OURS is an essentially conservative musical climate, and attempts to reproduce historical styles of performance still tend to be viewed with suspicion. It is therefore not surprising that to transpose parts of a recognized masterpiece should be regarded by some almost as an act of heresy. I first directed a performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers in 1977, and on that occasion, as on subsequent ones, the psalm Lauda Jerusalem and the Magnificat a7 were given a 4th below their written pitch. (The discussion that follows is quite independent of absolute pitch standards appropriate to Monteverdi's music: the issue is that of the relative pitch levels of the various Vespers movements.) Reactions to the idea of the transpositions have been predictably mixed: one of our bestknown Monteverdi conductors has described them as an ‘aberration’, while others find the results revelatory. But if the very familiarity of the work makes objective assessment difficult, it has also the advantage of focusing attention on a vital but neglected area of historical performance practice, one of direct relevance to a host of less well-known pieces. With the release of my recording of the 1610 Vespers, the time is obviously ripe for a detailed defence of the practice.

Monteverdi has had the misfortune to be labelled a Baroque composer and a Venetian composer, despite the facts that he published six collections before the 17th century even began and that he worked in Mantua until he was 45. Consequently his music has often been viewed in a false light. Instrumental writing of the kind illustrated in Ex. 5.1 would perhaps have seemed unexceptional in its technical demands to a musician of the early 18th century; in 1610 it would undoubtedly have seemed revolutionary in its high tessitura. And there lies the crux of the matter. Do the high vocal and instrumental ranges of the Magnificat a7 serve a new dramatic function through an (as it were) Beethovenian stretching of existing conventions? Or is this all an illusion, caused by a trick of notation that would have ruffled none of Monteverdi's contemporaries?

Lauda Jerusalem and the Magnificat a7 lie consistently at a higher written pitch level than the other Vespers movements, a fact which is reflected in (or caused by) the choice of a different set of clefs.