Claudio Monteverdi

The myth of Orpheus, the ancient hero who could enchant nature with his music and tried to  bring back his beloved Eurydice from Hades, consists of many different elements. There is no single original Orpheus myth, but the story gradually developed in Antiquity, over time absorbing new elements and new turns. These elements often occur separately in texts and the visual arts, but are sometimes combined in a story as well. Thus Orpheus has
become a complex figure with many aspects. This versatility is an important feature of his character, that causes his reception not to be uniform, but to take many different forms. Orpheus appears in many different types of texts, but also in the visual arts, and especially in plays and operas.
Writers, visual artists and musicians often have views on the figure of Orpheus that differ strongly and often conflict with one another. These different and conflicting views are inherent to the diversity of the figure of Orpheus. People who use Orpheus in their works, often choose between the many stories about him.
On the one hand this choice is often determined by the knowledge available: many a time a stereotipical view is copied
from predecessors in the same genre. On the other hand, some artists are familiar with more aspects of Orpheus, but appear to deliberately select only those aspects that are appropriate  for  their  argumentation.  Orpheus  is  often  seen  and  presented  either  as  a positive character or as a negative character. Amongst his positive aspects are mainly reckoned his musical and poetical qualities and his ability to tame the beasts (i.e. to civilize
human kind) with his song (eloquence). Besides, his participation in the voyage of the Argonauts and his status as a poet-theologian or philosopher are judged in a positive
manner. Amongst his negative aspects are reckoned his love of wordly goods (Eurydice) and his looking back at these things, his homosexuality and his horrible death. The attempt to unite these conflicting images of Orpheus runs through his reception in Italy between 1300 and 1600 like a continuous thread. For example,
authors tend to ignore his negative aspects  or  express  their  astonishment  about  the  irreconcilability  of  the  different
characterizations of Orpheus; in some extreme cases they adjust the outcome of the myth.
Except for the change of outcome, there are no major adjustments to the myth, like a complete change of characters, of the action or of the setting of the story in time and
space. Most changes to the image of Orpheus stem from the
possibilities which the myth as a whole offers. Many representations of Orpheus are inherent to the character itself. An author or an artist chooses from the existing possibilities and thus manipulates his own version of the myth.

Over the past hundred years, the operas of Claudio Monteverdi have become iconic symbols of the early music movement and have entered the canon of so-called great operas. The conventional explanation for their iconicity is that they are historically important works, the first to fully realise the potential of the operatic genre, and that they speak to us and relate to contemporary concerns. These definitions, though, are contingent on surrounding socio-cultural factors. Rather than trying to explain their immanent and autonomous greatness, this thesis examines how Monteverdi’s operas have actually been received and performed on stage, going beyond mere description and providing a deeper analysis of the political, cultural, and social contexts of their performative instances. There is no single explanation for why performers and scholars have so frequently engaged with Monteverdi’s operas, but it is clear that Monteverdi opera is now, as it was in the seventeenth century, a fluid entity. In the current stage of what Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘liquid modernity’ this fluidity and lack of single answers is particularly apparent in operatic performance. But where Bauman sees liquid life as a negative and troubling state, this thesis will show that, at least regarding early opera, not having one answer leads to great invention and thoughtful engagement with the contexts of the past and present.
The thesis consists of five case studies, each examining in detail one particular issue brought up by the early opera revival. First, an examination of Monteverdi’s place in the earliest stages of the revival in the first half of the twentieth century challenges the view of the early music movement as primarily antiquarian. The thesis demonstrates the revival’s highly politicised underpinnings in France, Germany, and Italy and the varied effect politics had on how and why Monteverdi’s operas were performed in those countries. Next, audio and video evidence is used to investigate three aspects of modern Monteverdi performance in more depth, examining how stage directors have placed notions of community on stage in their interpretations of L’Orfeo, how stage and music directors have reshaped Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria for widely varying dramaturgical and musical ends, and how singers have interpreted the role of Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea vocally and dramatically. Finally, I examine three recent productions of L’incoronazione di Poppea from the perspective of a participant observer, focusing on how the opera functions in the real space of an opera house, and how the presence of performance is conveyed in early opera today through the use of directorial attitudes, space, and the staging of gender relations.
This wide-ranging thesis demonstrates that the concept of a ‘Monteverdi opera’ is fundamentally fluid. This fluidity involves not only the texts themselves (cuts, rearrangements, transpositions, orchestrations, etc.) but also their medium (the stage, film, recording), their ideologies (nationalistic, fascist, communitarian), and their performances (in various singing and playing styles). While a large amount of valuable and rigorous work has been done in studying the early music movement, few of these studies find a significant place for early opera, and few recognise the basic fluidity and cultural contingency of performance and reception. This thesis hopes to correct those omissions, and to show how this fluidity manifests itself in the modern production of Monteverdi’s operas.

