Monteverdi in Mantua - the Genius of the Vespers

CHOIR SINGS

This is a journey back in time to Italy 400 years ago,

and a turning point in Western music.

It's the story of a Renaissance duke and the composer who worked for him,

and how their volatile relationship

would create one of the most revolutionary and beautiful

collections of music ever published.

The composer was Claudio Monteverdi,

whose bold experiments would change the way music sounds for ever.

Here in the northern Italian town of Mantua,

we'll discover the world of his employer, Vincenzo Gonzaga,

a man addicted to sex, luxury and art.

CHOIR SINGS

This is the story of a new breed of dramatic composer.

The world had never heard anything before like the Monteverdi Vespers.

With Harry Christophers and his virtuoso choir The Sixteen,

we'll investigate what makes this music so powerful

and so modern.

Let me take you into the heart of the Vespers

with Monteverdi In Mantua.

When Claudio Monteverdi composed his Vespers For The Blessed Virgin Mary,

often called The Vespers Of 1610

because that's when they were first published,

he must have known that it was a truly revolutionary work,

unlike anything that the world had heard before.

He was 43 years old, and at a crossroads in his life.

In this ground-breaking composition, he distils all his musical skills,

his genius, proving himself to be the first of a new breed

of dramatic composer, straddling the worlds of the secular

and the sacred.

CHOIR SINGS

For 20 years Monteverdi had toiled in the service

of a demanding and ungrateful patron.

With this unashamedly modern music as his manifesto,

he was determined to secure for himself a better future

and to escape forever the tyranny of his master,

Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua.

Our journey into the world of this masterpiece

starts here in Oxford, at the Ashmolean Museum.

This is the earliest portrait we have of Monteverdi,

painted in about 1597, when he was just 30.

And he's, er, rather a handsome young man.

He has a very sensual face.

He's holding a bass viol. In front of him is a piece of music,

which...

I can read, but I certainly can't identify,

and there's a quill too.

He actually looks a bit startled to me, his eyes are slightly wide,

and so perhaps he's been interrupted

and this is a picture of him at work.

Claudio Monteverdi was born here in Cremona

in the North Italian province of Lombardy.

Inevitably, there's a statue of him here,

and unfortunately, it's ghastly.

His father was called Baldassare, he was a barber surgeon,

and his mother Maddalena,

but she died when he was just seven years old.

He was baptised in a church on this site

which was subsequently destroyed and then rebuilt,

but the font remains, as do the baptismal records,

and here they are in front of me.

"15th May" - Maggio - "1567, Claudio Zwan" - a form of John -

"Anthony, figlio di" - son of -

Master Baldassare Monteverdi.

A great composer starts his life.

CHOIR SINGS

This is Cremona Cathedral,

Monteverdi's first workplace as apprentice to the composer

and master of the cathedral's music Marc'Antonio Ingegneri.

Ingegneri was very much of the old school.

His church music was based on medieval plainchant

and the theories of the ancient philosophers.

From his master, the young composer learned all the old ways,

but tradition was not to be his way.

By the time he was 20,

he'd already had four books of his work published,

each more radical than the last.

But he knew he still had a long way to go.

"I can't expect from music that is so much a product of youth

"as mine is such praise as might be given

"to the mature fruits of summer.

"My compositions are like the flowers of spring."

When he was 23, Monteverdi secured

an appointment in Mantua as a violist,

at the court of His Most Serene Highness the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga,

sole ruler of the city.

Vincenzo Gonzaga IS Mantua. He's the Mantuan law.

He owns his citizens. They are his children.

Everyone in Mantua owes the Duke loyalty and obedience.

Mantua today is a rather tranquil backwater

nestling in the heart of rural Italy,

but 400 years ago, it was a town that seethed with sexual scandal,

violence and court corruption.

And the palace of the Gonzagas, behind me, was at the centre

of this explosive mix of cruelty and high culture.

In this vast and elaborate palace, Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga

lived in luxurious style, ruling over a court

where art and music were at the centre of politics and power.

One of the ways of demonstrating that

you're a city and a court that's not to be messed with

is to show that you have wealth and prestige and great contacts.

Art, paintings, music are all part of this very overt display

of magnificence - a magnificence that keeps your enemies at bay.

One of the greatest painters of the Early Baroque, Peter Paul Rubens,

was recruited by Vincenzo to work for him at the Gonzaga court.

