Notes on the Program

By Janet E. Bedell

Across musical history, there are moments when an established style is suddenly ousted by something radically new. At the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven took the elegantly proportioned language of Classicism and transformed it into something bigger and bolder, paving the way for Romanticism. Again, at the turn of the 20^th, Stravinsky and the trio of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern challenged the lush Romantic style with their leaner, harsher experiments and pushed us into the modern era. Just such an event took place around 1600 in Northern Italy when the lavish polyphonic style of the Renaissance, known as the primo practica, gave way to the seconda practica: a style in which a simpler monodic vocal style was proposed that would emphasize the expression of words over musical display and eventually produce the first operas. It would also usher in the Baroque era.

Presiding over this revolution was the Cremona-born Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), the premier musical genius of the first half of the 17th century in Italy. Over the course of his long career serving at the court of Mantua and at Venice’s San Marco, he created the first opera to remain in the standard repertoire, L’Orfeo (1607), as well as the masterful operas of his old age Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1639-1640) and L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643). Simultaneously, he brought the older art of the multi-voice madrigal to its highest level in his nine books of madrigals, infusing them with harmonic, rhythmic, and coloristic inventions that defined the new monodic style.

Across this program, we will hear the  transformation of Monteverdi’s madrigals from the beautiful works of Books 1 and 2, published in 1587 and 1590, that echo the older Renaissance polyphonic style to the new monodic style that reaches its culmination in Book 8, which Monteverdi titled Madrigali guerriere et amorosi (Madrigals of War and Love). Published in 1638, Book 8 was a compilation of madrigals composed over the previous 30 years and set to words by such revered Italian poets as Petrarch (1304-1374) and Torquato Tasso (1544-1595).

In many of these madrigals — and especially in the epic Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda — the texts are vividly brought to life through the virtuosic use of the stile concitato or “agitated style” invented by Monteverdi to mimic the sounds of war. His innovations also included a dramatically new treatment of rhythm, using it to describe the galloping of horses, the frantic intensity of the blows of warriors’ swords, and their exhausted panting. (During his service with the court of Mantua, Monteverdi had experienced warfare himself in all its blood and fire.) He also freed himself from the restrained harmonic practices of the Renaissance to create stunning harmonic twists in the melodic line and to expand the use of dissonance, making it a potently expressive partner.

In the early 17th century, the Italian courts vied to become the most dazzling centers of culture, which included the arts of theater and dance as well as music. “Volgendo il Ciel,” from Book 8, is an example of the ballo form, in which the vocal artists were joined by lavishly costumed dancers — and sometimes the courtiers themselves.

“Baci soave e cari” (“Sweet kisses”), from Book 1, compares the sweetness of a lover’s kiss with a beautiful death — a metaphor used throughout 16th and 17th century poetry. It is set in the five-voice texture mostly used for the madrigal form, and much of the writing is homophonic, with the voices joined together in chords to clarify the text. But there are also freer contrapuntal passages that are the madrigal’s most expressive. Especially remarkable are the long downward-sliding lines for the words “non senta’ il duol di morte/ e pur si more”; here the composer layers the voices over a series of suspensions producing a stream of stunning dissonances.

A highlight of Book 2 is “Ecco mormorar l’onde” (“Behold the waves tremble”): a five-voice madrigal setting a lovely poem by Tasso that portrays the beauties of the arrival of dawn. In the polyphonic Renaissance style, this is a much more sophisticated setting with a beautiful melodic flow and little melismas glorifying key words such as “tremble,” “laughs,” and “breeze.”

Book 7, from 1619, breaks away from the typical five-voice madrigal style and contains many duets and other ensembles as well as a prominent role for instruments. The gorgeous love duet for two sopranos and instruments, “Chiome d’oro” (“Golden tresses”), opens with a lengthy ritornello for the instruments that returns between the vocal lines. The virtuosity of the singers is emphasized by their little cadenzas that close each stanza.

From Book 8’s canti amorosi section, “Lamento della Ninfa,” is a theatrical madrigal that is one of Monteverdi’s greatest portraits of grief. Three men sing as a Greek chorus introducing and commiserating with the nymph betrayed by her lover. The soprano then sings her lament over a four-note bass pattern that repeats 34 times. Despite this rigid device, Monteverdi urges the soprano not to sing in strict time, but “according to the mood.”

