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The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi. John Whenham and Richard Wistreich, editors. 358 pages. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Reviewed by Wendy Heller.
The state of Monteverdi performance and scholarship has advanced dramatically since the publications of The Monteverdi Companion, by Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, in 1968, and its successor, The New Monteverdi Companion, some 17 years later. Since that time, there has been an ever-increasing number of concerts and recordings and a veritable explosion of scholarship on Monteverdi's music and career, his lesser-known contemporaries, and the political and social context in which he worked. It is therefore not surprising that another Monteverdi companion has been published for a new era and more sophisticated readership, a volume in which a top-notch group of scholars present an elegant synthesis of some of the best recent research.
What is perhaps most impressive about this collection is the way in which it balances a remarkably thorough overview of Monteverdi's career and works with close readings of individual compositions. Much of this is apparent in the novel organization of the volume. A chronological overview of Monteverdi's career and works is framed by pairs of essays that engage global issues in thoughtful...