And here is Rubens's portrait of Vincenzo,

sitting there opulently dressed, very much the art collector,

the patron of music, the lavish thrower of parties.

Behind him is his father, more soberly dressed,

the statesman, the soldier, also a musician.

Vincenzo was connected by blood and marriage to the elite of Europe.

He was notorious for his devotion to alchemists,

dwarves and lady singers,

for his extravagance, his sexual promiscuity,

his lack of concern for the future,

and also for his genuine enthusiasm for the arts.

Of course, unless you were a famous lady singer,

the Gonzagas tended to pay the lowest possible fees

whilst demanding the highest possible standards.

So there he is - the maverick, the chancer,

summed up by his famous motto, "Forse che si, forse che no."

"Maybe, maybe not."

For the next 22 years, this would be Monteverdi's world,

working unceasingly, composing and performing

as Vincenzo Gonzaga dictated.

When you join the court, you become a servant of the Duke.

You need permission to marry, you need permission to leave the city,

you need permission, certainly, to seek alternative employment.

So while being a member of the ducal family

is a great privilege and a great honour,

it's also a great constraint.

In 1599, he fell in love with one of the court singers,

Claudia Cattaneo, and they were married here in this Mantuan church,

San Simone e Giuda.

And this is their marriage certificate.

Their entry is at the bottom of this first page.

And I can see his name, Claudio Monteverdi, "e Claudia Cattaneo".

But even this happy occasion was blighted by the Duke's stinginess.

Monteverdi would later complain

that although he'd been promised clothes,

he had no topcoat, no stockings or garters,

and no silk lining for his cloak.

This is the Mantua state archive,

and somewhere in this vast dusty labyrinth

there are preserved 127 letters written by Monteverdi

over a period of 30 years.

It's a remarkable legacy.

Addressed to various court officials, some to the Duke himself,

they reveal a long-suffering man beset by ill-health

who hated the swampy Mantuan climate.

This is business correspondence between an artist and his employer,

but in every detail, they show us how little control Monteverdi had

over his own life.

He was always polite, sometimes almost laughably courtly,

as was the fashion for the time,

pleading to be released from his master's vice-like grip

as wages were embezzled and promises broken,

and the work was relentless.

CHOIR SINGS

He was often a little tactless, but never malicious,

simply honest and outspoken,

and his letters are in this box here.

CHOIR SINGS

"To my most respected master,

"His Serene Highness the Lord Duke of Mantua.

"Having exhausted all other appeals,

"it is now proper that I kneel with humility before Your Highness

"humbly to beg from the bottom of my heart some five months' wages,

"without which my distress has been building up day upon day.

"Look not upon the boldness with which I ask this

"of Your Highness's infinite virtue,

"but favour me with your support without which my life is ruined.

"I pray to Almighty God for a long life for Your Highness

"to whom I bow,

"your most grateful and humble servant,

"Claudio Monteverdi."

Duke Vincenzo demanded new and impressive music

on an almost weekly basis,

particularly the fashionable secular songs known as madrigals.

Music became a highly competitive sport -

acquiring the greatest composers, the greatest singers

and the greatest players is something that different dukes

had attempted to compete with each other for.

Vincenzo was probably more sophisticated

than many of his contemporaries

and genuinely appreciates the calibre

of what he's managed to attract to Mantua.

Cruda Amarilli may sound innocuous to us -

in fact, it's rather a beautiful piece of work -

but it sparked a real controversy.

In 1600, Giovanni Maria Artusi published his treatise

on the imperfections of modern music.

"I was invited to hear a new madrigal," he wrote.

"I will not name the composer, but he introduced new rules,

"defamations of the true nature of harmony which proved harsh

"and unpleasing to the ear.

"There's nothing but smoke in the head of such a composer,

"so in love with himself that he believes

"he can corrupt and despoil the good old rules

"handed down to us by ancient theorists and musicians."

The composer in question can only have been Monteverdi,

since Artusi quotes from Cruda Amarilli, which he describes as

"a monstrous birth - part man, part crane, part swallow, part ox."

Five years later, Monteverdi publishes

his fifth book of madrigals and he writes

a brief but blunt preface.

"Being in the service of His Grace the Duke of Mantua,

"I don't have time to reply in detail to Artusi,

"but these things I do are not done by accident.

"It may be a surprise to some, but there are other ways

"of producing beauty and harmony besides the ancient style.

