Claudio Monteverdi (in old prints spelled Monteverde, though by himself as here) first saw the light of the world at Cremona, in May, 1567. His father was probably a physician, at any rate a man of culture, who provided for his children an education far above the average. Claudio gave early evidence of musical talent and was placed under the tutelage of Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, the choirmaster of the cathedral and musical arbiter in Cremona, with whom he studied viola playing, singing and composition. Ingegneri was a composer of genius; his Responsoria, published anonymously, were for a long time ascribed to Palestrina, and, while worthy to be ranked with that composer’s, they contain harmonies and modulations foreign to his style.
Here, in the master’s originality we seem to find the explanation of his leniency toward his pupils’ vagaries, for Monteverdi from the first showed a most persistent tendency to break the rules of counterpoint. He first appears as composer at the age of sixteen, publishing in 1583 his Madrigali spirituali for four voices and in the following year his Canzonette a tre voci, which were full of irregularities and forbidden progressions. His first book of five-part madrigals was brought out in 1587 and it was evident that he was already reaching out for realms unknown, though perhaps not yet equal to the leap. An extraordinary addiction to dissonances, frequent use of the seventh in suspensions, and a number of unpleasant progressions characterize these otherwise beautiful madrigals, as well as the additional collections, printed in 1590, 1592 and 1603; but they nevertheless became popular, the last two going eventually through eight editions.
Meantime Monteverdi had become an able violist and aroused attention to his playing in high quarters. His virtuosity opened him the doors to the service of Duke Vincenzo di Gonzaga at Mantua, whither he went in 1590 as violist and singer. His modernist tendencies aroused the opposition of local musicians, which, already evident when he became maestro di capella in 1602, broke out openly as the madrigals of his fifth book, including the beautiful Cruda Amarilli, made their appearance. These drew the fire of Giovanni Maria Artusi, theoretician, and canonicus regulatis of S. Salvatore, who attacked him in a polemic, ‘On the Imperfections of Modern Music’ (1600), not mentioning his name, but quoting his newest compositions (still in MS.) as examples. The attack is so amusing, and its adherence to the perennial arguments of contemporary criticism so striking that we cannot refrain from quoting it in part.
Claudio Monteverdi.
After a contemporaneous portrait (artist unknown).
‘Though I am glad to hear of a new manner of composition it would be more edifying to find in these madrigals reasonable passagi, but this kind of air-castles and chimeras deserves the severest reproof.’ Like all critics he cites the example of the masters: Palestrina, Porta, Merulo, Gabrieli, Gastode, Lasso, etc., whose works these ‘moderns’ should emulate, but instead ‘are content to concoct as great a noise as possible—a confused mixture of unrhyming things, and mountains of imperfections.’ ‘Behold, for instance,’ he cries, ‘the rough and uncouth passage in the third example (by Monteverdi). After a rest the bass attacks on a diminished fifth against the upper voice.’ Not after a consonance, mind you, as the masters have done, but after a rest—and, as for sevenths unprepared—preposterous!
Monteverdi had had the temerity not only to use the dominant seventh without ‘preparation’ according to the established rules, but to use other dissonances, diminished and secondary sevenths, ninths and elevenths in connection; he had introduced a freedom in the movement of voices and a sequence of chords the audacity of which still startles us to-day. ‘Modern! Certainly he is modern by these tokens,’ says Tiersot, after hearing the Paris revival of Orfeo. ‘But truly and spontaneously has he made his discoveries, they were so little searched for, that neither his contemporaries, nor his successors, perhaps not even himself, have understood their value; and it has taken us centuries to arrive at a true appreciation of their merit.’