The most complex and sophisticated of Monteverdi’s large-scale madrigals from the Eighth Book, Hor che’l ciel e la terra sets, in two parts, the entirety of Petrarch’s 164th poem from the Canzoniere, a sonnet. The prima parte sets the two quatrains, and the seconda parte the two terzets. This is a poem replete with Petrarchan contrasts and oxymorons. But Petrarch’s contrasts, as described by Pietro Bembo in the Prose della volgar lingua, are brought into harmony and smoothed over the mellifluous sounds and varied, rolling rhythms of his highly refined poetic style. This is easily seen in Petrarch’s fifth and sixth lines, where the most abrupt semantic juxtapositions are couched in an elegantly structured and alliterative sentence that draws attention away from the contrasts toward their union in a highly stylized and carefully crafted poetic conception. Resemblances of rhyme, of rhythm, of line lengths and stanzaic structure, and especially resemblances of sonority all serve to overcome the semantic contrasts.

Contrasts in Petrarch’s sonnet occur on several levels. First there are the obvious, immediate contrasts between successive words or concepts in the second quatrain. “Dolce pena” at the end of the 6th line is an oxymoron;  “Guerra” (war) and “pace” (peace) are contrasted in the 7th and 8th lines. In the first terzet, “dolce” (sweetness) and “amaro” (bitterness) are contrasted in the middle line, while the final line opposes “risana” (heals) with “punge” (wounds). In the middle line of the final terzet “moro” (I die) is contrasted with “nasco” (I am born).

On a larger structural level there is significant contrast between the first quatrain and the second. The first quatrain unites in silence and motionless a series of natural elements and living creatures. Even the rocking rhythm of all four lines is reminiscent of a lullaby. This quatrain is a depiction of nature at rest.

The second quatrain, in which the speaker awakes, contrasts the speaker’s individual experience with that of quiet nature.  This quatrain too begins with a series, but rather than different elements being united in a smooth, rocking rhythm, “Veglio, penso, ardo, piango” are an abrupt series of wholly unrelated activities characterized by both qualitative and quantitative accents on the first syllable of each two-syllable word. The beginning of this line is an effective characterization of the intense psychological state and confusion with which one often abruptly awakens in the middle of the night. This startled series is then followed by a rational attempt to explain the psychological state: “she who undoes me is always before me for my sweet pain,” though the rationality of the thought is undermined not only by the affective oxymoron at the end, but by the seeming contradiction between the notion of the woman who undoes the sleeper also being the source of the sweet pain. The next sentence compounds the emotional contradiction.  The speaker’s state is now warlike, full of anger and sorrow, but in the next line, “and only thinking of her do I have some peace,” the cause of the warlike state of mind turns out to be the only source of tranquility.  In this quatrain emotional contradictions and confusions are articulated in utter contrast to the stability and tranquility of nature as described in the opening quatrain.

The sestet creates yet another contrast. The description and experience of the octet are now given additional meaning through the metaphor of the “clear, living fountain.” The fountain is the source of nourishment whence the speaker drinks both sweetness and bitterness, and the hand of the beloved, like the fountain, both heals and wounds. There is a cross-reference here to a previous canzona of Petrarch’s where two fountains of the Fortunate Isles are described: “who drinks from the one, dies laughing, and who from the other, escapes.”  (Poem 135, lines 78-79)

In Hor che’l ciel, the speaker is like the waters of the fountain in that his martyrdom doesn’t reach its end so that a thousand times a day he dies and is reborn as the waters are recycled through the fountain. This is how far he is from regaining his mental health, which could only come about through resolving the emotional contradictions engendered by his lady. The sestet brings nature into relationship with the speaker; the two had been completely separate in the octet. Through the metaphor of the fountain, the speaker and nature are reunited, but this is an active, seething nature, not the sleeping nature of the opening quatrain. As a consequence, the thought is left open and unresolved at the end, as if the distance from his health must remain permanent for the speaker.

How does Monteverdi deal with this text taxonomically and iconographically? Quite clearly in separate sections focusing on specific categories of affect. The opening, which sets the entire first quatrain, consists of static chords, organized rhythmically around the rhythms of the text, although the concluding trochees of terra, tace, affrena, mena and giace are all set as spondees rather than trochees, thereby increasing even further the sense of stasis. The only pitch motion in this entire section is a slow moving I-V-I-VI-V-I chord progression, which is perhaps stimulated by the phrase “in giro mena” (leads in a circle) in the third line. It is probably no accident that the first return to the tonic chord occurs precisely with this phrase. The homogeneous opening section of the piece is thus a single icon for the tranquility described in the first quatrain of Petrarch’s sonnet.

Petrarch’s second quatrain, as we have seen, not only contrasts with the first but is also less internally unified. This leads Monteverdi in the first two lines to invent three musical metaphors in the Renaissance sense, the first interpreting the sudden awakening, the second the single word piango, and the third the rest of the sentence.  But Monteverdi’s treatment of these metaphors is informed by his iconographic structural sensibilities. Each is treated as a structural device in a sophisticated interaction among the individual metaphors to create a larger structural metaphor for the confused, contradictory state expressed by the speaker.  Here we have aesthetic aspects of the Renaissance madrigal serving to enrich the structural possibilities of the concertato style.

The second quatrain begins with a graphic representation of the startling awakening of the sleeper, but leading immediately to a typically Renaissance metaphor for piango  (I weep) in suspended figures of falling half- or whole- steps. In contrast to the opening section, each word is now on a new chord and at a higher pitch level than the last.  The continuation of the thought with e chi mi sface is cast in a descending lament in two voices in parallel thirds, the descent an obvious icon for depressed emotional states. But already Monteverdi is at work dealing with the psychological contrasts and contradictions in these two lines by superimposing a restatement of veglio, penso, ardo, piango over the completion of the thought. The restatement proceeds with wider gaps between veglio, penso, ardo and piango, thereby giving them the effect of a psychological background to the more immediate thought about the beloved who undoes the speaker. And Monteverdi artfully times these background superimpositions so that the final one, piango, occurs simultaneously with the final word of the second line, pena.

