Review Summary: Part XI - The Creator's master-work
Modern ears render the Renaissance and the early years of its subsequent musical era, the Baroque period, rather uniform listening experiences for most. The differences in compositional approach between those times and our own are such that identifying unique characteristics can be a challenge unless you've actually studied those eras. Genre lines blur together, hardly distinguishable as most of the works from these eras are vocal or for solo instruments, rarely a mixture of the two in Renaissance days especially. The Baroque saw a larger-scale acceptance of instrumental works, however, with composers like Giovanni Gabrieli popularizing brass instruments and pairing them with both vocalists and other instruments to create massive soundscapes, ones built for the rapidly-expanding list of concert halls in Europe.
In a 1951 biography, music historian Leo Schrade dubbed Claudio Monteverdi (May 1567 - 29 November 1643) the "creator of modern music" - an epithet bound to draw controversy, which indeed it did, but one can hardly find a composer from his era who sounds as relevant to today's sounds as the Italian-born Monteverdi. Born in Cremona, a town in the northwest of Italy, Monteverdi moved to Mantua around 1590, becoming one of the most well-respected string players of the area at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. At Mantua, his compositions gradually gathered him more attention, specifically his madrigals, which were unorthodox in their usage of dissonances and harmonic resolutions. Monteverdi's name became especially publicized in 1605, when he published a retort to Giovanni Artusi (a music theorist who had criticized his style) that defended his innovations as emblematic of a shift in styles - a
seconda practica ("second practice") as opposed to the
prima practica of Palestrina and other late Renaissance composers. After a stressful end to the decade that included the death of his wife Claudia and a ruthless work schedule, Monteverdi moved to Venice in 1613, where he would spend the rest of his life as the
maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Cathedral.
While Monteverdi's name has predominantly survived for his contributions to the genre of opera, the man dabbled in a wide array of secular and sacred genres, dedicating himself to pursuing this
seconda practica in what was a fertile time for Italian music. Here is where the
Vespro della Beata Virgine ("Vespers for the Blessed Virgin") enters the conversation: this work was written over the span of numerous years while Monteverdi was employed at Mantua, and its 1610 publication was at the initial height of his acclaim as an opera composer. The piece is a setting of the vespers associated with Marian feasts, periodic celebrations of the Virgin Mary that take place across many sects of Christianity, but in this case were written for Catholic services specifically. It was the first sacred work Monteverdi had released to the public since his original madrigal publication in 1583, at age 16 - to call the Vespers a massive upgrade on ambition and achievement alike would be an understatement. Rather, it is a tour de force that summarizes everything Monteverdi had worked for and accomplished up to this point in his already-decorated career.
The piece opens with a recall to Monteverdi's breakthrough opera,
L'Orfeo (1607), where a melody from the beginning of that piece is reworked in a radically different setting. A choral part is accompanied by a brash instrumental lineup that features strings, high and low brass, and a harpsichord playing a
basso continuo part (a harmonic accompaniment device pioneered by Monteverdi that would become one of the Baroque's defining features - regulating the music into bassline + chords while allowing the performers some freedom to voice the chords as best suited the performance in question). Vocal arrangements range anywhere from monody/solo voice to full-blown polychoral works, allowing examples of the recitative style that Monteverdi's operas pioneered and backing them with some of the most expressive polyphony he ever wrote, in a career filled with dark, expressive madrigal writing. The instrumental parts don't settle for a backseat themselves, either; Monteverdi conjures a real sense of humanity out of these inanimate objects, a marvelous irony given Catholicism's long-held stance of banning instruments from official worship. Cornets and trombones alike blast through the mix of sounds, giving the work a visceral power atypical for sacred music.
Why the vast array of styles? It's difficult to say, although Monteverdi would leave Mantua soon after this piece's publication and thus may have intended it as an intentional
tour de force so as to make himself a marketable hire. Not that he would have needed it - the man was the hottest opera composer in a country quickly becoming enraptured with the genre, and more will be said about this going forward. But the Vespers stand as a unique artistic document, not only typifying compositional approaches that would quickly become standardized across the early 17th century, but exemplifying them. Few doubted in 1610 that Monteverdi was the most skilled composer of the day, and even fewer doubt it now. This is an example of a master in his prime, a grab-bag that will satiate the average listener in some way or another, and it stands as an incredible accomplishment that this piece has endured just as well as Monteverdi's very best operas.
Jordi Savall (2007): https://open.spotify.com/album/3sY1cmyFGVI0dmRnrDahI0?si=ofPwXGJuRf6gzhJ0wHnq5Q