A busca de mais de um século chegou ao termo quando, em 24 de fevereiro de
1607, os convidados do Conde Vicenzo de Gonzaga, um tanto apertados devido às
dimensões modestas da Galleria delle Specchi, a Sala dos Espelhos, no palácio ducal de
Mântua, começaram a ouvir os primeiros acordes da nova composição de Alessandro
Striggio e Claudio Monteverdi. O evento todo foi um presente do conde para seus amigos
intelectuais e membros da Accademia degli Invaghiti1. Foi o fim de uma longa busca,
cujo início pode-se datar em 1483, quando se encenou – igualmente em Mântua – o
primeiro drama profano em língua italiana, coincidentemente também uma fábula de
Orfeu, da autoria de Angelo Poliziano.
Da Favola di Orfeo de Poliziano até Striggio e Monteverdi, a busca passou por
mascherate, balletti, intermezzi com ou sem prólogo, fábulas pastorais e comédias
madrigalescas. Foram procurados nomes para o novo gênero, tais como dramma in musica,
favola in musica ou opera in musica, e, no cadinho de influências estéticas e filosóficas
tomaram parte filósofos gregos clássicos e helenistas, literatos e tragediógrafos romanos,
teólogos medievais, escolásticos, historiadores, poetas que escreviam em italiano,
compositores e teóricos da música, filólogos, alquimistas e nigromantes.
O resultado foi a confluência de todas as correntes, do Neoplatonismo renascentista,
do Aristotelismo, de teorias simpáticas acerca da ordem do universo e das leis das
transformações alquímicas – tudo isso, bem entendido, harmonizado com a doutrina cristã
–, resultando em apaixonadas discussões sobre qual deveria ser o papel da poesia, qual o
da música e o da emoção em uma nova forma artística que, esperava-se, pudesse trazer
de volta à vida a tragédia dos antigos gregos. E a questão a que se propunha resolver era:
como restituir à música o mítico poder que, a julgar pelos documentos dos antigos, ela
havia possuído em priscas eras?

Ese trabajo se propone a investigar las influencias estéticas que formaron el concepto de seconda prattica en la ópera Orfeo, una favola in musica (1607), de Claudio Monteverdi. El Orfeo nació de conceptos y tradiciones que, venidas desde la Antigüedad, han sido releídas y transformadas por los teóricos florentinos del comienzo del siglo XVII en una nueva forma de expresión. El resultado del trabajo de Claudio Monteverdi y de su libretista Alessandro Striggio representó la junción de muchas corrientes: el Neoplatonismo del Renacimiento, el Aristotelismo, las teorías simpáticas acerca del orden del universo y de las leyes de las transmutaciones alquímicas – todo eso, por supuesto, en harmonía con la doctrina cristiana -, apasionadas discusiones sobre el papel de la poesía y el de la música un una nueva forma de arte que, así se añoraba, podría dar nueva vida a la tragedia de los antiguos griegos. La cuestión que se proponía a resolver era: como hacer para restituir a la música el mítico poder que había poseído en la Antigüedad?

