Magnificat Announces 2007-2008 Season

Magnificat is pleased to announce our 16th Season of concerts exploring the rich and varied repertoire of the Seventeenth Century. This season offers tremendous variety in genres and national styles with an opera and a program of cantatas and instrumental music from Italy; several petit motets from France, and a liturgical reconstruction from northern Germany.

The season opens on the weekend of October 26-28 with a program that will recreate the musical festivities surrounding the 1607 re-dedication of St. Gertrude’s chapel in Hamburg (pictured at right). Joined by The Whole Noyse and The Sex Chordæ Consort of Viols, Magnificat will perform music of Hieronymus Prætorius, Jakob Handl, and others in this program that weaves polychoral motets, traditional chant, and Lutheran chorales in a rich sonic tapestry. We are pleased to welcome back German baritone Martin Hummel, who will act as celebrant and sing in several of the motets.

The re-dedication service was reconstructed by UC Riverside musicologist Frederick Gable and is based on the detailed description written by the pastor of another Hamburg church, Lucas von Cöllen, who delivered the sermon on the occasion. Cöllen was deeply impressed with the dignity and solemnity of this service - which featured "hymns, [musical] instruments, sermons, and prayers, after the manner of Solomon." The description of the performing forces and their disposition in the chapel make it clear that the antiphonal styles associated with Venice had already reached northern Europe by the turn of the Seventeenth Century.

The concerts will be Friday October 26, 8:00 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal Church in Palo Alto; Saturday October 27, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday October 28, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

For our holiday concerts, soprano Catherine Webster (left) will be featured in Magnifcat’s holiday program of music by the towering figures of Roman music of the end of the Seventeenth Century: Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli.

Scarlatti was born into poverty in famine stricken Sicily, his talent and good fortune allowed him to travel to Rome where he studied with Iacomo Carissimi. After writing several successful operas he gained the favor of Queen Christina of Sweden during her extended exile in Rome, and served as maestro di capella.

Scarlatti was in Rome during Pope Innocent XI’s reign, when opera was banned from Rome, and as a result he produced instead a wealth of sacred oratorios and cantatas, including two Christmas cantatas for soprano and strings. He later worked in Naples, Florence, and Venice, before returning to Rome later in life. A prolific and hard-working artist, Scarlatti's operas, oratorios, and cantatas circulated widely throughout Italy and beyond and heavily influenced the music of the Eighteenth Century.

Our program focuses on Scarlatti's cantatas in which we find the detailed and imaginative imagery and the dialogue between voice and instruments that characterize his finest work. In addition to the well known nativity pastorale O di Betlemme altera, Ms. Webster will also perform a later setting of the Christmas story Non sò qual più m'ingombra and an allegorical cantata Hor che di Febo.

Renowned as a violinist, composer and teacher, Corelli had a profound influence on musical style in the last quarter of the century. He also enjoyed the favor of Queen Christina and he was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy. The "Paganini" of his time, Corelli's trio sonatas and concerti grossi went through many editions and spread his fame across Europe. Our program will include a trio sonata, a solo violin sonata, and the composer's beloved Christmas Concerto.

The concerts will be Friday, December 7, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday December 8, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday December 9, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

Magnificat will return to the glorious music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (right) in January with performances of four of his “petit motets”. Most likely writing for the Chapel of Saint-Suplice, Charpentier produced these intimate masterpieces for two sopranos and bass with violins during the first month of 1677. As always the master’s subtle harmonic palette and sensitive text expression are on display in these small-scale musical gems. The concert will include motets for New Year's Day, Epiphany, Purification, and for the Feast of St. Genevieve.

Some, if not all of these works were written for the musical ensemble of Charpentier’s patron, Mademoiselle de Guise, in whose household the composer lived and worked after returning from Rome, where he also was a student of Carissimi. The protected environment of the Hotel de Guise was conducive to Charpentier's development as a composer and allowed him the luxury of writing and performing music for his close friends and musical colleagues. Charpentier scholar and Magnificat artistic advisory board member John Powell prepared the editions from which Magnificat will perform and ill present the pre-concert lectures for these concerts.

The concerts will be Friday, January 18, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday January 19, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday January 20, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco.

With the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Magnificat will present the American premiere of Stradella’s opera Il Trespolo Tutore in April. After fleeing Rome in 1677, Stradella, one of the most colorful figures of the Seventeenth Century, wrote several operas in Genoa before his untimely death there in 1682. Il Trespolo Tutore is a light-hearted comedy that features a basso buffo title role, which will be sung by Peter Becker
(left).

The story of the opera is based on a play by the Tuscan playwright Giovanni Battista Ricciardi. Ricciardi created a cantankerous, bumbling character named Trespolo, who featured in a series of prose comedies, one of which served as the basis for a libretto by Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi. Following the success of Trespolo, Villifranchi went on to become the leading comic opera librettist in Florence, writing several original works plus an opera based on another one of Ricciardi’s Trespolo comedies.

The opera has an entirely farcical plot and the characters of the ridiculous Trespolo and his maid Despina are prototypes of characters used widely later in the opera buffa genre. Stylistically, the opera is similar to the oratorio La Susanna, performed last season by Magnificat. Magnificat's performances will mark the North American premiere of the work, and the first performances in the original language since the 17th century.

The concerts will be Friday, April 11, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto; Saturday April 12, 8:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Berkeley; and Sunday April 13, 4:00 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Pre-Concert lectures are open to all ticket holders and begin 45 minutes before the concert. For more information and to purchase tickets visit www.magnificatbaroque.org or call 800-853-8155.

Magnificat Performs at Notre Dame University and the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami

Just a few days after concluding our 2006-2007 season, Magnificat was honored to be presented by the Society for Seventeenth Century Music as part of their annual conference. The concert was a repeat of our subscription series program that featured music of Chiara Margharita Cozzolani in a reconstruction of an Easter Vespers liturgy. The musicians performing were (left to right in the photo) Catherine Webster, Margaret Bragle, Jennifer Ellis, Kristen Dubenion Smith, John Dornenburg, Katherine Heater, Warren Stewart, Elizabeth Anker, David Tayler, Andrea Fullington, Suzanne Elder Wallace, and Jennifer Paulino.

The concert took place in the beautiful Patricia George Decio Theatre in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center on the Notre Dame campus. The recently built concert hall boasts extraordinarily clear acoustics and the stage crew were exemplary - making us all feel like rock stars. A small but remarkable audience, made up almost entirely of scholars specializing in seventeenth century music, attended the concert. It was particularly meaningful for me to perform Cozzolani's music for colleagues that I have known and worked with for many years, including members of Magnificat's artistic advisory board, Jeffrey Kurtzman of Washington University St. Louis and Robert Kendrick of the University of Chicago, who graciously supplied authoritative program notes. The appreciative audience and the post-concert conversations made this one of the most memorable Magnificat concerts and a fitting conclusion to our 15th season.

Earlier in the Spring, Magnificat performed at the Tropical Baroque Festival in Miami. The program was Stradella'a oratorio La Susanna, which we had recently performed on our subscription series in the Bay Area.

The concert was enthusiastically received and the Miami Herald noted the "heady mixture of seamless, voluptuous melody", and commented that "all of the other singers and instrumentalists contributed towards the success of a sublime work". The reviewer was especially taken by soprano Laura Heimes, who sang the title role and will return for three sets next season. "Heimes, given a lion's share of the singing as Susanna, was balm to the ears. Her tones were perfectly floated over the ensemble, and her willingness to sing softly made her a Susanna of beauty indeed."

In addition to Ms. Heimes, the musicians for the Miami performance were Jennifer Paulino, Chris Conley, Paul Elliott, Peter Becker, Rob Diggins, David Wilson, Waren Stewart, and Katherine Heater.

Cozzolani Program Notes by Robert L. Kendrick

This evening’s program allows us to experience again some of the repertory produced by seventeenth-century Italian cloistered women. Thanks not least to groups like Magnificat, over the last decade the sacred music heard in their institutions throughout the peninsula has made the leap from printed page to a real presence on recordings and in concert. In addition, the work of several SSCM members on sacred music outside convent walls—ranging from problems of tonal organization to those of liturgical use—helps provide a better context in which to understand nuns’ repertory.

The basics of tonight’s concert are fairly well-known: music by the Benedictine nun Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-c.1677), a sister at the musically famous convent of Santa Radegonda, located across the street from Milan Cathedral. Cozzolani’s psalms and motet are here presented as they would have been first heard, in the context of her order's liturgy for Easter Vespers. S. Radegonda was famous for its sisters’ music-making on such feast-days, as visitors from all over Europe crowded into its half-church open to the public (chiesa esteriore). We hear the major musical items, in polyphony and chant, for such a Vespers, using largely Cozzolani's music and reflecting the convent's repertory around 1650; the psalms and Magnificat are scored for eight voices plus basso continuo, while the intervening motets are for smaller forces. The psalms and canticle come from her Salmi a otto voci concertati, op. 3 (Venice, 1650), published as a result of the 1649 visit to Milan of the Austrian Habsburg princess Maria Anna, a young woman soon to be married to her cousin Philip IV of Spain. Four of the five motets appeared in Cozzolani’s Concerti sacri, op. 2 (Venice, 1642; only the Mary Magdalen motet is found in the 1650 book). As a whole, the music reflects S. Radegonda’s festal liturgy at the time of Maria Anna’s visit, and could have been heard by the princess during her stay in the city, a sojourn which both reaffirmed Milan’s place in the Habsburg domains and linked the two branches of the House of Habsburg.

Like her sister, aunt, and nieces, Cozzolani took her vows at the house in her late teens. She had been born into a well-off family in Milan, and might have received her early musical training from members of the well-known Rognoni family, instrumental and vocal teachers in the city. Her four musical publications appeared between 1640 and 1650; later, she served as prioress and abbess at S. Radegonda, helping to guide the house through troubled times in the 1660’s, as it came under attack by the strict Archbishop Alfonso Litta, concerned to limit nuns’ practice of music, along with other “irregular” contact with the outside world. She disappears from the convent's lists between 1676 and 1678.

