Venetian Splendour

Grace Davidson

Catherine King

Nicholas Mulroy

Charles Daniels

Howard Croft

Notes

Claudio Monteverdi

“On 24^th, June, the Feast of St John, I was taken to Vespers in the Church of SS Giovanni and Lucia, where I heard the most perfect music I had ever heard in my life. It was directed by the most famous Claudio Monteverdi, who was also the composer.”

This account, made by poet-composer Constantijn Huygens on a visit to Venice in 1620, is one of many such testimonies to the wonders of creativity that greeted tourists to the ‘serene republic’ Our concert tonight aims to relive some of these aural experiences that so astonished such visitors, by focusing on the variety of styles and musical developments of Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi, two giants of their age, working before and after 1600.

This was certainly a Golden Age, where music filled a crucial role in promoting the opulence and mystique of an extrovert city, for Venice saw itself as a divinely appointed state with its own curious customs, unique architecture, Doge and a liturgy independent of Rome.

We open our concert with a reference to one such bizarre rite of passage: the annual enactment of Venice's wedding to the sea, “Lo Sposalizio” Every Ascension Day the Doge rode out of the lagoon in his royal peota (gondola) to throw a gold ring into the Adriatic, as a symbol of Venice's dependence on the sea for trade and expansion. Madrigals such as Andrea Gabrieli's sensual Vieni, vieni Himeneo, calling for blessing from Hymen, the god of love, would have been sung from boats accompanying the Doge in something of a prequel to Handel's Water Music! After our imaginary journey across the lagoon, we arrive in St Mark's Square to move in procession with the Doge and his entourage, a scene depicted so often by Canaletto. Such pomp and circumstance, accompanied by the fanfares of the Doge's own Piffari, was another important custom that propagated the city's fame.

Next, we move into St Mark's Basilica itself, the final resting-place of the apostle's bones, for a festal service of Vespers in honour of the saint. It was for such key days in the Venetian calendar that the most lavish musical spectacles were reserved. At such times, with the Doge in attendance, the pala d'oro, a bejewelled and precious altar-piece, was also displayed. The music was equally dazzling, with the masses forces of Giovanni Gabrieli's motet, Deus qui beatum Marcum, utilising the spezzati stereophonic effects so famously associated with the building. A tradition started by the composer Willaert (c1490-1562), this style sees ideas being thrown to and fro between choirs great and small.

Garieli Giovanni

In contrast, we now hear a small-scale motet, also in praise of saints and martyrs. Written some decades after the Gabrieli setting, Sanctorum meritis comes from Monteverdi's epic 1641 publication “Selva morale e spirituale”, the composer's own compendium of his life's work in Venice. Notice the much lighter, secular feel to the music, very different from the monumentalism of the Gabrieli. Monteverdi was keen to introduce popular musical forms such as dance rhythms, ground-bass patterns and Venetian songs into his style, something akin to introducing rock and pop choruses into today's worship!

Another aspect of Monteverdi's genius (and there are many!) was the versatility of his style, adopting both the strict contrapuntal forms of the stile antico and then contrasting or fusing them with the harmonic and melodic language of the stile moderno. Monteverdi was in fact the main protagonist of this new style, which developed from the declamatory recitative of early opera and opened up fresh horizons for baroque music during the seventeenth century.

The first Vespers psalm, Dixit Dominus, is a great example of Monteverdi's transformation of an older style, retaining as it does the practice of alternatum (exchanges between two voice groups) and also preserving contrapuntal imitation, often based on the original plainsong, yet the expressive intent is forward-looking.

Research has shown that these more reactionary double-choir settings, mostly found in the composer's posthumous 1650 publication, were favoured at St Mark's for particular Solemn Feast Days in the liturgical year.

Curiously, however, much of Monteverdi's output is weighted towards the more modern style of concertato writing, where solo singers and instruments engage in a lively dialogue, and where words become the dominant force or, as Monteverdi himself once said, “music is the mistress”. It seems likely, then, that although he was employed at St Mark's, Monteverdi's settings may have been commissioned for other more flamboyant church festivities in the city. He is certainly known to have been involved in musical rituals for other key saintly protectors of Venice, namely St John the Baptist and St Lorenzo.

