Old world, new tricks… Every January we're faced with the same mantras of reinvention and reset.
True innovation and newness is a rarity, a kind of secular miracle that occurs maybe a couple of times in a century. Looking back to the Renaissance, an era full of transformation in the arts, one figure stands out as master maverick of music: Claudio Monteverdi.
Over in England, his contemporary Shakespeare commandeered the theatre stage for depictions of the human condition, and Monteverdi did roughly the same with the nascent form of opera, creating works that even today, are startling in their modernity and individualism.
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Listen, via RTÉ lyric fm: Great Moments in Classical Music on Monteverdi
Monteverdi’s career spanned a period of turbo-charged developments in Italian arts. He was born in 1567 in Cremona, the great city of violin makers in northern Italy; it was the human voice, however, which would dominate his career and life. This was the last great era of polyphony, or vocal counterpoint - part songs, where voices would weave and interact around each other, in sacred and secular works. Monteverdi was schooled in the works of Orlando Lassus, Giaches de Wert and Clemens non Papa, composers who combined the intellectual rigour of German style with the lyrical, open flow of Italian song.
For any composer back then, you had two employment options: the court or the church. Monteverdi pursued both options: his early career spent at the court of a Renaissance prince in Mantua, followed by the resplendent latter part of his career, as maestro di cappella (master of music) at the Basilica of San Marco, Venice. Each of these jobs positioned Monteverdi brilliantly - right man, right time, right place - to harness emerging trends in music, and to carry out his startling revolution.
found in the collection of Museo Correr, Venice.
(Photo: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
It was at noble settings such as the Mantua court that new ideas in music were being discussed; principally, that of monody, or single voice with accompaniment as opposed to many voices. This was to be the foundation of a novel form, a music drama based on ancient Greek precepts (or so the nobles reckoned). It would be called… opera! Yes, long before the shrieks, the sobs and seductions of the form as we know it, opera (translated as "work" or "artistic labour") was conceived as an esoteric exercise among the nobility, a musical couching of the spoken word.
Monteverdi took this rather stilted, cerebral premise, and created the first enduring opera masterpiece, Orfeo (1607). He described it as a "favola in musica", a story in music, one which tells the plight of the divine musician Orpheus on the death of his mortal wife. The work employs a weave of aria, chorus, recitative (sung dialogue to music) and arioso (halfway between aria and recitative), plus a sizeable orchestra. All combined in an expression of the new stile rappresentativo (theatre style) - this vital, flexible expression of human emotions. Monteverdi aimed for nothing less than a perfect unity between drama and music, an ambition centuries ahead of its time - you’d have to look to the operas of Richard Wagner for a comparable aspiration. Text and emotion are all, with the composer’s supple scoring designed to colour and highlight character and action throughout.
For smaller scale wonders, look to Monteverdi's collections of madrigals. The genre of secular partsongs had its final flowering during his lifetime, soon rendered obsolete with the advent of the Baroque era. But for Monteverdi, the madrigal offered a template in miniature for all his ambitions. Throughout his career, he, crafted and developed the form, with its miniature dramas of love, of war and mutability. Again, there’s that extraordinary attention to text and meaning, Monteverdi’s gift for word painting and effect bringing to mind the chiaroscuro effects of Renaissance painting, with their juxtapositions of shadow and light.
Take his celebrated Petrarch madrigal Zefiro Torna/ Zephyr Returns (Madrigals, Book 6); the gusty brightness of its phrasing imitates the west wind and its promise of spring. Then the contrast of long, plaintive phrases, as the unlucky lover mourns his lot - it’s a soundscape of distilled emotion and effect, full of eager intensity.
As an individual, Monteverdi was diligent, intellectually curious and fully aware of his worth. During his years at the ducal court of Mantua, he'd been largely overworked and discontented; but just occasionally, fate can get things right.
In 1613, a year after the death of his employer, Monteverdi was offered one of the grandest gigs in music: that of music master at San Marco, Venice. His task was to take up the great legacy of ceremonial music written for that basilica - creating sacred works to exalt and enthral the city’s ruling oligarchy. Personally, Monteverdi was never that into sacred music - he far preferred writing for the stage - but this brief allowed for the use of splendid drama and effects, developments he’d previously cultivated in works such as his Vespro della Beata Vergine/ Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1610).
Monteverdi ended his days on that great stage set of Venice, the pleasure capital of Europe. The city had become home to his beloved genre of opera, where it was presented for the city's populace. Opera had become an entirely different beast since its days of early esotericism; now, it bristled with melodrama and brilliant display so as appeal to the punters.
For the Venetian stage, Monteverdi crafted his late, great operas, culminating in L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), a tale which sees the shocking triumph of evil, as emperor Nero and the courtesan Poppea murder and thwart their enemies, taking possession of power. There’s no retribution for the pair; instead, the opera is crowned with their love duet, Pur ti miro/ I gaze upon you, I desire you - one of the most perfect and beautiful expressions in all opera.
New tricks, old world? Centuries later, the music of Monteverdi still strikes us with its daring and responsiveness. Front and centre, Monteverdi showcases the human being - all this genius, harnessed to represent the ardour and fragility of our brief lives. This is something radical and alive, regardless of the era... You want something new? I give you Monteverdi.
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