Venice, morning: the city takes shape in the shimmer of the canal. Slowly, almost mysteriously, Rainer Maria Rilke’s first poem (“Venezianischer Morgen”) develops in a spoken and sung voice – a dialogue between words and sounds. Brief impulses, from pianissimo to fortissimo, are interspersed with pauses in the manner of medieval hiccups. Distorted imitations of micro-intervals on brief fragments are furtively reminiscent of Renaissance counterpoint. Ductile, ornate melodies carry echoes of the Baroque idiom. History is there, as often underlying Bruno Mantovani’s creative thinking. On this multiple canvas, where we can fleetingly imagine the immemorial City of Canals dear to the poet, two choirs echo, complement, and oppose each other, opening on Italy’s musical past like one of the “princely windows” mentioned in the first line.
The deliberately unstructured lyrics, mirroring the Rilkean wandering, are shaped by the composer’s inspiration, a shy breath anticipating the “fatal wind” that completes it, a continuous “sense of ebb-and-flow”. An opal appears here, a nymph seduced by Zeus there, before the basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore rises. The quiet then returns, time freezes, and the voices suddenly surge, forming a kind of chorale. It’s now late autumn (Spätherbst in Venedig): the city, in the second poem, has ceased to “drift like a lure”. Summer is no more than a weary ghost haunting the gardens, upside down. The galleys set sail from the deserted Arsenal, gliding in a wind from which the morning light gradually emerges again, echoing the initial shimmer. The loop closes, leading from abstraction to figuration – or the other way round. Everything is possible. And everything is possible in this creation, a prelude to the ensuing service.
Let’s leave La Serenissima and go back in time… In 1610, Claudio Monteverdi, 43, has been living for twenty years in Mantua, attached to the House of Gonzaga. His Orfeo was premiered three years earlier. A widower with three dependent children, he now hopes to improve his lifestyle, since his position of Kapellmeister to the Duke, which he has held since the end of 1601, is no longer sufficient. So, he offers Pope Paul V a monumental collection of sacred compositions, most likely expecting the Holy Father not only to grant him a position, but also a place and scholarship for his eldest son at the seminary in Rome. Alas, the attempt fails: although the music is accepted, Monteverdi has to wait another three years to obtain a life-changing appointment – in Venice, where he becomes choirmaster in 1613.
The collection offered to the pontiff includes a Mass for the Blessed Virgin for six voices, whose original material is specified below (Nicolas Gombert’s motet “In illo tempore”), and the “Vespers for several voices with a few sacred songs suitable for chapels and ducal chambers”. Even today, these Vespers are shrouded in a certain mystery. The title Vespro della beata Vergine, under which the office is known today, appears at the head of the only basso continuo part, and some scholars question the work’s real purpose, suggesting that its nuptial function may have been a selling point. Indeed, apart from the final Magnificat – the closing canticle of all vesper ceremonies – only two pieces, placed consecutively at the end of the office, are strictly nuptial: the Sonata sopra Santa Maria – an instrumental sonata based on the invocation Sancta Maria ora pro nobis – and the hymn Ave Maris Stella, for soloists and choir. Finally, nothing is known about the conditions and location of their creation. Some believe the service may have been performed as early as 1607. Others point to a premiere in 1610, in the Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantua, then used as the ducal palace chapel.
The series deploys fourteen major pieces – including two Magnificats, one in the old style, the other more innovative (chosen this evening) – in which Monteverdi displays the full range of his skills. Sometimes enhanced by instruments (Invitatorium), the plainchant is generally set in cantus firmus for one of the voices in the psalms, sometimes even enriched by variations (Sonata sopra Santa Maria). If the initial fanfare, which is also that of the overture to the Orfeo, is the signature of the Gonzagas, the concertante style (Dixit Dominus) and polychorality in three (Lætatus sum, Lauda Jerusalem), four (Laudate pueri) and five (Nisi Dominus) parts are emblematic of the aesthetics in use in Venice. Hymns and motets are a voce sola (Nigra sum), in duet (Pulchra es), in duet then trio (Duo seraphim), or invite the choir into the solo discourse (Audi cœlum, Ave Maris Stella). Instrumental ritornellos – another “modernist” echo – willingly slip into the discourse (Dixit Dominus, Ave Maris Stella). This Mantua definitely has a lot of Venice in her.
Anne Ibos-Augé
