¹ Schrade, Leo, Monteverdi: Creator of Modern Music (New York, 1950).Google Scholar

² For a discussion of the humanist view of the relationship between poetry and music, see Pirrotta, Nino, Music and Theater from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge, 1982), 22–3.Google Scholar

³ Monteverdi was hardly the first madrigalist to sacrifice poetic form to musical exigency, but he may have been the most extreme textual deconstructor in the history of the genre.

⁴ The idea of the madrigal breaking the bonds of its genre is an old one: see for example Bukofzer, Manfred, Music in the Baroque Era (New York, 1947), 35.Google ScholarMace, Dean T., ‘Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberata, and Monteverdi’, in Studies in the History of Music, I: Music and Language (New York, 1983), 118–20Google Scholar, offers a discussion of monodic (i.e., operatic) elements in the madrigal.

⁵ The indebtedness of Monteverdi's Orfeo to Peri's Euridice has long been appreciated. For bibliography on the subject, see Rosand, Ellen, ‘L'Ovidio trasformato: Orfeo by Aureli and Sartorio (Venice, 1673)’, Drammaturgia musicale veneta, 6 (Milan, 1983), li (n. 24).Google Scholar

⁶ See Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Madrigal, Monody, and Monteverdi's via naturale alla immitatione’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 84–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Tomlinson, 80–97 et passim.

⁸ For an enlightening discussion of Monteverdi's setting of Armida's lament from Book Three, see Mace (n. 4), 131–41.

⁹ The two versions are compared briefly in Tomlinson (see his n. 41 top. 88 for further bibliography).

¹⁰ This was Monteverdi's own view of the lament. See the letter to Alessandro Striggio of 21 March 1620, translated in Stevens, Denis, ed., The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi (Cambridge, 1981), 197.Google Scholar This evaluation was obviously shared by the Mantuan audience; see Follino, Federico, Compendio …(Mantua, 1608)Google Scholar, quoted in Solerti, Angelo, Gli albori del melodramma (Milan, Palermo, Naples, 1904), I, 99 and II, 145.Google Scholar

¹¹ The problematic state of the Poppea sources cannot be discussed here. My remarks are based on the libretto published by Busenello as part of his collected works, Delle bore otiose (Venice, 1656)Google Scholar, and on a collation of the two manuscript scores in Venice and Naples. The most recently published study of the sources of Poppea, now somewhat out of date, is still Chiarelli, Alessandra, ‘L'incoronazione di Poppea o Il Nerone: Problemi di filologia testuale’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 9 (1974), 117–51.Google Scholar

¹² Madrigalisms inherited from the sixteenth century continued to find a place in opera throughout the seventeenth century. See Termini, Olga, ‘The Transformations of Madrigalisms in Venetian Operas of the Later Seventeenth Century’, Music Review, 39 (1978), 4–21.Google Scholar

¹³ I have discussed the characterisation of Seneca in ‘Seneca and the Interpretation of ‘L'incoronazione di Poppea’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 34–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Mace (see n. 4), 133–4, would call these techniques of imitation ‘symbolic’ as opposed to ‘naturalistic’. His terms are not exactly analogous to my ‘literal’ and ‘affective’, since both of his types are actually affective.

¹⁵ The dramatic effect of this passage is the subject of an eloquent analysis in Osthoff, Wolfgang, Das dramatische Spätwerk Claudio Monteverdis (Tutzing, 1960), 63–5.Google Scholar Osthoff focuses on the relationship of the ostinato bass to the affect of the text. See also Müller, Reinhard, ‘Basso ostinato and die “imitatione del parlare” in Monteverdis Incoronazione di Poppea’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 40 (1983), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ No other opera of the period, by Monteverdi or any of his contemporaries, moves with such ease between recitative and aria style. The implications of this observation on questions of authenticity that continue to surface regarding Poppea need to be explored further.

Arioso here refers to lyrical oases within declamatory passages; these oases were shorter and less formal than arias. During the early seventeenth century the term functioned essentially as an adjective – as in recitativo arioso –rather than a noun. Later it assumed the substantive meaning of short aria.

¹⁷ In his first scene with Ottavia. See Rosand (n. 13), 46.

¹⁸ See especially his ‘Monteverdi e i problemi dell'opera’, in Studi sul teatro veneto fra Rinascimento ed età barocca, ed. Muraro, Maria Teresa (Florence, 1971), 321–43Google Scholar, esp. 342–3. Although not published until 1971, the article dates from 1964. For an English translation, see Pirrotta, Nino, Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 235–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ For a different, less enthusiastic interpretation, see Tomlinson (n. 6), 100–1; see also his ‘Music and the Claims of Text: Monteverdi, Rinuccini, and Marino’, Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), 587–8.Google Scholar

²⁰ The often-discussed text of the preface appears in facsimile in Monteverdi, Claudio, Tutte le opere, ed. Malipiero, G. Francesco, 17 vols. (Asolo, 1926–1942, 1966), VIII.Google Scholar

²¹ For a discussion of the effect of the stile concitato on text clarity, see Whenham, John, Duet and Dialogue in the Age of Monteverdi (Ann Arbor, 1982), I, 206.Google Scholar

