Word: monteverdi
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...Monteverdi's Vespers, performed on Friday, March 7, by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and a stellar array of guest artists, could be viewed as an audio resum. Claudio Monteverdi published the music we now call the 1610 Vespers in a volume of music printed probably at his own expense and dedicated to the Pope. The year before, Monteverdi had published a volume containing his opera L'Orfeo and dedicated to the future Duke of Mantua. In that first book, he showed that he was the master of the new theatrical style and that he could weld into new shapes...
...wants to show that he is the master of church music. So this volume contains a mass composed in elaborate polyphonic style and paying tribute to past masters, and it also contains all the music sung at the evening service called Vespers; music, as Monteverdi says on the title page, suited to the chapels or apartments of princes. Monteverdi is trying to see how far his artistic wings will carry him. These two publications prove his mastery of his art, and the dedication to the Pope suggests his desire for a new job, far away from the problems of being...
...Monteverdi is a brilliant tactician; he bases just about all the Vespers music on the ancient traditon of Gregorian chant. Surely that will appeal to conservative church authorities. And he shows a dazzling musical variety in doing so; surely that will impress the musical world. And he intersperses the psalms and canticles with the very latest things, little concertos or motets for solo voices, displaying the fabulous virtuosity that the Mantuan singers, under Monteverdi's direction, were capable...
...harpsichords; it uses the same numbers and types of voices, and most of the same wonderful musical techniques: tricky echoes that turn the last syllables of a phrase into a new word; fantastic fast notes; learned counterpoint. It is a piece drawing specifically on the talents of the musicians Monteverdi regularly worked with...
...popular course showcases five pieces of music--Beethoven's ninth symphony, Handel's "Messiah," Stravinsky's "Le sacre du printemps," Monteverdi's "Orfeo" and Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique"--and examines the cultural context of their first performances...