Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 2 – The combat between Tancredi and Clorinda by Claudio Monteverdi

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 2 – The combat between Tancredi and Clorinda by Claudio Monteverdi

How are you at keeping up with the times?  It’s sometimes challenging isn’t it?  But some professions absolutely demand it, even expecting their practitioners to have something of a sixth sense in anticipating the next hot trends.  Take marketing, for example.  What was it like 150 years ago?  Well, mostly print I would assume.  Newspapers, billboards, fliers.  Maybe there were magazines, probably catalogs.  Within the next century, bold new channels were opening up, including the telephone, radio and television.  Can you imagine what that must have been like for folks in advertising and marketing?  How many saw it coming, and how many persisted in looking the other way as the new delivery systems steamrolled over everything?  How many glanced at the emerging media and dismissed them as inconsequential, critically mispredicting the impending direction of the industry, media, and the world?  What was it like to be able to sell over the phone, as if the person 500 miles away was standing next to you, as opposed to relying on print which must travel over land and sea?  Can you image how powerfully the telephone compressed the process of booking concerts in faraway lands?

Now think about the past fifty years, which saw the birth, growth, and eventual dominance of online media in all of its varied, detailed, and powerful forms.  Who saw it coming?  How many saw it, but dismissed the emerging trends as inconsequential or ephemeral, with no real transformative power on commerce or culture?  In marketing services myself I have seen a rapid progression just within the past decade.  A little more than a decade ago, it was essential to have a presence in the Yellow Pages; now, while people still use it, who does not turn to Google for a quick fix in finding a company to meet his needs?  About 10 years ago, it was finally more or less universally acknowledged that a website is absolutely essential in marketing products or services.  Today it is undisputed, and probably the cheapest and easiest way to start getting one’s name out into the ether, with easy and effective website builders like Weebly and Squarespace helping those of us with minimal coding knowledge to design clear websites in minimal time.  In the last 5 years or so the game has changed again and a website is no longer sufficient; now marketers must know the ins and outs of pay-per-click advertising and Facebook marketing.  It just never stops, and the next big thing is out there somewhere.  But do you know where to look?  Some people seem to have a knack for it, and they are the ones that become successful consultants and marketing coaches, helping others to see the writing on the wall and direct their efforts and resources in the best directions.

Nothing stands still.  While the essence of successful marketing has never changed (“Would you like your life to be easier or more enjoyable?  I can help, and I can do it better/cheaper than they can”) it is the delivery systems that do.  Has the essence of music changed?  That question is a little knottier, but I think most of us can agree that it really hasn’t (“That sounds great!/That makes me want to dance!/That really soothes my soul!/Wow, he can really play!/I can’t believe how much the music is helping me to empathize with the protagonist of that drama!”) and it is merely the genres that change over time.  But the genres become very fashionable and can dull listeners’ sense of the essence present in the old ones.  Like master marketing consultants, musicians who can see the writing on the wall, and not become stuck in the old ways of doing things, stand to become very successful, both in terms of personal prosperity and historical legacy, if they can sell the emerging trends convincingly.

One composer who was very good at this is Claudio Monteverdi.  He lived and worked in Italy, spending almost equal amounts of time in the sixteenth century and the seventeenth.  He was present and engaged during an astounding shift of musical delivery systems, convincingly filling both old forms and new with a wonderful music essence.  While Monteverdi respected the old forms revered by the previous generation and worked with them well, he was progressive and clear-eyed enough to continually stay on top of the revolutionary fashions that were emerging and to create convincingly in those too, effectively selling them to his own generation and those that followed.  It is arguable that without Monteverdi’s masterful cultivation of emerging practices, they may never have caught on as they did.

By way of summary, Monteverdi began his career when Palestrina’s polyphonic perfection was Europe’s thing, all over really, and he mastered that style, as is evident from listening to this passionate early madrigal from 1590:

 

Dawn had not yet risen,

nor had birds stretched their wings

to the new sun,

but the loving star was still alight

when the two fair and graceful lovers,

whom a merry night had joined together

in as many twists and turns as an Acanthus,

were separated by the new light; sweet cries

in the final embraces

mixed with kisses and sighs,

a thousand burning thoughts, a thousand yearnings.

A thousand unfulfilled desires

did find each loving soul

in the other’s beautiful eyes.

 

And one said, sighing with languid words:

«Good-bye, my soul».

And the other answered: «My life, good-bye.»

«Good-bye, no, stay!» And they would not leave

before the new sun.

And before dawn, which rose in the sky,

each saw

the most beautiful roses

pale on loving lips,

and eyes shimmer like small flames.

And their parting was that of souls

which are cut up and uprooted:

«Good-bye, for I leave, and die.»