Orpheus and Eurydice’s myth has inspired many composers and librettists since Renaissance until present times, and was at the birth of one of the first known operas, the Euridice by J. Peri and G. Caccini. In this paper the author studies the influence of this myth in two of the most significant operas of modern repertoire: L’Orfeo by C. Monteverdi, and Orfeo ed Euridice by C. W. Gluck, bearing in mind the classical version established by Ovid and Virgil. Each opera has two distinct purposes: Monteverdi and Striggio’s work reflects a diligent care about the Classical World and its conceptions; Gluck and Cazalbigi’s effort is to use the myth’s text as a pretext for singing an overwhelming passion.

Baroque opera was invented on a deathly premise: reviving a tradition of sung ancient tragedy that had in fact never existed. Modern historiography has struggled with the notion of origins, focusing on relationships among the surviving textual sources to make sense of the proliferation of theatrical subjects. These relationships remain important—but there is also reason to delve deeper into the “haunted” status of early opera. With respect to three central works on the subject of Agrippina and her son Nero (Nerone fatto Cesare, Noris-Perti, Venice 1693; Agrippina, Noris-Magni, Milan 1703; and L’Agrippina, Handel-[Grimani], Venice 1709), the haunted status of performances was made explicit, both in the drama and in contemporary poems dedicated to the main singers.
Using terminology associated with the “spectral turn” in the humanities, this essay argues for rethinking operatic genealogies through the lens of hauntological intertextualities. In contrast to traditional theories of compositional influence, this study adopts a non-linear historiographical approach to performance genealogies, embracing text, music, and discourse about opera itself. Contesting the use of the concept of “origins” with respect to both the birth and subject matter of baroque opera, I argue that the genre developed as an already haunted narration.

For all the progress that has been made toward a more sympathetic understanding of Monteverdi’s Marinism, musicologists have yet to conquer their own bias against Marino as anti-Petrarchan poet. Such bias has prevented an understanding of the Marinist quality of the Seventh Book of Madrigals in the broader context of Monteverdi’s well-known experiments with the very concept of the book of madrigals as musical canzoniere. This essay proposes to rethink Monteverdi’s Seventh Book of Madrigals via the poetics that informs the poetry of Marino’s La lira; specifically, Marino’s idiosyncratic approach to the ideology of Petrarchism. From this new vantage point—which takes heed of more recent scholarship on Marino by literary historians—one may see the Seventh Book as an experimental work leading to a new musical canzoniere form that directly emanates from Marino’s re-use of Petrarchan form.

The paper focuses on the sources of and existing links between the Aristotelian rhetoric and monodic music in late Renaissance and first Baroque in Italy. It describes a practice well know as "Recitar cantando", practice which will soon be changed in "Affektenlehre".

La ricchezza e la precisione delle indicazioni strumentali nell'Orfeo di Monteverdi ci mostrano un uso degli strumenti che segue da un lato gli affetti, dall'altro l'idea drammaturgica, oltre a una funzione imitativa ricca di madrigalismi strumentali e timbrici.

