Conflicting Views of the Nature and Purpose of Music: The Artusi - Monteverdi Controversy

Claudio Monteverdi

During the middle of the sixteenth century, the madrigal emerged to dominate secular art-music. This was doubtless due to the succession of key musicians who devoted their talents to the genre: Verdelot, Arcadelt, Willaert and Rore were a formidable lineage whose achievements were later canonized in music prints and treatises. However, the tag of the greatest champion of the madrigals can undoubtedly be associated with Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). His first two books of madrigals (1587, 1590) reflect his study under Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri (c.1547-1592), maestro di cappella at the cathedral of his home town, Cremona. Here one can see Monteverdi coming to terms with the various madrigalian manners of his period, although his setting of Tasso’s ‘Ecco mormorar l’onde’ in the Second Book cannot be called a mere student piece by any means. In 1590 or 1591, Monteverdi had moved to Mantua to join the musicians of the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga to whom he dedicated his Third Book of madrigals in 1592. The Third Book brought to an end a remarkably prolific series of publications marking Monteverdi’s studies with Ingegneri and his first maturity as a composer.

After the publication of the Third Book, there followed an eleven years’ silence, at least in terms of publishing – the Fourth Book of madrigals appeared only in 1603 and the Fifth Book in 1605. This silence may have been partly due to the pressure of Monteverdi’s duties in Mantua – he was closely in the day-to-day musical life of the court and also probably accompanied the Duke on at least two foreign trips. But there might be other reasons too. This seems to have been a time when Monteverdi explored and assimilated new idioms. The mid-1590s saw the appearance of Giaches de Wert’s pioneering L’undecimo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, and also an important series of madrigal prints from the Ferrarese circles, by Fontanelli, Gesualdo and Luzzaschi from 1594 to 1596. All these developments must have had considerable impact on Monteverdi. Indeed, he was in direct contact with Ferrara, and some of his new madrigals were apparently performed there in 1598. His music thus came to the attention of Giovanni Maria Artusi, a Bolognese theorist and pupil of Zarlino.

In 1600, Artusi published a treatise, L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica – here the dialogue between “Vario” (“a gentleman from Arezzo” as spokesman for Artusi) and “Luca” is divided into two ragionamenti exploring the “imperfections” of modern music. The first discusses the combination of instruments in concerti and systems of tuning and temperament; in the second, Artusi deplores the irregular melodic, harmonic and modal practices of some modern composers who thereby satisfy neither sense nor reason. In particular, Artusi examines passages from anonymous madrigals later published by Monteverdi. There is also L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, parte seconda, which might have been prompted by the appearance of Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of madrigals in 1603, which included one madrigal criticized by Artusi in 1600. Here Artusi returns to the ground of the second ragionamento of his first treatise, further criticizing Monteverdi and the moderns.

In one sense it was the usual battle of the generations. Monteverdi rebelled against the strictures of his masters; Artusi, a generation older, stood by the standards of composition taught by Zarlino, among whose followers he was one of the most eminent. He expected dissonances to be introduced according to the rules of counterpoint, and he insisted upon unity of modality within a piece. These conventions had been challenged already in the middle of the sixteenth century. Artusi was not an outright conservative on his own accord. His own books often relaxed unnecessary strict rules on counterpoint. He recognized, as Zarlino did not, that dissonances were of primary importance in composition and devoted a whole volume to them. Yet it grieved him to see counterpoint, which had reached a point of ultimate refinement and control, become a prey to caprice and expediency. He honestly believed that the patiently created structure was under siege.

In another sense the controversy was a battle between two contemporary points of view. On one side were those like Monteverdi who accepted the advances of concerted instrumental music, improvised counterpoint, ornamented singing, the rhythms of dance music and the enlarged vocabulary of chromaticisms blended with the diatonic. On the other side were those like Artusi who felt that these innovations, mainly produces of relatively unschooled musicians, corrupted a pure, noble and learned art. One side held a single standard of counterpoint; the other followed a double standard, one for everyday sacred compositions and another for compositions on texts expressing violent passions. From the view of posterity, it can be said that neither side won an absolute victory. The strict standards advocated by Artusi returned by the mid-seventeenth century in a modified form, the modifications representing concessions to the other side.

