As in all history, Claudio Monteverdi comes down to us as a narrative based on documents containing facts, other artefacts and - in his case - encoded artistic output (scores).
This narrative is still alive and constantly rejuvenated after more than four hundred years. It was literally revived in the past hundred and twenty years since new performances of his works started to take place in an exponentially growing number.
Parallel to this resounding past (or slightly anticipating it) was the gradual scientific emancipation of musicological activities. These had their roots in the work of music theorists and chroniclers, going back to Monteverdi's days.
Remarkably, every period has its version of the composer Monteverdi. Sometimes, certain aspects of those versions last a bit longer, like the idea that he was the avant-garde inventor of new music and a new style at the beginning of the 17th century. This idea dominated the historiography in the first half of the 20th century. In the 18th century, however, the Monteverdi-Artusi controversy, surviving primarily in print, caused a distorted view of Monteverdi's qualities. In the 19th century there was a lot of confusion due to inaccurate research and historicism accompanied by the general historical projections.
The portrait
Nothing evokes our idea of a dead composer's person stronger than a good portrait. In Monteverdi's case, we are dealing with two versions of one portrait. The difference in reception of these two versions is significant in itself.
The copy on the left of a portrait by Bernardo Strozzi (1581 -1644) ( Il Cappuccino) is now in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum. The original is in the director's room of the Wiener Singverein and was painted in Venice in the early 1630s.
Almost exclusively, only the copy is reproduced in all kinds of publications as an illustration of the composer. This is how the person Claudio Monteverdi is now known to the world since the second half of the last century.
This is particularly noteworthy because striking details in the original painting are not found in the copy, which thus gives the impression of a 'photoshopped' image. There are apparent differences in the shape of the head, the eyes, the beard, the haircut, the nose and ear and the skin colour. All in all, the impression is that the portrait was painted with a living model, and the copy was probably posthumously, after the original Strozzi painting.
Although questions of copyright have possibly played a role in the fate of Monteverdi's image (trimmed rather than authentic), it is nevertheless striking that now the history of the two paintings is known, this situation has not been altered. Since Paolo Fabbri explained the historical details of both portraits in his 1985 monography, very little attention has been paid to these facts as if they were of little value. Even those who seriously try approaching Monteverdi’s presumed original sound ignore the visual equivalent and accept a substitute
for the real man.
Monteverdi, as seen by his contemporaries
The two versions of the portrait illustrate what happens when second-hand knowledge and information corrupts the original. Just like this happens in painting, so it also occurs in written testimonies. Many examples of reflections in contemporary reports or comments created Monteverdi's historical image, unadjusted by his personal writings. Only twice was the latter undeniable because he addressed a general audience directly in print, as will be illustrated later.
Though Monteverdi was already frequently admired as 'il divino Claudio' during his lifetime, severe criticism was manifested publicly by Artusi in print or uttered privately, as Doni did in his correspondence to Mersenne. Giulio Cesare Monteverdi offered the audience a peek into the life and mindset of his brother through his explanation of Claudio's public letter in the fifth madrigal book. In character, these impressions align very well with the 127 extant letters by Claudio himself.
Artusi
In 1605 Claudio Monteverdi published his fifth book of madrigals, dedicated to his patron Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. In the dedication, he refers to performances of these madrigals in the duke’s chambers leading to Monteverdi’s appointment as maestro della musica. Now printed, they were, as he continues, granted the protection of such a noble Prince that the madrigals “would lead an eternal life to the shame of those who had been seeking to bring death to the work of others.”
This last remark was pointing to the Bolognese music theorist and canon Giovanni Maria Artusi, who had published a treatise in 1600 with a sequel in 1603, entitled L’Artusi overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica. In this treatise, madrigals by Monteverdi were taken - without naming the author - as examples of breaking rules of counterpoint and good taste in the new fashion of composition.
Monteverdi had waited five years before he publicly replied to Artusi’s allegations and took the publication of his fifth book as an opportunity to make a statement. Alongside his musical output, this would ensure him a long-lasting reputation in music history as the great musical innovator of the 17th century.
The statement was twofold because he opened this fifth book with the madrigal Cruda Amarilli, the most heavily attacked by Artusi, followed by O Mirtillo, Era l’anima mia and Ecco Silvio. Monteverdi embraced the works in his book by adding to the dedication as a postface the ‘letter to the studious readers’ (see the text) that would initiate an exegesis of this theoretical conflict that lasts until the present day.
The controversy between Artusi and Monteverdi became a topos in the history of Western music, which was right from the start - as we will see later on - the main subject in many chronicles describing Monteverdi’s position. From the year 1609 on, when Adriano Banchieri referred to it, the polemic calmed down, but following the writings of other contemporaries of the composer, it was kept alive in the work of music historians in the centuries to follow.
It is striking that the narrative of Monteverdi as a pivotal innovator at the turn of the century was - probably unintentionally - initiated by himself. Not in the least by his claiming exclusivity of the term seconda prattica, which oddly had first appeared in Artusi’s sequel of 1603, in a letter by Monteverdi’s defender, L’Ottuso. Until now, this defender's identity has not been convincingly revealed, but it would add a very important perspective to the polemic.
The difficulty is that Ottuso’s style of writing in combination with the apparent deep knowledge of the innovations by the new composers as well as the prima prattica, exclude the most obvious candidates such as one of the Monteverdi brothers or the theorist and Artusi-opponent Ercole Bottrigari. The assumption that Artusi would have made up the defender L’Ottuso himself, as Palisca suggests, lacks substantial evidence.
Monteverdi could have left the defence against all allegations against his music, which would triumph in numerous reprints (Quarto libro, 1603, 8 x and Quinto libro, 1605, 9x). From the beginning, the works were internationally acclaimed by colleagues.
But after five years, he decided it was time for a reaction, as described earlier.
And so, he addressed his thoughts to the 'studious readers', being the intelligentsia of learned musicians and music theorists. They used to be spoken to directly in print, and "Ai lettori" can be found in numerous treatises. However, most of those prefaces contained substantial detailed information about performance practice and theoretical issues. This message to the readers was more of a pamphlet and was reprinted only twice in 1606 and 1608.
Dichiaratione della lettera.
The letter by Claudio Monteverdi might have had little impact (certainly not for posterity) if there had not been a follow-up that clarified the 'telegram' statements made in this letter. His brother Giulio Cesare became the spokesman in a following publication two years later, in the summer of 1607. As a postface to the first edition of Claudio’s Scherzi musicali, he wrote a clarification of his brother’s letter to the studious readers (dichiaratione della lettera).
For centuries to come, the publications of Artusi in 1600 and 1603 and the defence of the Monteverdi brothers in 1605 and 1607 were the main ingredients for music historians and chroniclers to portray and characterise the modernity of Claudio Monteverdi in his time.
These music historians often copied each other, so after some time, an identity emerged that was heavily coloured by the imagination of the writers.
Banchieri
Already in 1609, Adriano Banchieri, composer, theorist and also a clergyman, embraced in his Conclusioni nel suono del Organo the modern practices of composers ‘in the guise of a perfect orator.’ In this constellation, he put Monteverdi on top of all (p.60) saying
“non debbo lasciare in far nominanza, del soavissimo componitore di Musiche Claudio Monteverde capo in Musiche appresso il Serenissimo Sig. D. Vincenzo Gonzaghi Duca di Mantova (ben che noto il suo valore universalmente à professori) in materia di moderno componere, poi che li suoi artefiziosi sentimenti in vero sono degni d’intera commendatione, scoprendosi in essi ogni affetuosa parte di perfetta oratione, industremente spiegati, & imitati d’armonia equivalente..”.[1]
“I must not fail to name the most ‘suave’ composer of music, Claudio Monteverde, head of the music of the Most Serene Lord Don Vincenzo Gonzaga Duke of Mantua (although his worth is known universally to professors of music), in matters of modern composition for his artful sentiments are truly worthy of total commendation, uncovering therein every affective part of perfect oration industriously laid out and imitated by equivalent harmony.”
Banchieri recognises the merits of theorists and composers such as Zarlino and Artusi, but they, as Carter translates it, “have failed to show how to practice to accommodate the words with imitated affections, whether in Latin or vernacular.” The affections Banchieri is pointing to are sorrow, passions, sighs, weeping, laughter, errors, questioning, etc.
Their counterpoint is very strict (osservatissime), resulting, as he says, in the sweetest sounds, but that has little to do with the text.
Thus, in 1609, two years after the defence of Giulio Cesare, this endorsement for Claudio Monteverdi also appeared in print, be it in a book about organs. It was the first of its kind in a long series of reflections of a historical nature, enlarging the effect of the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy. Five years later, Banchieri published his Cartella musicale (1614), where he clarified once more that for the contrapunto osservato, many rules existed. However, for the modern contrapunto commune (improvised), there were no rules, nor could they be made. Vincenzo Galilei already drew this conclusion in 1591 (see Palisca, 1985, p.156 n84). In a way, Banchieri, being the first reporter of the controversy, saw clearly that the origin of this conflict was the incompatibility of a theorist's approach towards the tacit know-how of a skilled practitioner.