The fame of Cozzolani and her house during her lifetime is evident in a passage from her contemporary Filippo Picinelli's urban panegyric, the Ateneo dei letterati milanesi (Milan, 1670): “The nuns of Santa Radegonda of Milan are gifted with such rare and exquisite talents in music that they are acknowledged to be the best singers of Italy. They wear the Cassinese habits of [the order of] St. Benedict, but (under their black garb) they seem to any listener to be white and melodious swans, who fill hearts with wonder, and enrapture tongues in their praise. Among these sisters, Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani merits the highest praise, Chiara [literally, ‘clear’, Cozzolani’s religious name] in name but even more so in merit, and Margarita [literally, ‘a pearl’] for her unusual and excellent nobility of [musical] invention…”. She was of course only one of over a dozen nuns in seventeenth-century Italy who published their music, but the ongoing tributes to her and to the musical culture of her house are remarkable on any count.

The canonical Hour begins with the versicle and response Deus in adiutorium meum, of which Cozzolani set the latter part (“Domine ad adiuvandum me festina”). Although this is normally a fairly straightforward text, the composer signaled the formal innovations to come in her psalm settings by rearranging various parts of the liturgical text (‘festina, Domine’ and the ‘Gloria Patri’) and troping them into earlier sections of the response. As per Benedictine Use in the seventeenth century, the four psalms (not five, as in the secular Use familiar from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610) and the ensuing Magnificat are each flanked by a chant antiphon and, substituting for the antiphon's normal repetition after the psalm, a motet. The hymn sung before the Magnificat is here given in an alternatim (i.e., alternate stanzas divided between Gregorian chant and organ versets) version from the standard contemporary publication for such practice, G. B. Fasolo’s Annuale (Venice, 1645).

The vocal resources of S. Radegonda allowed Cozzolani to apportion a wide variety of textures to the verses of the eight-voice items. The psalms use this kind of kaleidoscopically changing scorings in order to differentiate verses and half-verses, often responding to the imagery of each with a directly representative gesture. The troping found in Domine ad adiuvandum is also evident in the opening psalm Dixit Dominus, in which the three members of the doxology (one for each of the Trinity) are inserted ‘prematurely’ among the verses. The martial affect of the 'Gloria' motive, repeated throughout the first half, heightens the victorious tone of the psalm, and to render the setting even more festive. Although refrains do occur in contemporary Vespers of composers working elsewhere in Italy—those of Monteverdi, Giovanni Rovetta, Gasparo Casati and Orazio Tarditi—such a use of the ‘Gloria Patri’ displaced to various parts of the psalm seems to occur only in Cozzolani’s psalms. For a Milanese audience of the 1640s, unused to refrains in psalm settings, the effect must have been uncommon, even ‘witty’. While Dixit tropes the doxology into the verses, Laudate pueri reverses the process, by troping the initial refrain into later sections, including the doxology. Another notable feature is the apportioning of solos to the first-choir alto, a favorite voice-type (?perhaps her own) for Cozzolani.

Dixit Dominus, with its unusual refrain, constantly varying textures, and martial affect represents one side of the 1650 collection; the second psalm, Confitebor tibi Domine (Ps 110) displays another. The concertato duet and trio writing found in Dixit Dominus are present here as well, as are the tutti declamatory, martial, and antiphonal sections. The difference begins on the structural level: there are no refrains in the strict sense. Instead the common pun of the return of the opening at ‘Sicut erat’ is employed. However, one feature distinguishes Confitebor tibi: the return of this opening’s ‘walking’ bass at two points: in a triple-time form at verse 7, ‘Ut det illis’ and at the soprano duet ‘Redemptionem misit’. Thus Confitebor represents a more subtle recurrence of the refrain idea that characterizes almost all of Cozzolani’s eight-voice settings. Second are smaller-scale features: the declamation in the tuttis is rather quicker than in Dixit; and there is more interest in local solo-tutti contrast (‘Fidelia omnia’). The relative brevity and economy of this setting marks it as closer to the subgenre of the salmo corrente, a more declamatory psalm setting with little or no internal textual repetition.

The pervasive influence of the dialogue made itself felt in Cozzolani’s setting of Beatus vir, sub-titled “in forma di Dialogo”. The ‘dialogic’ influence functions on both the small-scale level (the verses are largely multi-voice concertato passages), and on the larger overall structure. For the psalm in interspersed with two interlocking refrains, one on ‘Beatus vir’ and one on ‘Jocundus homo’. The print supplies question marks for non-interrogative clauses in the text of the psalm verse (e.g. ‘qui habitabit?’), normally allotted to a solo voice or pair of voices. These ‘forced’ interrogatives are then followed by another set of voices (or by the whole ensemble), giving the whole text (verse or half-verse) as an answer. It is this characteristic that seems to impart a ‘dialogic’ trait to the piece. Although the idea may seem constructivist, Cozzolani uses the structure to reinforce certain qualities of the ‘blessed man’, in what may be a reference to a venerated saint or possibly even a (deceased) religious superior (in his edition of this piece, Jeffrey Kurtzman has noted Cozzolani’s sensitivity to textual semantics). This structural feature doubles the length of the text as sung, in addition to the musical echoes provided by the dialogue of voices, and the unpredictable returns of the two refrains; Beatus vir is one of the more extended and individually reworked psalms in the mid-century north Italian repertory.

The Magnificat primo (there are two in the 1650 edition) also tropes the rearranged first verse (‘anima mea magnificat’, here used as a kind of emblem of the overall affect of the piece) into various places of the canticle. But it also repeats parts of adjacent verses in the interest of local binary contrast, textual and musical, as in the case of the forceful ‘dispersit superbos’ followed immediately by the humble ‘respexit humilitatatem ancillae suae’ from an earlier verse. The entire declamation then becomes: ‘dispersit . . . [interspersed contrast:] respexit . . . mente cordis sui’. This setting also uses direct antiphony between the two groups of four voices (‘a progenie in progenies’), a procedure that is somewhat rare in the collection.

The printed version of the canticle setting also highlights issues of performance practice: at ‘Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae’, the Basso II voice descends to a low D# (i.e. below the bass staff), for obvious mimetic reasons. Similarly, in Confitebor at “Magna opera Domini”, the Basso I, the only voice declaming the text, descends to low F. Indeed, in these settings as in the rest of Cozzolani’s music, the vocal ranges are entirely normal (even extended) by seventeenth-century standards, and so the problem of how the music was performed by the all-female ensembles of S. Radegonda is directly posed. There is some evidence that, given the large numbers of women in the house along with a tradition of female singers named as ‘bassi’ in the archival records, convent ensembles must have had women who could sing tenor lines, at least, at pitch. Bass parts might then have been transposed up an octave; alternately, entire pieces might have been transposed up a fourth or fifth. Since the conditions of convent performance are not reproducible today (without major social engineering), tonight’s concert offers a solution in which both tenor and bass parts are taken up an octave, so as to give something of the ethereal, ‘celestial’ sonority of nuns’ ensembles that so impressed contemporary listeners.

As scholars from Stephen Bonta onwards have pointed out, it was common Italian practice to replace the antiphons with motets. We have chosen five: one for solo voice, three for two voices, and one for four voices, based either on their direct suitability for Easter or on their general Christological traits appropriate for this highest of feasts of Christ. The motet O quam bonum, O quam jocundum, for solo soprano, alternates quick triple meter sections with more declamatory writing. Its text adumbrates the healing effects of the Eucharist, and it switches between addressing Christ and the urban public listening in the external church of the convent. It invites the listeners to enter the “Lord’s gate”, namely the wound in Christ’s side, the door to salvation. The repetition of the motet’s opening section halfway through is balanced by its conclusion, featuring ornamental dissonance in the voice part over long pedals in the basso continuo, an appropriate climax to the setting of an intense text.

Three duets show other aspects of Cozzolani’s style. The soprano/alto motet Ave mater dilectissima sets a dialogue between Mary and the Risen Christ, appropriate for the feast. In its modal stability, and gradually expanding range of the vocal lines, this dialogue exemplifies the traditional side of Cozzolani’s writing. The duet for two canti, Bone Jesu, fons amoris, is a setting of a late-medieval text addressed to Christ. With its opening ostinato section and two imitative periods at the end (“fac habere premium” and “ut cantemus”), this motet displays the rhythmic drive and intensity of the new musical styles in northern Italy around 1640. O dulcis Jesu, whose text, scoring, and musical procedures recall those of Bone Jesu, fons amoris, was reprinted by the German Lutheran organist Ambrosius Profe in his anthology of 1649, Corollarium geistlicher collectaneorum (copies of which survive in various Lutheran collections), while the piece also circulated in Bohemian manuscript copies with violin parts added later (one other piece from Cozzolani’s 1650 book, not performed here, has been found by Bernardo Illari and T. Frank Kennedy in the musical archive of the Jesuit reduction in Concepción, Bolivia). Thus the Christological piety—and up-to-date musical traits—of O dulcis Jesu seem to have appealed to a wide (confessional) variety of singers and listeners.

As the substitute for the Magnificat antiphon we hear the motet Maria Magdalena stabat, a dramatic setting of Mary Magdalen’s encounter with the angels at Christ’s tomb on Easter morning. This text would have had special meaning for Cozzolani, the other nuns, and S. Radegonda’s public, for the convent was the only church in Milan to house a relic of the penitent saint. Even more importantly, she was used as a model for nuns in particular, and for Christians (as sinners) more generally. The first half of the piece is a dialogue between the Magdalen and the angels, in which the saint expresses her desire to find the missing Christ, using language taken from the Song of Songs and featuring musical periods of gradually increasing length, complexity, and dissonance (its climax being “Dilectus meus, amor meus…crucifixus est”). This adumbration of grief and longing for Jesus, an example of what an individual nun and Christian would have felt when contemplating the mystery of the empty Tomb on Easter morning, is then balanced by a long conclusion (beginning at “Dicamus ergo gaudentes”), three sentences each ending with “alleluia”, unified by a recurring cadential figure. In its combination of specifically female spirituality with the universal joy of believers at the Resurrection, the dialogue sums up the devotional and musical themes present in much of Cozzolani’s output.

