Exploring Music: Often-Splendid Music
David M. Greene
The MHS Review 383 Vol. 11, NO. 5• 1987
Claudio Monteverdi has long stood as one of the great revolutionaries of European music, a primary bridge from the Renaissance to the baroque or perhaps from a late-medieval to a "modern" concept of what music is or should be. He in fact had more than a little to do with effecting the sweeping changes that developed around the turn of the 17th century. For one th ing, his compositions exploring the new style had an impact that was considerably more than local, especial1y after he was established in Venice, then perhaps the most important cultural crossroads of the Western world. Secondly he was one of the first to discuss the nature of these changes in print.
In 1600 and again in 1603 a Bolognese church-musician and theorist named Gaiovanni Maria Artusi criticized a composer whom he did not name, for breaking in certain madrigals, some time-honored no-nos. The composer, who was Monteverdi, recognized himself, and in 1605 replied publicly in a letter prefacing fifth book of madrigals. In it he said there was sound and logical reason for his adoptions of what Artusi had branded
"imperfections ,'' and promised to write a full exlanation in a work to be called (in translation) "The Second Practice, or the Perfection of Modem Music ."
The phrase seconda prattica had been used in a related way before, but Monteverdi appears to have been responsile for its popularity and wider application. He never wrote the book, but in 1607 his brother Giulio Cesare, in a preface to Claudio's Scherziu musicali (Musical witticisms), explained in some detail the differences between the prima prattica and the seconda. To put it simply, the difference lay in the contrapuntal conception of the older music and the harmonic conception of the newer. It was, said Giulio Cesare , a manifestation of the ancient quarrel over the primacy of the music or word meanings. Stressing the intellectual and emotional import of the text necessitated rhythmic and harmonic irregularities inconceivable Zarlino or Palestrina.
Claudio Monteverdi is perhaps more commonly identified with secular than with sacred music. The nine books of
madrigals that span his career from the age of 20 are a record of a revolution in progress. The earliest, whatever personal fingerprints he placed on it, is in keeping with the established-though-progressive taste of the day; the latest are madrigals only in name, ranging from solo songs to dramatic presentations. Peri, Caccini, and others had experimented with opera before Monteverdi, but his Orfeo of 1608 stands as the first viable music-drama, and his late masterpieces have be come virtual repertoire standards in our time.
There is a large body of sacred works too, though the only ones to have won anything like general popularity are the Marian Vespers of 1610 and the works published with them. The earliest are no more than exercises and
contrafacta (religious texts applied to music originally for madrigals in this case). The bulk of Monteverdi's sacred music comes from the final Venetian period when the new style is fully developed. This music is thus not pathbreaking, though often splendid in its own right.
One of the monument s of the MHS catalog is, or was, Michel Corboz's recording of the two great religious collections of 1640 and 1651, and the present disc is drawn from the same material. The attraction is, as Peter Holman's notes detail, the application of the most up-to-date scholarship and theory of Monteverdian perfor-
mance practice. "We have attempted," he says, "in this recording to reproduce the effect of a performance in St. Mark's during Monteverdi's lifetime." So we have A=440 ("Venetian pitch"!), omission of keyboards from the continuo, 17th-century bows--everything in fact but St. Mark's, St Jude's Hampstead having to serve.
Review of Sacred Vocal Music by Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi has long stood as one of the great revolutionaries of European music, a primary bridge from the Renaissance to the baroque or perhaps from a late-medieval to a "modern" concept of what music is or should be. He in fact had more than a little to do with effecting the sweeping changes that developed around the turn of the 17th century. For one th ing, his compositions exploring the new style had an impact that was considerably more than local, especial1y after he was established in Venice, then perhaps the most important cultural crossroads of the Western world. Secondly he was one of the first to discuss the nature of these changes in print.
In 1600 and again in 1603 a Bolognese church-musician and theorist named Gaiovanni Maria Artusi criticized a composer whom he did not name, for breaking in certain madrigals, some time-honored no-nos. The composer, who was Monteverdi, recognized himself, and in 1605 replied publicly in a letter prefacing fifth book of madrigals. In it he said there was sound and logical reason for his adoptions of what Artusi had branded
"imperfections ,'' and promised to write a full exlanation in a work to be called (in translation) "The Second Practice, or the Perfection of Modem Music ."
The phrase seconda prattica had been used in a related way before, but Monteverdi appears to have been responsile for its popularity and wider application. He never wrote the book, but in 1607 his brother Giulio Cesare, in a preface to Claudio's Scherziu musicali (Musical witticisms), explained in some detail the differences between the prima prattica and the seconda. To put it simply, the difference lay in the contrapuntal conception of the older music and the harmonic conception of the newer. It was, said Giulio Cesare , a manifestation of the ancient quarrel over the primacy of the music or word meanings. Stressing the intellectual and emotional import of the text necessitated rhythmic and harmonic irregularities inconceivable Zarlino or Palestrina.
Claudio Monteverdi is perhaps more commonly identified with secular than with sacred music. The nine books of
madrigals that span his career from the age of 20 are a record of a revolution in progress. The earliest, whatever personal fingerprints he placed on it, is in keeping with the established-though-progressive taste of the day; the latest are madrigals only in name, ranging from solo songs to dramatic presentations. Peri, Caccini, and others had experimented with opera before Monteverdi, but his Orfeo of 1608 stands as the first viable music-drama, and his late masterpieces have be come virtual repertoire standards in our time.
There is a large body of sacred works too, though the only ones to have won anything like general popularity are the Marian Vespers of 1610 and the works published with them. The earliest are no more than exercises and
contrafacta (religious texts applied to music originally for madrigals in this case). The bulk of Monteverdi's sacred music comes from the final Venetian period when the new style is fully developed. This music is thus not pathbreaking, though often splendid in its own right.
One of the monument s of the MHS catalog is, or was, Michel Corboz's recording of the two great religious collections of 1640 and 1651, and the present disc is drawn from the same material. The attraction is, as Peter Holman's notes detail, the application of the most up-to-date scholarship and theory of Monteverdian perfor-
mance practice. "We have attempted," he says, "in this recording to reproduce the effect of a performance in St. Mark's during Monteverdi's lifetime." So we have A=440 ("Venetian pitch"!), omission of keyboards from the continuo, 17th-century bows--everything in fact but St. Mark's, St Jude's Hampstead having to serve.
Review of Sacred Vocal Music by Claudio Monteverdi