Sacred Music - From The Middle Ages To The 20th Century [CD 9-10]

CD 9

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567-1643)
Vespro della Beata Vergine (I)
da concerto, composto sopra canti fermi, 1610
01 Deus In ADJutorium [02:13]
02 Antiphona - Dixit Dominus (Psalmus 109) [08:27]
03 Nigra Sum (Concerto) [03:33]
04 Laudate Pueri (Psalmus 112) [06:48]
05 Pulchra Es (Concerto) [03:53]
06 Antiphona - Laetatus Sum (Psalmus 121) [07:23]
07 Duo Seraphim (Concerto) [06:00]
08 Antiphona - Nisi Dominus (Psalmus 126) [06:19]
09 Audi Coelum (Concerto) [07:45]
10 Antiphona - Lauda, Jerusalem, Dominum (Psalmus 147) [04:38]
11 Sonata Sopra 'Sancta Maria, Ora Pro Nobis' [07:00]
12 Ave Maris Stella (Hymnus, Anon. XIe Siecle) [06:55]
Agnès Mellon, soprano 1
Guillemette Laurens, soprano 2
Vincent Darras, alto
Howard Crook, ténor 1
William Kendall, ténor 2
Gerard O’Beirne, ténor 3
Peter Kooy, basse 1
David Thomas, basse 2
La Chapelle Royale
Collegium Vocale Gent
Les Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse
Dir. Philippe Herreweghe

CD 10

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567-1643)
Vespro della Beata Vergine (II)
01 Vespro Della Beata Vergine [II] : Antiphona - Magnificat [18:21]
Agnès Mellon, soprano 1
Guillemette Laurens, soprano 2
Vincent Darras, alto
Howard Crook, ténor 1
William Kendall, ténor 2
Gerard O’Beirne, ténor 3
Peter Kooy, basse 1
David Thomas, basse 2
La Chapelle Royale
Collegium Vocale Gent
Les Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse
Dir. Philippe Herreweghe
Giovanni Rovetta (1596-1668)
Vespro solenne
02 Dixit secondo [08:07]
03 Confitebor tibi Domine [08:23]
04 Beatus vir [08:14]
05 Laudate pueri [08:44]
06 Lauda Jerusalem - [11:57]
07 Magnificat - [10:04]
Cantus Cölln, Dir. Konrad Junghänel
Nele Grams, Hedwig Westhoff-Düppmann, sopranos
Elisabeth Popien, Henning Voss(3, 7), altos
Hans-Jörg Mammel, Wilfried Jochens, Sebastian Hübner(4), ténors
Stephan Schreckenberger, Matthias Gerchen, basses
Bruce Dickey, Doron Sherwin, cornets
Ulla Bundies, Veronika Skuplik, violons
Albert Brüggen, violoncelle
Miriam Shalinsky, contrebasse
Carsten Lohff, orgue
Konrad Junghänel, luth

BAROQUE VESPERS

The Office of Vespers, celebrated in the evening, is perhaps the important Hour of the liturgical day. In the Roman liturgy,
Vespers are structured around the recitation of four or five psalms framed by antiphons. The psalms are preceded by an
opening intonation (Deus in adjutorium) and followed by a hymn and the Magnificat


Composers have generally set only fragments of Vespers, adopting a variety of styles from one period to another. The few
complete cycles include Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore.

Commentators never fail to be intrigued by the title-page of the 1610 publication: the Vespers, to us one of Monteverdi’s
major works, is there relegated to secondary importance in the printed layout after the 6-part Missa da cappella fatta Sopra
il motetto In illo tempore del Gomberti. There has often been an attempt to explain this presentation by the dedication of
the volume to Pope Paul V. This theory has the advantage in the first place of bringing up the problem of style: Monteverdi is
said to have placed the emphasis on a mass composed in the ‘old style’ (stile antico) in order to make the modern audacities
of the stile concertato of the Vespers more palatable and easier to accept. One might also see in the stylistically composite
publication a kind of manifesto: for ten years Monteverdi had been the target of Artusi’s attacks, and here he may have wanted
to demonstrate his mastery of both styles.