Monteverdi has by now not only created three musical metaphors, but has begun to use them in a structural fashion to expand the section as well as create the psychological connection between the sudden awakening and the cause of that awakening. Having used the original metaphors in this way, he continues to repeat and exploit them structurally, in varied form and through gradually increasing textures until all six voices are involved.  This allows him to bring the section to a close, based on a structural dynamic of varied repetition in increasingly thicker textures, a structural dynamic we find over and over again in his large-scale concertato works. This process has evolved his original three metaphors into icons by the end of the section.  By that time their significance has become musical-structural rather than localized and passing. They have achieved the sense of permanence and reusability characteristic of icons.

The next two lines of the quatrain contrast guerra (war) with pace (peace). As we would expect, guerra is represented by the concertato  style. The final line, E sol di lei pensando ò qualche pace, is contrasted to the previous one by a homophonic and homorhythmic style in slow tempo, an obvious icon for pace. Moreover, Monteverdi drops out the lower two voices, since the thought is focused on the feminine lei, and as the state of peace is described, the harmony turns toward a cadence on B major, since peace is a decided shift of mental state for the speaker. Rather than simply quit at this point, Monteverdi once again uses structural repetition of his two icons to expand the scope of the composition and bring the prima parte to a close. This time pace cadences in E major rather than B major, and it is important to the overall structure of the madrigal that we have an inconclusive close in the dominant key at this point, leaving the way open for the sestet to bring the speaker and nature together.

The seconda parte opens with a descending figure reminiscent of e chi mi sface. This resemblance serves a structural purpose in linking the two parts of the madrigal, but also performs an affective function in relating the image of the living fountain to the beloved who undoes the speaker.  One might say that the descent from e” at the beginning of the seconda parte has a musical function similar to the linking function of the word Cosí  (thus) at the beginning of Petrarch’s sestet. But the most important part of the opening is the overlapping of the phrase Cosí sol d’una chiara fonte viva with Move’l dolce e l’amaro, ond’io mi pasco.  The latter is set to a chromatically rising motive treated in imitation, a typical icon for situations of anguish in Monteverdi.  This particular version, however, abjures dissonance almost altogether in recognition of the sweetness that is also imbibed from the fountain.

The combination of these two motives brings together in simultaneity the source of the water and its effects on him who drinks thereof. Monteverdi’s texture has gradually expanded through the imitation, reaching his typical full-textured climax, which in this case serves as the beginning of a more extended structural repetition of the chromatic motive. But there is a third line to the terzet, and Monteverdi cleverly introduces it into the texture by simply varying the descent from e and substitutes the final line Una man sola mi risana e punge.Thus when he once again reaches his textural climax, the section and  the terzet can come to a close, and the passage once again has been built upon varied structural repetition.

The final terzet revolves mostly around the second line, one of the most common textual conceits of the Petrarchan 16th century and set over and over again by composers from Arcadelt through Rore to Monteverdi in multiple imitations. What started as a musical metaphor for multiplicity had early on reached the more enduring status of an icon. This line is briefly introduced by a simple, recited statement of the first line. Monteverdi’s treatment of the second line is in some respects antiphonal; only the final word, moro, set to longer notes in stepwise descent overlaps.  At the end of the passage, he even makes the words nasco and moro overlap, to bring them into even closer oppositional relationship to one another than Petrarch could do in the linear medium of language. Structural repetition, transposed by a 5th, serves to enlarge the section just as in earlier portions of the piece.

Petrarch’s concluding line is somewhat separate from the rest of the sonnet in making a final statement about the poet’s situation. Monteverdi likewise sets this line apart, with a single voice in static repetition except for the word lunge, whose significance is emphasized by a long leap and even longer slow, melismatic descent. A transposed, full-textured structural repeat then serves to close out the entire madrigal, returning to the opening key. The emblematic character of this melisma is obvious in its not carrying any of the emotional weight of Petrarch’s final line.

Now that we have seen how Monteverdi has treated this text, both taxonomically and iconically, let us go back and compare what Petrarch has accomplished with his poem and Monteverdi with his music. Petrarch has taken the anguished torment of the lover who is pulled to extremes of opposing emotions and shaped it into a highly refined, elegant form. This process of shaping and refining the emotional content brings those emotions under control, into an order and a beauty that not only allows us to grasp them in multiple dimensions, but also informs us that through cultivated art the most unbridled emotions can be at least partially tamed, conceptually understood and survived. By virtue of artistic creation, it is no longer necessary for the poet to die and be reborn a thousand times a day–he can rather conceive and cope with his problem by subjecting it the imagination and structures of art and we, his readers, can share with him both the agonies described and the poet’s insight about how to manage them in a coherent fashion.

Monteverdi has taken a somewhat different approach. His goal is first of all to identify clearly the emotions and situations described by the poet. This is his taxonomic approach. His purpose is no longer to make the listener weep and laugh with the performer as the aesthetics of early opera had demanded in accordance with the Platonic theory of the transference of affect. His purpose is to convey in music knowledge about affective states–first to identify their character, then to present them for our understanding in an appropriate musical garb. This knowledge is principally of separate affects, but in both the prima parte and the seconda parte  there are passages where the combination of separate ideas creates a more complicated psychological affect, which is also clearly conveyed musically. Monteverdi’s approach is more empirical than passionate, more interested in conveying concepts of emotion than in inducing emotion.  The opening segment is not so much about the silence of nature as described by Petrarch, but rather about the nature of tranquility in general. The concitato section is not so much about the poet’s warlike state in this particular instance as it is about the general character of warlike agitation.