Adriano Banchieri was obviously in favour of adventurous harmonic progressions by the way he described in the Cartella on p. 230 an experience of listening to improvised counterpoint (contrapunto alla mente sopra il basso), which, as a result, “with certain observations between them made a delicious hearing.” [2]
Banchieri’s admiration was not limited to theoretical issues. His appreciation of Monteverdi’s music was shown in full proportion when he took him as a model for his Accademia dei Floridi, which he founded in 1615, and consequently invited him on 13 June 1620 to the celebration of the feast of St. Anthony in the San Michele in Bosco near Bologna. Later, in the lettere armoniche, Banchieri reminds Monteverdi that music was played and speeches held in his honour. [3]
Huygens
Eleven days later, after Monteverdi returned from Bologna to Venice, his vespers on the feast of St. John the Baptist were witnessed by the young Dutch composer and diplomat Constantijn Huygens. The Dutchman wrote about it in his journal with superlative praise, offering us now a little peek into the local performing forces of those days.
Le 24e, qui fut la feste Saint Jean Baptiste, on me mena au vespres à l'eglise Saint Jean et Lucie, (should be San Giovanni Elemosinario, Fabbri/Carter p.176) où j'entendis la plus accomplie musique, que je fay estat d'ouïr en ma vie. Le tant renommé Claudio di Monteverde, maistre de la chappelle à Saint Marc, qui en estoit autheur, la dirigea et modera aussi cette fois, accompagné de 4 tiorbes, 2 cornets, 2 fangotti (sic), 2 violins, une viole basse de monstrueuse grandeur, les orgues et autres instruments, qui furent touchez et maniez au parangon les uns des autres, outre 10 ou 12 voix, qui de ravissement me mirent hors de moy.
"It was the most perfect music I have ever had the pleasure of hearing in my life. The composer of the piece, the widely renowned Claudio Monteverdi, maestro di cappella of San Marco, was also the conductor of this performance, played by four theorbo's, two cornetto's, two bassoons, two violins, a bass viol of gigantic proportions, the organs and other instruments, one played even more beautifully than the other. Furthermore, there were 10 or 12 voices, which put me beyond myself with delight."
Doni
Almost three decades after the lettera of 1605 we find in his letters to Giovanni Battista Doni the second personal message from Monteverdi that strongly coloured his narrative. Doni had been seeking contact with him for his treatise about the rise of the monodic style in theatrical music at the beginning of the century.
It is significant that the composer proactively approached the chronicler when he heard Doni was interested in contacting him as an essential oral witness of the period. From this exchange of information, two very informative letters by Monteverdi survived. We find Doni’s thoughts only in letters to others and his treatise.
In his letters, Monteverdi unwittingly reveals some details about his personality. For instance, he speaks only about 'a certain theoretician' who condemned some of his madrigals in print. This suggests that the unnamed Artusi had become marginalised, but as a subtext, we still sense Monteverdi's indignation at his compositions being discredited.
Also, the initial intention of 1605 to reply to the allegations with his own treatise about the seconda prattica was reanimated in this correspondence. Instead of showing some authority by this announcement, Monteverdi only weakened his credibility as an intellectual partner.
In Doni's treatise the role of the poet Rinuccini in creating opera in a new style is enlarged to great proportions, even to the point of naming him and Jacopo Corsi the true architects of the new style. As he says, Monteverdi received great help from the poet, who did not even read music but had the finest judgement of music and an exact ear.
“e parimente grandissimo aiuto ricevé il Monteverde dal Rinuccini nell’Arianna, ancorché non sapesse di Musica (supplendo a ciò col suo giudizio finissimo, e con l’orecchia esattissima, che possedeva; come anco si può conoscere dalla qualità, e testura delle sue poesie)…”
In the end Doni shows his appreciation and respect for the Lamento d'Arianna, and recognises Monteverdi's qualities but introduces some fake news in music history when sharing his views with Marin Mersenne.
In a letter of 7 July 1638 he wrote:
“…Pour Claude Monteverde il n’est pas homme de grandes lettres, non plus que les autres musiciens d’ajourhuy, mais il excelle à faire des melodies pathetiques, merci de la longue pratique qu’il a eu à Florence de ces beaux esprits des Academies, mesme du sieur Rinuccini […]encore qu’il n’entendist rien en la musique contribua plus que Monteverde à la beauté de ceste Complainte d’Arianne compose par lui.”
Doni depicted in his letter Monteverdi as limited in his literary training. His presumption that he owed the quality of his work to his long practice in Florence and the elevated spirits of the academies there was, of course, his own invention. The idea that Rinuccini contributed more to the beauty of the lamento than the composer was echoed later by other writers.
As Massimo Ossi observed, there is no reference whatsoever to Monteverdi having a' long practice in Florence with the lofty spirits of the Accademie.’ This is the first striking example of a chronicler inventing biographical details and thus creating confusion about Monteverdi’s life for posterity.
Ban
Even more arrogant than Doni's were the comments of the Dutch priest and theorist Ioan Albert Ban from Haarlem, who dedicated a treatise of 1642 to Constantijn Huygens. First he praises Monteverdi as the composer who achieved more than anyone else. But then he did not hesitate to position himself like Artusi as a school teacher with a patronising conclusion: "..hadde hy den kracht der geluyden, te weeten stemtrappen ende stem-sprongen mede zoo doorgront, hy zoude veel veerder gekomen ende wonderlyke dingen gedaen hebben."
"...would he have understood equally well the power of sounds, that is
in voice leading and jumps, he would have come much further and done
even more marvellous things."
Ban was not a musician and, to my knowledge, no musician ever criticised Monteverdi in such a way. As we shall see, this is typical for the theorists and music historians, and it is more likely that Ban’s remark was inspired by the assumed deficiencies of Monteverdi as printed by Artusi.
Certainly, also his contact with Descartes - then living in Egmond aan den Hoef close to Haarlem - played a role in his judgement. Ban worked with Descartes to calculate the 'perfect harpsichord' tone distances with five additional red keys to the black keys. An approach to temperament and music that was very rational and depended on explicit mathematics.
Ban admired Monteverdi for his rhetorical achievements in music, which was his priority as well. He even called his interval system after Cicero, musica flexanima, the soul-stirring style of composition. However, this style depended on a rigid and complex use of intervals. This might be the reason for his criticism, thinking that the rigour of his own invention was lacking in Monteverdi's works.
A year before Monteverdi died, Ban wrote that he hoped the assertive spirit of this master was still searching for the improvements he had in mind. On the other hand, just like Monteverdi, he sets nature as an example for the searching artist, who can not invent something genuinely new that is not already to be found in nature.
"De nature is ryk en vast wetende, ende werkende in haer zelve. : wy en bedenken niet nieuws buiten de natuire (sic): maar speuren alles na."
"Nature is rich and firmly knowing, working in itself.: we do not invent something new outside of nature, but are researching everything that is already there."
Ban's image of nature included the laws of physics and its numbers of vibrations, etc. Probably due to taking measurements together with Descartes in 1639 to create the ‘Volmaekt Klaeuwier’ (perfect keyboard) with pure enharmonic extensions by extra keys. It is conceivable that he hoped that Monteverdi would continue searching for improvement using this or similar inventions for what he considered acceptable intervallic relations. However, it is also very probable that the ‘nature as knowledge’ concept was of a spiritual kind, which would be appropriate for him as a priest.
Bonini
Another cleric and contemporary of Monteverdi who wrote down the youngest history of music, was the Florentine monk Severo Bonini. Like Doni's, his treatise (Prima parte de' discorsi e regole sovra la musica) was not published but it is an interesting source for scholars nowadays. Certainly, when considering that he had studied with Giulio Caccini and, during his formative years, learned the new monodic style while it was developing. By the time he wrote his treatise monody had become the standard, but he positioned the 'eminentissimo maestro' Monteverdi as a singular representative because of his sensitive style. As a reason he gives the maestro's unusual inventions through which he 'roused the sleepy spirits to invent new whims.' (hà destato li spiriti sonnacchiosi ad' inventar nuovi capricci)
Among scholars, Bonini is best known for his statement that Arianna's lament was found (forty years after its composition) in every house with a harpsichord or theorbo.
After summing up the Florentine representatives of the stile recitativo he names Monteverdi as the first among foreigners (forestieri: outside Florence) who enriched the style with his extraordinary and capricious thoughts in his opera Arianna, which was so much loved (gradita).
