What is this sung speech, this second practice
which the Divine Claudius speaks of?
We note first of all notice (Monteverdi's letter of the 22nd
October 1633 probably written to G.B. Doni) the difference Monteverdi
establishes between harmony founded on the prime practice and harmony
founded on the melodic conception that he calls second practice. The
bitter dispute between Monteverdi and Artusi is in effect based on this profound
difference, and Monteverdi explains very well what he means by second
practice that is no more than the fulfilment of the Platonic Melody; "Melody
or musical second practice. Second (as I mean it) considered in terms of it's
being modern, prime in terms of it's being ancient..." Second practice is,
therefore, essentially a return to the ancient conception of music as production
of the emotive diction of poetic expression through sound, which must be,
according to Plato, chosen for its particular spiritually communicative value.
This is the opposite of what happens in prime practice where literary expression
is made upon a particular construction of sounds. As a consequence, oration
as master of rhythm and harmony (second practice) is set against prime practice
where harmony is master of rhythm and oration. This is the difference which
Monteverdi had already noted in his letter to Striggio on 9th December 1616, the
difference between sung speech (second practice) and spoken song
(prime practice). In explaining his conception of the second practice (Platonic
melody) he clearly states; "Arianna leads me to a right lament and Orpheus to
a right prayer'. It is this word RIGHT that brings us to the conception of
Song as the modulated communication of thought which, according to Plato, has to
come out of the recreation of a real situation and which is, then, truth
rediscovered as argued in the Xth Book of the Republic, 602 and that which
follows, where Plato indicates the path that leads to mimesis. Monteverdi
does not fail to show us this "enclosed light" (again in his letter of the 22nd
October 1633) which he is barely able to see: "When I was about to write
Arianna‘s lament, not finding a book that would describe for me the natural way
of imitation, nor that would illuminate for me what the imitator should be,
other than Plato by way of an enclosed light, the little of which I was hardly
able to see with my weak sight from a distance; I experienced, as I say, a great
fatigue in doing that little which I did of imitation"; this is the way that
leads to the right mimesis of nature.
For Monteverdi the second practice is therefore a
return to a conception of music as fulfilment of poetry in its three unitary
elements - meaning, rhythm and sound - unitary elements that the artist moulds
according to emotional impulse: that which is "representation of the
affections", or the passions. Second practice must not be considered
as a style of musical writing, but as a total poetic expression of human
passions manifested in the WORD - alive with meaning, rhythm and sound.
I think it is useful at this point to make a few points
concerning Monteverdi's style. Many people today persist in considering
Monteverdi a "mannerist" and "baroque" musician! This is simply ridiculous and
it is therefore easy to understand why so many of his interpreters manage so
well to make a mockery of his music!
The term "mannerist" during the Renaissance indicated a
particular way of being, or of doing a thing, and every artist had his or her
manner or style. Later, the meaning of the term deteriorated and
ended by indicating - as manner - a quest for, or the alteration of,
elements of an affected style. It is easy to imagine how this view of
Monteverdi's art could lead to a doubtful interpretation.
As for the term "baroque", we find ourselves faced with
something that, properly speaking, doesn't mean anything and which, due to bad
habit, in the end was attributed underserved and very doubtful importance.
This is not the place, however, for an essay on musicology;
it is enough to reproduce the passage of the letter that Monteverdi probably
wrote to G.B. Doni on the 2nd February 1634. It is to some extent his
philosophic and aesthetic "credo", and from which we get these illuminating
affirmations: "... I directed my studies elsewhere and applied them to the
fundamentals of the best and most searching natural philosophers, and because -
according to what I have read - I see that the affections meet right reason and
the satisfaction of nature (...) and I really see that one only has to follow
these rules, with satisfaction, for these fundamentals I have placed the name of
second practice (...) because my intention is to show (...) how much I have been
able to extract from the mind from this philosophy which is at the service of
fine art, and not at the source of the prime practice, which is merely
harmonious..."; nor do we ever forget what Monteverdi, as we have seen,
wrote in his letter of the 22nd October 1633, again with reference to the
second practice.