This is a more objective view than in his Mantuan works and is fully consonant with the efforts of contemporary thinkers to understand their world in more objective terms, the basis of the new empirical science of the 17th century. If we note that Monteverdi’s conclusion doesn’t sum up the significance of the poem the way that Petrarch’s final line does, that is because the significance of his musical setting cannot be summarized in a single musical statement. The significance of his setting is in the accumulation of separate and combined affects he has strung together in a sectionalized manner. Knowledge of emotion is presented by accumulation rather than by integration, and what makes such a piece good or not so good depends on the interest and quality of the musical presentation of each separate affect, plus the purely musical structural aspects of the expansive work.

(Excerpted from “A Taxonomic and Affective Analysis of Monteverdi’s ‘Hor che ’l ciel e la terra’,” Music Analysis 12 (1993): 169–95.)

Monteverdi sets each of the seven verses either in voal polyphony or as accompanied monody, subjecting the borrowed melody in successive verses to  a series of variations in texture, sonority and meter. Separating verses 2-6 is a ritornello for five unspecified instruments. The overall setting is conservative in character, even in notation, which is principally in semibreves and minims. The only modern elements are the insertion of the ritornello and the reduction of the texture to a solo voice with continuo accompaniment in verse 4-6. Nowhere is there an attempt to interpret individual wordsof the text, a difficult proposition in the strophic setting of hymns in any event.

The successive variations in texture, sonority and meter are organized around both symmetrical and asymmettrical principles. The first and last verses comprise identical eight-voice, double-choir polyphonic settings. The second and third verses reset the cantus firmus in triple meter and are identical except that they alternate four-voice choirs, thereby varying the sonority. The fourth, fifth, and sixth verses retain the triple-meter version of the melody, but are performed by a solo voice with only basso continuo support. The solo voice itself changes from verse to verse: the fourth verse is sung by a soprano from the first choir (cantus), the fifth by a soprano from the second choir (sextus), the sixth by a tenor from the first choir (tenor). Thus there is a regular alternation between first and second choirs in verses 2-7. Throughout all seven verses the harmonization of the plainchant remains unchanged.

The ritornello, in triple time, is identical in each repetition, and bears no melodic relationship to the hymn tune. It does, however, bear astructural relationship to the verses in triple meter and the tonal structure of the vocal harmonization. Like the triple-meter verses, the ritornello comprises four phrases of five bars each, and several phrases begin and end with the same harmony as the verses (although sometimes substituting a major or minor chord for its opposite).

This ritornello is symmetrically deployed in the hymn: it does not appear until after the second verse, and according to Monteverdi’s rubric, it is to be omitted between the sixth and seventh verses. There are therefore paired verses at the beginning and end not separated by the ritornello; otherwise, the ritornello alternates with each verse. Likewise, the deployment of the hymn tune is arranged symmetrically between the two choirs. On the other hand, the varying textures and varying parts carrying the hymn tune are organized asymmetrically. As a result, Monteverdi, in his customary fashion, creates a structure based on simple principles, but not at all simple in its realization.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 293-295]

The cantus firmus does not begin until well into the piece, and its successive statements are altered rhythmically and separated by rests of varying durations. The instrumental sonata supporting the cantus firmus unfolds in ten overlapping section, the first one restated at the end in the manner of a da capo. As in the Magnificat, the different sections differ in style and texture, and the meter shifts between duple and triple time with some frequency. In contrast to the Magnificats, the sections do not correspond exactly with the restatements of the plainchant, since the opening segment is without cantus firmus and another section supports two intonations of the chant melody.

The lengths of the ten sections comprising the Sonata vary considerably–the longest is three-and-a-half times the length of the shortest. Yet despite these many irregularities, there are some elements of symmetry in the structure of the composition, even if the piece is not as schematic as the psalms, Magnificats, and hymn. The Sonata is framed by the opening section and its da capo at the end; only the final plagal cadence with the last statement of the cantus firmus lies outside this frame. Sections 2-4 concentrate on virtuoso, dotted-rhythm scale patterns and ornamented versions of these patterns in the cornettos and violins. These sections are entirely in duple meter until the introduction of a series of four-bar interpolations in triple meter at the very end. The central segment of the Sonata, section 5, is abrief passage notated in blackened triplets, still under duple mensuration. This passage merges with the succeeding large segment comprising four subgroups (sections 6-9), all in triple meter.

Thus the outward frame encloses an only slightly off-balance symmetry of sections 2-4 and 6-9, the former in duple meter, the latter in triple meter, which surround the central segment inblack notation. This middle section is not perfectly located, however, since it is the concluding cadence of this section that articulates the mid-point of the composition.

The variation concept applies not only to the differing contexts of the reiterated litany, but also to portions of the Sonata where the chant is absent. The first two sections, for example, are formed from the same music, first in duple meter, the reorchestrated and recast in triple time, a procedure frequently encountered in dance pairs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A later figure, played by the violins in duet, is presented in several melodic and rhythmic variants, even in its first appearance: a scale in dotted quarters and eighths is embellishedwith an extra eighth and the continues in a sequnce of broken thirds.

The scale pattern, in both melody and bass, is a fundamental motif in the Sonata and appears in a variety of guises. While variation procedures may be at the root of some of these similarities, others may be attributed to a basic motivic consistency throughout the composition. The figure not only involves scale motion, but also is closely related by inversion to the opening motif of the Sonata. In fact, the section based on this motif functions as a transition between the scale forms and a new triple-meter section whose main motif bears a strong resemblance to the opening figure.

The motif undergoes several metamorphoses in the course of the extended middle section, but all its forms are suffieciently related to one another and to the opening motif in their use of conjunct and disjunct thirds to render perfectly and natural the return of the opening passage following the conclusion of this section.