The Plot

Vincenzo Gonzaga II, reigning Duke of Mantua from 1587-1612, desires that his musical establishment be one of the finest in Italy. Hearing of an extraordinary singer in Naples who accompanies herself on the harp (on which instrument she is known to be an acclaimed virtuoso), he begs her to enter his service. To achieve his aim, since she does not seem to immediately disposed to comply, he brings diplomatic pressure to bear upon the Prince of Stigliano - who employs her doctor husband Muzio Baroni - and then, on the Vice-Regals of Naples. To negotiate this matter, Vincenzo sends an emissionary to Naples, a certain Ottavio Gentile. Since Vincenzo still finds no sign of acquiescence from Adriana, even with the help of Gentile, he requests his wife - the long-suffering Eleonora de Medici - to send her own supplication to Adriana, She at last agrees to come, and departs for Mantua, accompanied by the whole Basilieria: her complacent husband Muzio Baroni, two brothers (at least one a musician), her sister Vittoria, and her children. Halting in Rome on her way north, Adriana performs before Vincenzo’s second son, Cardinal Ferdinando, resident in that city. Ferdinando, who is an acclaimed poet and composer, falls prey to her insidious musical charms, and sends glowing reports back to Mantua. Adriana herself is by no means insensible to the ‘cardinal virtues’ of Ferdinando: their subsequent correspondence is decidedly flirtatious (and, we are inclined to think, perhaps not entirely ‘virtuous’). On reaching Florence, she is heard by a group of formidable musicians in that city: Bardi, Fontanelli etc .. who report to to Mantua that she can ‘read from the book’ most excellently, and that her skills are applauded.
        Reaching Mantua with her extended family in the heat of the summer of 1610, Adriana enters Vincenzo’s musical harem (Cardinal Ferdinando makes an admirably discreet diplomatic retreat, although he continues to send her his compositions for her judgement and performance). Duke Vincenzo showers Adriana with jewels, fine dresses, vast sums of money, and - eventually - the baronetcy of Piancerreto in Monferrato. After Vincenzo’s death in 1612 and the succession of his son Francesco, Cardinal Ferdinando tries to bring Adriana to Rome, for his own service. But Duke Francesco dies after less than a year, and Ferdinando unexpectedly succeeds to the Duchy of Mantua. Under his reign, Adriana and her sisters (a second sister Margherita has joined them in Mantua) enjoy highly successful musical careers. - In XXXX she moves to Rome, with her two daughters.  "La bella Adriana" will be immortalised, together with her sisters and daughters, by the publication of an infinite number of tributes from both poets and musicians alike.
          The music that we offer in this concert celebrating this extraordinary musician traces her passage from Naples to Mantua by offering a selection of works from the city of departure, the cities where she stayed on her way north, and her eventual destination. But it also offers - perhaps for the first time in posterity - a performance of some musical settings of poetic tributes in honour of la bella Adriana - the Sirena di Posilipo - composed and left for posterity by some notable musicians of her time.

Studio sulle modalità seguite dall'Accademico Gian Francesco Busenello (1598-1659) nel rappresentare la figura di Seneca nel libretto della Incoronazione di Poppea, musicato da Claudio Monteverdi, con particolare attenzione all'utilizzo fatto delle fonti antiche relative alla vicenda rappresentata.

Director del taller “Taller vocal de interpretación de música barroca: las Vísperas de Monteverdi desde las fuentes originales”, (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, campus “Antonio Mahado” de Baeza, del 3 al 5 de diciembre de 2018), junto con Fernando Pérez Valera (Universidad de Alicante).
El presente taller, de carácter teórico-práctico, se centrará en el estudio y montaje, desde una perspectiva históricamente informada, de una de las obras más emblemáticas de la historia de la música universal: las Vísperas de la Virgen (1610) de Claudio Monteverdi. Se trata de un taller experimental en el que se recreará el método de trabajo de una capilla vocal de principios del siglo XVII, leyendo las Vísperas a partir de la notación original contenida en los libretes impresos de 1610. Por otro lado, la sección de canto llano que complementa el oficio de Vísperas (antífonas a los salmos) también se estudiará y se trabajará sobre fuentes contemporáneas italianas o españolas. Ello implica, en primer lugar, experimentar el solfeo histórico (solmisación), entre otros aspectos de la práctica interpretativa histórica, atendiendo a los tratados de teoría musical de ese periodo, además de a las propias fuentes musicales originales. Entre otros, se prestará especial atención a los siguientes temas:
1. Aspectos generales de interpretación a partir de fuentes originales:
- Solmisación. El hexacordo y las mutaciones. La mano guidoniana y el gamut.
- Notación mensural: figuras y pausas. El tactus. Figuras con punto y síncopas; figuras ligadas. El color. Proporción tripla y sesquialtera
- Contrapunto, texturas, cánones y cláusulas.
- Música ficta: ajuste intervalos perfectos armónicos y melódicos; fórmulas cadenciales.
- Conceptos de ornamentación y su puesta en práctica, tanto en el canto llano como en la polifonía, de acuerdo con los criterios estéticos del momento y a partir de las referencias que se encuentran en tratados de la época.

