C. Monteverdi: Il quinto libro de madrigali (1605)

This splendid compilation of madrigals in nine books, published between 1587 and 1651, represents one of the pinnacles of Western musical literature. In this session, we continue this magnificent journey through this corpus, understood as an exercise in proto-opera and a theater of emotions.

This fifth book, published in Venice in 1605 and dedicated to his patron, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, where he worked as a violist, marks a turning point in his work as the composer radically develops his style by incorporating a series of innovations that sparked a famous controversy. Giovanni Maria Artusi, a canon of Bologna, accused Monteverdi of an exaggerated use of chromaticism, an excess of dissonances that strayed from the classical style of Palestrina. Monteverdi responded with a text (Seconda prattica overo delle perfezione della moderna música) in which he justified that the seconda prattica was more suitable for madrigals (and not sacred music), since "words are the masters of harmony, not its slaves."

Rinaldo Alessandrini, conductor, harpsichordist, and a true authority on the composer, will guide us through the paths of this fascinating and lush universe filled with beautiful miniature gems. The word, the music, the declamation, and the concitato style will place us in front of the earliest attempts to represent human passions through text and harmony.

With the support of: