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Sacred
Music in the 17th Century:
Venice
San Marco
Giovanni
Gabrieli (ca 1558-1613)
The great composer
Giovanni Gabrieli was the innovator who brought forth the first murmurs
of the new music that would replace the polyphonic style, called
the stile antico, that had
dominated music throughout the 16th century. We don't know where
Gabrieli was born, but he was the nephew and pupil of Andrea Gabrieli,
the eminent organist, composer, and teacher at San Marco (Saint Mark
Cathedral) in Venice.
By 1575, Giovanni had gone
to Munich to study with the great Renaissance composer Orlando
Lasso. Then in the early 1580s or thereabout, he returned to Venice. On January 1st, 1585, a competition
was held to select an organist at San Marco and Giovanni
won. After becoming San Marco's organist,
he composed some very extraordinary and revolutionary
instrumental and choral compositions.
Gabrieli was an
extraordinary composer, creating sacred compositions that used 2, 3 and
even 4 different choirs, all spaced above the
congregation in the choir lofts of San Marco. He was
called the "Father of the chromatic style"
because of his bold modulations, and was one of the first,
if not the first, to employ use a separate bass line, an idea that will
become the
underpinnings
of the new music. He wrote magnificently
for instruments, choir, and a combination of both, and
he was the first composer to specify
violins in a score. This alone qualifies him as a
Father of our classical music tradition and to him must be
given the credit for opening the door for the new music
that came to life at the beginning of the 17th Century. He was
also the first to really
develop instrumental music. In addition to his sacred choral
compositions, he created canzonas for brass and strings.
The first known example of
orchestration occurs in Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae Symphoniae
(1597) where instruments are specified. This is where the
violin was first specified in music.
It5 was already fully devolped by this time except that the neck
was shorter and the bridge was flatter.
Giovanni
and his uncle
Andrea
were
also the first to use the term concerto,
in the 1587 Concerti di Andrea, et di Giovanni Gabrieli. The
violin, now emancipated, and the rest of the violin family
will become the mainstay of 17th century music, and in the later
part of the century, the concerto will become the medium of
expression for this family of instruments, manufactured in Italy by
the greatest makers who ever lived such as
Amati and Strativarius.
Gabrieli is
not only a very
important composer historically, but also a composer of absolutely sublime
music. His magnificent choral works, such as
Plaudite and O Magnum Mysterium belong in catagory of
great compositions of all time.
CDs:
Gabrieli
at San Marco
The
Glory of Venice - Gabrieli in San Marco
This one is essential!
Music
For Brass Volume 3
On
the Web:
Biography
MP3s:
Plaudite
Dovesong
Gabrieli Page
Claudio
Monteverdi (1567 - 1643)
Monteverdi
was born in Cremona, Italy in 1567. When he was young, he
became a viola player in the orchestra of Duke Gonzaga of
Mantua and studied counterpoint with the well-known
composer Ingegneri. At 17 and at 20, he published his
first madrigals and canzonette a3 and in these appeared the harmonic
innovations for which he is famous, and which helped him
become the greatest musician of his
own age. His progressions include the
unprepared entrance of dissonances and the dominant
seventh and ninth chords. He was bitterly assailed in
pamphlets, particularly by Giovanni Maria Artusi (ca
1540-1613), and Monteverdi replied
in kind. Monteverdi was the first proponent of the new
style of music that made use of song and accompaniment
and one of the musical giants who ushered-in the Baroque Era in music.
Monteverdi's
triumph at Mantua spelled the end to the polyphony of the Renaissance Era
that had been brought to perfection in the music of Victoria
and Palestrina.
Therefore, one hand we might morn the begining of the end of one of the
greatest spiritual music styles of all time with the
replacement by a perhaps more mundane style, but on the
other hand, we would welcome the opportunity to usher in a new style
of music that will continue for more than a century,
reaching perfection in the music of J.S. Bach.
In 1603, Monteverdi became
Ingegneri's successor as maestro to the Duke and composed
the opera Ariadne for the wedding of the Duke's son to Margherita of Savoy. Ariadne's grief moved
the audience to tears. Never had there been a dramatic
music such as this! Little did they know that they were
witnessing the birth of opera, an art form that
will perpetuate to the present day.
In 1607, Monteverdi
produced his glorious opera Orfeo with the
then-unheard-of orchestra consisting of 36 pieces. The
music of Orfeo shows
great modernity, Rockstro comparing its prelude with the
one bass-note sustained throughout to the introduction to Wagner's Das Rheingold, and its continual
recitative also to that of Wagner.
In 1608, Monteverdi's mythological spectacle Ballo delle Ingrate
appeared. The Vespers and motets published in 1610 gave
him such fame that in 1613 he was made maestro di Cappella
at San Marco in Venice, at the unprecedented salary of 300
ducats, but this was raised to 500 in 1616 and a house and
traveling expenses given to him.
