01	Laudate Dominum						04:21
	02	Quel Squardo Sdegnosetto						02:32
	03	Ballo Delle Ingrate						04:29
	04	Madrigali Amorisi - Madrigal 1						04:25
	05	Madrigali Amorisi - Madrigal 3						04:42
	06	Madrigali Amorisi - Madrigal 4						03:36
	07	Madrigali Amorisi - Santa Maria						03:06
	08	Madrigali Amorisi - Eri Gea Tutta Mia						02:16
	09	Madrigali Guerrieri - Madrigal 1						08:48
	10	Madrigali Guerrieri - Madrigal 4						04:05
	11	O Rosetta Che Rosetta / Non Cosi Tosto						02:31
	12	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Kyrie						03:30
	13	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Gloria						05:18
	14	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Credo						08:57
	15	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Sanctus						02:07
	16	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Benedictus						01:16
	17	Messa "In Illo Tempore" - Agnus Dei I + II						04:56
	18	Symphonia						01:57

Claudio Monteverdi
Country Italy
Birth May 15, 1567 in Cremona, Italy
Death Nov 29, 1643 in Venice, Italy
Period Baroque

Biography
If one were to name the composer that stitches the seam between the Renaissance and the Baroque, it would likely be Claudio Monteverdi -- the same composer who is largely and frequently credited with making the cut in the first place. The path from his earliest canzonettas and madrigals to his latest operatic work exemplifies the shifts in musical thinking that took place in the last decades of the sixteenth century, and the first few of the seventeenth.
Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Italy, on the 15th of May, 1567. As a youth his musical talent was already evident: his first publication was issued by a prominent Venetian publishing house when he was 15, and by the time he was 20 a variety of his works had gone to print. His first book of five-voice madrigals, while bearing a dedication to his Cremonese mentor Ingegnieri, succeeded in establishing his reputation outside of his provincial home-town, and helped him find work in the court of the Duke Gonzaga of Mantua. His compositions from the Mantuan period betray the influence of Giaches de Wert, who Monteverdi eventually succeeded as the maestro di cappella. It was around this time that Monteverdi's name became widely known, due largely to the criticism levied at him by G.M. Artusi in his famous 1600 treatise "on the imperfection of modern music." Artusi found Monteverdi's contrapuntal unorthodoxies unacceptable and cited several excerpts from his madrigals as examples of modern musical decadence. In the response that appeared in the preface to Monteverdi's fifth book of madrigals, the composer coined a pair of terms inextricably tied to the diversity of musical taste that came to characterize the times. He referred to the older style of composition, in which the traditional rules of counterpoint superseded expressive considerations, as the prima prattica. The seconda prattica, as characterized by such works as Crudi Amarilli, sought to put music in the servitude of the text by whatever means necessary-including "incorrect" counterpoint-to vividly express the text.

In 1607, Monteverdi's first opera (and the oldest to grace modern stages with any frequency) L'Orfeo, was performed in Mantua. This was followed in 1608 by L'Arianna, which, despite its popularity at the time, no longer survives except in libretti, and in the title character's famous lament, a polyphonic arrangement of which appeared in his sixth book of madrigals (1614). Disagreements with the Gonzaga court led him to seek work elsewhere, and finally in 1612 he was appointed maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.

His earliest years at Venice were a rebuilding period for the cappella, and it was some time before Monteverdi was free to accept commissions outside his duties at the cathedral. In 1616 he composed the ballet Tirsi i Clori for Ferdinand of Mantua, the more-favored brother of his deceased and disliked ex-employer. The following years saw some abandoned operatic ventures, the now-lost opera La finta pazza Licori, and the dramatic dialogue Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

The 1630s were lean musical years for Monteverdi. Political battles and an outbreak of the plague left him without commissions from either Mantua or Venice. However, with the opening of Venetian opera houses in 1637, Monteverdi's operatic career was revived. A new production of L'Arianna was staged in 1640, and three new operas appeared within two years: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia, and L'incoronazione di Poppea. This resurgence preceded his death by just a few years: he passed away in Venice in 1643. -- Jeremy Grimshaw






Work(s) Overview
Composer Claudio Monteverdi

Description
Claudio Monteverdi, like Beethoven, has often been viewed as a titanic and revolutionary figure, boldly reshaping the very fabric of musical style. Even a more sober assessment places Monteverdi's prolific musical output squarely astride a major stylistic rift between the "Renaissance" and the "Baroque" in music, between the Prima and Seconda Prattica (terms made famous by his brother in his defense). But throughout his numerous and varied publications, Monteverdi strove for an ideal of text-expression, deploying all the compositional resources of his time as servants of the words he set. His earliest publications, three volumes of motets, Madrigali spirituali, and Canzonette (1582, 83, and 84), though foregrounding his contrapuntal training at the hands of his teacher Marc' Antonio Ingegneri, also each demonstrate an early concern for word-painting. Monteverdi further distinguished himself as a madrigalist, eventually publishing nine (one posthumous) collections. His essays in this courtly and popular genre quickly surpass his teacher's influence, the "mannered" style of Marenzio's image-conscious writing (Second Book, 1590) and the more introverted psychological dramas of Wert (Third, 1592). The Fourth and Fifth Books (1605/1607) represent the pinnacle of his achievement in the harmonically rich five-voiced medium he inherited.
The year 1607 also saw the premiere in Mantua of Monteverdi's first opera, the La favola d'Orfeo. Musically, Orfeo presents an aggregate of various current dramatic styles, from an emotionally charged "modern" recitative style to more archaic, madrigalian choruses. Nowhere is his compositional fluency more evident than the 1610 collection of sacred music presented to Pope Paul V (and incidentally used as a "portfolio"). A thickly canonic Mass in academic stile antico rubs shoulders with a Vespers series of Psalms, a Hymn, and two Magnificats. These large-scale choral and instrumental concerti contain imitative polyphony, cantus firmus writing, polychoral homophony, and falsobordone choral chanting. The collection is further enriched by a group of utterly "modern" florid monodic motets. In the Seventh Book of Madrigals (1619), with fashionable compositions integrating solo voices with basso continuo and treble instruments, Monteverdi gives the musical world his "invention" of the Stile concitato, a "warlike" division of long notes into short repetitions. He claimed in this volume to recapture the strength of ancient Greek martial music, complementing recent madrigalian advances in the expression of amorous texts.

Much later in his life, Monteverdi published a pair of massive volumes, the 1638 Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi, and the Selva morale et spirituale (1640-1641). These retrospectively attempt to gather his secular and sacred compositions from decades of Venetian service. The "madrigals" include concerted settings of Petrarch (Hor che'l ciel) and others, with quasi-dramatic works such as the Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. The "Spiritual Forest" includes many new concerted Psalm settings, often directly borrowing from his secular styles (Beatus vir was derived from the canzonetta Chiome d'oro). Monteverdi continued to compose operas in Venice, as well, the most famous being L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642). -- Timothy Dickey