The Tallis Choir of Toronto Online - Programme Preview: Monteverdi Midnight Mass

Monteverdi and San Marco

The year is 1613. A gondola slips through the back canals of Venice. Seated amidships is the greatest living composer in Europe, Claudio Monteverdi. On his lap he holds a leather satchel filled with samples of his music. Monteverdi is on his way to an interview for the most prestigious musical post in Italy, maestro di cappella in St. Mark's, the state chapel of the doge. He is nervous. The past two years have not been promising. He has failed to secure a significant post since he left Mantua. His reputation is growing, but he needs a strong base for his music. He needs Venice.

Awaiting his arrival in the Doge's palace is a council in crisis. The procurators are contentious and divided about whom to appoint. Despite its glittering facade, Venice is a state in decline economically and politically. The solution? Pour money into the arts to create the illusion of magnificence and bolster prestige. Behind the Tintorettos there is a whiff of death in Venice. The council is particularly fractious today because the standard of music in St. Mark's has slid into mediocrity. The glory days of the Gabrielis have passed. Venice needs a new superstar: it needs Claudio Monteverdi.

The opposition is anxious. Monteverdi is ostentatiously avant-garde, the chief exponent of the radical 'Second Practice.' St. Mark's will be filled with new sounds: virtuoso solo singing, extravagant ornamentation, dramatic new instrumental forms. Monteverdi's supporters argue that this is precisely what Venice needs to impress the musical world. The doubters are not persuaded. There are rumours of 'personal problems' -- perhaps an anonymous letter was dropped into the mouth of the bronze lion in the Piazza. Informants report that Monteverdi had some sort of mental breakdown during the previous year. Can he handle the position?

The applicant is admitted and the doors are closed. We do not know what happened during that encounter, but Claudio Monteverdi emerged as the new choirmaster of St. Mark's. Venice had cheated death yet again and was poised to begin one of the greatest epochs in its musical history.

Monteverdi's first task was to acquaint himself with the unusual customs of Venice. St. Mark's was not the cathedral of Venice (that was on the island of Torcello) but the Chapel Royal of the doges of Venice. After the Council of Trent, the Vatican had imposed uniformity on the various local rites in Western Europe. The fiercely independent Venetians simply ignored the pope and maintained their own customs.

During the four weeks of Advent which preceded Christmas, the music had been solemn and ascetic. Now the Christmas season was welcomed in with concerted music in church and carnaval masks in the piazza. The great jewelled altarpiece in St. Mark's, the “Pala d'oro,” was ceremonially opened and thousands of candles illuminated the golden mosaics of the domes. The entire government of the “Most Serene Republic” accompanied the doge down the Staircase of the Giants and into St. Mark's where Monteverdi and his musicians were waiting in the galleries. We can only marvel like the astonished Englishman who stuttered out a breathless description of his experience in St. Mark's:

“Music … so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent,
that it did even ravish and stupefy all those strangers that never heard the like!”