‘E in rileggendo poi le proprie note’:Monteverdi responds to Artusi?

Tim Carter

Piagn’e sospira ... A lover weeps and sighs through the forest: ne la scorza de’ pinio pur de’ faggi/ segnò l’amato nome in mille guise – scoring the beloved’s name inthe bark of pine or beech. Pastoral characters both male and female do it allthe time, and thus far, we cannot tell the gender of the specific one perform-ing the action here. Obviously, this is not Orlando carving Rosalind’s namethrough the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599 or early1600). Nor, if one knows one’s Ariosto (Orlando furioso, 1516), is it Medoro,the rival of a different, more troubled Orlando for the love of Angelica. It isnot Tirsi as described by Dafne in Act I Scene 1 of Tasso’s Aminta (1573),although with Tasso we start to come closer. The segnò l’amato nome in milleguise may remind one of Erminia among the shepherds in Tasso’s Gerusalemmeliberata (1581), 7:19. But even that is not quite right: Erminia’s forest hasbeech trees and laurels, but no pines. In fact, our lover is Nicea, the replace-ment for Erminia in Tasso’s revision of the Liberata as Gerusalemme conquistata(1593), 8:6. Nicea laments the harsh blows and mishaps of fortune as she, aMuslim in love with a Christian, takes refuge in Arcadia, wandering over andover through the trees: e in rileggendo poi le proprie note/ spargea di pianto levermiglie gote (and while then re-reading her own notes, she showered hervermilion cheeks with weeping).

Claudio Monteverdi, perhaps the most prestigious Italian composer of thelate sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, chose to conclude his Il quartolibro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1603) with a settingof ‘Piagn’e sospira; e quand’i caldi raggi’. The Fourth Book of five-voicemadrigals is a slightly odd collection. Some fifteen months before its appear-ance, Monteverdi had been appointed maestro della musica to Duke VincenzoGonzaga of Mantua. However, instead of responding to that appointment inwhat might seem the normal way – by printing something in the duke’shonour – the composer instead dedicated a madrigal book to the Accademiadegli Intrepidi of Ferrara, saying that some of its contents while in manuscript

I am grateful to Seth Coluzzi (Brandeis University), Suzanne Cusick (New York University), Don Harrán (TheHebrew University of Jerusalem), Anthony Newcomb (University of California, Berkeley), and Laurie Stras(University of Southampton) for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Renaissance Studies Vol. 26 No. 1 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2011.00793.x

© 2012 The AuthorRenaissance Studies © 2012 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

would have been presented to Duke Alfonso II d’Este had the duke not died(on 27 October 1597), so the composer was now presenting to the academythose madrigals and some new ones in print.1 It seems a strange move, eventhough the composer’s connection with Ferrara went back at least to Novem-ber 1598 (and clearly he knew at least some Ferrarese music before then),when some of his works were performed there at the house of the musicalconnoisseur, Antonio Goretti. They thereby attracted the criticism of theBolognese canon and music theorist, Giovanni Maria Artusi, who harshlydissected their modernist irregularities in two treatises published in 1600 and1603. The so-called Artusi–Monteverdi controversy set one benchmark for thearguments between conservatives and progressives that animated muchmusical endeavour in early seventeenth-century Italy. It also led Monteverdi tocome up with his famous dictum that justified the modern style: in his new‘second practice’, the words – or better, their delivery (oratione) – governedthe music rather than vice versa.2

Monteverdi seems to have held off entering the controversy, allowing othersto take his side: his first known use of the term seconda pratica was only in thepostface to his Il quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice: RicciardoAmadino, 1605),3 and its meaning was not properly explained until hisbrother, Giulio Cesare, added the ‘Dichiaratione della lettera stampata nelQuinto libro de’ suoi madrigali’ (‘Explanation of the letter printed in theFifth Book of [Monteverdi’s] madrigals’) to the end of his edition of thecomposer’s Scherzi musicali a tre voci (Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1607).4

Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of madrigals, on the other hand, has no overtreference to Artusi – although it contains one of the madrigals criticized by

1 Monteverdi begins the dedication ‘Poichè gli anni passati io non potei presentare alcuni miei Madrigali àpenna al Serenissimo Alfonso Duca di Ferrara, per la sopravegnente sua morte’, and later refers to ‘i medesimi[ = Madrigali à penna], e altri novi Madrigali hora stampati’.

2 For Monteverdi, the best biography remains Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin: EDT, 1985); a second edition,trans. Tim Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), removes the original commentaries on themusic. For more recent views, see the essays in John Whenham and Richard Wistreich (eds.), The CambridgeCompanion to Monteverdi (Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For the conduct of, andreasons behind, the theoretical debates in which Monteverdi was involved around 1600, one should start withClaude V. Palisca, ‘The Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy’, in Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (eds.), The NewMonteverdi Companion (London: Faber, 1985), 127–58; Tim Carter, ‘Artusi, Monteverdi, and the Poetics ofModern Music’, in Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Bárbara Russano Hanning (eds.), Musical Humanism and its Legacy:Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992), 171–94; Massimo Ossi, Divining theOracle: Monteverdi’s ‘Seconda prattica’ (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003); ChadwickJenkins, ‘Giovanni Maria Artusi and the Ethics of Musical Science’, Acta musicologica, 81 (2009), 75–97.

3 Let me point out that my spelling of pratica – despite the preference of many musicologists – is correct inboth seventeenth-century and modern Italian; it is also the one consistently used by Monteverdi himself in thepresent context (e.g., in his statement in the Fifth Book, and in his letter to Giovanni Battista Doni of 22October 1633), even if Giulio Cesare Monteverdi tends to prefer the hypercorrect prattica in the ‘Dichiaratione’.

4 It is certainly apparent, however, that the controversy resonated through other progressive musical circlesin the early 1600s; see the comments in Anthony Newcomb, ‘Gli Humori di Horatio: On a Few Madrigals fromthe Veglie di Siena’, in Massimo Privitera (ed.), Theatro dell’udito, theatro del mondo: atti del convegno internazionale,nel IV centenario della morte di Orazio Vecchi, Modena–Vignola, 29 settembre–1 ottobre 2005 (Modena: Mucchi, 2010),383–99.

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him – and it appears to carry on its business as usual. But a somewhat differentreading is suggested by its ‘academic’ Ferrarese context, and also by its con-cluding madrigal, a showcase of compositional virtuosity the text of whichprompts us, quite literally, to re-read its notes very carefully indeed.

MONTEVERDI, MANTUA, AND FERRARA

In late 1601, Monteverdi succeeded Benedetto Pallavicino as Duke VincenzoGonzaga’s maestro della musica, taking charge of the household musicians andtheir various duties. He had been a member of that distinguished group sincelate 1590 or early 1591, when he moved from his native Cremona afterattracting the attention of the ducal court as a talented all-round musician(who played string instruments, sang, and composed): he responded to thatmove in the conventional way, by dedicating to Duke Vincenzo his Il terzo librode madrigali a cinque voci (Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1592). During the1590s, Monteverdi no doubt fulfilled all the traditional roles of the courtmusician in the theatre, chamber, and chapel. In 1595 he accompanied theduke on his military campaign to Hungary, and in 1599 on a trip to Spa (inmodern-day Belgium). He was also involved in the Mantuan court’s repeatedattempts to stage Guarini’s famous if controversial pastoral play, Il pastor fido,which eventually reached fruition with three performances in 1598, the thirdon 22 November in honour of Margaret of Austria during her processionthrough Italy en route to Spain as the new wife of King Philip III.

