Monteverdi as cosmopolitan trendsetter
In 1599, the aspiring composer and musician Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) travelled through Flanders in the entourage of his employer Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. According to his own account, it was during this time that he became acquainted with the ‘canto alla francese’ and composed the Scherzi musicali, which were then published by his brother Giulio Cesare Monteverdi in 1607.
The homophony of the movement, the alternation of passages sung solo and in full voice, the insertion of instrumental ritornellos represented an enriching innovation for Italian vocal music of the time. We encounter the ‘canto alla francese’ again later in Confitebor Tibi Domine (Selva morale) as well as the related Dolcissimo uscignolo and Chi vol haver felice e lieto il core (8th Book of Madrigals).
Monteverdi as master and preserver of the traditional stile antico
Monteverdi was naturally familiar with the works of the Franco-Flemish masters from an early age, since some of the most outstanding representatives of this style, such as Josquin Desprez, Adrian Willaert, Jacobus Arcadelt, Cipriano de Rore and Orlando di Lasso, worked in Italy. In 1610, the year of publication of the Marian Vespers, Monteverdi also published his Missa In illo tempore, in which he used several motifs from the motet of the same name by Nicolas Gombert (1495-1560).
Monteverdi as a pioneering innovator
Giaches de Wert (1535-1596), born in Ghent and maestro di capella at the court of Mantua from 1565 to 1592, played a not inconsiderable role in Monteverdi’s development of a new seconda prattica in which the strict rules of counterpoint were broken down and extreme dissonance and daring chromaticism were permitted in the service of text interpretation. For example, both de Wert and Monteverdi set Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Cruda Amarilli and Ah, dolente partita to music. Monteverdi transposes the madrigal into a new age in the course of the eight books of his oeuvre. From five-part a cappella singing to instrumentally accompanied operatic scenes.
With The Travels of Monteverdi, B’Rock Orchestra & Vocal Consort invite the audience to follow Claudio Monteverdi’s artistic development from his days at the Gonzaga court in Mantua to the peak of his career as maestro di capella at San Marco in Venice. From the traditional polyphonic style of the old masters to the almost unrestricted freedom of the seconda prattica, from the foothills of the Renaissance to a still untouched new world of the dawning Baroque age.
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The premiere of this production was realized with the support of the Tax Shelter measure of the Belgian Federal Government through Flanders Tax Shelter.