In 1624, he introduced the
then-startling novelty of an instrumental tremolo (which
the musicians at first refused to play) into his dramatic
interlude Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. In
1627, he composed five dramatic episodes including
Bradamante and Dido for the court at Parma, in 1630, the
opera Proserpina Rapita, then in 1637--in the first
opera-house, which opened at Venice (the Teatro di St.
Cassiano operas having hitherto been performed at the
palaces of the nobiliy)--Monteverdi produced the operas Adone, Le
Nozze di Enea con Lavinia, Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria,
and L'Inoronazione di Poppea. He earned the title of
"the father of the art of instrumentation" and
was the most popular and influential composer of his time.
Among his great works are
his books of madrigals, the eighth book embodying music of the
highest caliber.
In 1636, Monteverdi joined
the priesthood, and that is the last that history records
him. L'Inoronazione
di Poppea and Orfeo were revived in Paris by Vincent
d'Indy, who prepared modern editions of these works that had been
laying dormant for over 250 years.
CDs:
1610
Vespers
The
famous Vespers for the Blessed Virgin, 1610. There are a number of
good recordings available. The one we prefer has not yet been
released on CD.
Orfeo
The first
great opera in the history of music. What a fantastic work of art:
pastoral, peaceful, calm.
L'Incoronazione
di Poppea
Vienna Boys Choir, Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt,
director
Teldec #42547
Madrigali
Guerrieri et Amorosi (Madrigals of Love and War)
English Chamber Orchestra, Raymond Leppard, director
Philips 432 503-2
Monteverdi's
8th Book of Madrigals, a stunning masterpiece of the first order.
Find this CD set and add it to your collection. What a treasure!
Selva
morale e spirituale
A
collection of sacred music published by Monteverdi towards the end
of his life.
Books:
Cambridge
1610 Vespers
Monteverdi
Web:
Wikipedia
Monteverdi
MP3s ->
Monteverdi
MP3s in the DoveSong MP3 Library
Alessandro
Grandi (ca1575-85? - 1630)
Grandi was one of the
most popular composers of his day. His music, composed in the new
style,
was published and widely disseminated, and continued to be
reprinted long after his death. He wrote settings of psalms,
motets, madrigals, and some of the earliest cantatas. He was
chosen choirmaster at
the Accademia della Morte in Ferrara in 1597, then moved
to the Accademia dello Spirito Santo in 1604 and stayed
there through
1607. In 1616 he was chosen to be masestro di cappella at
the Ferrara cathedral. In 1617 he became a singer and three years
later vice maestro at the prestigious San Marco in
Venice under Monteverdi. In 1627 he was chosen masestro di cappella
at San Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. He died there in 1630 from
plague.
Another great
17th Century composer forgotten amongst the others in the
"forgotten century" of music.
CDs:
Alessandro Grandi: Mottetti e Cantilene
Gruppo Madrigalistico "Citta di Rovigo"
Achicembalo Ensemble, Carlo Rebeschini, direttore
Rivo Alto
Associazione Cultural
La Voce Della Musica, Onlus
On
the Web:
Biography
Pier
Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676)
Cavalli was
born in Crema in 1602. At some point he was at San Marco in Venice where
he was elected to the chapel choir as a tenor under Monteverdi. He
was there until 1635. In 1640 he became the second organist at San
Marco and maintained that position for twenty-five years. In 1639
he had a success with his first opera, Le nozze di Teti e Peleo.
After his second opera Didone, produced in 1641, his fame
then spread all over Europe. At least 42 of his operas were subsequently staged. In
1656 he published Musiche sacre concernenti Messa e Salmi
concertati con istromenti, Inni, Antifone et Sonate, a 2-6, 8, 10
e 12 voci.
Cavalli traveled to Paris to stage his operas, with ballet music
required by the French to be supplied by Lully.
The ballet music pleased the French, but not the operas, and there
is some evidence that the egotistic and opertunistic Lully
sabotaged Cavilli's reputation there. Cavalli left Paris a
bitter man. He approached operatic composition from then on with
reserve. (In his Lettre
sur la Musique françoise of 1753, Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells
us that:
"Lully himself, alarmed by the arrival of Correlli
[SIC] in France, hastened to have him expelled from France: which
was all the more easy for him in so far as Correlli was the
greater man, and in consequence less of a sycophant than he."
(It is believed that Rousseau was actually talking about Cavalli here.)
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Cavalli's last works were the Vesperi a 8 voci published
in 1675. He died the following year.
CDs:
Missa
pro Defunctis, Mottetti e Sonate
Vespero
della Beata Vergine Maria
Athestis Chorus &
Conort dir.: Filippo Maria Bressan
Tactus TC 600311
On
the Web:
Goldberg
Early Music Portal
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