Claudio Monteverdi

Matsumoto, Naomi. 2011. Pio Enea degli Obizzi and the Opera Torneo Genre – Towards an Understanding of the Commercialisation of Early Italian Opera’. The Journal of the Musicological Society of Japan, lvii(1), pp. 56-68. ISSN 00302597

http://www.musicology-japan.org/publish/v57/Matsumoto.pdf

This draft article presents a feminist late-Foucauldian approach to Baroque lament as a confessional mode of theatrical song.  Lament is one of the great expressive modalities of seventeenth-century European musical theater, and in recent decades its ethics and politics have been vigorously debated, particularly in feminist music scholarship.  This debate generally assumes a repression-expression model of the political that values authentic individual expression as freedom and musical eloquence as power.  While this model highlights important aspects of lament, it cannot address the normative violence involved in singing the disappointed self of lament as an abject, feminized subject whose humiliation is, in many cases, associated with intense aesthetic gratification. Nevertheless, not all lament is confessional, and I also point to some marvelous examples from the repertory that present the lamenting self in ways that resist its normative definition, or that can be easily nudged in that direction in performance.  These include Méduse’s lament from Lully’s Persée and Dido’s two laments in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, as well as non-texted instrumental laments.  I conclude that Baroque lament is best understood in its full political ambiguity: as a tactical art of social governance that is also potentially, in Foucault’s words, a critical art “of not being governed quite so much.”

Reception history is not simply a question of compiling a list of performances of a given work, rather it addresses the two-way conversation between two historical periods: the older work sometimes changes the world that has rediscovered it, and vice versa present-day practice integrates and modifies the work in order to be able to enjoy it and make it its own. A comparative reading of twentieth-century transcriptions of Monteverdi’s Orfeo provides a synthesis of such mechanisms, and offers us a point of departure for the history of the rediscovery of early music. The essay suggests seven paradigms of recuperation,which can be subsumed into three strands: (1) discovery: earlymusic has a strong exotic flavor (in a chronological rather than a geographical sense); it is thus a novelty that the public must be allowed to ‘‘taste’’ through careful selection, so that it can above all be enjoyed; (2) re-elaboration: earlymusic can be a sort of gym in which (re)compositional verve can be exercised, with the intention both of renewing aesthetic and emotional reception of works that are too distant from modern sensibility, and of appropriating works that providemany ‘‘open areas’’; (3) restoration: an effort ismade to reproduce themusical text in historically ‘‘correct’’ terms, both editorially and in performance.
The prevalent reception paradigm generally gives more importance to those who provided the ‘‘transcription’’, and the way it was carried out, rather than to the original work. Because of this, an examination of different approaches to some key aspects of Monteverdi’s score, and the interpretation of the clues that emerge from the different solutions, ultimately concerns the study of the poetics, techniques, and performance practices of twentieth-century music.

The Greek myth of Endymion, a shepherd who fell in love with the moon, is attested as early as 200BCE. The moon’s goddess reciprocated, but as writers began to shift the role of lunar deity to Diana, the story grew confusing. How could this goddess, famed for chastity, form half of an iconic couple?

In La Calisto, a 1651 operatic adaptation of the myth, the couple resolve that confusion by agreeing to a romantic, sensual, but sexless relationship. The acts of kissing, and to a lesser extent of caressing and embracing, acquire new weight for them as mutually pleasurable experiences once released from their traditional status as precursors to copulation. More simply, ‘foreplay’ becomes an end (the end) in itself.

This paper suggests that Diana and Endymione thus queer normative concepts of intimacy, and that La Calisto drew on well-known Venetian opera tropes to represent their unconventionality.