The variety and “meraviglia” of Cozzolani's musical invention are well on display in these selections. Three and a half centuries later, this music has lost none of its power to attract and impress listeners, and its restoration to the liturgical context in which it was originally heard only reinforces the power of the music.

SFCV Review of Rosenmüller Vespers

A Magical Re-creation
By Rebekah Ahrendt

The following review appeared on San Francisco Classical Voice.

The sanctuary of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco was transformed into the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice Sunday afternoon. Performing a re-creation of a vespers service for the Feast of the Annunciation, Magnificat wowed the audience with works by Johann Rosenmüller, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli. This program was a great example of what happens when good colleagues perform the music of good colleagues.

Rosenmüller, Rovetta, and Cavalli all worked together at San Marco beginning in 1658, when Rosenmüller arrived from his native Germany. He had been scheduled to take up the cantorate in Leipzig (the eventual job of J.S. Bach), but was arrested in 1655, having been accused of homosexual activity. Somehow he managed to escape and found a warm welcome in Venice, where he took a job as trombonist in the San Marco Cathedral.

Rovetta was maestro di capella there, assuming Monteverdi's duties after that great composer's death in 1643, and serving until his own death in 1668. Cavalli was employed as a singer and organist, and eventually succeeded Rovetta as maestro di capella, a position he held until his death in 1676. Rosenmüller stayed on in Venice, eventually moving back to German lands in 1682. For all three of these composers, the steady employment and good wage that San Marco offered allowed them to produce and perform exceptional music. The collegiality of the capella gave them opportunity to experiment and influence one another.

Modern-day capella

Magnificat is a good modern-day example of a collegial capella. Under artistic director Warren Stewart, the core of Magnificat's ensemble has experimented with all kinds of music rarely heard today. Together, they have developed a distinct sound and approach to repertoire that never fails to please. Sunday's concert was no exception.

Magnificat's Annunciation Vespers service was quite long — only counting the polyphonic works, there were five psalms, six church sonatas in place of antiphons, a hymn, and a magnificat. These were interspersed with chant antiphons, responsories, and prayers. Altogether, that added up to two hours of music, performed without a break. Though it caused some numbness of the rear end, the program was altogether overwhelming and beautifully performed.

Two of the psalm settings by Rosenmüller had probably not been performed since the 17th century. Both his Dixit Dominus à 4 and his Nisi Dominus à 4 have not appeared in modern editions. According to the program notes, Stewart obtained copies of the manuscript from Rosenmüller specialist Kerala J. Snyder. It is amazing to me that such wonderful music has been so largely ignored.

Nisi Dominus in particular was a great find. As is typical of the late Venetian style, the piece is scored for a combination of voices and instruments, which effectively illustrated every line of the psalm. For example, "Sicut sagittae in manu potentis" (As arrows in the hands of the mighty) featured a martial figure in the accompaniment, with all voices uniting in a show of strength. Soprano Jennifer Ellis was highlighted in a solo setting of the first part of the doxology that was extremely melismatic.

Just listening to the six different settings of the doxology on this program was an enlightening experience. Besides that of Rosenmüller's Nisi Dominus, the doxology for Cavalli's Laetatus sum was also special. Tending more toward the mystical and strange, Cavalli's setting focused on darker tones. A five-part string ensemble (including two violas and violone) emphasized the contributions of the alto, tenor, and bass, sung beautifully by Margaret Bragle, Daniel Hutchings, and Hugh Davies. Their muted melodies, often in a low register, seemed to highlight the anxiety of war underneath the rejoicing of this psalm.

Musical delights

On the high end, soprano Laura Heimes was a welcome addition to the ensemble, one I had not heard with Magnificat before. Her clear soprano blended excellently with Ellis' in the five-part works, which often paired the high voices. Her solo portions were equally well performed, with precision and sensitivity.

Offsetting the vocal works were a number of sonatas by Rosenmüller, performed by two violins, two violas, and violone. At San Marco it was common to substitute instrumental works for portions of the service. With so many fine instrumentalists on call, the so-called sonata da chiesa (church sonata) became popular. This type of sonata contrasts elaborate contrapuntal moments with contemplative or meditative slow sections. A few of the sonatas on this program featured wildly chromatic themes that were richly elaborated and deliciously performed by the ensemble. The five-part texture is typical of 17th century Italian music and became standard also in French music after Lully.

The violas were a special treat. It is not often that I get to hear two independent viola parts in a concert, especially when played by fine violists like David Wilson and Vicki Gunn Pich. John Dornenburg's violone playing was also quite fine and was surprisingly florid and agile on an instrument best known for being rather lugubrious. Violinists Rob Diggins and Jolianne von Einem were simply delightful, as was (as always) the continuo playing of Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler on organ and lute, respectively.

Proosdij was given a moment in the soloist's spotlight on a hymn setting by Giovanni Battista Fasolo, a famous organist who published an all-purpose collection of organ pieces for liturgical use in 1645. The hymn "Ave maris stella" was performed in alternation between the singers on the hymn tune and the organ in a richly ornamented version. The effect was stunning. Though the tune was recognizable in the organ parts, the inventiveness of the elaboration and the skill of Proosdij in bringing it all together created a wholly new experience of this popular hymn.

Altogether, this was a most impressive concert. Though I did have trouble walking for some time afterward, and though a few more tuning breaks would have been desirable for the strings, it was a more than worthwhile experience. I felt transported back to San Marco for an afternoon, listening to the music of those who worked there long ago. Thanks to the work of Magnificat, it is possible, and rewarding, to take such an imaginary journey.

Rebekah Ahrendt holds the artist's diploma in viola da gamba and historical performance practice from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Currently, she is a graduate student in historical musicology at UC Berkeley.

Program Notes for Rosenmüller Vespers

Vespro della Beata Vergine, with music by Johann Rosenmüller, Giovanni Rovetta, and Pier Francesco Cavalli will be performed on Friday March 31, 8:00 p.m. at First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Saturday April 1, 8:00 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, Berkeley; and Sunday April 2, 4:00 p.m. at St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church, San Francisco. The program featured Laura Heimes, soprano; Jennifer Ellis, soprano, Margaret Bragle, alto; Daniel Hutchings, tenor; Hugh Davies, bass; Rob Diggins, violin; Jolianne von Einem, violin; David Wilson, viola; Vicki Gunn Pich, viola; John Dornenburg, violone; David Tayler, theorbo; Hanneke van Proosdij, organ.

One of the most highly regarded German composers of the second half of the seventeenth century, Johann Rosenmüller’s music has been rarely performed since then. Following the practice of many northern composers of the period, he preferred to have his sacred music disseminated in manuscript. Fortunately a considerable number of those manuscripts have survived and we are pleased to feature Rosenmüller in this reconstruction of a vespers service as it would have been performed in Venice, the composer’s adopted home.

Born around 1619 in a small town near Zwickau in Saxony, Rosenmüller studied theology at the University of Leipzig and music with Tobias Michael, cantor of the Thomasschule. His quickly rose to the postion of assistant cantor by 1650. He was appointed organist at Nikolaikirche in 1651 and in 1653 he was promised the succession to the cantorate.

This promising career came to an abrupt halt in 1655 when, along with several of the St. Thomas schoolboys was accused of homosexuality for which he was jailed. While awaiting trial he managed to escape and eventually made his way to Venice where, in January of 1658 he was appointed as a trombonist in the orchestra of San Marco. He remained in Venice until 1682, when he was kappelmaister in Wolfenbüttel until he died in 1684. While in Venice, rosenmüller was active as a composer, both at San Marco and at the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi would be employed a few decades later.

Almost all of Rosenmüller’s extant vocal music is sacred with a significant body of music for Vespers. While the psalms and Magnificat we will perform were no doubt written during Rosenmüller’s time in Venice, it has thus far proven impossible to date them with any accuracy or to associate them with any particular occasion or location. Stylistically the setting of Lauda Jerusalem would seem to be the earliest composition, and the key of the Nisi Dominus would suggest a relative later date. The Dixit Dominus and Magnificat settings are particular fine examples of the late Venetian concertato style, demonstrating a satisfying blend of Rosenm’ller's native Northern tast for intricate counterpoint and the bold harmonic language and clear tonal structures characteristic of the Italian masters.

Near the end of his life Rosenmüller published a collection of twelve sonatas from which our antiphon substitutes are drawn. A compendium of the stylistic and gestural possibilities of the mid seventeenth century ensemble sonata, the collection most likely contains works composed from various atges of Rosenmüller’s life. The collection was dedicated to the cousin of Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who may have been responsible for the composers return to Germany.

Two composers that Rosenmüller would have worked closely with while in Venice are also represented on our program. Giovanni Rovetta assumed the post of maestro di cappella at San Marco on th death of Caludio Monteverdi in 1643 and remained in that position for the remainder of his life. During this period Pier Francesco Cavalli, though best known as a composer of stage works for the newly created public opera houses of Venice, was the organist at San Marco through the 1640s and 1650s, assuming the role of maestro di cappella when Rovetta died in 1664.

I am extremely grateful to Prof. Kerala Snyder for providing copies of the manuscripts for Dixit Dominus and Nisi Dominus and to Johan Tufveson for his excellent website, the source for the 1682 sonatas. Thanks also to Herb Myers and William Mahrt, the music libraries of UC Berkeley and Stanford, Nika Korniyenko, and Tchocky.

Magnificat Revives Charpentier Program

On the weekend of December 9-11, Magnificat will revive one of our most beloved programs that features the Pastorale sur la naissance de Nostre Seigneur of Marc-Antoine Charpentier together with traditional French noels, or Christmas carols from the period. This program was performed by Magnificat as part of our 1993-1994 season and again in 1997 on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series.

Like many, I first encountered the music of Charpentier in the delightful Midnight Mass, a work that uses the tunes associated with many popular noels in setting the text of the Mass ordinary. Charming as this piece is, it gives only a faint glimpse of the range and profundity of Charpentier’s compositional skills. Nevertheless, in making reference to the infectious melodies, it captures the earthy flavor of these tunes, which were known and loved by Frenchmen of all classes.

