Claudio Monteverdi

Italian composer

• Born: May 15, 1567
• Birthplace: Cremona, Duchy of Milan (now in Italy)
• Died: November 29, 1643
• Place of death: Venice (now in Italy)

Monteverdi was the outstanding Italian composer of his age. He made equally significant contributions to the fields of sacred and secular music, especially in the genres of opera and the madrigal, and forged for himself and his successors an expressive musical style by combining the established techniques of his predecessors with the innovations of his contemporaries.

Early Life

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi, better known as Claudio Monteverdi (KLOWD-yoh mohn-tay-VAYR-dee), was the eldest child of Baldassare Monteverdi, a chemist and barber surgeon, and his first wife, Maddalena (née Zigani). Claudio and his brother Giuleo Cesare studied music with Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, the maestro di cappella of Cremona Cathedral. In 1582, Claudio published a book of three-part motets titled Sacrae cantiunculae in Venice, and the next year he published a book of sacred madrigals for four voices in Brescia. These were followed in 1584 by a book of canzonettas for three voices, again published in Venice. As was the custom at the time, many of Monteverdi’s early works were modeled on specific pieces by older composers. In addition to his compositional talent, he developed his skills as a string player.

After an interval of three years, Monteverdi published his first book of madrigals in 1587. These works for five voices illustrate the grasp of structural organization and contrapuntal technique that he had acquired from Ingegneri as well as the more modern approaches to text setting of the Ferrarese composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi and the Roman Luca Marenzio.

Monteverdi’s second book of five-part madrigals, published in 1590, displays even more clearly the influence of Marenzio. This book also shows the new influence of Giaches de Wert, especially in the setting of amorous but not emotionally charged texts by Torquato Tasso. This book was the last publication in which Monteverdi acknowledged himself to be a pupil of Ingegneri, and he was clearly hoping to follow in the footsteps of other Cremonese composers, such as Benedetto Pallavicino, Giovanni Gastoldi, and Costanza Porta, by seeking work outside his hometown. After an unsuccessful attempt to land a job in Milan in 1589, he soon accepted another as a string player in the musical establishment of the Gonzaga court at Mantua. He was then nearly twenty-five, with five publications to his name and in command of a highly polished compositional technique.

Surviving portraits of the young Monteverdi show a handsome youth of above-average height, with an oval face and penetrating eyes. In most of the portraits of Monteverdi as an older man, his face is lined and somewhat haggard, perhaps a legacy of his ill health in the years following his wife’s death. He was clearly embittered by his dealings with the Gonzaga family and was difficult at times, but in his later years he was capable of a certain amount of happiness. His character was essentially serious, and he made few concessions either to his colleagues or to his audiences, but he was a good provider for his family and a generous teacher.

Life’s Work

The Gonzagas were active patrons of the arts and maintained a spirited rivalry with their neighbors the Estes at Ferrara. Peter Paul Rubens, Tasso, and Battista Guarini were all resident at Mantua at different times, and Duke Vincenzo I was responsible for several large-scale performances of the latter’s tragicomedy Il pastor fido (1590; The Faithful Shepherd, 1602). The musical establishment was smaller than that at Ferrara but hardly less distinguished. Under the direction of Wert the cappella included the composers Pallavicino, Francesco Rovigo, and Salomone Rossi, while Lodovico Viadana was organist at the cathedral and Giovanni Gastoldi was director of music at the ducal chapel of Santa Barbara. Monteverdi’s initial duties included participating in the weekly concerts in the ducal palace, at which the court singers attempted to rival the exploits of the famous “three singing ladies” (concerto delle donne) of Ferrara.

Almost immediately, Monteverdi published his third book of madrigals, heavily influenced by the essentially serious style of Wert. The book included a number of texts from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581; Jerusalem Delivered, 1600), in direct emulation of Wert’s Tasso settings of the 1580’s, and an even larger number of madrigal texts and excerpts from Guarini’s The Faithful Shepherd. The collection was popular enough to be reprinted two years later, in 1594. Monteverdi continued to compose madrigals throughout the 1590’s but did not publish another collection until 1603.

He traveled with the duke on the duke’s military expedition to Austria and Hungary in 1595 and again on a visit to Flanders in 1599, returning from each voyage richer only in experience. He had hoped to succeed Wert when the latter died in 1596 and was disappointed when the post went to Pallavicino. He may have sought employment at Ferrara and was certainly about to dedicate a book of madrigals to Duke Alfonso II d’Este, when that nobleman died in 1597.

