54 Facts About Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, string player, choirmaster, and Catholic priest.

Claudio Monteverdi's surviving letters give insight into the life of a professional musician in Italy of the period, including problems of income, patronage and politics.

Claudio Monteverdi's surviving music includes nine books of madrigals, large-scale religious works, such as his Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610, and three complete operas.

Claudio Monteverdi is established both as a significant influence in European musical history and as a composer whose works are regularly performed and recorded.

Claudio Monteverdi is usually described as an "Italian" composer, even though in his lifetime the concept of "Italy" existed only as a geographical entity.

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Claudio Monteverdi was the first child of the apothecary Baldassare Monteverdi and his first wife Maddalena ; they had married early the previous year.

Claudio Monteverdi's first published work, a set of motets, for three voices, was issued in Venice in 1582, when he was only fifteen years old.

The musicologist Tim Carter deduces that Ingegneri "gave him a solid grounding in counterpoint and composition", and that Claudio Monteverdi would have studied playing instruments of the viol family and singing.

Claudio Monteverdi's second published work, Madrigali spirituali, was printed at Brescia.

When Claudio Monteverdi arrived in Mantua, the maestro di capella at the court was the Flemish musician Giaches de Wert.

When Wert died in 1596, his post was given to Benedetto Pallavicino, but Claudio Monteverdi was clearly highly regarded by Vincenzo and accompanied him on his military campaigns in Hungary and on a visit to Flanders in 1599.

Strain of the hard work Claudio Monteverdi had been putting into these and other compositions was exacerbated by personal tragedies.

Claudio Monteverdi resented his increasingly poor financial treatment by the Gonzagas.

In 1613, following the death of Giulio Cesare Martinengo, Claudio Monteverdi auditioned for his post as maestro at the basilica of San Marco in Venice, for which he submitted music for a Mass.

When Claudio Monteverdi arrived to take up his post, his principal responsibility was to recruit, train, discipline and manage the musicians of San Marco, who amounted to about 30 singers and six instrumentalists; the numbers could be increased for major events.

Claudio Monteverdi sought to expand the repertory, including not only the traditional a cappella repertoire of Roman and Flemish composers, but examples of the modern style which he favoured, including the use of continuo and other instruments.

Claudio Monteverdi was free to obtain income by providing music for other Venetian churches and for other patrons, and was frequently commissioned to provide music for state banquets.

The Procurators of San Marco, to whom Claudio Monteverdi was directly responsible, showed their satisfaction with his work in 1616 by raising his annual salary from 300 ducats to 400.

Claudio Monteverdi received commissions from other Italian states and from their communities in Venice.

Claudio Monteverdi acted on behalf of Paolo Giordano II, Duke of Bracciano, to arrange publication of works by the Cremona musician Francesco Petratti.

In 1627 Claudio Monteverdi received a major commission from Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, for a series of works, and gained leave from the Procurators to spend time there during 1627 and 1628.

Claudio Monteverdi discusses experiments to transform lead into gold, the problems of obtaining mercury, and mentions commissioning special vessels for his experiments from the glassworks at Murano.

Claudio Monteverdi was on one occasion – probably because of his wide network of contacts – the subject of an anonymous denunciation to the Venetian authorities alleging that he supported the Habsburgs.

Claudio Monteverdi was obliged to sell the necklace he had received from Duchess Caterina to pay for his son's defence.

Claudio Monteverdi wrote at the time to Striggio seeking his help, and fearing that Massimiliano might be subject to torture; it seems that Striggio's intervention was helpful.

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Money worries at this time led Claudio Monteverdi to visit Cremona to secure for himself a church canonry.

Claudio Monteverdi's set of Scherzi musicali was published in Venice in 1632.

In 1631, Claudio Monteverdi was admitted to the tonsure, and was ordained deacon, and later priest, in 1632.

Claudio Monteverdi was still not entirely free from his responsibilities for the musicians at San Marco.

Claudio Monteverdi revised his earlier opera L'Arianna in 1640 and wrote three new works for the commercial stage, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Le nozze d'Enea e Lavinia, and L'incoronazione di Poppea .

