[*]Jeffrey Kurtzman (jgkurtzm@wustl.edu) is Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. A specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian music, he has published two books on the Monteverdi Vespers, a critical/performing edition of the Vespers, and a ten-volume edition of Italian Vespers and Compline Music. Together with co-author Anne Schnoebelen, he has published A Catalogue of Mass, Office, and Holy Week Music Published in Italy, 1516–1770 as JSCM Instrumenta, volume 2. Kurtzman was the founding president of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and serves on the editorial boards of the Society’s Journal and Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music. He is the General Editor of the Opera Omnia of Alessandro Grandi, published by the American Institute of Musicology, and of an anthology of Italian instrumental music published by the Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music.
[1] Denis Arnold and Denis Stevens have both associated Monteverdi’s Confitebor tibi terzo from the Selva morale with two madrigals from the Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi … Libro ottavo: Chi vol haver felice et lieto il core and Dolcissimo uscignolo. Denis Arnold, Monteverdi: Church Music (London: British Broadcasting Company, 1982), 49; Denis Stevens, Monteverdi in Venice (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 59–60. But while Monteverdi has used some melodic motives in the psalm that are similar to those in the two madrigals, and he even introduced some structural parallels in the case of Chi vol haver felice, the psalm is by no means a reworking of either madrigal in the sense of the other adaptations discussed here. Indeed, a systematic search for similar motives and structural parallels between different Monteverdi works, a number of which have been cited in the Monteverdi literature, would lead to many more connections among distinct compositions, as is the case with many composers. But whether the connections are meaningful to the relationship between two works or simply a consequence of a personal musical language can be difficult to discern.
[2] A detailed analysis of the relationship between the two Magnificats can be found in Jeffrey Kurtzman, Essays on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610 (Houston: Rice University Studies, 1978), 71–87; and Kurtzman, The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 256–92.
[3] Jerome Roche, “Monteverdi—An Interesting Example of Second Thoughts,” The Music Review 32, no. 3 (1971): 193–204. By “version,” I mean different musical settings of the same text.
[4] Publication details will be given in Chapter 2 below. In addition to the critical editions cited below, transcriptions of both pieces, ed. Peter Rottländer, are available online from the Choral Public Domain Library: http://www0.cpdl.org/wiki/images/e/e6/Mont-di1.pdf (posted 2015) and http://www0.cpdl.org/wiki/images/b/b1/Mont-dx1.pdf (posted 2010). Brief comparisons between these two Dixit Dominus settings are also found in Denis Stevens, Monteverdi: Sacred, Secular, and Occasional Music (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978, 86–87); Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin: Edizioni di Torino, 1985), 350; Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. Tim Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 271; and Linda Maria Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik von Claudio Monteverdi (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), 173, n. 8. Further, a recent article by John Whenham, “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650) and Monteverdi’s Venetian Church Music,” Recercare 28 (2016): 85–112, which came to my attention only after the completion of an earlier version of this article, has a more extended descriptive comparison of the two Dixits and concurs with Koldau and me regarding which setting preceded the other (pp. 102–4). I am grateful to Prof. Whenham for sending me a copy of the final proof of his article prior to its publication.
[5] A detailed study of the Selva morale’s Dixit Dominus primo may be found in Jeffrey Kurtzman, “What Makes Claudio ‘Divine’? Criteria for Analysis of Monteverdi’s Large-scale Concertato Style,” in Seicento inesplorato: Atti del III convegno internazionale sulla musica in area lombardo-padana del secolo XVII, ed. Alberto Colzani, Andrea Luppi, and Maurizio Padoan (Como: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1993), 257–302. The essay was republished in Kurtzman, Approaches to Monteverdi: Aesthetic, Psychological, Analytical and Historical Studies (Farnham, Surrey, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013), VI. A diagram of the psalm also appears in Linda Maria Koldau, “ ‘Divino Claudio’ oder Komponist seiner Zeit? Claudio Monteverdis Dixit Dominus-Vertonungen und die Entwicklung des concertato-Stils um die Mitte des Seicento,” in Musikkonzepte—Konzepte der Musikwissenschaft: Bericht über den Internationalen Kongreß der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Halle (Saale) 1998, ed. Kathrin Eberl and Wolfgang Ruf (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), 2:193.