These techniques in the Sonata illustrate the close relationship between Monteverdi’s concept of melodic and rhythmic variation and sixteenth-century methods of motivic development. Although the motifs are typical of the early seventeenth century in the strength and regularity of their rhythms and the time intervals of their imitations, the metamorphosis of one motif out of anpother by means of expansion, contraction, inversion, retrogression, and alteration of rhythmic values is the saem process found in innumerable ricercari and canzonas of the second half of the sixteenth century. It is only in those passages where greater identity of material is maintained that one can speak of variation in the form-building sense rather than as thematic development. Yet the distinction between the two in the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria is largely a matter of degree, although it has significant structural implications. The techniques of thematic development facilitate the construction of large continuous sections, which maintain a certain sense of homogeneity despite alterations in the melodic material.

This process of formal variation, on the other hand, through its retention of a basic and readily perceptible morphological identity, tends to subdivide the music into comparatively short, discrete sections where first one variation technique is exposed and then another. This is apparent in the first half of the Sonata, which relies more ont he process of variation and is more clearly sectionalized than the portion depending on sixteenth-century medthods of motivic development.

The passage in blackened triplets (meliora) concluding the first half of the Sonata (shown in the image from the Cantus partbook above), section 5, has given rise to a variety of interpretations of its rhythmic relationship to the surrounding sections. My reading of this passage (which will be adopted by Magnificat in their perfromances) allows for a single tactus to be used throughout the Sonata, and all the bars are of equivalent length in performance.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 297-303]

The first of Monteverdi’s structural modules is the famous walking bass frequently cited in Montverdi literature. This bass is repeated exactly in each its five occurrences, lending Laetatus sum a strong sense of harmonic and structural continuity. The other three patterns, whose systematic return tightens the organization even further, have generally escaped notice.

The walking bass is both highly repetitive and sequential in its motivic structure. The second bass pattern is similarly repetitive. This pattern is reiterated almost exactly in its second statement, but is simplified in its final version.

The third bass pattern is almost completely static and serves as the support for virtuoso passage-work both times it appears. The only difference between its two statements is in the length of the sustained Gs. The fourth bass pattern is also repetitious, in that the final eight bars are a sequential replication of the preceding eight. this pattern is shortened through truncation and diminution in the second and third presentations (D’).

Patterns A and B each accommodate one verse of text, while C and D combine to present verses 4 and 8. The virtuoso passage-work over pattern C introduces each of these two verses, which then continue with a normal polyphonic texture over pattern D (or D’). D’ subsequently underlies the entire Sicut erat.

Although these patterns appear on the surface to be very different from one another, there are some importnt points of similarity among three of the four. A comparison between the beginning of the walking bass (A) and pattern B demonstrates that the later is a slower-moving variant of the former, particularly in its harmonic outline. Pattern D also features scale motifs similar to patterns A and B. Only pattern C, which is without any rhythmic or pitch motion at all, is radically different.

The structural sequence of these patterns, as schematized above, gives special prominence to the walking bass (A), which underlies all odd-numbered verses until the doxology, an arrangement reminiscent of the more primitive alternatim technique of psalmody. Since the underlying identities of each of the other basses are not obscured despite their varied repetitions, the entire psalm unfolds as a complex series of strophic variations, inspired perhaps by Monteverdi’s essays in strophic variations in L’Orfeo. In several of these, too, Monteverdi varied the bass-line in each successive strophe.

Monteverdi’s ingenuity in writing strophic variations is readily apparent in the manifold ways in which he manipulates the six voices, achieving continuous variety in texture and style as a counterbalance to the repeated bass. The walking bass sections (A), in where each successive statement of the bass supports progressively larger numbers of upper parts, illustrate this variety. Bass pattern B also supports varied textures and styles, ranging from a solo intonation to paired duets to imitative txtures. On the other hand pattern D normally underlies a full six-voice sonority, and the sustained pitch of pattern C supports virtuoso passaggi.

Unlike Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum does not have an elaborate Amen. Rather there is a simple plagal cadence to G with Picardy third, virtually identical to the plagal cadence concluding Dixit Dominus.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]

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 the entire first verse of Dixit Dominus, in Laudate pueri only the first half of the verse is traversed, so the process is repeated, with a new countersubject, to complete the first verse.

After the first verse, where Dixit Dominus had turned to the tripartite series of falsobordoni, ritornellos, and duets, Laudate pueri presents a lenghthy succession of virtuoso duets for voices in a single register, accompanied by the cantus firmus. In this portion of the psalm (verse 2-5), the psalm tone migrates upwards through the texture from one verse to the next, starting in the quintus and proceeding through the altus, the cantus, and finally the sextus. It is sung both in long notes and in half notes and quarter notes, but even in the shorter rhythmic values the cantus firmus appears sustained because of rapid embellishments in the other voices. The movement of the chant out of its bass role in the quintus part permits increased harmonic variety, and successive transpositions of the psalm tone upwards by a fifth (verses 2 and 3 transpose the reciting note to G, verse 4 to D) admit a wider tonal compass as well. Only at verse 5 does the reciting note return to its original C.

The virtuoso duets of verses 2-5 employ two sopranos (cantus and sextus) in verse 2-3, the two tenors (tenor and quintus) in verse 4, and the two basses (bassus and [octavus]) in verse 5. The gradual descent in register of the duets is mirrored by the gradual ascent of the cantus firmus (quintus, altus, cantus, sextus). the migrations and transpositions of the cantus firmus thus bring the psalm tone from the low register to the top of the vocal texture, parralleling the text of these verses, which begins with man’s praise of God and ultimately exults God above all nations, heaven, and earth in the climactic verses 4 and 5. The phrase et super coelos gloria eius is accompanied by durus harmonies over the notes of the natural hexachord, cadencing to A major, illustrating Monteverdi’s tendency to associate durus harmonies with positive textual ideas from this period onwards.