Tra forestieri il primo fù il Signor Claudio Monteverdi il quale arricchi questo stile di peregrini vezzi e nuovi pensieri nella Favola intitolata Arianna. Opera del Signor Ottavio Rinuccini gentilomo di Firenze fù tanto gradita, che non è stata Casa, la quale havendo cimbali, ò Tiorbe in Casa, non havesse il lamento di quella.
Despite the praise for Monteverdi's artistic courage Bonini leaves some doubt about his appreciation. Not only by his choice of words, but by sometimes explicitly condemning the construction. 'Some of the Great', he writes, 'are sometimes shaming themselves by delivering more air than art' (avendo piu aria che arte). Like an echo of Artusi he takes as an example the madrigal Sfogava con le stelle, of Monteverdi's book IV, where the author according to him had lost the good rules of counterpoint (questo Autore mentre lo componeva smarrisse le buone regole del Contrappunto) since there are many perfect consonances of the same species that descend and ascend together.
Posthume praise
The only other contemporary additions to the biography of Monteverdi came just after his death when he was honoured in print by the Fiori Poetici and particularly the Laconismo written by the priest Matteo Caberloti.
Artusi is no longer mentioned in this oraison funebre, but indirectly plays his part by the remark that Monteverdi's intended treatise on the perfection of modern music was prevented by his untimely death.
This conclusion was probably mainly motivated by the urge to pay tribute to the genius of Monteverdi in modern composing. Caberloti was more accurate, as Ellen Rosand pointed out, in describing the effect of the wide emotional range and contrast displayed in Monteverdi's operas. After a series of rhetorical questions Caberloti comes to the main characteristic that Monteverdi was able to change the affects from moment to moment.
E nella varietà de' suoi componimenti per le Nozze de Prencipi, e ne Theatri di questa Serenissima Città rappresentati, non variano di momento in momento gli'affetti?
Perche hora t'invitano al riso, il quale in un tratto sforzato dei cangiare in pianto, e quando pensi di pigliar l'armi alla Vendetta, all'hora appunto con miracolosa metamorfosi cangiandosi l'harmonia si dispone il tuo cuore alla Clemenza: in un subito ti senti riempire di timore, quando altretanta fretta t'assiste ogni confidenza.
And with the variety of his compositions for the weddings of princes and performed in the theatres of this illustrious city, did the affects not change from moment to moment? Because now they invite laughter, which all at once is forced to change into crying, and just when you are thinking of taking up arms in vengeance, a marvellous change of harmony disposes your heart into clemency; in one moment you feel yourself filled with fear and in the next you are possessed by complete confidence. (translation Ellen Rosand)
Historicisation
A bit more than half a century after Monteverdi's death, the contemporary perspective had vanished and a process of turning the lore of practical knowledge into knowledge on paper was established. A chain of storytellers kept the myths about Monteverdi alive. Once again the clergy took on this self-imposed task. All these contributions demonstrate that Ercole Bottrigari and Monteverdi's observation of the fact that Artusi made his objections appear in print, would have a long-lasting effect.
Bottrigari even titled him a public censor:
"But if one were to ask him how it belongs to him, what authority he has to act as Public Censor, what would he answer?"
Tevo
This is, for instance, clearly the case with Zaccaria Tevo in his Musico testore from 1706. After one century, he is reviewing the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy, explaining details about the objected free treatment of dissonances and showing an understanding of Artusi’s points of view. Despite his appreciation for Monteverdi’s inventiveness and genius, Tevo believed that ignoring the rules had weakened his compositions.
Martini
Later, during the 18th century, the story of compositional weaknesses was revived by Padre Giambattista Martini, in his Esemplare, o sia Saggio fondamentale pratico di contrapunto fugato, 1775, Tomo II, p.180-185. Martini sketches Monteverdi as ‘one of the first to introduce modern music, and for that reason, he had many adversaries.’ He calls Artusi one of the principal adversaries (probably imagining more of them) and in his publications among the others (who else?) Monteverdi was the primary target. To help the reader see the full impact, Martini takes him to the battlefield: ‘The heated war between the two parties was bitter.’
There are no details about who the other opponents of Monteverdi would have been, but many writers repeated this tale for a century to come. And the verdict of seconda prattica was yet again confirmed in print.
Burney
Charles Burney, in his General History of Music, dedicated a chapter on ‘Monteverde’ for which he was indebted to Padre Martini. He met the Italian master in Bologna during his journey in Italy and had most of his information out of first hand. Nevertheless, his own imagination helped him dress up the story a bit, neglecting some chronological and topographical facts and above all the original sources. It is interesting that he specifies Claudio Monteverdi as someone who initially distinguished himself on the tenor viol, while others only speak of viola. The viola da gamba might be Martini’s translation of vivuola, which is found in Monteverdi’s dedication to Vincenzo Gonzaga.
But in contrast with these plausible observations also Burney’s errors originated from Martini’s Storia della Musica, which was not always as accurate as his reputation would suggest. An example are the Madrigals for 3,4, and 5 voices he classified as published in 1582, the year of 3vv Sacrae cantiunculae, Monteverdi’s first publication. For some reason, Burney names Ingegneri 'maestro di capella' of Duke Vincenzo I and Monteverdi following lessons with him after entering the Duke’s court music. François Fétis would later copy this error, without checking. Also, the so-called deficiencies in composition are echoed by Fétis. Burney obviously had not seen the editions of the early madrigal books, otherwise he would have noticed that Ingegneri was mentioned as Monteverdi’s teacher years before he entered the court music in Mantua.
Charles Burney did not hesitate to dress up the whole controversy with Artusi saying Monteverdi “violated many rules of counterpoint…” which resulted in “…many opponents, who treated him as an ignorant corruptor of the arts.” […] According to Burney, after Artusi published his treatise “musicians entered the lists on both sides and the war became general.” Thus, copying without further study, the narrative that was turned by padre Martini into a story of war with substantial troops on both sides.
In the fourth volume of his General History of Music we read that Charles Burney was unable to distinguish the presumed superiority of Monteverdi to Peri and Caccini when it concerns the development of recitative in the dramatic music. What he notices is that Monteverdi paved the way for innovation by harmonic audacities to such a point that “every fortunate breach of an old rule seems to be regarded as the establishment of a new.” He continues that apparently "everything is now allowable in musical composition as long as it does not offend cultivated ears."
Nevertheless, there is not much praise of Burney for Orfeo and he complains mostly about incomprehensible dissonances and the counterpoint in two parts being deficient. “Some sagacity is necessary to discover (distinguish) the errors of the press from those of the composer”:
Burney gives a few excerpts from Orfeo to illustrate what he calls the incomprehensible offences to the ear by certain voice leadings. In line with Artusi he accuses Monteverdi of mistakes that even a beginner in composition would not make.
Considering that at the end of the 18th century, there was very little knowledge about performance practice around 1600, it is understandable that Burney’s aesthetic judgement was based on the idea that the score is the music. The figures he added to the bass in the examples from Orfeo show that he did not know about the harmonic idiom of the period. Burney’s footnote in this example quotes Pietro Della Valle, who did not publish his discours himself, but had it made accessible by Doni. In his discursive letter Della musica dell’età nostra che non è punto inferiore, anzi è megliore di quella dell’età passata, (About music of our times which is not inferior, but rather better than that of the past) 1640, Della Valle states that under the influence of Rinuccini, Bardi and Corsi and other ‘erudite Toscan gentlemen’ the later works of Monteverdi were considerably better than the first. “…si vede quanto l’istesso Monteverde ne migliorasse nelle ultime sue cose, che sono state assai differente dalle prime.”
Burney took this as a confirmation of his low esteem of Orfeo.
In his time, Burney and others attributed the innovation of music theatre mainly to the poets. In Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano, Stefano Arteaga, discusses at length all the qualities of Rinuccini and his opera Dafne that was performed in Florence. Without providing any proof Arteaga writes that Rinuccini's Arianna was also performed in Florence in the years following, 'modulated' by Monteverdi. Indicative of his sloppiness is Arteaga's mistake describing Arianna lamenting Giasone's departure on one page and on the next page, quoting the libretto with Theseus (Teseo). Anyway, the lamento was, in Arteaga's words, for a long time, the top of opera in this genre (Capo d'opera dell'arte in quell genere), and the merits of Rinuccini were represented enough by this fragment alone. Significantly, Arteaga did not mention Monteverdi's contribution, thus downplaying the merits of the composer.
Fétis
As mentioned above, François Joseph Fétis copied information from Padre Martini and Charles Burney when he added his share among the music historians to the narrative about Monteverdi in the 19th century.
He also corrected Burney after consulting Ernst Ludwig Gerber's lexicon, the false presumption that Monteverdi developed his style of daring dissonances in theatrical works. These were written after Artusi published his first attack in 1600.
In his first version of the Biographie universelle des musiciens, which he compiled between 1837 and 1844, there are some interesting observations from this author, who specialised in harmonic studies in Paris.