[6] Luigi Collarile, ed., Salve Regine del Sig. Claudio Monteverdi (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 2011). The single surviving source lacks a title page and any other identifying publication information. Collarile has identified the source as printed by Alessandro Vincenti through analysis of typefaces. The first Salve Regina, for alto, tenor, bass, and basso continuo, is headed in the Alto and Tenor partbooks “Salve Regine del Sig. Claudio Monteverde.” The Basso partbook lacks everything in this heading except the word Monteverde, while the Basso Continuo partbook has the same wording except that “Regina” is in the singular. The remaining pieces have no heading at all. The first Salve concordances are with a version in the Selva morale, where there are differences, and an earlier, longer version in Lorenzo Calvi’s 1629 anthology Quarta raccolta de sacri canti, also published in Venice by Alessandro Vincenti (RISM SD 1629|5) but not yet available in a modern edition. Collarile’s study will include an edition of the Calvi setting. I am grateful to Prof. Collarile for sharing this information with me.
[7] Fabbri, Monteverdi, 192–95; Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. Carter, 138–40. The sestina is explicitly associated with the death of Martinelli.
[8] See Nicholas Till, “ ‘A Free and Knightly Art’: Monteverdi’s Toccata for Orfeo and the Neo-Chivalric Ideal in Early Seventeenth-Century Italy,” in this issue.
[9] There were two empresses named Eleonora Gonzaga in seventeenth-century Vienna. The first, the dedicatee of the Selva morale, was the daughter of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga I of Mantua; she became the wife and widow of Emperor Ferdinand II and mother of Ferdinand III. The second was the daughter of Carlo I di Gonzaga-Nevers and third wife and widow of Ferdinand III. See Herbert Seifert, “Die Musiker der beiden Keiserinnen Eleonora Gonzaga,” in Festschrift Othmar Wesseley zum 60. Geburtstag (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1982), 527–54.
[10] According to Saint Augustine, whose commentaries on the psalms were repeated in seventeenth-century publications, the opening hemistich, “Dixit Dominus Domino meo: sede a dextris meis,” refers to the Lord God with Christ at his right hand. Augustine’s psalm commentaries are available in English translation by J.E. Tweed: A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 8 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, c.2017, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801.htm; I am grateful to Tim Carter for this reference. Monteverdi, however, seems more interested in the immediate semantic meanings of words, phrases, and verses of psalms than he is in theological and symbolic interpretations of their texts. For a comparison of Monteverdi’s and contemporaries’ settings of Dixit Dominus, see Linda Maria Koldau, “Divino Claudio,” 186–93. Koldau offers a very brief outline of the first Dixit from the Messa et salmi as the basis of her comparison with other composers’ settings. In more general terms she confirms the greater structural unity, even while they display considerable internal variety, of Monteverdi’s large-scale concertato works in comparison with those of his contemporaries (pp. 189–90).
[11] “Queste Sacre Reliquie dell’opere dell’Eccellentissimo Monteverde, che non senza miracolo doppo la morte di lui mi toccò pietosamente raccogliere, vengono hora publicate dà mè per sodisfare alla comun deuotione” (“These sacred reliquaries of the works of the most excellent Monteverdi, which not without a miracle after his death it fell to me to piously collect, are now published by me to satisfy common devotion”). Vincenti’s dedication to the Messa et salmi is reproduced in facsimile in Tutte le opere di Claudio Monteverdi, ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero, 2nd ed. rev. Denis Arnold (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1968), 16:iii; and in Claudio Monteverdi, Messa a 4 voci e Salmi (1650), ed. Mariella Sala, in Opera omnia, vol. 18 (Cremona: Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi, 1995), 75. It is also available in diplomatic transcription in Jeffrey Kurtzman and Anne Schnoebelen, A Catalogue of Mass, Office, and Holy Week Music Printed in Italy, 1516–1770, JSCM Instrumenta 2 (created 2014, last revised October 2018), https://sscm-jscm.org/instrumenta/instrumenta-volume-2/, Monteverdi 1650 Anthology M3447 SD 1650-5.
