Monteverdi, the “creator of the new”
It was in this way that Canon Artusi—a composer for whom nothing passed onto posterity except his enraged arguments against Monteverdi—baptized this musician. What could have occasioned the ire of the canon? Quite simply the phenomenon of a new mode of musical expression. It was alright that a few intellectuals and artists in Florentine circles at the close of the 16th century speculated about the respective merits of Greek tragedy and ancient music. It was alright that one of them, Jacopo Peri, right at the turn of the century, and after Dafne, produced a surprising, if a bit monotonous, L’Euridice for the wedding of Henry IV and Marie of Medici—if not the first opera, then the first attempt at dramma per musica. The first story entirely set to music, instead of a succession of independent madrigals that had been performed up to that time at princely soirées. Monteverdi followed this movement, and Artusi choked with anger, not even daring to name him in his diatribes. Against whom? Against an exceptional genius who alone knew how to unite tradition and modernity, to depart from custom as well as from new dogmatism, and in that way to establish a new era.
The period with which we are concerned, that of the last years of the 16th century and the first years of the century that followed, represents a period of relative stability prior to the storms of the Thirty Years’ War. The Italian towns and courts are rich; they have the leisure to revel in the resplendence of the spirit and the senses, all except for Rome, guarantor of tradition. Venice is opulent; Mantua won’t stop for anything as it watches Florence jealously. Secular music is the principal arena for these aesthetic jousts.
Alongside the villanella and the canzonetta, the polyphonic madrigal frees itself from the shackles of counterpoint with daring modulations and visionary expression in the work of Gesualdo, and with pastoral expression in that of Marenzio. Chromaticism annihilates modality and creates new harmonic relationships. The center of polyphonic gravity moves from the tenor (the mediaeval tenor) to the top voice, immediately brought back into balance by a bass soon to be a continuo. The poetic text, jewel of neo-classical humanism, henceforth will determine the structure of the melody by its prosody, and by its very presence imposes the necessity of intelligibility in musical discourse, an attempt that had often been made by homophony. Of course, traditional counterpoint stills reigns supreme in religious music. A look at the dates: in Rome Lassus and Palestrina die in 1594; in Venice Willaert has long ago disappeared (1562), Zarlino in 1590. Meanwhile, in Mantua Monteverdi publishes his third book of madrigals in 1592. And in the galleries of St. Mark’s, Gabrieli, who would die in 1612, intoxicates audiences with the splendors of flourishing instrumental music.
Monteverdi’s freedom in the face of all of this aesthetic upheaval is fascinating. Musician at the Mantuan court, he follows his patron on his European campaigns. Fed on the milk of old Franco-Flemish counterpoint, attentive to the theoretical speculations of the Florentines with regard to the recitar cantando, influenced by the care for simplicity taken by his master Ingegnieri, contemporary with the birth of the Roman sacred musical drama, the oratorio (with Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo in 1600), Monteverdi is also aware of the work on musique mesurée à l’antique done by the academy of Baïf. In the fourth book of madrigals, and especially in the fifth, Monteverdi forges ahead with chromatic and harmonic audacity and orients himself clearly toward the basso continuo. At the same time, by necessity, he defends his harmonic daring with theoretical explanations issuing from his brother’s pen in the preface to his fifth book and to the Scherzi Musicali of 1607, the year of L’Orfeo. Monteverdi’s breakthrough would be to take up all of the expressive means found in tradition and modernity, and then to organize them coherently in the service of dramatic logic, their permanent confrontation creating an undeniable feeling of correctness and audacity. Each element in its place at exactly the right moment for the most natural expression of the soul’s agitations, since L’Orfeo consecrates the consciousness of the primacy of the individual confronting the world, be it that of the gods... or of canons.
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