2. Aspectos performativos de las Vísperas de Monteverdi:
- Reconstrucción de las antífonas de canto llano que acompañan a los salmos
- Estructura general de la parte polifónica: obras basadas en cantus firmus y obras libremente compuestas. 
- Estilos de canto: obras para solistas y a varios coros.
- Cuestiones de ornamentación e improvisación. 
- Otras dimensiones interpretativas: pronunciación, tempo, transportes y afinación.

Puesto que el taller es principalmente práctico, se dirige fundamentalmente a músicos (cantantes, directores de coro, musicólogos especializados en música antigua) interesados en acercarse a este repertorio desde una nueva perspectiva.

This article examines the temporal structure of L’Orfeo’s prologue. An analysis of the distribution of semibreves per line of text reveals a palindrome, which reinforces long-held perceptions of symmetry in the opera. Adopting the form of strophic variations, Monteverdi carefully shapes musical time for expressive and structural purposes. He is thus able both to enact and to check music’s affective power within the context of seconda prattica. More than a conventional prologue, La Musica’s exordium stands as an emblem of both L’Orfeo and the anxiety surrounding the nascent dramma per musica.

Claudio Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640) constitutes a unique source for understanding Venetian norms concerning the nature of marriage, love, and the emergence of public opera as a popular form of entertainment in 17th-century Venice.  Monteverdi’s first foray into public opera demonstrates the composer’s ability to adapt to shifting expectations from the audience while fulfilling his own personal aesthetic.  This study seeks to understand the plurality of meanings embodied in a particular character, Queen Penelope, in an effort to recover period listening practices and receptions of operatic character.  In the historiography of Il ritorno studies, Penelope acquires a degree of autonomy more closely correlated to her Homeric counterpart than her textual and musical treatment suggests.  Augmented by an investigation of the social conditions and aesthetic shifts of the time, a study of Penelope’s music in its dramatic contexts reveals a systematic objectification of her character.  By examining these representations as deliberate actions of the composer, one concludes that the opera focuses on women as objectified symbols worthy of pity rather than representatives of chastity, prudence, or constancy.

The 1623 publication of Procopius’ Secret History shocked the scholarly world. The ancient historian’s rejection of his official account of the reign of Justinian I forced humanists to reflect on the general reliability of historical sources. The article suggests that Giovan Francesco Busenello’s libretto L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643) reflects the challenge posed by Procopius’ book. Though its portrayal of historical figures adheres to Tacitus’ Annals, it plays with the possibility that even Tacitus himself was deceived by Machiavellian rulers. Did he, for example, condemn Nero and Poppaea while praising Octavia because this was the truth, or because Octavia was, in fact, a superior politician who had managed to craft a favourable epitaph for herself?

As construções musicais utilizadas por Claudio Monteverdi,  mais do que uma maneira de organizar o discurso musical, refletem uma proposta dramatúrgica do compositor, no que concerne ao re-significado do texto. O texto poético, com seu significado próprio, ao ser reorganizado em suas repetições, em diversas tessituras vocais, sobreposições textuais e outros procedimentos composicionais próprios da seconda pratica, notadamente aqueles que são utilizados para a construção das melodias e encontros harmônicos, externa um significado novo, muitas vezes distante do original puramente literário. Monteverdi, ao elaborar processos melódicos com soluções distintas daquelas palestrinianas, com seu modo peculiar e individual de tratar as dissonâncias (melódicas e harmônicas), constrói uma nova dramaturgia  e aponta suas próprias possibilidades interpretativas.

The article reads Sigmund Freud and Claudio Monteverdi’s understanding of musicality, its affinity with rhetoric, and the way this relation informs their individual oeuvres. Both Monteverdi and Freud, each in his own way, were condemned to live with an aversion to musicality that strengthened their hermeneutics of psychic and discursive disturbance. Through the specific rhetorical figure of the musical lament found in psychoanalytical discourse, the article demonstrates the way dissonances implicate opera, the madrigal, and the talking-cure, making aporetic claims, especially in the face of Freud’s self-attestation—his resolute conviction that he was “ganz unmusikalisch”—which astonishingly matches Monteverdi’s own resistance to music.

