Two Monteverdi Problems, and Why They Matter

Author(s): Tim Carter

Source: The Journal of Musicology , Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 417-433
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2002.19.3.417

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 Two Monteverdi Problems,
and Why They Matter
T I M C A RT E R

I n the notes to his 1996–97 recordings of Mon-

teverdi’s secular duets,1 Alan Curtis places great emphasis on the fact
that he has gone back to the original sources, thereby producing signif-
icant new readings of this music. The impulse is no doubt laudable,
although its consequences are sometimes odd. Take the example of the
well known “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti,” Ž rst published in Mon-
teverdi’s second book of Scherzi musicali (Venice: Bartolomeo Magni,
1632). In this setting for two tenors and continuo of a sonnet by the
Florentine poet Ottavio Rinuccini (1562–1621), Monteverdi produces 417
an exuberant sequence of variations over a ciaccona ground bass, re-
sponding with loving care to the pastoral imagery of the poem’s Ž rst
eleven lines; for the Ž nal tercet, he moves to a more declamatory,
recitative-like style, as the poet–lover contrasts the delights of spring
with his own turbulent emotional state. The ciaccona returns brie y
(twice) towards the end to point up the other paradox that lies at the
heart of the poem: how one can both weep and sing.
Curtis draws special attention to the fact that he has amended the
Ž rst line of the poem to read as “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi odori,” restor-
ing Rinuccini’s “sweet perfumes” in place of Monteverdi’s “sweet ac-
cents.” He is in distinguished company: The same change was urged by
Nino Pirrotta, writing in 1968, and of course, one takes issue with

Volume XIX • Number 3 • Summer 2002

The Journal of Musicology © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California

Portions of this paper were presented at the conference La musique ancienne dans le
monde d’aujourd’hui (Brussels, May 1998) and before a meeting of the Southeast Chapter
of the American Musicological Society (Chapel Hill, NC, February 2002); I have beneŽ ted
from comments made by members of both audiences. I am also most grateful to Massimo
Ossi and to an anonymous reader for their comments on a Ž nal draft.
1 Il Complesso Barocco, Monteverdi: Complete Duets, 2 vols. (Virgin Classics, 7243-5-

45293-2-0, 7243-5-45302-2-7).

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

Pirrotta only at one’s peril.2 The argument is that “odori” is what the
poet originally wrote, and that it Ž ts the prescribed rhyme-scheme of
the sonnet (rhyming with “Ž ori,” “Clori,” and “canori”), whereas “ac-
centi” does not. But although there is no doubt that “odori” is correct
by most poetic criteria, whether it is what Monteverdi wanted is another
matter altogether. Indeed, surely it is the very point of the musical set-
ting that Zephyr should return with “sweet accents,” just as the West
Wind also makes the  owers “dance” in the Ž eld—Why else have the
jaunty triple time over the ciaccona? Monteverdi’s “accenti” may be a
lapse made either consciously or subconsciously, and whether or not
prompted by his compositional requirements. But it cannot be an error
that requires correction in a modern edition or performance.
In fact, this is one of a quite large number of cases in Monteverdi’s
secular output where his presentation and handling of a text differs in
some signiŽ cant way from its poetic model. The composer was happy,
it seems, to omit one or more lines from a poem (for example, in
“Sfogava con le stelle” in the Fourth Book of madrigals), to add lines
(the settings of Tasso’s “Al lume delle stelle” in the Seventh and of Rin-
uccini’s “Ogni amante è guerrier: nel suo gran regno” in the Eighth),
418 to change rhyme-words (“Incenerite spoglie, avara tomba” and “Qui
rise, o Tirsi, e qui ver me rivolse” in the Sixth; the Combattimento di
Tancredi e Clorinda in the Eighth), and even just to divert, or subvert, a
poem’s syntax (“Mentre vaga Angioletta,” again in the Eighth).3 Of
course, such discrepancies between a literary poem and its musical set-
ting might each be explained in various ways, ranging from the contam-
inated or otherwise problematic transmission of the text, to Mon-
teverdi’s willful intent to turn his verse to compositional advantage. For
that matter, the issue might seem to be of mere anecdotal interest, to
be relegated to the small print in a critical commentary. Yet Curtis’s and

2 In his “Scelte poetiche di Monteverdi,” Nuova rivista musicale italiana 2 (1968):

10–42, 226–54, translated as “Monteverdi’s Poetic Choices,” in Pirrotta, Music and Culture
in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: a Collection of Essays (Cambridge: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1984), 271–316, at 313n144.
3 For “Ogni amante è guerrier: nel suo gran regno,” see Pirrotta, “Monteverdi’s Po-

etic Choices,” 310n128; for “Mentre vaga Angioletta,” see Massimo Ossi, “A Sample Prob-
lem in Seventeenth-Century imitatio: Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Turini, and Battista
Guarini’s ‘Mentre vaga angioletta’,” in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in
Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony Cummings (Warren, Mich.:
Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 253–69, at 261. Other cases listed here are noted in Tim
Carter, “ ‘Sfogava con le stelle’ Reconsidered: Some Thoughts on the Analysis of Mon-
teverdi’s Mantuan Madrigals,” in Claudio Monteverdi: studi e prospettive; atti del convegno,
Mantova, 21–24 ottobre 1993, ed. Paola Besutti, Teresa M. Gialdroni, and Rodolfo
Baroncini, “Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti: Miscellanea” 5
(Florence: Olschki, 1998), 147–70, at 156n18.

