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A sampling of recorded performances in celebration of the quadricentennial of the work's creation
"Monteverdi is having printed an a cappella Mass for six voices of great studiousness and labor...and together he is having printed also psalms for Vespers of the Madonna, with various and diverse manners of invention and of harmony...."
THIS RATHER INNOCUOUS description of Claudio Monteverdi's greatest sacred work was provided by Bassano Cassola, a singer and vice maestro di cappella, in a letter to Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, the Duke of Gonzaga's son. Four hundred years later, "One can not help but be awestruck at the splendor and magnificence of this ground-breaking music," says John Scott, the director of music at New York's Saint Thomas Church. "We find operatic virtuosity within the context of religious music for the first time. It's a marvel of sonic splendor encompassing so many different moods and textures."
Claudio Monteverdi's Mass and Vespers of the Blessed Virgin peeled off the press of the Venetian publisher Ricciardo Amadino in 1610. The entire publication commemorates the Virgin on her chief feast days. The Missa In illo tempore is a stile antico mass based on a motet by Nicolas Gombert.
In 17th-century Italy, vespers (the chief evening service of the Office, the daily cycle of prayer) were celebrated with lavish music on special feasts. A vespers service contains an introit, five psalms that are framed by chant antiphons, a hymn (Ave maris stella in Monteverdi's Vespers), and the Magnificat. In the published edition there are two settings of the Magnificat - one for smaller ensemble and one for larger. In addition, there are four virtuoso vocal concerti (motets for one, two, and three voices) and a sonata with voices. All are set to texts that are not part of the traditional vespers liturgy.
And those are perhaps the only things we know for sure.
What did Monteverdi hope to accomplish with the 1610 publication? Did he write it as an audition piece to find a job (possibly in Rome) and get out of the misery of Mantua? Or is it simply a collection of music he might have had on the shelf and decided to have published together? Did he envision a particular venue for the performance?
The...