Monteverdi

[Belle]

A composer who seldom makes it to these pages, but an absolute master. And one of the very greatest.

Here is his magnificent "L'incoronazione di Poppea' with Les Arts Florissant/Christie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N3vehFPXz0

The issue of extant scores/reconstructed editions may have affected the popularity of these works, as we are never sure we're going to hear the same work we heard before! This Les Arts is different from my own recording with Rene Jacobs/Collegium Vocale Ghent, this latter version being just slightly superior to the former: not in performance but 'orchestration'.

Here is the opera with Norwegian Opera and ballet (poor quality recording). Again, there are differences with the Christie and the Jacobs. This one inhabits a more "L'Orfeo" soundworld than I would like. Monteverdi's composing style had moved along quite a lot in the intervening years since his first opera(1607) to L'Incoronazione (1648). That fact and the narrative of the latter meant he had moved away from the 'Favola in Musica' - with its set pieces and ballet (more akin to the earlier Florentine Intemedii) - to his first, full-length serious opera "Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria" (1641). By the time of "L'Incoronozatione", several years later, Monteverdi was composing sophisticated and lyrical arias with recitative which moved the plot along:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rj2GnhGr9A

They're all finally approximations, but I still prefer Collegium Vocale, Ghent. The tragedy for Monteverdi is the lost and partial scores.

"L'Orfeo" contains the earliest operatic 'arias' (more akin to arioso) and Monteverdi composed these in a masterful way because of his experience with the books of madrigals. You can actually chart his evolution as a composer through those madrigals. This first, "Possento Spirito", is a profoundly moving aria/arioso, using the ornamentation of the period, as prescribed in the treatise 'The New Music', Caccini 1601. The penultimate utterances of this aria/arioso are pure poetry!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAH8N8fPCZE

'Rosa Del Ciel", from the first Act of "L'Orfeo", is an aria/arioso which could come straight from one of the later books of madrigals, when the composer had fine-tuned his counterpoint to smaller forces of more intensity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi4fcl0 ... eh&index=5

And if anybody thinks Monteverdi is trapped in late Renaissance musical tropes let me disabuse them of that notion: his was music full of rhythmic vitality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsrV7aQ ... h&index=20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ_WHOm ... eh&index=7

Many of us know Jordi Savall's brilliant production from the early part of this century with Montserrat Figueras.

[diegobueno]

My favorite Monteverdi recording is called "Geistliche Konzerte" with Jürgen Jürgens and the Monteverdi-Chor Hamburg, on the Archiv label. Most of the selections are from Monteverdi's "Selva morali e spirituali". There's something about the acoustics of the recording, the choice of continuo instruments, the virtuosity of the singers, and of course the beauty of the music that's just wonderful.

This recording of "Beatus vir" by Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Choir is every bit as good, though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPNZeT_7OR4

[Belle]

Monteverdi's sacred music is extraordinary.

What about this forerunner to the operas of Monteverdi: La Pellegrina, 1589. Intermedii for an important marriage of the time with collaborative Intermedia from Marenzio, Bardi, Caccini and Malvezzi. If I can remember these were the composers, along with Jacopo Peri, who started the Florentine Camerata in circa 1600 and experimented with the first operas!! (Interesting, too, that Caccini was more of a musical theorist.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q4jx5ACIbE

This is magnificent music and Monteverdi's music inhabits this sound world. The later operas of Cavalli also sound like Monteverdi.

For about two decades this music interested me more than the 19th century repertoire, except for Beethoven of course.

[Lance]

I really never went very deeply into Monteverdi though I have much of him on disc. The Coronation of Poppea, of course, and Orfeo, and something I never thought conductor Leopold Stokowski would do: Vespro della Beata Vergine. The Orfeo I have is on DGG with tenor Fritz Wunderlich (my reason for wanting this), with August Wenzinger, conductor. Binghamton University gave a performance of Poppea not long ago. I had to prepare the harpsichord, of course! It was joyous!

[Belle]

Absolute magic!! 'Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinde'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACTeQxiMpjk

I just lifted this from a paper on Monteverdi's role in the development of tonality from modality:.

These two different systems of composing music (modality and tonality) form the theory behind the sound of Western music. However, while the two systems are important in themselves, the transition stage between modality and tonality is especially intriguing. During the time when these changes were occuring, Claudio Monteverdi made his rise as a composer in madrigals and later in operas. The evolution from modality to tonality can be seen in his works. A change which did not occur quickly, tonality developed slowly and gradually, which can be observed in an evaluation of Monteverdi’s early works in comparison to his later musical achievements. Claudio Monteverdi was a key composer in the transition of music from modality to tonality in the late Renaissance era due to his background in music theory, his use of modality within his early madrigals, and his use of tonality in the opera L’Orfeo.