Claudio Monteverdi

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Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643).
Portrait by Bernardo Strozzi around 1630

Claudio Zuan Antonio Monteverdi (also Monteverde ; ≈ May 15, 1567 in Cremona ; † November 29, 1643 in Venice ) was an Italian composer , gambist , singer and Catholic priest .

His work marks the turn of music from the Renaissance to the Baroque . In addition, Monteverdi is considered the best-known pioneer and trailblazer of early opera and set new accents especially with 'L'Orfeo'. In some sources, the latter is even considered to be the very first opera.

Life

Adolescence

Claudio Monteverdi was the eldest son of the surgeon Baldassare Monteverdi (* around 1542), who also worked as a barber , and his wife Maddalena, b. Zignani. He also had a sister, Maria Domitilla (* 1571), and a brother, Giulio Cesare (1573-1630 / 1631). After his mother's death (around 1576), his father married a second time. This marriage had three children, including the daughter Clara Massimilla (* 1579) and the son Luca (* 1581). Although Baldassare Monteverdi lived in modest circumstances and until 1566 carried out his work in a small business rented by the Chapter of the Diocese of Cremona , he gave his two sons from his first marriage a thorough musical education from Marc'Antonio Ingegneri , the conductor of the Cathedral of Cremona , get. Ingegneri's influence can be found in Claudio's first collection of works, Sacrae cantiunculae , which he published in print in 1582 at the age of 15. He describes himself as a student of the outstanding Ingegneri ( Egregii Ingegnerii Discipulus ). In 1583 a book with Madrigali spirituali was published , of which only a bass voice book has survived . In 1587, he published his first madrigal book, which now only contained secular works.

Mantua

Title page of a part (the thoroughbass) of the Virgin Mary Vespers

In 1590 Monteverdi was appointed to the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga as a singer and violist in Mantua , where he was to stay for 22 years. There he found exceptionally good conditions with a full orchestra and outstanding soloists. There Monteverdi became " Cantore " in 1594 . He married the singer Claudia Cattaneo, the daughter of a local musician. In 1597 he toured Flanders with the orchestra , where he met the great masters of the Franco-Flemish style . After his return he was appointed Kapellmeister in 1601, despite the attacks by Giovanni Artusi , who accused the harmonic innovations of Monteverdi too much "modernity", since he disregarded the old rules of counterpoint in the service of expression .

Despite his obligations to the court, Monteverdi composed four more madrigal books between 1590 and 1605. From monody, with its emphasis on clear melody lines , understandable texts and cautious accompanying music, it was only a short, logical step towards the development of the opera . In 1607 he composed one of the first of its kind, L'Orfeo , which was commissioned for the annual Carnival in Mantua and premiered on February 24; The two castrati Giovanni Gualberto Magli and Girolamo Bacchini were used as mezzo-sopranos. The opera was an instant hit.

Monteverdi was deeply affected by the death of his wife, who was buried in Cremona in September 1607. After initially refusing to return to Mantua, he composed another opera there, L'Arianna , in 1608 , of which only the lament has survived.

In 1610 he composed what is perhaps his most famous sacred work today , the so-called Marienvesper (Vespro della Beata Vergine) . After the death of Duke Vincenzo in 1612, Monteverdi was dismissed by his successor, who was not very sensitive to music.

Venice

Title page 'Fiori poetici' 1644. Portrait is the only authentic portrait

After a short stay in Cremona, after the death of Giulio Cesare Martinengo in 1613 , Monteverdi was unanimously appointed Kapellmeister of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, one of the most important musical offices of the time, where he revived the choir, engaged new virtuoso singers such as Francesco Cavalli , and new sheet music went shopping, reintroduced the singing of masses on weekdays and holidays, and ensured that the members of the instrumental ensemble received monthly wages instead of being paid on a daily basis as before . This was the beginning of his most pleasant and productive years. In parallel to numerous sacred works, Monteverdi continued his secular work and published Madrigals VI to VIII between 1614 and 1638.