Charpentier’s Pastorale is once removed from the noels, borrowing much of the imagery and tone of the texts but providing them with a rich and highly refined musical setting. It was exactly these parallels that motivated the construction of Magnificat’s original program in 1993. The Pastorale on its own was a bit short for an entire concert and by framing its four sections with arrangements of noels (some by Charpentier himself) a satisfying and revealing program resulted.

In 1670, upon returning to France from his studies with Carissimi in Rome, Marc-Antoine Charpentier became a member of the household of Marie de Lorraine, called Mademoiselle de Guise. One of the wealthiest women in Europe, and a princess in rank, Mlle. de Guise chose to live in Paris independent of the intrigues and obligations of court life under Louis XIV. She was a passionate lover of music, and maintained an ensemble of musicians, less opulent than that to be found at court, but highly admired by the Parisian connoisseurs of the time. It was for this ensemble of companions that Charpentier wrote his Pastorale.

During this time, Charpentier was primarily involved with writing music for the stage, working briefly with Moliére before the playwright’s untimely death, and later with others. His gifts as a composer of dramatic music contributed significantly to the Pastorale and it has been suggested that the work was intended to accompany a traditional Christmas pageant. This possibility is supported by the list of characters on the title page of the manuscript: along with the shepherds and angels are the names of Mary and Joseph, who have no singing parts anywhere in the piece. Charpentier’s biographer Catherine Cessac has suggested that the Pastorale may have been intended for performance at a school for the education of poor girls supported by Mlle. de Guise. It is easy to imagine costumed young girls arranged in the traditional tableaux vivants during this musical expression of the Christmas story.

Three versions of the Pastorale are preserved in the composer’s manuscripts, the first having been performed in 1684. The following two years the piece was performed again but with some new music and some of the previous music rearranged. The reasons for the revisions is not clear, though it is easy to surmise that perhaps the capabilities of different singers may have motivated the changes. In any case, the basic form of the piece remained consistent and for Magnificat’s program an amalgamation of the three versions has been assembled using the opening scenes common to all three arrangements which tell the story up to the appearance of the angels to the shepherds, while the scene at the crèche comes from the1685 version and the closing scene depicting the shepherds on their way home at dawn is taken from the 1686 version.

Mille grazie!

Just a brief post to thank all those who contributed to our very successful first concert set - musicians, box office staff, ushers, stage hands - and most of all the very warm audiences!

SFCV Review of September 30 Magnificat concert

http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/magnificat_10_4_05.php

EARLY MUSIC
A Running Start
09/30/05
By Joseph Sargent

Giovan Battista Guarini's play Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was a failure as drama but proved extraordinarily successful as literature. The tragicomic 17th-century play of pastoral love, lust and loss was first published in 1590. No other source of lyrical texts surpassed it in popularity among Italian composers of the time.

Il Pastor Fido evidently holds a similar appeal for Magnificat, which compiled a selection of solo and polyphonic pieces from the play for its opening concert of the 2005-2006 season, organized into a narrative structure that mimics the play's plot. Under the guidance of artistic director/violoncellist Warren Stewart, a consort of five vocalists and three instrumentalists tackled this repertoire Friday at Palo Alto's First Lutheran Church with abandon, delivering an animated performance that represented a strong debut for the ensemble's new season.

Any effective performance of Italian madrigals ought to lavish great attention on the tell-tale aspects of the genre: frequent emotional shifts in the text, an innate sense of theatricality, and distinctive “text paintings” in which musical devices accentuate the literal meaning of individual words. Magnificat proved to be adept interpreters in this regard, their approach focused on conveying the dramatic as well as musical power of these settings.

An effective match

This combination of music and drama paid off with Tarquinio Merula's "Oimè, son morta!" (O, I'm dead), a struggle between "wanton nymph" Corisca and the hunter Satiro. Soprano Jennifer Ellis and bass Peter Becker were a delightfully combative pair of foes, their virtuosic vocal displays and captivating affective gestures a highlight of the evening. Ellis' beguiling voice was pure and lithe with a delicate vibrato, perfect for this repertoire. Becker had a sparkling presence here and throughout the evening with his gorgeous tone, impeccable skill in ornamentation and winning theatricality.

Among the other soloists, tenor Dan Hutchings deployed his gentle, polished voice to good effect in Sigismondo d'India's "Cruda Amarilli" (Cruel Amaryllis), though he might have offered more passionate expression (both physical and vocal) to the text's heart-wrenching sentiments. Tenor Paul Elliott displayed a somewhat darker tone in a series of d'India songs, conveying a somber quality that, while matching the affective nature of the texts, sometimes seemed heavy-handed. He and Hutchings were well-matched, however, in their Alessandro Grandi duet "Udite lagrimosi" (Hear, weeping), their voices distinctive in alternating phrases yet merging seamlessly at several points to create a satisfying whole.

Magnificat displayed impressive command in the ensemble madrigals, their faultless intonation and carefully matched phrasing adding greatly to this music's effectiveness. Particularly successful was the closing madrigal set, d'India's Se tu, Silvio crudel, mi saettasti (When you, cruel Silvio, shot me). Following an agile opening flourish from soprano Laura Heimes, the ensemble depicted Silvio's tragic accidental wounding of his beloved Dorinda with virtuoso panache, effortlessly moving between fugal and homophonic lines and poring over the many expressive word paintings with great care. Also impressive was Claudio Monteverdi's masterly "Ah dolente partita" (Oh, painful separation), in which the character Mirtillo agonizes over the absence of his beloved Amaryllis. Ellis and Heimes gave haunting expression to the piece's opening dissonances and the ensemble followed with passionate cries of anguish, supplemented by powerful dynamic swells.

Love's labors

In Giovanni Ghizzolo's Il Gioco della Cieca (The game of Blind Man's Bluff), Heimes displayed a bright, dulcet sound as Amaryllis, tangling with Mirtillo in a game in which the participants' furtive movements symbolize the blindness of love. Heimes also combined with Ellis and Becker for several delightful moments as the Nymph's Chorus, their gleeful passages commenting wryly on the characters' machinations.

A couple of quibbles, however. Balance was a nagging issue at several points in the program, particularly in the classic Monteverdi setting of "Cruda Amarilli," with Elliott in particular tending to overpower his comrades. And some of Magnificat's performers seem generally more comfortable in the madrigal idiom than others — dramatic expression was occasionally unequal and ornamental lines were delivered in varying degrees of fluency, for instance.

The two continuo performers, theorbist David Tayler and harpsichordist Hanneke van Proosdij, masterfully accompanied the vocal consort and also commanded their own moments in the spotlight. Tayler's gentle grace and technical polish imbued a pavan of Alfonso Ferrabosco II with quiet emotion, while Proosdij added graceful lyricism and flawless passagework to a canzona by Merula and a toccata of Giovanni Picchi.

Un Pasticcio di Madrigaletti (program notes)

“A pastiche of little madrigals” is how Gaspare Murtola described Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido in 1626, and while his comment was intended as derogatory, he succeeding in pointing both to the strength and weakness of the play. The overblown and self-consciously poetic language of Guarini’s tragicomedy succeeded in making the play a relative failure on the stage, tremendous success as a work of literature, and a goldmine for composers seeking affective, emotional texts through which to display the new compositional techniques of the early baroque.

Guarini’s play, whether by design or not, turned out to be just as Murtola had described it: a series of little madrigals, from which composers drew texts for decades. Many of the “little madrigals” took on a life of their own, with composers seemingly competing with each other with their different settings. Often when the names of specific characters from the play occurred in the text, composers would alter the text or substitute generic pastoral names (Tirsi, Clori, etc.) to make their madrigal more general.

Though the play in many ways springs from the same humanist orientation that was leading the avant-garde composers of the late sixteenth century to develop the new monodic style of recitative, the majority of settings that were published at the time were in the form of polyphonic madrigals. Our program emphasizes the settings from the seventeenth century and features both monodic and polyphonic settings. While the program is ordered according to the narrative of the play, it is of course not a complete nor balanced rendering of the play, since certain sections received considerable attention from composers and other relatively little.

A little background is needed to understand the action of the play. In the prologue and first act it is revealed that Arcadia, where the play is set, is suffering under a plague cast by Diana. It seems that Aminta, a priest of Diana, was in love with Lucrina. She spurned him for another and Aminta asked his goddess to avenge him and Diana obliged with a plague on Arcadia which the oracle stated would have no end unless Lucrina, or someone who would take her place, were sacrificed. Aminta, appointed executioner, stabbed himself at the altar and Lucrina, stricken with guilt, followed suit. Diana, still angry, renewed the plague and the oracle made three pronouncements: that a young woman must be sacrificed each year to abate the plague; that any faithless woman should die unless a voluntary substitute were found; and that the preceding should be valid until Love united two people of divine ancestry.

The chief priest, Montano, is the theocratic hierarch of Arcadia. His son, Silvio, is descended from Hercules and, in order to end the curse, is betrothed to Amarilli who is descended from Pan. However, they do not love each other. Silvio it seems is only interested in the hunt and in the first scene his older servant Linco tries to persuade him. An excerpt from his entreaty, Quell augellin che canta, became one of the most frequently set excerpts with 15 surviving prints beginning with Leoni’s in 1591. Many, including Monteverdi’s found in his fourth book of madrigals, contain additional verses. The setting we will perform, from Sigismondo d’India’s third book of madrigals, published in 1615.

In the next scene we meet Mirtillo, lately arrived in Arcadia, and Ergasto, a doorkeeper at the temple who has befriended him. Mirtillo is in love with Amarilli and we find out later that she, albeit chastely, loves him in return. Perhaps the most famous of all the Pastor Fido madrigals comes from this scene, Crud’ Amarilli, in which Mirtillo bemoans his unrequited love. This text first appears in a music print in 1595 in a setting by Marenzio. Monteverdi’s famous setting, the subject of fierce and pedantic criticism by Artusi, was most likely written in 1597 or 1598, but published only in 1605 in the composer’s fifth book of madrigals. We will also perform a solo setting of the text by d’India that was published in 1609.

In the third scene we meet Corisca, described in the cast of characters as “a wanton nymph”. A great beauty, she reveals herself to be vain, jealous, and mischievous, but the extent of her treachery will only be discovered later. In scene four Montano, the father of Silvio and Titiro, the father of Amarilli congratulate themselves for arranging a marriage for their children that they assume will end the plague. Their encounter also provides a chance to fill the audience in on a lot of the background. In the final scene of Act I, we meet the Satyr, a comic character who ends up playing a significant role later in the play.