Desde su nacimiento a finales del siglo XVI, se han escrito muchas teorías sobre la ópera desde una perspectiva histórica, poética, musicológica, estética, política, entre otras. Sin embargo, no ha existido ningún intento sistemático por organizar estas teorías y plantear la pregunta fundamental: ¿qué es la ópera? Se mostrará que el término “ópera” responde a una idea filosófica, que desborda a cualquier disciplina positiva. De hecho, no existe una idea de ópera, sino varias, algunas de ellas contradictorias entre sí. En este artículo presento una tipología de ideas con base en tres criterios lógicos, que he obtenido tras analizar los propios materiales: la distinción sujeto/objeto, la distinción sincrónico/diacrónico y la distinción singular/plural. Esto ya enseña mucho sobre nuestra forma de entender la ópera, pero también nos obliga a preguntarnos si estas ideas son adecuadas para comprender el género.

In this article author considers three pieces by Andrzej Kwieciński in context of their Mannerist inspiration. At the beginning composer’s earliest output and inspirations are briefly presented. Then there are analysis of two pieces considered as the most important in Kwieciński’s ‘Mannerist turn’: "Sinfonia: Luci nella notte" (2012) and "Canzon de’baci" (2013), and the analysis of the newest composition: "un momento indugiò" (2016). In this paper Mannerism is considered in a wide sense (as in writings of Ernst Curtius and Gustav Hocke) – not as a trend closed in a few decades between Renaissance and Baroque, but as universal mode of expression present in every epoch. Main points of analyses and interpretations are: revealing the inspirations, showing the way composer quotes early music and emphasising the role of those quotations (Dietrich Buxtehude and Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa in "Sinfonia: Luci nella notte", Francesco Cavalli in "Canzon de’baci", Gesualdo and Claudio Monteverdi "in un momento indugiò"). The author focuses not only on external signs of Mannerist and Baroque inspirations such as Italian titles, Italian lyrics (in "Canzon de’baci") and quotations but looks for Mannerist features in music itself (préciosité, deformita, ability to cause a stupore). In conclusion all three compositions by Kwieciński are shown not only as pieces inspired by historical Mannerism but as examples of contemporary Mannerism as well.

Ni simple jeu de sons, ni simple tissu sonore, la musique a une importante dimension psychique, spirituelle et sociale. Autrement dit, une oeuvre musicale n'est pas seulement un artefact autonome, mais aussi un document humain.» De cette thèse découle un vaste plaidoyer pour une «musique humaine», dans l'optique d'une recherche du sens de la musique. Étayée sur des travaux interdisciplinaires et des documents inédits, l'étude de diverses oeuvres du répertoire, de Monteverdi à Alban Berg, montre comment et pourquoi elles peuvent s'entendre et se comprendre comme le langage spécifique de l'amour. Après avoir analysé l'expression musicale de différentes conceptions de l'amour, l'auteur conclut par une mise en garde contre un monde déshumanisé. (C. Floros, Der Mensch, die Liebe und die Musik, 2000)





















   



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Der Mensch, die Liebe und die Musik

In: Venezia Musica e dintorni, maggio 2012, p. 28

See Claudio Monteverdi : Salve Regine del Sig. Claudio Monteverde, ed. by Luigi Collarile. Sala Bolognese (Bologna): Arnaldo Forni Editore, 2011
https://www.academia.edu/21454025/Claudio_Monteverdi_Salve_Regine_del_Sig._Claudio_Monteverde._Sala_Bolognese_Bologna_Arnaldo_Forni_Editore_2011_with_three_newly_discovered_motets_

El Orfeo y la iconografía: introducción. Conversación con Marc Heilbron

Música antiga  en escena: Un  projecte  transversal  coordinat  per Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Susana Egea i Rubén López-Cano.

L'Orfeo favola in musica de Claudio Monteverdi. Docència, recerca, conferències, interpretació, posada en escena (Febrer-Abril  de 2015).

Grup de Recerca en Interpretació i Creació Musicals
(2014 SGR 1382)

Realització: Rubén López-Cano

A survey of the main aspects of  musical patronage in 17th-
century Venice  – those linked, respectively,  to the ruling class, the printing industry and the  theatrical  entrepreneurship –  in the light of  the author’s views on musical patronage  in early modern Italy and  on the basis of letters from  Monteverdi’s and  Carissimi’s epistolaries. Because of an exceeding number of misprints  an ad hoc  list of errata is appended to the  offprint uploaded below.