Margaret had been in Ferrara the week before, where her marriage wassolemnized in the presence of the pope (the king was represented by proxy).This was clearly a political move, given that the city and its surroundingterritory had been annexed by the Papal States following the death in October1597 of Duke Alfonso II d’Este without a legitimate heir. Under Duke Alfonso,Ferrara had been a well-known centre for artistic, literary, and in particularmusical activity, not least by virtue of the famed concerto di donne, a (mostly)female performing group that the duke reserved for private music-making(musica segreta) to which only special guests were admitted.5 However, thesituation changed quite drastically in 1598 as Ferrara came under the admin-istrative control of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, the Papal Legate to Bologna.The Este court moved to Modena under the rule of Alfonso’s cousin, Cesare(from an illegitimate line of the family) – who was supported by EmperorRudolph II – while a rump of Ferrarese nobility was left to combat thefast-encroaching influence of the churchmen now occupying the city.

Prior to his becoming Duke of Mantua in 1587, Vincenzo Gonzaga hadspent a great deal of time at the Ferrarese court – his sister, Margherita, was

5 The key texts remain Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti, Cronistoria del concerto delle dame principalissime diMargherita Gonzaga d’Este (Florence: SPES, 1979); Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579–97, 2 vols.(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).

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the duchess – where he could indulge his pleasures in hunting, in music, andin pursuing Barbara Sanseverina, Countess of Sala. It is also clear that in the1590s he aspired to make Mantua a worthy rival to Ferrara, and after 1598, toturn his city into its nominal successor in terms of cultural leadership amongthe north Italian courts. Duke Vincenzo had already offered asylum toTorquato Tasso following the poet’s confinement in the Hospital of St Annain Ferrara; he founded his own concerto di donne in Mantua; he sought repeat-edly to stage a play with strong Ferrarese connections, Guarini’s Il pastor fido;and he wooed key Ferrarese composers after 1598, not least Luzzasco Luzza-schi.6 The widely reported triumph of the spectacular production of Il pastorfido in November 1598 was proof of the success of this aggressive culturalstrategy.

Events in Ferrara and Mantua in late 1598, and Guarini’s play itself, also haddirect relevance for Monteverdi. Artusi sets the scene in his L’Artusi, overo Delleimperfettioni della moderna musica (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1600). The tworagionamenti that make up the treatise each begin with a musical event held inFerrara in November for the gathering of Italian and Habsburg princes andprelates attending Margaret’s wedding. The first (fol. 1r) involves a visit to theConvent of San Vito, where the guests are charmed by a vocal and instrumen-tal performance by its famous nuns. Artusi figures himself one of these guests– as a ‘Signor Vario’, a gentleman from Arezzo – and there meets an old friendwho had studied at the University of Bologna, one ‘Luca’ from the city of‘Craic’: the two discuss the nuns’ ensemble, leading to a dialogue on the idealuse of instruments in consort and, in turn, to an attack on the Bolognesemusic-theorist Ercole Bottrigari.

Artusi’s second ragionamento (fol. 39r) begins with Luca’s account of hishappening upon a musical evening held (on 16 November 1598) at the houseof the Ferrarese nobleman and music-lover, Antonio Goretti. This included aprogramme of modern musical compositions, and was done – ostentatiously,it seems – in the company of two musicians who had formerly held prominentpositions in Duke Alfonso d’Este’s court, Luzzaschi and Ippolito Fiorini. Lucadoes not mention the other performers, although Luzzaschi and Fiorini oftenaccompanied the famed Ferrarese concerto di donne, two members of which(Livia d’Arco and Laura Peverara) are known to have performed beforeMargaret of Austria around this same time.7 However, Luca’s chief concern isthe propriety of various ‘passages’ from some of the madrigals performed that

6 For Vincenzo Gonzaga and Luzzaschi in late 1598, see Anne MacNeil, Music and Women of the Commediadell’arte in the Late Sixteenth Century (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 246; Susan Parisi,‘Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: An Archival Study’, Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois atUrbana–Champaign, 1989, 184 n. 65. For further contact between them in 1606, see Parisi, ‘Ducal Patronageof Music in Mantua’, 185 n. 69. The broader Mantuan context is revealed in Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronagein Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, 1982).

7 Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1:184, cites a Roman ambassador’s report (17 November 1598) of howLivia d’Arco and Laura Peverara came before Margaret and, accompanied by both Luzzaschi and Fiorini, sangfor an hour, much to the queen’s satisfaction. This is almost certainly not the same as the event in Goretti’s

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evening – by Monteverdi, although the composer is not named – that hebrings to Vario for judgment; Vario, in turn, is quick to point out yet more‘imperfections of modern music’ and the consequences for any broader evalu-ation of works of this kind.

Artusi’s enthusiasm for the musical nuns of S. Vito would seem to put himon the liberal side of the well-known arguments over, and ecclesiastic prohi-bitions against, music in convents that had also been playing out in Ferrarasince the appointment of the hard-line Giovanni Fontana as bishop in 1590.8

However, his strategy is also to compare the ‘good’ music of such holy womenwith the ‘bad’ music found in other secular spaces, where the moderns adoptthe manner not of nuns but, rather, of painted whores.9 The stage appears setfor a smaller version of an ideological conflict – courtiers against churchmen– that had been played out in broader political terms in Ferrara since the early1590s, but was exacerbated still more by the events of 1597–98. Therefore,Artusi identifies in this modern music a wide range of faults violating thetried-and-tested rules of contrapuntal and modal theory. While he refrainsfrom naming Monteverdi in his first treatise, and also in his next instalment,the Seconda parte dell’Artusi (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1603), he cites in the1600 text particular madrigals that the composer published in his FourthBook of 1603 (‘Anima mia, perdona’ and its second part, ‘Che se tu se’ il cormio’) and Fifth of 1605 (‘Cruda Amarilli, che col nome ancora’ and ‘OMirtillo, Mirtillo anima mia’). They are all settings of texts from Il pastor fido,and the controversial nature of that play (on the grounds of its mixture ofgenres and other licenses) therefore enters the controversy by proxy, as itwere.10 Later, under the pseudonym of Antonio Braccino da Todi, Artusipublished two further treatises; in the second of 1608 (the only one thatsurvives), he complains that he had repeatedly invited Monteverdi to responddirectly to his criticisms, but that the composer had instead engineered a replyby a third party hiding behind the pseudonym ‘L’Ottuso Academico’ (whosedefence Artusi cites in the Seconda parte dell’Artusi).11 In 1608, Artusi claimed

house, and it is impossible to tell whether any women performers were present on the latter occasion: Lucarefers only to the attendance of ‘molti spiriti nobili, et della Musica intendenti’ (so, men).

8 Laurie Stras discusses music in Ferrarese convents, both elsewhere in this journal and in a forthcomingbook; I am grateful to her for sending me its draft chapters.

9 Artusi likens modern music to ‘una sfacciata meretrice’ in the Seconda parte dell’Artusi overo Delle imperfettionidella moderna musica (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1603), 38; see Suzanne Cusick, ‘Gendering Modern Music:Thoughts on the Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 1–25, at6. Cusick’s article was also the subject of an exchange of communications between her and Charles S. Braunerin Journal of the American Musicological Society, 47 (1994), 550–63.

10 Two other Guarini settings in the Fifth Book entered the frame in 1603: ‘Era l’anima mia’, and ‘Ma se conla pietà non è in te spenta’ (the second part of ‘Ecco, Silvio, colei che in odio hai tanto’, another text from Ilpastor fido). Gary Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), Chap. 1,makes the connection between the controversies surrounding Monteverdi and Guarini, and also Galileo Galilei.

