[University of Michigan, 2007]
Claudio Monteverdi’s Mentre vaga Angioletta is a lovely madrigal about the admiration of
music’s power and its versatility.
Monteverdi conveys the poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini very well. Not only does he use text painting with
almost every individual word in the poem, but he also conveys an overall sense
of admiration and longing throughout the entire work.
Guarini’s
poem is about all of the things that music is capable of doing, describing in
detail the abilities of the human voice to convey contradictory
characteristics: it can be hurried and held back, broken and swift, projected
and low, and tremulous and firm. It
begins with the wonderment of Angioletta, one of the three virtuoso women
singers of the concerto delle donne,
and ends with the statement that the human heart steers clear from love in
order to prevent it from being broken.
Taking
a closer look at the text painting, we can see that Monteverdi pays such close
attention to the words that almost every word in the poem is adequately
imitated through the music. For example,
with the words “my heart beats faster” the notes of the madrigal pick up in
tempo and continue in an ascending fashion of thirds, followed by an upward
scale. With the words “I try to fathom
how” Monteverdi provides his listeners with minor music, depicting mystery and
echoing the poet’s wonderment. “The
Spirit of Music” brings the entrance of instruments, showing the pomp and
importance of this spirit and presenting us with the theme of the poem. With “into a fount of exquisite harmony” we
are treated to a display of harmonies and intensity unprecedented in the
madrigal; the music creates the imagery of a fountain and one might imagine a
fountain bursting with new and exciting harmonies. The phrase “urging it on” is accompanied with
an ascending pattern, musically portraying encouragement and urgency. It seems that every word describing the
characteristics of music is confirmed in the music: with “broken syllables” the
phrase is broken up, with “sometimes softly murmuring” the voice becomes
quieter and melancholy, with “low and liquid” the voice is indeed lower and
smooth, “alternating” of course brings in additional voices and alternating
harmonies, “held notes” are held, with “now suspended” the melody is sung with
two voices, a cappella, in sync, as if suspended in the air without
instrumental accompaniment, and with “spreads its wings and flies” the melody
takes off in an ascending style, depicting a heart flying up, up, and away into
safety.
I do
sense that Monteverdi is trying to go above and beyond the text painting mimesis idea of the Renaissance. Not only is he using text painting with each
individual word, but he is using it with the entire work as a whole. He leaves us with an unresolved harmony, and
the idea that the heart should fly away from love, taking a pessimistic
perspective on being in love. According
to Guarini’s text, music is a spirit that can do so many things, and eventually
will even transform the human heart into a bird so that it may fly away from
love and heartbreak. Monteverdi supports
this belief by articulating each and every capability of the Spirit of
Music.
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