An Unknown Work by Monteverdi: The Vespers of St. John the BaptistAuthor(s): Frits NoskeReviewed work(s):Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 118-122Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/854804 .Accessed: 13/07/2012 05:24

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AN UNKNOWN WORK BY MONTEVERDI: THE VESPERS OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST

BY FRITS NOSKE

IN THE SPRING of 1620 the States General of the United Provinces sent a diplomatic mission to the Venetian Republic, headed by the ambassador extraordinary Francois van Aerssen. The party included six sons of Dutch patricians, who

probably intended to make the Grand Tour by this means. One of them, Constantijn Huygens, may have had additional reasons for joining the mission: he

aspired to a diplomatic career. Huygens's accomplishments at the age of 23 already pointed to the homo

universalis he was to become in the course of his long life. Well versed in the arts and sciences, speaking and writing six languages and playing four musical instruments, he was a particularly brilliant young man whose strong personality may have intimidated other, less gifted people. This perhaps explains why, despite the excellent relations his father enjoyed in government circles, he still lacked a post.

During the journey Huygens kept a journal written in French, which was

published nearly a century ago in the annals of a Dutch historical society.' This record of his travels seems to have been almost completely overlooked by musicologists. I consulted it some 25 years ago when preparing the article on

Huygens for MGG, but the importance of several details, including those of the

entry for 24 June 1620, escaped my notice. The account of the mission's travels through Germany and Switzerland

includes only one reference to music; this is not without interest, however, since it reveals the inner conflicts of the young Dutch Calvinist with regard to religious practice in his own country. Despite his adherence to the principles of the Dutch Reformed Church, Huygens seems to have been far from satisfied with the severe restrictions of its musical liturgy.

[11 May 1620] We stayed that night at Weinssen, an Imperial city on the river Neckar, which is small, however, and has few inhabitants, almost all of them Lutherans and adherents of the Union. It was the feast day of a saint. In the evening, the young girls of the town performed a round dance in the street with much modest seriousness, singing nothing but psalms and sacred songs, apparently with devotion, which seems to me a practice quite different from that of my country.

Once the party had crossed the Italian border and entered Venetian territory, Huygens's position changed considerably. As the only member of the company who spoke fluent Italian, he became indispensable to the ambassador, and he took

advantage of this circumstance by ingratiating himself with their hosts. On 4 June the mission arrived at Bergamo and was lodged in the palace of the capitan grande.

' 'Constantijn Huygens' journaal van zijne reis naar Venetie in 1620', ed. J. A. Worp, Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, gevestigd te Utrecht, xv (1894), 62-179.

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Here the young man received his first impression of musical practice south of the Alps:

We had supper, all of us being plied copiously with food, and with a double dessert ... To this was added music of ineffable beauty, performed by a spinet, a theorbo and voices.

The party moved on to Verona, where their reception was even more splendid. On 11 June Huygens made a note in his journal of a visit he paid to the palace of Count Bevilacqua:

He took me to his Room of the Muses, where once a week music is made by voices and all kinds of instruments, which are there to see. I was pleased to see all the walls hung with tapestries portraying the great musicians of all time, Italian as well as Flemish . . .

The same day, their hosts invited the ambassador and his party to the Accademia Filarmonica:

That evening there had been invited all that the summer season had left over of the ladies of the city, who set about dancing to the excellent music of voices, spinet, theorbos etc.... These gentlemen, observing that I enjoyed their music, made me a present of the new books by their maestro di cappella, which I shall keep in memory of them.

The maestro in question was very probably Stefano Bernardi. Huygens sent these music books by sea to Holland but was later told that they had been lost, the ship having been captured by Barbary pirates.

In the early morning of 14 June the mission reached Venice. The same day Huygens was sent to the Doge's palace to announce the ambassador's arrival. The Doge, Antonio Priuli, was delighted with the young Dutchman. He later said to the ambassador: 'Questo e suo secretario, giovane discreto e savio', praising Huygens's good manners and fluent Italian.2 During his three weeks' stay in Venice Huygens mentioned various events and activities in his journal: the ceremonial reception of the mission; the splendid processions (invitations to which the ambassador of a Calvinist country had politely to decline); the visits to the Murano glassworks, art collections, armouries and so on. Huygens recorded his most exciting musical experience as follows:

On the 24th [of June], which was the feast of St. John the Baptist, I was taken to Vespers in the church of SS. Giovanni e Lucia,3 where I heard the most accomplished music I think I shall ever hear in my life. The very famous Claudio di Monteverde, maestro di cappella at St. Mark's, whose composition it was, led and also conducted it on this occasion, accompanied by four theorbos, two cornetts, two bassoons, two violins, a bass viol of monstrous dimensions, organs and other instruments, all of which were equally well handled and played, not to speak of ten or twelve voices; I was transported with delight. 2 See Jacob Smit, De Grootmeester van Woord- en Snarenspel: het Leven van Constantijn Huygens, The Hague, 1980,

p. 80. 3 I cannot trace the existence of such a church, and Huygens may have intended to write 'SS. Giovanni e

Paolo'.