11 In the Seconda parte dell’Artusi, Artusi notes that he had received his first communication from L’Ottuso inFerrara (again!) in 1599; ibid., 50–51, also includes ‘passaggi’ from pieces by L’Ottuso to which Artusi tookobjection. The academician’s identity remains a mystery. However, it may be worth noting my suspicion (no

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that resorting to an anonymous third party was a sign both of the composer’simpoliteness and of his having recognized the error of his ways.

It is true that Monteverdi seems to have been slow to rise to Artusi’s bait. HisFourth Book of madrigals (dedicated on 1 March 1603) contains no directreference to the controversy – although we shall see an indirect one in itsdedication – save for the inclusion of one madrigal involved therein (‘Animamia, perdona’). Rather, it was the Seconda parte dell’Artusi (dedicated on 25March, and somewhat mischievously, to Ercole Bottrigari) that seems to haveprompted the composer to go public.12 His Fifth Book (1605) is dedicated toDuke Vincenzo Gonzaga, who, Monteverdi claims, had heard these madrigalsin his royal chambers (nelle sue Regie Camere) while they were still in manu-script, and who might now grant them eternal life ‘to the shame of thosetongues which seek to bring death to the works of others’ (ad onta di quellelingue, che cercano dar morte all’opere altrui). This book also contains a statementto the ‘Studiosi lettori’ wherein Monteverdi names Artusi (as Artusi had notyet done for Monteverdi).13 Here the composer claims that he has not hadtime to answer his criticisms properly due to the demands of his service at theMantuan court, but says that he has now written a response that, once copied,will be published with the title Seconda pratica, overo Perfettione della modernamusica. This will prove that his music is not written by chance, will offer areasoned defence of the modern style, and will prove that it is founded upontruth. Monteverdi also lays claim to the term ‘seconda pratica’ so that it mightnot be appropriated by others, and sets it in opposition to the practiceconcerning consonances and dissonances taught by Zarlino (Artusi’steacher).

The statement in the Fifth Book then received a ‘dichiaratione’ by Mon-teverdi’s brother, Giulio Cesare, in the composer’s Scherzi musicali a tre voci(1607), dedicated this time to Duke Vincenzo’s son, Francesco Gonzaga:Giulio Cesare claimed that he was moved to write by the fact that an individual‘sotto finto nome di un Antonio Braccini da Todi’ had issued an attack (now

more) that the last of these ‘passaggi’ – reproduced and transcribed (with appropriate corrections) inNewcomb, ‘Gli Humori di Horatio’, 397–99 – comes from the end of an otherwise unknown five-voice settingof Battista Guarini’s ‘Cruda Amarilli, che col nome ancora’ (i.e., the same text set by Monteverdi and criticizedby Artusi). The final two lines (poi che co’l dir t’offendo/ i’ mi morrò tacendo) have a very distinctive stress-pattern andfit the passage by L’Ottuso, although not quite perfectly, it must be admitted.

12 The fact that the Fourth Book and the Seconda parte dell’Artusi were both published in March 1603 (theformer just over three weeks before the latter) would seem coincidental – or at least, would need carefulconsideration in terms of the lead-time for typesetting and publication after delivery of a manuscript to the press– unless there were some competitive shenanigans between the printers Ricciardo Amadino (Monteverdi) andGiacomo Vincenti (Artusi), as I have already suggested might be the case for the Artusi–Monteverdi controversyas a whole; see Carter, ‘Artusi, Monteverdi, and the Poetics of Modern Music’, 176–77. It is true, however, thatMonteverdi’s Fourth Book is an exception to the composer’s seemingly normal practice in Mantua of issuing hispublications during the summer months, when he had fewer if any duties for the Gonzaga court (given that theducal family tended to spend the summer away from Mantua).

13 Giulio Cesare Monteverdi tried to remedy the breach of etiquette in the ‘Dichiaratione’ in ClaudioMonteverdi’s Scherzi musicali (1607) by claiming that the composer’s reference to ‘l’Artusi’ was to the title of the1600 treatise and not to its author.

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lost) on Monteverdi’s comments in the Quinto libro. Giulio Cesare’s line-by-linegloss on these comments certainly tried to justify his brother’s madrigalsagainst their ill-treatment by their critics, but not so much by cogent argument(at least so far as Artusi would have perceived it). Rather, Giulio Cesare restedhis case on the precedent established by the ‘divine’ Cipriano de Rore and hisnoble followers of the ‘heroic school’ (seguitando il Divino Cipriano Rore, IlSignor Prencipe di Venosa [Gesualdo], Emiglio del Cavagliere, il Conte AlfonsoFontanella, il Conte di Camerata [Giovanni de’ Bardi?] e il Cavalier Turchi, il Pecci,e altri signori di questa Eroica scola) as well as by other well-known composers(non solamente da li Signori detti, ma dal Ingegneri, dal Marenz[i]o, da Giaches Wert,dal Luzzasco, e parimente da Giaccopo Peri, da Giulio Caccini e finalmente da li spiritipiù elevati, e intendenti de la vera arte), and on classical authority (le ragioniinsegnate da Platone). As for his argument, it was more just a statement ofprinciple: Monteverdi’s intention has been, within the seconda pratica, to makethe oration the master and not the servant of the harmony – è stata (in questogenere di Musica) di far che l’oratione sia padrona del armonia e non serva – whereasthe reverse had applied in the stricter musical counterpoint of what he nowcalls the prima pratica.14 Following the second response of ‘Antonio Braccinoda Todi’ in 1608, the controversy appears to have died down: indeed, Mon-teverdi later claimed, no doubt disingenuously, that Artusi had not onlyrescinded his objections but had even come to admire this music.15

Monteverdi’s conception of the seconda pratica was a cunning move, giventhat it pulled the rug out from under Artusi’s feet: the moderns and conser-vatives were talking about two entirely different things, and therefore Artusi’sobjections confused apples and oranges (Giulio Cesare Monteverdi followedErasmus’s more elegant adage of purpura iuxta purpuram diiudicanda – that is,purple needing to be judged against purple). Not that the composer was onmuch safer ground: he never produced his promised treatise – although hewas reportedly still working on it at the end of his life16 – and the proposedservant/master relationship between music and text was little more than aneat catchphrase hardly amenable, it would seem, to sustained theorizing. Itis also clear that Monteverdi was more comfortable composing music thanwriting prose, and no doubt he would have viewed the success and reputationof his madrigals as a more effective response to any theoretical objectionsmade against them.

14 Readers familiar with Monteverdi’s formulation of the seconda pratica will realize that I am being puckishhere: the Italian is commonly translated as the oratione being the mistress, not the (maid)servant, of the armonia.Padrona and serva are gendered feminine because they apply to the (grammatically) feminine nouns oratione andarmonia. Consider, however, the similar situation in the statement in Monteverdi’s letter to Alessandro Striggioof 10 September 1627, in reference to Duke Vincenzo II Gonzaga, that ‘His Most Serene Highness will alwaysbe my lord and master’ (Sua Altezza Serenissima sempre sarà signora e padrona di me).

15 So Monteverdi said in his letter to Giovanni Battista Doni of 22 October 1633; see Denis Stevens (trans.),The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 421.

