The Musical Language of the Venetian School

The Venetian style was all about grandeur and largesse. The foremost purpose of music during worship was the expression of the text and the overall effect of the music, which had to be impressive and dramatic. Whilst in Rome the a cappella style of Palestrina was deeply entrenched, during the sixteenth century the Venetians developed a love of orchestral colour. Instrumental music, in the form of sonatas, canzonas and ricercars, was regularly included in church services, with sonatas generally being more devotional in mood than canzonas. Gabrieli included instrumental pieces in his Sacrae Symphoniae Ioannis Gabrielii, a collection of sacred music which was published in Venice in 1597 - although it is interesting to note that Monteverdi, who wrote brilliantly for instruments, didn’t leave behind a single piece which is only for instruments. In 1610, three years after staging L’Orfeo, and three years before taking up his position in Venice, Monteverdi published a collection of mass settings, motets, hymns and magnificats dedicated to the Virgin Mary and presented them to Pope Paul V. This collection of sacred music is significant as it was the first sacred music he had published since 1582, when he would only have been 15 years old. The collection contained a confusing profusion of musical styles which we can classify as coming from the prima and seconda prattica – the first and second practice. The first practice was the old traditional style of Palestrina, popular in Rome and bound by tradition. The rules for it had been set out in a treatise by Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590), a pupil of Willaert and briefly (and somewhat unsuccessfully) Maestro di Capella at St Mark’s in 1565. In the mid sixteenth century some composers wished to see this style canonised as the only acceptable one for sacred music. The Venetians largely differed, and i>n the 1560s two distinct groups developed within the Venetian school: a progressive group, led by Baldassare Donato (1530-1603), and a conservative group, led by Zarlino, who was then Maestro di Cappella. Friction between the two groups came to a head in 1569 with a dramatic, public fight between Donato and Zarlino during the Feast of St Mark. Donato was duly appointed as Maestro di Cappella.

In the preface to his fifth book of madrigals, published in 1605, Monteverdi, clearly a progressive at heart, felt the need to lay out, in a brief treatise of his own, the rules and idioms of this seconda prattica. They were at odds with the treatise of Zarlino. This book of madrigals was the first to be published with a basso continuo part, and, in terms of its use of dissonance and harmony, it is outrageously progressive, and audaciously breaks all of the established rules of the prima prattica. Another distinction between the two styles can be understood by comparing the motto of the first practice ut harmonia sit domina orationis (let harmony be the mistress of the text) with that of the second, ut oratio sit domina harmoniae (let the text be the mistress of the harmony). This second style, where the expression of the text in as dramatic a way as possible was uppermost, and as exemplified in this fifth book of madrigals, was the style which found favour with the Venetians and therefore has a part to play in explaining the decision of the Procurators to appoint Monteverdi. Monteverdi found no difficulty in exercising these styles side by side, as the 1610 collection shows. (One might cynically consider that he was deliberately demonstrating compositional versatility in this publication in order to maximise the opportunity of an offer of employment from either the conservative Rome or the much more forward-looking Venice.) As late as 1641 he was still demonstrating this versatility in the publication of his Selva Morale e Spritiuale, which contains a mass in the old style as well as significant passages of music in the seconda prattica. Denis Arnold, in his book on Monteverdi, states that “the multiplicity of styles which can be found in Monteverdi’s music owes much to the fact that, although he spent the last thirty years of his relatively long life employed by the church, he had virtually no contact with it during his young and formative years.”

During the latter half of the sixteenth century Venice was still politically at odds with the papacy, and the progressive musical tradition at St Mark’s was not helping the situation. The Venetians appeared not to care about this: Sansovino, in his treatise Venetia, citta nobilissima, claims that “in Venice, music has her very home.” The austerity of Roman a cappella music made virtually no impact on the composers of the Venetian school. Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586), a singer at St Mark’s from 1536 and organist from 1566, also a pupil of Willaert and uncle to Giovanni, makes it clear, in his preface for a publication of sacred music in 1563, that instruments and voices were to be used both separately and together - although he does not make it clear exactly how this should be done. All instrumental parts in these publications are underlaid with text, and so the instrumental players were essentially playing from vocal parts, and therefore following the phrasing and breathing of the singers – a practice which, in the interests of authenticity, is happening in this evening’s concert. We can assume that the combination of voices and instruments would have varied from one performance to the next: as long as the text is not compromised and no part is missing this would have worked perfectly well.