdo, and with composers of the school of Ferrara such as
Luzzaschi; the book was dedicated to a Ferrarese musical society, the Accademici Intrepidi.[75]
The fifth book looks more to the future; for example, Monteverdi employs the concertato style with
basso continuo (a device that was to become a typical feature in the emergent Baroque era), and
includes a sinfonia (instrumental interlude) in the final piece. He presents his music through complex
counterpoint and daring harmonies, although at times combining the expressive possibilities of the
new music with traditional polyphony.[74]
Opera and sacred music, 1607–1612[edit]
In Monteverdi's final five years' service in Mantua he completed the operas L'Orfeo (1607)
and L'Arianna (1608), and wrote quantities of sacred music, including the Messa in illo
tempore (1610) and also the collection known as Vespro della Beata Vergine which is often referred
to as "Monteverdi's Vespers" (1610). He also published Scherzi musicale a tre voci (1607), settings
of verses composed since 1599 and dedicated to the Gonzaga heir, Francesco. The vocal trio in
the Scherzi comprises two sopranos and a bass, accompanied by simple instrumental ritornellos.
According to Bowers the music "reflected the modesty of the prince's resources; it was,
nevertheless, the earliest publication to associate voices and instruments in this particular way".[76]
L'Orfeo[edit]
Main article: L'Orfeo
Frontispiece of Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, Venice edition, 1609.
The opera opens with a brief trumpet toccata. The prologue of La musica (a figure representing
music) is introduced with a ritornello by the strings, repeated often to represent the "power of music"
– one of the earliest examples of an operatic leitmotif.[77] Act 1 presents a pastoral idyll, the buoyant
mood of which continues into Act 2. The confusion and grief which follow the news of Euridice's
death are musically reflected by harsh dissonances and the juxtaposition of keys. The music
remains in this vein until the act ends with the consoling sounds of the ritornello.[78]
Act 3 is dominated by Orfeo's aria "Possente spirto e formidabil nume" by which he attempts to
persuade Caronte to allow him to enter Hades. Monteverdi's vocal embellishments and virtuoso
accompaniment provide what Tim Carter has described as "one of the most compelling visual and
aural representations" in early opera.[79] In Act 4 the warmth of Proserpina's singing on behalf of
Orfeo is retained until Orfeo fatally "looks back".[80] The brief final act, which sees Orfeo's rescue and
metamorphosis, is framed by the final appearance of the ritornello and by a lively moresca that
brings the audience back to their everyday world.[81]
Throughout the opera Monteverdi makes innovative use of polyphony, extending the rules beyond
the conventions which composers normally observed in fidelity to Palestrina.[82] He combines
elements of the traditional 16th-century madrigal with the new monodic style where the text
dominates the music and sinfonias and instrumental ritornellos illustrate the action.[83]
L'Arianna[edit]
Main article: L'Arianna
The music for this opera is lost except for the Lamento d'Arianna, which was published in the sixth
book in 1614 as a five-voice madrigal; a separate monodic version was published in 1623.[84] In its
operatic context the lament depicts Arianna's various emotional reactions to her abandonment:
sorrow, anger, fear, self-pity, desolation and a sense of futility. Throughout, indignation and anger
are punctuated by tenderness, until a descending line brings the piece to a quiet conclusion.[85]
The musicologist Suzanne Cusick writes that Monteverdi "creat[ed] the lament as a recognizable
genre of vocal chamber music and as a standard scene in opera ... that would become crucial,
almost genre-defining, to the full-scale public operas of 17th-century Venice".[86] Cusick observes
how Monteverdi is able to match in music the "rhetorical and syntactical gestures" in the text of
Ottavio Rinuccini.[86] The opening repeated words "Lasciatemi morire" (Let me die) are accompanied
by a dominant seventh chord which Ringer describes as "an unforgettable chromatic stab of
pain".[85] Ringer suggests that the lament defines Monteverdi's innovative creativity in a manner
similar to that in which the Prelude and the Liebestod in Tristan und
Isolde announced Wagner's discovery of new expressive frontiers.[85]
Rinuccini's full libretto, which has survived, was set in modern times by Alexander Goehr (Arianna,
1995), including a version of Monteverdi's Lament.[87]
Vespers[edit]
Main article: Vespro della Beata Vergine
Deus in adiutorium,
from Vespro della Beata
Vergine
MENU
0:00
Laudate pueri,
from Vespro della Beata
Vergine
MENU
0:00
The Vespro della Beata Vergine, Monteverdi's first published sacred music since the Madrigali
spirituali of 1583, consists of 14 components: an introductory versicle and response, five psalms
interspersed with five "sacred concertos" (Monteverdi's term),[88]a hymn, and two Magnificat settings.