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 carter

Pirrotta’s decision to restore “odori” for “accenti” in “ZeŽ ro torna, e di

soavi accenti” suggests that something more is at stake.
The absence of general discussion in the scholarly literature of
these problematic cases is both surprising and revealing, for they strike
to the heart of cherished beliefs about Monteverdi’s Ž delity to his texts
according to the central tenets of the so called seconda pratica. We have
collectively invested a great deal in the notion that Monteverdi was
somehow thoroughly and uniquely sensitive to the poetry he set, even
if opinions might differ on how this sensitivity variously manifested it-
self throughout his long career. The composer himself sowed the seeds
of this position in the well known statements made by him and his
brother, Giulio Cesare, in response to their controversy with the Bolog-
nese theorist, Giovanni Maria Artusi, in the early 1600s. As is well
known, Artusi’s diatribes against modern music focused at least in part
on passages in madrigals eventually published in Monteverdi’s Fourth
and Fifth Books (1603, 1605) on the grounds of their irregular disso-
nance treatment and modal improprieties. The composer responded
with the argument that while what Artusi said was perfectly reasonable
in the context of a “Ž rst practice”—adhering to the rules of counter-
point as described by Zarlino—in his “second practice” musical irregu- 419
larities were justiŽ ed, indeed required, by the expressive and other de-
mands of the text. Monteverdi built on the Platonic dictum (in The
Republic, as translated by Ficino) that “melodia” (the art of composi-
tion) comprises three elements, “oratio,” “harmonia,” and “rhythmus,”
with the Ž rst preeminent. Thus, as Giulio Cesare Monteverdi expressed
it in Italian (in the Dichiaratione appended to Monteverdi’s Scherzi musi-
cali a tre voci [Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1607]), the essential feature
of the seconda pratica is “che l’oratione sia padrona del armonia e non
serva” (“that the oration should be mistress of the harmony and not ser-
vant”). The catchphrase has been taken as one deŽ ning feature of
Monteverdi’s output, and indeed of his entire period, with changing re-
sponses to, and priorities within, text-setting in early 17th-century Italy
viewed as ushering in a new musical age.
Matters are, of course, more complex. Why the Monteverdis said
what they said, and whether they really meant it (and for how long),
has been a matter of some discussion. Scholars such as Gary Tomlinson
and Massimo Ossi have variously taken the statements on the seconda
pratica with some seriousness so as to produce important readings of
signiŽ cant portions of Monteverdi’s music by way of his literary sensibil-
ities. I, on the other hand, have argued that although the distinction
between a prima and a seconda pratica usefully pulled the rug out from
under Artusi’s feet—it offered the composer the convenient claim that

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

he was in effect playing the game according to other rules—it did not
necessarily form the basis of a consistent aesthetic position.4 The pre-
cise nature of Monteverdi’s Ž delity to his poetry has also been subject
to debate, not least when it clashes with another, somewhat paradoxical
tenet in our beliefs concerning the composer: that all said and done, he
was a musician through and through. Thus one can discuss whether the
seconda pratica is best served by adherence to the letter of a poem or
rather by an effective musical exploration of its spirit. Much depends,
too, on how one deŽ nes “l’oratione.” Most scholars follow Strunk in
translating it as “the words.” As both Claude Palisca and Silke Leopold
have pointed out, however, it can also mean verbal delivery.5 This, in
turn, places less onus on any literal treatment of a text, with Monteverdi
free to manipulate his poetry so long as its effective delivery remained a
priority. But our test-case of “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti” illustrates
some of the inconsistencies that emerge from these various positions.
Curtis and Pirrotta clearly felt justiŽ ed in amending the Ž rst line of the
text on the grounds that it involves an error (say, by the printer) some-
how extraneous to what the composer wanted, or should have wanted,
to write; they seem to have assumed that Monteverdi would not be so
420 crass as to alter a prominent rhyme-word. Ossi, on the other hand, be-
lieves that the composer’s changes to Rinuccini’s sonnet “reveal his

4
See Gary Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1987); Massimo Ossi, Divining the Oracle: Aspects of Claudio Monteverdi’s “seconda prat-
tica” (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, forthcoming); Tim Carter, “Artusi, Monteverdi,
and the Poetics of Modern Music,” in Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honor of
Claude V. Palisca, ed. Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning (Stuyvesant,
N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1992), 171–94.
5 For the translation of the 1607 “Dichiaratione,” see Oliver Strunk, Source Readings

