Monteverdi Madrigals with Matthew Robertson and The Thirteen

A madrigal is a fusion of music and poetry, in which the music illustrates the text and animates the verse so precisely that the sound, the word and the mental image they produce become one. Madrigals existed before opera and art song, helping pave the way for both, but in its use of an ensemble of voices it is very much its own thing, creating a new type of choral texture that was a marked departure from the hymns and masses of church choirs. It's no accident that the madrigal developed during the High Renaissance and flourished in tandem with the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque and the resurgence of a secular artistic culture. 

It's also no accident that Claudio Monteverdi, known as a pioneer in the realms of opera and sacred music, began his career as an industrious and highly prolific composer of madrigals, which served as a laboratory for his musical development. In his fifth book of madrigals, he introduced instruments to what had previously been a strictly a cappella form, and by the eighth book he stretched the definition of "madrigal" to its ultimate point to include strophic songs, dramatic monologues and dialogues, narrated historical theatre, and works that involved costumes, elaborate staging, dance numbers, fight scenes and even equestrian activity. Obviously, that's all amazing and groundbreaking, and some of these works (like the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda) are milestones in the history of music. But it's also the reason many scholars consider his fourth book to be his last collection of "real" madrigals, his contribution to the century-old tradition in which the magic lies in the power of a few unaccompanied voices singing perfectly crafted and carefully judged poetic miniatures, analogous to the astonishing lieder Franz Schubert would compose two centuries later. These are works in which intimacy and economy of means are essential to their emotional impact.

In their final program of the season, the celebrated Washington-based chamber choir The Thirteen will perform several selections from Monteverdi's fourth book, along with madrigals by his contemporaries Carlo Gesualdo and Barbara Strozzi as well as 20th and 21st century works that put a modern spin on the madrigal tradition by Eric Whitacre, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Morton Lauridsen and David Lang. I spoke with The Thirteen's Artistic Director Matthew Robertson about this upcoming program, to which he has given the title "Monteverdi Refracted."