[12] On Monteverdi’s sacred music production in Mantua and Venice, see Jeffrey Kurtzman, “The Mantuan Sacred Music,” in Monteverdi, ed. John Whenham and Richard Wistreich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 141–54; and Kurtzman, “Monteverdi’s Missing Sacred Music: Evidence and Conjectures,” in The Musicologist and Source Documentary Evidence: A Book of Essays in Honour of Professor Piotr Pozniak on his 70th Birthday, ed. Zofia Fabiańska et al. (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2009), 187–208. The latter essay is reprinted in Kurtzman, Approaches to Monteverdi, XI. Further speculation on the venues for Monteverdi’s concertato sacred music in Venice are found in Whenham, “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650),” 116–20.
[13] The first to propose an origin for much of the music of the Selva morale was James H. Moore, “Venezia favorita da Maria,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 37, no. 2 (1984): 299–355; he associated portions of the print with ceremonies celebrating the end of the Venetian plague in November 1631. However, much of Moore’s evidence and argument have not proved persuasive. See Jeffrey Kurtzman, “Monteverdi’s ‘Mass of Thanksgiving’ Revisited,” Early Music 22, no. 1 (1994): 63–84, and Kurtzman, “Monteverdi’s Mass of Thanksgiving: Da Capo,” in Fiori Musicali: Liber Amicorum Alexander Silbiger, ed. Claire Fontijn (Ann Arbor: Harmonie Park Press, 2009), 95–128; republished in Kurtzman, Approaches to Monteverdi, X. On Eleonora’s Mysterien-Andachten, see Gabriela Krombach, “Die Musik zu den Mysterien-Andachten in der Wiener Augustiner-Kirche,” in Johann Joseph Fux und seine Zeit: Kultur, Kunst und Musik im Spätbarock, ed. Arnfried Edler and Friedrich W. Riedel (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1996), 203–18. Linda Maria Koldau, in Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 110–16, has suggested that the music of the Selva morale, whether selected or newly composed, was suitable for Eleonora’s Mysterien-Andachten as well as other services in her private chapel. Andrew Weaver has also associated motets from the Selva morale with these mysteries in “Piety, Politics, and Patronage: Motets at the Habsburg Court in Vienna during the Reign of Ferdinand III (1637–1657)” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2002), 155, and “Divine Wisdom and Dolorous Mysteries: Habsburg Marian Devotion in Two Motets from Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale,” Journal of Musicology 24, no. 2 (2007): 262–63.
[14] See James H. Moore, Vespers at St. Mark’s: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979), 1:68–74; and Moore, “The Vespro delli Cinque Laudate and the Role of Salmi Spezzati at St. Mark’s,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 43, no. 2 (1981): 249–78.
[15] “Per lo che supplico la Maestá Vostra con ogni humilità possibile á degnarsi di riceuerla, ancorche ella non sia forse in quel grado di perfettione, ch’io desidererei, ch’ella fosse.”
[16] In particular, the “Gloria a 7 voci”and the “Magnificat a 8 voci.” See additionally the long list of corrections for many of the pieces in Claudio Monteverdi, Selva morale e spirituale, ed. Denis Stevens, in Opera omnia, vol. 15 (Cremona: Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi, 1998), 55–61. Stevens’s story of the robbery of Monteverdi’s manuscript and parts after the performance of the “Thanksgiving Mass” on November 21, 1631 (according to the thesis of James Moore, in “Venezia favorita da Maria”) is entirely fictitious, as is the “source” he cites for the story (p. 15).
[17] Important recent studies of this print comprise the introduction by Mariella Sala to her Cremona critical edition, Monteverdi, Opera omnia, vol. 18; Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 135–39; and Whenham, “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650).”
[18] The “Letaniae” had been previously published by Vincenti in 1620 and 1626 in two different anthologies, Giulio Cesare Bianchi’s Libro secondo de motetti (RISM SD 1620|4) and Lorenzo Calvi’s Rosarium litanarium Beatae V. Mariae (RISM SD 1626|3). The assumption that Vincenti had at his disposal more manuscript music than he published in 1650 is shared by Whenham in “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650),” 105, which also speculates on how and when Vincenti managed to obtain the manuscripts. A more remote possibility that can’t be rejected out of hand is that Vincenti actually obtained a discrete set of manuscripts that Monteverdi had already organized himself for an intended publication of a mass and vespers music, lacking only a Magnificat. The quantity of corrections required for the Cremona critical edition (ed. Sala, Opera omnia, vol. 18) suggests that the manuscripts Vincenti received were still in need of considerable editing.
