Across music history, there are moments when an established style is suddenly ousted by something radically new. At the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven took the elegantly proportioned language of Classicism and transformed it into something bigger and bolder, paving the way for Romanticism. Once again at the turn of the 20th, Stravinsky and the trio of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern challenged that lush Romantic style with their leaner, harsher experiments and pushed us into Modernism. Just such an event took place around 1600 in Northern Italy when the lavish polyphonic style of the Renaissance, which became known as the prima prattica, gave way to the seconda prattica: a style in which a simpler vocal style studded with dissonances was proposed. The style, called monody, emphasized the expression of words in place of complex musical display and eventually led to the first operas. It would also mark the start of the Baroque era.
Presiding over this revolution was the Cremona-born Claudio Monteverdi, the premier musical genius of the first half of the 17th century in Italy. Over the course of his long career serving at the court of Mantua and at Venice’s Saint Mark’s Basilica, he created the first opera to remain in the standard repertoire, Orfeo of 1607, as well as the masterful operas of his old age Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea (others have been unfortunately lost). Simultaneously, he brought the older art of the polyphonic madrigal to its highest level in his nine books of madrigals, infusing them with the harmonic, rhythmic, and coloristic inventions that defined the new monodic style.
The greatest of these collections is Book 8, which Monteverdi titled Madrigali guerriere et amorosi (“Madrigals of War and Love”). On this evening’s program, Jordi Savall and his ensemble perform six highlights of this vast collection. Published in 1638, it was a compilation of madrigals composed over the past 30 years and set words by such revered Italian poets as Petrarch (1304–1374) and Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), as well as Monteverdi’s contemporaries. Book 8 was dedicated in a flowery homage typical of the era to Ferdinand III of Mantua, who had been elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, based in Vienna, in 1636; several of the madrigals we’ll hear refer to him and to his palace on the Danube River. Although Book 8 is divided into two halves, one focusing on warlike poetry and the other on love poetry, the two contrasting experiences are in fact closely intertwined throughout, with the battles of love portrayed as being nearly as lethal as armed combat.
In many of these madrigals—and especially the epic Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda—the texts are vividly brought to life through the virtuosic use of the stile concitato (“agitated style”) invented by Monteverdi to mimic the sounds of war. In his preface to Book 8, the composer wrote: “Having considered that our mind has three principal passions or affections—anger, temperance, and humility or supplication [also the emotions of love]—as the best philosophers affirm … and never having been able to find in all the compositions of past composers an example of the agitated style as described by Plato … in these words: ‘Take up that harmony which … imitates the voice and accents of a man going bravely into battle’ … I therefore, with no little research and effort, set myself the task of discovering it.”
Monteverdi’s discoveries were premised on a radically new treatment of rhythm, using it to describe the galloping of horses, the frantic intensity of the blows of warriors’ swords, and their exhausted panting. During his service with the court of Mantua, he had experienced warfare himself in all its blood and fire. He also freed himself from the restrained harmonic practices of the Renaissance to create stunning harmonic twists in the melodic line and to expand the use of dissonance, making it a potently expressive partner. In the words of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, one of Monteverdi’s greatest 20th-century champions, “Now a piece could begin with an unprepared dissonance, like a bolt out of the blue—something that had previously been quite impossible.” Monteverdi also worked with new coloristic effects for his orchestras and was the first composer to specify the use of such playing techniques as pizzicato chords, string tremolo, and col legno, in which the strings are struck with the wood of the bow instead of the gut. All these innovations created music that portrayed extreme emotions with unprecedented force.
Maestro Savall begins the concert with a Sinfonia from Monteverdi’s Book 7 of madrigals published in 1619 that accompanied its first solo vocal work “Tempro la cetra.” Borrowing suitable orchestral sinfonias, as Savall does tonight, from another work of one’s own or even by another composer was standard practice in the Early Baroque era. And this grave, ode-like instrumental piece is a perfect choice because it not only opens Book 7, but also introduces a song that matches the theme of “Altri canti di Marte e di sua schiera.” Another ode to Mars, “Tempro la cetra” begins: “I tune the lyre, and now to sing the praise of Mars, take up the stylus, seek the odes, but all in vain; it seems impossible this lyre can resound to anything but love.”