On May 20, 1599, Monteverdi married one of the Mantuan court singers, Claudia Cattaneo, who had three children in rapid succession. Only the two sons survived infancy: Francesco, who eventually became a singer in the choir at St. Mark’s, Venice, and Massimilione, who became a medical doctor in Cremona. Finally, in 1601, on the death of Pallavicino, Monteverdi was appointed maestro di cappella of the Mantuan court, and in April, 1602, he and his family were given Mantuan citizenship.

Monteverdi’s madrigals of the 1590’s had circulated in manuscript, and several were attacked in print by the theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi in 1600, instigating a controversy that continued for some years. Artusi objected specifically to Monteverdi’s use of certain harmonic idioms and of unprepared or unresolved dissonances. Monteverdi defended these devices as being necessary to express the meaning and emotional content of the text rather than merely to reflect the syntax of the poem and graphically to depict certain key words through the use of stylized musical formulas.

In 1603, Monteverdi published his fourth book of madrigals, to be followed the next year by his fifth. These two largely retrospective collections contain some of his most original and emotionally intense music, especially in the settings of epigrammatic texts by Guarini in book 4. The last six madrigals of book 5, however, show an increased interest in formal musical structure, in contrast to direct expression of the emotional content of the text, with the introduction of an obligatory basso continuo, or figured bass, in which the figures indicated chords to be played by a keyboard or plucked string instruments. Thus, in a symbolic way, book 5 marks the boundary between Renaissance and Baroque music.

An even more striking and clearly Baroque technique was monody, which permitted the flexible musical declamation of a text by a solo voice to the accompaniment of a basso continuo. This technique had been developed at Florence in the late 1590’s and led directly to the creation of opera. For a variety of reasons, the Gonzagas had become interested in Florentine activities around 1600, and these latest musical developments were well known at Mantua, at least by report. This knowledge led to the composition and performance in early 1607 of the opera La favola d’Orfeo , with music by Monteverdi and a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, the Younger. Both parties were clearly inspired by the Florentine opera Euridice of 1600, with music by Italian composer Jacopo Peri and a libretto by Italian poet Ottavio Rinuccini.

La favola d’Orfeo was performed before the Accademia degli Invaghiti in a room in the ducal palace in February, 1607. Although it employed a large orchestra, the vocal and staging requirements were modest by the standards of court operas—presumably because it was not composed to celebrate a state occasion. In the music, Monteverdi combined the new Florentine monody, in particular Peri’s development of theatrical recitative, with various techniques from his own a cappella and continuo madrigals, with the instrumental forms with which he was familiar, and with his own sense of formal structure, to produce the first full-fledged opera.

La favola d’Orfeo was well received and was repeated at the command of the duke. Although it was published in 1609 and again in 1615, no further performances were forthcoming. Meanwhile, Monteverdi had returned to Cremona to be with his seriously ill wife. She died in September, leaving him desolate. He briefly refused to return to Mantua but changed his mind when another opera was required of him. This opera was L’Arianna , with a libretto by Rinuccini, commissioned by Vincenzo to celebrate the wedding of Prince Francesco Gonzaga to Margherita of Savoy in early 1608. Again, the composer was confronted with tragedy, for the young singer Caterina Martinelli, whom he had taught for several years and who had lived in his household almost as an adopted daughter, died of smallpox in March, 1608, while preparing the title role. The opera was postponed while another singer was found and was finally given on May 28 to an enthusiastic reception.

L’Arianna was Monteverdi’s most renowned opera, and it was later performed at Naples and, as late as 1640, at Venice. The famous lament, in particular, was widely admired and served as the model for the string of laments written by other composers in the 1620’s and 1630’s. The lament was printed in several different forms by Monteverdi himself and is the only piece of music to survive from the opera.

After the festivities, to which Monteverdi also contributed a ballet in the French style entitled Il ballo delle ingrate (1608) and a prologue to Guarini’s pastoral play L’idropica (1609), he returned to Cremona in a state of physical collapse and deep depression. He blamed the climate of Mantua for his wife’s death and his own ailments, he blamed Mantuan officials for withholding his salary while paying exorbitant sums to visiting musicians such as the Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, and he requested release from Gonzaga service. In the end, his salary was increased, and he was granted an annual pension, which he had difficulty collecting for the rest of his life.

In 1610, Monteverdi published a collection of church music in a variety of styles and forms, both archaic and modern, generally referred to as the Vespers of 1610 . Although much of the music may have been intended for use at Mantua, and the motets in particular were clearly designed for virtuoso singers, the publication seems primarily to have been an advertisement of his suitability and availability for a new position involving church music, perhaps at Rome or Venice. He remained at Mantua until (following the death of Vincenzo) he was dismissed by the new duke Francesco in July, 1612, along with a number of Mantuan artists, including his brother Giuleo Cesare. He then returned to Cremona for a year before being appointed to the prestigious and remunerative position of maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s in Venice on August 19, 1613.