In the dialogue of 1600, Artusi printed and analysed nine examples from two madrigals of Monteverdi that he knew from manuscripts, although he withheld both the composer’s name and the texts. The composer’s identity was not known in print until Monteverdi answered Artusi in the letter that opens his Fifth Book of 1605.of the madrigals criticized in the 1600 dialogue, Anima mia, perdona was not published until 1603 in the Fourth Book, and Cruda Amarilli and O Mirtillo not until 1605 in the Fifth Book.

Throughout the controversy the treatment of dissonances was the most bitterly contested issue. The dissonance effects Artusi objected to in Monteverdi’s madrigals are of three kinds: those caused by the application of ornaments to a consonant framework; those which, though accepted by usage in improvised counterpoint and instrumental music, were outside the norms of the severe style; and those outside these two categories that could be justified only in terms of the expressive demands of the text. The text, of course, was the principal motivating force behind all three kinds of dissonances. But it was possible to talk about the first two without the text, and this is what Artusi does in his first critique, even though some of his examples could not be explained adequately without the text.

Each of the examples cited by Artusi in the 1600 book violates one or more rules of the strict style as taught by Zarlino and Artusi in their counterpoint books. In Cruda Amarilli, for example, in bars 12-14, Vario (the spokesperson for Artusi) charges Luca (the advocate for Monteverdi) with failing to accord the upper part with the bass. Luca argues that the example should be regarded as ‘accented’ singing, that is, a written example of an improvisational practice. Vario protests that no author has yet spoken of accented music or defined what accents are. Luca finds the effects of the accents attractive. Compositions embellished by such ornaments “when played by various instruments or sung by singers skilled in this kind of accented music full of substitutions yield a not displeasing harmony which I marvel” (L’Artusi). Vario’s answer is doctrinaire, as expected. Composers and singers who use these portamentos, delays and turns, while they may avoid offensive sounds by instinct or deceive the ear by the quickness of their embellishments, corrupt the good old rules with their mannerisms.

Monteverdi accepts into written composition some of the fortuitous clashes that occur when the parts are moving independently around some common focus. One of the passages Vario points to as following the relaxed rules harmonic correspondence between parts is bars 41-42 of Cruda Amarilli, where the texture is divided into two groups, each of which corresponds harmonically with the tenor, but parts of the opposing groups may clash with each other. The composer takes advantage of the tolerance for free mixtures of intervals acquired through improvised music to introduce a variety of rhetorical effects. This device seems to be particularly fitting to illustrate the word ‘fugace’ (‘elusive’), as it affords at once smooth and independent voice movement. Again, the diminished fifth and seventh on the word ‘fera’ (‘fierce’) seem to serve both the function of providing a climactic cadence and to heighten the feeling of the word. In answering Vario’s objection that in bars 42-43 some of the quavers do not correspond either to the bass or the tenor, Lucas says that this license is derived “from perceiving that in instruments these [quavers] do not much offend the ear because of the quickness of movement.” Incidentally, Vincenzo Galilei in his manuscript treatise on counterpoint (1589-91) made precisely this observation about rapidly moving parts which he found “more appropriate for instruments than for voices.” Although it was customary, he said, to alternate consonance and dissonance in writing such runs, he declined to make a strict rule, showing rather that as many as three dissonances may occur in succession with impunity. By coincidence his example uses the very progression that Monteverdi employs in bars 42-43 in Cruda Amarilli between the two uppermost parts and the bass.

Three years after this dialogue appeared Artusi, having received letters from a defender of the anonymous composer who signs himself ‘L’Ottuso Academico’, published a second book. In the first part of this Artusi answers his correspondent’s letters. In the Considerationi that follows he defends Francesco Patrizi’s statements about Greek music against Ercole Bottrigari’s criticisms. The true identity of L’Ottuso remains shrouded in mystery. Critics are well divided as to the identity of L’Ottuso – many have surmised it was Monteverdi himself while Stuart Reiner is of the opinion that is was Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, the composer’s brother, a proposition which opens up wholly new channels for debate. Some are even of the opinion that L’Ottuso is fictitious character created by Artusi himself – somebody with whom he could debate in the first person about Monteverdi’s modernisms – something he was perfectly capable of doing, because he understood the modernists even if he disagreed with them.