in Music History (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), 405–15; idem, Source Readings in Music
History, vol. 4: The Baroque Era, ed. Margaret Murata (New York and London: Norton,
1998), 28–36. It has tended to dominate the Anglo-American literature, despite the vari-
ous problems—and the need to return to the original Italian—noted in my “Artusi,
Monteverdi, and the Poetics of Modern Music.” Compare also Denis Arnold, Monteverdi
(London: Dent, 1963), 3rd ed. rev. Tim Carter (London: Dent, 1990), 57 (“words”);
Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance, 23 (“words”); and Suzanne Cusick,
“Gendering Modern Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi-Artusi Controversy,” Journal
of the American Musicological Society 46 (1993): 1–25 (“words”). Silke Leopold (Claudio
Monteverdi und seine Zeit [Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1982], 57) uses the German “Text,”
which is followed in the book’s English translation (Monteverdi: Music in Transition [Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1991], 42). The doyen of scholars working on this issue, Claude
Palisca (“The Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy,” in The Monteverdi Companion, ed. Denis
Arnold and Nigel Fortune [London: Faber and Faber, 1968], 133–66; rev. in The New
Monteverdi Companion, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune [London: Faber and Faber,
1985], 127–58), tends to use both “text” and “words,” although he reports (155) the
more active meaning. Compare also Leopold, Monteverdi: Music in Transition, 50, which
similarly notes that the Latin “oratio,” like the Greek “logos,” can mean “on the one hand
the words as such, and, on the other, the delivery of the words.”

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 carter

care, and talent, for poetic detail,”6 with, for example, “accenti” being
far richer than “odori” in verbal and musical meaning.
One can usually discover, or invent, some more or less plausible
musico-rhetorical explanation for Monteverdi’s manipulation of his
texts. Indeed, it becomes essential to do so if one somehow believes in
the seconda pratica, however it might be deŽ ned. Yet matters become
more difŽ cult in cases where his musical setting produces severe prob-
lems in reading a poem, or still worse, creates arrant nonsense. How far
can we go in seeking to legitimize Monteverdi’s treatment of his poetry?
The following discussion of two examples—another passage in the duet
“ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti,” and the trio settings of “Su, su, su
pastorelli vezzosi”—explores some of the concerns behind that rather
troublesome question.

“ZeŽro torna, e di soavi accenti”

Alan Curtis might feel that he had addressed the most obvious difŽ -
culty in the duet “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti” by restoring the “cor-
rect” reading of the Ž rst line. However, there are other issues that de-
mand equal attention. The version of Rinuccini’s sonnet included in 421
his posthumous Poesie (Florence: I Giunti, 1622) contains some read-
ings at variance with Monteverdi’s setting, including not just “odori” for
the composer’s “accenti,” but also a different beginning to the Ž nal ter-
cet (“Lass’io” rather than “Sol io”).7 But even if we take Monteverdi’s
reading on its own terms, it is not entirely straightforward (the transla-
tion here is by Denis Stevens):8

ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti
l’aer fa grato e ’l pié discioglie a
l’onde,
e mormorando tra le verdi
fronde,
fa danzar al bel suon su ’l prato i
Ž ori.
5 Inghirlandato il crin Fillide e Clori
Zephyr returns, and with sweet accents
enchants the air and awakens the
waves,
and murmuring his way through green
leaves
he invites the meadow  owers to
dance to his tune.
With garlanded hair, Phyllis and
Chlorys

6 Massimo Ossi, “L’armonia raddoppiata: on Claudio Monteverdi’s ZeŽro torna, Hein-

rich Schütz’s Es steh Gott auf, and Other Early Seventeenth-Century ciaccone,” Studi musi-
cali 17 (1988): 225–53, at 241.
7 One wonders, in fact, why Curtis did not make this editorial change, too, although

Monteverdi’s “Sol” has a clear impact on his setting, with one voice left “alone.”
8 In Claudio Monteverdi: Songs and Madrigals, trans. Denis Stevens (Ebrington, Glouces-

tershire: Long Barn Books, 1999), 230–32.

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

note temprando amor care e
gioconde,9
e da monti e da valli ime e
profonde
raddoppian l’armonia gli antri
canori.
Sorge più vaga in ciel l’aurora,
e ’l sole
10 sparge piú luci d’or; piú puro
argento
fregia di Teti il bel ceruleo
manto.
Sol io, per selve abbandonate e
sole,
l’ardor di due begli occhi e
’l mio tormento,
come vuol mia ventura, hor
piango and hor canto.
sing joyful love songs so dear to them,
while from the high hills and deep
valleys
the echoing caves redouble their music.
Dawn rises more lovely in the sky, and
the sun
pours down gold yet brighter,
embellishing
the sky-blue mantle of Thetys with
purer silver.
Alone I wander through lonely and
deserted woods,
and, as my fortune demands, now
weep, now sing
the brightness of two lovely eyes and
my torment.

It is well known that the poem contains self-conscious references

and allusions to Petrarch’s sonnet “ZeŽ ro torna e ’l bel tempo rimena,”
422 which Monteverdi had set for Ž ve voices and continuo in his Sixth
Book of madrigals of 1614: Rinuccini, like most Florentine poets, was
strongly Petrarchan. But unlike the 1614 setting, Monteverdi’s han-
dling of “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti” is in a thoroughly modern
musical style: Two tenors offer a prodigious display of musical images to
paint the text over the repeating ciaccona ground bass. Quite apart from
this musical imagery—which is virtuosic in both senses—the duet is re-
markably well crafted. Monteverdi dares to construct a setting based
(for its Ž rst 11 lines of text) on no fewer than 56 statements of a two-
measure cadential formula, while the shifts between triple and duple
time for, and in, the Ž nal tercet emphasize the vivid contrasts in the
text. He also follows quite closely the syntax of the poem, respecting
Rinuccini’s enjambments: For example, the Ž rst two lines are broken
into three parts—“ZeŽ ro torna,” “e di soavi accenti l’aer fa grato,” and
“e ’l pié discioglie a l’onde.” The one exception may be for other rea-
sons. The tenors are given a brief respite for one statement of the bass
pattern in measures 65–66, after line 6 of the text, even though the