The second act opens with a breathless Ergasto telling Mirtillo that Corisca has cooked a scheme whereby Mirtillo to disclose his love to Amarilli. Mirtillo then recounts his first encounter with Amarilli, in which he was dressed as a nymph (this took place presumably before facial hair or a broken voice might have given him away) and got him invited to a nymph-only affair. At the party the frisky nymphs all decide to have a kissing contest and since Amarilli clearly possessed the most desirable lips she was chosen as the kissing judge. Sure enough Mirtillo-as-mystery-nymph won the contest but left with some uncertainty about whether Amarilli might have suspected the ruse.

In the next scene we meet Dorinda, who is as lovesick over Silvio as Mirtillo is over Amarilli. She is about in the woods with her servant Lupino (everyone has a sidekick in these pastorals) and happens upon Silvio’s faithful dog Melampo, who has strayed from his owner. She asks Lupino to hide with the dog and, upon encountering Silvio, tries pathetically and futilely to get him to promise his love to her in return for his beloved hound. Their exchange continues in the third scene, where Dorinda likens herself to a doe wounded in the heart. The frustratingly literal and impatient Silvio asks for an explanation and Dorinda’s responds tthat she is like a doe caught by the arrow of love, a statement that foreshadows the action of the fourth act.

In scene four, Corisca reveals a bit of her scheme, along with her very jealous nature, and in scene five she sets her “friend” Amarilli up for a meeting with Mirtillo, knowing that she is duty bound to reject him, owing to her forced engagement to Silvio. Corisca has planned for Mirtillo to appear during a game of Blind Man’s Bluff that seems to be a favorite of the local nymphs in Arcadia. Amarilli departs just before the final scene of Act II in which Corisca is trapped by the Satyr who attempts to drag her off to a cave and have his way with her. They engage in a spirited exchange of insults before Corisca finally escapes because the Satyr has grabbed her hair only to discover that she is wearing a wig causing him to fall down as she flees. His ego (and various parts of his body) bruised he concludes the scene with a self-pitying monologue. We are fortunate that this entire scene was set in the new operatic style for soprano and bass by Tarquinio Merula. Merula was a Cremonese composer who appears to have composed his Corisca e Satiro while working in Poland in the early 1620s, though it was not published until 1626, after his returned to Italy.

The Third Act was clearly the favorite source for composers and the first lines of scene one, which begin O Primavera, were chosen for over twenty madrigals beginning with a setting in Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals in 1592. One could assemble a very satisfying, if perhaps monotonous, program from the many beautiful settings of Mirtillo’s monologue including madrigals by Wert, Monte, Luzzaschi, Schütz and others. We will perform d’India’s exceptional five part setting for tenor and continuo published in 1609. Mirtillo’s soliloquy takes up the entire first scene and in the second scene he encounters Amarilli in the Gioco della Cieca (Game of Blind Man’s Bluff). This scene with its conceits of the blindness of love in many ways is a microcosm of the entire play and was perhaps the most famous scene and the most troublesome to stage. Apparently, Guarini wrote the words to fit the music, which had been written to fit the dance in an initial performance of the play during the mid-1580s. Neither the music nor a detailed description of the resulting performance have survived, but there is a complete setting of the scene by Giovanni Ghizzolo that was published in his Madrigali e arie, of 1609 which we will perform.

A long and emotional dialogue between Mirtillo and Amarilli, in which the former musters his most poetic possible expression of his fidelity and devotion for the latter, who is unable to return the love she so ardently feels in her heart, follows the game. Their departure is marked by another of the most beloved madrigal texts, Ah dolente partita, in which Mirtillo laments their separation. With 37 published settings, the last from the 1640s, Ah dolente partita was the most often set text drawn from Il Pastor Fido, and we willbegin the second half of our program with the setting from Monteverdi’s fourth book of madrigals published in 1603, though most likely composed several years before.

The program continues with Amarilli’s opening lines from scene four, O Mirtillo anima mea. Another extremely popular text, we will perform the famous setting from Monteverdi’s fifth book of madrigals. Along with Crud’ Amarilli, this madrigal was singled out for its harmonic infelicities by the Bolognese academic Giovanni Maria Artusi in 1601, commencing a public argument in print that Monteverdi at first ignored and then belated joined, with his brother eventually coming to the composer’s defense and coining the term seconda prattica to describe the new music that violated the old rules for expressive effect.

The following two scenes pair Corisca, first with Amarilli and then with Mirtillo, and she continues to play her devious psychological games with each of them. In her conversation with Corisca, Amaryllis reveals the depth of her love for Mirtillo and the anguish that her dilemma causes her. Corisca convinces Amaryllis that if Silvio is caught in an apparently adulterous situation, she will be free of her duty to marry him. Corisca’s scheme involves arranging a tryst in a notorious cave between Silvio and Lisetta, another nymph, which will be discovered by Amarilli. After some persuasion Amarilli agrees but insists on first visiting the temple and goes off leaving Corisca to congratulate herself on her sinister plan. She intends to arrange for Amaryllis herself to be caught in a compromising situation with Corydon (who is in love with Corisca, but that’s another subplot) which will lead to her death, thus freeing Mirtillo (or so she imagines) for her own lustful designs.

Next Corisca sets about deceiving Mirtillo, who conveniently wanders by, distraught from Amarilli’s rejection. His tragic and emotional opening soliloquy, Udite lagrimosi, was a favorite of madrigalists with over twenty settings, beginning with Marenzio’s in 1594. The tortured and pathos-laden lines were irresistible for composers and inspired some of the most exquisitely chromatic and expressive madrigals of the early baroque. We will perform a setting for tenor duet by Alessandro Grandi, Monteverdi assistant at San Marco in Venice.

Corisca then engages Mirtillo in a discussion of his love and marvels, jealously, at the constancy of his fidelity to Amaryllis. In not very subtly promoting herself as a more willing and desirable lover, she describes a less tortured and more carefree hypothetical situation in which love is actually requited by the object of one’s desire. An excerpt of this description Com’è soave cosa was set by many composers, including the brief monody found in d’India Musiche, book 3 of 1618 that we will perform. After painting this appealing, though false, picture of her desirability as a potential lover, Corisca tells Mirtillo that the true object of his love is unfaithful and directs him to the same notorious cave to catch Amarilli in the arms of another. Mirtillo of course refuses to believe but nevertheless is persuaded to go to the cave to see for himself.

Soliloquies for Amarilli and Mirtillo follow in which they further embellish their individual predicaments as they make their separate ways to the cave. Amarilli enters the cave first, and Mirtillo, thinking that she is there waiting for her lover, decides to hide in the cave where he will then attack his rival with darts when he enters The Satyr overhears Mirtillo as he goes into the cave and, suspecting that it is Corisca that Mirtillo is meeting in the cave, mischievously rolls a great stone in front of the cave’s opening, trapping the pair inside, leading to the chorus that concludes the Act.

The Fourth Act begins with Corisca discovering that the entrance to the cave has been blocked. She finally decides that it must have been Mirtillo who, in rage at finding Amarilli and Corydon there, moved the stone over the opening. She decides to go in through the secret entrance (of course there’s a secret entrance!) and find out what is happening. With the second scene of the act we return to Dorinda, whom her father’s servant Linco finds dressed in furs, a disguise that allowed her to watch her beloved Silvio in the hunt. Linco is understandably perplexed by the extremes to which Dorinda has gone and suggests that she should return to more normal attire. However, it seems that Dorinda’s servant Lupino, who was minding her clothes, has thoughtlessly gone off somewhere and Dorinda asks Linco to find him.

Next Ergasto relates the dreadful scene when, at the Satyr’s bidding, the chief priest's minister went to the cave to apprehend the adulterous Amarilli. Mirtillo attacked Nicandro, the minister, thinking him to be Corydon, and threw a dart that miraculously missed its mark, but Mirtillo was nonetheless taken prisoner along with Amarilli. Corisca gloats in the next act of the success of her plans, since, by the double standard of the day, only the female half of such an adulterous pair is punished by death and Mirtillo will doubtless soon be set free. However, she reckons that it would be best for her to hide for a while, until her rival has been sacrificed.

In the fifth scene, Nicandro interrogates Amarilli. All of Arcadia is of course incredulous that the most virtuous Amarilli has been found in such a compromising position – on the very day that she was to be married to Silvio and thus end the horrible plague. This incredulity does not, however, seem to cause Nicandro to give Amaryllis the benefit of the doubt and her pleas that Mirtillo be questioned to corroborate her story fall on deaf ears. After all why should they believe her accomplice? In spite of several madrigals worth of entreaties, Nicandro is unmovable, heartlessly counseling her to nobly accept her punishment and reminding her that one “who fears to die, dies every hour of the day” - hardly adequate comfort for someone in Amarilli’s predicament.

In the very brief scene six, Silvio, fresh from his triumphs in hunting the wild boar, basks in the praise of the other shepherds and huntsman. In the next scene, Corydon appears to explain his tardiness in arriving at the cave. Corisca had sent Lisetta to beacon Corydon to hasten to the cave to see her but he was detained by his father and arrived only to find the cave closed up. He takes the opportunity to relate Corisca’s many betrayals and deceits and his resolve to forgo her for another nymph. It seems that Amarilli and Mirtillo were the only shepherds left gullible enough to take Corisca at her word.

In scene eight, Silvio ruminates on the sad news of Amarilli and congratulates himself on his immunity from the sickness of love only to find him in an argument with a mischievous and informative echo that seems to be Cupid himself. The echo dialogue, in which the final syllables are returned as an echo was the most popular of late Renaissance conceits and it is somewhat surprising that only one madrigal setting of Silvio’s echo scene survives, an eight voice setting by Monte published in 1599. The echo neatly foreshadows the events of the next scene, pointing out that not only would Love conquer Silvio but also it would be the huntsman’s bow and not Cupid's, that would accomplish Silvio’s unlikely submission to Love’s commands. Silvio, unconvinced, dismisses the echo as a drunkard and turns to leave the forest when he spots a movement in the bushes and instinctively fires an arrow that, typically for such a fine marksman, hits its target. Only when its too late does he see that it was a human in wolf’s clothing (an interesting twist on the proverb) at first thinking he had inadvertently hit a shepherd.

