Heavenly Voices

by Petar PLAMENOV


11 May (Wednesday), 2011
 
Conductor: Virginia Atanasova
Director: Carmelo Agnelli
Tutti Soli Chamber Ensemble

Bulgaria Hall
Grand Hall, 19:30
Address:
Sofia, 1 Aksakov Str.
Working time: mon-sun 09:00–18:30
Phone: 02 987 76 56

If one were to name the composer that stitches the seam between the Renaissance and the Baroque, it would likely be Claudio Monteverdi -- the same composer who is largely and frequently credited with making the cut in the first place. The path from his earliest canzonettas and madrigals to his latest operatic work exemplifies the shifts in musical thinking that took place in the last decades of the sixteenth century and the first few of the seventeenth.

Italian priest and musician, was born at Cremona in May 1567; he was engaged at an early age as violist to the Duke of Mantua, and studied composition under Ingegneri, the duke's maestro di capella. His bold experiments, while bringing upon him the attacks of Artusi and Banchieri, led to discoveries which exercised a lasting influence upon the progress of musical art. He was the first to make deliberate use of unprepared dissonances, or what are now known as fundamental discords. These discords constituted a revolution against the laws of 16th century music. He employed them first in his madrigals, where they are a sign of decadence, but afterwards introduced them into music of another kind with such excellent effect that their value was universally recognized.



Compared to the archaic vocabulary and methods of his predecessors, Monteverdi’s operas represent an entirely new art. This is not a revolution: there was nothing before Monteverdi that he could have revolutionized. This is invention, the discovery of a brave, new world. He was the first one to understand and appreciate the role of the orchestra in an opera, to use an instrumental style and resources as an ally for his dramatic mission. To use instruments for the purpose of mood painting and characterization was simply without precedent. He knew how to make his characters not the abstractions they had been before, but human beings. 

One of his most famous opera compostions is L'Orfeo. Monteverdi wrote his last opera when he was 75 years old--just one year before he died! He also composed other types of music: masses (music that accompanies a full service in the Catholic and Anglican churches), motets (unaccompanied choral compositions that are based on sacred texts), and madrigals (choral pieces that are often patterned after poetry and tell a story). He is known for being able to compose wonderful music that was both religious (sacred) and non-religious (secular). 

 

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