On Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers

There are a number of composers whose works, in the context of the changes in musical style that happened around them (and because of them), might be deemed revolutionary. Music history timelines typically mark the year 1600 C.E. as the transition point from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Of course, Baroque musical characteristics appeared before 1600, and Renaissance musical characteristics guided some music written after 1600, but as the seventeenth century dawned, new styles and genres were taking shape while existing ones reached a highpoint of refinement and polish. Decades of Reformation and Counter- reformation debates about musical style led theorists such as Gioseffo Zarlino to codify rules and articulate aesthetics for sacred polyphonic music exemplified by composers such as Josquin. Palestrina’s works would later be extolled as epitomizing this practice perfectly. Meanwhile, starting in the 1580s, an artistic movement emanating from Florence upended those aesthetics by prioritizing melody and emotive textual declamation over adherence to Zarlino-esque rules grounded in harmony. The new movement’s composers favored monody— a texture featuring a single prominent melodic voice with supporting bass instruments—over polyphonic textures built from several equal voice parts. The lifespan of Claudio Monteverdi (1567 to 1643) straddles this transitional time, and his musical output includes work in both styles. In his sacred polyphonic music, Monteverdi demonstrated craftsmanship commensurate with paragons such as Josquin and Palestrina. In his books of poetry-based madrigals and in his pioneering contributions to the still-inchoate genre of opera, Monteverdi demonstrated something entirely different. Equipped with excellent singers in the lavish, music-loving Gonzaga court in Mantua, and eager to exploit the expressive potential of words, he experimented with daring shifts in harmony and speech amplified through music in the recitativo style that would eventually dominate the Baroque. Monteverdi described these two styles as two separate “practices.” The older polyphonic style—his first practice--” “considers the harmony commanding ... the mistress of the words.” The newer monadic style—his “second practice—” “considers the harmony commanded, the words the mistress of the harmony.” In his writing, Monteverdi indicated that the second practice was not meant to replace the first. His music demonstrates his mastery of both.

If ever a case could be made that the first and second practice can coexist and, moreover, enhance each other, one need only look to Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610. Published five years after his dedication-cum-defense in the Fifth Book of Madrigals, the Vespers convincingly established his bona fides as a Renaissance composer: The publication included, in addition to the psalm settings for Vespers, a Mass based on an existing work by the older Renaissance composer Nicholas Gombert, compliant with the “rules” of the first practice. But it also includes intimate “sacred concertos,” for one, two, and three solo voices and continuo, redolent of Monteverdi’s operas, that exemplify the second practice and demonstrate Monteverdi’s importance as a progenitor of the Baroque. His was a musical imagination that recognized and exploited equally the excitement of colossal choral- instrumental compositions and the direct impact of a solo singer, simply accompanied. To me, the genius of Monteverdi in his Vespers collection is that, in addition to featuring examples of these two styles side by side in his publication, he created movements that innovatively combined them.

The heterogeneous early Baroque orchestra Monteverdi wrote for also had one foot in the past and one in the future. Its “brass” family adds an idiosyncratic color. The sackbuts, early trombones with a less-flared bell than the modern trombone, trade the brassy blare of their future cousins for a subtler timbre that evokes burnished bronze and blends beautifully with voices. The cornetto held a prominent place in Renaissance and early Baroque instrumental ensembles, before the insurgent violin family vied for dominance and eventually took over. The cornetto is a short, tubular wooden instrument with a trumpet-like mouthpiece. Its unique timbre combines the penetrating brilliance of brass with the plangent roundness of woodwinds, and blends seamlessly with sackbuts and voices alike. Violins, violas, cello, bass, recorders, organ, and arch-lute (theorbo) round out the ensemble.

As though he were making an explicit point about the way elements of secular music can enhance sacred music, Monteverdi begins the Vespers by embedding a choral chant, harmonized to a single chord, in a resplendent toccata borrowed from his opera Orfeo. We’re introduced to the instruments of the orchestra as they erupt in fanfares and prance around in dance-like ritornelli (instrumental interludes).

