Composer Kits - Monteverdi Edition

We hope you enjoyed Eggy Goes to Venice!

We’ve made this website just for you. Here, you can:

• Watch parts of Monteverdi’s Vespers, or sit back like Eggy and watch the whole thing!

• See videos of all the different instruments Eggy met while on her trip

• Learn more about Monteverdi’s life, and hear more of his beautiful music.

Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610

Here is TENET Vocal Artists’ entire performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers. You can listen to the whole concert like Eggy, or you can skip around to your favorite parts.

We think you’ll enjoy these selections. Just go to the time code!

• 00:00 - Deus in adiutorium: The tenor announces the beginning of the piece

• 24:17 - Pulchra es: Two sopranos share a beautiful duet

• 49:04 - Audi coelum: Listen for the echo at the end of each line…

• 1:03:10 - Sonata sopra Santa Maria: Here the instruments have a chance to shine!

Monteverdi’s Orchestra

Click on the photo of the orchestra to learn what “early instruments” are, and then click on individual instruments to hear them by themselves.

More about Monteverdi

early life

Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 - more than 450 years ago! He spent his childhood in Cremona, Italy. He was very talented as a young boy, and he published his first piece of music when he was only 15 years old.

Monteverdi’s first job was to be a court musician for the Duke of Mantua. Court musicians composed and played music for special occasions. In Mantua, Monteverdi got to work with many wonderful musicians, and he also met many poets and singers who inspired him to write more beautiful music.

Young Monteverdi developed a new musical style. The old style was known as prima pratica (“first practice”) and this new style was called seconda pratica (“second practice”). The prima pratica continued to be used for church music. In this style of writing, the way the music sounded was more important than hearing the words clearly. Prima practica music was contrapuntal, with several different parts going on at once so that the words could not be clearly heard. However, in the seconda pratica, hearing the words clearly and following the story became very important to listeners. To make sure people could follow the words, the music sounded simpler. This was particularly important in madrigals, and Monteverdi wrote nine books of them.

Madrigals

A madrigal is a special kind of song for a small group of singers. Madrigals were very popular in the 1500s and 1600s. This was the end of the music period called the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque period. Madrigals were invented in Italy and became very popular for a short time in England and France too. The poems of madrigals are always about non-religious things like shepherds, flowers, cool breezes, but mostly they were about love. Sometimes instruments would play along with the singers too.

Move to Venice

When Monteverdi moved to Venice, he had a job called maestro di cappella (director of music) at San Marco (Saint Mark’s church). This was the most important job for a church musician in all of Europe! Monteverdi was hired in 1613. At this time, Venice was one of the largest cities in Europe and was a center for trade and for the arts. Monteverdi had to compose music for many special feast days during the year. For the rest of his life, Monteverdi continued his work at San Marco and live in Venice.

opera

At the end of his life, Monteverdi spent a lot of time writing operas. An opera is a play in which all of the words are sung instead of spoken. The singers act out the story on a stage and the instrumentalists play their parts from an area in front of the stage called an orchestra pit. Operas are usually performed in big theaters, called opera houses.

Monteverdi wrote what musicologists consider the first “modern” opera, Orfeo, in 1607. He often wrote operas based on the stories of mythical figures like Orpheus, Ulysses, and Athena, and also historical figures, like the Roman Emperor Nero. His other famous operas are called Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. Monteverdi’s operas are still performed today!

The beautiful illustrations of Eggy found in Eggy Goes to Venice! were created by Sylvia Baber.