Claudio Monteverdi Free Sheet Music, Program Notes, Recordings and Biography

The Second Practice: A War of Words and Music

Around the year 1600, the conservative music theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi launched a public attack on some unpublished madrigals by a rising composer named Claudio Monteverdi. Artusi was scandalized, pointing to what he considered gratuitous and illegal uses of dissonance that violated the sacred rules of Renaissance polyphony. The attack sparked a famous war of words. Monteverdi, in his defense, made a revolutionary declaration. He stated that there were two "practices" of composition. The old style, the prima pratica, was where harmony was the master of the text, governed by strict rules. But he was now working in a seconda pratica, a new style where the text was the master of the harmony. If the emotional meaning of a word required a harsh dissonance, then the rules must be broken. This bold manifesto was the birth certificate of the Baroque era, announcing a new kind of music dedicated to expressing human passion in its rawest form.

Cremona and the Court of Mantua

Claudio Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1567, the son of a physician. He was a child prodigy, publishing his first collections of sacred music and madrigals as a teenager. In his early twenties, he secured a position as a string player at the court of the Gonzaga family in Mantua, one of the most brilliant and artistically adventurous courts in Europe. For over two decades, he served the Gonzaga dukes, eventually rising to the position of maestro della musica (master of music). It was a demanding and often frustrating job, but it was in Mantua that he composed the works that would change music history.

The Birth of a Masterpiece: L'Orfeo

At the Mantuan court in 1607, Monteverdi produced his first opera, L'Orfeo. While not the very first opera ever written, it was the first to realize the full dramatic potential of the new genre. Based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, who travels to the underworld to rescue his dead wife Euridice, L'Orfeo is a masterpiece of musical drama. Monteverdi used a large and colorful orchestra, specifying the exact instrumentation for the first time in an operatic score. He created a seamless flow between dramatic speech (recitative) and expressive song (aria), and his music brilliantly captures the full range of human emotion, from the joy of the wedding celebrations to the profound grief of Orpheus's lament and the terrifying power of his aria "Possente spirto" ("Powerful spirit") at the gates of Hades. L'Orfeo is the first great opera and the earliest one to hold a permanent place in the international repertoire.

Master of St. Mark's in Venice

Despite his artistic successes, Monteverdi felt overworked and underappreciated in Mantua. In 1613, he secured one of the most prestigious musical posts in all of Europe: maestro di cappella at the legendary St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. As the director of music for the Venetian state, he was responsible for composing a vast amount of sacred music for all major feasts and ceremonies. It was here that he composed many of his greatest sacred works, solidifying the fame he had already achieved with his monumental Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin), published in 1610. The Vespers of 1610 is a breathtakingly grand and diverse collection of sacred music, combining traditional chant with massive double choruses, virtuosic solo writing, and dramatic, opera-like settings of the texts.

The Madrigal Perfected

Throughout his career, Monteverdi continued to compose and publish madrigals, secular vocal works that were the most advanced musical genre of the late Renaissance. His nine books of madrigals, published over a fifty-year span, are a musical autobiography, tracing the evolution from the prima pratica of unaccompanied vocal polyphony to the new, revolutionary seconda pratica of the Baroque. His later madrigals are essentially miniature dramatic scenes, featuring solo singers, instrumental accompaniment (the basso continuo), and a new, agitated style (stile concitato) he invented to depict anger and warfare.

A Triumphant Final Act: The Venetian Operas

In 1637, the world's first public opera houses opened in Venice. This was a radical development, moving opera from a private courtly entertainment to a commercial venture for a ticket-paying public. The new art form was a sensation, and the demand for new works was enormous. Monteverdi, then in his seventies and having not written an opera in decades, came out of retirement to compose for this new public audience. In his final years, he produced his two last and greatest masterpieces for the Venetian stage: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria ("The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland") and, in 1643, L'incoronazione di Poppea ("The Coronation of Poppea"). Poppea is a stunningly modern and psychologically complex work. Based not on myth but on Roman history, it tells the story of the adulterous and murderous affair between the emperor Nero and the ambitious courtesan Poppea. In a shocking conclusion, love and vice triumph over virtue. The music is a masterpiece of characterization, brilliantly depicting the full range of human emotions.

Legacy

Claudio Monteverdi died in Venice in 1643, a revered figure who had been ordained a priest late in life. He is one of the most important composers in Western history, a true revolutionary who stands as the great bridge between the world of the Renaissance and the world of the Baroque. He took the fledgling, experimental form of opera and infused it with such dramatic power and emotional depth that he ensured its survival and future development. He was the first great master of musical drama.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Fabbri, Paolo. Monteverdi. Translated by Tim Carter, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

• Arnold, Denis, and Tim Carter. "Monteverdi, Claudio." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001.

• Whenham, John, and Richard Wistreich, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

• Ringer, Mark. Opera's First Master: The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi. Amadeus Press, 2006.