A series of psalm settings and a hymn form the backbone of the Vespers. Monteverdi changes the number and disposition of voice parts for each psalm setting, inventively varying textures. We will highlight this textural variety by featuring different ensembles and combinations for each psalm. Dixit Dominus and Laetatus Sum are scored for six voice parts; Laudate Pueri uses eight. The two subsequent psalms and the hymn (movements eight, ten, and twelve), Nisi Dominus, Lauda Jerusalem, and Ave Maris Stella, are scored for two choirs of five, three, and four voice parts each. The singers of Amor Artis will subdivide into as many as ten different parts.

The full title of the Vespers includes composto sopra canti fermi (composed over cantus firmuses). Indeed, each of the psalm settings features the text sung to a plainchant psalm tone—a simple melodic formula that intones most of the syllables on a single pitch, rises to a stressed syllable, and falls or moves through several tones at the end of the half verse, as a form of punctuation. The first three psalm settings use the psalm tone in a variety of ways. Both Dixit Dominus and Laudate Pueri open with tenors presenting the psalm tone melody verbatim but quickly becoming entangled in a web of imitative polyphony, as the other voices echo the melody, fold it back onto itself, and flip it upside-down. Laetatus Sum opens with the psalm tone in the tenor accompanied by a jaunty walking bass line. Some verses are set to falsobordone, a type of unmetered choral chant, that Monteverdi explodes into multi-voiced cascades on the text’s final syllable. Other verses employ a trio texture, where one voice declaims the psalm text simply, using the psalm tone formula, while two other voices present a lively duet above or below it. Dancing instrumental ritornelli provide contrasting punctuation between some of the verses. Monteverdi fashions the Nisi Dominus into a broad essay sung by two five-part choirs that embeds the psalm tone in the second tenor part, near the bottom of the texture. In the Lauda Jerusalem Monteverdi moves quickly and excitedly through the text by volleying half-verses between two choirs of sopranos, altos, and basses. The tenors stand their ground between them, integrating their declamatory version of the psalm tone into each choir to complete a four-part texture. Traditional Vespers settings include a hymn, and Vespers for Marian feasts used Ave Maris Stella. For his 1610 publication, Monteverdi riffed variations on an ancient tune for that hymn, bookending a series of solos, quartets, and instrumental ritornellos with two sumptuously harmonized choruses.

Alternating with the choral psalm settings are a series of Monteverdi’s innovative “sacred concertos” for solo voices. In concert performance, the stunning simplicity and directness of the sacred concertos shine and are not overshadowed by the splendor of the grand psalm settings that precede and follow them. In the first two, the tenor solo Nigra Sum and soprano duet Pulchra Es, Monteverdi’s musical imagination illuminates the Song of Songs’ fluid transitions [“slippage” has negative connotations] between the sensual and the sacred. The vocal parts coo, heave, and sigh, sometimes lingering on past the bass instrument’s harmonic resolution and at other points jumping in eagerly ahead of it. Duo Seraphim begins as a tenor duet representing two archangels crying out to one another across the span of heaven. Halfway through, where the text notes that “there are three who give testimony,” Monteverdi introduces a third archangel who joins the first two in a simple three-note chord; where the text finishes, “and these three are one,” the three voices reunite on a single pitch. Audi Coelum introduces a stunning acoustical effect whereby a second voice echoes just the last part of the first voice’s final word in each phrase, refracting it via a heavenly reflection, glossing on its meaning. In the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, the balance shifts toward the instruments, which present a series of variations on three motifs while sopranos subtly weave in a short bit of plainchant on the text “Holy Mary, pray for us.”

The capstone of the collection is the Magnificat. Its text is Mary’s response to her cousin Elizabeth, who has just delivered the shocking news that Mary, a virgin, is to bear God’s son, and that the barren Elizabeth is herself with child. Mary is on the one hand exhilarated and magnified, and, on the other, utterly humbled. The verses reconcile paradoxical opposites: the high are brought low, the meek are exulted, the mighty are deposed, and so on. At once compendium and showcase, Monteverdi’s Magnificat brings the two styles face to face to give each verse a distinct atmosphere. The ancient psalm tone melodies, which have been with us throughout the work, sometimes subsumed into polyphony or nestled between massive choirs, are here laid bare, given to one voice part to deliver, unobscured, in clear long tones, while pairs of violins, voices, or cornetti drape florid garlands of faster notes upon them. To train one’s ear on the psalm tone is to be transported beyond rhythm and meter to a realm beyond time; to train one’s ear on the florid duet around it is to revel in the expressive flexibility of the human voice and the fleet fingers of instrumentalists. One layer feels eager and ardent, the other unhurried and stoic. Their reconciliation creates something sublime, as the activity of the more modern music casts different shades on the long notes of the ancient chants. The whole of the Magnificat—dazzling variety married to simple unity—is a revolutionary conception beyond anything any composer had created to that time.