Monteverdi’s first task at St. Mark’s was to restore the standards of the musical establishment. That involved recruiting and training singers, regularizing the pay structure of the choir and instrumental ensemble, and introducing new music. He must have contributed new works of his own, but few were published. He gradually appointed younger men, many of whom had been his students, to take over some of the responsibilities for the music program; most prominent among these were Francesco Cavalli, Alessandro Grandi, the Elder, and Francesco Rovetta. Monteverdi continued to compose secular works throughout the next two decades. Among the products of this period was his last commission from Mantua, the opera La finta pazza Licori , projected for 1627 but never performed. Of Monteverdi’s late Mantuan stage works, only the music for the ballet survives.

All musical activity decreased in Venice during the early 1630’s as a result of the plague and related financial difficulties, and Monteverdi, who was already in his sixties and preparing to take holy orders, seems to have composed less himself. The opening of the first public opera houses at Venice in 1637, however, prompted him to undertake a final series of stage works. The opera L’Arianna was revived in 1640, to be followed the same year by Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria . In 1641, Monteverdi composed a ballet, La vittoria d’amore , on commission from the count of Parma for performance at Piacenza. Finally, in 1642, he produced his last opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea , which contains music of an astonishing variety (some of which may have been added posthumously by other composers for subsequent performances outside Venice). He died in Venice, after a final visit to Cremona, and is buried in the Church of the Frari.

Significance

Monteverdi’s career demonstrates both his versatility and his adaptability. His first two books of madrigals and first book of canzonets are essentially student works, but they display his grasp of the musical idioms and techniques of the 1580’s. The madrigals of books 3-6 show an increased interest in selecting poetry with serious emotional content and expressing those emotions through a heightened use of dissonance, contrast, and rhetorical declamation. These books mark the zenith of the madrigal as an expressive musical form.

The opera La favola d’Orfeo offered Monteverdi the chance to draw upon all the techniques he had mastered in his madrigals and incorporate with them the newer developments of monodic song and recitative developed by the earliest Florentine opera composers. La favola d’Orfeo thus stands as Monteverdi’s first attempt to consolidate conflicting musical styles into a musical and dramatic whole, and is rightly considered the first great opera.

Monteverdi’s enduring works are memorable for their expression of human emotions, depiction of individual characters, and sheer beauty of sound. His first six books of madrigals mark the culmination of a great Italian tradition of secular polyphony. Of his operas, La favola d’Orfeo was the first fully formed, L’Arianna the most influential, and L’incoronazione di Poppea arguably the greatest opera of the seventeenth century. The remarkable variety of styles in the Vespers of 1610 provides an overview of Italian sacred music at the beginning of the Baroque era as interpreted by the composer who was largely responsible for the introduction of secular style to sacred music. Monteverdi was recognized as a giant by his contemporaries, and, although he had little direct influence on the music of succeeding generations, that status was recognized anew in the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Arnold, Denis. Monteverdi. Edited by J. A. Westrup. Rev. ed. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1975. The standard biography of the composer in English. Contains a summary list of works and a select bibliography.

Arnold, Denis, and Nigel Fortune, eds. The New Monteverdi Companion. London: Faber & Faber, 1985. An excellent collection of essays on Monteverdi’s musical environment, his compositions, and questions of performance practice. Contains an extensive bibliography.

Fabbri, Paolo. Monteverdi. Translated by Tim Carter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. The English translation of Fabbri’s comprehensive account of Monteverdi’s life and musical compositions.

Monteverdi, Claudio. The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi. Edited and translated by Denis Stevens. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. The authoritative English translation of Monteverdi’s extensive correspondence, with detailed annotations by the editor.

Schrade, Leo. Monteverdi: Creator of Modern Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1950. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1964. A detailed, full-length biography of Monteverdi, the first in English. Contains a select bibliography.

Stevens, Denis. Monteverdi in Venice. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. An account of Monteverdi’s life and work in Venice, where he spent the last thirty years of his life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Monteverdi: Sacred, Secular, and Occasional Music. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978. A brief introduction to Monteverdi’s works, treated categorically rather than chronologically. Calls attention to many of the lost works and their place in his output. Contains a select bibliography.

Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. An insightful discussion of the development of Monteverdi’s musical style and his place in Italian cultural and intellectual life of the period. Contains numerous musical examples and an extensive bibliography.

Whenham, John, ed. Claudio Monteverdi: “Orfeo.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. One of the Cambridge Opera Handbooks, this is a collection of essays on the composition, production, and reception of the opera La favola d’Orfeo. Includes a bibliography and a discography.