9
This is another misreading: Rinuccini has “note tempran d’amor care e gioconde”
(i.e., Phyllis and Chlorys temper sweet and pleasant notes of love), which has been al-
tered to a gerund (Love tempering sweet and pleasant notes). This is a near homophone,
especially when eliding the last syllable of “temprando” and the Ž rst of “amor,” producing
in effect “note temprand’Amor.” It suggests that Monteverdi may have had an aural mem-
ory of the text rather than a written version of it, or perhaps that an editor, typesetter, or
proofreader was taking it down by dictation.

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 carter

syntax is more or less continuous from line 6 to line 7. This allows the
singers to take a rest; it also divides the piece precisely at its lesser
Golden Section (beat 193 out of a total of 506), suggesting that broader
structural issues are in play.10
Line 7, however, contains the most fundamental “problem” of
“ZeŽ ro torna e di soavi accenti.” In general, one can nitpick at Denis
Stevens’s translation given above: It is not quite literal, and in particu-
lar, the reordering of the last two lines is unhelpful. But still worse, his
translation is completely wrong at one key point. Stevens is not alone:
His mistake has been made explicitly or implicitly in almost all accounts
of this text that I know (although there is at least one honorable excep-
tion, to be discussed below). It seems to be one of those recursive er-
rors within the literature re ecting some manner of short-circuit in the
synapses of our collective historical memories. Such errors are always
very interesting indeed.
Stevens translates line 7—“e da monti e da valli ime e profonde”—
as “while from the high hills and deep valleys.” This reading, or some
variant thereof (such as “from mountains and valleys lofty and deep”),
appears quite often in published translations of Rinuccini’s sonnet.11
But it cannot be right: “Ime e profonde” are adjectives in the feminine 423
plural form, and so must both apply to “[le] valli” and not to “[i]
monti.” Thus here we have two adjectives linked by “and” referring to a
single noun and not to two nouns in opposition, just as in the previous
line “care e gioconde” qualify “note”; the hills (or mountains) cannot
be “ime” while the valleys are “profonde.” Moreover, “imo” (“ima,”
“imi,” “ime”) does not mean “high”: Indeed, the most detailed Italian
dictionaries refer to its early use in Dante and Petrarch to mean “deep”

10 For Monteverdi’s use of the Golden Section and similar proportions, see Roger

Bowers, “Some Re ection upon Notation and Proportion in Monteverdi’s Mass and Ves-
pers of 1610,” Music & Letters 73 (1992): 347–98, at 391–95 (discussing the Sonata sopra
“Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis” ). My total of 506 beats assumes that the shifts between duple
and triple meter are not proportional (as Bowers would argue in general at least for Mon-
teverdi’s earlier notation) but rather are based on metrical equivalence at the lowest
level, with a whole note in the triple time equalling a quarter note in the duple. This
reading is prompted by the upbeats leading into the changed meters. The lesser Golden
Section is calculated as 506 divided by 0.382 (the greater Golden Section is 0.618), i.e.
193.292.
11
For example, it can be found in numerous liner-note translations from the early
1980s on (by Alan Curtis, Hans Grüss, Lionel Salter, Eric van Tassel, Derek Yeld, and oth-
ers), although I have not done a systematic search. See also Leo Schrade, Monteverdi: Cre-
ator of Modern Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950; repr. 1979), 330, where “ime e pro-
fonde” is offered as one of many examples in this duet where “the melodic motifs . . . are
the most realistic imaginable”; and Leopold, Monteverdi: Music in Transition, 114, refer-
ring to “the high mountains and deep valleys.” Italians tend to pass over the issue in si-
lence: for example, Paolo Fabbri notes “i monti e le valli ‘profonde’ ” in his Monteverdi
(Turin: EDT, 1985), 289.

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

in the sense of low as distinct from “profondo,” meaning “deep” in the

sense of distance.12 These early citations also associate “imo” with val-
leys. The word derives from the Latin “imus,” a poetic contraction (of-
ten used by Virgil) of “inŽ mus,” the superlative form of “inferus.” The
Italian is an old Tuscan word that would have been well enough known
to the Florentine Rinuccini and to most erudite poets of the period.
Thus Torquato Tasso uses it in canto 12 of his Gerusalemme liberata when
he describes the ceremonies of the Christian armies about to attack
Jerusalem. They Ž rst make a pilgrimage up the Mount of Olives with de-
vout singing and playing, and as they ascend, the valleys “low and deep”
—“le valli ime e profonde”—resound with cavernous echoes from all
sides, redoubling the praise of Christ and the Blessed Virgin.13 Rinuc-
cini seems to be referring directly to Tasso, even if his context is very dif-
ferent. But his point is that the valleys are deep in two dimensions, and
it is this double depth that enables the echoes ringing forth from the
caves to magnify the sweet, pleasant notes sung by Phyllis and Chlorys.
That much was clear to the poet, even if not to Stevens and to so
many others. But although translators are always easy targets for criti-
cism, in this case there may be an unexpected explanation for their
424 repeated error. The sonnet is full of rich images crying out for old-
fashioned madrigalian word-painting: the recurring “return” of Zephyr,
the “sweet accents” in the air, the  owing waves, the “murmuring” in
the leaves, the  owers made to “dance” to the wind, the entwined gar-
lands in the nymphs’ hair, their joyful singing, the mountains, valleys,
and echoing caverns, the rising dawn, and the sun spreading its rays.
Monteverdi acts accordingly, presenting a series of musical signs that
consistently resemble the content of the text on a quite traditional word-
by-word basis:14 appoggiaturas for the “accenti,” roulades for the air, sin-
uous lines for the waves and for murmuring, jaunty triads for the danc-
ing, close canon for the hair braided with garlands, high notes for the