It really does take the imagination of Gustav René Hocke to
call Monteverdi "the greatest Italian mannerist genius together with
Tintoretto..." and all the fantasy of Manfred Bukofzer (Music in the
Baroque Era) to discourse upon the baroque that, according to Claude
Palisca, ended up by including "the madrigals of Gesualdo, the first
pastorals of Peri and Monteverdi, the tragicomedies of Scarlatti, the lyrical
tragedies of Rameau... and Corelli, Vivaldi, Schütz
and Bach's cantatas... (Baroque Music, 1968)".
Interpretation and execution of a work of second practice
can exist only when it is possible to reproduce through particularly refined
practice the emotional situation that have determined the poiesis of the artist
who - and this is an important consideration - has noted the sounds and rhythms
of the words pronounced in the particular emotive situation which he or she
expresses in mimesis of the real life act.
It is opportune here to point out the aesthetic and technical
characteristics of the ancient Italian school of singing.
The great theoreticians and practicians of the period -
Maffei, Caccini, Rognoni, Brunelli, up to Tosi and Mancini (18th century) are
all unanimous in demanding that song take its vitality from messa di voce,
exclamation, increase and diminution of the voice, ornamentation (groups and
trills), passages in marked notes, a pure binding of the breath in a
perfect emission which allows all the notes to always be articulated in
such a way as to leave a "vacuum" between each. Everything is enriched by a
carefully constructed sprezzatura (nonchalance) which is at the heart of
the rubato.
What comes out of these high school admonitions is the
conditio sine qua non of natural full voice singing which singers of
falsetto could not and cannot now perform: a full natural voice that, in
unifying the two registers (chest and head) naturally moves from pianissimo
to fortissimo (without getting lost in mezza voce, which is only an
effect), this full natural voice without which song can never be expressive.
Caccini is very precise concerning this: "... from false voices
(falsetto) there cannot come the nobility of good song: that will come out of
a voice which is able to deal with all chords, that a person may deal with
according to his talent, and without having to rely upon breath, showing himself
master of all the best effects that are required, for this very noble manner of
singing." It is clear that, taking leave from this conception of the art of
singing, every performance made by falsettos of this music is a mystification
which a seriously made analysis can in no way accept; history has its own
rights, and they must be respected.
I therefore believe it is useful to point out that the
climate which characterised vocalisation in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries
was particularly interesting since this was the period in which the female
octave voice dominated in theatres and churches and ended up by substituting
the singers of falsetto even in polyphonic repertory, both for technical reasons
(the possibility of aggressive virtuosity) and aesthetic ones (a natural
capacity to represent "affections"). It is in fact true that to do this the
voice has to be able to fuse the natural registers (chest and head, which
Italians also called falsetto). This fusion cannot be made by singers of
falsetto as they only use one part of the vocal chords.
There here arises another great mystification: the belief
pseudo controtenori had (alias singers of falsetto) that they were able
to perform passages written for female octave voices (castrati).
The exact understanding of castrato is possible only
from a technical point of view. A vast and at times morbose literature on this
subject has contributed to some confusion surrounding the subject. Latest
medical research states that: "castrati have a larynx which is as large as
that of a woman's (due to the fact that there is no secretion of testosterone)
while castration has no effect upon the production of thoracic breath or on the
sound box; both of which remain the same as those of a singer who has not been
castrated. (Thesis for a doctorate - Faculty of Medicine - University of
Limoges - 1983 - Dr. Philippe Defaye, cfr. VIII Convegno Internazionale di
Musicologia - Centro Studi Rinascimento Musicale, Artimino l983). The voice of
the castrato is characterised therefore by a high octave which is typical of a
woman's voice with its two registers (chest and head). The grande tecnica
has to lead to homogeneity (fusion in one register) in the low, middle and high
notes.
