Claudio Monteverdi 1567-1643

“The end of all good music is to affect the soul.” 

-Claudio Monteverdi 

Take a moment to listen to one of Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals, Cruda Amarilli, while you read the rest of this article:  (Open another window in your browser.  Cut and paste this URL into your browser window:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5XI3X7IUgw .  It will take you to a YouTube video of the piece.  The entire video consists of a shot of a concrete wall, so you might as well come back and read!)

Got it on?  Good.  Beautiful, isn’t it?  Would you have ever guessed that this song, and others like it, could have inspired this vehement a reaction?

Such composers have nothing but smoke in their heads if they are so impressed with themselves as to think they can corrupt, abolish and ruin at will the good old rules handed down from days of old.  For such composers, it is enough to set up a great roar of sound, an absurd confusion, an exhibit of deformities.     

This criticism by composer Giovanni Artusi caused Monteverdi to write a rebuttal that helped launch a new style of music - one that laid the foundation for most of the music that we enjoy to this very day.

Schooled in Tradition

Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 in Cremona, Italy, where he studied with the singing master at the cathedral.  He seems to have been something of a prodigy, producing his first published works while still in his teens.  At the age of 23, he went to work as a vocalist and viol player in the court of Duke Vincenzo I de Gonzaga in Mantua, Italy. While there, he married the singer Claudia Cattaneo.

This was not a happy period in Monteverdi’s life.  The Duke paid him poorly and often late, and he worried about his wife’s poor health.  Perhaps he took refuge in the act of composing beautiful music.

During this time he composed several books of madrigals.  (A madrigal is a song, usually secular, written for 3-5 unaccompanied voices.  It was a popular form in Renaissance music.)  His early madrigals followed the “good old rules,” as Artusi put it.  They were polyphonic, meaning each voice had its own melodic line, and no one voice had dominance over the others.

Bridge to the Baroque

It wasn’t long before Monteverdi began to experiment with a new approach.  Perhaps he was responding to a change in society itself.  Near the end of the 16^th century, a strong middle class began to emerge.  With it came a greater awareness of the individual.  Artists began paying more attention to individual personalities in highly realistic portraits, and the passions and emotions began to be highlighted in all the arts.

Monteverdi must have been a passionate individual himself, for the new awareness of individuality appealed to him.  His madrigals began to take a new direction.   Instead of giving equal importance to all the voices, he began to give the primary melody to just one voice, letting the others serve as harmonic support.  This allowed the primary voice much greater freedom of expression and emotion.  

Not everyone appreciated the new style.  As mentioned above, composers such as Artusi expressed outrage at such musical atrocity (as they saw it).  Monteverdi appears to have handled their criticism with tact.  While defending his compositions, he also carefully expressed his respect for the old traditions.  In fact, he went so far as to define in writing what he called the “prima prattica,” or traditional (“first”) style, versus the “seconda prattica,” or new style. And he continued to compose using both the old and the new.

Music Infused with Feeling

In 1607 Claudia died, leaving behind three young children.  The death of his wife caused Monteverdi, now serving as court conductor, to lapse into a period of deep mourning and depression.  The Duke took no pity on him.  Instead, he required the grief-stricken composer to come up with several major pieces of music, including examples of a brand new musical form: opera.

Opera had just been invented in Florence by a group of scholars trying to revive the idea of Greek drama.  Monteverdi seized upon this new genre as the perfect opportunity to highlight the solo vocalist and exploit emotion to the fullest extent.  His first opera, L’Orfeo (Orpheus), is still performed today. 

His second opera, L’Arianna, like much of Monteverdi’s music, is unfortunately lost.   Just one piece remains: a top hit in its day, Arianna’s Lament.  Written shortly after Claudia’s death, it embodies a depth of emotion never before heard on stage.  (Listen to it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFOEuGJd-qA&feature=related ). 

A Change of Fortune

In 1612 Monteverdi’s employer Duke Vincenzo died. One of the first things the his son Francisco, now the new Duke, did was fire the composer.  

Monteverdi had not been happy at the court of Mantua.  (Just two years before, he had presented his renowned Vespers of the Blessed Virgin to Pope Paul V as a sort of resume, hoping to find better employment in Rome.  The Pope was not impressed, and the attempt failed.) Even so, his sudden unemployment must have come as quite a shock.  He wrote about it later:  “I left that Most Serene Court in so sorry a plight … as to take away no more than 25 scudi after being there for twenty-one years”

Fortunately, he was soon welcomed as the maestro di cappella of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.  He kept this well-paying and highly respected position for more than thirty years, which he described later as being “the only really happy years of my existence”.

Claudio Monteverdi died at the age of 76, a highly respected musician.  Today we honor him as the “Bridge to the Baroque,” and the “Father of the Modern Opera” – the one who first brought living, breathing, passionate character to the stage.