12 See, for example, Nicolò Tommaseo, Dizionario della lingua italiana, 20 vols. (Mi-

lan: Rizzoli, 1977), 10:21, where “imo” is deŽ ned as “Basso, inŽ mo.” Petrarch, Canzoniere
145 (Sonnet 111, “Pommi ove ’l sole occide i Ž ori e l’erba”), is often cited as an early use
(“in alto poggio, in valle ima e palustre”). Compare also the noun form in Dante, Par-
adiso, I.138: “se d’alto monte scende giuso ad imo.” The once authoritative Vocabolario
degli Accademici della Crusca (Venice: Giovanni Alberti, 1612), now searchable online at
<http://vocabolario.biblio.cribecu.sns.it/Vocabolario/html/index.html>, gives a similar
deŽ nition.
13
Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, canto 12, st. 11: “Colà s’invia l’essercito canoro, / e ne
suonan le valli ime e profonde / e gli alti colli e le spelonche loro, / e da ben mille parti
Ecco risponde, / e quasi par che boscareccio coro / fra quegli antri si celi e in quelle
fronde, / si chiaramente replicar s’udia / or di Cristo il gran nome, or di Maria.”
14 See my discussion of the duet in “Resemblance and Representation: Towards a

New Aesthetic in the Music of Monteverdi,” in “Con che soavità”: Essays in Italian Baroque
Opera, Song and Dance, 1580–1740, ed. Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995), 118–34.

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 carter

mountains, low ones for the valleys, an extensive play on echo effects at
“raddoppian l’armonia,” and so on. It is this consistent use of mimetic
gestures that may well explain the mistranslation, which responds directly
to the potent imagery in Monteverdi’s music.
Monteverdi sets line 7 quite deliberately, with “e da monti, da
monti” to a rising line in Tenor 1, “e da valli, da valli” to a falling line in
Tenor 2, then “ime” to high notes in Tenor 1, and “e profonde” to low
notes in Tenor 2 (see Ex. 1). This manner of setting clearly distin-
guishes the “monti . . . ime” from the “valli . . . profonde,” and also, of
course, gives the impression of painting “ime” as “high.” It would seem
that our translators have simply followed suit, translating not so much
the text as what appears to be Monteverdi’s own musical translation
of that text. But is their mistake also the composer’s? Can we feasibly
accept that Monteverdi did indeed lapse twice in reading Rinuccini’s
line, once in terms of grammar (the agreement of “ime”), and once in
terms of vocabulary (the word’s meaning)?

example 1. Monteverdi, “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti” (Scherzi musi-

cali, 1632), mm. 67–72, in Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, 425
ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero, 2nd ed., 17 vols. (Vienna:
Universal Edition, 1954–68), 9:14.
67

[ ]
E da mon - ti, da mon - ti

[ ]
e da val -

[ ]

70

i - me

¶
li, da val - li e pro - fon - de

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

It seems clear that many translators of “ZeŽ ro torna e di soavi ac-

centi” have in some sense been misled by Monteverdi. The honorable
exception noted above proves the rule: In his edition of the setting of
“ZeŽ ro torna e di soavi odori” (sic) in Salamone Rossi’s Madrigaletti a
due voci . . . con il basso continuo (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1628),
Don Harrán provides the almost impeccable “While from the moun-
tains and from the deepest and lowest valleys,” but then, Rossi sets the
words in an entirely appropriate manner.15 As for Monteverdi, however,
the question now is whether he was himself somehow misled by his text.
The composer’s defenders—and there will be many—might wish to
make one or more of several possible arguments in his favor: Mon-
teverdi is focusing on broader images rather than single words (moun-
tains are high even if Rinuccini does not say that they are); the sides of
“deep” valleys can seem “high” depending on the position of the viewer;
music cannot feasibly imitate the two meanings of “deep” contained in
“ime e profonde,” and so the juxtaposition of high and low notes serves
a rhetorical purpose more than a mimetic one; these high and low notes
chie y deŽ ne a musical space through which the succeeding echoes will
ring, just as those echoes will resound through the twice-deep valleys;
426 the composer is less interested in conventional word-painting than in
broader musical symmetries and structures; the thrill caused by those
top Gs far outweighs any textual impropriety which, in turn, is scarcely
noticed in the experience of listening to the piece, rather than reading
its score. Fewer, no doubt, will be prepared to accept that Monteverdi
simply made a mistake, perhaps because he did not know the Tuscan
word “imo” and so took a guess at its meaning, incorrectly if not im-
plausibly (did he confuse it with “cime,” i.e. mountain “peaks”?). But if
there is indeed an error here, then it no less warrants correction than
the mistaken (according to Curtis and Pirrotta) “accenti” in the Ž rst
line of the poem. Of course, one would never make a change: For mod-
ern scholars and performers, Monteverdi’s musical notes are in the end
always more important than his words.

