Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), SV 206, is a musical setting by Claudio Monteverdi of the evening vespers on Marian feasts, scored for soloists, choirs, and orchestra. It is an ambitious work in scope and in its variety of style and scoring, and has a duration of around 90 minutes. Published in Venice (with a dedication to Pope Paul V dated 1 September 1610) as ("Mass for the Most Holy Virgin for six voices, and Vespers for several voices with some sacred songs, suitable for chapels and ducal chambers"), it is sometimes called Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610.
Monteverdi composed the music while musician and composer for the Gonzagas, the dukes of Mantua. The libretto is compiled from several Latin Biblical and liturgical texts. The thirteen movements include the introductory Deus in adiutorium, five Psalms, four concertato motets and a vocal sonata on the "Sancta Maria" litany, several differently scored stanzas of the hymn "Ave maris stella", and a choice of two Magnificats. A church performance would have included antiphons in Gregorian chant for the specific feast day. The composition demonstrates Monteverdi's ability to assimilate both the new seconda pratica, such as in the emerging opera, and the old style of the prima pratica, building psalms and Magnificat on the traditional plainchant as a cantus firmus. The composition is scored for up to ten vocal parts and instruments including cornettos, violins, viole da braccio, and basso continuo. Monteverdi travelled to Rome to deliver the composition to the Pope in person, and a partbook is held by the Vatican Library.
No performance during the composer's lifetime can be positively identified from surviving documents, though parts of the work might have been performed at the ducal chapels in Mantua and at San Marco in Venice, where the composer became director of music in 1613. The work received renewed attention from musicologists and performers in the 20th century. They have discussed whether it is a planned composition in a modern sense or a collection of music suitable for Vespers, and have debated the role of the added movements, instrumentation, keys and other issues of historically informed performance. The first recording of excerpts from the Vespers was released in 1953; many recordings that followed presented all the music printed in 1610. In some recordings and performances, antiphons for a given occasion of the church year are added to create a liturgical vespers service, while others strictly present only the printed music. Monteverdi's Vespers are regarded as a unique milestone of music history, at the transition from Renaissance to Baroque.
History and context Monteverdi in Mantua Monteverdi, who was born in Cremona in 1567, was a court musician for the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua from 1590 to 1612. He began as a viol player under Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and advanced to become maestro della musica in late 1601. He was responsible for the duke's sacred and secular music, in regular church services and soirées on Fridays, and for extraordinary events. While Monteverdi was court musician in Mantua, the opera genre emerged, first as entertainment for nobility, to become public musical theatre later. The first work now considered as an opera is Jacopo Peri's Dafne of 1597. In the new genre, a complete story was told through characters; as well as choruses and ensembles, the vocal parts included recitative, aria, and arioso. Monteverdi's first opera was L'Orfeo, which premiered in 1607. The duke was quick to recognise the potential of this new musical form for bringing prestige to those willing to sponsor it.
Monteverdi wrote the movements of the Vespers piece by piece, while responsible for the ducal services which were held at the Santa Croce chapel at the palace. He completed the large-scale work in 1610. He possibly composed the Vespers aspiring to a better position, and the work demonstrates his abilities as a composer in a great variety of styles. The setting was Monteverdi's first published sacred composition after his initial publications nearly thirty years before and stands out for its assimilation of both the old and the new styles.
Vespers
The liturgical vespers is an evening prayer service according to the Catholic Officium Divinum (Divine Office). At Monteverdi's time, it was sung in Latin, as were all Catholic services then. A vespers service at the time contained five psalms, a hymn and the Magnificat (Mary's song of praise). The five psalms for Marian feasts (as well as other female saints) begin with Psalm 110 in Hebrew counting, but known to Monteverdi as Psalmus 109 in the numbering of the Vulgate:
Psalm Latin English Psalm 110 The LORD said unto my Lord Psalm 113 Praise ye [the Lord, O ye] servants of the Lord Psalm 122 I was glad Psalm 127 Except the Lord [build the house] Psalm 147 Praise, Jerusalem
The individual psalms and the Magnificat are concluded by the doxology Gloria Patri. The hymn for Marian feasts was "Ave maris stella". Variable elements, changing with the liturgical occasion, are antiphons, inserted before each psalm and the Magnificat, which reflect the specific feast and connect the Old Testament psalms to Christian theology. Vespers are traditionally framed by the opening versicle and response from Psalm 70, and the closing blessing.
On ordinary Sundays, the vespers service might be sung in Gregorian chant, while on high holidays, such as the feast day of a patron saint, elaborate concertante music was preferred. In his Vespers, Monteverdi may have offered such music without necessarily expecting that all of it would be performed in a given service.