For the remainder of the psalm, Monteverdi abandons the few-voiced texture and makes use of all eight voices, with the exception of very brief passages for reduced forces. The psalm tone has already returned to its reciting note of C in verse 5, and it remains there for the rest of Laudate pueri, including the doxology. Because the chant always appears in an inner voice until it is projected to the top of the texture in the Sicut erat, there is considerable flexibility in its harmonization. Moreover, temporary pauses in the psalm tone allow for even further harmonic freedom and variety. Indeed, this portion of the psalm is characterized by substantial tonal variety couple with considerable textual variety, ranging from homophony to imitation, with the number of participating voices changing constantly. The rhythmic organization also shifts frequently between duple and triple meter.

Like Dixit Dominus, the doxology shifts tonality. The psalm text itself concludes with a complete cadence to A major, and through circle-of-fifths harmony, a transition is made to G major for the beginning of the Gloria Patri. As in Dixit Dominus, the psalm tone is recited by the tenor in long note values, accompanied only by the bassus generalis (though interrupted by a four-voice passage). This passage again reminds us of the traditional alternatim technique where plainchant verses alternate with polyphony. The Sicut erat, with its harmonization of the psalm tone in the top voice, is also somewhat parallel to the same verse in Dixit Dominus (Dixit places the chant in both the bass and top parts). But while the Sicut erat of Laudate pueri parallels Dixit Dominus in style, it is also reminiscent of the final verse and rounded structure of Nisi Dominus in closely resembling the opening verse of the psalm.

The final Amen, devoid of the psalm tone, constitutes an extended coda based on ascending fifths. At first the tenor and quintus remain silent, but as the texture gradually thins, they commence singing the same motifs as the other voices, emerging from the other parts to complete the psalm with a lovely imitative duet of their own. As a consequence, Laudate pueri ends with a thin texture in the tenor register, as it began. The two voices converge on the unison final g, the same note on which the two sopranos will begin their duet an octave higher in the following motet, Pulchra es. Indeed, the opening of Pulchra es outlines the same ascending fifths with which Laudate pueri concludes. The duet concluding the Amen is reminiscent of a very similar passage in Giovanni Gabrieli’s Quem vidistis pastores, published posthumously in his Symphoniæ sacræ of 1615.

In Laudate pueri, Monteverdi has bult a more dynamic form than the symmetrical structure of Dixit Dominus. This form proeeds, after the initial polyphonic verse, to a series of trio textures (duets against the psalm tone) before expanding again to the full choir. The length of each verse depends heavily on the character of the musical figures and their working out, and these figures depend in turn much more on the significance of individual words or phrases of the text than do the figures in Dixit Dominus. Yet some degree of symmetry is present in the reiteration of the music of the first verse in the Sicut erat. It may well have been the absenmce of other forms of symmetry in Laudate pueri that prompted Monteverdi to repeat the opening music for the Sicut erat (as in Nisi Dominus), whereas Dixit Dominus, being governed bthroughout by a symmetrical organization, did not require a similar return at the end.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]

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 notes, supports first an imitative duet, and finally an imitative five-voice texture, creating a series of variations over the bass cantus firmus. The beginning of this latter verse looks very much like measured falsobordone and illustrates how closely chordal textures in the harmonization of a psalm tone approximate falsobordone, expecially when the chant is in the bass, allowing for very little variety of harmonization.

Even within each of these verse the principle of variation predominates, since each half verse repeats the text, prompting variation in its setting. For example the third verse (Virgam virtutis) begins with the cantus alone and then adding the sextus in an imitative texture for the reiteration of the text. Note that although the chant is not present for the first statement of the half verse in the cantus, the bassus generalis still reflects the psalm tone. In the second half-verse of the verse a subtle coloristic variation is achieved by shifting the leading role from cantus to the sextus.

Even in those passages not based on the cantus firmus the principle of variation prevails. The melismas concluding each half-verse are rhythmic variants of a single underlying descending sequence. Each instrumental ritornello is similarly a slightly modified repetition (transposed up a step) of the immediately preceding melisma, exchanging the vocal sonority for an instrumental one.

The first verse and the doxology exhibit yet further contextual variants for the cantus firmus. In the first verse, the psalm tone itself becomes a subject for polyphonic imitation, joined by a countersubject in a six-voice texture. At the beginning of the doxology the solo cantus firmus appears in long notes a step lower on g in cantus mollis (one flat). The Sicut erat is unrelated to the first verse of the psalm, but is reminiscent in its reiteration of the sustained psalm tone on D (harmonized with D minor) of the Domine ad adiuvandum respond that opened the Vespers.

[Adapted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 211-215.]

Lauda Ierusalem, like Nisi Dominus, is characterized by two choirs in frequent antiphonal responses, but the texture is thinner, comprising only seven parts. The six voices apart from the cantus firmus are subdivided into two equal ensembles of canto, alto, and bass, and the more transparent sonority of these three-voice choirs facilitates more frequent interchanges and greater rhythmic complexity than is exhibited by Nisi Dominus. While the overall tonal organization of the psalm is determined by the pitch at which the reciting note appears, structure on a smaller scale is determined, as in Nisi Dominus , by antiphony. However, in contrast to the lengthy passages with one choir only that characterize Nisi Dominus, the second choir of Lauda Ierusalem regularly alternates (sometimes in imitation) with the first choir at the interval of approximately three bars.

With verse 5 this interval is reduced by at least half. Finally the two choirs join in verse 7, at the point where the chant returns its original reciting level, and remain together until the doxology. Although the texture in verse 7-9 is full-voiced and mostly homophonic, it is simultaneously imitative (sometimes only in the outer voices). At verse 9 the time between entries reduces to only a half or quarter note (depending on the voice), producing a lively mosaic of entrances as pitches and mtifs heard in the leading trio reappear almost immediately in the other while the tenor continues to intone the cantus firmus uninterruptedly. I know of no other example of doubl-choir music from this period, aside from the first and last verses of Montecerdi’s Nisi Dominus, that develops such a complex texture from the interplay of two separate groups.

