Claudio Monteverdi
A composer who made the text the master of the harmony, so that song could lament and rage like human speech.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Those around him ⏳🌊
- TeacherMarc'Antonio Ingegneri
As maestro di cappella of Cremona Cathedral, he taught the young Monteverdi strict counterpoint.
- PatronageVincenzo I Gonzaga
As Duke of Mantua, he kept the court that gave birth to Orfeo, though wages were always late.
- FamilyClaudia Cattaneo
His wife, a court singer, who died in 1607, leaving behind two sons.
- RivalryGiovanni Maria Artusi
The theorist whose public attack on his dissonances drew out his declaration of a 'seconda pratica'.
- FriendshipAlessandro Striggio
The librettist of 'L'Orfeo', with whom he exchanged candid letters well into his Venice years.
- PupilFrancesco Cavalli
As a boy he studied under him in the choir of St. Mark's, and later went on to lead Venetian opera.
I. The boy from Cremona · 1567–1590 (age 0–23)
(Birth) He was born in May 1567 in Cremona, in the Duchy of Milan (in present-day Italy), and was baptized on May 15. His father, Baldassare Monteverdi, was a barber-surgeon. Barbers of the day did more than cut hair; they also let blood and tended wounds, and Baldassare would later qualify as a full physician. Cremona was a city of the Spanish-ruled Duchy of Milan, and it was also home to the workshop of the Amati family of violin makers. (Mother) His mother, Maddalena Zignani, died around 1576, when he was about nine. His father soon remarried, but his second wife also died, in 1584, and he married a third time. The boy had a sister, Maria Domitilla, and a brother six years younger, Giulio Cesare. Giulio Cesare also became a musician and would one day write in his elder brother's defense. What these early losses and the frequent upheavals at home left in the boy, the records do not say. (Teacher) He studied music with Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, maestro di cappella of Cremona Cathedral. Ingegneri was a conscientious craftsman who taught strict counterpoint, the art of weaving many voices together according to rule. In 1582, at fifteen, Monteverdi published his first collection, the 'Sacrae cantiunculae'. On the title page he described himself as 'pupil of Ingegneri'. A book of Madrigali spirituali (1583) and one of Canzonette (1584) followed. (Ambition) In 1587 he published his first book of madrigals, and in 1590 his second. He dedicated the second book to the president of the Senate of Milan, an attempt by a young musician from a provincial town to make his name on a larger stage. It was around this time, too, that he began setting the poetry of Tasso. Cremona had no post for him to rise to. He was preparing to leave home in search of work.
II. Musician at the Gonzaga court · 1590–1606 (age 23–39)
(Mantua) Around 1590 he entered the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga in Mantua as a viol player. The extravagant, art-loving duke drew painters such as Rubens and many other artists to his court. The maestro di cappella was the Flemish-born Giaches de Wert. From him Monteverdi learned to dramatize a poem in music word by word, and Wert's influence runs deep in the Third Book of madrigals of 1592. (Campaigns) In 1595 he followed the duke on a campaign in Hungary against the Ottoman Empire, and in 1599 he accompanied him on a journey to Flanders. When Wert died in 1596, the post of maestro di cappella went to his senior colleague Benedetto Pallavicino. Monteverdi did not become maestro until 1601, when Pallavicino died. (Marriage) In May 1599 he married Claudia, a singer and the daughter of the court musician Giacomo Cattaneo. Their first son, Francesco, was born in 1601, and a daughter, Leonida, in 1603, but Leonida died in infancy. A second son, Massimiliano, followed in 1604. Claudia sang at court, the voice that stood closest to her husband's music. (Controversy) In 1600 the Bolognese monk and theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi published a book attacking his madrigals, which had not yet even appeared in print. In pieces such as 'Cruda Amarilli', he charged, dissonances burst out without preparation and broke the rules. In the preface to his Fifth Book of madrigals in 1605, Monteverdi replied briefly that there was a 'seconda pratica', distinct from the old rules. In 1607 his brother Giulio Cesare spelled it out on his behalf: “the words must be the mistress of the harmony and not its servant.” The last six pieces of the Fifth Book require a basso continuo. The madrigal was crossing into the age of solo voice and accompaniment.
Artusi singled out this piece as an example of rule-breaking. The seconda pratica controversy began in these very few bars.
