In about 1800, Ludwig van Beethoven began forcing music into a new era, one of more daring harmony and greater emotional impact than had been fashionable in the previous few decades.
Two hundred years earlier, Claudio Monteverdi had taken on exactly that same task and accomplished it brilliantly. Beethoven is a classical superstar, known even to people who dislike classical music. But Monteverdi has not won similar popularity, although he was an innovative genius with creative powers comparable to Beethoven's.
Where to begin an appreciation of Monteverdi's work? Opera? He did not write the first opera, but he did write the first operatic masterpiece, ``L'Orfeo.'' Church music? Here Monteverdi created a distinguished body of work using all the latest techniques.
But other well-known composers have written great operas and sacred music. The one genre to which Monteverdi applied himself with distinction but without competition from other enormously popular composers is the madrigal.
Monteverdi wasn't the first or only great madrigal composer. In fact, he was one of the last; the madrigal fad died about the same time as Monteverdi (1643 is the composer's death year; madrigals have no tombstone but sputtered out in the mid-17th century).
The madrigal is a form of secular vocal music that flourished in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The earliest madrigals were published in Rome in 1530. Italy remained the home base of madrigal writing, although the form did spread around Europe and became especially fashionable in England.
Madrigals are perfect examples of polyphony. Polyphonic music combines several simultaneous, more or less independent melodic lines and was the principal method of composing sacred and some secular music during Monteverdi's time.
The opposite technique is called either monody, which is a solo song with some sort of accompaniment, or homophony-essentially the same thing, in which one voice leads melodically and is supported by chordal or slightly more elaborate accompaniment. Most l9th-century classical music and almost all contemporary popular songs are homophonic.
Now, even though by the middle of the 16th century sacred music and secular madrigals were written polyphonically, there was no mistaking one kind of music for the other. Church music of the period (and the hymns used today, for that matter) tended to be stately and full of white notes - whole and half notes, which are held a fairly long time.
Madrigals, on the other hand, were bursting with black notes - quarter and eighth notes, which are quite short. This mixture of long and short notes made it possible for the music to reflect the rhythms of the words more accurately and to convey the texts' moods more convincingly.
Church music, with all those white notes, could sound only devout, sad or sometimes rapturous. Madrigals, with their note mixtures, could sound amorous, tipsy, joyful or fierce.
Madrigalists like Monteverdi also became fond of chromaticism - using not only the do-re-mi notes of the scale, but the sharp and flat notes between them.
Monteverdi was also especially daring in his use of dissonance, or harmonies that didn't quite seem to fit. What the people of 1605 thought was dissonant sounds innocuous by today's standards. But in Monteverdi's madrigals it's easy to detect the dissonant parts - there's a sudden intensity of expression; the music turns exquisitely bittersweet or anguished, depending on the madrigal's subject.
Monteverdi's fourth and fifth books of madrigals, published respectively in 1603 and 1605, are pinnacles of the avant-garde madrigal style. The contents of each book are written for five voice parts and may be sung with excellent results either by an intimate vocal quintet or a small choir.
These and Monteverdi's later madrigal collections are marvelous concoctions of chromaticism, imitative sound effects, and, at times, virtuosic and declamatory solo singing. It was only natural for Monteverdi to carry these techniques over to more overtly dramatic music forms, including a new type of music called opera.
In fact, these are precisely the qualities that make Monteverdi's three surviving full-length operas the earliest such works average music lovers care to hear today.
``L'Orfeo,'' Monteverdi's Orpheus-inspired first opera, premiered in 1607 and is the most popular of the three. Monteverdi will never be confused with opera god Giuseppe Verdi, who lived 250 years later. But ``L'Orfeo'' is a remarkable opera with passages that ought to be as well-known as anything in Verdi's ``La traviata'' or ``Aida.''
``L'Orfeo'' combines the most avant-garde elements of music used in Monteverdi's time - monody, bits of madrigal writing, and innovative use of the instruments. Monteverdi enlarged the orchestra and became one of the first composers to increase its dramatic range by having the strings use tremolo (a fast, trembling repetition of a note) and pizzicato (plucking the strings).
Monteverdi's innovations found their way even into church music. His ``Vespers of the Blessed Virgin,'' published in 1610, is a compendium of the newest forms of church writing. It contains awe-inspiring psalm settings for chorus, and extremely difficult solo passages and instrumental interludes that are downright operatic - including a striking opening sequence adapted from ``L'Orfeo.''
Monteverdi listening suggestions
A good way to begin a compact disc collection of Monteverdi's music is with some of the most characteristic madrigals. Anthony Booley and his Consort of Musicke have recorded the entire Book 5 set for the record company L'Oiseau-Lyre. Book 5 is prime Monteverdi and probably the best introduction to his work. Booley is working his way through the other books, too, now for the troubled Virgin Classics label. Because that company was sold to EMI, no one is certain whether Booley's series will continue, or even whether the existing releases will remain available much longer. In other words, order what you can now.
For the often-recorded 1610 Vespers, the newest versions are by and large the best. Look for those conducted by Philip Pickett on IL'Oiseau-lyre, Philippe Herreweghe on Harmonia Mundi, or Jordi Savall on AstrCe (this last is available, even though it isn't listed in the highly inaccurate Opus catalog; its catalog number is E8719).
And as for ``L'Orfeo,'' two versions are of prime interest: one led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt on Teldec, the other directed by John Eliot Gardiner on Archiv.