Fétis wondered why Monteverdi was unaware of the implications of his innovative approach to harmonic matters that transformed music from a modal system to modern tonality. At least he did not address this in his defence of the letter to the studious readers.
He did not tackle the major issue of transformations in harmony and tonality and had no idea of the importance of what he had done.
Monteverdi had been led unwittingly by his genius to all these innovations and without any philosophical guidance."
By attributing the harmonic innovations to a kind of intuitive (à son insu) way of working, Fétis refers to the composer's implicit knowledge. It is his own observation because Monteverdi's letters were not yet available at the beginning of the 19th century. Monteverdi might have been unaware he had transformed harmony when writing his defence in 1605, but not anymore when he wrote his letter to Doni about finding his own way while composing the lamento. (see above)
Later Pietro Canal endorses in his book about music in Mantua the view of Fétis on the intuitive approach of Monteverdi. He just formulated it a bit differently and owes the harmonic innovations to the 'fine ear and vivid listening' (of Monteverdi) instead of having firm principles or philosophies about these changes. Canal concludes by saying that the composer was the first to pave the way for a modern use of dissonances and thus presented the essence of tonality.
Understanding the full implications of the harmonic transformation was not possible for Fétis, who (like Burney) obviously had problems interpreting the unfigured basses of the time.
His enthusiasm about the lamento d'Arianna as a profoundly melancholic piece of music, was not damaged by, as he called it, the 'incorrect bass and jolting, bizarre harmony.'
La basse incorrecte et l'harmonie heurtée et bizarre, dont le compositeur a accompagnié ce morceau ne nuissent point au caractère de mélancolie profonde qu'on y remarque.
It is unclear what the source is for Fétis' version (here on the right), but there are many deviations from the most reliable sources. The figured bass has been reworked by changing notes and harmonies. Two added bars (15-16) repeating the phrase "in cosí gran martire" weaken the abruptio at the reprise of the opening bars. It seems a 'cosmetical' implant by Fétis, just like the other alterations, to adapt the style to the expected appreciation of his audience.
In his updated edition of the Biographie universelle, which appeared in 1864, Fétis added a considerable extension of information about Monteverdi, thanks to recent research. However, this new knowledge was not always accurate, such as the work of Francesco Caffi. From this Venetian author, he copied the information that Monteverdi was born from 'oscuri parenti which he understood as 'fils de pauvres parents' (son of poor parents). With hindsight, this is rather funny bearing in mind that Baldassarre Monteverdi was a doctor who reported to Duke Vincenzo that he had to lend his son 500 scudi because the court often did not pay the wages over the past years.
Also, the story that Monteverdi became a pupil of Marc'Antonio Ingegneri after being accepted in Mantua because the latter would have been the duke's maestro di cappella, is a persistent misconception that many historians shared.
The twisted view of Monteverdi's formative years was based on the impression that he owed his acceptance at the Mantuan court only for being a gifted viol player. That should explain some clumsiness in counterpoint. However, certainly from the virtuoso viola bastarda players an extensive and intrinsic knowledge of counterpoint was required.
The opinion of the historians was strongly influenced by the fact that their information depended exclusively on the accesible printed sources.
The war metaphor of Padre Martini received an extra attribute from Caffi (p.216), baptizing the book of Artusi 'the banner of war' (lo stendardo di guerra). Fétis confidently repeated the information and even Artusi's self organised support by the Florentine humanist Girolamo Mei, using the posthumous publication of his Discorso of 1602. Caffi had blindly followed this fallacy because Mei died in 1594. Six years before the publication of L'Artusi, and completely unaware of Monteverdi's existence.
Beginnings of revival
A crucial step François Joseph Fétis took was his attempt to let Monteverdi's and other music from the past sound again, evoking the ideas of that past. For his series of Concerts historiques at the conservatoires, first in Paris and later in Brussels, he even made an effort (to a great extent in vain) to have the sound of the original instrumentations.
The first concert in this series was on 8 April 1832 and dedicated to the history of opera, starting in 1590. Fétis introduced the concerts with lectures and demonstrated his talk with substantial fragments from the operas at stake. After playing Caccini and Peri, the audience was confronted with the first sounding proofs of Monteverdi's Orfeo. The best available singers were recruited and there was a promise of period instruments from the Brussels museum collection. As a former curator and librarian of the Paris Conservatoire, Fétis profited from the vague distinction between private ownership and institutional property when appointed director in Brussels. Many books were returned to Paris after his death.
The announcement of viols, basses de viole, organs, old guitars, and harp could not always be realised, as we learn from the sardonic reviews of the concerts historiques, viciously posted by Hector Berlioz in the Gazette Musicale de Paris.
Berlioz's disappointment is understandable if we think of his own passion for instrumentation and diversity in sound character. There is a report by August Tolbeque, a 19th-century specialist in historical cello and viola da gamba, that to find musicians who could play them, Fétis had to cope with modernised historical models of instruments. He ended up with disguises of cello, guitar, harp, etc., and he later admitted to regret that the performances did not match his views.
Fétis not only adapted the instruments to the taste of his time. In his copy of the Lamento d'Arianna (see above), the changes he made in the harmonies, but also in the structure, are proof of his unobligated attitude in matters of authenticity.
The copies of Orfeo we can find now in the digitised Fétis collection of the Belgian Royal Library show alterations that were very probably made with the Paris performances in mind. The famous passage "Tu sei morta" from the second Act of the opera is transposed one tone higher. This might have to do with the tenor's tessitura, who sang at the concert historique in 1832, and as such, it would be understandable.
But apart from the highly simplified harmony, Fétis also changed the melody considerably right from the opening of this recitative, starting at e' instead of b-flat. As a consequence the character of this passage is more that of a lyrical tenor from the early 19th century. The original chromatism which Monteverdi used to colour the emotion is erased by a straightforward and banal melodic development. The whole scene is replaced by newly composed recitatives, maintaining the original rhetorical outlines and gestures but with little understanding of the refined Italian declamation of early opera. Monteverdi's admirable blend of text and music, which always resulted in a great variety of declamatory rhythm, is altogether lost. If this is the score of what was presented as Monteverdi's music at the concert historique of April 1832, the list of Fétis falsifications can be extended with these presumed reconstructions of Orfeo.
The main reason for the success of the concerts historiques and the impression Fétis made digging up old masterpieces was most probably due to the all-star cast of four tenors, three sopranos and two basses he had at his disposal. In retrospect, it is incredible that the very best singers of his time, as well as outstanding instrumentalists, were willing to contribute to this adventure. Virtuosi, who normally sang the leading roles of Rossini and Meyerbeer operas in Paris and throughout Europe, such as Giovanni Battista Rubini, Luigi Lablache and Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, were now performing the highlights of centuries ago in Fétis adaptations.
From the changes that Fétis made in the passages from Orfeo, it seems that he had to satisfy the taste of the audience and comfort the singers by offering a more familiar idiom than represented by the original notes. It seems obvious that in this way the singers could probably sight-read this 'early music'. To make an impact the final duet between Apollo and Orpheus was extended with repeats and additions (see examples), so it sounded more like the belcanto of the contemporary composers. With these aforementioned tenors, also today this would make a great impression. But it also leaves the feeling that we are dealing with a subconsciously frustrated composer who was trying to live his moment of glory here at the expense of original revelations he had advertised as sensational.
Remarkably but in no way by chance, these historical concerts coincided with what would later go down in history as l'affaire Fétis. The man had been fired as librarian of the Paris Conservatoire and moved to Brussels to continue his career in the position of director of the Belgian Royal Conservatoire. After his departure a large part of the collections of the Conservatoire and of the Bibliothèque Royal Paris, such as old prints, manuscripts, magazines etc. were missing. Many other objects were mutilated and damaged by personal annotations and others were torn from their bindings. After three had passed unnoticed, only one large moving box of books was intercepted by Paris customs while the rest had left for its destination in Brussels. In his correspondence Fétis kept denying he had done something illegal. Apparently, he considered himself the only person who should have these materials at his disposal because others were just ignorants in the field. His authority was based on his monumental effort to write a history of music in an encyclopedic format, the Histoire universelle des musiciens, which was indeed an exceptional achievement. But also full of errors that were not corrected in a second and revised edition after twenty years. A lot could have easily been adjusted if he had taken the time to be more conscientious, or at least more scrupulous.
Kiesewetter
The concerts historiques in Paris were not the only events of such nature in Europe in the 1830's. In Vienna, the work of amateur musicologist Georg Raphael Kiesewetter resulted not only in publications but performances as well. They took place at his house and were programmed with vocal repertoire from the 16th to the 18th century. The repertoire was approached with genuine curiosity as can be read in his History of Modern Music of Western Europe and resulted in a broad overview, that made him publish a separate book in 1841 on secular vocal music of the Middle Ages until the beginnings of opera.