- In the opening, the five voices spit out the first word, 'Cruda' (cruel), as a single mass, and it sounds like one bitter word of reproach.
- Near 'ahi lasso' (alas), the top soprano sounds a note that clashes with the voices below (a dissonance) outright, without preparing it; this is the passage Artusi objected to. Follow the upper voice alone and the clash comes through clearly.
- The text comes from Guarini's play 'Il pastor fido'. The bitterness of a shepherd spurned in love is carried over into the rough grain of the harmony.
- Compare a performance by five unaccompanied voices with one in which a lute or harpsichord supports the bass (basso continuo), and the difference in color is striking.
III. L'Orfeo and two deaths · 1607–1612 (age 40–45)
(L'Orfeo) On February 24, 1607, 'L'Orfeo' had its premiere at a gathering of a learned academy at the Mantuan court. The libretto was by the court official Alessandro Striggio. Earlier, Peri and others in Florence had tried to revive Greek tragedy through monody (a solo melody with simple accompaniment). Monteverdi went further, assigning instruments scene by scene and weaving song, chorus and dance together to carry the whole drama in music. A century and a half later, the same myth would become the starting point of operatic reform in Gluck's 'Orfeo ed Euridice' (1762). (Loss) On September 10 of that year his wife, Claudia, died in Cremona, leaving him with two sons aged six and three. The court soon summoned him back and assigned him an opera, 'L'Arianna', for the wedding of the duke's son the following year. The singer chosen for the title role, eighteen-year-old Caterina Martinelli, was a pupil who lived and studied in his house; in March 1608 she died of smallpox. The 'Lamento d'Arianna', sung by her replacement, is said to have moved the audience to tears. In 1610 he wrote a six-voice madrigal mourning Martinelli, 'Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata'. (Exhaustion) When he fell ill from overwork, his father, Baldassare, petitioned the duchess to release his son from the court. In December 1608 Monteverdi himself wrote to a court official, pouring out his anger over unpaid wages and an impossible schedule. The duke promised a pension, but its payment would torment him for decades to come. (Dismissal) In 1610 he dedicated the 'Vespro della Beata Vergine' to Pope Paul V. He went to Rome in person to seek a new post and a seminary place for his son, but secured neither. In 1612 Duke Vincenzo died, and his son and successor Francesco dismissed Monteverdi that July. He left the court he had served for more than twenty years and returned to his father's house in Cremona.
Written for a court festivity, this work became the first masterpiece to carry a tragedy from beginning to end in song and instruments. A few months after the premiere, the composer lost his wife.
- The toccata (a short, brilliant instrumental curtain-raiser), in which the brass sound the same chord three times before the curtain rises, is thought to have been the Gonzaga family's ceremonial fanfare. Three years later the music returned in the first piece of the 'Vespers'.
- In Act II, as the shepherds are singing merrily, a messenger enters crying 'Ahi, caso acerbo', and in that instant the color of the harmony suddenly darkens. It is the turning point of the drama, announcing Euridice's death.
- Orfeo's 'Tu se' morta' (You are dead) is monody, sung almost without accompaniment, as if spoken. Listen to the melody rising and falling with the inflection of the words.
- In Act III, in 'Possente spirto' (Mighty spirit), Orfeo pleads with the ferryman of the underworld. The score prints two versions of the melody together, one plain and one richly ornamented. The passages where violins, cornetts (an old brass instrument made of wood) and harp answer in turn are the heart of any comparison between performers.
- In the underworld scenes, as the score directs, we hear the rough sound of trombones and the regal (a small organ with vibrating reeds). Their color is starkly different from the strings and recorders of the earthly scenes.
It is the only scene to survive from the opera he wrote in the year he lost first his wife and then his pupil. A contemporary account says there was not a lady present who did not weep at this passage.
- The opening line, 'Lasciatemi morire' (Let me die), returns like a refrain throughout the song. Each time it comes back the context around it has changed, so the same words sound different.
- She calls after the departed Theseus, then reproaches him, then regrets her reproaches, and these sudden swings of feeling are laid bare in the shifts of melody and tempo.
