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L'Arpeggiata/Christina Pluhar: Monteverdi's Vespers

L'Arpeggiata on a lit stage, playing their period instruments

Alexandra Coghlan sheds some light on the inception of Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers, performed tonight by Christina Pluhar and her audacious ensemble L’Arpeggiata.

‘To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one’s best friends. Even to avoid joining in the controversy is to find oneself accused of (i) cowardice, or (ii) snobbishness, or (iii) sitting on the fence, or (iv) all three…’

What single piece of music could possibly prompt the kind of divisive passions described here by musicologist Denis Arnold? The perhaps unexpected answer is Monteverdi’s Vespers – a ‘musicological Lorelei’ that has confounded scholars and provoked performers for over 400 years.

We know the Vespers was first printed in Venice in 1610 – a facsimile of that score is readily available. But, despite a direct paper-trail, the work remains mysterious, a source of questions to which any performance must supply an answer. When was it composed? For what purpose and occasion? Was it ever performed and, if so, where and in what form? Finally – and most significantly – is it, in fact, a unified work at all?

To start the process of untangling these is to travel not to Venice – the city that was home Monteverdi’s triumphant final decades – but to Mantua’s Gonzaga Court. The ambitious young musician who considered himself ‘fortunate’ to enter the Duke’s service in 1591 was scarcely recognisable as the composer creating ‘…an a cappella Mass for six voices…together with psalms for Vespers of the Madonna’ in 1608.

Aged just 43, Monteverdi was a broken man. The death of his wife had left him alone, ‘seriously ill’ from overwork and the Mantuan climate, struggling to support his two young sons. Pleas for dismissal were ignored, and Monteverdi was forced to continue in the Duke’s demanding service. 

It seems an unlikely time for the composition of a large-scale sacred work. Some argue that it was created for the magnificent festivities surrounding the marriage of the Duke’s son to Margherita of Savoy in May 1608. Others have argued for the Vespers as a musical portfolio to advertise to the visiting Pope Paul V (the work’s dedicatee) in hopes of a Vatican job. That both theories persist speaks to the ambiguity of a work that seems designed to serve many functions – at once a compendium and a single work, an advertisement and a functional collection of sacred music. 

Vespers – the daily Catholic evening service – follows a set form. Five psalms (each preceded by an antiphon), a hymn and a Magnificat are the key elements. Monteverdi sets each of these (twice, in the case of the Magnificat), but also includes additional elements, including four ‘sacred concertos’ and an instrumental sonata.

One interesting detail of the Vespers is its emphasis – on the title-page, no less – on the work’s historical elements. The psalms and Magnificat settings may have been composed separately over time, but all are united by their structure. Each takes plainchant as its basis, treating it as a cantus firmus – a slow-moving central melody – around which Monteverdi weaves intricate strands of counterpoint in both instruments and voices.

The effect is strikingly varied from piece to piece, but retains the same spirit of collision: music at the threshold of ancient and modern. This is a composer who wishes to be admired for his invention, but also his respect and understanding of musical history. Add to this the sheer potential opulence of the settings – scored for up to 10 vocal parts, with cornettos and sackbuts as well as organ and strings – and you have a showcase well suited not only to the splendour of the Vatican, but perhaps even more to the gilded galleries of St Mark’s Venice.

Like that building, whose vast scale eclipses all at first glance, the details of Monteverdi’s Vespers can easily get lost in sheer sonic scale. But once ears adjust, there’s much to notice. Has the supplication ‘O Lord, make haste to help me’ ever sounded more arresting than it does here in music adapted from the opening Toccata of Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, fizzing instrumental ritornelli breaking up the solid blocks of chant, cornetto and violin soaring high above? 

The next musical peak arrives in motet Nigra Sum. The sensual Song of Solomon text is set for solo voice and accompaniment, exploiting all the expressive freedom of the new operatic style. In contrast, psalm-setting Nisi Dominus is thickly scored for two five-voice choirs who pass verses back and forth, imitation intensifying towards an emotional and rhythmic climax.

The instrumental 'Sonata sopra Sancta Maria' puts instrumental virtuosity in the spotlight, weaving a shifting texture over continuo in a set of variations on three motifs. In and out of this drift soprano voices singing the short phrases of a plainchant litany to the Virgin.

Finally, the Magnificat: a fusion of old and new more audacious than any we’ve heard so far. A plainchant cantus firmus runs through each of the movements, its slow-moving notes a harmonic core for a kaleidoscope of mood and invention that takes us from the penitential gloom of the lower-voices ‘Et misericordia’, through a shadowy vision of the Holy Spirit in the echoing et Spiritui Sancto of the ‘Gloria patri’ to arrive at the blazing final dance of an Amen – music truly, as Monteverdi himself described it, ‘…suited to the chapels or chamber of princes’.