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The importance of this report is obvious. We know that during his 30 years in Venice Monteverdi wrote for services at St. Mark's an enormous amount of sacred music of which a relatively small part survives. In his letter of 13 March 1620 to Alessandro Striggio at Mantua he mentions that he also supplied other Venetian churches with music, for which he was most liberally paid;4 this is confirmed by archival documents.5 The detailed information about the rich instrumentation points to festive music of more than average importance, comparable to that of the Marian Vespers in Monteverdi's 1610 collection of sacred music.

The entry in Huygens's journal thus adds another item to the long list of lost music by Monteverdi. There is no reason, however, to leave the matter there. The question may be raised: how far is it possible to reconstruct this particular work?

The musical part of the Second Vespers of St. John the Baptist consists of the versicle and response 'Deus in adjutorium' / 'Domine ad adjuvandum'; five psalms with their antiphons (the so-called male cursus, that is, the sequence of psalms used for a number of major feasts of male saints): Psalms 109, 'Dixit Dominus' (third tone), 110, 'Confitebor' (fourth tone), 111, 'Beatus vir' (first tone), 112, 'Laudate pueri' (third tone), and 116, 'Laudate Dominum' (third tone); the hymn of St. John, 'Ut queant laxis' (second mode); and the Magnificat with its antiphon (seventh mode). The obvious place to look for polyphonic settings of the psalms, the hymn and the Magnificat is the collection of sacred music that Monteverdi

published in 1640 under the title Selva morale e spirituale.6 At first sight the result seems more than satisfactory. There is even an embarras de choix, for the volume includes several settings of the five psalms: two each of Psalms 109, 111 and 112 and three each of Psalms 110 (the last of these allafrancese) and 116. Most of these

settings are for fairly large ensembles. Taking into account the fact that additional instrumental parts doubling the voices were often not written out, the scoring more or less fits the description in Huygens's journal. The Selva morale contains only one

setting of the Guidonian hymn 'Ut queant laxis', which uses more modest means: two sopranos, each singing a strophe followed by a ritornello for two violins, and

joining forces in the final strophe. A note at the end mentions the possibility of

singing other sacred texts written in the same metre 'sopra questa aria'; one of

these, the hymn 'Iste confessor', is printed in the same volume. Finally, there are two settings of the Magnificat, the first in the concertato style for eight voices, two

violins, four viols or trombones, and continuo, the second in the stile antico for four voices with basso seguente. In addition, the posthumous collection of Monteverdi's sacred music published in 16507 includes two settings each of Psalms 109 and 110 and one each of Psalms 111, 112 and 116.

A reconstruction on the basis of this rich material encounters problems, however. The fact that we do not know whether the liturgy at SS. Giovanni e Lucia

[Paolo?] was the same as that at St. Mark's is of minor importance. The rite in the ducal chapel, which has been described in detail by the late James Moore,8 deviated in many ways from the Roman, especially with regard to the sequence of

psalms on various ecclesiastical feasts. Yet, unlike the First Vespers on the vigil of 4 See The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, trans. & ed. Denis Stevens, London & Boston, 1980, p. 190.

For example those transcribed in Denis Arnold, Monteverdi, London, 1963, p. 202. ' See Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero, xv (2nd, rev. edn., Vienna, 1967). 7Ibid., xvi (2nd, rev. edn., Vienna, 1968). " See James H. Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli,

Ann Arbor, 1981.

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the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, whose psalm sequence ended with 'Memento Domine David' (Psalm 131) instead of 'Laudate Dominum', the psalms of the Second Vespers were sung according to the Roman breviary.9 Only the text of the third psalm, 'Beatus vir', contained a few minor variants; these, however, do not appear in the two settings included in the Selva morale. In the hymn 'Ut queant laxis', on the other hand, Monteverdi seems to have followed the reading of the Psalterium Davidicum, the psalter for the rite of St. Mark's.'? Its last strophe in particular differs considerably from that of the Roman version.