16 According to the composer’s posthumous eulogist, Matteo Caberloti; see Fabbri, Monteverdi, 62 (trans.Carter, 49).

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THE ACCADEMIA DEGLI INTREPIDI OF FERRARA

Ulrich Siegele has already pointed out the high stakes in the Artusi–Monteverdicontroversy: the Bolognese theorist dedicated his 1600 treatise to CardinalPompeo Arrigoni, a leading member of the Congregation of the Roman andUniversal Inquisition (he was also present in Ferrara in November 1598), whichpotentially at least placed the ‘imperfections’ of modern music and its compos-ers in some jeopardy.17 Not for nothing did Monteverdi have the Mantuan courttheologian, Cherubino Ferrari, provide for his Fifth Book of madrigals twopoems in his defence, one toward the beginning and one toward the end(respectively, after the dedication to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and after thestatement to the ‘studious readers’).18 He also, however, engaged in a typicalacademic game, at least if we take a particular view of the position of ‘CrudaAmarilli, che col nome ancora’ at the head of the Fifth Book. Artusi had alreadycomplained about that madrigal’s dissonance treatment, so putting it first wasitself a statement. There may be other resonances, however. In Guarini’s play(I.2), Mirtillo complains about Amarilli’s cruel behavior: given that he offendsher by speaking, he will die in silence (poi che co’l dir t’offendo/ i’ mi morrò tacendo).However, the name Amaryllis was often read as a cipher for ‘Rome’ (or theChurch), at which point the object of Mirtillo/Monteverdi’s grievance is clear,even if his response, by being sung, makes him break his ‘silence’.19

The Fifth Book might be viewed as Monteverdi’s coming out with all gunsblazing: a dedication to Duke Vincenzo, encomiastic verse by a court theolo-gian, a pointed choice for the first madrigal in the book, and a concludingself-justificatory statement to the reader. But it also reveals a scatter-shotapproach suggesting that Monteverdi was unsure how best to respond toArtusi’s attack. He must have been unsettled by something which bore downnot just on his reputation but also on that of his employer and patron,Vincenzo Gonzaga, and at a sensitive time for the composer when he had beenseeking the position of the duke’s maestro della musica. The standard mode ofcourtly response in such situations, however, tended toward the elliptical: in a

17 Ulrich Siegele, ‘Cruda Amarilli, oder: Wie ist Monteverdis “seconda pratica” satztechnisch zu verstehen?’,Musik-Konzepte, 83–84 (1994), 31–102.

18 I shall make these poems, and others related to the controversy, the subject of a future study. Ferrari isalready known to Monteverdi scholars for having written in praise of the composer’s Orfeo (1607); see Fabbri,Monteverdi, 123 (trans. Carter, 76).

19 Don Harrán, ‘The “Sack of Rome” Set to Music’, Renaissance Quarterly, 23 (1970), 412–21, discussesPhilippe Verdelot’s setting of the sonnet ‘Trist’Amarilli mia: donqu’è pur vero’ as an allegorical treatment ofthe Sack of Rome (1527). Harrán notes the connections of this text with Theocritus and Virgil, but not the factthat Virgil’s Eclogues 1:30 was often read as a comment on Mantua (represented as Galatea) versus Rome(Amaryllis) based on the well-known late fourth-century ad commentary by Servius Honoratus. The issue mayalso have a bearing on the reception of Caccini’s famous song ‘Amarilli, mia bella’ across northern Europe (andoften in recusant circles), although I was not aware of the possibility when I published my ‘Giulio Caccini’sAmarilli, mia bella: Some Questions (and a Few Answers)’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 113 (1988),250–73. For the suggestion that L’Ottuso may have introduce another setting of ‘Cruda Amarilli’ into thedebate, see above, note 12.

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courtly context, academic disputes were commonly manufactured as a socialpastime, and were often conducted anonymously or by way of proxies giventhat to accept a challenge directly would legitimize it.20 In that sense, at least,Artusi’s complaint (made in 1608) about Monteverdi refusing to come outinto the open reflected the Bolognese theorist’s misunderstanding of therules of the game. Just as Monteverdi’s initial defender, L’Ottuso, hid behindan obtuse academic name, so, it seems, did the composer himself initiallyprefer an indirect route. The Fourth Book of madrigals now starts to makemore sense in this light: by virtue of its dedication to the Accademia degliIntrepidi, it is explicitly associated with the home-ground of the Artusi–Monteverdi controversy (Ferrara), with a noble musical environment (thereference to Duke Alfonso II d’Este), and with a locus of proper intellectualjudgment (an academy). As Monteverdi noted in his dedication, the Intrepidicomprised a ‘most noble band of knightly friends’ (nobilissima schiera di cava-lieri amici).21 It therefore appears resolutely secular, despite the papal presencein Ferrara, and also could be associated at least indirectly with the ‘heroicschool’ of noble composers who (we read in the ‘Dichiaratione’) providedone precedent for, and validation of, Monteverdi’s own musical ideas. In thededication of the Fourth Book to the Intrepidi, the composer hopes that theirMost Illustrious Lordships would appreciate his ‘gift’, however small, with thegreatness of spirit proper to their virtue, birth, and profession. Their nameswould illuminate his ‘songs’, he suggests, and their protection would ‘defend’them, which is presumably a veiled reference to Artusi’s criticisms.22

The early history of the Accademia degli Intrepidi, founded in 1600 or1601, is somewhat sketchy, though its theatre designed by Giovan BattistaAleotti and constructed in 1605–06 is well known.23 The academy clearly hadstrong theatrical and musical interests: among its members was GuidubaldoBonarelli, author of the very popular pastoral play Filli di Sciro (1607), andmusicians associated with the Intrepidi included at least Orazio Bassano,Girolamo Belli, and Alessandro Grandi, the last of whom, while working inFerrara, dedicated to the academy his first book of Madrigali concertati (Venice:Giacomo Vincenti, 1615). In the dedication of his Fourth Book, Monteverdirefers to a newly emerged ‘prince and head’ (Principe, e Capo) of this ‘mostnoble band’, who may have been Marchese Carlo Cybo, Giulio Thiene(Marchese di Scandiano), Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio, or even, by some

20 Here and elsewhere, I follow the lead of Mario Biagioli, Galilei, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Cultureof Absolutism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 60–84.

21 I borrow the translation from Massimo Ossi, ‘Monteverdi, Marenzio, and Battista Guarini’s “Cruda Ama-rilli” ’, Music and Letters, 89 (2008), 311–36, at 321.

22 ‘Si degnino perciò le SS. VV. Illustrissime d’accettare, e gradire il dono, benchè piccolo, con quellagrandezza d’animo, che è propria della virtù, del nascimento, e della profession loro, illustrando con lachiarezza de lor nomi, e diffendendo con la felice loro protettione, questi miei canti’. Ossi, Divining the Oracle,34, makes the connection with Artusi’s attack.

23 There is a useful overview in Gregor Scherf, Giovanni Battista Aleotti (1546–1636): ‘Architetto mathematico’ derEste und der Päpste in Ferrara (Marburg: Tectum, 1998), 182–84.

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pre-emptive stroke on Monteverdi’s part, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, whoclearly had some interest in the academy as part of his strategy of Ferrareseappropriation.24 Vincenzo is also, of course, mentioned on Monteverdi’s titlepage by virtue of the composer’s now being ‘Maestro della Musica del Sere-nissimo Signor Duca di Mantova’. But while the uncertainty over the actualleadership of the Intrepidi around 1603 – and therefore the inability toidentify the ‘prince and head’ to whom the composer refers – is probablytiresome for Monteverdi scholars, it, too, fits the pattern: it was a conventionof courtly disputes that although the participants could invoke the support oftheir patrons, the latter could not be openly committed to one side of thedebate or another – otherwise the patron ran the risk of losing face as thearguments played themselves out.