[19] The “male cursus” comprises the psalms Dixit Dominus, Confitebor tibi, Beatus vir, Laudate pueri, and Laudate Dominum. The sequence for the “female cursus” is Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum, Nisi Dominus, and Lauda Jerusalem. Thus, the sequence of psalms in the Messa et salmi comprises the “male cursus” followed by Laetatus, Nisi, and Lauda Jerusalem. The “Sunday cursus” is the same as the “male cursus” with the exception of the fifth psalm, In exitu Israel. However, it was also common in the seventeenth century to substitute Laudate Dominum for In exitu in Sunday services, so Monteverdi’s Messa et salmi could also be used on Sundays.
[20] Especially noteworthy from this writer’s point of view are the Dixit Dominus setting discussed here, both Confitebor tibi, Laetatus sum, and Nisi Dominus settings, and the Lauda Jerusalem a 5.
[21] Biblia Sacra juxta Vulgatam editionem Sixti V et Clementis VIII (Vatican, 1592; definitive edition, 1598); Psalterium Davidicum Venetiarum per hebdomadam dispositum, ad usum ecclesiae ducalis Sancti Marci Venetiarum: Cum omnibus, quae pro Psalmis, Hymnis, & Antiphonis, in Divinis Officijs, necessaria sunt (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1609), fols. 83r–83v; Psalterium Romanum iuxta ordinem breviarij restituti, ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilij Tridentini & Officium Beatae Mariae virginis ita ordinatum ut facillimè quilibet per se recitare poterit (Venice: Giunta, 1580), fols. 171r–171v. (The Giunta 1580 print was apparently the earliest edition of this version of the psaltery, which was republished numerous times throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries.)
[22] Saint Augustine chooses “exaltavit.” See Tabula divi Aurelii Augustini in librum psalmorum (Venice: Bernardinum Benalium, 1493), fol. 265r. Monteverdi’s various settings of Dixit Dominus show a preference for “exaltabit,” but not exclusively. The differences may have more to do with copyists, typographers, and printers than with any choices on Monteverdi’s part. His 1610 Dixit has “exaltavit” in the cantus partbook but “exaltabit” in all the others. Ambiguity is particularly evident in Vincenti’s 1650 Dixits: the first one, studied here, has “exaltavit” in the first alto voice and “exaltabit” in the first tenor. The second setting has “exaltavit” in all parts except the two basses, which show “exaltabit.” In the two Selva morale settings, the Dixit primo uses “exaltabit” in both sopranos, as does the Dixit secondo in all voices except the second tenor, which uses “exaltavit,” and the first soprano, which employs both spellings.
[23] See Whenham, “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650),” 102.
[24] Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 110, at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801110.htm (see note 10 above).
[25] Ioanne Baptista De Rubeis, Commentaria in Psalterium Romanum dispositum per Hebdomadam ad formam Breviarij Romani Pij V. Pontificis Maximi iussu editi, & Clementis VIII recogniti una cum hymnis, canticis, antiphonis & versiculis per totum Annum cum suo rationali (Venice: Giovanni Gueriglio, 1628), available on Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=yQpHEg-Snn4C. The wordy disquisition on Dixit Dominus appears on pp. 684–90.
[26] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 684: “Materia huius Psalmi est de mysterijs incarnationis Christi, ac de eius exaltatione, & magnificentia, tam ex parte humanitatis, quàm ex parte divinitatis.”
[27] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 686: “Tortores enim martyrum posuit Deus in inferno sub pedibus eorum s. Sanctorum.
[28] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 687: “Hanc autem quadruplicem Virgam dedit Deus pater ipsi Christo filio suo inquantum homo: & ipse Christus tradidit eam discipulis suis in die Pentecostes. Et hanc dedit in monte Sion.… De Sion exibit lex, & verbum Domini de Ierusalem. Dominatur etiam inimicorum suorum Iudaeorum, Paganorum, & haereticorum …”
[29] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 687: “Ostendit Christum esse verum filium Dei patris naturalem, & aeternum, & per consequens iure haereditario regnum aeternum, & supradictam potestatem à patre accepisse.… Unde ipse pater est [tecum,] & est unum [principium] mittendi Spiritum sanctum, [in die virtutis tuae] nempè, in die Pentecostes, scilicet, [in splendoribus Sanctorum] quando splendor igneus venit super sanctos Apostolos. Nam illa die simul eum Patre misisti virtutem super eos, quae dies dicitur splendor sanctorum, eò quòd fuerunt illuminati, & omnibus virtutibus, & donis refecti.…Moraliter. [Ex utero ante Luciferum genui te] idest, ex occulto praedestinationis meae disposui te glorificare.”