²² ‘Faranno li passi et gesti nel modo che l'oratione esprime et nulla di più nè meno, osservando questi diligentemente li tempi, colpi et passi, et li ustrimentisti li suoni incitati e molli, et il Testo le parole a tempo pronuntiate in maniera che le creationi venghino a incontrarsi in una imitattione unita; […] Gli ustrimenti […] doveranno essere tocchi ad immitatione delle passioni de l'oratione; la voce del Testo […] porterà le pronuntie a similitudine delle passioni de l'oratione.’ Monteverdi, Claudio, Lettere, dediche e prefazioni, ed. de'Paoli, Domenico (Rome, 1973), 419–20.Google Scholar

²³ For convincing evidence that the music for this opera was never finished, see Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Twice Bitten, Thrice Shy: Monteverdi's “finta” Finta pazza’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 36 (1983), 303–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Letter of 7 May 1627: ‘È vero che la parte di Licori per essere molto varia, non doverà cadere in mano di Donna che hor non si facci homo et hor Donna con vivi gesti, et separate passioni; perchè la immitatione di tal finta pazzia dovendo haver la consideratione solo che nel presente et non nel passato et nel futuro[,] per conseguenza, la imitatione dovendo haver il suo appoggiamento sopra alla parola et non sopra al senso de la clausula, quando dunque parlerà di guerra bisognerà inmitar di guerra, quando di pace pace quando di morte di morte, et va seguitando, et perchè le transformationi si faranno in brevissimo spatio, et le immitationi; chi dunque haverà da dire tal principalissima pane che move al riso et alla compassione, sarà necessario che tal Donna lassi da pane ogni altra Immitatione che la presentanea che gli somministrerà la parola che haverà da dire; crederò non di meno che la Sig.ra Margherita sarà la ecc.ma.’ De' Paoli (see n. 22), 244. My translation is adapted from Arnold, Denis and Fortune, Nigel, eds., The Monteverdi Companion (New York, 1972), 63–4.Google Scholar

²⁵ In using this passage to support his contention that Monteverdi's late style is characterised by imitation of individual words rather than the sense of whole lines or sentences, Tomlinson (see n. 6), 101–2, has distorted its meaning. It is clear from the context of the passage that Monteverdi regards his word imitation as abnormal, specifically linked to the abnormal state of madness, and that the more normal imitation would involve the sense of the whole line. Pirrotta, too, used this passage to interpret Monteverdi's treatment of text in his late works ( ‘Scelte poetiche di Monteverdi’, Nuova rivista musicale italiana, 2 [1968] 253–4Google Scholar; English translation: ‘Monteverdi's Poetic Choices’, in Pirrotta [see n. 18], 315–16); but he specifically acknowledged its original context as referring to the portrayal of madness, and he used it in reference to the last two books of madrigals, expressly not to Poppea. Monteverdi does indeed emphasise individual words more frequently in his late works than in his earlier ones, but, as we have seen in Poppea, he usually does so for larger dramatic reasons. Tomlinson has recently revised his interpretation of this passage and presents a more balanced view in Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1987), 205, n. 21.Google Scholar

²⁶ Letter of 10 july 1627: ‘Resterà solo che la Sig.ra Margheritta, hor divenghi soldato bravo, hor temi hor ardischi, impatronendosi bene de li propri gesti, senza tema et rispetto, perchè vado tendendo che le imitation galiarde et di armonie et gesti et tempi si rapresentino dietro la sena; et faranno passaggi in un subbito tra le galiarde et streppitose armonie et le deboli et soavi atib ben bene salti fuori l'oratione.’ De' Paoli (seen. 22), 264–5. My translation is adapted from Stevens (see n. 10), 335–6.

²⁷ Letter of 24 May 1627: ‘Il mio fine tende che ogni volta che sia per uscire in scena sempre habbi ad aportare diletto novo con le variationi nove; tre lochi bensì penso sortirassi l'effetto, l'uno di quando forma il campo che sentendosi dentro la scena gli soni et gli strepiti simili alle immitationi de le sue parole, mi pare non farà mal riuscita; l'altro di quando finge essere morta et terzo di quando ella finge dormire, dovendosi in tal loco adoperare armonie imitanti il sonno, ma in certi altri che le parole non ponno haver imitatione de gesti, o de strepiti o altro modo d'imitatione che salti fuori, dubito che languidirebbe oil passato od il futuro.’ De' Paoli, 251–2. My translation is adapted from Stevens (see n. 10), 320.

²⁸ See the letter to Alessandro Striggio of 9 December 1616. In translation (Stevens, 117) the relevant passage reads as follows: ‘How, dear Sir, can I imitate the speech of the winds [in Le nozze di Tetide], if they do not speak? And how can I, by such means, move the passions? Ariadne moved us because she was a woman, and similarly Orpheus because he was a man, not a wind.’

²⁹ The phrase is Tomlinson's (‘Music and the Claims of Text’ [seen. 19], 588).

³⁰ This study was originally written in 1983, for the Festschrift honouring Jan LaRue on his sixty-fifth birthday; the volume is scheduled for publication in 1989.