The main purpose of my dissertation is to characterise selected narratives related to the contemporary (since around 1950) reception of the early modern Venetian music (including both musicology and musical performance). I try to examine examples of Vespers music composed from the 16th to the 18th century, since this kind of repertoire is often associated with the Venetian music practice, particularly with the St. Mark’s church – the most important religious centre of the Serenissima.
Therefore, more than the Venetian music itself I consider here its meanings, contexts and finally myths, which aroused around it in the recent past. One of the crucial question I pose here is to what extent the way scholars, musicians and music producers apply particular terms (such as ‘vespers’, ‘reconstruction’ or even ‘Venice’) can affect the modern perception of the musical past. Despite the use of different tools (musicological or performative), vehicles (academic and popular publications, music albums or concerts) and various approaches to sources (musicological hypothesis and their sonic implementation), the contemporary image of the Venetian music culture constructed by people of different professions may be established by the same myths.

A large quantity of recently published books and articles dedicated to the history of Venetian music deals with corrections of misunderstandings and generalizations made by earlier generations of scholars. ‘Mistakes’ are often inscribed in the capacious and vague category known as the ‘myth’. If I wanted to adopt a similar narrative, I should probably inscribe examined here terms into a such set of myths. However, instead of focusing on the myths themselves I prefer to refer to the meme theory. According to this daring but constantly discussed and improved hypothesis meme is an element of culture, transmitted by non-genetic means and just like the gene ‘tends’ to replicate itself. The best example of memes are words which copying and mutation does not need to be necessarily associated with their understanding. What is innovative and controversial in this theory is that memes are the main beneficiaries of their reproduction.

The first three words from the title impose structure on my dissertation. The text is therefore divided into three parts: ‘memes’, ‘psalms’ and ‘myths’. Names which appear in the title (a sixteenth century composer Adrian Willaert and a present-day conductor John Eliot Gardiner) determine the time frame of the dissertation.

At the beginning of the first part (chapter 1) I characterise chosen narratives connected to polychoral music. Then (chapter 2) I discuss the origins and significance of certain key-words typical for this kind of the repertoire. I examine particularly the Italian term cori spezzati, widely applied by modern scholars and performers.

In the second part of the dissertation I focus entirely on the Vespers music. I begin with the short introduction to the liturgical context of the Vespers service emphasizing particularities of rituals order in the ducal church (chapter 1). Subsequently (chapter 2), I discuss the settings of Vespers psalms possibly connected to St. Mark’s church. They consist of incredibly vast collection of very simple two-choirs compositions written from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and are rarely performed today and almost never mentioned in the modern textbooks. In the last section of this part (chapter 3) I pose a few questions concerning what can be learned about Italian polyphonic Vespers – or rather their contemporary reception – from their recordings, mainly from album covers, assuming that our knowledge of early repertoire is shaped not only by the music itself and by the way it is performed, but also (perhaps in particular) by the methods employed to present it.

The third and the last part of my PhD thesis brings the discussion to another, more theoretical ground. It is entirely dedicated to the term ‘myth of Venice’, well represented in Venetian studies of different specialities. I start with the short history of this notion and its meanings, mainly in historical literature. The main emphasis is placed on the term ‘myth’. By recalling different definitions taken from myth studies I try to prove that in the context of the Venetian historiography the term ‘myth’ functions as a kind of interpretative pass key. What is more, scholars can be sometimes considered as mythmakers rather than mythologists. In the last chapter I track examples of implementations of the term ‘myth of Venice’ into music and musicological contexts.

Link: https://www.esm.rochester.edu/integral/33-2019/morgan/
This article confronts assumptions about how suspensions function and demonstrates how Renaissance suspensions differ from their tonal counterparts. This is primarily due to an additional component in Renaissance suspensions, the perfection phase, which comes immediately after the resolution phase. The difference in the metric structure of Renaissance and tonal suspensions is particularly significant in cases of ternary meter. A corpus study that makes use of the Humdrum Renaissance Dissonance Classifier provides empirical support for the importance of ternary suspensions and their relevance to our understanding of how compositional style changed over the course of the Renaissance. This article also examines dozens of treatises and counterpoint textbooks to highlight some issues with the way that Renaissance suspensions are generally taught and have been taught for centuries.

