Magnificat

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Monteverdi's setting of Laudate pueri (1610) is scored for eight voices, but here, in contrast ith his technique in Nisi Dominus and Lauda Ierusalem, Monteverdi rarely divides the ensemble into antiphonal four-voice combinations, preferring instead to pair voices in the same register. Throughout the psalm, Monteverdi is extremely flexible in his treatment of the plainchant. The psalm tone (tone 8 with finalis g) migrates freely from voice to voice, is transposed and is absent altogether in some passages. Nevertheless, each verse of the psalm appears at least once in plainchant. The treatment of the psalm tone at the beginning of Laudate pueri resembles that at the opening of Dixit Dominus: after initial solo intonations in a tenor voice (quintus), the psalm tone combines with a countersubject to evolve a steadily expanding imitative texture. Even the countersubject is similar to the one at the beginning of Dixit Dominus. Whereas this process encompassed ...

After its opening verse, Monteverdi's 1610 setting of Dixit Dominus alternates between falsobordone settings of the chant (tone 4 with finalis e) and imitative textures built over the cantus firmus in the bass. Each falsobordone is followed by an instrumental ritornello. The doxology then concludes with a solo tenor intonation of the psalm tone and a six-voice polyphonic chorus, balancing the opening verse in symmetrical construction. Throughout the psalm, only the melismas that conclude each half verse (typical for falsobordoni) and the ritornellos are free of the chant. Within this scheme, Monteverdi varies the context of the chant in several different ways. In the falsobordoni themselves, the first half-verse is presented on an a minor chord (A major for verse 6), while the second half-verse is a steplower on a G major triad. In the alternate verses 3, 5, and 7, the chant, transferred to the bass in half and quarter ...

Click to continue reading “Monteverdi’s Setting of the Psalm Lauda Ierusalem (1610)”

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Click to continue reading “Why All This Music for Vespers?”

As early as the Fall of 1608 Monteverdi had discussed the possibility of leaving Mantua and his publication of a monumental Mass and Vespers in 1610, with a dedicate to Pope Paul V was clearly an attempt to promote his services. In that year, with his collection in tow, Monteverdi traveled to Rome, where he hoped to achieve two results: an audience with the Pope to enable him to offer his sacred collection in person, and a free place for his son Francesco. (Monteverdi was a widower of over two years at that point.) In a letter from that month he wrote to Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga: "'in the Roman seminary with a benefice from the church to pay his board and lodging, I being a poor man. But without this favor I could not hope for anything from Rome to help Franceschino, who has already become a seminarian in order to ...

"Monteverdi is having printed an a capella Mass for six voices, of much study and labour, since he was obliged to manipulate continually, in every note through all the parts, always further reinforcing, the eight motifs that are in the motet In illo tempore of Gombert. And he is also having printed together [with it] some vesper psalms of the Virgin with various and diverse manners of invention and harmony, and everything over a cantus firmus, with the intention of coming to Rome this autumn to dedicate them to His Holiness. He is also in the midst of preparing a group of madrigals for five voices, which will consist of  three laments: that of Arianna, still with its usual soprano, the lament of Leandro and Hero by Marini, the third, given him by His Highness, about a shepherd whose nymph has died. The words [are] by the son of Count ...

The sheer variety and magnificence of Monteverdi's 1610 collection is breathtaking, and in 1613, music from the Vespers may have served as part of Monteverdi's successful audition for the position of maestro di capella at the ducal church of St. Mark's in Venice, the most important church job in all of northern Italy. In this 1610 print, which also includes a conservative, even archaic, six-voice polyphonic mass, Monteverdi gathered the most diverse examples of modern musical style imaginable for his Vespers. Introducing the Vesper service is the solo plainchant versicle (Deus in adiutorium) followed by its massive, fanfare-like response with the full choir supported by a large instrumental ensemble of strings and brass. This response was reconstituted out of the fanfare introduction to Monteverdi's own first opera of 1607, Orfeo. Following the opening of the service, virtuoso solo and few-voiced motets sit side-by-side with the psalms featuring ...

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It has frequently been assumed that Grandi remained at San Marco until he accepted the position as chapel master at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in March 1627. However, there are many indications that he left St. Mark’s earlier. He had been relieved of his duties as maestro di canto at the seminary by March 1626, and Giovanni Rovetta makes clear in the dedication to his Salmi concertati (dedication dated 1 January 1626), that the post of vice-maestro at St. Mark’s was already vacant and that he had been performing some of the duties associated with the position: I hoped thereafter [i.e., after joining the cappella] to be able to exercise the duties of vice-maestro in the absence of the Maestro di Capella, this position already being vacant beforehand. Nor was the thought that I might succeed at this in vain, for since this need occurred shortly after I ...

In the second of a three part biographical essay, Steven Saunders discusses the decade that Alessandro Grandi spent in Venice, the period from which most of the music Magnificat will be performing in February was drawn. Grandi’s short tenure at the cathedral in Ferrara lasted at least through early 1617, since the second impression of the Primo libro de motetti (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1617), as well as the second reprinting of the Madrigali concertati (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1617) still identify him as maestro di cappella there.  By 31 August, however, he had returned to Venice to accept a post as a singer in the chapel of St. Mark’s at the relatively generous salary of eighty ducats per year.  He quickly assumed additional responsibilities, first as head of the Compagnia di San Marco (from 22 September 1617), then as the singing teacher at the seminario gregoriano (from March 1618), and finally as ...

Click to continue reading “Part 1: Alessandro Grandi in Ferrara”