- Monteverdi also reworked the piece as a five-voice madrigal. In 1640 he even gave it a Latin text, turning it into a lament of the Virgin, the 'Pianto della Madonna'. Listen to the three versions side by side and you will hear how differently the same melody can be dressed.
The collection he dedicated to the pope when, worn out by the court, he was looking for a new post. It was also a kind of résumé, meant to display both the old church style and the new dramatic style in a single volume.
- The first piece, 'Domine ad adiuvandum', takes over the opening toccata of 'L'Orfeo' unchanged, while above it the choir recites the prayer on a single chord. You can hear that court opera and church music grow from one root.
- In 'Audi coelum' (Hear, O heaven), a second tenor, from a distance, echoes the final syllables of the words the first tenor sings. The echoes are contrived so that they form words with a different meaning.
- In the 'Sonata sopra Sancta Maria', while the instruments trade lively exchanges, the soprano repeats a short chant phrase, 'Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis', eleven times.
- Scholars and performers disagree over whether the last two pieces should be sung lower than written, and whether the whole collection was performed as a single service. That is why recordings differ in pitch and scoring.
IV. Maestro di cappella at San Marco · 1613–1629 (age 46–62)
(Venice) In August 1613 he was chosen as maestro di cappella of St Mark's Basilica in the Republic of Venice. The post paid 300 ducats a year with a house attached, and in 1616 it rose to 400 ducats. Unlike Mantua, whose wages were always late, the Republic paid on time. On the way to take up the post he was waylaid by highwaymen near Sanguinetto and robbed of what he carried. He reorganized the choir, hired new singers and bought new music. In 1616 the boy Francesco Cavalli joined the choir. (Pride) Mantua went on trying to give him work. When in 1616 he was asked to write a stage piece in which the sea god and the winds sing, he wrote to Striggio: Arianna moved people because she was a woman, and Orfeo because he was a man, but how could winds sing and move anyone? His conviction that music must depict human feeling shows plainly in this letter. (Sons) His eldest son, Francesco, worried his father by announcing, while studying law in Bologna, that he would become a friar; in the end he became a singer at St Mark's. The second, Massimiliano, studied medicine and became a physician. But in 1627 he was imprisoned by the Mantuan Inquisition on a charge of reading a banned book. Monteverdi spent months writing to his Mantuan connections and raising bail, and the following year his son was acquitted and released. (Agitation) During the Carnival of 1624, “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” was performed at the palace of the nobleman Girolamo Mocenigo. In this work a narrator sings Tasso's epic while two knights act it out in gesture. Here he tried out the agitated style (stile concitato), which paints rage and battle through rapid repetitions of a single note. He later wrote that the nobles who saw it were so seized with pity that they nearly wept.
First performed in a Venetian nobleman's palace, it holds an experiment in rendering rage and battle in sound. It is the story of a knight who realizes too late that his enemy was his beloved.
- The Testo (the storyteller), in the role of narrator, sings most of the work. The two knights sing only a few lines. The key to a performance is how theatrically the storyteller's voice shifts.
- Where the horse gallops, the strings repeat a long-short rhythm in imitation of hoofbeats.
- As the fight intensifies, the strings strike a single note in rapid repetition. This is what Monteverdi called the agitated style. It sounds like the tension of clashing blades.
- The score instructs the players to put down the bow and pluck the strings with two fingers. It is counted among the earliest cases of plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) being specified in a score.
- At the end the dying Clorinda sings, “Heaven opens; I go in peace.” This high, calm melody contrasts with the turmoil before it.
V. Plague and vow · 1630–1638 (age 63–71)
(Plague) From the summer of 1630 into the following year the plague swept Venice, killing more than 40,000 citizens. The Republic vowed that when the plague ended it would build a church and dedicate it to the Virgin. That church is today's Santa Maria della Salute. In November 1631 a Mass of thanksgiving for the end of the plague was held at St Mark's, and Monteverdi provided the music. Some believe the 7-voice Gloria later published in “Selva morale e spirituale” dates from that occasion. (Priest) Around 1632 he was ordained a priest. He had lost his wife 25 years earlier and was past sixty. Some speculate that living through the plague shaped his decision, but he left no reason. That same year he published “Scherzi musicali,” a collection of light songs, keeping his hand in secular music. (Summation) In 1638 he gathered works written over decades into Book 8 of his madrigals, “Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi,” and dedicated it to Emperor Ferdinand III. In the preface he divided human passions into three: anger, moderation and humility. Because the music of the past had no way to portray anger, he wrote, he had discovered the agitated style. “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” was included in the book as well. (The nymph) The “Lamento della ninfa,” from the same book, unfolds over an ostinato, a bass of four notes descending like stairs, repeated without end. An abandoned woman sings while three men beside her grieve for her. He noted in the score that her song should be sung not to the beat of the hand but to a tempo set by the feelings of the heart. Even in the summing-up of his old age, his attention stayed on the voice of a wounded person.