"Believe me, the modern composer

"is building on the foundations of truth."

By the time he's 40, he's not only published five books of madrigals,

but, significantly, they've all been reprinted.

But life is about to become very hard.

Claudia, his beloved wife and the mother of his two sons, dies.

At the same time, he was writing his opera, L'Orfeo,

whose plot must have had a particular significance for him.

The story of a musician

who descends into the underworld to recover his dead wife.

And it was probably first performed here,

in what is now the palace bookshop.

This is how Orfeo in the opera

responds to the news of his wife Eurydice's death.

"You are dead, my life,

"but I still breathe.

"Gone from me and never to return,

"so why should I remain?"

This was a turning point in Western classical music.

With Orfeo, Monteverdi had created

for the glory of the Duke and the House of Gonzaga

one of the world's first operas,

a work that dazzled and amazed its aristocratic Mantuan audience.

The success of Orfeo

only brought more demands from the Duke for more music,

and it was at this point that Monteverdi hatched his plan,

a real indication of what an independent thinker he was.

He would consolidate two decades of musical experimentation

into a single bold statement.

13 compositions dedicated to the Virgin Mary,

crucially not commissioned by Duke Vincenzo,

but designed to propel the composer's reputation beyond Mantua.

He called it "the fruit of my nocturnal labours",

and rather cheekily, he began it with the fanfare from Orfeo.

Monteverdi brings together all sorts of techniques,

utilising every single dramatic,

operatic effect. And nobody really has done this before.

It's by turns ebullient and mystical

and prayerful and joyful and sensuous.

It's a bit like putting on a really great album

that just doesn't have a bad track.

It's the most extraordinary piece, really, that I've ever sung.

I find Monteverdi just so wonderful to sing, it really is.

What makes the Vespers Of 1610 so remarkable

is that the composer uses instruments and techniques from

his secular work - his opera and his madrigals - in a sacred context.

It was Monteverdi's ambition to combine for the first time

the spiritual and the sensual, taking us through passages

of the most flamboyant virtuosity and the most profound intimacy.

And needless to say, he succeeds to thrilling effect.

With its heady mixture of elaborate fanfares,

extravagant theatrical gestures and moments of human intimacy,

the Vespers seem to me like

a microcosm of life at the Gonzaga court.

Duke Vincenzo I had a reputation for sexual dalliances -

more than dalliances, in some cases full-blooded affairs

with women of other people's courts

and the women of his own court.

In the late 16th century, being a man who put himself about

was actually a very good way of demonstrating your princely stature.

You didn't really need to follow normal rules.

Some of the texts that Monteverdi set for his Vespers were taken

from the Song Of Songs, the most erotic book in the Old Testament.

Here is no mention of God or the law, this is a dialogue

between two lovers, an unabashed celebration of sexual love.

# Pulchra es

# Amica mea

# Suavis

# Et decora

# Filia Jerusalem... #

Were the Vespers designed in part to be sung as extracts, as solo pieces?

Would they have been heard performed here in the ducal palace

outside the church?

Of course, within the church, there were only male voices heard.

But Monteverdi at this time was writing a great deal

for female voices,

constantly casting and directing women for his operas

and court entertainments.

And the presence of women performers at court

was a source of great pleasure

as well as scandal and gossip in 17th-century Italy.

Every week in this room, Monteverdi and his musicians,

both men and women, would perform for the Gonzaga Court.

"Every Friday evening," he wrote,

"there is music in the Hall Of Mirrors.

"And when the lady singers join us, their voices give our music

"such power and such special grace that it delights all the senses.

"His Highness the Duke will be compelled

"to post cards at the entrance soon,

"because I swear that the audience last Friday numbered over 100.

"Lord, ladies and gentlemen from the city."

# Pulchra es

# Amica mea... #

Pulchra Es is a very intimate, sensual setting of the Song Of Songs.

It always takes quite a lot of courage to sing that, really,

because there is so much control involved

and you have to trust your duetting partner

that you can really feed each line back and forward.

So it is very exposed.

# Sicut Jerusalem

# Terribilis... #

It is also an incredibly challenging range for the singers.

Vocally, it goes really high,

it goes really low, a lot of the time, for the sopranos.

So we are kind of grovelling around in our boots a lot of the time

and we still have to sound beautiful and expressive and all those things.

So it is a big challenge.