Silvio rushes to aid the fallen shepherd and sees that it is Dorinda, with Linco at her side. Eventually, Linco, who recognized Silvio’s arrow, sees the huntsman and berates him for shooting before looking and Silvio rushes to Dorinda’s side. Three extraordinary madrigal cycles, by Monteverdi, Marenzio, and d’India have immortalized the ensuing dialogue between the wounded Dorinda and Silvio, who suddenly (as foretold by the Cupid echo) is overwhelmed by love for her. We have chosen to perform d’India’s five-voice setting, Se tu me saettasti, published in his eighth and last book of madrigals in 1637. Written near the end of the d’India’s life and well after the popularity of the polyphonic madrigal had faded, this five-part cycle is arguably the composer’s greatest masterpiece. D’India avoided the issue of dramatic verity by incorporating the best of his skill as a monodist and polyphonist in a style that was called madrigale concertato, or concerted madrigal.

In the ensuing dialogue, Silvio offers his arrows to Dorinda to avenge her wounds on him, an offer she of course refuses protesting

“I should wound you? Let Love wound you, rather,
for I could not desire
greater revenge than to see you in love.”

Silvio and Linco carry Dorinda, still gravely wounded, to Silvio’s family. Our program ends here but that is still another act of the play necessary to resolve all the various plots.

It takes the appearance of visitors from a distant land to untangle Mirtillo and Amarilli’s dilemma and we meet them as the fifth act begins. Carino and his friend Uranio (as noted before, everyone has a sidekick in these plays) have journeyed back to Carino’s beloved homeland of Arcadia. Sure enough, he is Mirtillo’s father, or at least he has acted as a father to him since he was washed ashore in a cradle many years before. (Oh, did I forget to mention that Silvio’s older brother had been swept away in a flood in infancy? Details, details…) Well Mirtillo had gone off journeying some time before and Carino had thought to find him in Arcadia.

In the next scene, Titiro, the father of Amarilli, is disconsolate not only over the imminent death of his only child, but at the lost hope of ending the plague. A messenger arrives to fill us all in on the recent events at the temple. It seems that her life has been spared; Mirtillo has offered to be sacrificed in her place. This turn of events was highly extraordinary to say the least and caused some consternation at the temple. Apparently Amarilli had protested that Corisca could vouch for her story, but, not surprisingly, the sneaky nymph was nowhere to be found. Then at the crucial moment, Mirtillo had appeared with his self-sacrificing offer, confounding Corisca’s scheme and creating an uproar amongst the priests. Needless to say, Amarilli was quite distressed and argued that Mirtillo should be spared but apparently temple protocol allowed for only one pinch-hit victim and all the knives and vestments were sent off to be re-sanctified.

In the next scene we witness the last preparations for the sacrificial rite. Mirtillo apparently speaks his last and is sworn to silence as the rite begins. In the nick of time Carino appears and, noting the sacrificial rite in progress, quickly realizes that it is his son Mirtillo that is about to die. Carino's vociferous protests are not appreciated by Montano, who complains loudly about being disturbed from his priestly duties by the stranger. After much rancor, Mirtillo, who has silently endured the entire argument, spoils everything by blurting out that the life that his father had given him could not be spent for a better cause than saving that of Amaryllis. Breaking his vow of silence apparently required that the entire ritual had to begin anew and he was sent back to the temple to take his vows over again. This unexpected delay allows for Carino and Montano to sort things out with the help of an old shepherd, Demeta. Apparently Demeta had been sent to look for Montano’s lost child during the flood and had returned empty handed. Now it seems that he had indeed found the child but having been told by an oracle that were the child to return to Arcadia he would die of his father’s hand, he thought better of it and delivered it to a gentleman of Arcadian heritage in far off Elis in hopes of preserving the child from this fate.

As if this weren’t enough, the blind hermit Tirenio appears just then to clarify everything. It seems that actually all has worked out quite well since what was required to end the plague was that two souls of noble lineage should fall in love, and a forced marriage of Silvio and Amaryllis would not have sufficed. However, now that Mirtillo had been revealed as Montano’s son and also demonstrated his unbending fidelity to Amarilli all would be well. In the next two scenes, Corisca learns to her displeasure that love was winning on all sides and she was losing. Linco informs her that Dorinda, revived by Silvio’s newly discovered love for her, had made a miraculous recovery after Silvio himself had removed the arrowhead from her wound. The next scene brings even worse news to Corisca when Ergasto informs her of the happy fate of Mirtillo and Amaryllis. The last scenes are spent tying up all the loose ends including a rather disappointing pardon granted inexplicably to Corisca, but then, this is a tragic-comedy.

Magnificat's concerts will be September 30-October 2. For times locations, and to purchase tickets please call 415-979-4500 or visit our the Magnificat Website

A Word About Translations

Sorry I've been away from the blog for a couple weeks. We're very close to performance week and I've been scrambling to get the program together and then there's all the usual logistics. One of the fascinating aspects of presenting this old music for a new audience is the question of translations. Attitudes to translation change and different circumsstances require different approaches to transaltion.

When we're performing liturgical music in Latin, many traditional translations exist. I have long prefered to draw biblical translations from the Douay translation of the Vulgate, first published in 1609, one year before the King James version. More than once after concerts, members of the audience have asked why the translation of some psalm wasn't the one they'd always known. After all the King James translation is a 17thy century transaltion. In a way though King James is a bit too good.

The King James version is a translation of the original languages, Hebrew in the case of the psalms, and is therefore a more "accurate" translation of the original. The Douay version is a translation of the Vulgate, which is itself a translation of the original, traditionally ascribed to St. Jerome in the 3rd century. My point is that the singers are singing the Vulgate, not the HEbrew, the audience are best served by a literal translation of what the singers are singing, even if it doesn't match the "original".

With the Pastor Fido texts I encountered an interesting problem. At first I figured it would be easy since there was a very good, roughly contemporary English translation by Sir Richard Fanshawe and published in 1647. However, Fanshawe chose to write his version in rhymed couplets and was much more concerned about communicating the sense of any particular passage than the exact meaning of the original Italian.

For example, the first setting we will perform from Il Pastor Fido, comes from Linco's monologue to Silvio in Act I, Quell' augellin che canta. The Italian reads:

Quell’ augellin, che canta
sì dolcemente e lascivetto vola
or da l’abete al faggio
e or dal faggio al mirto,
s’avesse umano spirto,
direbbe: ‘Ardo d’amore, ardo d’amore’.
Ma ben arde nel core
e parla in sua favella,
sì che l’intende il suo dolce desio.
E odi a punto, Silvio,
il suo desio
che gli risponde: ‘Ardo d’amore anch’io’.

A more or less literal translation would be:

That little bird which sings
so sweetly and flies merrily
now from the fir to the beech
and now from the beech to the myrtle,
if it had human understanding
it would say: “I burn with love, I burn with love.”
But it does really burn in its heart
and speaks in its language,
of his sweet desire
And hear now, Silvio,
its beloved mate
which answers it: “I also burn with love.”

While Fanshawe wrote:

That little bird which sings
So sweetly, and so nimbly plyes the wings,
Flying from tree to tree, from Grove to Grove,
If he could speak, would say, I am in love.
But his heart sayes it, and his tongue doth say't
In language understood by his deer Mate:
And Silvio, heark how from that wildernesse
His dear Mate answers, And I love no lesse.
The Cowes low in the valley; and what's this
But an inviting unto amorous blisse?

The sense is there, but it wouldn't really help a listener to appreciate the musical tricks that Monteverdi or d'India used to grace their settings of Guarini's blank verse.

To Speak Through Singing

Claudio Monteverdi, wrote in a letter in the 1630s that the goal of music was ‘to speak through singing” In spending much of my life researching, promoting, and performing the ‘new music’ of the 17th century, I have observed that it is characterized by an underlying urgent impulse to communicate the human experience - and it is precisely the intensity of that impulse that continues to draw me to music of this fascinating, unsettled, and dynamic period. [1]

The 17th century was a period of pervasive upheaval, which violently shook the very foundations of the world in all realms of life. It was a time when alchemy and empirical science easily coexisted, a time when the exploration of new worlds and the investigation of the sky challenged traditional conceptions of the place of earth in the universe, a time of religious persecution and political conflict - a time not that different from today. And like tumultuous periods throughout history it was also a time that produced some of our most treasured art, architecture, poetry, and music.

In the first decade of the 17th century Monteverdi wrote that he intended to publish a treatise describing the 'secunda pratica' or ‘second practice,’ the new compositional attitude that he and his colleagues had adopted. Drawing on Plato, he said that his book would be laid out in three parts and would begin with a chapter on oration. How appropriate that a manifesto of the new music of the 17th century should give such prominence to the rhetorical art, for the communication of words and the emotions they express was the dominant motivation driving composers of the period. Through the experiments that led to the creation of the genres of opera, oratorio, and cantata, composers sought to integrate drama and music into new compositional approaches that reflected the immediacy and engagement so essential to the art of oratory.

Perhaps because the fruits of these experiments remain fundamental to musical perception three centuries later, they take on a special significance for us. The basic elements of what we now call “common practice” tonality, the dominance of the keyboard as the basis of musical conception, the emergence of institutions like orchestras and opera companies and the appearance of professional virtuoso performers – the very notion that the purpose of music was to move the passions and communicate emotions – all this developed in the seventeenth century. I would argue that beyond a mere curiosity about the origins of our current musical universe, the music of the seventeenth century has a special resonance for us today because we also are living through a 'paradigm shift' comparable to the crises of the seventeenth century, with all the attendant upheaval characteristic of such times.