“Altri canti di Marte e di sua schiera” (“Let Others Sing of Mars and His Hosts”) begins the second half of Book 8, which comprises the madrigals of love. Set to verses by Giambattista Marino, one of Monteverdi’s favorite contemporary poets, it is a six-voice madrigal about the poet’s unrequited love for a cruel woman. The work is filled with warlike imagery despite its subject matter. Opening with homophonic chords uniting the voices, it immediately blows apart into frantic imitative counterpoint using the stile concitato as the singers describe the glories of warfare. Quite different is the airy, melodious music beginning at the words “Io canto, Amor,” which is led by the higher voices in sensuous melismas. Monteverdi specialized in such sudden changes of musical texture.
In the madrigal’s second part, “Due belli occhi fur l’armi onde traffitta” (“Two Beautiful Eyes Were the Weapons that Pierced”), the three women’s parts divide from the male voices into a contrapuntal dialogue about the sufferings wrought by Love’s “warrior maiden.” A bass representing the poet sings the final lines awarding the victory to her; the sextet transforms his final melismas into a wondrous polyphonic tissue of coloratura as the poet begs that his pain may “give life to my song.”
In the early 17th century, the Italian courts vied with each other to become the most dazzling centers of culture, which included the arts of theater and dance as well as music. Our next madrigal is an example of the ballo form, in which the vocal artists were joined by lavishly costumed dancers—and sometimes the courtiers themselves joined in. We know this because Monteverdi included copious instructions in the score as to how “Volgendo il ciel per l’immortal sentiero” (“While Heaven in the Immortal Path Turns”) was to be staged. A setting of two interlocking sonnets by Ottavio Rinuccini evoking an era of idyllic pastoral peace after war has ended, it also includes references to Ferdinand and pays tribute to his new Viennese kingdom with dancers representing nymphs of the Danube.
Instrumental entrance music leads in the various performers. Among them is a tenor soloist who sings the words of the first sonnet in straightforward monodic style. After he calls the dancers, the ballo section begins with the second sonnet “Movete al mio bel suon” (“Move to My Melodious Sound”) sung in triple-meter dancing rhythm by five voices. This madrigal makes beautiful display of the singers’ mutual agility in a series of choral melismas tossed from the women to the men. At midpoint before the second part of the ball “Ei l’armi cinse,” Maestro Savall has chosen to interpolate an infectiously rhythmic dance over a repeating bass pattern: the “L’eroica” Ciaconna by the Neapolitan composer Andrea Falconieri published in 1650.
“Altri canti d’Amor, tenero arciero,” the opening madrigal of the canti guerrieri (“songs of war”) of Book 8, is a symmetrical partner to “Altri canti de Marte” and sets an anonymous text, probably commissioned by Monteverdi, to contrast with it. It makes prominent reference to Ferdinand III, the Holy Roman Emperor. The initial Sinfonia is the instrumental introduction to the entirety of Book 8. Beginning solemnly, it quickly softens into a joyful three-beat dance.
Continuing in this dance rhythm, the three upper voices of the sextet sing in sweetly languid praise of the pleasures of love. But the bass soloist interrupts with the words “di Marte,” and the rest of the voices respond excitedly invoking Mars. A spectacular passage of vocal polyphony in stile concitato ensues as the singers embrace images of the noisy sounds of the battlefield. Here the vivid representation of the scene is more important than being able to understand the individual words. But the words regain focus as Monteverdi gives the final lines, in which Ferdinand is extolled for his heroic deeds, to a single voice: The virile bass who sings them in the word-dominated monody with lavish coloratura on the word canto (“sing”). The sextet then enlarges on this apostrophe to Ferdinand in clear homophonic chords.
Book 8’s most famous piece is Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, which dramatically sets an extraordinary episode from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberate (Jerusalem Delivered). We know it was composed in 1624 because Monteverdi tells us so in his preface to Book 8: “It was performed in the palace of the most illustrious and excellent gentleman Girolamo Mocenigo, my special patron, in a fully polished production, because he was a nobleman of fine and delicate taste. It was during Carnival as an evening entertainment in the presence of all the nobility, who were so moved by the emotion of compassion that they almost shed tears, and who applauded since it was a genre of vocal music never seen nor heard.” Monteverdi’s stage directions in the score indicate that it was originally acted and danced.
