7. Early works.

Monteverdi's first publication was the set of three-voice Sacrae cantiunculae sv207–29 (1582), miniature motets in a remarkably out-of-date, yet very competent, style (see §6 above). They were followed by a volume of Madrigali spirituali sv179–89 (1583), of which only the bass partbook survives: these appear to have contained no striking madrigalisms, and so were also not in the most modern vein for the period.

A different picture is painted, however, by Monteverdi's first venture into secular music, in the Canzonette a tre voci sv1–21 (1584). These brief three-voice pieces draw on the airy, modern style of the villanellas of Marenzio, while not at every point equalling Marenzio's technical assurance. Like Marenzio's pieces, they draw on a substantial vocabulary of text-related madrigalisms even though they are strophic, including distinctions between syllabic and melismatic setting, expressive dissonances and disguised sequences of consecutive 5ths for parodic purposes. Most of them have a high tessitura (which together with the florid style suggests the textures of the concerto delle donne) and a flat signature, but there is a variety of clef combinations and hence tessitura, with some pieces alluding to the standard low-clef duet of upper voices notated in C clef on the top line of the stave. More noteworthy still is the extended range within a single piece effected by a combination of high and low clefs, as in La fiera vista e'l velenoso sguardo and Vita de l'alma mia, cara mia vita; Monteverdi was later to exploit exceptional, wide ranges not suggested by clef combinations in such madrigals as Sfogava con le stelle and Or che'l cielo e la terra e'l vento tace, besides the expansion of range that accompanied the introduction into his works of instrumental voices.

Like Marenzio's villanellas, these canzonettas belong to a light genre in which composers could feign unconcern. Yet the florid trio texture, in which the lowest voice is a true structural bass, in which the upper voices, rather than any voice in a tenor range, play a crucial role in defining the tonal type of the piece, and in which each phrase is tonally structured in terms of a clear cadential progression, represents the true basis of up-to-date five-voice madrigals of the 1580s, and of much of Monteverdi's own subsequent output.

So canzonettas offered serious composers an ideal vehicle for gaining technical competence, and characteristics of the canzonetta are ubiquitous in madrigal collections, as they are in Monteverdi's first book of madrigals sv23–39, published in 1587. Tomlinson relates the purely playful, pastoral settings in this book to the style of Marenzio, and those that invoke affective dissonance to the style of Luzzaschi. Of the latter, Monteverdi's setting of Guarini's Baci soavi e cari is the best-known madrigal in the volume, with Luzzaschi's Gratie ad amor, o me beato e lui(1582) as a possible intertext. The piece prefigures later Monteverdi madrigals in its informal but clear division into two sections of roughly equal length, the second beginning after a full cadence with theatrical, homophonic declamation. The volume is notable also for the first two of Monteverdi's cycles of linked madrigals, which represent an important device of the period for constructing extended musical forms. In Ardosì, ma non t'amo – Ardi o gela a tua voglia – Arsi et alsi a mia vogliathe intertext is Ingegneri's setting of the same poems (by Guarini and Tasso), and the cycle provides a graceful compliment to his teacher with which to end the volume.

With the second book of madrigals sv40–59 (1590) Monteverdi, whether or not he was already working at Mantua, had ‘spiritually left Cremona’ (Arnold, D1963). The influence on this and the third book sv60–74 of the work of Giaches de Wert has often been noted; it reflects a concern with an affective, audience-orientated aesthetic just as much as do the monodies of the period. Ecco mormorar l'onde, the most celebrated madrigal in the second book, is closely modelled on Wert's Vezzosi augelli in fra le verdi fronde; to support the description of a lakeside dawn, Monteverdi exploited a varied range of madrigalisms within Wert's narrowly circumscribed tonal range (with hardly any variation within an F-final tonal type), including his distinctive use of homophony and of static recitation on single notes.

But the emotional thrust of the piece comes less from these than from Monteverdi's deployment of descending, stepwise diatonic chains of thinly disguised 5-3 chords, which are indeed not unique to this madrigal in the second book, and which were recognized by Leichtentritt (G1909–10) as typical of the composer's mature style. This feature is introduced very significantly at the point, in the final rhyming couplet, where the verse turns from describing external nature to the expression of the poet's amorous feelings, with a play of words on the name Laura: ‘L'aura è tua messaggiera, e tu de l'aura, / ch'ogn'arso cor ristaura’. The clear, almost schematic structure provides the work with a seemingly inexorable musical logic, increasing in power towards the final cadence, which strongly underlines the affective power of Tasso's verse.

Monteverdi, Claudio