The culture of late 16th century Italy was marked by sharp philosophical contrasts and an eclectic intellectual climate. Historians typically portray this culture as a confrontation of conflicting intellectual, spiritual and social forces: classical versus Christian tradition, totalitarianism versus republicanism, feudalism versus capitalism, logic versus rhetoric, mysticism versus scientific rationalism. Certainly the turn of the seventeenth century was no worse than any other time – wars, famine, recessions, epidemics and religious controversies were not inventions of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless the constant political and economic insecurity of the 16th century had succeeded in shaking the self-confidence of Renaissance society to such a degree that awareness of a sense inescapable crisis, of the absurdity of human endeavor, could effectively replace his faith in the creative forces of man as a rational creature.

Just as powerfully, the effect of the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic reaction had shattered any sense of spiritual universality (though this was always a myth in any case). Religious denomination became a favorite pre-text in power politics, the most horrific example being the Thirty Years War that dominated the lives of most of Europe for the first half of the 17th century.

The human species’ place at the center of the universe had been challenged by discoveries of Copernicus and especially by Galileo’s experiments with telescopes. Though it would not be until the 18th century that a conception of the Earth as a speck lost in an infinite universe would be widely accepted, doubt nevertheless prevailed about the accepted Aristotelian cosmology despite the draconian efforts of the Church to maintain it.

In his influential book Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance, Gary Tomlinson focuses on the dichotomy between scholasticism and humanism in charting the development of Monteverdi’s music and his observations tell us a great deal about the fundamental shift in the attitudes of artists, musicians, and poets of the period and the new techniques and genres of expression that they created. This struggle between authority and innovation can serve as a useful window into the artistic climate of the time that highlights the role of oratory and rhetoric in stimulating its artistic expression.

Scholasticism arouse in the universities of the Middle Ages and was closely associated with the teaching there of theology, philosophy, medicine and law. It was characterized by a reliance on authority in the form of Scripture and Classical texts and a faith in the absolute truth of knowledge gained through rigorous deductive logic.

Aristotle in particular appeared to present a systematic exploration of the full potential of human reason itself. Many scholastic writers were confident that complete knowledge was attainable and indeed already had been attained by a few ancient and early Christian writers in their fields of expertise. It can be said that the scholastic vision assumed not only the existence of a universal order but also a substantial capacity of the human mind to grasp this order. The appeal of such a attitude is of course its fundamentally optimistic view of man’s intellectual capabilities and the fact that it reinforced the unity, perfection and authority of an omnipotent God.

However, if reality was closed, systematically ordered, and completely apprehensible as the scholastics believed, then knowledge itself must be limited. Accepting the authority of the ancients could ultimately entail rejecting the possibility of new ideas. Though it may be easy to dismiss the “Schoolmen” as hopelessly old fashioned, their arguments have much in common with the influential arguments of various fundamentalists of our own day. At any rate, facing the geographical, cosmological, technological, and other discoveries of the sixteenth century, the scholastic deference to authority sometimes hardened into dogmatism – a dogmatism that stimulated important questions about scientific, scholarly, and artistic innovation.

Humanism, by contrast, was native to Italy – a response to the imported scholastic ideas that seems to have been nurtured by the circumstances of Italian urban life. The necessities of business and self-governance encouraged a pragmatic view of the uses and ends of knowledge – learning was applied to everyday concerns and human actions, foreign to scholastic thinkers. A whole class of educated men emerged who were employed to work out contracts and negotiate with foreign traders and man the government bureaucracies. Soon a new breed of scholars, referred to as humanisti, appeared. They stressed moral philosophy and teachings derived from poetry and above all history. The humanisti promoted a new dialectic that blurred the distinction between scientific demonstration and plausible argumentation, marking a shift from syllogistic to topical logic.

In this new view, human will attained a centrality and importance that was at odds with its scholastic position as merely a mediator between reason and passion.
Petrarch, one of the first humanists, wrote that “It is safer to strive for the good and pious will, than for a capable and clear intellect. The object of the will is to be good; that of the intellect is truth. It is better to will the good than to know the truth.”

The Humanists esteem for man’s will and their pragmatic view of knowledge arose in interaction with the requisites of republican self-governance and commercial necessity. Through the will, more than the intellect, man’s passions could be swayed and channeled to result in right action. The importance of rhetorical persuasion to this new vision is obvious.

Behind the humanistic exaltation of oratory lay a recognition of the passions as dynamic forces directing human actions and thought and a need to control and exploit these forces. The humanist had little faith in the encompassing theories of the ancients, recognizing instead the validity of practical experience and accepting its fragmentary and unsystematic nature as the inevitable impression of a complex reality on the imperfect human intellect.

This humanist perception of reality encouraged a reconsideration of the relationships among the intellectual disciplines and the consideration of their differing methods and goals. Natural philosophy or science was seen by the scholastics as governed by universal laws and they distinguished their discipline, characterized by its logical search for universal truth, from the lower disciplines like astronomy, which merely observed phenomena. But in the face of ever more exact and diverse empirical observation humanists tended to admit their meager understanding of the laws of nature and came to a healthy realization of the limitations of classical authority. The unpredictable actions of man, ruled as often by his passions as by his intellect, became the focus of their study. So how did this opposition of humanism and scholasticism play out in music?

In the first decade of the 17th century a controversy has been preserved in an exchange of published letters between a Bolognese academic named Giovanni Maria Artusi, often under the guise of the pseudonym Bracchino da Todi (they were gentlemen after all) and Monteverdi. Monteverdi figures so prominently not only because he was arguably the most celebrated musician of the time but also because we are fortunate to have so much of his correspondence – so many of the composers of the 17th century left little beyond their music for our consideration. He also serves admirably as a representative of the new music of the 17th century. He was by no means a radical like Peri or Caccini or Galileo’s father Vincenzo. Rather he was a synthesizer, taking the avant-garde techniques of the time and fashioning it into powerful enduring masterpieces that exerted a profound influence on all who followed.

Artusi objected to certain contrapuntal practices he had observed in some as yet unpublished madrigals of Monteverdi, noting that they violated the rules of correct composition as laid down in the magisterial treatise of Zarlino in 1555 that was widely accepted as the authority on musical composition. Monteverdi eventually responded in the preface to one of his madrigal collections that was later expanded by his brother, Giulio Cesare. Essentially Monteverdi couldn’t really be bothered to engage with a pedant like Artusi but felt he must make some defense of new musical practices, which he saw as already well established by that time. It is here that he promised his treatise on the seconda prattica, or second practice, second as in following chronologically not as superior to or superceding the older or ‘prima prattica".

This new practice is not based on a compositional principle or a new set of rules but rather on a new attitude toward the respective roles of text and music. For thinkers like Artusi, the intellect and not the feelings were the last resort when judging a work of art. Monteverdi, however, perceived the goal of music as being an appeal to the emotions of the audience, not to their understanding and in attaining this goal, music was justified in using any means, even if it infringed on the established rules. For Artusi ‘art’ meant artistic skill, a craft at the highest level, constrained by a theory, which established its rules and thus made it teachable and learnable, debatable and controllable. For Monetverdi art began where it stopped for Artusi. The ingenious idea, the non-verifiable, the non-teachable, the step past the boundaries of instruction, was the essence of art – based, significantly on an otherwise compulsory set of rules, so that a transgression against them could be recognized as such. For Monteverdi a work of art distinguished itself by the very fact that it could not be completely understood, that it possessed something disconcerting, mysterious and not entirely explicable. Within this idea of the seconda prattica are found the origins of the later aesthetic theory of genius in which the genius breaks the shackles of tradition and creates his own rules.

Fundamental to Monteverdi’s rebuttal of Artusi is his claim that words should be the ‘mistress’ of the music and not the other way around. Later defenders of this new attitude sited with disdain composers who could write whole compositions of perfect counterpoint and afterward hang on the notes whatever words would fit. For a musician of humanist leanings like Monteverdi, the expressive power of music was a function of its relation to its text.

The highest goal that music could seek was to form a syntactic and semantic union with its text so perfect that the distinction of musical and nonmusical elements seemed to fade before the heightened oratorical power of a single musical speech. “To speak through singing...”

In its specifics, the dispute between Artusi and Monteverdi was over fairly minor compositonal procedures that strike us as arcane and inconsequential. Its importance lies in the insights it offers into the changing attitude to authority so characteristic of the period. Artusi grounded an optimistic view of the capabilities of human intellect in the comprehension of an unchanging natural order. He, and others like him, could not admit a universe so disconcerting that the sun itself had stopped moving and the earth had taken its place.

Monteverdi, as a representative of humanist inclinations among musicians of his time, understood that the artistic authorities of the past were conditioned by their own cultures to express themselves in ways not necessarily relevant to the present – he rejected the scholastic placing of theory over practice. Perhaps most importantly, Monteverdi’s concern for the joining of music to poetry in a single moving and persuasive language links him to the humanist’s high estimation of man’s will and their urge to sway the passions, associating him with the humanist’s pursuit of rhetorical eloquence, the key to those passions.


[1] This article, which originated as a lecture at the University Club in San Francisco in September, 2004, benefits substantially from several scholarly works. Due to its nature as an unpublished lecture for a general audience, I was not scrupulous about specific citations. I hope that a general citation in the following bibliography will convey my recognition of the role of the works cited in informing this article and excuse me for any unintentionally uncited quotes.

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Select Bibliography
Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel. The Monteverdi Companion. New York, 1968.
Bianconi, Lorenzo. Music in the Seventeenth Century. Turin, 1982.
Brouwsma, William. The Waning of the Renaissance. New Haven and London, 2000.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge and London, 1957.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, 1962.
Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1987.