In recent decades, mimesis has become a critical term for rethinking relationality, difference,
and affect, reconsidered against the notions of artistic autonomy and representation. While
music—and sound in general—seldom feature in these accounts, issues of musical autonomy
and representation (aesthetic and political) in music studies have given way to a concern with
immediacy, relationality, and vibration that bypass a revaluation of the discipline’s own
accounts of mimesis, still understood largely as imitation. I propose a radical revision of mimesis
away from its traditional understanding to bridge these various gaps and to reaffirm the
necessity of thinking of alterity and difference in expanded conceptions of musical relationality.
Music is more central in ancient Greek accounts of mimesis, especially in Plato’s Republic, than
current musicology acknowledges. In close reading of these texts and drawing on the work of
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jacques Derrida (1975), I elaborate a critical methodology to
analyze the logics of mimesis—the mimetologies—as they are deployed in theoretical works and
artistic performances. I propose to understand mimesis in music not as imitation but as (1)
related to the ancient Greek mousikē—the collective performance of sung poetry and dance; (2)
the production of originals out of copies (and not the reverse); (3) the inscription of the ethos
and laws of the community through musical practice; (4) a general process involved in the
production and negotiation of value, identity, and difference. This revaluation of mimesis
challenges narratives of emancipation and discontinuity that continue to privilege a Romantic
philosophy of autonomous music and which fail to offer rigorous accounts of music’s social
inscription. In close dialogue with musicological and philosophical historiography, I focus on the
Artusi-Monteverdi controversy, the Medici intermedi of 1589, and early operas, Peri’s L’Euridice
(1600) and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607). As a mimetic performance, music does not mirror or
represent social orders but participates in their production and regulation. I conclude that early
modern spectacle and opera employed an ethos of allegrezza to inscribe the laws of a
patriarchal society in which sovereign power was preserved across Europe through marriage ties
and strictly male inheritance.

Scopo della presente comunicazione è indagare il contesto editoriale che ha fatto da cornice alla pubblicazione di un’importante – da poco ritrovata – silloge di musica monodica pubblicata a Venezia nel 1613 per i tipi di Bartolomeo Magni: Orfeo, musiche de diversi autori eccellentissimi. Attraverso un’attenta analisi della stampa e del suo contenuto viene delineata la storia editoriale di un testimone straordinario, capace di gettare nuova luce sulla diffusione e sullo sviluppo della 'nuova musica' monodica a Venezia nel primo scorcio del Seicento.

Publication in preparation

Música antiga  en escena: Un  projecte  transversal  coordinat  per Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Susana Egea i Rubén López-Cano.

L'Orfeo favola in musica de Claudio Monteverdi. Docència, recerca, conferències, interpretació, posada en escena (Febrer-Abril  de 2015).

Van participar en aquest documental:
Marc Heilbron, Xavier Díaz-Latorre, Paco Rubio i Rubén López-Cano.

Grup de Recerca en Interpretació i Creació Musicals
(2014 SGR 1382):
Melissa Mercadal
Sofía Martínez
Susana Egea
Oriol Saña
Xavier Díaz-Latorre
Joaquim Rabaseda
Enric Guaus
Rubén López-Cano


Realització: Rubén López-Cano

L'Orfeo: La parola,  padrona  della  musica. Métrica. Conversación con Paco Rubio.

Música antiga  en escena: Un  projecte  transversal  coordinat  per Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Susana Egea i Rubén López-Cano.

L'Orfeo favola in musica de Claudio Monteverdi. Docència, recerca, conferències, interpretació, posada en escena (Febrer-Abril  de 2015).

Grup de Recerca en Interpretació i Creació Musicals
(2014 SGR 1382)

Realització: Rubén López-Cano

Kurset afholdes i forårssemestret 2016 som musikvidenskabeligt emne med analyse, 14 fredage kl. 8-12.