It seems that the whole city was awash not only with water but also with music! Musicians and composers were frequently called upon to enhance events held at the various scuole grandi (guilds). These were charitable fraternities with money to spare and both Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi are known to have provided music for the Scuola Rocco in particular. St Rocco, or Roch, was revered for his miraculous healing of plague victims, a particularly pertinent aid to Venice during 1575 and again in 1630. His patronal feast day was recalled by the English traveller and writer Thomas Coryat in 1608 as consisting “principally of Musicke, which was both vocall and instrumentall, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so superexcellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like.., for mine owne part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with St Paul into the third heaven”

Such a sound-spectacular lies behind Gabrieli's 1615 setting of the Jubilate with its kaleidoscopic textures incorporating solo singers, brass and choir. Equally inventive instrumental canzonas, such as the two that we hear tonight, illustrate Gabrieli's groundbreaking developments in instrumental writing during this period.

Tonight's Vespers' music sequence continues with alternating psalm and motet settings taken from both of Monteverdi's 1641 and 1650 publications, which demonstrate a wealth of compositional approaches, so we hear psalm settings cast for duet, solo ensemble, choir and some with a mixture of all three.

The duet version of Confitebor typifies the melodic, declamatory, word-centred style which heralds from the operatic stage, whilst a setting of Beatus vir doffs its cap to the more conservative contrapuntal tradition. Even here, though, notice how Monteverdi dramatises the text with inventive motives and exerts a formal unity through the recurring “beatus vir” theme.

It is, however, perhaps this Laudate, pueri setting which best illustrates Monteverdi's ingenious use of concertato, where solo voices and instruments engage in a playful conversation essentially alternating just two melodic ideas, one in duple and the other in triple time. The joyousness of the psalm is also expressed in some captivating dance rhythms that wouldn't seem out of place in West Side Story!

It is also fascinating to hear how Monteverdi converts the simple short psalm Laudate Dominum into a dramatic dialogue, by brilliantly alternating vocal duets with tutti interjections. The two sopranos, perhaps representing angels, start by urging “the people” (the chorus) to “praise the Lord” but we only find out why when the soloists explain “because His mercy is confirmed upon us”, which provides the cue for the chorus to take off.

Such methods of utilising the forces available are at their most elaborate in the Magnificat I of 1641, where we witness several expressive duets amidst an array of eight-part choral writing.

There is an equally imaginative use of instrumental colour and the so-called stile concitato, the latter an ‘agitated’ delivery of fast repeated notes that Monteverdi believed best expressed feelings of anger and warfare. Appropriately, he uses this effect to depict the images of power and revenge mentioned in the canticle.

The Virgin Mary, it was believed, was a key protector of the Venetians, having helped deliver them from plague and win battles. Thus the singing of her song, the Magnificat, always formed the climax of a Vespers service, and was accompanied by the censering of the altar.

In the distilled atmosphere of his motet Sancta Maria, Monteverdi captures this reverential tone by exploring the potential of the plainsong theme alongside moments of prayerful recitation. Its text is taken from the Magnificat antiphon for the commemoration of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, suggesting that Monteverdi composed this for the Church of the Carmelite nuns in Venice, a place where he is known to have performed in 1627. By contrast, our final setting of the Regina Cœli by Gabrieli takes us back to the other monumental performing tradition of just a few decades earlier.

Monteverdi also supplied music for the Communion Service and, apart from his three surviving complete mass settings, there are some delightful miniature motets. Adoramus te, which opens tonight's second half is a so-called elevation motet and would have been sung at the most solemn part of the service, the blessing of the host. Since the text is taken from the Hours of the Cross, this music may also have associations with Holy Cross Day, when a relic of the holy blood was displayed in St Mark's. Monteverdi's music certainly captures this moment well.

Another facet of Monteverdi's output are examples of non-Vesper psalm settings. Amongst these is a setting of Psalm 6, Dominus ne in furore, in which the composer demonstrates a whole gamut of melodic ideas, syncopations and harmonic shifts to depict the restlessness of the text. Listeners may also detect some references to the Nisi Dominus from the 1610 Vespers. With such extraordinary music to enjoy, we may all well echo the words of that C17^th visitor Thomas Coryat, who “would willingly goe an hundred miles a foote at any time to heare the like”