During the 16th century, the musicians had learned that trombones and cornets made a wonderful effect in scenes of the underworld (Hades, Inferno, Hell), of which there were many. They discovered, too, that trumpets and drums made battle scenes and war songs real; that flutes, oboes and bassoons gave a pastoral, or shepherd-like effect; that viols were for scenes of love and of sadness; and that to represent Heaven, they needed harps, lutes and regals. Monteverde brought them all together, and studied how to simplify the orchestra to give it a better balance in tone and variety. It must have been a wonderful time to live in this “young manhood” day of music.
The opera Arianna was written a year after Orfeo, to celebrate the wedding of the Duke’s son. It must have been a sad task for Monteverde, as he had just lost his wife to whom he was very devoted. Ottavio Rinuccini, poet of the “Camerata”, was his librettist (the writer of the words), and a famous Italian architect, Vianini, built an immense theatre in the castle for the first performance in 1608. Six thousand people assembled, the largest audience that had ever heard an opera! Nothing remains of the opera today, but the text, or words, some published accounts of the performances, and a very touching and beautiful Lamentation in which Arianna expresses her grief at being left by Theseus. This one piece is enough to show Monteverde’s genius, also how freely he expressed human feelings in music. Not a house in Italy with either a clavichord or a theorbo was without a copy of the Lamentation!
About this time, Monteverde wrote a prologue for a comedy composed by five other musicians of the court, all well-known composers of their day, Rossi, Gastoldi, Gagliano, Giulio Monteverde, and Birt.
In 1613, a year after the death of the Duke, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Monteverde was made Chapel master of St. Mark’s in Venice, which had long been famous for its fine music, where Adrian Willaert, Cyprian de Rore and Zarlino had been Chapel masters in the time of the “Golden Age of Polyphony.” Monteverde had much to live up to! But, after his hard work at the court of Mantua, he found his position very agreeable, and he gave his time now to composing music for the Church, madrigals, intermezzos, and a new form of music called “cantata.” His church music can be divided into works written in the old polyphonic style of Palestrina, and those written in the modern style of his day. So, when he did not write in the older church style, it was not because he did not know counterpoint, but because he wanted to make music express feelings through harmony and not through polyphony. He was able to do this as no one else had! His church music is not published for the parts have been so scattered, that a bass will be found in one collection and an instrumental part in another, and perhaps a soprano in still a third. So it would be very much like a jig-saw puzzle to find them all and put them together.
The Gonzaga family tried to persuade him to return to their court, but he refused, although he often wrote special operas for them or short dramatic spectacles which were called intermezzos. Of these, sad to say, almost nothing remains.
The recitative style invented by the “Camerata” had by this time taken such a firm hold upon the people, that it spread even to the music of the Church and to the madrigals. All the Italian composers began to write recitative for solo voices and accompaniment which they called canzoni (songs), canzonetti (little songs), and arie (melodies).
Monteverde was one of the first to turn the madrigal into a cantata da camera which means the recitation to music of a short drama or story in verse, by one person, accompanied by one instrument. But, as things improve or die out, very soon another voice and several instruments were added. This composition is a musical milestone of the 17th century as the madrigal had been of the 15th and 16th. The cantata for more than one voice forms a little chamber music opera without any acting. Some of the best known cantata writers were Ferrari, Carissimi, Rossi, Gasparini, Marcello, and Alessandro Scarlatti. At the age of seventy, Monteverde took up this new style of composition with all the enthusiasm and freshness of a young composer! He was not the inventor of the cantata da camera, as is so often claimed for him, as no one man was its inventor. It was the result of the constant search of the composers of that day, who followed along the same path, and worked together to perfect a new form.
New Feelings Expressed
One of Monteverde’s most important works in this style is the Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda (Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda) a poem by Tasso, which is noteworthy for several new things. In the preface of the published edition, Monteverde says that he had long tried to invent a style concitato, or agitated, that he had been struck by the fact that musicians had never tried to express anger or the fury of battle, but had expressed only tenderness and sweetness, sadness or gayety. (Perhaps he did not know Jannequin’s Battle of Marignan.) So he wrote battle music.
The second innovation was the tremolo, which, however familiar to us today, he used for the first time to express agitation, anger and fear, and the musicians were so surprised to see something that they had never seen before, that they refused to play it! This was neither the first nor the last time that musicians balked at something new.