In the first edition of the history of music, Kiesewetter's observations of Monteverdi were based on limited source material. He was therefore copying errors in dates and facts, like Rinuccini as librettist of Orfeo. Also his judgment of the free treatment of dissonances in Monteverdi's madrigals is still an echo of Padre Martini. In line with the exaggeration of the latter, Kiesewetter suggests that Monteverdi was attacked by his learned colleagues ('heftig angefochten von seinen gelehrten Kunstgenossen'). Evidently, again, no other names of opponents are given than Artusi. However, he adds that Monteverdi might have inspired composers to explore the appilcation of dissonances in ways that were formerly unaccepted or not conceived as possible.
Like Fétis also Kiesewetter did not correct his errors in the revised edition of his history of music, published in 1846, despite having proven to know all the correct data in his 1841 publication about the rise of opera. These were based on the work of Carl von Winterfeld's Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter published in the same year as the first edition of Kiesewetter's history of music, 1834.
Von Winterfeld had done first-rate research in primary sources in several Italian cities and was the first to publish a transcription of the Lamento d'Arianna, though only the beginning. It is not clear what he used as a source, but the characteristic dissonance of the second note (b-flat) is smoothened by a change of the bass note, a 'correction' that was copied by many after this publication. In the fifth bar, the seventh of the melody is changed into a fifth, maybe to avoid the unprepared dissonance, but causing a parallel fifth to the next bar. A real error that Monteverdi would not have made. Also on the word 'volete' the original painful e against b-flat in the bass is softened into an innocently embedded anticipation.
In his book, Winterfeld points to the fame of this lamento, which was considered in its time "a miracle of art" and "and if we disregard some of the awkwardness and harshness of the modulation, which must have been inseparable from the first attempts of the new music genre, we cannot fail to recognise the strength of the passionate expression in it." Again the particular inventions of the old maestro are seen as clumsy mistakes against the rules of harmony and counterpoint.
In 1862, Kiesewetter's nephew, August Wilhelm Ambros, also published a history of music. Remarkably he added errors that his uncle had not made apparently by quoting recent authors such as Francesco Caffi. Nevertheless, he felt qualified to judge the lamento for his readers but failed to check data and facts that were already known for a century, as could be read in the General History of the Science and Practice of Music by Sir John Hawkins. (1775)
Ambros, Geschichte der Musik IV, about Montverdi's lemento on p.358
Historians and Theorists were equally fluent in delivering their judgements and critical observations. But as we have seen before, a lot of it consisted of a chain of copied 'knowledge' and lacked understanding and scrutiny.
On page 353 of Ambros's Geschichte, we read that Monteverdi had been attacked by other representatives of the old music style:
"Claudio scheint auch noch von anderen Anhängern der alten Musikstyls allerlei Angriffen erfahren zu haben." Again the persistent myth that Padre Martini started about the crowd of Monteverdi's opponents, is repeated here.
Although Ambros was active as a musician and composer and a professor of music history in Prague, he did not show much understanding from that perspective.
Gevaert
A few years after the publication of Ambros' fourth volume Geschichte der Musik the Belgian composer and musicologist François-Auguste Gevaert contributed substantially to the revival of early music by making it available for performance. In 1868, he published an anthology of Italian vocal music from the 17th and 18th centuries giving an impressive overview of highlights and stylistic development. He had just returned from Paris, where he was active until the French-German war as director of the Opera, after having premièred seven of his own operas. Gevaert succeeded Fétis in Brussels as the director of the Royal Conservatoire. He appointed teachers of the highest calibre in Europe, such as Eugène Ysaÿe and Henri Vieuxtemps. The latter was Arnold Dolmetsch's teacher and in this light it is significant that under Gevaert the interest in performing music from the past was intensified after Fétis' retirement.
Among the early Baroque composers in Gevaert's anthology, the first strophe of the lamento was the only work by Monteverdi he considered appropriate to include. From a didactic point of view it is understandable that Gevaert did not consider parts from Orfeo suitable for the students of the conservatoires to whom he addressed the anthology. There would be too much to explain or adapt.
Like his predecessor Fétis, Gevaert inserted some alterations, and he probably even copied from him. Changes in rhythm that go against the meter of the text, such as "E che volete.." (bar 7), and "in cosi dura sorte" (bar 11) might be leading back to Winterfeld's transcription.
There is no other explanation for leaving out the "voi" (bar 8) found only earlier in Fétis' transcription. This proves the very popular (transposed) version that we find in Alessandro Parisotti's Arie Antiche, to be directly taken from Les Gloires de L'Italie. Just like many other songs and aria's, and not from the original sources as the compiler suggests in his preface.
For many generations of singers and students through the 20th century, the Arie Antiche remained an introduction to the vocal repertoire of the 17th and 18th century. The influence on their style of performance is noticeable until the present day.
The immediate popularity of Parisotti's version can be traced right up to the orchestration of the lamento, by Ottorino Respighi, resulting in an invition by the conductor Arthur Nikisch for a performance with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1908. Respighi had taken Parisotti's arrangement of the lamento as a starting point, using the transposition to F-Minor, now in the advantage for the tessitura of the Dutch star soprano Julia Culp. For the rest of the lamento, he must have found another source, which had become available since the late 1880s.
The rise of musicology: Emil Vogel and Romain Rolland
Rigorous research of the late 19th century and philological scrutiny profoundly changed the historical awareness of musicology. Direct consultation of the sources and archival studies provided answers to questions that were hardly asked beforehand because historians kept copying each other. Including the errors, presumptions and fantasies.
The decade between 1885 and 1895 saw a disclosure of important archives and libraries in Italy. As a 24-year-old student from Berlin, Emil Vogel travelled to Italy with a Prussian scholarship to assist with studies on Palestrina.
But soon he followed his own interest and singlehandedly rewrote the history of Claudio Monteverdi, based on facts from primary sources. He profited from the publication by Stefano Davari, who had published his findings of the Mantuan Gonzaga archives in 1885 and introduced a new voice through Monteverdi's extant letters.
Vogel summarized his findings in a dissertation of 45 pages, which granted him a doctorate title on 4 August 1887 at the Friedrich Wilhelm Universität in Berlin. Soon after, he published the rest of his study in an article of 136 pages in the Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, including some of Monteverdi's letters, an almost complete list of his printed music and the first complete and faithful transcription of the Lamento d'Arianna. He found the untitled lamento in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence after searching for the score of Arianna in all major libraries of North- and Middle Italy.
This article set a new standard in the Monteverdi studies, which remains valuable until the present day. Vogel was the first scholar after Davari to consistently use the name Monteverdi instead of Monteverde, as was customary until then. His argument was that Monteverdi signed all his letters with this spelling. Something he did not remark is that the surname was always written in lowercase and never with a capital M. Thanks to Vogel's research, there was no longer any doubt about the date of birth nor the status of Monteverdi's father. Also, the inexplicable aberration that Marc'Antonio Ingegneri would have been maestro di capella at the Mantuan court, was debunked by him.
He made it clear that Monteverdi was Ingegneri's apprentice before entering the Mantua service. The year of entrance at court, which was mistaken even by Davari, has been corrected by Vogel deducted from known facts. If he had entered 1589, Monteverdi would have addressed his new patron in his dedication to the second book of Madrigals (1590).
Vogel is the first author to discuss the controversy with Artusi extensively and with an understanding of the nuances of its situation. He consulted more documents, such as Ercole Bottrigari's Aletelogia in Bologna. To finish the war metaphor, he quotes this unpublished treatise with a fierce characterization of Monteverdi.
"... Er ist ja ein Mann der viel weiß und viel kann, er wird sich mit Klugheit und Tapferkeit vertheidigen und wird die Bodenlose Kühnheit und Arroganz jenes Mannes niederschlagen, der da verlangt man solle sich seinen Vorschriften unterordnen, während er selbst thut was ihm gefällt."
"... He is a man who knows a lot and can do a lot; he will defend himself with wisdom and bravery and will defeat the bottomless boldness and arrogance of the man who demands that one should submit to his rules because he does as he pleases."
Despite his meticulous fact-checking, Vogel also wrote down assumptions based on common sense, but for which there was no proof. For instance there still is an echo of all those who wrote about the forces at Artusi's side.
About the publication of the third book of madrigals, Vogel suggested that "...his innovations naturally aroused the strongest opposition from the theorists of the old school." Subsequently, he introduced Artusi 'among the opponents' but mentioned no other names.
Also, the loss of his 'irreplaceable' wife, Claudia Cattaneo, is said to have shocked the entire court in Mantua, which is Vogel's interpretation of a letter that was sent by Federico Follino to order Claudio's return and starting to work on a new opera. According to Vogel, her death had caused the greatest pain to her loved ones. Their boys, Francesco (6) and Massimiliano (3) must have missed their mother very much.
However, Claudio has not even left one line that tells us what he felt for her. After his wife's death, the only times he mentions her name are in letters referring to her pension and, via his father, the problem that he stood alone in taking care of his children.