Like Nisi Dominus, the doxology is anentirely separate section where the chant for the first time migrates out of the tenor into the top voice, achieving greater prominence. The Sicut erat, which in this case does not resemble the opening verse, begins with rhythmisized falso bordone, followed by an imitative texture based entirely on the psalm tone. Because the psalm tone comprises principally a repeated pitch, this imitative texture differs from the rhythmicized falso bordone in its straggered entrances. In contrast to Nisi Dominus, a large polyphonic Amen, from which the cantus firmus is absent, concludes Lauda Ierusalem. The structural parralels between Lauda Ierusalem and Nisi Dominus not only relate these two psalms to one another, but separate them from the other three, which are also related to one another by various means.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 208-211.]

The chant itself varies rhythmically from long notes to the same shorter notes as appear in the other parts, and a little more than half way through, at Sicut sagittae (verse 5), the tone is transposed up a fourth, allowing harmonzations with B flat minor and G minor chords in contrast to the predominating F major and D minor triads of the preceding verses. At the same point, the meter shifts to triple time, introducing a further variant in both the cantus firmus and its polyphonic content.

The varied context of the cantus firmus depends not only on its harmonization and rhythmic organization, but also on the polychoral patterning of the other four voices. Monteverdi’s opening verse combines both choirs in a densely imitative texture, but thereafter the two choirs alternate as strict cori spezzati (which overlap at verse endings and beginnings) until mideway through verse 6, where the choirs rejoin to end the psalm. The cori spezzati section (verses 2-6) reveals a gradually growing level of rhythmic excitement and ultimately textural density as the two choirs merge.

The doxology of a polyphonic psalm is often set somewhat apart from the psalm proper. In Nisi Dominus, Monteverdi not only returns to the original duple meter, but in the Gloria Patri also transposes the psalm tone down a fifth (from  B flat to E flat) allowing for harmonization by E flat major and C minor triads. In many psalms, the Sicut erat in principio (“As it was in the beginning”) is a musical pun, reflecting the first verse in keeping with the meaning of the text, and in Nisi Dominus Monteverdi returns to F and reiterates the opening verse, giving a rounded stucture to the psalm.

[Excerpted from The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance by Jeffrey Kurtzman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 207-208.]

First page of the Cantus Primo partbook for Beatus Vir

Magnificat and Musica Omnia are pleased to announce our latest release – Cozzolani’s extraordinary setting of the psalm Beatus vir. Taking the characteristics of the “salmi bizarri” to an extreme, here Cozzolani manipulates the psalm text into a dialogue and collects ritornelli as she makes her way through the text. The recording features sopranos Catherine Webster, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, Ruth Escher and Andrea Fullington; altos Meg Bragle, Karen Clark, Suzanne Jubenville and Elizabeth Anker; and a continuo team of John Dornenburg, violone, David Tayler, theorbo and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ, with Warren Stewart conducting.

Magnificat first performed this compositional tour de force on the San Francisco Early Music Society series in 1999, with later performances at the 2002 Berkeley Early Music Festival, on the Music Before 1800 series in New York in 2003, and in 2007 for the Society for Seventeenth Century Music at Notre Dame University.

Cozzolani subtitles her setting of the psalm Beatus vir “In Forma di Dialogo, signaling a very free recasting of the psalm text into a series of questions and answers between interlocutors. While the entire psalm text is traversed in its proper sequence (with the omission of occasional words), the text also serves as a matrix from which various phrases can be extracted and inserted repeatedly in the midst of other verses. Only a schematic of the text and its reworking can give an adequate idea of how freely and dramatically Cozzolani treats it. In the following outline of the psalm and its literal English translation, bold type indicates refrains and texts repeated out of order as found in the original psalm text. Italics constitute the dialogue, with questions and their answers, the answers derived from the psalm itself. The verses are numbered as in the Liber Usualis.

1. Beatus vir . . .
Qui beatus vir?
qui timet Dominum:
Qui timet Dominum, beatus vir?
Beatus vir qui timet Dominum:
in mandatis eius volet . . .
Volet, in mandatis eius?
Volet, volet nimis.
Beatus, beatus, beatus vir.
2. Potens in terra erit semen eius:
Potens in terra? Erit semen eius? Semen eius in terra, potens erit:
generatio rectorum benedicetur.
Benedicetur? In terra semen eius benedicetur.
Beatus, beatus, beatus vir.
3. Gloria et divitiae in domo eius:
Gloria in domo eius? Gloria. Divitiae in domo eius? Divitiae.
Gloria et divitiae in domo eius:
Et iustitia eius manet . . .
Manet iustitia eius?
Manet in saeculum saeculi.
In saeculum saeculi? In saeculum saeculi manet.
Beatus, beatus, beatus vir.
4. Exortum est in tenebris lumen rectis:
Lumen rectis? Exortum est. In tenebris lumen? Exortum est
misericors, et miserator, et iustus.
5. Iocundus homo . . .
Beatus, beatus, beatus vir.
Qui miseratur?
Iocundus homo
Et commodat?
Iocundus homo
disponet sermones suos in iudicio,
Iocundus homo
quia in aeternum non commovebitur.
Non commovebitur? In aeternum. Non commovebitur? In aeternum non commovebitur.
Iocundus homo.
6. In memoria aeterna erit iustus:
Iustus erit in memoria? Erit in memoria aeterna,
Iocundus homo,
ab auditione mala non timebit.
Non timebit? Non. Ab auditione mala? Non. Non timebit? Non, non timebit,
Iocundus homo.
7. Paratum cor eius sperare in Domino,
Paratum cor eius? Paratum. Paratum sperare? Sperare in Domino.
confirmatum est cor eius . . .["non commovebitur" omitted]
Donec? Donec dispiat inimicos suos,
Iocundus homo.
8. Dispersit
Dedit pauperibus? Dedit pauperibus
divitiae in domo eius.
iustitia eius manet in saeculum saeculi:
In memoria aeterna erit iustus,
cornu eius exaltabitur in gloria.
Gloria in domo eius,
Iocundus homo.
Beatus, beatus, beatus vir.
9. Peccator videbit et irascetur,
Beatus vir qui timet Dominum
dentibus suis fremet et tabescet.
Iocundus homo qui miseratur,
desiderium peccatorum peribit.
Peribit? Peribit,
in memoria aeterna erit iustus,
in aeterna non commovebitur,
desiderium peccatorum peribit.
10. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
11. Sicut erat in principio,
Gloria Patri
et nunc et semper
Gloria Filio,
et in saecula saeculorum,
Gloria Spiritui Sancto.
Amen.