[30] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 687–88: “In has parte praedicit Christum fore sacerdotem aeternum, quae est secunda dignitas, quam Christus acquisivit in praemium suae passionis.… Homo, ut posset pati pro nobis ad iustitiam complendam. Deus, ut praevaleret contra Diabolum, & pretium esse validum, & infinitum. Rex, ut haberet universal dominium…. Fuit enim Melchisedech rex, & sacerdos: quía rex Salem, quod sacerdos Dei altissimi.… Item Melchisedech interpretatur rex iustitiae: Chrisuts autem est verus rex iustitiae.… Item sicut Melchisedech fuit rex Salem, ita Christus fuit verus rex pacis, & nos patri reconciliavit.… Nam sicut ille [Melchisedech] obtulit panem, & vinum pro Abraham Deo altissimo: ita Christus instituit sacrificium Eucharistiae, in quo obtulit se ipsum sub forma panis, & vini in memoriam suae passionis, in qua passione obtulit se ipsum in forma, & carne humana in cruce.”
[31] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 688–89: “Christus ipse sacerdos in aeternum positus, [à dextris tuis] ò Domine pater, de quo iurasti, cum dixisti: sede à dextris meis: Donec ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum, [confregit,] id est conquassabit [in die ira].… Astiterunt reges terrae, & principes convenerunt in unum, adversus Dominum, & adversus Christum eius. Hos confregit gloria sua, & pondere nominis sui infirmos reddidit, ut non possent facere quod volebant.”
[32] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 689: “Iudicabit occulto iudicio in praesenti [in nationibus]: i[dest] in gentibus propter peccata, ut humilientur ad conversionem, idest iudicium faciet, & puniet gentes, ut convertantur, [& implebit] aedificando [ruinas], idest humiles … qua contra Christum se erexerant … Vel sic [iudicabit] in forma humana in finali iudicio [in nationibus,] idest in populis universis: quia illud erit universal iudicium: [implebit ruinas]. Angelorum, quia illuc homines ascendere faciet, unde Angeli apostatae ruendo descenderunt [conquassabit] i[dest] graviter condemnabit [capita multorum] i[dest] multos superbos praelatos, & Tyrannos … Vel [iudicabit in nationibus] ipsas nationes, iustas, salvando, & impios damnando: [conquassabit capita] i[dest] humiliabit corda [in terra multorum] i[dest] in multis locis, & habitaculis hominum.”
[33] De Rubeis, Commentaria, 689: “Omnes enim labores, & itinera, & peregrinationes, fames, sitis, iniuriae, opprobria, & verbera, quae pro nobis ipse Christus tulit, & sustinuit computantur in eius passione: quia tota vita Christi fuit unus continuus labor, & quaedam passio, & unus actus meritorious respectu Christi. Et ideo vita huius mundi dicitur quasi torrens, & fluvius tribulationum.… Et sic vita Christi fuit quidam torrens plenus persecutionum, & laborum, & afflictionum: per quem Christus transivit, & de quo bibit in hac vita corporali, per quos labores meruit exaltari, & obitnere regnum, & sacerdotum, & iudiciariam potestatem, de quibus supra.… Quia Christus bibit calicem passionis de torrente tantarum persecutionum, & laborum, & opprobriorum, & mortis, & crucis in via huius mundi inquantum fuit viator: ideo in praemium tantorum laborum, & tantae humiltatis, & charitatis, quia humiliavit semet ipsum usque ad mortem crucis, exaltavit caput, honorem, regnum suum, & potestatem super omnes creaturas.”
[34] Monteverdi’s labeling of the partbooks in the Selva morale is “Soprano Primo, Soprano Secondo, Tenore Primo, Tenore Secondo,” etc. Vincenti’s labeling of the partbooks in the Messa e salmi, however, is “Canto Primo Choro, Alto Primo Choro … Canto Secondo Choro, Alto Secondo Choro,” etc. The Messa et salmi labeling may have been the result of Vincenti’s editorial intervention in a manuscript without such specific voice labels.