# Averte oculos tuos a me

# A me

# A me

# Quia ipsi... #

Vincenzo had a network of spies and music agents

that used to scour Italy,

looking to borrow or steal rising stars from other courts.

The Duke himself would pick and choose his leading ladies

and seduce them at every opportunity.

Did the Duke's appetites change the course of music history?

I met up with musicologist Paula Besutti.

-Women singers...

-Yes?

-They were quite new, weren't they?

-Yes.

In 1607, Eurydice in Orfeo was a young man. OK?

-Sung by a man?

-Yes.

-In 1608, Arianna was a woman.

-His second opera.

An actress. With Arianna,

we have the first case of a diva of opera.

-Do we have her name?

-Yes. Florinda Virginia Andreini nate Florinda.

-Very fascinating.

-It must have been very exciting, and very sexy...

-Yes.

-..to see women...

-Virginia was very, very sexy, yes.

Virginia was not only a singer but was a singer and actress.

That is so, so important, this aspect,

for understanding the significance of opera is not only music,

but music, beauty,

scenery, light and so on and so on.

-She was a bit of a superstar?

-Yes.

Florinda was a jewel of the court of Mantua.

MUSIC: O, Chiome D'Oro

Monteverdi's composition of the Vespers was interrupted

by a commission from Vincenzo.

He required a special magical, one to mourn the death of a singer,

Caterina Martinelli, nicknamed La Roma Nina, the Little Roman Girl.

She died suddenly from one of the many infectious diseases

that ravaged Mantua at the time, aged 18,

just before she was about to take the lead role

in one of Monteverdi's operas.

She had been a great favourite of the Duke's.

His agents had recruited her in 1603,

when she was just 13 years old.

But to protect her reputation,

her family insisted that she must take regular virginity tests.

Even in Rome, they were aware of Vincenzo's dubious reputation.

The Duke was sufficiently alarmed at this to recommend

that in order to keep things above board, she should stay

with the eminently respectable Monteverdi and his family.

Monteverdi knew about death. This is a madrigal of grief

in which his love for the human voice, for the young singer

whom he befriended, and for his wife, Claudia, are distilled.

This letter, dated 2nd December 1608, written during a period

when he would have been composing the Vespers,

shows him asking for an honourable dismissal from the Duke's service.

"The Duke only ever talks to me about hard work," he says.

"Believe me, if I do not take a break from this toiling away at music,

"my life will be a short one indeed.

"As a consequence of my labours so recent and of such magnitude,

"I suffer from frightful headaches

"and a horrible and violent itch all around my waist.

"No remedies, not even blood-letting, cure me.

"My father thinks that the cause of the pain in my head

"is mental strain and that the itch is due to Mantua's air,

"which does not agree with me.

"He fears that the air alone will be the death of me before too long."

It is a long letter, and paints a vivid portrait

of the day-to-day drudgery of life as a 17th-century composer.

He complains about his money problems,

how other people are paid more than he is,

how he never receives the money he is promised,

how he has to meet all his own costs,

how he can barely afford to feed and clothe his two sons.

"Please let me be released from the service of his Highness.

"It cannot make me poorer than I already am

"and perhaps I may even derive true happiness."

Monteverdi hated the pressures that Vincenzo put upon him.

Time and again he quotes the proverb,

"Presto e bene insieme non conviene."

"Haste and good work never go together."

Whenever the pressure of working for the Duke got too much for him,

Monteverdi would retreat to his childhood home in nearby Cremona,

a place he could focus his musical genius and compose.

VIOLIN MUSIC

In the 16th and 17th century,

Cremona was in the vanguard of musical instrument making.

It is no coincidence that in Monteverdi's Vespers, he employs

instruments that had never before been heard in church music.

Throughout his life, Monteverdi was delighted

and intrigued by new instruments and their possibilities.

# Sancta Maria

# Ora pro nobis... #

Monteverdi seems to really understand the dynamics of each instrument,

almost as if he played it. And perhaps he did

because musicians of the time were multi-instrumentalists.

What Monteverdi is doing in bringing these instruments

into this piece is he's bringing in new sound worlds, new colour,

he's being deliberately controversial and he's using

those instruments in a way that has never been done before.

I mean, it's completely pioneering stuff.

The cornet was the most favoured wind instrument of its time

and considered to come closest to the sound of the human voice.

And the human voice was the ultimate yardstick.