The text repetitions show Beatus vir used repeatedly as a refrain, particularly in the first several verses of the psalm. From the middle verses onward, Iocundus homo serves as the refrain, though Beatus vir returns in the eighth and ninth verses. In memoria aeterna erit iustus from the sixth verse also recurs in the middle of the eighth and ninth verses. Cozzolani generates one or more questions out of the declarative statements of every verse up to the Gloria Patri. In the Doxology, she mixes the Gloria with the Sicut erat, reinforcing the eternity of the glorification of each member of the Trinity.

Cozzolani’s free manipulation of the text bears witness to her conception of the psalm as a lesson in action and faith rather than merely a succession of verses to be recited in fulfillment of the liturgical requirement of the Office. This dramatic conception of the text finds its echo in the musical setting as well. The principal tonality is A. The two choirs are of equal significance, and while one choir may momentarily be set off against the other, equivalent voices from the two choirs more often pair with one another in imitation or in parallel thirds.

Cozzolani’s basic means of handling the dialogue format is to assign the questions to a solo voice or a pair of voices in the same register in imitation or parallel thirds, and to provide the answers with anywhere from a solo voice to the full choirs. In the first verse, the questions are posed by two tenors (sopranos on Magnificat’s recording) in imitation and in parallel thirds, while the response is given to a trio of two sopranos in parallel thirds supported by an alto. In the second verse, Potens in terra, the questions are asked by a solo bass and the two altos answer in parallel thirds and in imitation. This pairing of tenors and sopranos in the first verse and bass (alto on the recording) and altos in the second is indicative of Cozzolani’s tendency toward systematic organization, especially in voicing, throughout the psalm. In the third verse, Gloria et divitiae, questions in a solo tenor alternate with answers by a solo soprano, and in the fourth verse, Exortum est in tenebris, the pairing is once again a solo bass and two altos, though this time it is the altos that ask the questions and the bass that replies. The fourth verse begins with the solo bass, just as the third verse had begun with a solo soprano.

Matters become more varied in the fifth verse, Iocundus homo, where the solo sopranos alternately intone the questions, while the answer, iocundus homo, constitutes a four-voice refrain utilizing only the three lower registers. In the sixth verse, In memoria aeterna, the questions are voiced by the two lower voices of the first choir, while the responses are sung by the three lower voices of the second choir. The seventh verse, continuing the systematic alternation of voices and choirs, sets the questions in a solo tenor of the second choir and the responses in the full first choir. In the eighth verse, an alto duet asks the questions, answered by sopranos in parallel thirds supported by a tenor and then by a pair of tenors. Finally, in the ninth verse, the question in a solo tenor is answered by both choirs in homophony.

These questions and their replies comprise only part of the musical progress of the psalm, since many passages are simply declarative statements set for anywhere from a solo voice to the entire ensemble. And the structure is complicated by the refrains, which are generally for both choirs. Even these refrains are symptomatic of Cozzolani’s tendency toward systematic organization. The Beatus vir refrain at the end of the second verse repeats the music of the refrain at the end of the first verse, but interchanges the upper three voices with slight modifications. The refrain at the end of the third verse largely repeats the voicing of the version from the first verse, while the refrain for the fourth verse is close to that of the second. The Iocundus homo refrain, on the other hand, is the same each time it returns.

Cozzolani is quite sensitive to the semantics of the text throughout the psalm, and frequently treats it in the manner of a madrigalist. The questions are often couched rhetorically with a rise in pitch at the end. A word such as potens is presented in a rhythmically strong triadic outline (bar26), while cornu exaltabitur (“horn” as a metaphor for strength) imitates the rising fifth of a horn, first in diatonic ascent, and then in triadic outline (bars 251-54). Similarly, Gloria in the phrase Gloria in domo eius, inserted from verse 3 into verse 8, is given numerous rapid reiterations in sequences of rising fourths in imitation of a trumpet call. The words manet in saeculum saeculi in the third verse are presented repeatedly in various two-part imitations, one voice obviously leading the other. Particularly striking is the chromatic descent in the solo bass in the fourth verse at the words misericors & miserator (bars 115-18).

Cozzolani pays particular attention to interpretation of the text in the ninth verse, where the opening words, Peccator videbit, are set homophonically, and uniquely, on F# minor and B minor triads (bars 267-70). The subsequent phrase et irascetur is also set chordally, but in very rhythmically agitated declamation outlining a G major triad (bars 271-72). The word fremet prompts a unique treatment in C major where the basso continuo repeats the root of the chord in static fashion, while the two bass voices leap about the root and fifth, and pairs of other voices move rapidly back and fourth in parallel sixths (bars 282-83). This is as clever a metaphor for the visual image as anything found in Marenzio´s madrigals. As an insert into the ninth verse, Cozzolani combines the words in memoria aeterna erit iustus from the sixth verse with the phrase in aeternum non commovebitur from the end of the fifth verse. While the motive for in memoria aeterna is the same as in verse 6 and its reiteration at bars 248-50, the motive for in aeternum non commovebitur consists of an unchanging reiteration of a single pitch (until the fall of a third on the last two syllables). Thus the musical image of immovability is placed in counterpoint to the eternal memory of the just man (bars 297-303). These and other musical metaphors for words, phrases and concepts in the text are capped off by the Beatus vir and Iocundus homo refrains, both festive in character in their eight-voice homophony. The Beatus vir refrain, the use of triple meter for Iocundus homo, and the parallel treatments of specific words between Cozzolani’s setting and the Beatus vir Primo a 6 from Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituali of 1641 suggest that Cozzolani modeled several aspects of her version on the earlier one by the maestro of St. Mark’s.