It should, in any case, be observed that the two works were not intended for the same usage: while the Missa da
cappella was explicitly intended to be sung by church choirs (ad ecclesiarum choros), the Vespers, like the concerti
sacri that accompanied them, were aimed at performance in the private chapel or the chamber of princes (ad sacella
sive principum cubicula accommodata). Reserved for the private use of a princely chapel, the ‘licences’ of the stile
concertato would thereby have found a tolerant audience. In fact, it is most probable that the Vespers were at first a
court composition, destined for the Chapel of the Duke of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga. This was the same court for which
Monteverdi had composed his Orfeo three years before. The sumptuousness of its musical establishment is well known;
few other places in Italy would have been able to assemble the necessary number of instrumentalists and virtuoso singers.
Monteverdi was aware of this: as a composer in the service of the church, he thus admitted a certain degree of flexibility in
the work so that it could be adapted to less imposing resources. Certain instrumental ritornellos in the Dixit, for instance,
are optional (ad libitum). Moreover, the Sonata sopra sancta Maria and the concerti, which require, respectively, a
solid instrumental team and virtuoso singers – as in the seven-voice Magnificat – are ‘movable’ pieces, i.e. liturgically
optional. They can be replaced by other motets, stylistically and technically easier to perform, or even quite simply by
liturgical antiphons in plainchant.

We are here putting our finger on one of the major problems which have preoccupied commentators in recent years: are
the Vespers really liturgical music in the strict sense? They do, in fact, contain, in correct liturgical order – rare for the
period – the eight chants of the Ordinary (the Introit Deus in adjutorium and its response Domine ad adjuvandum, the
five psalms Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum, Nisi Dominus, and Lauda Jerusalem, the hymn Ave maris
stella, and the Magnificat), interspersed with four motets or concerti (Nigra sum, Pulchra es, Duo seraphim, Audi
coelum) and an instrumental Sonata sopra sancta Maria. It is, precisely, these five pieces that do not seem to conform
to any liturgy of the Blessed Virgin. However, their place in the collection seems to attest to the fact that they fulfilled the
function of the Proper, probably taking the place of the repetition of the antiphons after each psalm. This was a relatively
common usage in Northern Italy in the solemn liturgies of Vespers. The instrumental sonata itself could have had this
function, too – the fact that it is constructed on a cantus firmus borrowed from the Litanies is of little consequence. This
phenomenon, particularly frequent in Venice, was also noticed in Rome in 1639, as reported by Maugars in his Reponse
faite a un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique en Italie: ‘In the antiphons they also played very fine symphonies
with one, two or three violins and the organ, and with several archlutes playing certain airs in dance measure, the one


Stylistically, as well, the concerti introduce an original dimension to the work, thereby adding to the paradoxical diversity of
the publication. In many aspects these Vespers are really quite exceptional. In the first place, it is rare for collections intended
for this type of office to present the works in precise liturgical order. In 1610, what is more, it was completely original for
music for Vespers to require obbligato instruments. Finally – and this is by no means the least original aspect – we know of no
other publication of this kind, except the concerti, in which the totality of the composition is constructed on liturgical cantus
firmi. It is true that Monteverdi is careful to stress at the beginning of the Vespers that this is a Vespro della Beata Vergine
da concerto, composto sopra canti Fermi . . . – as if, for all his stylistic audacity, he wished explicitly to present himself as
belonging to a very old and unassailable tradition.

In doing this the composer was setting himself a genuine challenge: to reconcile irreconcilable stylistic objectives. In the face
of Artusi’s attacks (around 1605, at the time of publication of the fifth book of madrigals), we know that Monteverdian poetics
took on a form which attempted to define the seconda prattica: ‘the text must be the master of the music and not its servant’
(l’oratione sia padrona del armonia e non serva). But how to reconcile this aim of expressiveness with the thematic and
structural yoke of the cantus firmus, especially when one is dealing with psalm tones, the very musical nature of which
implies from the outset obvious constraints in uniformity, especially of a modal and harmonic nature? It is this incredible
challenge that Monteverdi so magisterially succeeds in surmounting in the Vespers. To measure the extent of this success one
need only listen, for example, to the Dixit or the Magnificat: despite the constant presence of the armature of the psalmodic
recitation treated as a cantus firmus and shifting from place to place in the polyphonic line, from cantus to bassus, each verse
of the text has its own colour and constitutes an autonomous entity. In a way which is again different, the Introit Domine ad
adjuvandum, by its prefatory position, emblematically sets the tone of the work in presenting an almost provocative stylistic
confrontation: the psalmodic recitation, treated polyphonically in falso bordone, according to traditional liturgical usage, finds
itself superimposed on an instrumental toccata which is none other than the overture to L’Orfeo. The intention to reunite, in
this work, the secular and the sacred in one and the same expression, could hardly be better expressed. Monteverdi succeeds
in doing the same thing in the four concerti by clearly adopting in them the style and expressive techniques of the concertato
madrigal and the opera. Here he mixes the recitar cantando and the affetti of the new style of singing (in the manner of
Caccini) – in Nigra sum – with late sixteenth-century mannerist vocal virtuosity – Duo seraphim and Audi coelum – and
with the almost theatrical universe of the dialogue in echo – Audi coelum –, where the play on the central word (maria-
Maria) has something essentially Baroque about it, in its relation to the work as a whole, as well as a premonition of his later
Venetian style. – J.-P. O.