Monteverdi’s Fourth Book can certainly be read as invoking various ‘aca-demic’ games, with its mixture of poems in the male and female voices(therefore with the possibility of one or more amorous dialogues betweenthem) as well as gender-neutral ones, and with its clear textual and musicalconnections between successive madrigals, if not over longer sequences.25 Thecomposer’s poetic choices also have strong Ferrarese–Mantuan connections(Guarini, Tasso) in addition to involving local poets in, or associated with,Ferrara itself (Ridolfo Arlotti and Maurizio Moro, as well perhaps as theanonymous poems).26 Particularly affecting from the Ferrarese point of view,

24 See Dinko.Fabris, Mecenati e musici: documenti sul patronato artistico dei Bentivoglio di Ferrara nell’epoca diMonteverdi (1585–1645) (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1999), 175, document 9 (from Gasparo Sardi, Librodelle historie ferraresi [Ferrara: Gironi, 1646]), on the founding of the Intrepidi and the election of DukeVincenzo as ‘principe’, much to the displeasure of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (della quale academia fudichierato Principe il Duca Vi[n]cenzo primo Duca di Mantova, non senza qualche dispiacer d’animo del Cardinale . . . ).But see also ibid., 213, document 171 (Duke Vincenzo requests to be ‘accettato’ in the Intrepidi in April 1609)and ibid., 222, document 204 (a list from 1610 of the yearly appointed ‘Principi’ of the Intrepidi from 1601 to1605: Signor Don Carlo Cybo through 1602; the Marchese di Scandiano [Giulio Thiene] for part of 1603, thensubstituted by Carlo Cybo; Count Luigi Bevilacqua for 1604; and Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio in 1605, thensubstituted by Count Bevilacqua). Laurie Stras informs me that documents in the Archivio di Stato, Mantua,suggest that Duke Vincenzo became ‘principe’ of the Intrepidi in 1610, although he was in contact with theacademy well before then. John Walter Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata and Opera from the Circles around CardinalMontalto, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 1:275, cites a reference to Duke Vincenzo as ‘principe’ in early1612. Stevens (trans.), The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, 355, suggests that the ‘principe, e capo’ to whomMonteverdi refers is Bentivoglio. However, Giulio Thiene is more likely according to the 1610 list of principi justnoted.

25 This is a much bigger topic than can be covered here. For some preliminary remarks, see Tim Carter,‘ “Sfogava con le stelle” Reconsidered: Some Thoughts on the Analysis of Monteverdi’s Mantuan Madrigals’, inPaola Besutti, Teresa M. Gialdroni, and Rodolpho Baroncini (eds.), Claudio Monteverdi: studi e prospettive; atti delconvegno, Mantova, 21–24 ottobre 1993, ‘Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti: Miscellanea’,5 (Florence: Olschki, 1998), 147–70. The notion that Monteverdi’s (and others’) madrigal books mightbe conceived according to thematic narratives, broadly defined, is also explored in Ossi, Divining the Oracle,passim (and for Ossi’s reading of the Fourth Book, see ibid., 96–109), although the matter remains ripe fordevelopment.

26 The latter should now include ‘La piaga c’ho nel core’, often attributed in the Monteverdi literature to‘Aurelio Gatti’. The poet Alessandro (sic) Gatti’s text beginning with this line (published in 1614) continuesdifferently (La piaga ch’ho nel core/ mi fa languir d’amore); Dionisio Bellante’s musical setting was published in1629. For further details, see the ‘Repertorio della poesia italiana in musica, 1500–1700’, database edited by

Monteverdi responds to Artusi? 147

however, was surely the opening ‘Ah dolente partita’.27 While the text is drawnfrom a speech for the lovelorn shepherd Mirtillo in Guarini’s Il pastor fido(III.3), Monteverdi sets the opening as if it were two female voices lamentingtheir ‘grievous parting’ – the two sopranos start on the same note e� but thenmove apart to a heart-wrenchingly dissonant minor second – to which the twolower voices (tenor, bass) respond with the question ‘do I leave you and notdie?’ and, with the alto, invoke the pains of death (da te part’e non moro? e puri’ provo/ la pena della morte).28 Although this setting had been composed by1597, when it was first published in the anthology Fiori del giardino di diversieccellentissimi autori à quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, & nove voci (Nuremberg: PaulKauffmann, 1597), it is hard not to read it now in a post-1598 context, as anelegiac lament for the passing of the old, courtly Ferrara and its famed concertodi donne.29 The fact that the leading members of Accademia degli Intrepidihad all known the Este court in its musical heyday, and that some were relatedby consanguinity or marriage to its leading female musicians, makes the issuestill more poignant.

PIAGN’E SOSPIRA

Monteverdi’s Fourth and Fifth Books of madrigals appear dominated bysettings of Guarini (eleven in the Fourth Book and ten in the Fifth), includingextracts from Il pastor fido (three in the Fourth; and four in the Fifth, two ofwhich are quite extended). These settings, in turn, have been viewed asrevealing the composer at his most progressive in terms of developing an‘epigrammatic style’ on the one hand, and a response to the ‘ideal of musicalspeech’ on the other. Tasso, rather, is associated with Monteverdi’s earlier‘heroic style’ seen in his Third Book of 1592 (and Tasso’s poetry also appearsprominently in the composer’s Il secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci [Venice:Angelo Gardano, 1590]). Thus the poet has seemed out of place in the FourthBook, to the extent that Monteverdi’s setting of ‘Piagn’e sospira; e quand’i

Angelo Pompilio and consultable at the Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo, Università di Bologna (apreliminary version is also available at <http://repim.muspe.unibo.it/repim/default.aspx>).

27 Although Giulio Thiene may also have found pleasing resonances in the second madrigal in Monteverdi’sFourth Book, ‘Cor mio, mentre vi miro’; Laurie Stras associates the text (a poetic madrigal by Guarini) withThiene’s wife, Leonora Sanvitale (d. 1582; also a singer), in her ‘Musical Portraits of Female Musicians at theNorthern Italian Courts in the 1570s’, in Katherine A. McIver (ed.), Art and Music in the Early Modern Period:Essays in Memory of Franca Trinchieri Camiz (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 145–72, at 166–67.

28 The alto part is shared between these two voice groups, at times singing with the sopranos (ah fin de la miavita) and at times with the tenor and bass (da te part’e non moro). I am, of course, aware that terms such as‘soprano’, ‘alto’, etc., refer to voice-range (defined largely by the clef in which a voice part is noted) and not tothe gender of the singer (castratos or male falsettists could sing the upper parts of these madrigals). The factthat ‘Ah dolente partita’ is the only madrigal in the Fourth Book in so-called ‘high clefs’ (chiavette : G2, G2, C2,C3, F3) may suggest some kind of performance involving, or inspired by, female voices, although it is a verytricky issue.

29 Kauffman’s large anthology also includes madrigals from Monteverdi’s already published Second andThird Books, but it is not known how he could have gained a copy of ‘Ah dolente partita’.