Collectively these pieces fulfil the requirements for a Vespers service on any feast day of the Virgin.
Monteverdi employs many musical styles; the more traditional features, such as cantus
firmus, falsobordone and Venetian canzone, are mixed with the latest madrigal style, including echo
effects and chains of dissonances. Some of the musical features used are reminiscent of L'Orfeo,
written slightly earlier for similar instrumental and vocal forces.[70]
In this work the "sacred concertos" fulfil the role of the antiphons which divide the psalms in regular
Vespers services. Their non-liturgical character has led writers to question whether they should be
within the service, or indeed whether this was Monteverdi's intention. In some versions of
Monteverdi's Vespers (for example, those of Denis Stevens) the concertos are replaced with
antiphons associated with the Virgin, although John Whenham in his analysis of the work argues
that the collection as a whole should be regarded as a single liturgical and artistic entity.[88]
All the psalms, and the Magnificat, are based on melodically limited and repetitious Gregorian
chant psalm tones, around which Monteverdi builds a range of innovative textures. This concertato
style challenges the traditional cantus firmus,[89] and is most evident in the "Sonata sopra Sancta
Maria", written for eight string and wind instruments plus basso continuo, and a single soprano voice.
Monteverdi uses modern rhythms, frequent metre changes and constantly varying textures;[89] yet,
according to John Eliot Gardiner, "for all the virtuosity of its instrumental writing and the evident care
which has gone into the combinations of timbre", Monteverdi's chief concern was resolving the
proper combination of words and music.[90]
The actual musical ingredients of the Vespers were not novel to Mantua – concertato had been used
by Lodovico Grossi da Viadana,[91] a former choirmaster at the cathedral of Mantua,[92] while
the Sonata sopra had been anticipated by Archangelo Crotti in his Sancta Maria published in 1608. It
is, writes Denis Arnold, Monteverdi's mixture of the various elements that makes the music unique.
Arnold adds that the Vespers achieved fame and popularity only after their 20th-century rediscovery;
they were not particularly regarded in Monteverdi's time.[91]
Other Venice music 1614–1638[edit]
Mantua at the time of its sacking in 1630
During this period of his Venetian residency Monteverdi composed quantities of sacred music.