15 Salamone Rossi: Complete Works, ed. Don Harrán, “Corpus mensurabilis musicae”

100 (Neuhausen: American Institute of Musicology, 1995), 8: xxxv–xxxvi (critical com-

mentary and translation), 41–45 (music). Elsewhere, however, Rossi’s setting has been
mistreated by way of Monteverdian interference: It is both indexed and inventoried as
“ZeŽ ro torna e di soavi accenti” in BibliograŽa della musica italiana vocale profana pubblicata
dal 1500 al 1700, rev. ed., Emil Vogel, Alfred Einstein, François Lesure, and Claudio Sar-
tori, eds. (Pomezia: Staderini, 1977). Here, a similar (but less extreme) fate also befalls
Francesco Dognazzi’s setting in his Musiche varie a cinque (Venice: Bartolomeo Magni,
1643), which is indexed as “. . . accenti” but inventoried as the correct “. . . odori.” The
presence of three settings of Rinuccini’s sonnet in (and only in) collections by com-
posers with strong Mantuan associations is striking, but there is no apparent connection
between Monteverdi’s setting and Rossi’s.

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 carter

“Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi”

While the treatment of “ime” in “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti”
might in the end Ž nd some musical or other legitimization, Mon-
teverdi’s defenders will have a harder time with the trio settings of “Su,
su, su pastorelli vezzosi.” Not for nothing have these two pieces been
more or less entirely ignored in the literature. A version for two sopra-
nos, alto and continuo was included in the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi
. . . Libro ottavo printed in Venice by Alessandro Vincenti in 1638. An-
other setting for two tenors, bass, and continuo is in Monteverdi’s
Madrigali e canzonette a due, e tre voci . . . Libro nono, which Vincenti
printed in Venice in 1651, some eight years after Monteverdi’s death.
This is one of only two cases where Monteverdi set the same vernacular
text twice (the other is “Perchè se m’odiavi,” also for two tenors and
bass in the Ninth Book, and for soprano solo in Alessandro Vincenti’s
1634 anthology Arie de diversi). The general absence of repetition in
Monteverdi’s poetic choices over his long career is striking; therefore
two settings of the same text necessarily raise intriguing questions.
There are problems of chronology in Monteverdi’s Venetian music.
He published relatively little between the Seventh Book of 1619 and
427
the Eighth of 1638: we have the Lamento d’Arianna . . . con due lettere
amorose in genere rappresentativo (Venice: Bartolomeo Magni, 1623), the
1632 Scherzi musicali, and a few pieces in anthologies. The Eighth Book
contains material going back at least in its Ž rst version to 1608 (the
Ballo delle ingrate), as well as music from the 1620s (the Combattimento di
Tancredi e Clorinda) and early 1630s.16 As for the posthumous Ninth
Book, Alessandro Vincenti included Ž ve duets already published by
Monteverdi (one from the 1632 Scherzi musicali and four from the
Eighth Book), which the printer said in a prefatory note were given
here “per più comodità de Vertuosi,” presumably “for the greater con-
venience” of those virtuosos unable or unwilling to buy the more ex-
pensive Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi just to perform its smaller-scale set-
tings.17 But various features of the 1651 print suggest that Vincenti was
seeking more to make a quick proŽ t by trading on Monteverdi’s name:
Witness the unusual extent to which the strophic settings have all their
strophes written out in music such that, for example, the three stanzas
of “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” take up three printed pages in each

16
See Steven Saunders, “New Light on the Genesis of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of
Madrigals,” Music and Letters 77 (1996): 183–93.
17 The Eighth Book was advertised in Vincenti’s catalogues of 1649 (at the high

price of 16 lire), 1658 (16 lire) and 1662 (16 lire 10 soldi); see Oscar Mischiati, Indici, cata-
loghi e avvisi degli editori e librai musicali italiani dal 1591 al 1798, “Studi e testi per la storia
della musica” 2 (Florence: Olschki, 1984), IX.78, IXbis.76, X.78. Of course, such longevity
does not indicate high demand.

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

partbook rather than just one (as with the setting in the Madrigali guer-
rieri, et amorosi).
In the dedication of the Ninth Book to Gerolamo Orologio, Vin-
centi also claims that Monteverdi had given him “alcuni suoi Musicali
Concerti” while still alive. This presumably refers to the works here not
hitherto printed in other sources. One wonders, however, precisely in
what state the composer gave them to the printer (if he did). Most of
the new settings in the Ninth Book do not scale great musical heights,
and indeed many would seem to have come from deep within Mon-
teverdi’s bottom drawer as material discarded over time, whether for its
lack of quality or for its failure to suit his previous publications. “Su, su,
su pastorelli vezzosi” might be viewed as a case in point. The text, cele-
brating the dawn, is anonymous, and its metrical structure is distinctly
odd and clumsily handled across the strophes. These problems seem to
have led to awkwardness in transmission, given the notable differences
between the text given in the Eighth Book and in the Ninth, and also in
the 1634 Arie de diversi, which contains an unattributed solo song with
just the Ž rst two strophes. The following text is as given in the Ninth
Book with some added punctuation for the sake of clarity. Lines given
428 here in italic are present in the Ninth Book setting—and also in the
Arie de diversi version—but not in the trio of the Eighth Book.18
Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi, Up, up, up, delightful shepherds,
correte, venite run, come
a mirar, a goder to admire, to enjoy
l’aure gradite, the pleasant breezes,
5 e quel dolce gioir 19 and that sweet enjoyment
ch’a noi porta ridente which to us smilingly brings
la bell’alba nascente. the beautiful, rising dawn.
Mirate i prati Admire the Ž elds
pien di Ž ori odorati full of perfumed  owers