Whoever he was, L’Ottuso finally brought the debate around to the main point – why the new harmonic effects were necessary. In his letter of 1599 he is quoted as saying, “The purpose of this new movement of the parts (modulatione) is to discover through its novelty a new consensus (concenti) and new affections, and this without departing in any way from good reason, even if it leaves behind somehow the ancient traditions of some excellent composers.” New affections call for new harmonic combinations to express them. This is the crux of the matter. The usages to which Artusi took exception may be considered in two categories: irregularities of ‘modulation’ or melody-writing, and irregularities of ‘harmony’ or vertical combination. Artusi objects to the melodic interval of a diminished fourth because it passes from a diatonic note to a chromatic one and is therefore unnatural to the voice, which, unlike instruments, is limited to a small number of consonant and dissonant intervals, through which it passes from one consonance to another. The interval occurs twice in the madrigal Era l’anima mia (Fifth Book) – in bars 28-29 in the quintus part and again in bars 58-59 in the tenor. L’Ottuso provides a weak reply: “It is a new voice progression (modulatione) for the sake of finding through its novelty a new consensus (concento) and a new affection.” Another usage that Artusi criticizes and L’Ottuso defends is that of following a sharpened note by a descending interval and a flattened note by a rising one. Artusi does not cite any examples in Monteverdi, but many can be found. “All the moderni are doing it,” says L’Ottuso, “most of all those who have embraced this new second practice” (questa nuova seconda pratica). This is the first time that the expression ‘seconda pratica’ appears in the controversy. The issue of modal purity and unity had already come out in the dialogue of 1600, when Artusi singled out O Mortillo as having been based on two modes. L’Ottuso defends the practice on the grounds that madrigals composed by noted composers before Monteverdi often employed more than one mode.

Monteverdi’s reply to Artusi in the preface of his Fifth Book was later elaborated by his brother Giulio Cesare in an afterword to Monterverdi’s Scherzi musicali (1607). Monteverdi avoided a trap by shifting the ground of the argument: instead of confronting Artusi, he diffused his claims by postulating two musical ‘practices’, one appealing to the intellect and the other to the emotions. As Giulio Cesare explains on his brother’s behalf, the First Practice was meant to “turn on the perfection of the harmony, that is, the one that considers the harmony not commanded, but commanding, not the servant, but the mistress of the words...”, and goes on to cite practitioners of the same – Josquin, la Rue, Gombert and others. On the other hand, the Second Practice is the one that “turns on the perfection of the melody, that is, the one that considers the harmony not commanding, but commanded, and makes the words the mistress of the harmony. Composers employing this new ‘practice’ included Gesualdo, Cavalieri, Fontanelli, Wert, Ingegneri and the like. Giulio also puts emphasis on the fact that Monteverdi called it ‘second’, and not ‘new’, and also ‘practice’ and not ‘theory’, because “he understands its explanation to turn on the manner of employing the consonances and dissonances in actual composition.”

Music history owes, although grudgingly, a great debt to Artusi, for he focussed attention on one of the deepest crises in musical composition and stimulated the composer who squarely confronted it to clarify his position. Without Monteverdi’s letter in the Fifth Book and his brother’s glosses upon it in the Scherzi musicali (1607), Monteverdi’s stylistic profile would be set less boldly in relief. The Artusi-Monteverdi controversy gives us a valuable commentary upon music history in the making, and also affects the course of musical evolution. Claudio Monteverdi and his brother Giulio Cesare, by publishing their manifestos for the new or the “second” practice, provided the ground for later composers to rally on. Further, this controversy also gives us a glimpse into the way composers thought about certain points of technique, how they justified them, what precedents they recognized, how they viewed the act of composition itself.