After the death of his son, who fell victim to the plague epidemic during the War of the Mantuan Succession , Monteverdi became increasingly ill. In 1632 he was ordained a priest , also under the impression of a plague epidemic . Stimulated in particular by the opening of the first public opera house in Venice in 1637, he wrote other stage works, including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642). At the same time he supervised the output of his selected sacred music in the Selva morale e spirituale collection (1641). After a last trip to Cremona and Mantua , he died in Venice in 1643, where he was given a solemn burial. His tomb is in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the first of the four chapels that flank the main choir.

progeny

Together with his wife, who died in 1607, Monteverdi had two sons: Francesco later became a tenor singer at St. Mark's Basilica. Massimiliano studied medicine and was arrested in 1627 on the orders of the Inquisition for reading banned books . After paying a ransom by his father, Massimiliano was released from prison a year later and practiced as a doctor in Cremona until his death in 1661.

meaning

Monteverdi led the opera, developed by the Florentines (especially Jacopo Peri ) as a new musical form shortly before the turn of the century, to its first climax and already achieved great fame during his lifetime. In total he composed at least 18 operas; but only L'Orfeo , L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria survived.

Monteverdi's 8th book of madrigals contains the “Madrigals of love and war” (Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi) , which are widely regarded as the most perfect examples of this form. Overall, the eight books demonstrate the significant step from the polyphonic style of Renaissance music to the monodic style of the Baroque.

In formal terms, Monteverdi is the inventor of the basso ostinato , which has continued in various forms into modern pop music . The walking bass with its regular border crotchets he invented in connection with the scene in L'Orfeo , in which Orpheus with Eurydice the way from the underworld into the world of the living will . In addition, the diatonic descending tetrachord , which played a central role as a lamento bass in baroque music and sometimes beyond, goes back to Monteverdi's Lamento della Ninfa from the 8th Book of Madrigals.

Monteverdi also influenced later music historiography with theoretical statements: In his discussion with Giovanni Artusi , he spoke of “ Seconda pratica , overo perfettione della moderna musica” in the foreword of his 5th book of madrigals . In the preface to his 8th book of madrigals, Monteverdi claims that he himself first made the music “complete” or “perfect” with the invention of a previously missing “excited style” (“genere concitato”).

After his death, Monteverdi was long forgotten; Interest in his work only reawakened with Gian Francesco Malipiero , who published Monteverdi's compositions in sixteen volumes from 1916 to 1942. A catalog of works, the Stattkus directory , appeared in 1985.

In May 1992 the asteroid (5063) Monteverdi was named after him. He has been the namesake of the Monteverdi Peninsula in Antarctica since 1974 .

Opera reception in the present

After 1945, the scholarly examination of Monteverdi's operas and performance practice began cautiously. In 1963, director Günther Rennert and conductor Herbert von Karajan presented L'incoronazione di Poppea for the first time at the Vienna State Opera . The luxurious cast - with Sena Jurinac (Poppea), Gerhard Stolze (Nerone), Margarita Lilowa (Ottawa), Otto Wiener (Ottone), Carlo Cava (Seneca), Hilde Rössel-Majdan (Arnalta), Gundula Janowitz (Drusilla / Pallas Athene ) and Murray Dickie (Lucano) - made a significant contribution to the success of the Viennese production with twenty performances until 1970. Although Karajan only conducted the premiere series of the first four performances, Hans Swarowsky, who was highly regarded in Vienna and well-versed in music history, took over the musical direction.

In 1971, 1985 and 1993 all surviving Monteverdi operas were presented at the Salzburg Festival . In 1972 Nikolaus Harnoncourt presented Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria at the Scala in Milan . The Monteverdi cycle by the director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Zurich Opera in the 1970s led to the permanent anchoring of Monteverdi’s stage work in the repertoire of major European opera houses. The first engagement of the Zurich Opera Orchestra with original instruments by Harnoncourt also led to the later founding of the original sound orchestra La Scintilla in the 1990s.

Since the reclassification of the Theater an der Wien for an opera house with Stagionebetrieb sets in 2006 Monteverdi also a central axis of the Schedule is. In 2010 in cooperation with the Glyndebourne Festival L'incoronazione di Poppea in a production by Robert Carsen presented. A complete cycle of the three Monteverdi operas was supervised by the director Claus Guth in 2011, 2012 and 2015 at the Vienna . The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Ivor Bolton , Les Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset and the Ensemble Matheus under Jean-Christophe Spinosi played .