Not a traditional madrigal, Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda was indeed something unusual, for it was Monteverdi’s first demonstration of his newly invented stile concitato to bring to life Tasso’s vividly described story of single combat, witnessed by only the man, Tancredi, and the woman, Clorinda, who fought it. It contains no dazzling polyphony, but is sung mostly by a tenor narrator, Testo, representing the poet Tasso himself. The voices of Tancredi and Clorinda only occasionally intervene. Equally important is the orchestra, displaying Monteverdi’s new techniques of tremolo, pizzicato, and lightning-fast articulation to give a hyperrealistic mimicry of the sounds of battle.
In a virtuosic display of expressive monody verging on arioso, Testo tells us the story of these two combatants, who, shielded by their armor, do not know each other’s identity. In previous sections of Gerusalemme, Tasso revealed that Tancredi once saw Clorinda, the Saracen, without her armor and fell instantly in love with her. We also learn that her parents were Christian, which explains the story’s poignant conclusion.
Testo plays a multifaceted role: sometimes giving a detached recital of the story, at other times addressing the audience or even admonishing the characters—most notably when he warns Tancredi not to take pride in his apparent vanquishing of Clorinda, for he will suffer bitterly for it. Urged on by the orchestra, he uses an extremely rapid parlando (an early style of recitative) to imitate the clashing swords.
Two sections deserve special attention. In the early stanza “Notte” (“Night”), Testo breaks into eloquent arioso as he projects this single act of valor into a larger context. To emphasize the heightened expressiveness, Monteverdi instructs the singer to freely adorn his phrases with ornaments; an orchestral sinfonia also sets this beautiful passage apart. The final section about the death of Clorinda also stands out for its eloquent simplicity as Tancredi baptizes her. Her dying words bring the work to an unexpectedly abrupt close.
From the canti amorosi, the Lamento della ninfa, another setting of a poem by Rinuccini, is a quieter theatrical madrigal that needs no staging to tell its heartbreaking story. The mood is established by another borrowed instrumental piece, Monteverdi’s Act II Sinfonia from Orfeo, its descending lines portraying Orfeo’s anguish after Euridice’s death. Then in the madrigal, three men sing as a Greek chorus introducing and commiserating with a nymph betrayed by her lover. The solo soprano then sings her lament over a four-note bass pattern that repeats 34 times. Monteverdi scholar Denis Arnold explains, “Always the bass figure goes on as before, reminding her and us that her fate is eternal and that she will always be alone.” Despite this rigid musical device, Monteverdi urged the soprano in the score not to sing in strict time, but “according to the mood.” Her freely arcing melodic lines, at times stung by harsh dissonance (listen for it also in the men’s introduction), make this one of Monteverdi’s most sublime songs of grief.
A Sinfonia from the vivacious Cantate Domino (“Sing to the Lord”), one of a set of choral motets Monteverdi wrote in 1620, ushers in “Or che’l cielo e la terra e’l vento tace” (“Now that the Sky and Earth and Wind Are Hushed”) a magnificent six-voice madrigal setting of a sonnet by the revered Petrarch. Though it is the second of the canti guerrieri, its subject matter ties it more to the canti amorosi. Murmuring on slow-changing pitches in their lowest range, the sextet paints the stillness of the world asleep. But with cries of “Veglio,” they announce that the poet is awake, burning and weeping at the absence of his lover. At the words “Guerra è il mio stato” (“War is my state”) — the chorus lustily erupts in a burst of bellicose stile concitato. The sonnet’s second part, “Così sol d’una chiara fonte viva” (“Thus from a Single Bright and Living Fountain”) is pure love poetry, filled with erotically creeping chromatic scales. Big, aspiring melodic leaps provide word-painting as the poet bemoans how far he is from salvation. The final phrases move very slowly upward to a high, sonically glorious conclusion.
—Janet E. Bedell