Sweet languor, and melancholic departure

 

Granted, the comparison to Palestrina is not direct, especially given the strength of feeling present in the secular text (Palestrina was quite pious and did not tend to set texts such as these; a little ironic since is was actually Monteverdi who was the priest!), but the fluid, imitative nature of the polyphony is clearly cut from Palestrina’s cloth.  During Monteverdi’s lifetime three significant stylistic transformations swept through the music of Europe and changed his manner of writing.  They were: the rise of opera, the practice of basso continuo, and concertato.  Let’s listen to a madrigal from about 30 years later which illustrates some of these reforms:

 

 

Golden tresses, oh so precious,

you bind me in a thousand ways

whether coiled or flowing freely.

 

Small, white matching pearls,

when the roses that conceal you

reveal you, you wound me.

 

Bright stars that shine

with such beauty and charm,

when you laugh you torture me.

 

Precious, seductive

coral lips I love,

when you speak I am blessed.

 

Oh dear bonds in which I take delight!

Oh fair mortality!

Oh welcome wound!

 

Again, the secular text is saucy and suggestive.  But the musical manner is completely different than a few decades prior.  We notice immediately that instead of purely vocal writing, Monteverdi brings the text to life through alternating considerably pared down vocal forces (2 female singers as opposed to 5 voices in his earlier madrigals) with lively instrumental episodes.  This alternation is known as concertato, and the variety of colors and textures that became possible were crucial in making Baroque music what it was, so rich and varied are the resources used by composers like Bach and Handel.  We can also hear the solid, foundation of the bassline constantly supporting the harmonic structure, a technique known as basso continuo, another practice that made Baroque music what it was.

Monteverdi’s mastery of opera bled into some of his madrigals, essentially yielding musical dramas in miniature.  The best known of these is the massive madrigal The Combat Between Tancredi and Clorinda, written in the 1620s, based on an episode from a very fantastic epic poem about the First Crusade called Jerusalem Delivered by the sixteenth century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, which served as a source of TONS of operatic plots.  In one episode of Tasso’s poem the Muslim warrioress Clorinda is mistakenly engaged in battle by her lover, Tancredi, and she is killed, but not before converting to Christianity.  Monteverdi expands this episode into a sprawling drama with sung parts for Tancredi, Clorinda, and a narrator, richly accompanied by a small string orchestra.  Can this even be called a madrigal?  Monteverdi labelled it as such, but it seems a stretch considering how far it has departed from the original Renaissance concept.  Still, it is a fascinating work, a great unveiling of a style called concitato, that is the “agitated” style, packed with dramatic repeated notes, tremolos, pizzicato, and galloping horses to illustrate the heat of battle.  The agitated style was another element of the early baroque musical palette refined by Monteverdi which made Baroque music what it was, contributing an unparalleled way to illustrate conflict in music.

 

Monteverdi probably exhibited the knack for seeing future trends better than any other notable composer in the history of Western music.  It is difficult to calculate just how much influence this ability exerted over the music that was to follow, but it is incredibly significant.  Monteverdi was the difference between good ideas that might have died, and good ideas that found their ideal expression and served as models for the next musicians.  Without Monteverdi the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven even, would have been unimaginably different.  This gift is rare and wonderful, in all fields of human production, and it is always richly rewarded, either with prosperity or a historical legacy.  Monteverdi’s output is a fascinating patchwork, reconciling old and new in unexpected and imaginative ways (see this post for another example of this).  The tragic combat between Tancredi and Clorinda is just one example, perhaps the most interesting, and a compelling representative of Monteverdi’s approach to music and culture as a whole.

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Mountains, Day 2 – “Lasciate i monti” from Orpheus by Claudio Monteverdi

This week’s theme is…Mountains! The stoic, majestic guardians of Earth’s geography, mountains have long inspired musicians with their monumental presence.  This week we examine some examples of this.

Mountains, Day 2 – “Lasciate i monti” from Orpheus by Claudio Monteverdi

Have you ever witnessed a major transition?  They often take a while, so you may not entirely realize it until it has happened.  But some people live through movements which cause elements of society and culture to be different at their time of death from their time of birth.  And some people jump into the fray and actively move the transition along, people like Claudio Monteverdi, who lived from 1567 to 1643.  Monteverdi achieved a stunningly luxurious life span of 76, a respectable age even by modern standards, but absolutely sprawling for a time when the average life expectancy was barely half of that.  He outlived his wife and some of his children, one of whom died in infancy.  Over the course of his life the primary vehicle of musical expression in Europe changed from the dense, largely sacred polyphony of the Renaissance, to the vibrant, bold, monodic, and very secular strokes of opera, which was born right around the middle of his years.  While the early experiments in opera were interesting in their concept, most listeners today would probably find them dry and sterile, compelling only in that they planted the historical seeds for truly interesting operas by much more capable composers.

And Monteverdi was one such composer, a master of his craft.  Weaned on the Renaissance-style polyphony referenced earlier (for more on a great proponent of that style, see this post), he was well-practiced in what more and more musicians of his day were coming to regard as an increasingly conservative and outdated discipline.  Renaissance polyphony had blossomed and reached its pinnacle of development in the glowing, perfect works of Palestrina, who died just before the seventeenth century.  Palestrina’s works are so flawless in their proportions and precise treatment of dissonance that they are still regarded as the supreme models of the style.  Where could polyphonic music go after his career?  There were still musicians who revered that style and sought to preserve its primacy in European music even after the turn of the century.  But others, Monteverdi included, sought to take what it offered and draw from more recent innovations as well, innovations like monody.