Claudio Monteverdi was survived by his sons; Masimilliano died in 1661, Francesco after 1677.

Ingegneri, Claudio Monteverdi's first tutor, was a master of the musica reservata vocal style, which involved the use of chromatic progressions and word-painting; Claudio Monteverdi's early compositions were grounded in this style.

Ingegneri was a traditional Renaissance composer, "something of an anachronism", according to Arnold, but Claudio Monteverdi studied the work of more "modern" composers such as Luca Marenzio, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, and a little later, Giaches de Wert, from whom he would learn the art of expressing passion.

Claudio Monteverdi set the latter to music in an archaic style reminiscent of the long-dead Cipriano de Rore.

Claudio Monteverdi continued to use this procedure well beyond his apprentice years, a factor that in some critics' eyes has compromised his reputation for originality.

Claudio Monteverdi's daring use of this device is, says Palisca, "like a forbidden pleasure".

Besides Tasso and Guarini, Claudio Monteverdi set to music verses by Rinuccini, Maurizio Moro and Ridolfo Arlotti .

Fifth book looks more to the future; for example, Claudio Monteverdi employs the concertato style with basso continuo, and includes a sinfonia in the final piece.

Claudio Monteverdi published Scherzi musicale a tre voci, settings of verses composed since 1599 and dedicated to the Gonzaga heir, Francesco.

Claudio Monteverdi combines elements of the traditional 16th-century madrigal with the new monodic style where the text dominates the music and sinfonias and instrumental ritornellos illustrate the action.

Cusick observes how Claudio Monteverdi is able to match in music the "rhetorical and syntactical gestures" in the text of Ottavio Rinuccini.

Vespro della Beata Vergine, Claudio Monteverdi's first published sacred music since the Madrigali spirituali of 1583, consists of 14 components: an introductory versicle and response, five psalms interspersed with five "sacred concertos", a hymn, and two Magnificat settings.

Claudio Monteverdi employs many musical styles; the more traditional features, such as cantus firmus, f bordone and Venetian canzone, are mixed with the latest madrigal style, including echo effects and chains of dissonances.

Claudio Monteverdi uses modern rhythms, frequent metre changes and constantly varying textures; yet, according to John Eliot Gardiner, "for all the virtuosity of its instrumental writing and the evident care which has gone into the combinations of timbre", Claudio Monteverdi's chief concern was resolving the proper combination of words and music.

The Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, centrepiece of the "war" settings, had been written and performed in Venice in 1624; on its publication in the eighth book, Claudio Monteverdi explicitly linked it to his concept of concitato genera that would "fittingly imitate the utterance and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare", and implied that since he had originated this style, others had begun to copy it.

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Claudio Monteverdi retained emotional and political attachments to the Mantuan court and wrote for it, or undertook to write, large amounts of stage music including at least four operas.

Apart from the madrigal books, Claudio Monteverdi's only published collection during this period was the volume of Scherzi musicale in 1632.

Claudio Monteverdi's two surviving operatic works of this period, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione are held by Arnold to be the first "modern" operas; Il ritorno is the first Venetian opera to depart from what Ellen Rosand terms "the mythological pastoral".

In L'incoronazione, Claudio Monteverdi represents moods and situations by specific musical devices: triple metre stands for the language of love; arpeggios demonstrate conflict; stile concitato represents rage.

Selva morale e spirituale of 1641, and the posthumous Messa et salmi published in 1650, are selections of the sacred music that Claudio Monteverdi wrote for San Marco during his 30-year tenure – much else was likely written but not published.

Interest in Claudio Monteverdi revived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries among music scholars in Germany and Italy, although he was still regarded as essentially a historical curiosity.

Revival of public interest in Claudio Monteverdi's music gathered pace in the second half of the 20th century, reaching full spate in the general early-music revival of the 1970s, during which time the emphasis turned increasingly towards "authentic" performance using historical instruments.

Claudio Monteverdi is lauded by modern critics as "the most significant composer in late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy"; "one of the principal composers in the history of Western music"; and, routinely, as the first great opera composer.

Claudio Monteverdi represents the late Renaissance era while simultaneously summing up much of the early Baroque.