18 The critical notes on the text (by Claudio Vela) in Claudio Monteverdi: Opera om-

nia, ed. Anna Maria Monterossi Vacchelli, “Instituta et monumenta” 1/5 (Cremona: Fon-
dazione Claudio Monteverdi, 1970– ), 19:52–53 (henceforth M9), have some strange er-
rors, including mislabeling the 1638 partbooks and not fully indicating the lines omitted
therein (in addition, the notes for lines 9 and 23 are incorrect or incomplete in terms of
minor details). In the footnotes below, I list signiŽ cant variants cued to the following
sigla: 1634 = Arie de diversi (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1634); 1638 = Monteverdi,
Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi . . . Libro ottavo (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1638); 1651 =
Monteverdi, Madrigali e canzonette . . . Libro nono (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1651). The
versiŽ cation is open to debate. For example, and as is noted in M9, 1634 divides the
opening line into two more regular settenari, “Su, su, su pastorelli / pastorelli vezzosi.” It
also runs on lines 3 and 4, joining up a settenario tronco and a quinario into an endecasillabo;
however, lines 10–11 remain separate, probably because joining them would produce an
irregularly accented endecasillabo.
19 1634: “e quel dolce piacer” (rhyming with “goder”), which is probably to be pre-

ferred (and is the reading in M9).

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 carter

10 ch’al suo vago apparir which at its delightful appearance

ridon festosi. smile festively.
Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi. Up, up, up, delightful shepherds.

Su, su, su augelletti canori, Up, up, up, songful birds,

sciogliete, snodate unfold, let loose
15 al cantar, al garrir20 to singing, to chattering
le voci amate, your beloved voices,
ed al dolce apparir and at the sweet appearance
del sol che i monti indora of the sun which makes gold the
mountains
salutate l’aurora, salute the dawn,
20 e su’ rametti and on the little branches
pien di vaghi Ž oretti full of pretty  owers
del suo leggiadro crin21 of his graceful brow
dite gl’onori. sing the honors.
Su, su, su augelletti canori. Up, up, up, songful birds.

25 Su, su, su fonticelli loquaci, Up, up, up, loquacious little streams,
vezzosi correte delightful, run
a gioir, a scherzar to enjoy, to play
come solete. as you are wont.
Siavi caro il mirar May it be dear to you to see 429
30 di quai splendor si veste with what splendor is dressed
la bell’alba nascente, 22 beautiful, rising dawn,
e di quai lampi and with what lights
son coloriti i campi23 are colored the Ž elds
che prometton ai cor which promise to hearts
35 gioie veraci. true joys.
Su, su, su fonticelli loquaci. Up, up, up, loquacious little streams.

The TTB setting of “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” has some musical
problems. The opening is striking enough, with its strongly directed C
major, but the subsequent moves to D major are awkward. In the sec-
ond half of the text, the imitative point for “Mirate i prati” is repeated
to excess, and Tenor 1 gets seriously out of step, introducing “ch’al suo
vago apparir” long before the other parts (and it then reverts, very
strangely, to “mirate i prati”). The underlay of the second and third
strophes is also clumsy, with additional rests in the music that make
matters still more uncomfortable. This piece is not vintage Monteverdi

20
1634: “al cantar, al girar”; 1638: “al cantar, al gioir”; 1651: “garir.”
21 1638: “del leggiadro suo crin,” which (so it is argued in M9) also Ž ts the 1651
music better. For ll. 22–23, 1634 reads “Da suoi leggiadri umori / dite li Amori.”
22 M9 suggests “la bell’alba celeste” (rhyming with “veste”), arguing that “nascente,”

repeating l. 7, perhaps arose from an error.

23 1638: (C1, A) “coloriti son i campi” (which does not Ž t the music in C1); (C2)

“coloriti i suoi campi.”

