Claudio Monteverdi and Sacred Music in the Household of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, 1590-1612

Abstract

Upon the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua (as on all laity) the canon law of the Catholic Church imposed an obligation to be present at Matins, Mass, and Vespers on every Sunday and (with First Vespers on the eve) on every major feast day. To facilitate their compliance Dukes Guglielmo and Vincenzo maintained among their household personnel an ecclesiastical staff (the cappella) extending to a principal and four other chaplains, a Director of Music (Maestro di Cappella), and ten adult male singers. Within the ducal palace at Mantua they kept two chapels for the conduct of service in their presence with elaborate music. For observance of the Office (and also High Mass when there were visiting princes to impress) there was maintained within the Corte Vecchia an opulent chapel, a little larger than the papal Sistine Chapel, known as the church of Santa Croce. For the celebration of private Mass daily for the duke, there existed a separate chapel within the Palazzo del Capitano, furnished with an elaborate chamber organ. (With these arrangements the ducal basilica of Santa Barbara was not associated, being a wholly separate collegiate church enjoying its own endowment and staff.) Claudio Monteverdi was from 1590 a member, and from 1601 Maestro, of the cappella staff of the ducal household, and may be understood to have composed an extensive repertory of music to sacred texts not only for the liturgical service in the chapels, but also for the entertainment and edification of his employer in the domestic setting. In 1610 he published a collection of fifteen items, of kaleidoscopic variety and inconsistency in terms of style and scoring, of which one was a mass, six were miscellaneous sacri concentus (motets), and the remainder items for the office of Vespers. The text both of his title pages and of his dedication expressed no claim whatever that these offered a menu for the construction of a unified service of Vespers. Rather, these and his other inscriptions make plain that he was tendering merely a miscellany, subjected (for the sake of tidiness and intellectual cohesion) to a superficial ordering as if for a service of Marian festal Vespers, albeit inordinately extended and illicitly interrupted.

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