Matsumoto, Naomi. 'The Operatic Mad Scene: Its Origins and Early Development up to c. 1700' (PhD Dissertation, University of London, 2005).

This thesis investigates the origins of the operatic mad scene, its development up to c.1700, and questions of its definition and meaning. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the traditions behind musico-theatrical portrayals of insanity from ancient times through to the Renaissance, and in Chapter 3 seventeenth-century Italian examples of “mad” operas are codified and examined. Chapters 4 – 6 discuss the dissemination of the “mad” opera through France, England, Spain, Germany and Austria, and the relevant indigenous musical and theatrical conventions of each country are discussed.
        Having reconstructed the surviving repertory, in Chapters 7 and 8, the textual, prosodic, behavioural and musical topoi used in association with such works are examined. The difficulties of attempting to establish purely musical signifiers for operatic insanity are demonstrated, and other means of approaching a definition are suggested. In Chapter 8, the forms and uses of aria, recitative, recitative soliloquy and arioso are analysed, and their contributions to the musical characterisation of the insane explored. In Chapter 9 the insights already gained are brought together in a case study of Iro from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria.
        The final chapter attempts to construct a typology of madness in seventeenth century opera based partly on literary criteria. It theorises the notion of fictive truth as a contract between the audience, the composer and librettist, and the protagonist on the stage. Next, the functions of mad characters within the plots are analysed in relation to the distinctive dramaturgical effects achieved by “fictive personalities”, “roles” and “character-types”. Finally, there is an attempt to locate our understanding of madness in opera within wider critical horizons, and to explain the cultural work that mad scenes do for us, as we listen to examples from the historically situated traditions of opera.

Today’s concert takes its point of departure from Tasso’s epic La Gerusalemme liberata: from its tales of Erminia amongst the shepherds, and her tears over what she believes to be the body of Tancredi; the pagan warrior Clorinda, who saves the Christians Sofronia and Olindo, about to be burnt at the stake; the maga Armida, who came upon the sleeping knight Rinaldo in her enchanted garden, and becomes enamoured of him, but is abandoned soon after their idyll. Composers have drawn on Tassos’ epic for their inspiration from even before the work was published in its authorized form. Since the late 16th century the epic has been an inexhaustible source of texts and themes for madrigals, monodies, chamber cantatas and operas - for works composed until even as late as our own time. But in today's concert we will focus on the music which was composed in Italy within the first five decades subsequent to its publication, from the first composer known to have set its ottave - the Flemish Giaches de Wert, employed at the court of Mantua, who had personal contact with Tasso - to the great masters of the Italian Baroque, Monteverdi, Marini and Mazzocchi, who have left us works of outstanding beauty and interest. One need only think of Monteverdi’s innovative Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, or Marini’s enchanting La Bella Erminia, with its echo lament, to perceive the importance of this repertoire. That there is a particular focus on the Roman composers of the early Baroque period in today’s concert is by no means a coincidence, for it is intended as a personal, affectionate and grateful homage to the director of Villa I Tatti, Joseph Connors, whose passion for music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods has led him to establish the series of biennial concerts that present early music in the limonaia, to the great joy of our Florentine and international public. Music has never flowered at I Tatti so rigorously as in these last eight years.

Pryer, Anthony J.. November 2012. Claudio Monteverdi: Sacrae Cantiunculae; Madrigali Spirituali; Canzonette a 3 Voci. Cremona (Italy): Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi. ISBN 9788886288361.