‘For the composition of the music and as master of the chapel, from among so many who could be found in Venice,
Signor Rueti was chosen, and expressly ordered to assemble as many singers and instrumentalists as could be found in
the city, in order to satisfy the magnificent projects of His Excellency, who desired the choicest and most solemn music
that could be found.’

‘His Excellency’ was Seigneur Hamelot de la Houssaye, the French Ambassador to Venice in 1638. And the ‘choicest and
most solemn music’ the nobleman had commissioned was intended for a very special occasion: in the autumn of 1638
the birth of the successor to the French throne, Louis XIV, the future ‘Sun King’, was celebrated in Venice with great pomp
and circumstance. For this purpose nothing was too good for Seigneur de la Houssaye. The splendid church of San Giorgio
opposite the Doges’ Palace seemed an appropriate place for the proposed ‘solennissima Messa’ and Te Deum to be sung in


Ambassador where they were treated for several days to bull-chases, sumptuous banquets, a ‘young ladies’ ball’, theatricals,
and fireworks.

Music played an essential part in all of these festivities, whether it was in the church services, as refined table-music during the
banquets, or as dance music for the balls. Most important of all, however, was the music for the solemn Mass in San Giorgio
composed and conducted by ‘Signor Rueti’. He was none other than Giovanni Rovetta, the vice maestro di cappella of San
Marco, who, as Maestro Claudio Monteverdi’s principal assistant, was directly answerable to the Doge of Venice. The thirty-
year old Rovetta had been appointed to the coveted position in 1626, after having begun his musical career as a chorister at
Saint Mark’s, then gradually working his way up from an instrumentalist to vice-maestro di cappella, and finally succeeding
Monteverdi in 1644 as maestro di cappella of the most famous musical establishment in north Italy, a position he held until
his death in 1668. The French Ambassador’s commission is indicative of the high esteem in which Rovetta’s music was held
in Venice as early as the 1630s. According to the above report of the 1638 festivities, the ‘wondrous harmony of the sweet
songs’ sent the audience into raptures. For Rovetta the commission was an important milestone in his career, since it afforded
him the opportunity of publishing a comprehensive collection of his music: in 1639 his Messa, e salmi concertati, op.4,
together with the ‘solennissima Messa’ of 1638, twelve vesper psalms and a Magnificat were published. On the title-page,
lavishly printed in two colours, Rovetta’s dedication to the King of France is given pride of place and in the Preface he makes
explicit reference to his ‘modest service’ on the occasion of the thanksgiving ceremonies marking the birth of the Dauphin
– for Rovetta a golden opportunity to demonstrate not only the high quality of his music, but also his own reputation among
the mighty of this world.

The present selection of five vesper psalms and the Magnificat from Giovanni Rovetta’s Messa e salmi concertati of 1639
is not an attempt to reconstruct a vesper service as it might have been performed for the birthday celebrations of 1638. The
contemporary chronicler mentions only the ‘messa solenne’, a Te Deum and several unidentified solo pieces – an Office of
Vespers of the magnificence to be found in Rovetta’s Psalms would certainly have been deemed worthy of special mention.
None the less, the programme on this record has a close bearing on the 1638 celebration, because these settings of the
Psalms give us a good idea of what was meant by the term ‘musica solenne’ for the high feasts of the church in Venice at the
end of the 1630s.

Giovanni Rovetta’s vesper psalms are scored for soloists, chorus and instruments. In the kaleidoscopic alternation of solos,
duets, choral tutti and instrumental ritornellos the composer presents us with the full range of variety of the concertato style,
which since the early seventeenth century had developed into the principal compositional manner in sacred and secular
music. – L. M. K.