Published in 1603, Book 4 showed a great advance in Monteverdi’s writing and was his most popular collection to date. Here the textual and emotional expressiveness of his music shines, and his daring use of harmony and rhythm points the way to the future. In “ ’Sfogava con le stelle,” a love-sick man pours out his anguish to the stars that echo the beauty of the woman he adores; he asks them to reveal his burning love to her. Shockingly, this madrigal begins with a prolonged dissonance between the five singers capturing the man’s suffering. Then Monteverdi weaves a texture of passages in the homophonic chant style of sacred music with gorgeous passages of counterpoint.

“Sí ch’io vorrei morire” (“Yes, I wish to die”), also from Book 4, is a graphic expression of the joys of lovemaking. Again, the metaphor of love equaling death is used. The opening section is slow, its dissonances conjuring the bittersweetness of passion. As the lovemaking proceeds, the music becomes faster with voices engaging in call-and-response cries. The climax achieved, the music ends peacefully.

The first half of this program closes with “A quest’olmo” (“To this elm”), from Book 8, which resembles the splendor of the choral sacred music Monteverdi wrote for the San Marco Basilica. By now he had left Mantua behind and settled permanently in Venice. Rather than five voices, the ensemble has increased to six. Like “’Sfogata delle stelle,” the poem by the composer’s contemporary Giambattista Marino celebrates the beauties of nature, but this time the singer is in tune with them as he recalls the spot where he consummated his love for the shepherdess Clori. The texture is a stunning mixture of homophony and imitative counterpoint, from which individual singers break out into eloquent solos.

Opening the second half of the program, Book 8’s “Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda,” dramatically sets an extraordinary episode from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberate. Not a traditional madrigal, Combattimento was indeed something unusual, for it was Monteverdi’s first demonstration of his newly invented stile concitato, bringing to life Tasso’s vividly described story of single combat between the Christian warrior Tancredi and the Saracen female warrior Clorinda. It contains no dazzling polyphony, but is sung mostly by the tenor narrator Testo, representing Tasso himself. The voices of Tancredi and Clorinda only occasionally intervene. Equally important is the orchestra, displaying Monteverdi’s new techniques of tremolo, pizzicato, and lightning-fast articulation to give a hyper-realistic miming of the sounds of battle.

In a virtuosic display of expressive monody verging on arioso, Testo tells us the story of these two combatants, who, shielded by their armor, do not know each other’s identity. He plays a multi-faceted role: sometimes giving a detached recital of the story, at other times addressing the audience or even admonishing the characters. Urged on by the orchestra, he uses an extremely rapid parlando to imitate the clashing swords. To further emphasize Testo’s expressiveness, Monteverdi instructs the singer to freely adorn his phrases with ornaments. So vivid is this musical storytelling that it needs little or no staging to intensify its impact.

“Romanesca: Ohime dov’e il mio ben” (“Alas, where is my beloved”) is another duet madrigal for two virtuoso high trebles. Here the poet admits that his own ambition and vanity may have separated him from his beloved. Monteverdi conjures an aching, bittersweet mood in his elaborate counterpoint between the two voices by having them constantly sliding back and forth between dissonance and consonance.

A madrigal for five voices from Book 6 (1614), “Zefiro torno” (“Zephyr returns”) sets a verse by Petrarch. Monteverdi seizes on the dramatic contrast between the joyous arrival of spring and the bitter sadness of the man who has lost his lover. In the first half, the beauties of the most hopeful season are captured in a buoyant three-beat dance. Then the anguish of the bereaved man who can find no pleasure in the flowering world reverts to solemn four-beat music riven with dissonances.

Book 7 closes — as does this program — with the light-hearted “Ballo: Tirsi e Clori.”  Monteverdi wrote it as a piece of entertainment for the January 1616 coronation of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga of Mantua. Tirsi and Clori are a shepherd and shepherdess in an idyllic Arcadia found in many stories and entertainments of the 17th and 18th centuries. The opening section is a duet in the monodic style, as the tenor Tirsi invites Clori to join him at the shepherds’ celebration, singing music that’s already in three-beat dancing rhythm. She is at first hesitant, but then warmly agrees as they join in a duet. More voices and instruments are added as everyone sings an ode praising dance, in which each stanza opens with the word “balliamo.” (“Let us dance”). The faster closing section in which triple meter yields to duple meter produces exciting counterpoint.

— Janet E. Bedell ©2026