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caldi raggi’, placed at the end of the book, has been dated to the early 1590s,both on these textual grounds and also because it is primarily a contrapuntaltour de force and therefore is assumed to be old-fashioned. This assumption hasno foundation save for an overly teleological view of Monteverdi’s stylisticdevelopment.30

We have seen that Artusi’s highlighting for criticism Monteverdi’s settingsof texts from Il pastor fido also suggests that the theorist somehow connectedthe composer’s modernist sins with that no less controversial play. Yet Mon-teverdi linked the seconda pratica at least partly to a ‘heroic school’, which onewould tend to associate with something other than Guarini. Moreover, thefinal piece of any madrigal book is normally chosen so as to end on some kindof high-note, whether a setting for an increased number of voices (‘Questivaghi concenti’ for nine voices and strings in Monteverdi’s Fifth Book of1605), one posing particular technical challenges (the sonnet-dialogue‘ “Rimanti in pace”, a la dolente e bella/ Fillide’ in the Third Book of 1592),or one setting a literary classic (‘Cantai un tempo, e se fu dolc’il canto’ byPietro Bembo, in the Second Book of 1590).31 The problem with ‘Piagn’esospira’ is that although it certainly has its musical moments – especially thecontrapuntally complex treatment of the long chromatic ascent at its opening– it seems as yet not quite to fit that conventional bill.

The text is plausibly ‘heroic’ in the sense that it comes from an epic poem.But we need to understand its context – if only to know whom it might be about– and also its origins, starting with Erminia, one of the pagan heroines in Tasso’sGerusalemme liberata. She loves the Christian Tancredi, who, however, is enam-oured of Erminia’s comrade-in-arms, Clorinda. Erminia attempts to sneak intothe crusaders’ camp, is spotted and chased away, and takes refuge among agroup of shepherds on the banks of the River Jordan, lamenting her misfortuneand agonizing over her conflicting loyalties (Gerusalemme liberata, 7:19):

Sovente, allor che su gli estivi ardorigiacean le pecorelle a l’ombra assise,ne la scorza de’ faggi e de gli allorisegnò l’amato nome in mille guise,e de’ suoi strani ed infelici amorigli aspri successi in mille piante incise,e in rileggendo poi le proprie noterigò di belle lagrime le gote.

30 The style categories identified in this paragraph form chapter headings in Tomlinson, Monteverdi and theEnd of the Renaissance ; for the dating of ‘Piagn’e sospira’ to the early 1590s, see ibid., 100. A more profitable viewfor present purposes is presented in Massimo Privitera, ‘Piagn’e sospira: Forme della “seconda pratica” nelQuarto Libro di Monteverdi’, Il saggiatore musicale, 6 (1999), 39–62. However, Privitera (40) accepts Tomlinson’s‘early’ dating of the madrigal, narrowing it down to 1593 (perhaps because that was the year of the publicationof Gerusalemme conquistata).

31 The poet of ‘Questi vaghi concenti’ is unknown. ‘ “Rimanti in pace”. . .’ is by Livio Celiano (i.e., AngeloGrillo).

Monteverdi responds to Artusi? 149

[Often, when in the summer’s heat/ the flocks lay seated in the shade,/ in thebark of beech and laurels/ she scored the beloved name in a thousand ways,/and of her strange and unhappy loves/ the harsh outcomes in a thousand plantsdid she inscribe,/ and while then re-reading her own notes,/ she lined hercheeks with beautiful tears.]32

Although this ottava rima stanza lacks strong emotive content – even Erminia’stears are ‘beautiful’ – the scene is poignant enough. Tasso also handles it withtypical verbal aplomb: for example, in line 6 he exploits the synaloepha ofpiante and incise (sounding as an elision: piant’incise) to create a sonic ambi-guity between plants (piante) and plaints (pianti). In this period, a plaint(pianto) was likely to attract any composer’s response, and Tasso seems toprompt it still further by other words that also have double meanings: note asmusical notes; and rigò associated with the ruling of the five-line stave (rigo) onwhich music is notated. Moreover, Erminia’s repetitive actions could easily bereflected in a contrapuntal setting, and her strani ed infelici amori wouldprovide an excuse for ‘strange’ and ‘unhappy’ dissonances or the like. Threecomposers set the stanza: Giaches de Wert for five voices (1586), Sigismondod’India as a song for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment (1609), andGiovanni Ghizzolo again for five voices (1621).33

For Tasso, however, Erminia’s strani ed infelici amori became one of manyreasons why Gerusalemme liberata needed reworking better to suit Counter-Reformation sensibilities. Pagans loving Christians, however ‘strange’ and‘unhappy’ the ways, were unlikely to attract much sympathy in the latersixteenth century, especially when the outcome remained unresolved. Whileother pagan women in Gerusalemme liberata (Clorinda and even Armida) aremade to see the Christian light through baptism, the last we hear of Erminia(in Canto 19) is how she offers comfort to a bloodied Tancredi on thebattlefield, binding his wounds with her hair; she then disappears from thenarrative, the rest of her story untold. At one point in drafting the poem,Tasso had it in mind to add ten stanzas to Canto XIX that would describeErminia converting to Christianity and entering a convent: he said thatalthough this might offer less pleasure to those who understood the art ofpoetry, it would no doubt make others with (religious) scruples somewhathappier.34 He never did so. But when Tasso reworked his epic poem as

32 Or to give Edward Fairfax’s more elegant, if less precise, translation (1600): ‘But oft, when underneath thegreenwood shade/ Her flocks lay hid from Phoebus’ scorching rays,/ Unto her knight she songs and sonnetsmade,/ And them engraved in bark of beech and bays;/ She told how Cupid did her first invade,/ Howconquered her, and ends with Tancred’s praise:/ And when her passion’s writ she over read,/ Again shemourned, again salt tears she shed.’

33 For a list of musical settings of Tasso’s poetry in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, seeMaria Antonella Balsano and Thomas Walker (eds.), Tasso: la musica, i musicisti, ‘Quaderni della Rivista italianadi musicologia’, 19 (Florence: Olschki, 1988), 56–84.

34 See Tasso’s letter to Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga, 24 April 1576, given in Melinda J. Gough, ‘Tasso’sEnchantress, Tasso’s Captive Woman’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 523–52, at 550. For the ambiguities, see

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Gerusalemme conquistata, he needed to address the situation, which he did byway of drastic curtailment. Nicea, the substitute for Erminia in the revision,loses much of Erminia’s narrative, and at the end (23:125) her pagan loyaltiesremain secure.

Nicea’s respite among the shepherds is configured slightly differently fromErminia’s (Gerusalemme conquistata, 8:6):35

Piagn’e sospira; e quand’i caldi raggifuggon le gregge a la dolce ombr’assise,36

ne la scorza de’ pini o pur de’ faggisegnò l’amato nome in mille guise,e de la sua fortuna i gravi oltraggie i vari casi in dura scorza incise:e in rileggendo poi le proprie notespargea di pianto le vermiglie gote.

[She weeps and sighs; and when the hot rays/ the flocks flee seated in the sweetshade,/ in the bark of pines or else of beeches/ she scored the beloved name ina thousand ways,/ and of her fortune the grave abuses/ and the various cases inharsh bark did she inscribe:/ and while then re-reading her own notes,/ sheshowered her vermilion cheeks with weeping.]