[35] The Basso Continuo partbook also contains a brief rubric for the piece in the score itself: “A 8. Con due violini & 4. Instromenti.”
[36] Two parts labeled Viola, notated in the alto and bass clefs respectively, do appear in the single partbook labeled Alto & Basso Secondo, but only in the “Magnificat concertato a 8.” The score of this piece is highly problematic, with the alto secondo and basso secondo voices missing altogether.
[37] Monteverdi was extraordinarily busy during the last several years of his life. Not only did he publish the very large Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi and the Selva morale in these years, he also revived the opera Arianna, wrote the balletto Vittoria d’Amore for Duke Odoardo Farnese for performance in Piacenza, and composed Le nozze di Enea in Lavinia, Il ritorno d’Ulisse and L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Venetian stage. It has been argued that portions of Poppea are not by Monteverdi, and it is perhaps not surprising that in 1638, when the French ambassador in Venice commissioned a festive musical celebration in San Giorgio Maggiore in honor of the birth of the Dauphin (Louis XIV), he turned to Giovanni Rovetta for the task. Perhaps Monteverdi was too overloaded to accept it, or even, at this late stage of his life, ill.
[38] Tutte le opere di Claudio Monteverdi, ed. Malipiero, 2nd ed. rev. Arnold, vols. 15–16. Musical examples below are adapted from this edition, including barring and bar numbers, but with editorial slurs and continuo realizations omitted. Slurring in my examples is as in the original prints. My examples from the Messa et salmi reposition the voices, as found in Alessandro Vincenti’s and Malipiero’s double choir arrangement, to agree with the descending pairs found in the Selva morale: Canto I, Canto II, Alto I, Alto II, etc. Original vocal cleffing for both settings is C1, C1, C3, C3, C4, C4, F4, F4.
[39] The Malipiero edition uses Ø3/2.
[40] The Malipiero edition uses Ø3/1.
[41] See Uwe Wolf, Notation und Auffürhungspraxis: Studien zum Wandel von Notenschrift und Notenbild in italienischen Musikdrucken der Jahre 1571–1630, 2 vols. (Berlin and Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1959); Gregory Barnett, “Tempo, Meter, and Rhythmic Notation in Sonatas of the Corellian Era,” in Arcomelo 2013: Studi nel terzo centenario della morte di Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), ed. Guido Olivieri and Marc Vanscheeuwijck (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2015), 57–99; and Barnett, “The Mensural Sonata: Meter, Rhythm, and Tempo in Late-Seicento Instrumental Music,” in Le notazioni della polifonia vocale dei secoli ix–xvii, Antologia—parte seconda: Secoli xv–xvii, ed. Antonio Delfino (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, forthcoming).
[42] For example, Adriano Banchieri, Cartella musicale nel canto figurato, fermo, & contrapunto (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1614), 29, 168; available on Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=VZxFAHJ37lkC. On p. 29 Banchieri complains about “cantori” who confuse tripla and sesquialtera. On p. 168 Banchieri, after praising Luca Marenzio and unnamed others, declares: “Altri poi vi sono che nelle conpositioni riescono mirabilia, ma nelle proportioni usano grandi abusi segnando gli numeri indeferentemente, & alcuni vediamo che in un opera istessa si contradiscono; queste ò sieno inavertenze, overo licentie capricciose meritano poca lode (per non dire molto biasimo) …” (“There are others whose compositions are marvelously successful, but who practice great abuses in proportions, indicating the numbers indifferently; and we see some who in a single work contradict themselves. These [proportions], whether careless or capricious, merit little praise (not to speak of much reproach).”) Although Banchieri diplomatically names no one, his words are a very accurate description of both Monteverdi’s reputation and his duple and proportional notations in his 1610 Vespro della Beata Vergine.
[43] See the Barnett articles cited in note 41. I am grateful to Ruth DeFord for several conversations we have had over theorists’ comments on proportions.
[44] The presentation in the first soprano of the full psalm tone in two hemistiches (i.e., the chant for “Dixit Dominus Domino meo: sede a dextris meis”) underscores an ambiguity in Monteverdi’s conception of the verse structure of the psalm. Although the polyphonic setting follows the Vulgate’s verse structure, the psalm tone itself identifies “Dixit Domino … a dextris meis” as a complete verse, not a hemistich of a verse, and “Donec ponam inimicos tuos scabellum pedum tuorum” as a second complete verse as in the verse structure of the Psalter of St. Mark’s and the Roman Psalter.
