Vespro della Beata Vergine

Monteverdi’s first foray into the publication of sacred music is an exuberant cornucopia of compositional dexterity and imagination, which can be seen as one of the greatest job applications in all music. Whether it was designed to impress the Pope with an eye to employment, or as a shop-window display of its composer’s prowess, it served its likely purpose: three years later in 1613, Monteverdi was installed as director of music at St. Mark’s in Venice. Musically, the evening service of Vespers observes a sung sequence of psalms, antiphons, motets, a hymn and a concluding setting of the Magnificat (the response of the Virgin Mary to the news of the Annunciation). Monteverdi’s collection is on such an extravagant scale, it was probably only intended to be dipped into—ever practical, he suggested possible simplifications, and the Magnificat exists in two versions: one unapologetically opulent, the other for six voices and organ. Old styles and new, sacred and secular, collide in a work that achieves a powerful synthesis balancing intimate devotion with undiluted grandeur and a sensuality drawing on Monteverdi’s experience as a composer of opera and madrigals. In Duo Seraphim (Two Angels) earthly and heavenly dialogues are enjoined; while the remarkable Sonata sopra Sancta Maria (Sonata on the Blessed Mary) unleashes the instruments to caper with unfettered glee, as oblivious high voices resolutely repeat their pleas for the Virgin’s intercession. An all-embracing compendium, gilded with an irresistible exoticism, and arguably similarly intentioned, the Vespers rank alongside J.S. Bach’s avowedly encyclopaedic Mass in B Minor.