Works

Spiritual works

Secular vocal works

  • Canzonette 3 v., 1584
  • 6 books Madrigali a 5 v., 1587, 1590, 1592, 1603, 1605 (with Bc ), 1614 (with Bc, con uno dialogo a 7 v.)
  • Concerto , 7th Madrigals 1–4 e 6 v., 1619
  • Madrigali guerrieri e amorosi … libro 8 ° 1–8 BC con Bc, 1638
  • Madrigali e canzonette libro 9 °, 1651
  • 2 books Scherzi musicali , 1607 and 1632
  • Lamento d'Arianna , 1623; with Latin text as "Pianto della Madonna", in: Selva morale ..., 1641

Stage works

Extract from Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
  • L'Orfeo , Mantua 1607
  • L'Arianna , Mantua 1608
  • Prologue to L'idroppica ( Guarini ), Mantua 1608 (lost)
  • Il Ballo delle Ingrate , Mantua 1608
  • Tirsi e Clori (Dialogo e Ballo), Mantua 1616
  • Prologue to Maddalena , Mantua 1617
  • Intermedien Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo , Mantua 1617 (lost)
  • Andromeda , Mantua 1617 (lost)
  • Lamento d'Apollo , ca.1620 (lost)
  • Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda , Venice 1624 (published in Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi… libro ottavo 1638)
  • La finta pazza Licori , Mantua 1627 (lost)
  • Armida , 1627 (lost)
  • Prologue and intermedia, including Gli amori di Diana e di Endimione , Parma 1628 (lost)
  • Torneo Mercurio et Marte , Parma 1628 (lost)
  • Proserpina rapita , Venice 1630 (lost)
  • Ballo in onore dell'Imperatore Ferdinando III , Vienna 1637
  • Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria , Venice 1640
  • Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia , Venice 1641 (lost)
  • Ballet La vittoria d'amore , Piacenza 1641 (lost)
  • L'incoronazione di Poppea , Venice 1642 (preserved in two versions)

literature

  • Michael Heinemann : Claudio Monteverdi. The discovery of passion . Schott, Mainz 2017, ISBN 978-3-7957-1213-6 .
  • Wulf Konold : Monteverdi. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-499-50348-4 .
  • Silke Leopold : Monteverdi and his time. 3. Edition. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2002, ISBN 3-921518-72-5 .
  • Silke Leopold: Claudio Monteverdi. Biography . Carus-Verlag in cooperation with Reclam, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-89948-283-6 (Carus) / ISBN 978-3-15-011093-5 (Reclam).
  • Wolfgang Osthoff : Claudio Monteverdi's late dramatic work. Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1960.
  • Manfred H. Stattkus: Claudio Monteverdi. List of preserved works (small edition) ( SV ). Bergkamen 1985 ( short version ).
  • Gary Tomlinson: Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. University of California Press, Berkeley 1990, ISBN 0-520-06980-3 .
  • Emil Vogel: Claudio Monteverdi. Life, work in the light of contemporary criticism and a list of his works that have appeared in print. In: Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 3rd vol. (1887), pp. 315–450 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Claudio Monteverdi  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katelijne Schiltz: The complexity of the oratione in Claudio Monteverdi's madrigal oeuvre: on Christophe Georis' 'Claudio Monteverdi letterato'. In: Romance Studies 3 (2016), online .
  2. ^ A b Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singing dictionary . 4th edition. Volume 1. Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-11598-9 , pp. 771 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Music in the past and present , personal section, vol. 12, p. 406
  4. ↑ Gerald Drebes: Monteverdi's principle of contrast , the preface to his 8th book of madrigals and the genere concitato ( Memento from December 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Musiktheorie, Jg. 6, 1991, pp. 29–42
  5. ↑ Reinhard Brembeck: jubilation and smell of tones. Two new books about Claudio Monteverdi, who was baptized 450 years ago . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 15, 2017, p. 12.
  6. ^ Archives of the Vienna State Opera : Claudio Monteverdi | L 'incoronazione di Poppea , accessed March 23, 2016
  7. ↑ See also: Opera productions of the Salzburg Festival
  8. ↑ La Scintilla dei Fiati , self-portrayal of the orchestra, accessed on March 24, 2016
  9. ↑ Bach Cantata's website: Orchestra La Scintilla at the Zurich Opera (Early Music Instrumental Ensemble) , accessed on March 24, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Monteverdi, Claudio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Monteverdi, Claudio Zuan Antonio (full name); Monteverde, Claudio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian composer, viol player, singer and Catholic priest
DATE OF BIRTH baptized May 15, 1567
PLACE OF BIRTH Cremona
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1643
Place of death Venice