A piece from Book 8, published as he gathered his past work in old age. It builds an abandoned woman's grief over a single strand of bass.
- The bass repeats the same pattern from beginning to end (ostinato): four notes, A-G-F-E, stepping down like stairs (descending). This descending four-note figure became the Baroque bass pattern that symbolized “lament.”
- The nymph sings deliberately out of step with the fixed bass, stretching and pulling the beat as her feelings dictate. This is the “tempo of the heart” the composer described in his preface.
- The short passages where the three men interject “Miserella” (poor thing) sound like the voices of onlookers watching from offstage.
VI. The final stage · 1639–1643 (age 72–76)
(Theater) In 1637 the Teatro San Cassiano, the world's first public opera house, opened in Venice. Anyone who bought a ticket could get in. Opera, once a courtly festivity, had become entertainment for citizens. In 1640 “Arianna” was revived at the Teatro San Moisè. Past seventy, Monteverdi wrote in quick succession “Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria” (1640) and the now-lost “Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia” (1641). (Poppea) In the Carnival season spanning 1642 and 1643, “L'incoronazione di Poppea” was staged at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo. Busenello's libretto tells how the emperor Nero and his mistress Poppea push aside the empress Ottavia and his teacher Seneca and take the throne. In place of gods and heroes, human beings driven by desire and ambition stood at the center of the stage. Interpretations still divide over an ending in which wickedness goes unpunished and love triumphs. Many scholars believe other hands, including his pupil Cavalli's, are mixed into the surviving score. (Homecoming) In 1643 he took a long-postponed leave and visited his hometown of Cremona and Mantua. He is thought to have also hoped to settle his overdue Mantuan pension. Back in Venice he fell ill with a fever and died on November 29, aged seventy-six. He was given a grand funeral and buried in the chapel of the Lombards inside the Frari church. (Oblivion) Most of his stage works have vanished. The music that survived soon fell out of fashion and went unperformed for a long time. “Orfeo” returned to an audience only in the early 20th century. Since then he has regained his place as the man who wrote the first masterpiece of the operatic genre.
The last opera of a seventy-five-year-old composer, written in the age of public theaters. In place of myth, it puts on stage human beings with power and desire.
- In the prologue the goddesses of Fortune, Virtue and Love quarrel over which of them is mightiest. In effect, it announces in advance the ending of the whole drama: “love wins.”
- In Act 2, when Seneca is ordered to take his own life, his disciples sing “Non morir, Seneca.” Its melody, creeping upward by half steps (chromatic ascent), sounds desperate.
- “Addio Roma,” sung by the deposed empress Ottavia, stammers as its words keep breaking off. It is counted the most heart-rending monologue in the opera.
- The role of Nero was originally written in a high range for a male singer castrated in boyhood (castrato). Today it is sung by a mezzo-soprano or a countertenor, and the impression Nero makes changes greatly with the singer.
- The final duet, “Pur ti miro” (I gaze on you), is the best-loved passage. Yet it is thought likely to be the music of a composer other than Monteverdi.