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

by any reckoning. Indeed, given its presence in a late, somewhat prob-

lematic source, some might even be inclined to doubt its authenticity.
The SSA setting in the Eighth Book is more successful in terms of
its handling of the part-writing and the larger-scale structure. It has
rhythmic similarities with the TTB one—as would be expected of so
oddly accented a poem—although it manages to sustain the melodic
line and the harmonic  ow more effectively. But its reading of the text
is very bizarre indeed, omitting the Ž fth and seventh lines of each stro-
phe, and thus producing gibberish in terms of syntax and meaning.24
There seems to be no way to make any sense of the poem as given here,
and one wonders just how this reading was let pass by Monteverdi, or
for that matter by Alessandro Vincenti, who had already published a
setting (in the Arie de diversi) with these lines included.
A clue to explain the missing Ž fth and seventh lines of each stro-
phe, however, is provided by the TTB setting, for here the Ž fth line is
set for just the two tenors, the sixth line for the bass alone, and the sev-
enth again just for the two tenors (see Ex. 2). In other words, anyone
looking at just the vocal bass part of this setting would not know of the
existence of the Ž fth and seventh lines, and indeed might surmise from
430 the rests that the sixth line was anticipated and then repeated in the
upper voices. It therefore seems at least possible that when Monteverdi
came to set “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” for SSA, the version published
in 1638, he drew the text from an earlier version of the bass part of his
TTB setting printed only later, in 1651 (not, however, the actual exem-
plar for the 1651 bass part, given the other different readings in the
text). This also suggests that when Monteverdi reset the text, he forgot
what he had written for the two tenors. Thus we now have a likely
chronology for the two pieces—the low-voice one coming Ž rst, even
though it was published later (and is of lesser musical quality)—plus
some evidence that Monteverdi kept the TTB setting in parts rather
than in score. This scenario would also explain another oddity. In the
1651 setting, Tenors 1 and 2 and the continuo (but not the vocal bass
part) have a repeat sign after “gradite” (l. 4) and at the equivalent
point in subsequent strophes, treating the Ž rst four lines as a syntactical
unit. In the 1638 setting, Soprano 2 and the continuo (but not So-
prano 1 or Alto) have the repeat after “ridente” (l. 6). If the 1638 set-
ting was prepared from an earlier version of the manuscript materials

24
There is some evidence of an attempt to rescue the situation; in the second
stanza (l. 20), 1638 has “e suoi rametti” in all voices, perhaps to bridge the syntactical
rupture caused by the omission of the previous line (“suoi” refers to “sol”), although even
that does not make much sense. For other examples of such editing in the Madrigali guer-
rieri, et amorosi—not by the composer, I argue—see my forthcoming “In Search of the Text
of Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.”

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 carter

example 2a. Monteverdi, “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” (Madrigali e

canzonette . . . Libro nono, 1651), mm. 25–31, in Claudio
Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, ed. Malipiero, 9:91–92.
a) 25

[]
[gradi-] te, E quel dol - ce gio - ir

[]
[gradi-] te, Ch’a noi

[]

28

La bel - l’al - ba na - scen - te.

431
¶
por - ta ri - den - te Mi - ra - te i

that formed the basis of the 1651 bass part, then there would have
been no indication of where to divide the setting into two; Monteverdi’s
(or his editor’s) apparent guess, at “ridente,” cannot have been made
on the basis of the preceding verse (“ch’a noi porta ridente” makes no
sense without the line before it, which is omitted in 1638), but rather
seems to re ect his sense that a new sentence begins at “Mirate i prati.”
By that point, however, the poem was corrupt beyond redemption.
Again, scholars will no doubt want to account for Monteverdi’s to-
tal disregard for poetic sense in the SSA version of “Su, su, su pastorelli
vezzosi,” and (I would argue) for musical logic in the TTB setting. For
example, the poem is trite—so bad settings are not the composer’s fault
—and it even supports Tomlinson’s notion of the descent of Monteverdi’s
Venetian secular music into the  ashy but sterile rhetoric of Marinism
prompted by the declining spirit of the age. There is, of course, an-
other explanation: Even Monteverdi could have a bad day.

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 t he j ou r na l o f mus ic o log y

example 2b. “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” (Madrigali guerrieri, et

amorosi . . . Libro ottavo, 1638), mm. 20–25, in Claudio
Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, ed. Malipiero, 8:311–12 (voices
only; continuo follows lowest voice).
b) 20

[ ]
[gradi-] te Ch’a noi por - ta ri - den - te, ri -

[ ]

23

den - te.

¶
432 Mi - ra - te i

* * *
It is true that for every apparent “mistake” or misprision in Mon-
teverdi’s handling of his texts, one can Ž nd a counterexample where he
has penetrated to the heart of a poem in witty, profound, and moving
ways. Two examples will not sufŽ ce to bring down a composer or the
scholarly ediŽ ce constructed around him. Even to call into question the
nature of the seconda pratica and all it implies, is not, in the end, to deny
Monteverdi’s stature. My account of two “problems” in his secular out-
put, and of how to explain them away (or not), does make one danger
clear, however. Our historical readings of given musical phenomena are
almost always implicated in their historiography which, in turn, Ž xes
agendas, and a set of prejudices, that we often Ž nd hard to acknowl-
edge, let alone escape. The more closely we examine the music of Mon-
teverdi, the more we must confront the consequences of these preju-
dices and turn them to advantage. Only then, perhaps, will we come
close to understanding his achievement.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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 carter

ABSTRACT
A close examination of Monteverdi’s problematic settings of two
texts, “ZeŽ ro torna, e di soavi accenti” (1632) and “Su, su, su pastorelli
vezzosi” (1638, 1651), raises signiŽ cant issues concerning his poetic
sensitivities and also the status of his literary and musical sources. This
further calls into question the modern reception of his agenda for the
so called seconda pratica, for all its role as an integral part of the stories
conventionally told of the composer.

433

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