© Alexandra Coghlan

Running times

Start time: 7.30pm

Approximate running time: 105 mins with no interval

Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change

This performance is subject to government guidelines

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Download programme note PDF 88.01 kb
Download translations PDF 89.6 kb

Programme and performers

Claudio Monteverdi Vespro della beata Vergine
1. Deus in adiutorium 
2. Dixit Dominus
3. Nigra sum
4. Laudate pueri
5. Pulchra es
6. Laetatus sum
7. Duo Seraphim
8. Nisi Dominus
9. Audi coelum
10. Lauda Ierusalem
11. Sonata sopra Sancta Maria
12. Ave maris stella
13. Magnificat. Magnificat
14. Magnificat. Et exultavit
15. Magnificat. Quia respexit
16. Magnificat. Quia fecit mihi magna
17. Magnificat. Et misericordia eius
18. Magnificat. Fecit potentiam
19. Magnificat. Deposuit potentes de sede
20. Magnificat. Esurientes implevit bonis
21. Magnificat. Suscepit Israel 
22. Magnificat. Sicut locutus est
23. Magnificat. Gloria patri et filio
24. Magnificat. Sicut erat in principio
 

Chorus
Céline Scheen soprano
Giuseppina Bridelli mezzo-soprano
Benedetta Mazzucato contralto
Vincenzo Capezzuto alto
Jan van Elsacker alto/tenor
Nicholas Mulroy tenor
Joshua Ellicott tenor
Dingle Yandell bass-baritone
Hubert Claessens bass-baritone
Greg Skidmore bass

L’Arpeggiata
Jorge Jimenez baroque violin
Jesus Merino Ruiz baroque violin
Anna Nowak baroque alto
Rodney Prada viola da gamba
Diana Vinagre baroque cello
Doron Sherwin cornetto
Gawain Glenton cornetto
Laura Agut trombone
Emily White trombone
Guy Morley trombone
Josep Maria Marti Duran theorbo
Daniel Espasa organ

Christina Pluhar artistic & musical direction

Translations

Deus in adiutorium meum intende.

Domine ad adiuvandum me festina.

Gloria Patri, et Filio,
et Spiritui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Alleluja.

O God, make speed to save me.

O Lord, make haste to help me.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.

Allelujah.

Artist biographies

Founded in 2000, L’Arpeggiata is an ensemble directed by Christina Pluhar. Its members are today’s finest soloists and in addition they work in collaboration with the most exceptional singers from the Baroque and the traditional music worlds.

The bases of L’Arpeggiata are instrumental improvisations, a different approach to singing centred on the development of vocal interpretation influenced by traditional music, and the creation and staging of attractive shows.

Since its foundation L’Arpeggiata has had an incredible response from the audience as well as from the critics: They have received outstanding reviews for their albums and concerts. Their album first album La Villanella dedicated to the music of Girolamo Kapsberger has been considered ‘Event of the month’ by Repertoire des disques in September 2001 and has been awarded with the Premio Internationale del disco per la musica italiana. Their second CD Homo fugit velut umbra devoted to Stefano Landi was ’10 de Repertoire’, ‘Diapason Découverte’, BBC's ‘CD of the Week’, ‘CD of the Month’ by Amadeus (Italy) and Prix Exellentia by Pizzicato (Luxemburg). La Tarantella, which proposes an encounter between baroque and traditional musicians, has been ’10 de Repertoire’, ‘CD of the Week’ by France Musique and ‘CD of the Month’ by Toccata (Germany). All’Improvviso, their third disc, was rewarded with 'Timbre de platine' of Opéra international, CD of the month by BBC Magazine, and their last CD, the Rapressentazione di Anima et di Corpo by Emilio de’ Cavalieri has won the prize of the academy 'Charles Cros'. Their album Los Impossibles (2010) stars the King’s Singers as well as the Flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela.
Their album Teatro d’amore (2009) included the singers Philippe Jaroussky and Nuria Rial and as well as their album Via crucis together the vocal ensemble from Corsica 'Barbara Furtuna’. In 2011 their version of the Vespro della beata vergine appeared on CD. Their album Los Pájaros perdidos (2012) is devoted to traditional and baroque music of Latin America and Mediterraneo (2013) included the Fado-singer Misia.

Winner in 2009, 2010 and 2011 of the Echo Klassik Preis in Germany, the Edison's price in Holland in 2009, the VSCD Musiekprijs in 2008, Arpeggiata has consistently been praised for its recording with rewards as the Cannes Classical Awards, Platinum of International Opera Magazine, CD of the Month of the BBC Magazine, amongst many others.

L’Arpeggiata has performed with great succes in festivals and concert halls around the world such in Lufthansa Festival London, Oude Muziek Utrecht, Festival de Pontoise, Printemps des Arts de Nantes, Theatre de Poissy, Theatre de Bordeaux, Rencontres de Vezelay, Festival Musique Sacree de Fribourg, Pfingstfestspiele Melk, Flagey à Bruxelles, Festival de St Michel-en-Thierache, Festival de Sablé-sur-Sarthe, Brugge Musica Antica, Musikverein Graz, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Sydney and in the Carnegie Hall in New York, among many others.