Monteverdi: Vespers (1610)Monteverdi's Vespers is an exceptional collection of sacred music, both in the inventiveness of the compositions that it contains and in the debate that it has provoked over its use in the seventeenth century and over Monteverdi's intentions in publishing it. This Handbook provides a guide to the music in all its aspects - from an introduction to the service of Vespers itself, through the practice of chanting psalms in plainsong to analysis of Monteverdi's settings, ranging from the rhetoric of the motet 'Nigra sum' to the sub-text of the psalm 'Laetatus sum'. It also examines the issues involved in performing the Vespers and evaluates various scholarly debates on the music, challenging the long-held ideas that the sacred concertos are antiphon substitutes and that the music could not have been performed at Santa Barbara, Mantua. The book includes the texts and plainsongs used by Monteverdi, and a discography. |
Contents
The 1610 settings and the liturgy of Vespers | 6 |
Problems posed by the 1610 Vespers | 15 |
The 1610 print and Monteverdis career | 23 |
Monteverdi and church music at Mantua | 29 |
Three theories | 30 |
Motives for publication | 35 |
Suited to the chapels or chambers of princes | 41 |
Duo Seraphim | 43 |
Lauda Jerusalem | 74 |
Ave maris stella | 76 |
The Magnificat settings | 77 |
Issues of performance | 82 |
Performance with period instruments | 85 |
Performance with solo voices | 87 |
Instrumental accompaniment | 89 |
Transposition | 90 |
Nigra sum and Pulchra es | 47 |
Audi coelum | 54 |
Sonata sopra Sancta Maria | 56 |
And all on a cantus firmus | 60 |
Response Domine ad adiuvandum | 61 |
Dixit Dominus | 62 |
Laudate pueri | 64 |
Laetatus sum | 67 |
Nisi Dominus | 72 |
Tempo and proportions | 91 |
Liturgical and concert performance | 92 |
Second Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin 15 August | 95 |
Plainsongs texts and translations | 100 |
Notes | 121 |
| 130 | |
Discography | 134 |
| 137 | |
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Common terms and phrases
1610 publication Amen amica mea antiphon Audi cœlum Ave maris stella bars bass Bassus generalis beginning Blessed Virgin breviary Bt & St cantus firmus cappella choirmaster church music Claudio Monteverdi Composed plainsong continuo Denis Stevens Dixit Dominus Domine ad adiuvandum doxology Duo Seraphim early seventeenth century Echo edition erat in principio example falsobordone feast Giovanni Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi Gloria Patri Holy hymn instrumental doubling Kurtzman Lætatus sum Lauda Ierusalem Laudate pueri liturgical Lord Magnificat Mantua Mode Monteverdi's 1610 Monteverdi's setting motets Nigra sum Nisi Dominus ornamentation part-books performance Period instruments phrase plainsong psalm settings psalm tone psalms and Magnificat Pulchra reciting note ritornello Roman Rome sacred concertos Sancta Maria sanctus Santa Barbara Second Vespers secula Sicut erat singers singing Sonata sopra Sancta soprano spiritui sancto suggested sung sunt tenor texture tion transposed triple metre Venice Vespers Vespers music Vespro Vincenzo Gonzaga virtuoso vocal lines