# Sancta Maria... #

The tenor sackbut can play as many notes as the voices of the time

and it could play as quickly and as virtuosic as the violin.

He gave us lots of notes to play and...

Yeah, we play them with joy, oh, we love it.

I find something new in every performance.

It's a brilliant piece of music.

The use of instruments here is truly revolutionary.

Monteverdi is like some kind of magician, constantly producing

new, surprising things from his copious bag of tricks.

You know, I would really love to have been there, in Mantua,

listening to Vespers and actually seeing the reaction

of Duke Vincenzo and his congregation.

The church and the Duke's palace had been built by his father, Guillermo,

who was passionate about sacred music

and designed the entire building around the organ.

This was Vincenzo's private chapel.

And if the Duke ever heard Monteverdi's musicians

perform the Vespers, it would have been here.

This is a theatrical space

and Monteverdi responded with his characteristic dramatic flair.

He placed one choir behind me,

an organist on this balcony, at the far end of the church

another choir, and here, a group of instrumentalists,

a technique known as cori spezzati - split choirs.

Monteverdi starts Nisi Dominus with full choir,

the two choirs singing together.

Then we have a sequence where we have the first choir giving us

all the words with great rhythmic vitality and contrasts.

And then this is handed over to the other choir,

throwing a sound from one end of the church to the other.

So we have the two choirs really oscillating from one to the other,

fighting rhythms, one of them lyrical and smoother

and the other one jagged and vibrant.

And the whole effect is one of you don't know where to listen

and your mind is taken in all sorts of places.

It would have made the congregation sit up and listen.

They'd never heard, really, anything like this.

Monteverdi loved these theatrical special effects.

In a section of the Vespers called Audi Coelum,

he employs an echo effect that had caused a sensation

when he'd used it in his operas.

With all its cameras and sound recording equipment,

the church where we are recording the music seems an ideal location

to experiment with this effect.

Five, four, three...

Harry, can we see how this echo effect works in practice?

Yes, we've got Jeremy singing the main tenor part

and Mark next to him is going to sing the echo.

Right, here we go.

# Ut

# Benedicam

# Dicam... #

So, Mark is the echo repeated, exactly the same notes,

but he's cut the word in half.

He has, he's just repeating the last two syllables of "benedicam",

but actually, in the process of doing that,

he's constructing his own word, "dicam".

-So, benedicam - I may bless thee. Dicam - I shall tell.

-I speak.

Now, we could be more theatrical, couldn't we?

-We could take Mark away from Jeremy, further away.

-We have to.

-To create a wonderful effect.

-A bit more spooky.

So he's now halfway down the nave

and we are going to do a separate section here.

Yes, this is really interesting because Monteverdi, with the echo,

repeats a couple of syllables, constructing a new word.

Here, actually, he repeats the same word but with a different meaning.

Coelos, maria - heavens and seas,

-and the echo repeats Maria - Mary.

-Mary.

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria... #

That's already more theatrical, isn't it? Could we hide him?

-That would be even better still.

-Because you're not conducting,

-so they could do it by ear.

-He could be anywhere.

-Everything is by telepathy.

-So we can put Mark right hidden away, then.

And you're going to do a larger section of the piece.

-Yes, we're going to start from the Ut benedicam.

-Good luck, Mark.

# Ut

# Benedicam

# Dicam

# Dic nam ista pulchra ut luna

# Electa ut sol, replet laetitia

# Terras... #

It's an extremely effective device.

I think it's really intended to convey God answering back to

someone's prayers, and this is a wonderful idea really,

that you offer up your prayer and something comes back.

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria

# Maria... #

Exploring these beautiful lakes that surround Mantua,

it's difficult to believe the place was such a torment for Monteverdi.

But after 20 years' service,

he was becoming increasingly desperate

to escape from the Mantuan court.

For a composer at this time, there were only two possible

employers - the aristocracy or the Church.

Monteverdi didn't want to swap one self-obsessed prince for another,

which left him only one recourse - sacred music.

By the autumn of 1610,

Monteverdi's plan is ready to be put into action.

He's finished the Vespers, he's had them printed,

and now he intends to take them to the very top.

Rome.

Five days' difficult journey away by carriage,

Rome was a city three times the size of Mantua, and the centre

of political and religious power, not just in Italy but in Europe.

He was hoping to present his new,

hot-off-the-press book of sacred music to the Pope.