Lesser-known stories
On his way to take up his post in Venice in 1613, he was set upon by armed robbers near Sanguinetto and stripped of his money and baggage. The episode is recorded in detail in a long letter he sent to a Mantuan official. One tends to expect a composer's letters to talk about music, but most of the some 120 that survive are records of daily life: wages and pensions, travel, worries about family. These letters were collected and widely read only in the 20th century. Letters he sent in 1625 and 1626 to Ercole Marigliani, an acquaintance in Mantua, discuss alchemical experiments. The two exchanged views on how to handle mercury and how strong to make the fire. Alchemy was then regarded as a discipline close to chemistry and medicine, and for the son of a physician it was no foreign world. Histories of music treat it as a side issue and seldom take it up. The final duet of “L'incoronazione di Poppea,” “Pur ti miro,” is hailed as the opera's emblem, yet its text also appears in another libretto by Benedetto Ferrari (1641). The opera's score survives only in two manuscripts made in Venice and Naples after the composer's death. Scholars therefore attribute some passages, this duet among them, to other composers' hands. Performance programs rarely mention that the most famous scene may not be his. Records show he wrote well over ten stage works, yet only three operas survive in score. Of “Arianna,” only the lament remains. His fame has been built on what survives alone; the scale of what was lost can only be guessed.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Madrigal
(In music) A secular vocal genre that flowered in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, usually with four or five singers each singing a different line at once. Its hallmark is painting each word of a poem of love or sorrow in sound. At the word “sigh,” for instance, the music pauses briefly; at “heaven,” it climbs high. Picture a few friends not at karaoke but sitting in a circle, each taking a different part and fitting the harmony together. Monteverdi published nine books of madrigals in his lifetime, and within them Renaissance music turned into Baroque music.
Monody
(Word meaning) A word formed from the Greek monos (alone) and ode (song), meaning “a song sung alone.” (In music) A way of singing devised around 1600 by Florentines who wanted the words to be heard clearly, as in ancient Greek tragedy. A single singer follows the inflections of speech while the instruments simply support the harmony. It was an attempt to solve the problem that lyrics were hard to hear when many voices sang over one another. It is like a classmate reciting a poem while someone behind them lightly strums chords on a guitar. The dialogue sections of opera grew out of this.
Basso continuo
(Word meaning) The Korean term tongjujeoeum (通奏低音) means a low sound (低音) played (奏) straight through (通) from beginning to end. The Italian basso continuo likewise means “continuous bass.” (In music) A method of accompaniment in Baroque music in which low instruments (cello, bassoon and the like) play the bass line continuously while chordal instruments such as the harpsichord or lute fill in harmonies above it on the spot. The score gives only the bass and a few figures, from which the players build chords. It is almost exactly like a band in which bass and keyboard keep supporting the song from below, the keyboard improvising its part from nothing but a chord chart.
Dissonance
(Word meaning) The Korean term bulhyeophwaeum (不協和音) means a sound that does not (不) go well together (協和). (In music) A combination of notes that sounds harsh and tense when sounded together. Under the old rules, a dissonance had to be prepared by sounding the note beforehand and resolved afterward onto a consonant note. Monteverdi drew criticism for unleashing dissonances without this preparation to express grief or pain. Think of the jolt when a harsh “bang” suddenly sounds in a horror film. To startle, it works best when it comes without warning. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech it refers to quarrels or being out of step between people, as in “there's discord on the team.”
Seconda pratica
(Word meaning) The Korean term je-2 jakbeop ('second compositional method') renders the Italian seconda pratica. Pratica means “the way one actually goes about things,” so the phrase means “the second way of composing.” (In music) An idea Monteverdi put forward to set his approach apart from the old rules of counterpoint (prima pratica). Its core is that “the word is the master of the music.” He held that harmonic rules may be broken when needed to bring out the feeling of the text. It is like school writing: following spelling and grammar is the basic rule, but in a poem you may deliberately break or invert a sentence to bring out emotion. This idea led on to opera and Baroque music.
Stile concitato
(Meaning) The term renders the Italian stile concitato. Concitato means 'agitated, driven.' (In music) A style Monteverdi devised to express anger and battle. A single pitch is repeated rapidly in very short note values. He took his cue from the writings of an ancient Greek philosopher and claimed that the music before him had possessed no means of depicting anger. It works on the same principle as a school field day, when the cheering squad pounds its drums in a rapid 'dum-dum-dum-dum' and your heart races even as you sit still.
Ostinato
(Meaning) Italian for 'stubborn.' The name comes from the way the same pattern is obstinately repeated. (In music) A technique in which a short melodic figure or rhythm repeats throughout a piece while other melodies change freely above it. In Monteverdi's 'Lamento della ninfa,' a bass line descending through four notes repeats without end. It resembles a game of jump rope, where two people keep turning the rope at the same steady beat while the one in the middle performs all manner of moves above it.