Numerous motets and other short works were included in anthologies by local publishers such as
Giulio Cesare Bianchi (a former student of Monteverdi) and Lorenzo Calvi, and others were
published elsewhere in Italy and Austria.[105][106][107] The range of styles in the motets is broad, from
simple strophic arias with string accompaniment to full-scale declamations with an alleluia finale.[105]
Monteverdi retained emotional and political attachments to the Mantuan court and wrote for it, or
undertook to write, large amounts of stage music including at least four operas. The ballet Tirsi e
Clori survives through its inclusion in the seventh book, but the rest of the Mantuan dramatic music
is lost. Many of the missing manuscripts may have disappeared in the wars that overcame Mantua in
1630.[108] The most significant aspect of their loss, according to Carter, is the extent to which they
might have provided musical links between Monteverdi's early Mantuan operas and those he wrote
in Venice after 1638: "Without these links ... it is hard to a produce a coherent account of his
development as a composer for the stage".[109] Likewise, Janet Beat regrets that the 30-year gap
hampers the study of how opera orchestration developed during those critical early years.[110]
Apart from the madrigal books, Monteverdi's only published collection during this period was the
volume of Scherzi musicale in 1632. For unknown reasons, the composer's name does not appear
on the inscription, the dedication being signed by the Venetian printer Bartolemeo Magni; Carter
surmises that the recently ordained Monteverdi may have wished to keep his distance from this
secular collection.[98] It mixes strophic continuo songs for solo voice with more complex works which
employ continuous variation over repeated bass patterns. Chew selects the chaconne for two
tenors, Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti, as the outstanding item in the collection: "[T]he greater part of
this piece consists of repetitions of a bass pattern which ensures tonal unity of a simple kind, owing
to its being framed as a simple cadence in a G major tonal type: over these repetitions, inventive
variations unfold in virtuoso passage-work".[93]
Late operas and final works[edit]
The last years of Monteverdi's life were much occupied with opera for the Venetian stage. Richard
Taruskin, in his Oxford History of Western Music, gives his chapter on this topic the title "Opera from
Monteverdi to Monteverdi." This wording, originally proposed humorously by the Italian music
historian Nino Pirrotta, is interpreted seriously by Taruskin as indicating that Monteverdi is
significantly responsible for the transformation of the opera genre from a private entertainment of the
nobility (as with Orfeo in 1607), to what became a major commercial genre, as exemplified by his
opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643).[111] His two surviving operatic works of this period, Il ritorno
d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione are held by Arnold to be the first "modern" operas;[112] Il
ritorno is the first Venetian opera to depart from what Ellen Rosand terms "the mythological
pastoral".[113] However, David Johnson in The North American Review warns audiences not to expect
immediate affinity with Mozart, Verdi or Puccini: "You have to submit yourself to a much slower pace,
to a much more chaste conception of melody, to a vocal style that is at first merely like dry
declamation and only on repeated hearings begins to assume an extraordinary eloquence."[114]
Il ritorno, says Carter, is clearly influenced by Monteverdi's earlier works. Penelope's lament in Act I
is close in character to the lament from L'Arianna, while the martial episodes recall Il
combattimento. Stile concitato is prominent in the fight scenes and in the slaying of Penelope's
suitors. In L'incoronazione, Monteverdi represents moods and situations by specific musical devices:
triple metre stands for the language of love; arpeggios demonstrate conflict; stile
concitato represents rage.[115] There is continuing debate about how much of the
extant L'incoronazione music is Monteverdi's original, and how much is the work of others (there are,
for instance, traces of music by Francesco Cavalli).[32][116]
The Selva morale e spirituale of 1641, and the posthumous Messa et salmi published in 1650 (which
was edited by Cavalli), are selections of the sacred music that Monteverdi wrote for San Marco
during his 30-year tenure – much else was likely written but not published.[32][117] The Selva
morale volume opens with a series of madrigal settings on moral texts, dwelling on themes such as
"the transitory nature of love, earthly rank and achievement, even existence itself".[118] They are
followed by a Mass in conservative style (stile antico), the high point of which is an extended seven-
voice "Gloria". Scholars believe that this might have been written to celebrate the end of the 1631
plague. The rest of the volume is made up of numerous psalm settings, two Magnificats and
three Salve Reginas.[119] The Messa et salmi volume includes a stile antico Mass for four voices, a
polyphonic setting of the psalm Laetatus Sum, and a version of the Litany of Lareto that Monteverdi
had originally published in 1620.[117][120]
The posthumous ninth book of madrigals was published in 1651, a miscellany dating back to the
early 1630s, some items being repeats of previously published pieces, such as the popular duet O
sia tranquillo il mare from 1638.[121][122] The book includes a trio for three sopranos, "Come dolce oggi
l'auretta", which is the only surviving music from the 1630 lost opera Proserpina rapita.[93]
