Claudio Monteverdi

Vital Statistics

Born: May 15, 1567, Cremona, Italy
Died: November 29, 1643, Venice
Nationality: Italian
Genre: Baroque
Performed as: Player of viols; probably studied singing
During the composer's lifetime: Shakespeare’s plays were written and performed. The Thirty Years War was fought.

Biographical Outline

• Boy wonder: Publishes his first collection of sacred songs at age 15.
• First gig, 1590 or 1591: Lowly court musician for the Duke of Mantua.
• Madrigal man: Between 1587 and 1607, Monteverdi publishes five books of madrigals and the Scherzi musicali (Musical pleasantries), a book of lighter-themed songs for voice and accompaniment. They make his reputation.
• Bumped up to middle management, 1601: Appointed maestro della musica (master of music) in Mantua.
• Opera at last: His Orfeo is performed at court in February 1607. Although not the first, this opera is the most impressive and important opera of the early 17th century.
• The boot, 1612-style: Monteverdi is abruptly dismissed from the Duke’s service, after three years of discontent and court intrigue.
• Corner office, 1613: Appointed maestro di capella at the Cathedral of San Marco, in the Republic of Venice. This was a state appointment as much as a church position, and one of the more important ones in Italy. Monteverdi composed music for civic celebrations, as well as sacred music. He was famous by this point, well-paid, and able to take advantage of many other composing opportunities.
• Public opera: Venice gave birth to public opera houses in the late 1630s. Monteverdi responded with Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (The return of Ulysses to his homeland, 1639/1640), Le nozze d’Enea in Lavinia (The marriage of Aeneas in Lavinia, 1640/1641, now lost), and his last and, today, best-known opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea, 1642/1643).

Fun Facts

• Survivor: Monteverdi survived highway robbery on the journey from his hometown of Cremona to Venice.
• Great loss: Despite his fame, many of Monteverdi’s compositions are lost, including more than 10 stage works, and much sacred music.
• Low point: Monteverdi wrote that he had only pocket money left when he was sacked at Mantua.
• Credit where credit is due: The most famous part of Poppea, a duet between Nero and Poppea in the last scene, was actually composed by someone else.
• Grave: Monteverdi is buried in Venice at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.

Recommended Biography

• Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. by Tim Carter. (Cambridge, 1994.) The standard biography. Out of print, but worth looking up.
• The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi, John Whenham and Richard Wistreich, eds. (Cambridge, 2007). Lots of biographical information, supplementing the standard biography. Some technical language.

Explore the Music

• Vocal music: Known for his operas and his madrigals. He composed madrigals throughout his career, publishing eight books of them. A ninth book was published after his death.
• Breaking the rules: Monteverdi was at the center of a famous controversy, when his “modern” style of composition was attacked by music theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi. No theorist himself, Monteverdi proposed a “second practice” in which breaking the rules was justified in order to express poetic meaning. This idea became a bedrock concept in Baroque music.
• Realism, 1643: In his opera L’incoronazione di Poppea, an ambitious courtesan manipulates a weak, psychologically unstable ruler (Emperor Nero), and there’s cross-dressing, exile, dueling goddesses—what more could you want from opera?

Recommended Websites

• Wikipedia entry on Monteverdi
• An extensive site on Monteverdi's "Vespers"
• BinAural Collaborative Hypertext (BACH). This is kind of a cool site with interactive media that goes through scores phrase by phrase with audio