Monteverdi deviated from the typical vespers liturgy by adding motets (concerti or sacri concentus) between the psalms. Scholars debate if they were meant to replace antiphons or rather as embellishments of the preceding psalm. Monteverdi also included a Marian litany, "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis" (Holy Mary, pray for us). All liturgical texts are set using their psalm tones in Gregorian chant, often as a cantus firmus.
Graham Dixon suggests the setting is more suited for the feast of Saint Barbara, claiming, for example, that the texts from the Song of Songs are applicable to any female saint but that a dedication to fit a Marian feast made the work more "marketable". There are just two Marian songs in the whole work ("Audi coelum" and "Ave maris stella"); and the sonata could easily be rearranged to any saint's name.
First publication
The first mention of the work's publication is in a July 1610 letter by Monteverdi's assistant, Bassano Casola, to Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, the duke's younger son. Casola described that two compositions were in the process to be printed, a six-part mass (Messa da Capella) on motifs from Nicolas Gombert's In illo tempore, and psalms for a vespers setting for the Virgin (Salmi del Vespro della Madonna). He described the psalms as "varying and diverse inventions and harmonies over a canto fermo" (cantus firmus), and noted that Monteverdi would travel to Rome to personally dedicate the publication to the Pope in the autumn.
The printing was completed in Venice, then an important centre for music printing. The printing of collections of sacred music in Italy at the period has been described as "a fast-growing and very large and lucrative market", with around 50 collections in 1610 alone, 36 of them for offices such as Vespers. The publisher was Ricciardo Amadino, who had published Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo in 1609. While the opera was published as a score, the Vespers music appeared as a set of partbooks. It was published together with Monteverdi's mass Missa in illo tempore. The cover describes both works: "Sanctissimae Virgini Missa senis vocibus ad ecclesiarum choros, ac Vespere pluribus decantandae cum nonnullis sacris concentibus ad Sacella sive Principum Cubicula accommodata" (Mass for the Most Holy Virgin for six voices for church choirs, and vespers for several voices with some sacred songs, suitable for chapels and ducal chambers).
One of the partbooks contains the basso continuo and provides a kind of short score for the more complicated movements: it gives the title of the Vespers as: "Vespro della Beata Vergine da concerto composta sopra canti firmi" (Vesper for the Blessed Virgin for concertos, composed on cantus firmi).
Monteverdi's notation is still in the style of Renaissance music, for example regarding the duration of notes and the absence of bar lines. There is no score, but a partbook for each voice and instrument. The corresponding continuo notes the beginnings of text lines, for example Magnificat, "Et exultauit", "Quia respexit" and "Quia fecit", and the names of instruments, for example cornetto, trombone and flauto. The initials of a title are embellished, such as the M of Magnificat, and in the voice part, the initials of a cantus firmus line begin with a larger letter, e.g. "E t exultauit..." and "Q uia respexit...". Sections where the voice or instrument is silent are marked "Tacet.". The notation poses challenges to editors adopting the current system of notation, which was established about a half-century after Vespers was written.
Monteverdi dedicated the work to Pope Paul V, who had recently visited Mantua, and dated the dedication 1 September 1610. The schedule seems to have resulted in some of the movements being printed in haste and some corrections had to be made. Monteverdi visited Rome, as anticipated, in October 1610 and it is likely that he delivered a copy to the Pope, given that the Papal Library holds an alto partbook. It is not clear whether he was honoured with a papal audience. The alto partbook which the Pope received, with hand-written corrections, survived in the Biblioteca Doria Pamphilij.
Monteverdi later wrote further music for vespers services, in the collection Selva morale e spirituale, published in 1641, and in another collection, Messa e Salmi (Mass and Psalms) which was published after his death in 1650. There is no indication that any of his publications of sacred music received a second edition.
Later publication After the original print, the next time parts from the Vespers were published was in an 1834 book by Carl von Winterfeld devoted to the music of Giovanni Gabrieli. He chose the beginning of the Dixit Dominus and of the Deposuit from the Magnificat, discussing the variety of styles in detail. Luigi Torchi published the Sonata as the first complete movement from the Vespers at the turn of the 20th century. The first modern edition of the Vespers appeared in 1932 as part of Gian Francesco Malipiero's edition of Monteverdi's complete works. Two years later, Hans F. Redlich published an edition which dropped two psalms, arranged the other movements in different order, and implemented the figured bass in a complicated way. In 1966, Gottfried Wolters edited the first critical edition. Critical editions were published by, among others, Clifford Bartlett in 1986, Jerome Roche in 1994, and Uwe Wolf in 2013, while Antonio Delfino has edited the Vespers for a complete edition of the composer's works.
Performance The historical record does not indicate whether Monteverdi actually performed the Vespers in Mantua or in Rome, where he was not offered a post. He assumed the position of maestro di cappella at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice in 1613 and a performance there seems likely. Church music in Venice is well documented and performers can draw information for historically informed performances from that knowledge, for example that Monteverdi expected a choir of all male voices.