Before Vogel, no one had shown so much genuine interest in Monteverdi since his death. He undertook enormous work to get the fullest possible overview of his life and works, putting truthfulness above all else. This included articulating uncertainties, where previous historians allowed themselves judgments on the basis of limited context.
The relentless distress caused by Gonzaga's failing payments and shortage of rewards meets with Vogel's comprehension, and he does not see it as an exaggeration of begging letters like many authors still do. Vogel tended to the other side; 'In all his complaints, the only thing that shines through is his infinitely loving care for the well-being and prosperity of his family - a trait that is revealed in most of his surviving letters and often emerges in a downright touching way.'
Rolland
The French writer, Nobel Prize winner, and great intellectual spirit of his time, Romain Rolland, initially wanted to become a musician. His parents did not agree with such a future, but his understanding of music contributed generously to his influence on several cultural movements, such as the revival of music from the past.
In this light, it is significant that his doctorate thesis was a profound study of the rise of European opera in the early Baroque period. He must have done a substantial part of his research when residing at the École Française in Rome. Also, his encounters with the revolutionary Malwida von Meysenbug, a close friend of Nietzche and Wagner, opened his horizon and understanding of cultural context, enriching his philological and musicological commitment. After two years, he returned to settle in Paris and completed a doctorate in the faculty of Lettres. It was the second dissertation in France that we now consider the beginning of musicology as an academic discipline. His influence in this field was decisive and soon stretched over Europe, illustrated by his organisation of the international Congrès d’Histoire de la musique de Paris in 1900, the first of its kind in France.
In his thesis Rolland dedicated a whole chapter to Claudio Monteverdi, and positioned him in the context of the social and artistic developments of his time. He used Vogel's article and sometimes borrowed interpretations of the German scholar. But as a writer, his imagination was inclined to fiction without the exactitude of supporting facts. This is clear when discussing Monteverdi's love and care for his family. He describes the "racking worries" in 1607, the "cruel" illness of his young wife Claudia, whom he loved "tenderly," and her "languishing for more than a year" before it became fatal to her. Actually, we do not know whether her disease lasted the whole year, only that she had been severely ill in the fall of 1606.
There is conclusive evidence however, that Monteverdi did a lot to ensure both his sons were well off. In his letters, we find proof, for instance, that the 23-year-old Massimiliano, a young doctor in medicine, was imprisoned because he had read a book on the forbidden list of the Inquisition. Claudio tried to use his contacts in Mantua, such as Alessandro Striggio, to react to a letter by the 'Father Inquisitor' saying that he could get his son released by paying a bail of 100 ducats until the case was dispatched.
Surprisingly, Rolland allowed himself obvious sloppiness in using previous studies. Vogel's accuracy contrasts sharply with Rolland's nonchalance.
On page 84 of his thesis he gives "Monteverdi né en 1568 à Crèmone..." and on the same page "Claudio Johannes Antonius Monteverde, né à Crémona au commencement de mai l567..." This latter information is obviously taken from Vogel's article. On the next page, the librettist of Orfeo is correct: Alessandro Striggio. But two pages further, Rolland bursts into a poetic mode and suggests Rinuccini as the author of l'Orfeo, probably confusing the opera with l'Euridice (by Peri).
It is very hard to understand that the persistent myth (from Burney? see above) about Marc'Antonio Ingegneri still survived in Rollands thesis. Monteverdi's teacher is named as such on page 85, in relation to the formation of the boy, but bluntly contradicted a few pages later, (Il fut maître de chapelle du duc de Mantoue), despite Vogels explicit falsification.
But at the other end of the spectrum, on the literary side, Rolland often delves into Monteverdi's specific position among his contemporaries. He emphasises the musical freedom that Monteverdi achieved, contrasting it with his Florentine colleagues by his dedication to practising his instrument day and night to explore its effects. What Artusi mocked is viewed by Rolland as transcending vocal boundaries. While the justice of the recitative may suffer slightly and the structure of the poetry may be overlooked, a direct connection between souls is established (l'âme parle directement à l'âme).
"Ainsi l'observation et l' « imitation » des passions (non pas seulement de la parole passionnée) est l'essence de la musique nouvelle. Elle ne s'attache donc pas servilement au texte, mais elle lit au fond de sa pensée."
(And thus the observation and "imitation" of passions (not just passionate speech) is the essence of new music. It does not slavishly stick to the text, but reads into the bottom of its thought.)
In the context of Monteverdi's dramatic use of instruments Rolland refers in a footnote to a concert he attended in the year before his dissertation came out. 1894 was the first of a series concerts historiques, organized by Charles Bordes, the founding father (together with a.o. Vincent d'Indy) of the Schola Cantorum Paris. Bordes sang the aria from Orfeo with an exposition of the rich instrumentation, which must have been Possente spirto ("le fameux air d'Orphée"). Though he admits that these curiosities of instrumentation can still be felt today, he sees her a loss of unity of the dramatic impression.
Rolland was very attentive to the dramatic impact of Monteverdi's work and had been reading his reflexions in the extant letters with a keen eye. His analysis of what determines the extra dimensions this composer added to a storyline and narrative in comparison to his colleagues is summarised when discussing La finta pazza Licori.
La musique va jusqu'au fond du cœur, et ne s'en tenant pas à la seule impression passagère éveillée par le mot, elle prête l'oreille aux sentiments plus qu'aux paroles du personnage; elle tient compte « de son passé et de son avenir, » comme dit Monteverde, c'est-à-dire de son caractère général; et nous voici bien près du leit-motiv moderne, où se résume une âme, que l'on voit vivre et se transformer au cours d'une action dramatique.
(The music goes right to the bottom of the heart and does not confine itself to the mere passing impression awakened by the word; it lends its ear to the feelings more than to the words of the character. It takes into account "his past and his future," as Monteverde puts it, that is to say, his general character; and here we are very close to the modern leitmotiv, which sums up a soul that we see living and transforming itself in the course of a dramatic action).
In July 1891 Malvida von Meysenbug took Rolland to Bayreuth on his way back from Rome to Paris. Seeing Parsifal, Tristan and Tannhäuser together made a huge impression on him and he saw analogies with the Italian beginnings of music drama, such as the role of the text, the silent audience, the hidden orchestra and the way human passions were exposed.
Rolland's passion for Richard Wagner's music drama explains his association with the idea of Leitmotiv. For instance, Arianna's sighing motive when she directly addresses Theseus (O Teseo, o Teseo mio), which I believe indeed functions not just as a refrain but also as a point of reference on which the audience subconsciously orients the dramatic development.
D'Annunzio, the narrative of decadentismo
It was during this period, at the turn of the century, that Romain Rolland played a decisive role in the changing narrative about Monteverdi and the true discovery of his music.
When Rolland was back in Rome in 1897, he was invited on 9 May to the salon of the Contessa Ersilia Caetani-Lovatelli to meet Gabriele D'Annunzio. This influential dandy poet had an immediate interest in the young musicologist, and right from the start of their acquaintance, they profoundly explored their common interests. D'Annunzio had a great passion for music, but as Rolland puts it later in his correspondence, he made people believe that he was much more knowledgeable than he was. While working on his novel Il Fuoco, he absorbed the ideas and expertise of his new friend on the rise of opera in Florence and his ideas about Wagner. Clearly, the poet had not read Rolland's book L'Histoire de l'Opera en Europe, although it had come on the market at the end of 1895. But many of the Frenchman's views will have passed through conversation, mainly and reportedly so in the summer of 1899, when they spent holidays together in the hotel Waldstätterhof, Brunnen, Switzerland.
Rolland's knowledge (and very likely his enthusiasm) thus inseminated the final version of Il Fuoco, as shown in an ecstatic dialogue about the outstanding achievements of Caccini, Peri and Emilio de Cavalieri. Their way of presenting the whole human being in their musical drama (manifestare con tutti i mezzi dell'arte l'uomo integro ) had been interpreted very much in the same vein as this was done in Bayreuth. The passage makes D'Annunzio's nationalism explicit and shows his wish to let Italian superiority retroactively compete with Germany of his present day.
In this context Monteverdi is introduced in the novel as a hero and saviour:
"Bisogna glorificare il più grande degli innovatori, che la passione e la morte consacrarono veneziano, colui che ha il sepolchro nella chiesa dei Frari, degno d'un pellegrinaggio: il divino Claudio Monteverde."
(We must glorify the greatest of innovators, he who is anointed a Venetian by his passion and death, whose tomb is in the Frari church, worthy of a pilgrimage: the divine Claudio Monteverde).
The nationalistic atmosphere is endorsed by the following conversation of characters that D'Annunzio, as most of them in Il Fuoco, moulded after real people of his inner circle:
- "Ecco un'anima eroica, di pura essenza italiana! - assenti Daniele Glàuro (Angelo Conti) con reverenza.
