Word: monteverdi
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...concert revival of a Broadway show? Easy enough--just get the sheet music, assemble an orchestra and cast, and start playing. Well, no. A 17th century Monteverdi opera has cleaner, fuller charts than many an old Broadway hit, whose arrangements might have ended up in the garage or garbage. The parts for the Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II Sweet Adeline, which was performed outdoors, had dead mosquitoes stuck to the pages. Says Daykin: "The musicians didn't know if it was a note or a dead...
Musicologists like to worry about whether the 1610 Vespers is really a single piece or compendium; about whether Monteverdi envisioned using a chorus rather than a group of solo singers; about whether he had in mind a specific feast of the Virgin Mary. These are all worthy questions, but they shouldn't overshadow the beauty of the music. It is the best musical resum I've ever heard, and if I were the Pope I'd hire him. In fact, though, Monteverdi ultimately got a job that probably really suited his musical talents better: he spent some 30 years...
When the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum gives a concert, they know how to do it in style. Their performance last Friday of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, in celebration of their 25th anniversary, was dazzling in every way, from the period instruments to the virtuosic soloists to the outstanding choir itself...
...program began with a welcome by Professor Thomas Kelly, in which he gave a brief history of the Vespers. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) is believed to have composed this collection of works in thirteen parts for the Gonzaga family, the rulers of the duchy of Mantua, for whom he was court composer. The Vespers is one of the daily hours of Roman Catholic worship, and Monteverdi's Vespers contains the texts of all of the essential prayers: the opening versicle and response, five psalms to the Virgin Mary, the hymn, and the Magnificat. Interwoven in these works is a collection...
...richness of Monteverdi's music is amazing, especially considering the era in which he composed. He uses the full range of colors and emotions available to him through the ancient instruments and voices, as can be heard in his numerous contrasts of tone throughout the Vespers. The psalmic settings (which were numbered incorrectly in the program except for Psalm 147) follow the Gregorian chant, but with great variations. On the other hand, the motets employs a style radical for those times: the "monody" or duet writing, which has a bolder and more expressive sound. Particularly beautiful is the transition from...