When performing early music, inevitably the matter of authenticity arises. The decision to perform Monteverdi’s Vespers requires a special willingness to confront a stream of unanswerable questions. To start, we’re not entirely sure why Monteverdi published it in the first place. On one level it might have been a vanity publication meant to distill and display in one impressive volume Monteverdi’s gifts in the realm of sacred music. By 1610 he was growing weary of working (and being overworked) at the Gonzaga court, and a volume like the Vespers could come in handy as a work sample for prospective employers (he dedicated it to Pope Paul V). On another level, Monteverdi may have been creating a resource for church musicians, as the music within his volume could be used to provide music for the celebration of many Marian feast days. A number of composers in the late Renaissance (Praetorius, Handl, Byrd, and Monteverdi’s sometimes contemporary, Viadana, to name but a few) produced comprehensive, resourceful publications with music for an entire service, or, in some cases, the entire liturgical year. The usual questions surrounding early music performance practice apply. How many performers, playing which instruments, at what pitch and tempo, with how much and what type of ornamentation? Performance practice from Monteverdi’s time proves especially difficult to ascertain because, in addition to the paucity of information available, the existing evidence shows great variability in actual practice. Performers in the seventeenth century adapted their performance practice according to what best suited their circumstances and needs (and budget!). Where instruments are concerned, by using replicas and tuning the organ to a different temperament than that of modern keyboard instruments, we can try to create sounds that are likely close to what Monteverdi might have heard. Voices are harder. In Monteverdi’s time, women would not have sung the Vespers; the alto and soprano parts would have been sung by boys, countertenors, and castrati. No two performers or historians will agree on precisely how music of a particular period should be ornamented, but what has always fascinated me about this work is the degree to which Monteverdi wrote out so many ornamental elements. Much of the florid passagework that you’ll hear from singers and players is written in the music itself. In addition to demanding the utmost sensitivity of interpretation, Monteverdi’s music in the sacred concertos and solo passages of the Magnificat demands virtuosic vocal and instrumental technique. Listening to this music, we begin to understand that the musicians with whom Monteverdi worked in the Gonzaga court at Mantua were highly trained virtuosi—an impressive team of experts on whom the Duke was willing to spend (and thereby display) considerable wealth.

Monteverdi’s contribution to the repertoire with the Vespers feels particularly staggering when we remember that it was written hundreds of years before Beethoven, Mahler, and Stravinsky rocked our concert halls with the modern symphony orchestra; before technology eased virtuosity with keys and valves on instruments; and even longer before electricity and computers enabled the thrillingly amped-up soundtracks shaking the walls of our Cineplexes. How splendorous this must have sounded to Monteverdi’s first listeners! What impresses me more than that, though, is the enduring universality of the music. Whether sung by six voices or one hundred and fifty, whether we determine that this section or that section exemplifies the prima pratica or the seconda pratica, whether sung as part of a liturgy or a concert, Monteverdi’s music just works. The opening fanfare and multi-voiced choruses still excite us. The intimacy of the sacred concertos still silences us. The interplay between chant and embellishment in the Magnificat still conjures portals to vast spaces for reflection. In the same way that we can take in the paintings and plays of Monteverdi’s esteemed contemporaries, Rubens and Shakespeare, and immediately appreciate the historical craft while seeing our modern selves in the work, Monteverdi’s Vespers, four hundred years on, sounds ancient yet resonates in new and fresh ways with every performance. Because, by looking back to the music that came before him while forging a new style in the fires of his imagination, Monteverdi tapped into some essential expressive urge and found a way to reflect the variety of humanity through music. He was a maverick in his own time and remains a model for artists of any era, and especially for Amor Artis, which seeks to illuminate the relationships between old and new music. Though these days I’m wary of any statement that begins with “Believe me,” I wholly accept Monteverdi’s salutation in the dedication to his Fifth Book of Madrigals. Speaking of that particular collection of music but surely also of his entire life’s endeavor, he closes:

“Believe me, the modern composer is building upon the foundations of truth. Live happily.”