- Egli compì l'opera sua nella tempesta, amando, soffrendo, combattendo, solo con la sua fede, con la sua passione e col suo genio - disse la Foscarina (Eleonora Duse) lentamente, come assorta nella visione di quella vita dolorosa e coraggiosa che aveva nutrito del più caldo suo sangue le creature della sua arte. -"
(- "Here is a heroic soul, of pure Italian essence! - confirmed Daniele Glàuro with admiration.
- He accomplished his work in the storm, loving, suffering, fighting, only with his faith, his passion and his genius,' said Foscarina slowly, as if absorbed in the vision of that painful and courageous life that had nourished the creatures of his art with its warmest blood. -")
The scene turns from a discussion into a theatrical mode when La Foscarina encourages Stelio (D'Annunzio) to tell about Monteverde. His telling captures the imagination to such an extent that the composer actually appears in the dining room:
"L'antico sonator di viola, vedovo ardente e triste come l'Orfeo della sua favola, apparve nel cenacolo.
Fu un'apparizione di fuoco assai più fiera e più abbagliante di quella cha aveva accesso il bacino di San Marco: una infiammata forza di vita, espulsa dall imo grembo della natura verso l'anzia delle moltitudini; una veemente zona di luce, erotta da un cielo interiore e rischiarare i fondi più segreti dela volontà e del desiderio umano; un inaudito verbo, emerso dal silenzio originario a esprimere quel che v'è di eterno e di eternamente indicibile nel cuore del mondo."
(The ancient viola player, a fiery and sad widower like the Orfeo of his fable, appeared in the cenacle. It was an apparition of fire far prouder and more dazzling than that which had entered the basin of St Mark's: an inflamed force of life, ejected from the womb of nature towards the anxiety of the multitudes; a vehement zone of light, erupted from an inner sky and illuminated the most secret depths of the human will and desire; an unheard word, emerging from the original silence to express what is eternal and eternally unspeakable in the heart of the world.)
Then the poet asks the audience, 'Should we speak of him if he himself could speak to us?.' He means that infinitely more telling it is to hear the music composed by Monteverdi. The following scene still evokes an almost spiritistic seance, now with real music. The singer that appears in Il Fuoco as Donatella Arivale was in reality Giulietta Gordigiani, a very beautifull rising star and close friend of Eleonora Duse. At the beginning of the novel she is announced to be soon performing Arianna, but in this scene Donatella appears as an anonymous ghost of the mythological Arianna.
"And he gazed at the singer; and he saw her as when she had first appeared to him in the pauses, among the forest of instruments white and lifeless as a shadow. But the spirit of beauty which they had invoked was to manifest itself through her.
"Ariadne," Stelio added in a low voice, as if to awaken her.
She rose without speaking, went to the door, entered the neighbouring room. They heard the rustle of her skirts, her light footfall, and the sound of the cembalo being opened. All were quiet and intent. A musical silence seemed to occupy the place that had remained empty in the supper-room. Once only a breath of wind slanted the candle flames, disturbing the flowers. Then all became anxious again, and motionless in expectation.
" Lasciatemi morire ! "
Suddenly their souls were ravished by a power that seemed the lightning-like eagle by which Dante in his dream was ravished up to the flame. They were burning together in undying truth ; they heard the world's melody pass through their luminous ecstasy.
" Lasciatemi morire ! "
Was it Ariadne, still Ariadne, who was weeping in some new pain ? rising, still rising, to new height in her martyrdom?
E che volete
Che mi conforte
In cosi dura sorte.
In cosi gran martire ?
Lasciatemi morire"
The voice ceased ; the singer did not reappear. The aria of Claudio Monteverde composed itself in the memory like a changeless feature.
" Is there any Greek marble that has reached a simpler and securer perfection of style? " said Daniele Glauro, in a low voice, as if he feared to disturb the silence which was still ringing with the music.
" But what sorrow on earth has ever wept like this?" stammered Lady Myrta, her eyes full of tears that ran down the furrows of her poor bloodless face, while her hands, deformed by gout, trembled as they wiped them away.
Because the 'voi' is also missing here (see above: E che volete voi), D'Annunzio likely had a score of the Arie Antiche by Parisotti. Even more likely, he knew the score when Giulietta Gordigiani once performed the lamento for him. The contact was intimate, but she disappeared (la cantatrice non riapparve) from his life when she married Baron Robert von Mendelssohn in 1899, a descendant of Felix Mendelssohn, a cellist and a wealthy banker. The couple settled down in Berlin, where they lived until Mendelssohn's death, in close contact with a large circle of famous musicians. It is very well possible that Giulietta witnessed the concert in 1908, where the Berliner Philharmoniker performed the Lamento with the slender-toned singing soprano Julia Culp (see above) as a soloist.
The 20th-century breakthrough
Admiration for Monteverdi, labelled as a proto-Wagnerian composer, coloured his music’s revival just partly. Rolland had started this associative narrative, which d’Annunzio used to disseminate his ideology of Mediterranean superiority. But Rolland was from the beginning convinced of Monteverdi’s unique qualities, judging it with the same criteria as he did with the music of his contemporaries. He was not looking for a hybrid romantic style for the inventor of opera but searched for the essence of his output. The challenge was to bring the dormant scores of Monteverdi’s dramatic music to life despite their incomplete representation of the actual musical and dramatic compass.
Musicology was needed to start a work of reconstruction, and Berlin delivered much more in that field than as a stage for sounding rediscoveries. For decades, Paris would prove to have the most fertile cultural soil. The fruits of Emil Vogel’s thorough investigations in Italy and the subsequent intelligent interpretation of these findings resulted in the possibility of performing the complete Lamento d’Arianna and not only its first page. Rolland had started a cooperation with the composer Vincent d’Indy, who was leading the Paris Schola Cantorum, to prepare new performances of Monteverdi’s music, just as the school had done with Lully and Rameau. D’Indy prepared a lecture performance in October 1902 and received a letter in which Rolland suggested performing the lamento, at least partly because it was the most famous and most perfect of Monteverdi’s pieces. He warned, however, that the piece in its entirety could risk being monotonous.
“Il est un peu trop long, pour pouvoir être donné, sans une impression de monotonie qui détruirait l’émotion du début. Mais peut-être pourrait-on exécuter une partie.”
(It is a little too long to be given without an impression of monotony, which would destroy the emotion of the beginning. But perhaps part of it could be performed.")
Two months later the lamento would be successfully performed in Paris by the young Italian soprano Mlle. Palasara, enthousiastically reviewed by Romain Rolland in the Revue Musicale of December that year. He had published two fragments from L’Incoronazione di Poppea in the same journal to show the comic side of Monteverdi’s dramatic work. These were copied by hand in Venice when he visited the library of San Marco on his way to Bayreuth.
This first confrontation with Wagner’s operas left a very deep imprint on the young Rolland, and it certainly explains the shared admiration in fiery discussions he had later with Gabriele d’Annunzio.
Similar inspiration may have worked in his contact with Vincent d’Indy, who was also a dedicated Wagnerian since he had witnessed the first Ring cycle in the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth when it was inaugurated in 1876 with the performance of the complete Ring des Nibelungen.
Despite their differences, particularly in politics but also more generally in the appreciation of art, d’Indy and Rolland were soul mates in their view of Wagnerian qualities in Monteverdi’s stage works. Rolland’s thesis from 1895 must have triggered the attention because of its repetitive references to Wagner.
“…on reconnaît encore l’artiste de la race de Wagner, le musicien dont le but est bien précisément l’action dramatique, et non pas la musique.
(…one recognises the artist of Wagner’s kind, the musician whose goal is precisely the dramatic action and not the music.”)
D’Indy did not read Rolland’s thesis very thoroughly because he quoted freely in his Schola Cantorum lectures, compiled in the third volume of Cours de Composition Musicale by a former scholar, Guy de Lioncourt. In this narrative, Artusi was mistakenly labelled one of the Camerata dei Bardi;
‘Monteverdi subit des critiques acerbes de la part des Florentins. Artusi, l’un des littérateurs à la solde de Bardi, relate en ces termes la première représentation d’Orfeo: “On entend un mélange de sons, une diversité de voix, une rumeur harmonique unsupportable aux sens. L’un chante vite, l’autre lentement; l’un va à l’aigu, l’autre tombe au grave; un 3e n’est ni grave ni aigu; tel chante selon la méthode harmonique, tel autre selon l’arithméthique. Comment voulez-vous que l’esprit se reconnaisse dans ce tohu-bohu d’impressions?’
(Monteverdi was harshly criticised by the Florentines. Artusi, one of Bardi's literary henchmen, wrote of the first performance of Orfeo: "One hears a mixture of sounds, a diversity of voices, a harmonic rumble unbearable to the senses. One sings quickly, another slowly; one goes high, another low; a 3rd is neither low nor high; one sings according to the harmonic method, another according to the arithmetical method. How do you expect the mind to recognise itself in this hodge-podge of impressions?)