Monody was the result of a series of experiments carried out by a club of Humanist (in the sense of learned in the humanities and championing the arts of ancient Greece) aristocrats meeting in Florence right around the turn of the seventeenth century.  They sought to create musical dramas from which emanated the clarity and expression of ancient Greek drama, at least as they understood it.  Their early operas (they didn’t call them that – that label came about later) combined acting, staging, and sung music.  Monody refers to the musical texture of the vocal parts: a single vocal line accompanied by a bassline, and perhaps other instruments to fill out the texture.  But the essence of monodic texture is melody and bass.  The bass line is often called basso continuo and it is known for its practice of notating the harmonies in a kind of shorthand called figured bass, which looks like this:

A skilled keyboard or lute player of Monteverdi’s time (and beyond – some musicians can still read this figured bass at sight) could use the bass line and figures to improvise a full, thick accompaniment that was just a little different at every performance.  If you want to study the method a little, this table will probably prove helpful:

 

The primary interest in this practice is in the melody and the bass, which is quite different from the precise, fixed sonic arcs of the polyphony that Palestrina brought to perfection, which typically features no fewer than four and sometimes as many as eight simultaneous lines, all intricate, and all equally weighted for listener interest.  Here’s an example of how that sounded:

 

The mastery of this style, particularly by Palestrina, but by other musicians as well, still stands out to me as one of the intellectual and aesthetic triumphs in the entire history of human thought.  Anyone who has ever tried to write competently in this manner, myself included, has an idea of the rigor it takes to master it.  And its fluid, glowing nature wedded ideally with the austere sanctity of post-Tridentine ritual in the Catholic Church.  Monteverdi was well-trained by his mentors in this style and knew it well.  He also sensed, as did others around him, that the status quo could easily become worn and uninspired.  And so Monteverdi’s greatest contribution to Western music became his efforts to form a coherent transition between Palestrina and the new monody, which he called First Practice and Second Practice, respectively.  The work of no other composer from Monteverdi’s time demonstrates such a thoughtful and thorough working through of this transition.

Monteverdi left 9 books of madrigals, Italian songs based on secular lyrics, that span his entire career, and from these we can observe his mastery of both practices, including some fascinating and imaginative essays in the new monodic style, many of which feature very colorful orchestral accompaniment, a clear indication of how far he was stretching the predominantly vocal madrigal.  No study of Monteverdi’s life work is complete without delving into his madrigals, the proving grounds of his stylistic expansion.  But it is in his first surviving opera, and what has been recorded as the first notable opera in Western history, premiered in 1607, that we can observe a marvelous synthesis of the two practices that only Monteverdi could have executed.

The great opera is called L’Orfeo, or Orpheus in English, and it is the first of many operas composed on the subject of the Greeks’ unmatched, mythical musician.  Naturally the character of Orpheus was inspiring to musicians throughout history and they have reciprocated with equally inspired musical tellings of his story.  To date we have the pleasure of enjoying operatic expressions of the Orpheus myth by Haydn, Gluck, Offenbach, and others in addition to Monteverdi.  For the gentlemen of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, American’s largest music fraternity, Orpheus is also a central and inspiring figure, appearing prominently in their songs and stories.  It is a fortuitous and suitable subject for the first notable opera in Western history and its effective expression motivated Monteverdi to craft a musical drama of compelling integrity that is still able to captivate listeners who witness its staging four hundred years since its creation.  And part of what makes it so is Monteverdi’s skillful combination of polyphony and monody, his first and second practices.

Listen to these, a healthy slice of Orfeo’s first act:

 

 

You can hear the alternation of monody, sung by the shepherd and nymph, describing how happy everyone is that Orpheus has a found a mate in his beloved Euridice, with the effectively contrasted madrigal-like choruses in which the whole company sings similar sentiments.  Particularly infectious is the latter “Leave the Mountains, Leave the Fountains” in which all the mythical creatures of the ancient landscape are implored to drop what they are doing and dance in celebration.  Performed in certain contexts, you could easily mistake it for just another madrigal:

 

Throughout Monteverdi’s madrigals it is possible to hear monodic and polyphonic examples side by side, often within the same volume, and in L’Orfeo he makes efficient and effective use of this juxtaposition, crafting a polished, engaging drama that was renowned in its day and, after a period of neglect and revival, shares today’s stages with operatic masterworks from all across the intervening four centuries.  You can watch a terrific production of the whole opera, which follows the story of Euridice’s death and Orpheus’ thrilling rescue attempt in the underworld here:

 

Oh, and do you know what “Monteverdi” means?  And he wrote a chorus about mountains.  Sounds like an Xhibit meme to me…

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