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Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Monteverdi Vespers oae released and really cemented my path on the road towards Monteverdi often sets the text in that way. I took ‘early music’. Ever since then I have wanted to the decision therefore to blend low tenors with direct performances of it and play it as many times high baritones, low baritones with basses, high as possible. It is a work of such beauty and depth tenors with countertenors etc to create more of that such a wide variety of interpretations can be the sound of a choir that can sing both high and Claudio Monteverdi made of it. I would like to explain briefly some of low within its partbooks. Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, 1610 the choices that I made in preparing for this: When we performed this as a concert, Monteverdi’s publication appears as part- I added in liturgical plainchant as I strongly ROBERT HOWARTH Director books and not as a full score. Many editors believe that Monteverdi never conceived these have undertaken the task of putting together as concert pieces but only ever to be heard in the a performing edition and I’m sure they will all church as part of a service, therefore the Psalms acknowledge that none of them are perfect. What would have been preceded by antiphons relevant lies within these books are dark mysterious codes to the day. These do affect the Psalm and the about how to interpret the music. Once an editor context in which they are heard. As we are now has made decisions on your behalf, it is difficult removing ourselves by one step and presenting not to do their version. One thing that does the music as a CD it feels more appropriate I’d like to introduce this CD with a few words become clear is that the choir for which this was to give you Monteverdi’s Psalms and Motets on our live recording. Following a successful tour written was versatile and probably didn’t restrain unframed by chant. However, the Magnificat is in the late spring of 2010, there was a lot of excite- its forces with neat labels like SATB (Soprano, presented with the same two antiphon substitutes ment about this project and many people were Alto, Tenor, Bass). This is evident from the that we had in the concerts. The music for this hoping to find a way of archiving this experi- partbooks whose pitch ranges are often very large. is the wonderful motet Exultent Caeli written by ence. We were all fortunate enough that the We must not forget that gentlemen singers in Monteverdi in Venice about 13 years after the OAE managed to find the resources to make these times were often required to sing not only Vespers, and a violin sonata of Giovanni Battista this possible, and for that I am most grateful. in their normal voices but also in their head voices Fontana who was employed at St. Marks at that A few months after the tour, we reconvened in to sing the high notes. Bearing this in mind, I set time. We have included these not just because the Kings Place, the home of the OAE, for a one-off out to try and stick to the partbooks as much as music is wonderful but because the motet fitted performance to be recorded and released on possible and not move people around from line to the context of the service (Annunciation) and the OAE’s new label and it is an honour and a line in order to keep a more consistent choral tone. because we know that instrumental sonatas were privilege to have been part of that. By doing this, you sometimes end up with lower often used in Mass services to draw the congrega- For me the Vespers is such an important work. voices singing higher in their register, which, tion together in faith at the elevation of the host. It turned my head when I heard it as a teenager to my ears, is more exciting, particularly as I like to think that the Magnificat is just such a focal point of the Vespers service and so I included THE VE SPERS AT 400 stood there and then. Even that, as the performers have an eye on the ‘top job’ – running the music it after the Magnificat for the same reason. Among history’s legions of musical geniuses, on this CD know, had its challenges. at St Mark’s basilica in Venice? Was the Vespers One must listen and engage with Monteverdi’s there are relatively few genuine revolutionaries. a demonstration of musical prowess? Did the music. He writes so brilliantly for the text he’s Those who do achieve that status usually fuse THE OFFICE OF V E SPERS composer knowingly include music in it that was been given. It’s true in his operas and particu- their radical vision of the future with a sound Vespers is the principal evening service of the tailored to the architectural qualities of St Mark’s? larly true in these pieces. I would urge you to understanding of the past. There can be few more Roman church. In Monteverdi’s Europe, it was Probably not. Or at least not intentionally. read the Psalms first, either as an act of faith or obvious proponents of that ability in music than the one daily office always enhanced with music. The Vespers’ musical style doesn’t anticipate that to appreciate them as poetry. Then listen to how Claudio Monteverdi, and the sounds he created in The service combines prescribed responses and which Monteverdi adopted when he eventually Monteverdi interprets them. From the warlike his 1610 Vespers alone would comfortably prove it. psalms with additional hymns and antiphons, and did get the Maestro di Capella job at St Mark’s moments in Dixit Dominus to the blatant sarcasm The Vespers was published in a 1610 volume reaches its apex in the Magnificat – the Virgin in 1613, and research has shown that the in Nisi Dominus and all the joy, love, fury and that contained other music by Monteverdi too Mary’s song of praise to God. composer was actually courting employment exultation in between, the Vespers should leave – most significantly a Mass setting based on One of the central questions hanging over in Rome during 1610. Furthermore, scholars you breathless and enriched. material by his predecessor Nicolas Gombert. This Monteverdi’s Vespers ‘book’ is whether the point to the Vespers’ tailoring to the abilities work saw Monteverdi take no great stylistic leap composer designed the publication as a single and configuration of the musical forces at Robert Howarth, Director, December 2010 forward, but instead demonstrate his total mastery work not to be altered or as more of a resource Mantua. Acoustically, the Ducal Chapel would of the ‘old style’. Pages later in the Vespers, the – a collection of works which could be dipped in have dealt far better with the intricate detailing composer created new-sounding sonorities and and out of. In reality, it was probably conceived as of Monteverdi’s writing. Unaccompanied textures and new ways of responding to written both: written initially for performance as a whole choral music best suited the washy acoustic of texts. But as technically innovative as his writing while proving useful to its composer as a musical St Mark’s, and Monteverdi wrote plenty of it after was, much of it was built on the ancient thematic ‘toolkit’ according to liturgical need. he was appointed there (though he did also revive patterns of plainsong. the Vespers). Performing the Vespers in 2010, the THE V E SPERS AND musicians and singers of the OAE had the benefit MONTEV ERDI’S CAREER MONTEV ERDI AND TEXT of heightened perspective, more (though still Folklore has long labelled Monteverdi’s ‘Monteverdi was passionate about us being not enough) contextual evidence and a greater Vespers the most elaborate job application in moved by sacred texts as much as operatic appetite for surrounding research and debate. history. Its creator was born in Cremona and ones’, says Robert Howarth. The composer had Who knows how the Vespers will be viewed on its trained as a chorister in the town before becoming contemporary taste on his side: in the 1580s an five-hundredth birthday, or even if this recorded a string player in the court at Mantua in 1590. artistic movement born in Florence had sought snapshot of it will exist? In 2010 many musicians Some claim that as the new century dawned, to rid music of multi-layered polyphony in order celebrated this masterpiece, striving to understand Monteverdi had itchy feet and was desperate to that words became discernable when sung. In it in the context of their musical aesthetics as they broaden his horizons outside Mantua. Did he following this doctrine, the Florentine Camerata effectively invented the form of speech-song on the words ‘miseris solamen’. Monteverdi’s unadulterated plainsong theme, launched by the It makes inventive use of plainsong and contains known as ‘recitative’. word-painting might be most obvious in these Second Tenors on the words ‘Dixit Dominus’ and highly evocative reflections of the words it sets. Much of the music for the Vespers falls into motets, but it’s by no means confined to them. imitated by the First and then Second Basses. It’s Across twelve parts it moves from quasi-operatic two categories which themselves form a neat a trick from Monteverdi. But far from devolving ‘scena’ to instrumental ritornelli and multi-voiced pattern.