This edition brings together the three earliest printed collections of music in Claudio Monteverdi’s output – the Sacrae Cantiunculae (1582), the Madrigali Spirituali (1583) and the Canzonette a tre voci (1584). The Sacrae Cantiunculae have never been presented before with a full liturgical commentary, the Madrigali Spirituali have hitherto only appeared in facsimile and without a commentary, and the Canzonette have never been edited so as to display all of the stanzas of the texts underlayed to the music, and with a flexible system of barring that takes proper account of the accentuation of the Italian words. Additionally, these new transcriptions correct numerous notational and textual errors in two earlier editions (1909, 1939), and a substantial ‘Introduction’ provides important new information on the creative context and performance of these items. These collections were clearly designed to demonstrate the precocious ability of the young Monteverdi (he was just fifteen years old in 1582), covering as they do three important, contrasting musical genres – the motet, the spiritual madrigal, and the canzonetta. Moreover, they all date from Monteverdi’s years in Cremona, and the printers, publishers and patrons involved reveal interesting details about exactly how he gained entry to the professional world of music.

Despite recent scholarly interest in Monteverdi's Selva morale et spirituale (1641), many aspects of this large, complex print remain enigmatic, and the intended context for much of the music in the collection has long been a matter of pure conjecture. Yet two of the most anomalous features of the Selva morale, the solo motets Ab aeterno ordinata sum and Pianto della Madonna, can now be placed into the context of the Habsburg court in Vienna during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1637-57). Both of these works play directly into the most important aspects of Habsburg Marian devotion. Ab aeterno is a setting of Proverbs 8:23-31, a text that although very rare for seventeenth-century motets would nonetheless have been widely understood as a celebration of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. The Pianto, a Latin contrafactum of Monteverdi's celebrated Lamento d'Arianna, would have been perfectly suited for the Habsburgs' Fifteen Mysteries Celebration, a Lenten devotion in praise of the Most Holy Rosary. Various types of evidence, including liturgical and other religious writings, Habsburg sermons, and additional musical works, support these interpretations of Monteverdi's motets and reveal their importance to the imperial court. That the composer did indeed include the motets in his print with the Habsburg court in mind is further indicated by similarities between the Selva morale and an earlier publication stemming directly from Ferdinand III's court: Giovanni Felice Sances's Motetti a voce sola of 1638.

The lecture is intended primarily to provide a systematic analysis of the genesis of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, and then, to consider the ways the text was copied and published. The author demonstrates the methodological uncertainties of L’Orfeo’s modern editions, the existence of loss sources and the links between the existing ones, as well as the inconsistency of many musicological myths related to score. He especially seeks to demonstrate the unsustainability of the hypothesis concerning the presence of music by Monteverdi for the last scene instead of the existing in the Amadino printed scores.
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Lo studio si propone anzitutto di fornire una analisi sistematica della genesi de L’Orfeo di Claudio Monteverdi, della storia del suo testo e delle modalità di trasmissione dello stesso, ricostruendo non solo le vicende di testimoni perduti e i legami tra quelli esistenti, ma anche dimostrando le aporie metodologiche presenti nelle moderne edizioni dell’opera, oltre che l’infondatezza di molti miti musicologici legati alla partitura. In particolare si cerca di dimostrare l’insostenibilità dell’ipotesi della presenza di un finale “bacchico” come originariamente musicato da Monteverdi in loco di quello presente nelle stampe Amadino.

In Convolute N, Benjamin claims that both the Arcades Project and the Trauerspielbuch reject a historiography based on the notion of periods of decline. Reflecting on the sonorous dimension of the dialectical image as presented in Convolute N, I suggest allegory as another link between the two works, which I explore in connection to sound and noise through an example from Monteverdi’s Orfeo while remarking on the role of sound in Benjamin.

No, these first steps will not make you a master of Baroque Gesture. But they will create the conditions in which you can study and practise further.

So, whilst you are putting in the time to internalise the collected wisdom of Quintilian, Bulwer & Bonifacio, to memorise the complete works of Shakespeare and/or to translate all the ‘opera’ libretti from Anima e Corpo (1600) to Poppea (1643), to learn all of Negri’s courtly dances, and to become a rapier-master according to Capo Ferro, here are some quick and easy short-cuts, literally from the ground up.