[45] Pietro Pontio, in his Ragionamento di musica (Parma: Erasmo Viotto, 1588; reprint, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1959, ed. Suzanne Clercx), 97–98, illustrates the principal notes of each psalm tone, which are the typical cadence points. Also available on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=VFg8AAAAcAAJ. For the eighth tone, these are C and G, but for the third tone, A, C, and G. This issue is discussed in relation to polyphonic compositions whose most prominent pitches coincide with those of the psalm tones rather than the modes in Laurie Paget [= Laurie Stras], “Monteverdi as Discepolo: Harmony, Rhetoric and Psalm-Tone Hierarchies in the Works of Ingegneri and Monteverdi,” Journal of Musicological Research 15 (1995): 149–75.
[46] This is another example of Monteverdi using both hemistiches of the psalm tone as cantus firmus while presenting in the other voices only the first hemistich of the verse’s text. See n. 44.
[47] In the full-cadence conclusion in A of this passage (Example 16, bar 208), Monteverdi does not place a sharp in front of the second soprano’s c″ in either setting, though common performance practice would normally call for a major triad at such a cadence on a sustained semibreve with fermata.
[48] See Herbert Seifert, “Die Musiker der beiden Kaiserinnen Eleonora Gonzaga,” in Festschrift Othmar Wessely zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Manfred Angerer et al (Tutzing: Schneider, 1982), 527-54, especially at 530.
[49] See Jeffrey Kurtzman, “A Jungian Perspective on Monteverdi’s Late Madrigals,” in Relazioni musicali tra Italia e Germania nell’età barocca: Atti del VI convegno internazionale sulla musica italiana nei secoli XVII–XVIII, ed. Alberto Colzani, Andrea Luppi, and Maurizio Padoan (Como: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1997), 132–35; and Kurtzman, “What Makes Claudio ‘Divine’?” The Divine Proportion, now more commonly called the golden section, is a ratio resulting from a whole unit subdivided into two unequal parts so that the ratio between the whole unit (of any number of dimensions or time durations) and its larger subdivision is the same as the ratio between the larger subdivision and the smaller subdivision. The ratio, in effect, identifies the point (in, e.g., distance units or time units) at which the unequal parts are thus divided. Geometrically, the concept is simple, but mathematically the golden section ratio results in a never-ending irrational number (.6180339887 …). The literature on the Divine Proportion is vast. Fundamental to the period represented by the present essay is Rudolph Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 3rd rev. ed. (London: Tiranti, 1962; New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1962). Wittkower first published this work in 1949; it is now available in a 5th ed. (Chichester, UK: Academy Editions, 1998).
[50] Luca Pacioli, Divina proportione: Opera a tutti gl’ingegni perspicaci e curiosi necessaria ove ciascun studioso di philosophia, prospectiva pictura, sculptura, architectura, musica, e altre mathematice, suavissima sottile e admirabile doctrina consequira, e delectarassi con varie questione de secretissima scientia (Venice: Paganini, 1509; reprint, Lexington, KY: Leopold Publishing, 2014). Available online at https://archive.org/details/divinaproportion00paci. Pacioli’s five attributes of God are noted in Marcus Frings, “The Golden Section in Architectural Theory,” Nexus Network Journal 4 (2002): 11.
[51] See Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 431n56, 448n56, 450n115, 452n232, 453n281.
[52] Rachel Fletcher, “Golden Proportions in a Great House: Palladio’s Villa Emo,” Nexus III: Architecture and Mathematics, ed. Kim Williams (Pisa, 2000): 73–85.
[53] Whenham, “The Messa a quattro voci et salmi (1650),” 102.
[54] Kurtzman, “What Makes Claudio ‘Divine’?”
[55] Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997).
[56] The Fibonacci number series is one in which each successive number is the sum of the previous two: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 … The ratio between successive numbers increasingly approaches the golden section, alternating between ratios larger and smaller than the golden section itself, but always narrowing in its distance from it. The Fibonacci series has often been used as a simple vehicle for creating golden section structures.