More problematic is the lack of modal agreement between the plainchant antiphons and the double-choir or concertato settings of the psalms and the Magnificat mentioned above. None of these compositions fits the modes of the antiphons in the Second Vespers. In plainchant services, modal agreement was of course a sine qua non. Theoretically the same held for double-choir or concertato settings; in practice, however, the rule was often disregarded. The antiphon after a psalm or the Magnificat could be replaced either by an organ piece or improvisation, a sonata, or an extra-liturgical motet. According to the arguments of Stephen Bonta, corroborated by various sources mentioned in Moore's study, this was a way of avoiding modal disagreement." The possible objection that the Vesper service would consequently take too long is untenable: Paul Hainlein and Thomas Coryat refer to services lasting several hours, one at the Scuola di San Rocco, for example, lasting from five till eight in the evening.'2

The practice of instrumental substitution also solves another problem. Since Monteverdi set only the first, third and fifth strophes of the hymn, one is justified in assuming an alternatim performance. This, however, would contradict the modal disposition: the plainchant melody is in the second mode, whereas the composition is in the seventh. Only if we take the violins' ritornello as a substitute for the chant is the alternatim principle maintained without modal 'disharmony'.

Finally there is the problem of modal inconsistency with regard to the antiphons preceding the psalms and the Magnificat. Although shortened, these had always to be sung in plainchant, as several sources confirm. Referring to Banchieri's observation that psalm tones were often transposed, Moore convinc- ingly suggests that the same procedure could have been applied to antiphons,'3 so that the final note of the plainchant melody agreed with the 'tonic' of the following psalm or Magnificat setting, 'or at least so that an egregious clash in tonalities was avoided'.14

Although we shall probably never obtain complete information about the practice of connecting plainchant antiphons (or their substitutes) with pieces written either in the stile antico or in the stile moderno, a reconstruction of the Vespers of St. John the Baptist including Monteverdi's settings of the five psalms, the hymn, the Magnificat and the optional 'Salve regina', interspersed with small-scale motets, organ improvisations and short sonatas (the latter by Monteverdi's Venetian contemporaries), seems entirely feasible. The choice between various

9 Breviarium romanum, Venice, 1562. o Psalterium Davidicum per hebdomadam dispositum ad usum Ecclesiae Ducalis Sancti Marci Venetiarum, Venice, 1609. " See Stephen Bonta, 'Liturgical Problems in Monteverdi's Marian Vespers', Journal of the American

Musicological Society, xx (1967), 87-106; and idem, 'The Uses of the Sonata da chiesa', ibid., xxii (1969), 54-84. See also Moore, op. cit., i. 175 ff.

'2 See Moore, op. cit., p. 171. 3 See Adriano Banchieri, L'organo suonarino, Venice, 1605, and Moore, op. cit., pp. 175-8. 14 Moore, op. cit., p. 178.

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settings has to be made with judgement and good taste. Settings in the two styles may alternate, as also may large and small ensembles. Still, not every piece can be used: the monodic 'Laudate Dominum' in the 1650 collection, for instance, is unacceptable, since it was written for the Vespers of Holy Saturday, which included only one psalm with five antiphons.'5

To return to Huygens, it is difficult to overestimate the strong impression he received while listening to an entirely new kind of music composed by a great master. In 1620, he was already relatively familiar with various musical genres such as the English anthem, the viol consort,'6 French lute music, the air de cour and the late sixteenth-century madrigal. In addition, he must have been taught the stile antico in sacred music as employed in Sweelinck's polyphonic psalm settings. The grand concertato, however, was still unknown to him as well as to his Dutch

contemporaries. As far as is known, Huygens never composed music for large ensembles. Yet this first impression followed by later experiences must have exerted a strong influence on his style. This applies especially to the close

relationship between words and music and to the employment of seconda prattica devices, as is apparent in his monodic collection Pathodia sacra et profana (Paris, 1647).17

Not everything in Italy pleased the Calvinist Huygens. Arriving at Chiavenna on the way back to Holland, he wrote a rather bitter poem in Latin verses, 'Italia decolor','8 in which he denounces the lack of true devotion behind the display of external beauty pursued for its own sake: processions, paintings, sculptures, even music. It is obvious that for Huygens, despite his interest in modern trends, the ideal of beauty was still the reflection of universal harmony, a gift of God. Nevertheless one can hardly imagine that when writing these lines he was thinking of his recent experience in a Venetian church: the emotion he felt while listening to Monteverdi's music was anything but ephemeral.'9

5 Ibid., pp. 206-7. 16 During the summer of 1613 Huygens met Giovanni Coprario at The Hague. They addressed each other in

Latin poems and almost certainly made music together. See De Gedichten van Constantijn Huygens, ed. Worp, i (Groningen, 1892), 53-54.

17 Ed. Frits R. Noske, 2nd, rev. edn., Amsterdam, 1976. See also Noske, Music Bridging Divided Religions: the Motet in Seventeenth-Century Holland (forthcoming), chap. 7.

18 De Gedichten van Constantijn Huygens, i. 186-7. After his return to Holland, Huygens somewhat mitigated this image in another Latin poem, 'Ex Italia redux': ibid., p. 188.

9 I am indebted to Professor Denis Arnold, Dr. Jerome Roche and Dr. Michael Talbot for sending me information on various points.

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