Historical Performance

Abstract:

Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610 has given rise to a long history of arguments in the musicological literature regarding its constituent elements, its liturgical function, and performance practice. Some of these have been resolved by general consensus over time, while others still appear in recent literature on the 1610 Vespers. Yet the remaining controversies can be resolved by reference to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century context of Vespers and Office music, notation, performance practices, and practices in the celebration of the liturgy.

This article demonstrates that the music Monteverdi includes under the rubric Vespro della B. Vergine da concerto composto sopra canti fermi comprises a nearly complete vespers service for the major Marian feasts of Monteverdi's day, with the sacri concentus interspersed between the psalms as overlays (or actual substitutes) to the chant antiphons following each psalm to enhance or comment on the significance of Mary, or to pray directly to her, as in the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria. Monteverdi provided no motet for the Magnificat, however. The argument that the Trinitarian motet Duo Seraphim would have no role in a Marian Vespers is misguided. Insertions into the liturgy derived their justification and meaning from the subject of a feast and/or texts used throughout a feast. The Trinity is a ubiquitous subject in all vespers services thanks to the Lesser Doxology as well as in some of the liturgical texts and gospel readings specifically assigned to Marian feasts, such as the final verse of the hymn Ave Maris Stella.

This article also addresses performance practice in the relationship between duple and triple mensurations, illustrating how a steady tactus can be used to produce a metric relationship between the two in successive passages of a composition, regardless of the disjunction in levels of rhythmic notation on either side of the adjacent mensurations. At the same time, there is no theoretical requirement for triple meter to relate in any specific way to adjacent duple meters, and triple meters may be unrelated to duple meters especially when they represent independent, non-continuous segments of a composition, such as the distinct verses of a Magnificat or hymn.

Ancillary to the issue of metrical relationships is the question of pacing in the central section of the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, which is in triplet notation under C and has been interpreted in modern editions in two different ways, one twice the speed of the other. The relevant evidence demonstrates that the notation is one of diminution and the faster speed is therefore the correct one.

This article also contains a brief discussion of the controversy regarding the transposition of Lauda Jerusalem and the two Magnificats notated in high clefs by a fourth downward, which has properly been settled in favor of these transpositions, and a few remarks about the possibility of employing doubling instruments, or even substituting instruments for voices in performance.