Il Pastor Fido, Aminta and the Pastoral Tradition in 16th century Italy

Guarini’s pastoral drama Il Pastor Fido was very consciously modeled on Aminta, written by his slightly younger colleague at the Este court in Ferrara Torquato Tasso. Both Aminta and the Pastor fido belong to the tradition of pastoral literature that was very much in vogue in Renaissance Italy. The fundamental characteristic of the pastoral drama was its idealized setting in ‘nature’, most often peopled by shepherds and nymphs who contradict the bucolic setting of their lives by expressing very urban sentiments in sophisticated language. Pastoral literature in general tended to idealize the innocent and serene lives of its rustic characters in contrast to complex and corrupt city life. The archetypal paradigm of the pastoral life was the Golden Age: a mythical, utopian time when human beings were content with their simple, peaceful lives, and when the uncultivated earth offered them everything they needed. The myth of the Golden Age, already present in the Greek poet Hesiod, was later treated by, among others, the Roman poet Virgil.[1]

The pastoral eclogue had been a relatively minor literary form in the classical times but was very popular among Renaissance humanists writing in first in Latin and then in the vernacular, and developed a rich complex of native, Christian, and classical themes in novels, lyric poetry, and drama. [2] While Boccaccio’s Ameto, can be considered a pastoral work, it is really Sanazaro’s Arcadia (1504) that has been considered the embodiment and culmination of the Renaissance pastoral tradition and it is from this Arcadian ideal that the new genre of pastoral drama arose. The genre had found expression as early as Poliziano’s Orfeo (1471), which was most likely the first of the Renaissance pastoral plays presented on stage to accompany courtly celebrations. The pastoral poem with its relatively free structure of dialogue developed into a stricter five-act format, typically in hendecasyllabic blank verse punctuated by more lyrical passages through the sixteenth century. Their were various attempts to codify this structure by Cinzio, Tansillo, Lollio, Argenti, and Beccari, all associated with the court in Ferrara, but it was only with Aminta and Il Pastor Fido that the pastoral drama acquired a place in the poetic canon between the dialogic eclogue and the developing melodrama.[3]

The fact that Il Pastor Fido shares so many themes and even plot lines with the earlier Aminta is certainly not a sign of simple plagiarism. Rather, it is more a sort of one-upsmanship, since Guarini intended to emphasize his rivalry with Tasso by writing several parallel scenes and in any case both plays used elements common to the tradition of pastoral drama. For example, Tasso presents the opposition between chastity and love, a common theme of Classical eclogues, in his opening dialogue between Silvia, the chaste shepherdess, and her companion Daphne, while Guarini places a similar dialogue in the first scene of Il Pastor fido with the dialogue between Silvio, the chaste hunter and his confidant Linco. An excerpt from Linco’s response became one of the most frequently set madrigal texts of the period, Quel augellin. Other similarities, like the presence of lustful satyrs in both plays are stock characters in pastoral dramas. The result in terms of reception history has often been to view Guarini’s work as derivative rather than complementary.

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1. Jernigan, Charles and Jones, Irene M. Aminta, a Pastoral Play by Torquato Tasso. New York, 2000.
2. Staton, Walter and Simeone, William. A Critical Edition of Sir Richard Fanshawe’s 1647 translation of Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido. Oxford, 1964. p. x.
3. Jernigan. op. cit., pp. x-xi.

Singing Guarini's Il Pastor Fido

In our first set of concerts, Magnificat will explore musical settings of the most popular play of the Baroque era.

In 1605 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine wrote that Guarini’s play Il Pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd) was more harmful to Catholic morals than the Protestant Reformation itself. While such hyperbole is typical of polemical tracts of the period and is characteristic of conservative reaction to any challenge to the established order, the Cardinal’s comments nevertheless highlight the impact of Guarini’s pastoral drama on the artistic and cultural climate of the time. The arguments echo those leveled against Monteverdi by Giovanni Maria Artusi beginning in 1600: the unacceptable violation of established classical principles. In fact the madrigals that Artusi quoted in his attacks were settings of texts drawn by Monteverdi from Guarini’s play, though Artusi left out the texts and commented only on Monteverdi’s harmonic improprieties.

Of course ecclesiastical criticism of Guarini’s heretic mingling of the Aritotelian dramatic genres in creating his pastoral tragicomedy and the licentious behavior of its bucolic characters had little effect on the play’s continuing popularity. This popularity can hardly be overstated. In the five years that it circulated in manuscript copies before its first publication 1590, the Pastor fido had already attracted a large and enthusiastic following and by the time of Bellarmine’s complaints it had already seen more than twenty editions. The play’s fame was not limited to Italy, as it spread in numerous translations across Europe. In all, well over one hundred editions of the play were published including six different French translations, five in English in over thirteen editions, with translations also into Spanish, German, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, several Italian dialects and even Latin. It was arguably the most widely read work of secular literature in Europe throughout the seventeenth century and its vogue was only slightly less for much of the eighteenth.

Riding the wave of the Pastor fido’s fame, over 125 composers drew texts from the play for madrigals and monodies with over 550 settings surviving in print from the first decades of the seventeenth century alone. The play’s lyrical monologues of tearful nymphs and shepherds were particularly appealing to those writing in the affective style that became known as the seconda prattica. In spite of the reputation of the play and the attraction of its poetry to composers, the Pastor fido was never set as an opera during the seventeenth century and it was only in 1712 that a libretto based on the play was set by Händel.

Giovanni Battista Guarini (engraving above) was born into a prominent Veronese family of humanistic scholars in 1538 and, after studying in Padua, replaced his uncle as professor of rhetoric and poetics at the University in Ferrara in 1557. Ten years later he entered the service of the Este court in Ferrara and was elevated to the status of Cavaliere. He was employed as a diplomat, notably in the unsuccessful negotiations for obtaining the crown of Poland for Duke Alfonso of Ferrara. Except for occasional intervals when he was employed by the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua, he spent most of his time in the service of the Estensi in Ferrara, until the duke’s death in 1597. After Ferrara was absorbed under the control of the Vatican, Guarini frequented the courts of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Urbino and spent his last years in Rome and Venice, where he was surrounded by admirers and enjoyed great fame as a poet. Guarini's domestic life, however, was stormy and unhappy. His daughter, Anna Guarini was murdered by her husband, Ercole Trotti, apparently in a jealous rage and with the assistance of one of the poet's own sons. His own conduct towards the latter was at times appalling and his whole career was embittered by quarrels and never-ending lawsuits with them and others.

The combined careers of politics and art was not as unusual in the sixteenth century as it is now, and Guarini wrote poetry throughout his time of service to Este family. However, it was only upon his friend and rival Tasso’s imprisonment on grounds of insanity in 1579 that his position as chief court poet for the Este family was secured. Between 1580 and 1584, he worked on his Pastor fido, but waited until December 1589 before publishing it. With his play, grounded in the tradition of pastoral drama and self consciously modeled on Tasso’s Aminta, Guarini intended to establish a new genre of theatre, the tragicomedy, which blended elements of comedy and tragedy. With its central theme of the power of love to transform the human soul, Guarini’s play expands considerably on Aminta and other pastoral dramas, adding complexities and sub-plots with convoluted poetic conceits and erudite references to Classical and contemporary literature.

As early as 1586 it was the subject of criticism from the professor of moral philosophy in Padua, Giason De Nores, who called it a “monstrous and disproportionate composition”. De Nores objected on both stylistic and moral grounds, in the first case relying on a narrow reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, and in the latter on the play’s excessive lyricism, metaphorical extravagance, and, above all, its explicitly lascivious content. He contended that the play’s mixture of tragedy and comedy destroyed any artistic unity and that its pastoral poetry about rude shepherds and their passions was without value for moral instruction.

Guarini, both intelligent and vain, was quick to enjoin in his own defense, publishing two treatises in response to De Nores and adding over 200 pages of annotations to the definitive edition of the play published in 1602. His spirited defense of the tragicomedy sounds quite modern and the history of drama from Shakespeare forward confirms the validity of his arguments. “Art observes that tragedy and comedy are composed of heterogeneous parts”, wrote Guarini, “and that therefore if an entire tragedy and an entire comedy should be mixed they would not be able to function…because they do not have a single intrinsic natural principle. But art, a most prudent imitator of nature, plays the part of the intrinsic principle, and while nature alters the parts after they are united, art alters them before they are joined in order that they may be able to exist together and, though mixed, produce a single form.” As for the complaint about rude shepherds, Guarini argued at length that art exists not to instruct but to purge – tragedy to purge pity and fear, tragicomedy to purge melancholy.

Despite its unrivalled popularity, the play was to receive very few actual productions. The first took place in Ferrara in 1595 or 1596, and it was staged 5 or 6 times in the decade following, most significantly in 1598 in Mantua, where Vincenzo Gonzaga had hoped for a production of the Pastor fido since 1584 and had actively pursued one since at least 1591. The performances in Mantua featured music by Giaches de Wert and Francesco Rovigo that had been written for an earlier production, and possibly music by Monteverdi as well, though there is no specific reference. These performances and a few others aside, the Pastor fido was destined to be a play more to be read than acted, due in no small part to its formidable length and its dense and florid poetic style.

Judging from the philosophical debates it created, the imitations and emulations it inspired, and its near universal familiarity, the profound influence of Guarini’s play on the European culture of the seventeenth century is undeniable. Since there is no complete musical setting of the play from the period, it seemed reasonable to assemble settings from various composers and present them in the order the texts appear in the play. So, Magnificat’s first set of concerts in the 2005-2006 season will feature settings of excerpts from the Pastor fido by a variety of composers including, in addition to Monteverdi, Sigismondo d’India, Alessandro Grandi, Tarquinio Merula, and Heinrich Schütz, who opened his first publication with the two part madrigal O Primavera, drawn from the third act of Guarini’s play. Almost all the settings of the Pastor fido are in the polyphonic madrigal style, though from Grandi, d’India, and Merula we do have monodic settings. The performances will be on the weekend of September 30-October 2.

(This article will appear in the September, 2005 edition of the San Francisco Early Music Society Newsletter. for more information about the Society, visit their website)
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Bibliography
There is a considerable body of literature about Guarini and his Pastor fido. For this article I drew from the following sources.

Hogan, Robert and Nickerson, Edward A. The Faithful Shepherd: A Translation of Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido by Dr. Thomas Sheridan. Newark, 1989.
Perella, Nicolas J. The Critical Fortune of Battista Guarini's "Il Pastor fido." Florence, 1973.
Staton, Walter F. and Simeone, William E. A Critical Edition of Sir Fanshawe's 1647 Translation of Giovanni Battista Guarini's "Il Pastor Fido". Oxford, 1964.
Tomlinson, Gary. Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance. Berkeley, 1987.
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago, 1974.
Whitfield, J. H. Introduction to The Faithfull Shepherd translated by Richard Fanshawe. Edinburgh, 1976.