Three decades in Venice

When the maestro di cappella—that is, the director of music—of St. Mark’s in Venice died, Monteverdi was invited to take his place, after an audition of some of his music in the basilica. He finally took up his appointment in the autumn of 1613.

He was appointed largely because the musical establishment of St. Mark’s was in need of an experienced director after some years of decline. The last of the native Venetian composers of any distinction, Giovanni Gabrieli, had recently died. Although Monteverdi had not been primarily a church musician, he took his duties extremely seriously and within a few years completely revitalized the music in the basilica. He hired new assistants (including two future composers of note, Francesco Cavalli and Alessandro Grandi), wrote much church music, and insisted on daily choral services. He also took an active part in music making elsewhere in the city, directing the music on several occasions for the fraternity of S. Rocco, an influential philanthropic brotherhood, on the annual festival of its patron saint.

His letters in those early years in Venice reveal a complete change in his state of mind from what it was in Mantua. He felt fulfilled and honoured, well (and regularly) paid, and he seems to have been reasonably prolific. He kept up his links with Mantua, largely because there was little chance of producing opera in Venice, while opportunities came quite regularly from the Gonzaga court. In his correspondence, a philosophy of dramatic music emerges that was not only to mold Monteverdi’s later work but also to influence the history of opera in general. The older type of opera had developed, on the one hand, from the Renaissance intermezzo—a short, static musical treatment, often allegorical and with scenery, of a subject from the play with which it was given, emphasizing the wishes of the gods; and, on the other hand, from the pastoral, with its highly artificial characterizations of shepherds and shepherdesses. Monteverdi, however, was increasingly concerned with the expression of human emotions and the creation of recognizable human beings, with their changes of mind and mood. Thus, he wished to develop a greater variety of musical means, and in his seventh book of madrigals (1619) he experimented with many new devices. Most were borrowed from the current practices of his younger contemporaries, but all were endowed with greater power. There are the conversational “musical letters,” deliberately written in a severe recitative melody in an attempt to match the words. The ballet Tirsi e Clori, written for Mantua in 1616, shows, on the contrary, a complete acceptance of the simple tunefulness of the modern aria.

His attempt to create a practical philosophy of music went on throughout the 1620s, leading to still further stylistic innovations. Following ideas derived from Plato, he divided the emotions into three basic kinds: those of love, war, and calmness. Each of these could be expressed by differing rhythms and harmonies. A further ingredient in his theories was a frank acceptance of realism—the imitating of the sounds of nature in various ways. All these ideas are to be found in his dramatic cantata, The Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda (1624), a setting of a section of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. In this work, the rapid reiteration of single notes in strict rhythms and the use of pizzicato—plucking strings—to express the clashing of swords show important steps forward in the idiomatic use of stringed instruments.

These trends were continued in a comic opera, Licoris Who Feigned Madness, probably intended for the celebrations of the accession of Duke Vincenzo II of Mantua in 1627. The score has been lost, but a sizable correspondence survives. At that time, Monteverdi suffered more anxiety since his elder son, Massimiliano, had been imprisoned in Bologna, where he was a medical student, for reading books banned by the Inquisition. It took some months before he was finally cleared of the charge. In the same year, 1628, Monteverdi also fulfilled a commission to write music for the intermezzi to Tasso’s L’Aminta and for a tournament given in Parma in celebration of the marriage of Duke Odoardo Farnese to Margherita de’ Medici.

Monteverdi and his family seemed to have emerged unscathed from the plague that broke out in 1630, and Monteverdi himself took holy orders during this period. He wrote a grand mass for the thanksgiving service in St. Mark’s when the epidemic was officially declared over in November 1631. The “Gloria” from it still survives and shows him applying some of the theories concerning the diversity of mood suggested by the words. Both this and some other church music probably written about this time, however, show a calm and majestic approach rather than the passion of his earlier years. A book of lighthearted songs and duets published in the following year is much the same. There is also a detached quality about much of the music in the final collection of his madrigals assembled by Monteverdi himself in 1638. A vast retrospective anthology of music dating from 1608 onward, it sets out to display Monteverdi’s theories, as its title, Madrigals of War and Love, denotes.

Though this collection, put together when Monteverdi was more than 70 years old, might seem the end of his career, chance played a part in inspiring him to an Indian summer of astonishing productivity: the first public opera houses opened in Venice in 1637. As the one indigenous composer with any real experience in the genre, he naturally was involved with them almost from the beginning. L’Arianna was revived again, and no fewer than four new operas were composed within about three years. Only two of them have survived in score—The Return of Ulysses to His Country and The Coronation of Poppea—and both are masterpieces. Although they still retain some elements of the Renaissance intermezzo and pastoral, they can be fairly described as the first modern operas. Their interest lies in revealing the development of human beings in realistic situations. There are main plots and subplots, allowing for a great range of characters—the nobility, their servants, the evil, the misguided, the innocent, the good. The music expresses their emotions with astonishing accuracy. Monteverdi shows how the philosophy of music evolved during his early years in Venice could be put to use, using all the means available to a composer of the time, the fashionable arietta (i.e., a short aria), duets, and ensembles, and how they could be combined with the expressive and less fashionable recitative of the early part of the century. The emphasis is always on the drama: the musical units are rarely self-contained but are usually woven into a continual pattern, so that the music remains a means rather than an end. There is also a sense of looking toward the grand climax of the drama, which inspires a grand scena for one of the main singers, Ulisse, Nero, or Poppea. At the same time, there are enough memorable melodies for the opera to seem musically attractive.

With these works Monteverdi proved himself to be one of the greatest musical dramatists of all time. That he was held in the highest esteem by his Venetian employers is shown by their gifts of money in these last years and by their granting him leave to travel to his native city in the last few months of his life. The Venetian public showed its esteem at his funeral, when after his death following a short illness, he was buried in the Church of the Frari, where a monument to him remains.