The voice of the castrato is therefore a voice which is "full
and natural" and able to cover the notable range of expression (play of
breath) described by Caccini and which Pietro Della Valle mentions when talking
of this new art that Caccini calls a representative style, that is to say
representative of the affections (human passions).
We are also able to say that this period witnessed the
triumph of female octave natural voices, both in theatres and churches where
women (nuns) and sopranos (castrati) sang, as well as, naturally, male voices.
It was therefore the category of falsetto voices that disappeared and it is
absurd to think of falsetto singers performing music which was written for "full
and natural" sopranos and contraltos (women or castrati).
The love of virtuosity and expressive song in Italy over past
centuries led to idolatry of high voices (sopranos) in the natural female octave,
an idolatry which continued up until the present time making aleatory every
attempt to carry out an unnatural return to what was more or less disguised, to
the practice of falsetto singing as substituted for the female voice (in the
15th and first half of the 16th centuries) in churches.
This quest for virtuosity and expressive song easily explains
the voices of women and castrati in interchangeable roles. Haendel for example
entrusted the same role in Rinaldo during its first performance to the
castrato Nicolini. For later performances he used women - Barbier and Diana Vico
- and then again another famous castrato, Bernacchi.
The interpretation offered by Nella ANFUSO leads us the
memorable performances of the high Italian school of singing associated with
Vittoria Archilei at the Medici Court in Tuscany, and Virginia Ramponi - an
actress in the Compagnia dei Fedeli who was the first to perform Arianna - and
then Leonora Baroni, daughter of Adriana Basile who was so much admired by
Monteverdi at the Court of Mantova... Then there was Francesca Caccini and her
daughter Margherita "so lucid and splendid in this profession as a singer
that whoever admired her superbly soft and gentle voice which seemed to issue
forth from a resonant silver reed, full of trills and marked groups accompanied
by marvellous and passionate accents, fought to see her..." - this
was real praise for a beautiful voice!
Caccini and Monteverdi give very careful instructions which
very few singers today can follow but which would be to their advantage and - as
Monteverdi wrote - "at the service of good art" (Venice 1634). In fact
perfect emission of the voice, which is to say the total and exclusive use of
resonance over and above that from the chest (no strain therefore and no
reliance on the larynx) means that sounds are not forced. It is only in
this way that one can really respect and follow the natural tempo required
for pronunciation of syllables which constitutes the primary rhythmic
element sung speech that is based exclusively on the rhythm itself of
natural breathing and, as a consequence, "singing without beat" (Monteverdi).
This leads to the possibility of having a voice that carries and that is able to
modulate sounds and, as a consequence, is able to express the most subtle vocal
effects (portamenti, etc.) and demonstrate the most extraordinary
virtuosity.
In diction it is essential - while maintaining its poetry -
to not forget that in modulated speech - or poetic "cantus" - we have a
succession of wired, almost suspended, alternating sounds together with
continuous sounds that belong to "usual speech" (see here Jacopo Peri's
Preface to his Euridice, Florence 1600). In sung speech (modulated
speech = speaking while modulating syllables) the characteristics of tonic
accents that - above all in Italian - have immense importance because they
condition the tone and intensity of sounds that are not tonic (which is to say,
are accentuated) must not be altered. For example, the word AMORE has a
delivery syllable A and tonic syllable MO that slides into the syllable RE.