The first line is more striking than that of ‘Sovente, allor che su gli estiviardori’, but the rest seems less so now that the complaint is over the graveabuses of fortune rather than ‘strange and unhappy loves’.37 Nicea’s carvingsare deprived of poetic respectability: she defaces pines and beech trees, butnot Erminia’s laurels.38 Her actions are also described in a far less eleganttext: Tasso should certainly have wielded an editorial pen over scorza . . . durascorza, and one wonders why Nicea’s cheeks are ‘vermilion’, a colour that inliterary Italian of the period could range from scarlet (blood) to rose-pink(associated with the dawn) and therefore indicate fever, anger, shame, embar-rassment, beauty, or arousal. Not surprisingly, Monteverdi appears to havebeen the only composer to set this stanza to music.

also Beatrice Corrigan, ‘Erminia and Tancredi: The Happy Ending’, Italica, 40 (1963), 325–33; Marilyn Migiel,‘Tasso’s Erminia: Telling an Alternate Story’, Italica, 64 (1987), 62–75.

35 There is a surprisingly persistent tendency to allocate ‘Piagn’e sospira’ to Erminia and not to the differentcharacter in Gerusalemme conquistata ; see, for example, Nino Pirrotta, ‘Monteverdi’s Poetic Choices’, in idem,Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984),271–316, at 286 (although Pirrotta was the first to identify the text as coming from the Conquistata); Fabbri,Monteverdi, 79–80 (trans. Carter, 59); Ossi, Divining the Oracle, 100.

36 Monteverdi has ‘la gregg’a . . .’.37 Privitera, ‘Piagn’e sospira’, 60 n. 36, disagrees, finding a ‘maggiore concentrazione espressiva’ in the Nicea

version compared with the Erminia one.38 I am grateful to Anne MacNeil (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) for this idea. Don Harrán also

reminds me that beeches and pines come together in Virgil’s Eclogues 1:1–5, 37–40, precisely in association withAmaryllis (= Rome; as noted above), which has interesting, if perhaps far-fetched, consequences for the readingof this madrigal that I propose below.

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Given the strongly intertextual nature of the madrigal repertory, it is typicalthat Monteverdi’s ‘Piagn’e sospira’ should have strong echoes of Giaches deWert’s setting of ‘Sovente, allor che su gli estivi ardori’; Wert had beenMonteverdi’s predecessor (but one) in Mantua, and the madrigal book con-taining his ‘Sovente, allor’, L’ottavo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice:Angelo Gardano, 1586), was itself strongly Ferrarese in orientation, and dedi-cated to Duke Alfonso II d’Este.39 Wert’s influence on Monteverdi is wellknown, as is the latter’s tendency to pay homage to, or compete with, hissettings of Tasso only indirectly rather than by setting precisely the same texts:this has even been used to explain the choice of ‘Piagn’e sospira’.40 ButMonteverdi also had good reason to take advantage of those gravi oltraggi andvari casi, and here, I suggest, lies the reason for his placing a madrigal thatmight on the face of it seem relatively unfruitful in so prominent a position atthe end of the Fourth Book.

The opening of ‘Piagn’e sospira’ certainly prompts Monteverdi to pull outall the musical stops: a chromatic ascent in whole notes treated imitatively andjuxtaposed against individual musical ideas for subsequent portions of the textin complex contrapuntal combinations. The first eighteen bars, just for threevoices (soprano, alto, and tenor), are intricate enough, but Monteverdinotches things up in bar 19, with the entry of a second soprano, and then stillmore in bar 33 when at last we hear the bass. These unusually delayed entriesfor the final two voices in the texture create some interesting disjunctions inthe presentation of the text. By the time the bass begins with Piagn’e sospira,the tenor and alto have already reached lines 5 and 6 of the text – e de la suafortuna i gravi oltraggi/ e i vari casi in dura scorza incise – making it very clear byway of the juxtaposition just what the weeping and sighing is all about:fortune’s ‘grave abuses’ and ‘various cases’.41 For those crucial lines, the voicesget stuck almost on a monotone: eventually, the soprano also enters on akeening high e� (bar 50; we have already heard it in bars 27–29), the note thathad been so characteristic of the beginning of ‘Ah dolente partita’ (it is alsoprominent in Wert’s ‘Sovente, allor’).42 Monteverdi then stretches the text outstill further by having the alto in bar 53 go back to the beginning of the stanza,with the returning chromatic ascent for Piagn’e sospira giving the illusion thatthis is, in fact, a six-voice madrigal. Those two lines containing the gravi oltraggiand vari casi appear no fewer than thirteen times across the five voices, firstentering in bar 28 (tenor) and continuing until the cadence in bar 87: they

39 I thank Anthony Newcomb for reminding me of the connections between Wert’s and Monteverdi’smadrigals.

40 Gary Tomlinson, ‘Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi’s “via naturale alla immitatione” ’, Journal of theAmerican Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 60–108, at 70–71 n. 16.

41 The Italian ‘caso’ can mean a case, an instance, or an event, as well as, in certain contexts, an accident orchance.

42 Ossi, Divining the Oracle, 100, notes the affective parallels between the opening and closing madrigals of theFourth Book, but not the musical ones.

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dominate well over half the setting as Nicea repeatedly carves her misfortunesinto the trees, one time more even than Wert’s Erminia (with twelve state-ments of gli aspri successi in mille piante incise). The extent and density of thecounterpoint is also clear from the fact that every single voice – including the‘fake’ sixth voice entering in the alto in bar 53 – has the complete text, incontrast to Monteverdi’s common tendency in his madrigals to split the poetrybetween different groups of voices such that it is not wholly present in anysingle part.43

After a brief rest in all the voices, marking a rhetorical break, SSAB enterwith e rileggendo poi le proprie note in simple note-against-note homophony: thecontrast with the preceding texture is striking. SSAT repeat the line and carryit through to le vermiglie gote ; then SSATB have the final two lines of the stanzaagain. In contrast to the thirteen statements of i gravi oltraggi e i vari casi duringbars 28–87, in bars 88–111 (the end of the madrigal) we hear e in rileggendo poile proprie note just three times, and spargea di pianto le vermiglie gote only twice,although the near-strict homophony makes the words very clear. Monteverdiavoids indulging in spargea di pianto to the extent one might expect, althoughhe does set the phrase to a very striking chord change, with a wholly irregularmelodic progression in the top voice and then an illicit dissonance (B flatagainst F sharp) between the upper two.

Were Artusi to have subjected this madrigal to his gimlet theoretical eye –he never did, so far as we know – he would have found plenty to condemn interms of its melodic and harmonic writing, its irregular dissonances, its chro-matic opening of indeterminate genus, and its irregular use of mode.44 Indeed,‘re-reading’ Monteverdi’s own musical ‘notes’ in his setting of ‘Piagn’e

43 This has a bearing on how one can ‘read’ the poetry on the printed musical page. In this period, madrigalswere usually issued in separate partbooks (one for each voice) and not score; the only way to get a compre-hensive view of their music and text other than in or through performance was to score them up oneself. Thiscould also sometimes lead to the adulterated transmission of poetic texts in subsequent musical settings (e.g.,where the composer took a poem from one partbook without realizing or caring that words were missing); seethe comments in Tim Carter, ‘Two Monteverdi Problems, and Why They Matter’, Journal of Musicology, 19(2002), 417–33.