Maybe through the marvel of his work,

he could secure a new position as a composer working for the Vatican

and thus escape the clutches of Vincenzo.

He certainly didn't want Vincenzo to know what he was doing.

He arrived in secret and avoided

staying at the Gonzaga Roman residence,

which would have been the done thing for a man in his position.

Unfortunately he was spotted,

by a Mantuan court official called Bissolati,

who rather sneakily wrote on the 7th of October,

"By chance this morning I ran into Signor Claudio Monteverdi.

"He's been staying in Rome for three days

"but has avoided being seen or heard of by us.

"He confesses he's been staying in a country inn."

He'd been rumbled.

CHOIR SINGS

The Pope that Monteverdi had hoped to present his work to was this man,

Pope Paul V, born Camillo Borghese.

He's rather a sly-looking fellow,

although the sceptical nature of his stare was probably as much

to do with his short-sightedness as it was a guide to his temperament.

The Pope had visited the Duke of Mantua a couple of years earlier,

probably had heard some of Monteverdi's music,

but on this occasion,

despite the composer dedicating the entire work to him -

even printing the papal coat of arms on the title page -

the two men never met, and Monteverdi left Rome unfulfilled.

The original printing of the Vespers is not just one book,

but seven separate volumes,

one for each of the different vocal parts plus yet another book

with the instrumental music in it.

Complete sets are scarce,

but here at the International Music Museum in Bologna,

they have eight beautifully preserved books, and I've asked

Harry and some of The Sixteen to join me here to take a look at them.

This is a very exciting moment,

because we have in front of us

the original 1610 printing of Monteverdi's Vespers.

So, Harry, take me through this, there are eight books here,

what's odd and interesting about this is they're all separate.

Does that make it more difficult?

It is, you've got individual singer partbooks,

and for us modern singers, we're used to seeing everything into a score.

Mark, you've performed from partbooks.

Yes, on occasion, it's very, very tricky.

We're conditioned as modern singers to have the entire score

in front of us, everything that's being sung, so you've got

points of reference in terms of the timing of what you're singing.

-Especially when you're not singing.

-When there are rests.

So this only has the tenor lines, it looks much more linear,

you've got more of a sense of the shape of your line,

cos it's not cluttered by the other lines, but on the other hand,

you've got no sense of what anybody else is doing, so you'd have to

either learn it in rehearsal or just do it with instinct and your ears.

Do you think that made a different type of listening, Harry?

Oh, very much so, I think singers in those days had to be well aware of

what their neighbour was singing, and to relate to all the parts around us.

Today we have everything in front of us, it's much more easy to score,

but in those days they'd have to listen, so that made the whole art

of music-making really quite exciting, I would have thought.

For me, that looks...

sort of difficult to read, rhythmically.

I can sort of picture the notes, but there are no bar lines

for instance, so is it difficult to read?

Well, yes, it is, obviously we know this now so it's ingrained in us.

If I was to see this for the first time I'm not sure what

I would make of it, it would be quite different

-to what I've seen.

-I mean, as an exercise...

..in musicality,

would you ever ask your singers to sing from partbooks, for instance?

-I'd love to have the time.

-Yes, quite!

-Can we try it out?

-Sure.

That's beautiful. Is it odd? Cos you know the piece.

It is, it's like a sentence without punctuation.

The next verse is also sung by soprano, not in this part

but in the second soprano partbook, and then the next solo verse

is sung by a male, and it's here in the tenor.

So, Simon, I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to sing together!

This is a ritual humiliation.

I'll just hide behind you two.

-Very croaky, I'm so sorry.

-Absolutely wonderful.

-Like a frog singing!

-Wasn't that great, though?

The last section of the Vespers is a bravura 17-minute setting

of the Magnificat,

Mary's great hymn of praise to God the Father from Saint Luke's Gospel.

"Magnificat anima mea Dominum."

Or, as the King James Bible has it, "My soul doth magnify the Lord."

The Magnificat is the big moment at the end of the Vespers service.

The demands he makes on both singers and instrumentalists is amazing.

It's really quite extreme.

We start with "Et exsultavit" with two tenors, really virtuosic.

It seems that he had a bit of a love for the tenors

that he was using at the time.

And they really get to show off, it's really flashy.

It's the equivalent of a Ferrari, it doesn't hold anything back.