Here diction is particularly complex and cannot be simplified in any way. Above
all, the three syllables must not be pronounced with the same intensity, and
certainly not doubled (as is too often done by foreign singers who think that in
this way the consonants M and R will be better understood (in the case of
amore). Pronunciation has to be exact in following tonic accent and the
features of voiced consonants and syllables. Comprehension of the text comes
automatically from the psychological impression that diction creates in the
synthesis of meaning, rhythm and sound. This synthesis is the primary
characteristic of representative "style", which is to say the "representation of
affections" or the representative expression of human passions. I would like to
end with a particularly important quote which gives us the exact measure of what
Monteverdi desired vocally. It is a passage from the letter addressed from
Venice to Alessandro Striggio on the 24th July 1627: "... Though it is true
that he sings with confidence, vivacity lacks and the notes of passaggi are not
sufficiently marked. This is due to an imperfect union between the two voices.
If the head voice laks the qualities of the chest voice, the passaggio becomes
hard and disagreable; if the latter lacks former's character, the wowels are
almost shuffled and the passaggio becomes oily and almost continuous; but when
the two operate harmoniously, the notes are marked and the passaggio is rendered
in its natural, perfectly gracious state..."
Any other conception of vocal execution is not natural, but
forced, and does not allow in any way or from any point of view to correctly
produce either airs or madrigals (whether monodic or polyphonic) and certainly
not the "'representative genre".
Therefore, either we go back to the Italian high school of
singing if we want to be virtuosi and interpreters, or we abandon
definitively a repertoire that, as Caccini said, "does not suffer mediocrity".
Editions
The Centre for Renaissance Music Studies has published three
studies (1969-1973-1975) on the Lamento d'Arianna, Due Lettere Amorose
and Tre Arianne. In publishing studies on the Lamento and the
Letters we wanted to recreate the notation of the original editions (Gardano
- Venice 1623 for the Lamento d'Arianna- Unicum in Gent). In terms of
musicology the 1623 Venetian edition of Arianna supplies us with very
important semiographic elements in that we thereby obtain Monteverdi's authentic
notation which modern revisions have not taken into account, perhaps in an
attempt to render more "singable" that which the author wanted to be natural "sung
speech". The result of this was distortion of the expressive truth of
Monteverdi's Seconda Practica which he explicitly makes clear in his
correspondence.
It is particularly interesting to see the presence of
chromatisms and dissonances that, having disappeared in modern versions, are on
the other hand rendered profoundly legitimate in the concept expressed by
Monteverdi himself in his letter of October 1633 in which he clearly, when
mentioning Plato, indicates having wanted to recreate, by imitation, the
authentic lament of the protagonist lived at first hand:
"When I was about to write Arianna’s lament, not finding a
book that would describe for me the natural way of imitation, nor that would
illuminate for me what the imitator should be, other than Plato by way of an
enclosed light, the little of which I was hardly able to see with my weak sight
from a distance; I experienced, as I say, a great fatigue in doing that little
which I did of imitation". After having deepened our knowledge of the
various texts obtained, we rightly opted for the unicum kept in Gent (the only
edition printed by Gardano in Venice, 1623).
We were comforted in this choice by Giovan Battista Doni's
critical study (1594-1647) which in a manuscript conserved in the Marucelliana
Library in Florence and printed in Florence a century later, in 1763, offers us
the opinion of a contemporary of great learning concerning the modal character
of Monteverdi's composition. Doni in fact writes: "Commendable is the judgement
of Monteverdi, who by setting aside these superstitious rules was well able to
vary by means of cadences the start of his Arianna, leaving the first
verse Lasciatemi morire in E, la, mi, and the same performance in
D, la, sol, re with its own cadence. E chi volete voi, che mi conforte,
in G, sol, re, ut. In così dura sorte in A, la, mi, re. In così gran
martire in bq mi. Penultimate Lasciatemi morire in F, fa,
ut and the same performance in D, la, sol, re with a final cadence.
Therefore in these few verses one can demonstrate all the ways - only four in
truth and as many as are the kinds of diapente that create some variety - since
that which comes from the different kind of diapason cannot easily be know
unless has access to ways of the old manner..."
