Background: Renaissance to Baroque ,
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". Musical literature has also defined the succeeding period (covering music from approximately 1580 to 1750) as the era of "
Baroque music". 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. In the Renaissance era, music had developed as a formal discipline, a "pure science of relationships" in the words of Lockwood. 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. 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."
Novice years: Madrigal books 1 and 2 , an early influence on Monteverdi
Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, Monteverdi's first tutor, was a master of the
musica reservata vocal style, which involved the use of
chromatic progressions and
word-painting; Monteverdi's early compositions were grounded in this style. 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. He was a precocious and productive student, as indicated by his youthful publications of 1582–83.
Mark 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.
Geoffrey Chew classifies them as "not in the most modern vein for the period", acceptable but out-of-date. 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". 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.
Madrigals 1590–1605: books 3, 4, 5 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. How much he composed in this period is a matter of conjecture; his many duties in the Mantuan court may have limited his opportunities, 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. by that time Monteverdi's direct superior as
maestro de capella at 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, 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". In this and in other settings the poet's images were supreme, even at the expense of musical consistency. 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", closer in nature to the third book than to the fifth. Besides Tasso and Guarini, Monteverdi set to music verses by Rinuccini,
Maurizio Moro (''Sì ch'io vorrei morire
) and Ridolfo Arlotti (Luci serene e chiare''). 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. The fifth book looks more to the future; for example, Monteverdi employs the
stile concertato 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.
Opera and sacred music: 1607–1612 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".
''L'Orfeo'' 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. 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. 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. In Act 4 the warmth of Proserpina's singing on behalf of Orfeo is retained until Orfeo fatally "looks back". 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. Throughout the opera Monteverdi makes innovative use of polyphony, extending the rules beyond the conventions which composers normally observed in fidelity to
Palestrina. 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.
''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. 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. Cusick observes how Monteverdi is able to match in music the "rhetorical and syntactical gestures" in the text of Ottavio Rinuccini. Rinuccini's full libretto, which has survived, was set in modern times by
Alexander Goehr (
Arianna, 1995), including a version of Monteverdi's
Lament.
Vespers of the
Vespers, a page from the
alto partbook (left), and the corresponding page from the
continuo partbook (right) {{listen|type=music|header=From
Vespro della Beata Vergine 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), 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. 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; The actual musical ingredients of the Vespers were not novel to Mantua – concertato had been used by
Lodovico Grossi da Viadana, 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.
Madrigals 1614–1638: books 6, 7 and 8 Sixth book During his years in Venice Monteverdi published his sixth (1614), seventh (1619) and eighth (1638) books of madrigals. The sixth book consists of works written before the composer's departure from Mantua. The central theme of the collection is loss; the best-known work is the five-voice version of the ''Lamento d'Arianna'', which, says Massimo Ossi, gives "an object lesson in the close relationship between monodic recitative and counterpoint". The book contains Monteverdi's first settings of verses by
Giambattista Marino, and two settings of
Petrarch which Ossi considers the most extraordinary pieces in the volume, providing some "stunning musical moments". The book also contains large-scale ensemble works, and the ballet
Tirsi e Clori. This was the height of Monteverdi's "Marino period"; six of the pieces in the book are settings of the poet's verses. As Carter puts it, Monteverdi "embraced Marino's madrigalian kisses and love-bites with ... the enthusiasm typical of the period". Some commentators have opined that the composer should have had better poetic taste. Many of Monteverdi's familiar poets – Strozzi, Rinuccini, Tasso, Marino, Guarini – are represented in the settings. It is difficult to gauge when many of the pieces were composed, although the ballet ''Mascherata dell' ingrate
that ends the book dates back to 1608 and the celebration of the Gonzaga-Savoy marriage. on its publication in the eighth book, Monteverdi explicitly linked it to his concept of concitato genera
(otherwise stile concitato'' – "aroused style") that would "fittingly imitate the utterance and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare", and implied that since he had originated this style, others had begun to copy it. The work employed for the first time instructions for the use of
pizzicato string chords, and also evocations of fanfares and other sounds of combat. The critic Andrew Clements describes the eighth book as "a statement of artistic principles and compositional authority", in which Monteverdi "shaped and expanded the madrigal form to accommodate what he wanted to do ... the pieces collected in Book Eight make up a treasury of what music in the first half the 17th century could possibly express."
Other Venetian music: 1614–1638 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. The range of styles in the motets is broad, from simple
strophic arias with string accompaniment to full-scale declamations with an alleluia finale. 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". Likewise,
Janet Beat regrets that the 30-year gap hampers the study of how opera orchestration developed during those critical early years. 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 Bartolomeo Magni; Carter surmises that the recently ordained Monteverdi may have wished to keep his distance from this secular collection. 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; Il ritorno
is the first Venetian opera to depart from what Ellen Rosand terms "the mythological pastoral". 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."
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. 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). 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. 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". 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Historical perspective==