Med udgangspunkt i fire forskellige historiske punktnedslag vil vi undersøge to genrer i europæisk vokalmusik fra den voldsomt bevægede periode ca. 1600 til 1650. De to genrer er madrigal og motet, som på henholdsvis verdsligt og kirkeligt grundlag i særlig grad eksponerer det kunstneriske samspil mellem musik og tekst.

Dette samspil diskuteres bl.a. ud fra to af barokmusikkens centrale begreber, seconda prattica og musica poetica. Med omvendt kronologisk progression er de fire nedslag musik af to tyske og to italienske komponister, nemlig Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein, Claudio Monteverdi og Carlo Gesualdo.

Kurset forløber i forelæsninger med tilhørende analyseøvelser samt seminarer med studenteroplæg. Desuden søges inddraget aktiviteter med eksterne bidrag i form af koncertudflugt, workshop med gæster o.lign.

Kursusinformation

Sprog Dansk
Point 15 ECTS
Niveau Bachelor
Varighed 1 semester
Placering
Forår
Skemagruppe
Forår
Kursuskapacitet max. 40
Studienævn Studienævnet for Kunst- og Kulturvidenskab

This study is concerned with what is to be gained by performers and scholars if the dramatic charge of Lamento d’Arianna by O. Rinuccini and C. Monteverdi was re-created with historically informed rhetorical gesture – an element of the representative theatrical style practised at the time of the lament’s premiere. The research contributes in a unique way to historically informed performance practice as well as to the literature on Lamento d’Arianna using multiple methods of performative research informed by historical source materials and work with musicians who specialize in baroque music, an expert in rhetorical gesture and the author as production dramaturg. Video footage, images, excerpts from the final score with gesture notation and this article offer an insight into the aesthetic and practice of early recitative artistry through reflexive writing that places the performance within relevant musicological discourses and scrutinizes auditory and visual elements of delivery.

This dissertation offers a reading of Alessandro Striggio and Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo as a reflection of the Accademia degli Invaghiti's humanist philosophy, focusing on the topics of oratory and symmetry. Additionally, this study offers new insight on the Invaghiti's views regarding music's power and its function in theatrical representation that helps to reconcile apparent disparities between the view of this work as a "hymn" to music's greatness and the failures of the musical protagonist. For example, on the subject of oratory--which served as one of the group's primary areas of study--I demonstrate how Orpheus's failure to persuade Charon through his aria-oration, "Possente spirto", results not only from his exhibitionism and affectation, but as suggested in academy member Stefano Guazzo's writings, his substitution of clever sophistries and musical brilliance for morally sound arguments and modest displays of ability. On the topic of symmetry--which was commonly associated with beauty during the period--I demonstrate how this formal design was used to project the "beauty" of moral uprightness, reflective the academy's Neoplatonic motto, "Nothing is more beautiful than virtue" (e.g., the symmetries of the first act representing Eurydice's "morally upright" decision to relent from her disdain for Orpheus's love, a "female vice" addressed by several of the academy members). I also consider the subject of gendering in relation to both of these topics, asserting that the marginalization of female characters not only "silences" them, but also creates an Aristotelian structure found in academy member Ercole Udine's narrative, La Psiche, that draws focus to the protagonist's inherently gendered character flaws (in this case, "male" flaws such as pride and fits of romantic despair). I expect this research to contribute to discussions on the impact of humanism on the development of early opera, giving much-needed attention to the views and practices of the group that sponsored Orfeo's creation.

In this article, I’m looking again at what Caccini actually wrote in his famous Preface to Le Nuove Musiche (Florence 1601/2), separating the facts from popular myths.

Actually, he only mentions sprezzatura twice, in the whole Preface. He only uses it once, in all his extensive music examples. Sprezzatura was not his priority. Sprezzatura was applied only to whatever did not matter. In contrast, he talks much more about divisions and  exclamations, and he uses these much more in his example songs. His priorities were text and rhythm.