44 To become technical for a moment, the madrigal is in the D-Dorian mode (with B naturals), but theopening point of imitation (Piagn’e sospira) starts outside the mode, with entries on B-flat and F, and the firstclear cadence is on G. In his 1600 treatise, Artusi complained about very similar modal irregularities inMonteverdi’s ‘O Mirtillo, Mirtillo anima mia’ in the Fifth Book; the connection is also made in Privitera, ‘Piagn’esospira’, 49 n. 19. For the chromaticism and the question of genus (diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic), see ibid.,49–58. The following are good examples of melodic and/or harmonic improprieties in ‘Piagn’e sospira’ noteasily explained away (although explanations can sometimes be found): bb. 41–42, S1, downward major sixththen moves up by step (in dura scorz’incise; and likewise at other entries of this imitative point); b. 48, SSAT, 6-4chord (in dura scorz’incise); b. 66, S1B, minor seventh (grav’oltraggi/ segnò l’amato nome); b. 72, SS, augmentedfourth (in dura scorz’incise); b. 78, S2ATB, a second, third, and fifth above the bass (sua fortuna/ in durascorz’incise); bb. 79–80, B, augmented second (in dura scorz’incise); b. 81, S2, an unprepared ‘seventh’; b. 96,SSAT, two major triads a third apart (spargea di pianto); b. 99, SS, diminished fourth (le vermiglie gote). Other verystrong dissonances, however, are more regular in terms of properly prepared, if improperly articulated,suspensions (e.g., b. 33, AB, et segue; b. 39, AT), or passing notes (bb. 63, 77, T) and the like. That irregulardescending major sixth that Monteverdi associates appropriately enough with dura also appears in Wert’s‘Sovente, allor’ at ‘strani ed infelici amori’.

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sospira’ provides almost a systematic catalogue of the kinds of heretical music-theoretical errors at which the Bolognese canon took such umbrage. Norwould the evident contrapuntal skill displayed in this madrigal have mitigatedthose errors, however proud Monteverdi might have been at using seeminglyprima pratica techniques to seconda pratica ends. Artusi might also have facedanother source of puzzlement: unless he knew the source and context of thepoem, he could easily have wondered what ‘grave abuses’ and ‘various cases’inscribed in the modern equivalent of harsh bark – printed paper – werebeing wept and sighed over. Still more, just who, or what, is doing thatweeping and sighing?

In his letter to Artusi defending Monteverdi and the moderns, L’Ottusoconstructs an argument with citations from Guarini’s Il pastor fido to Tasso’sGerusalemme liberata (via Petrarch, Dante, Ficino on Plato, and Aristotle) toshow that emotions can be aroused through music, and therefore, that newmusic can produce new emotional effects. His choice of Tasso’s ‘Qual musicogentil, prima che chiara’ (Gerusalemme liberata, 16:43) is unfortunate, to say theleast, given that this passage describes the wicked Armida preparing herlast-ditch attempt to persuade Rinaldo not to abandon her. Artusi hasa prompt response, returning to the safer sacral space invoked by Tasso’saccount (11:1–13) of a Christian procession singing in praise of the Lord (andthe Blessed Virgin, St Peter, the disciples, hermits, nuns, angels, martyrs, andsaints), and ignoring the blasphemies of the Saracens, in preparation for theattack on Jerusalem. The musical sounds of Armida’s magic island, on theother hand, are mere delightful and flattering – but deceitful – charms (Artusiquotes ‘Fra melodia sì tenera, e fra tante/ vaghezze allettatrici e lusinghiere’from 16:17).45

If L’Ottuso and Artusi can trade lines from Tasso – albeit (one assumes)without Monteverdi’s knowledge – there is no reason why the composer couldnot do the same. As Suzanne Cusick has also pointed out, the gendering ofmodern music as feminine (and therefore bad) matters in the context of theArtusi–Monteverdi controversy and beyond. Yet plaintive Nicea was a muchless harmful choice than L’Ottuso’s wicked Armida, and Gerusalemme conquistaa more orthodox one than Gerusalemme liberata.46 There is something particu-larly delicious about the idea that Monteverdi might have ventriloquized aresponse to the Reverend Artusi through a female narrative, and moreover,one concerning a non-Christian. Even more so is the possibility that ‘she’ who

45 Seconda parte dell’Artusi (1603), 18 (L’Ottuso), 38–39 (Artusi). Cusick, ‘Gendering Modern Music’, 12–13,makes the connection, although she wrongly suggests that Tasso has nuns actually singing in the Christian camp(as Brauner notes in his communication in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 47 [1994]: 550–54, at 553n. 15). Artusi did not object to music-making by nuns, as we have seen, but they were unlikely to be found ona battlefield outside Jerusalem.

46 I am grateful to Seth Coluzzi for pointing out another possible twist in the tale: Tasso dedicated Gerusa-lemme conquistata to Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, the cousin of the Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini who wascurrently governing Ferrara.

154 Tim Carter

is performing the actions narrated in Monteverdi’s setting of ‘Piagn’e sospira’– lamenting ‘her’ grave abuses, re-reading her notes, and showering hercheeks with tears – might be la moderna musica whose imperfections Artusi hadso decried. The very next madrigal that Monteverdi published, ‘Cruda Ama-rilli, che col nome ancora’, was more direct – especially if we accept the‘Rome’ reading – given that it voiced the composer rather than his medium.But why not let music speak for itself, at least in the first instance?

In his encounters with epic poetry, Monteverdi seems to have had a fond-ness for the Armidas, Erminias, and Clorindas of Tasso’s world.47 However, itis wholly typical in the context of the present stage in the Artusi–Monteverdicontroversy, and of its broader courtly conduct, that the composer could havepresented a musical counter-argument to a theoretical attack in so covert amanner, one detectable by connoisseurs but not by any hoi polloi, and onethat may or may not be tongue-in-red-faced-cheek. He may or may not haveknown that Artusi would soon tighten the screw still further – as noted above,the dedication of the Seconda parte dell’Artusi is dated 25 March 1603, that is,some three weeks after Monteverdi’s Fourth Book – forcing the composer totake a more aggressive stance in 1605. And of course, there is nothing toconfirm that ‘Piagn’e sospira’ served the purpose that I propose here: theevidence is soft rather than hard, and the hypothesis suggestive rather thanproved. Members of an early seventeenth-century academy would have appre-ciated the point, as, I half suspect, did Monteverdi himself. ‘Ben, bene, tuttoè zolfa, tutto è zolfa’ (‘Well, well, it’s all sol-fa, it’s all sol-fa’), he would saybenignly on looking over the feeble efforts of an aspiring composer.48 Butthen again, perhaps music is something more.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

47 For the broader issues, see Pirrotta, ‘Monteverdi’s Poetic Choices’, 288. Armida is represented by ‘Vattenepur, crudel, con quella pace’ in the Third Book (1592); Monteverdi also composed in 1626–27 a (now lost)setting of stanzas relating to Armida’s abandonment by Rinaldo. The Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda of1624, then published in Monteverdi’s Eighth Book, the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi (Venice: AlessandroVincenti, 1638), is also a well-known case of the composer using Tasso as a site for musical experimentation. Ihave placed this work in an ‘academic’ environment in my ‘The Composer as Theorist? Genus and Genre inMonteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda’, in Thomas J. Mathiesen and Andreas Giger (eds.), Music inthe Mirror: Reflections on the History of Music Theory and Literature for the Twenty-first Century, ‘Publications of theCenter for the History of Music Theory and Literature’, 3 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,2002), 77–116. Clemens Risi, ‘Claudio Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624 or 1625): AChristian–Muslim Encounter in Music?’ also notes the exotic oddities of the music allocated to Clorinda at theend of the piece; I am grateful to Dr. Risi for giving me a pre-publication copy of his paper.

48 See the anecdote from Antimo Liberati, Lettera scritta . . . in risposta ad una del sig. Ovidio Persapegi (Rome:Mascardi, 1685), given in Fabbri, Monteverdi, 297 (trans. Carter, 235).

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