One should note here the fact that Doni's study adheres to
the Venetian edition being examined and concerns the "resta in F fa ut" (penultimate
Lasciatemi morire), F fa ut which is not met with in the various unsigned
manuscripts of the time or in modern revisions. The last three verses "Nacqui
Regina...", "Vivo, moro...", "Io son contenta..." are found exclusively in the
Magliabechiano Mss in Florence and the British Museum in London.
As far as Rinuccini’s tragedy is concerned it has to be
pointed out that only the manuscripts of Florence and London contain the entire
dramatic scene for which we have the music for the character of Arianna,
since the rest of Monteverdi's composition was lost.
So as to restore the purely dramatic and representative value
of the "Lament" and ascribe it to Monteverdi, by referring to Striggio in
December 1616 "'Arianna mi porta ad un giusto lamento\ and eliminate in
terms of aesthetic and interpretative value a tendency now falsely acquired of
considering this stupendous scene almost as a song to be performed as camera
music, and not a stupendous example of Monteverdi's sung speech, we have
included contributions by Nunzio, Coro and Dorilla (for which we do not have the
music) in their right place among the verses expressed by Arianna in the form of
recited text. All of this so as to get to know the scene itself and in order to
create the atmosphere in which Arianna modulates her own pathos. This
reconstruction appeared to us to be particularly useful in order to also
demonstrate the classic structure of Rinuccini’s tragedy. In fact this scene in
Arianna reminds us structurally of the Kommos, or the moment when the
protagonist laments her destiny while the chorus participates and comments upon
the event (see for example Sophocle's Antigone).
The present performance of Penelope's Lament from
"Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria" is an absolute novelty as, for first time,
the Lament is performed on the basis of the text written by Badoaro.
The habit from the very start of reworking varying texts with
varying pieces of music in Venetian performances is now well known, while
the opening of the theatre of S. Cassiano and the presentation of musical
performances to a paying public - a wider public, but also one which is
culturally less aware - is essentially a commercial venture whose end aim is, of
course, commercial success. One remembers here the episode concerning the
Florentine Filippo Vitali who left Rome in extreme irritation after his
Narciso was "reworked" by Marazzoli for a performance in Rome. Monteverdi's
glorious name was commercially appealing for the impresarios Ferrari and
Mannelli but, all said and done, it was the commercial element that prevailed
over any respect due to this musician from Cremona. Thus, new performances were
reworked by singers - who, let's not forget, were at the time accomplished
musicians - since the principal objective was to create a successful performance
leading to a consistent paying public. This is what happened with the arietta
Torna il tranquillo al mare from Penelope's Lament, which was
rejected.
The exact origin of the Viennese manuscript of "II Ritorno
di LJlisse in Patria' is unclear, as are its performances and adaptations.
What we do know is that Penelope's Lament was cut and Badoaro's dramatic
order changed. This could not have been done by Monteverdi, who belonged to that
generation of artists who held the poet's poem in high esteem, whether it was
Badoaro or Rinuccini. Penelope's verses were reduced to 76 in the manuscript
from Badoaro's original 125, and what strikes the ear most is the absence of the
arietta Torna il tranquillo al mare whose position was changed by the
unknown manipulator so as to arouse the interest of the public: far from what
Monteverdi would have done, either from the musical or the dramatic point of
view. The original dramatic order in the Lament has therefore been
reestablished so that it now reveals its unifying psychological character,
even if it has not been possible to restore Penelope’s great scene due to the
mutilated condition of the manuscript. The pages of the female characters (Messenger,
Nymph, Speranza and Proserpine) from Orpheus were produced
upon the basis of the Venetian editions of 1609 and 1615 (the latter from the
Polish library in Wroclaw, and containing handwritten notes) and take into
consideration differences concerning "notes" and "alterations" made there.
Musical performances of a "genere rappresentativo" is carried
out on a organo di legno and chitarrone (also "soli") as indicated by Monteverdi
who, for example, in the Messenger scene indicates these very instruments for
performance of the continuous bass.