But there is one other concept that he discusses far more than any other. Caccini’s text is dominated by the interlinked concepts of affetto (passion, or a passionate ornament) and effetto (a passionate ornament or the effect of such an ornament on the listener’s passions). He mentions affetto and its derivatives 32 times: include the 8 occurrences of effetto, and this interlinked concept has 40 hits. There is also an exclamatione affettuosa in the first of the three example songs.

This suggests that what is really ‘new’ about the nuove musiche is Caccini’s focus on passion (affetto), combined with the linking of such passion to a particular class of ornaments (affetti/effetti) and to the emotional effect on the listener (effetto).

Caccini does not equate sprezzatura with free rhythm.

The priorities for Caccini and the Camerata are Text & Rhythm. Sound is the lowest priority. Castiglione indicates that sprezzatura is applied to low-priority elements, suggesting that Caccini’s sprezzatura should be applied to Sound. Caccini’s phrases are sprezzatura di canto and canto in sprezzatura. He associates sprezzatura with ‘almost speaking’.

Caccini’s sprezzatura is a nonchalant voice-production that is ‘almost speaking’.

In light of generally derogatory assessments of the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625) by modern scholars, this essay reassesses Monteverdi's approach to Marino's poetry, arguing that the composer was indeed able to expose hidden depths beneath the sensuous surface of the poems. The author does this not by examining all of Monteverdi's Marino settings but by focusing on a discrete set of four works on the time-honored theme of the kiss from the seventh book of madrigals: 'Eccomi pronta ai baci,' 'Perché fuggi tra' salci,' 'Vorrei baciarti, o Filli,' and 'Tornate, o cari baci.'

Several scholars have addressed the use symmetry in Alessandro Striggio and Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo, focusing primarily on localized symmetrical shapes within the first act, the symmetrical placement of the plot's corresponding events (e.g., Eurydice's first and second deaths in Acts II and IV, respectively), and associations between these symmetrical forms and physical beauty, as articulated in Marsilio Ficino's Neoplatonic philosophy. However, these studies have not addressed the possible impact of analogous symmetrical models in literary works admired by the Accademia degli Invaghiti--for whom Orfeo was composed, and of which librettist Alessandro Striggio was a member-- including works from Antiquity, and contemporary works modeled after these ancient texts. In this way, these studies have not considered how Orfeo's symmetries manifest the most common activity among humanists like the Invaghiti, namely the study and emulation of Classical sources.

By comparing Orfeo's symmetrical structures to those found in three such literary works, I demonstrate how this opera illustrates this humanist inclination, reflective of the Invaghiti's Neoplatonic views (the latter articulated in their recorded conversations, and expressed in their motto, "nothing more beautiful than virtue"). These literary models include Virgil's Aeneid, which was translated into Italian by academy member Ercole Udine in 1597; Udine's rendition of the myth of Psyche (Psiche, 1599); and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, which according to Mantuan chronicler Eugenio Cagnani was "deeply admired" in Mantua. All of these works feature symmetrical structures similar to those found in Orfeo, including the arrangement of the plot's corresponding events (e.g., Psyche's removal and subsequent return to her home in the second and penultimate cantos of Psiche, respectively), as well as localized symmetrical shapes which emphasize key events (e.g., the symmetrical arrangement of speeches on corresponding subjects around Dido's abandonment in the Aeneid).

In Striggio's libretto, the placement of corresponding events at key proportional markers within this structure (in particular the center of individual acts, as well as the entire work) emphasizes the allegorical duality of hope and despair, as the protagonist moves back and forth between these opposing emotional states. Monteverdi underscores these contrasting emotions through his association of hope with G-Mollis, and despair with A-Durus. For example, both the 1607 libretto and the 1609 score are precisely centered on the Dantean allusion, “Abandon all hope, you that enter,” uttered twice by the allegorical character Hope, first over G-Mollis, then A-Durus. Hope then abandons Orpheus, creating a powerful representation of the "abandonment of hope" to despair. In sum, this study contributes to discussions on the impact of humanist and academic culture on the development of early opera, giving much-needed attention to the Invaghiti's impact on this foundational work.