Cozzolani’s harmonic palette does not extend widely beyond the principal tonality of A, though there are numerous instances of abrupt harmonic shifts involving chromatic changes, such as from A major to C major. Clear harmonic direction and cadences are often expressed through harmonic and melodic sequences, which constitute a primary structural element in the setting. Of particular interest are the frequent biting dissonances, including successive cadential seconds, the final one comprising a minor second. Even the final cadence involves a striking juxtaposition of c#” against d and d’. There are numerous interruptions of the prevailing duple time by sections in triple meter, sometimes in connection with the celebratory presentation of phrases such as Gloria et divitiae or Iocundus homo (though the refrain on the latter words is in duple meter), and on other occasions simply as another mode of contrast within the overall structural organization.

Forty years ago, virtually nothing was known about polyphonic music for the Office except for the 1610 Vespers of Claudio Monteverdi, which had been receiving significant scholarly attention since shortly after World War II. Today, not only have a number of critical editions of Vesper publications from Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries been issued in various series, but a variety of scholars, including notably, Robert Kendrick, have researched the relationship between published and manuscript liturgical music and the monastic institutions and their friars and nuns that produced and performed this music. My own research has focused on bringing the entire Italian published repertoire of Office music to light through the collection of bibliographical information on over 1500 prints of Office music published between 1542 and 1725. This information will be made available online through a database being assembled at the Fondazione Cini in Venice and an online catalogue to be published by the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music.

Dufay and Binchois

Polyphonic music for Vespers is a latecomer to the repertoire of polyphonic sacred music in Europe. This is especially true of the principal texts of the Vesper service, the four or five psalms that constitute the core of every Vesper ceremony (the monastic rite typically required only four psalms; however monastic composers almost invariably published psalms in groups of five or more). Hymns for Vespers had already been the subject of polyphonic composition in the late fourteenth century, and Dufay placed significant emphasis on hymns in his compositional output. Like hymns, polyphonic Magnificats also originated in the fourteenth century and achieved popularity in the next century with settings by Dufay, Binchois and others. The papal chapel in Rome in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was a major center of Magnificat composition.

Vesper psalms, however, only began to be circulated with some frequency in the late fifteenth century, appearing in an increasing quantity of manuscripts in the first half of the sixteenth century. After the middle of the century, growing quantities of psalms appeared in print, although much psalmody, especially in Rome, remained in manuscript and was never published.

By the time we reach the threshold of the seventeenth century, a number of trends in polyphonic Vesper settings had already been established:

1. Four-, five-, and six-voice falsobordone settings
2. Four-, five-, and six-voice polyphonic settings
3. Eight-voice, double-choir settings
4. Twelve-voice, three-choir settings
5. Multi-choir settings

Many of these settings were alternatim, alternating either odd or even polyphonic verses with plainchant verses, although through-composed polyphonic settings assumed increasing importance with the decade of the 1580s. Multi-choir settings were especially prominent in Rome beginning in the 1580s, where the quantity of choirs could reach four and five. We also know that by the middle of the century, instruments were used to enhance the impressiveness of multi-choir psalm and Magnificat settings in the North and by the 1570s in Rome. Rodobaldo Tibaldi cites as the first publication to call explicitly for instruments in a psalm or Magnificat a collection of motets by Joseph Gallo, published in 1598, although the title page of Ippolito Camatero’s Salmi corista a otto voci of 1573 had already declared the contents as “comodi alle voci, accompagnate anco con ogni sorte di instrumenti,” and the same composer’s Magnificats for eight, nine and twelve voices of 1575 were described in the print’s dedication as “concertata con ogni sorte di stromenti musicali.”

While publications of Vesper psalms had increased steadily throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, spurred on especially by the publications of Giambattista Asola in the 1580s and 1590s, Vesper music increases dramatically in significance during the first decade of the Seicento. By 1610 Vesper publications considerably outpaced publications of masses and motets. It is in this decade that a number of new stylistic possibilities for the setting of Vesper psalms emerges alongside those inherited from the previous century. What is apparent is that polyphonic Vesper services, whether in secular or monastic churches and chapels, had become of greater musical significance than the mass, for composers focused more of their efforts and their imagination on Vesper psalms (including Magnificats, which were often subsumed under the rubric of psalms) than on masses. This new emphasis is obvious in Monteverdi’s 1610 publication with its single polyphonic mass in the contrapuntal style of the mid–16th century and fourteen items for Vespers of the Blessed Virgin exhibiting a myriad of different, elaborate compositional techniques representing virtually every new musical style developing in the first decade of the century.

The reasons for the exponential growth in music for Vespers are not entirely clear, though probably multiple. A few publications of Vesper music in the latter part of the Cinquecento carried mottos such as conformi al decreto del Sacro Concilio di Trento, even though psalms and Magnificats themselves had not been mentioned in the final dictates of the Council. Indeed, the predominantly chordal settings of psalm texts in this period meant that psalm settings by their very nature conformed to the Council’s decree for clarity of text in polyphonic masses. However, the fact that the Council had not addressed psalmody in its declarations on music eventually meant that psalms were not considered subject to the same constraints as the mass in the eyes of composers and church officials. Certainly the psalms for major feasts, which were more in number than the mass ordinary movements normally set in polyphony, offered a greater variety of texts for seventeenth-century composers who continued and even augmented the interest in musical interpretation of textual concepts inherited from the Cinquecento. Another factor may have been the tradition of granting indulgences for attending Vesper services—there are hints of this in the documents of the Servite congregation in Milan. This is a subject requiring further investigation, but may indeed be a principal explanation of the rapid expansion of Vesper polyphony in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.