Another proof of d’Indy’s sloppiness in consulting Les Origins du Théâtre Lyrique moderne is that he missed the fact that Artusi was a priest at the Congregation of the Saviour in Bologna. If the Cours were based on notes taken between 1897 and 1898, during d’Indy’s lessons in the Schola Cantorum, the responsible students or their teacher must have been drowsy. The Cours Vol. 3 consists of some random mixtures of quotes from Rolland, like the one above, which he did not connect to Orfeo at all. Another surprising quote is more accurate on d’Indy’s side but concerns a Wagnerian projection by Rolland himself, which, even as a free interpretation of the Dichiaratione, is farfetched. It sounds very much like the kind of populism that Rolland endorsed.
Les hommes de science protestent au nom de Platon, que le peuple se trompe et ne saurait juger. Non, le peuple a raison, et s’il contredit l’élite, c’est à l’élite à se taire.
(Men of science protest in the name of Plato that the people are wrong and cannot judge. No, the people are right, and if they contradict the elite, it is up to the elite to keep quiet.)
In this case, the elite is represented by the academic world, which, as noticed by Annegret Fauser, meant a high degree of identification for Vincent d’Indy. The shared opposition to the academic world was even more than ‘slightly veiled in the discourse,’ as she puts it. After Padre Martini and Charles Burney, new fictive enemies are found that would have fought Monteverdi.
‘Mais bientôt, frappé par la sécheresse du style résultant des théories florentines, il se prit de querelle avec Caccini et se libéra violemment de la tutelle des Académies, qui lui décernèrent alors à l’unanimité un brevet d’ignorance.’
(But soon, struck by the dryness of style resulting from Florentine theories, he quarrelled with Caccini and violently freed himself from the tutelage of the Academies, which then unanimously awarded him a patent of ignorance.)
Obviously, d’Indy lacked the musicological rigour to offer an alternative for the existing institutions and academia he had been criticising. In the educational field, he had high ambitions to initiate changes, and he was part of a committee with a mandate from the ‘Ministre de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts’ to reform the Conservatoire.
A rejection from the Paris Conservatoire of his plans for innovation resulted in the foundation of the Schola Cantorum Paris in 1894, together with the organist Alexandre Guilmant and choir conductor Charles Bordes, the principal until d’Indy took over in 1904 (see above).
The Schola embodied the ideology that young composers should learn from analysing great works from the past. After 1900, not just analysis but, on the contrary, increasingly realising these compositions in performance became a way to understand the artistic essence of ancient masters better. A long list of masterworks by half or entirely-forgotten composers was excavated and performed in monthly concerts. Predominantly, the French cultural heritage was restored, and Rameau, Lully, Charpentier, Clérambault, and Couperin were regularly sounding in the Salle Érard of the school. But Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the best-represented composer of all, and many cantatas and concertos or chamber works alternated in the concert series with the large-scale lineups of oratorios and the B-minor Mass.
This repertoire was all preserved in printed scores (old and new) and manuscripts with sufficient information about which notes were supposed to sound and when. For Monteverdi’s dramatic work, however, reconstruction was needed with a thorough understanding of the early 17th-century Italian monodic style. That knowledge was not yet sufficiently available, certainly not to accomplish a reconstruction from an unfigured bass in the bold and unpredictable harmonic language of Monteverdi. In the preface of his 1905 edition of the work, he states that the realisation of the basso continuo is done with ‘le plus grand respect’ for style. Despite the respect, Vincent d’Indy worked out a solution for the recitatives after being encouraged by Romain Rolland to consult a transcription by Robert Eitner. In the letter quoted above (footnote 76), Rolland refers to this transcription, used by d’Indy to make his arrangement. The edition had a scholarly purpose rather than performative, and Rolland approved the transcription but had severe doubts about the ‘harmonic fantasies’ of the German musicologist, which were apparently a point of discussion in a previous letter by d’Indy. Rolland wrote: “One is confronted with strange disillusions when taking a closer look at the impressive German science.”
However, d’Indy’s opinion about Eitner’s work was formulated explicitly only later, in 1915, when he released an orchestral score of his own arrangements:
Mon but n’est pas de présenter un fac similé de la partition originale traduite en notation moderne; ce travail a déjà été fait assez exactement quant à la sincérité du texte, quoi qu’avec une parfaite absence de goût et une lourdeur bien allemandes, par Robert Eitner. Un document de ce genre intéressant peut-être pour les archéologues, eut été de nulle utilité pour les artistes.
(My aim is not to present a facsimile of the original score translated into modern notation; this work has already been done quite accurately as far as the sincerity of the text is concerned, albeit with a perfect lack of taste and a very German heaviness, by Robert Eitner. A document of this kind, interesting perhaps for archaeologists, would have been of no use to artists.)
A simple explanation for Eitner's twisted harmonic passages is his effort to produce plausible constructions in the basso continuo realisation along the standards of later periods of tonality, which did not exist in the first half of the 17th century. So, in that sense, d'Indy was right about the German approach.
But James Thorburn has pointed out that the versions d’Indy produced of Orfeo - in 1905 a French version with piano reduction and in 1915 in Italian with orchestral score – relied very much on Eitner’s edition from 1881. Somehow d’Indy was not aware that he lied about the uselessness of the musicologist’s work for artists and performers. There is convincing evidence that the French composer did not have any other source at his disposal but Eitner’s score.
Wishing to mould the drama of Orfeo in the direction of Wagner, d’Indy cut off the first and last acts, but nothing appeared in his scores that was not found in Eitner’s edition, which also lacked many parts of the original 1609 print.
After all the preparations were done, on 25 February 1904 at 21.00 h, the Troisième concert mensuel of the Schola Cantorum was dedicated to the first modern performance of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in a French translation. Several reviews describe the exceptional event and the successful instrumentation based on their symbolic function in the story.
Today, it is hard to imagine that the performing forces mounted up to 150. To understand the proportions, it is important to realise that at the end of the 19th century, the number of performers was much higher. Even then, an atmosphere of intimacy was possible, and the music spoke directly to its audience. Louis Laloy remarks in his review in the Revue Musicale about the contrast with Gluck’s Orfeo: ‘Orpheus is a man, not a divine virtuoso.'
In total, there are six extant reviews about this first resurrection of Orfeo, mostly from the inner circle of the Schola, like the conductor Julien Tiersot in his magazine Le Ménestrel. His observation is that the lyrical form of this Orfeo did not resemble the familiar styles of more ancient types, nor the later operas. He calls the peculiar facets of harmony, orchestration etc. at the same time ‘très savant et très naïf.'
The success of the performance was followed by a publication of the piano reduction that d’Indy had made of his own arrangement. The release was celebrated with a retake of the Orphée on 27 January 1905 in the Salle Pleyel, this time conducted by d’Indy’s student Francisco de Lecerda. Above all, the juvenile freshness of the performance, as well as its precision, were praised.
Suddenly, among the many composers whose music was revived by the Paris Schola, a new voice was added that distinguished itself from the many Renaissance masters, J.S. Bach, and the French Baroque music that had been performed for some years, like Charpentier, Campra, or Rameau. With hindsight, the narrative about Monteverdi as mainly a historical figure was taken over by proof of his musical presence, thus creating a new dimension of narrative. Of course, we should see this in the context of a general revival of music from the past as cultivated by the Schola Cantorum. Nevertheless, Monteverdi’s position is different thanks to the surprise of his personal dramatic language in combination with an ‘open score’, demanding knowledge and creativity to complete it. The performance of Orfeo in 1904 and the publication of the score a year later was the beginning of a chain of similar adaptations by famous composers throughout the 20th century.
Parallel to these developments, musicological and philological studies intensified the quest for the ‘original’ Monteverdi, while performers gradually searched for a way to convince by their interpretations with the help of knowledge that was thus retrieved.
While in Paris, the Orfeo was prepared for performance, 20-year-old Gian Francesco Malipiero saw his first Monteverdi manuscript in the library of Venice, there titled Nerone, but actually L’Incoronazione di Poppea. In his own words the seed was planted then for making a transcription of the complete works, which would result in the first monumental edition of a composer in Italy.
Composers often took the lead in making the material ready for performance but also grasped the opportunity to go beyond adaptation and created new work out of an interaction with the ‘ghost’ of the old master. These hybrid creations were not just a station to pass towards an ultimately historical reconstruction. In recent times, some musicians classified as historical performers with great knowledge of and fluency in the style of Monteverdi’s times have chosen to go a comparable, adventurous way.
Being alive by being performed in the past 120 years, all these different aspects have led to a wide spectrum of manifestations, renewing the narrative and proliferating an immense and fertile variety around the person of Claudio Monteverdi and the implicit messages communicated by his music.