This is the crux of everything,

and Monteverdi certainly delivers that to us musically,

because he presents us with movements for full choir,

incredibly virtuosic instrumental parts

that dart around all over the place...

..movements for different voices, and it's an incredible work of art.

With the Magnificat, Monteverdi shows himself as a true modernist.

This is music that transcends earthly concerns -

the financial problems, the health problems,

the petty world of the Gonzaga court and its autocratic duke.

This is the height of virtuoso writing,

the moment we come face to face with Monteverdi, the great composer.

This bass duet, in which the two bass parts have almost

a jousting duet to see who can sing

the loudest and highest

on the words "Quia fecit mihi magna,"

which means "Who has done me great things."

The bass part is quite heroic at times.

It goes so fast that if you lose your place

you'll never find your way back in again.

Halfway through the Magnificat we hear the words

"Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles."

"He has set down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble."

Given the Duke's behaviour over the years,

I wonder what was going through Monteverdi's mind

as he composed the music for that particular passage.

He starts with the cornets, very high and very florid,

and he makes it really quite fragile at some places.

And then he hands that over to the violins,

which then produce a sort of otherworldly texture,

it's such a quiet sound.

He was very much the avant-garde of that time,

and it's a use of so many different techniques,

being incredibly inventive

and bringing the theatrical elements in, and it's really quite daring.

Then in 1612, Duke Vincenzo dies, aged 49.

The official reason given is fever, but the rumour is syphilis.

He is succeeded by his son Francesco, who found that his

father's spendthrift habits had left

the family coffers almost entirely empty.

There were 800,000 scudi in debt -

that's the equivalent of a cool £20 million.

Many of the servants had to be dismissed,

including Monteverdi and a third of the music department.

With a malicious flourish worthy of his father,

Francesco specifies that Monteverdi be sacked when he least expects it.

Duke Vincenzo was buried in a fine marble tomb,

and his composer was unemployed.

When he left the Mantuan court, his letters show him to be hurt,

and not a little indignant.

But the final indignity was still to come.

Somewhere round about here,

close to what is now state road number ten, nearby the delightful

small town of Sanguinetto, he was robbed by three bandits.

Here is part of his own vivid account.

"Suddenly in the road, two men appeared,

"with a long musket apiece, firing pin down.

"Without saying a word, they lead our carriage to a field,

"where there was a third man with a spike.

"I was made to kneel and one of them, brandishing a gun,

"demanded my purse.

"They went through our luggage and,

"taking whatever they wanted, made a big bundle.

"They even robbed me of my cloak. A brand-new one of woven wool,

"which I'd only just had made for me."

Monteverdi returned to Cremona,

where he spent a year without employment.

He wants the big appointment, he has all the Vespers,

so it's a big calling card, it's a statement to say,

"Here is a compilation of music which can be performed by anybody

"who's got a choir and is something incredibly modern and really unique

"to hear in the church."

And then the current choirmaster of St Mark's,

the grandest church in Venice, dies.

Monteverdi applies for the job,

and all the evidence points to the Vespers being

the audition piece that secured him his post as master of music.

For the next 30 years he lived and worked here at St Mark's,

performing, composing and finally being paid.

He never remarried, and eventually he took holy orders

and became a priest.

The Vespers is the most monumental masterpiece ever written really.

It's grand, it's the most extraordinary piece

that I've ever sung,

and it's so joyful to sing, it really is.

It's very expressive in its emotion,

and that's wonderful for buttoned-up English singers, to abandon

their reserve and really go for it and express themselves to the max.

For us, The Sixteen,

this is the most fantastic work to be able to perform,

because, for me, it allows my wonderful singers to

really express themselves, and it really does get to the heart.

Duke Vincenzo had now been dead for 30 years,

but even from beyond the grave, he would determine the composer's fate.

When he was 76, Monteverdi left Venice

to pay one last visit to Mantua.

He was still hoping to recover the money Duke Vincenzo owed him

from more than three decades earlier.

But, as his father had once predicted,

the unhealthy Mantuan climate finally claimed him.

He caught a fever and, returning home here to Venice,

he died on the 29th of November, 1643.

He's buried in the church behind me.

An anonymous poet wrote of him,

"My lords enjoyed cheerfully the sweetness of the music

"of the never-enough-praised Monteverdi.

"This truly great man who so adapted the musical notes to the words,

"was born into this world so as to rule over the emotions of others.

"Wherever in the future music is known,

"then his music will be sighed for."