2 CD - CD 3086 - (c) & (p) 2009


Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)




L'Orfeo - Favola in Musica, 1609
94' 46"
- Prologo (Toccata e Ritornello) 4' 57"
- Atto primo 14' 07"
- Atto secondo
23' 22"
- Atto terzo
24' 14"



- Atto quarto 13' 49"
- Atto quinto 14' 17"



 
Patricia Brinton, La Musica Gino Sinimberghi, Orfeo
Uta Graf, Euridice
Gertrud Schretter, Speranza
Norman Foster, Caronte Mona Paulee, Proserpina
Frederick Guthrie, Plutone Waldemar Kmentt, Apollo
Ana Maria Iriarte, Messaggiera
Auguste Schmoczer, Ninfa
Dagmar Hermann, Pastore orimo Hans Strohbauer, Pastore secondo
Wolfram Mertz, Pastore terzo




Die Wiener Singakademie, Coro di Ninfe e Pastori - Coro di Spiriti
Hans Gillesberger, Einstudierung


Anton Heiller, 1. Cembalo Hermann Nordberg, 2. Cembalo und Regal

Kurt Lerpeger, Orgel Franz Jelinek, Harfe
Karl Scheit, Robert Brojer, Lauten

Paul Angerer, Kurt Theiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Hermann Höbarth, Beatrice Reichert, Eduard Hruza, Streicher
Karl Trötzmüller, David Hermges, Karl Mayerhofer, Josef Koblinger, Josef Spindler, Hans Kraus, Josef Jakl, Johann Tschedemnig, Wilhelm Pasewald, Bläser


Paul Hindemith, Einrichtung und musikalische Leitung
 

Luogo e data di registrazione
Grosser Saal, Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (Austria) - 4 giugno 1954
Registrazione live / studio
live at Wienet Festwochen 1954
Producer / Engineer
Bernhard Trebuch
Prima Edizione CD
ORF "Alte Musik" - CD 3086 - (2 cd) - 66' 40" + 28' 06" - (c) & (p) 2009 - mono
Prima Edizione LP
-

Alte Instrumente oder Kopien alter Instrumente
- Italienisches Regal von 1556 (Leihgabe des Stiftes Lambach, Oberösterreich)
- Organo di legno (erbaut 1954 von Josef Mertin, Wien als Kopie der Orgel der silbernen Kapelle in Innsbruck)
- Positiv (Gottlieb Henckhe 1728)
- Cembali (Gebrüder Ammer, Eisenberg, Thüringen)
- Doppelchörige Laute (Mathaeus Stautinger, Würzburg 1750)
- Deutsche Kopie einer italienischen Renaissancelaute (doppelchörig)
- Flautini (Dolmetsch, England)
- Zwei Barockgeigen (18. Jahrhundert)
- Violen und Gamben: (aus der Sammling Harnoncourt, Wien) von Antoine Veron, Paris 1735 - Ludovicus Guersan, Paris 1742 - Anonym, Brescia um 1580 - Jakob Precheisen, Wien 1760

Fresh tomatoes are not enough to make good pasta
Claudio Monteverdi about life and music
Born in Cremona, home of violin-makerr; "Suonatore di Viola" and later distinguished composer at the Gonzaga court in Mantua; for thirty years until his death "Maestro di cappella" of St. Mark's, Venice, a musical metropolis and Mecca for musicians and in whose basilica, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, "Il divino Claudio" lies buried.
Over three hundried and sixty years later, Claudio Monteverdi's music has lost none of its timeliness. Not only do the subjects of his madrigals, arias and opera - despair, love, desire, jealousy etc. - continue to stir our feelings but stylistically his music seems to possess the immediacy that today's listeners long for. The recical of this most influential of Italian comèpsers would have been unthinkable without Nikolaus Harnoncurt's exemplary performances.
Harnoncourt (at this time member of the Wiener Symphoniker) played in the first performance of l'Orfeo "on original instruments", conducted by Paul Hindemith in 1954, alongside pratically the whole - as yet anonymous - Concentus Musicus Wien, making this their unofficial debut. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 80th birthday and the appearance of the first edition of l'Orfeo four hundred years ago are reasons enough for an interview with the composer who, together with his colleagues, altered the course of music.

We may justly call the time around 1600 a period of upheaval in music. You took an important part in these changes. How did the "nuove musiche" come about?
You could say that we were living at the end of an era. The style known today as "Palestrina style", which we called "prima prattica", had reached its perfection, even passed its zenith. Of course we too had acquired this style with its severe rules. In Rome I was able to study carious codices containing sacred music by selected Renaissance composers. As you may perhaps know, I paid homage to Nicolas Gombert, one of the most important masters of finely-woven polyphony (and sadly almost forgotten today) in the "Missa in illo tempore" from my 1610 collection of sacred music.

Didn't you want first and foremost to prove to Pope Paul V, dedicatee of this publication, that you too could compose in the old style, with a post at the Vatican in mind?
Prove? I never had to prove anything to anybody in my life, except perhaps to myself. I enjoyed every hour, of the good as well as bad times. Only the future can show us which way the present is pointing to. But I'm starting to philisophise. In fact, I want to say something more about our new compositional style, the "seconda prattica". We had no idea at the time that we had pratically developed a basis for music that would last until today.
Of course it caused quite a stir; just think of Maestro Artusi's memorandum [Giovanni Artusi "L'Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica ragionamenti dui", Venedig 1600] when my colleagues and I had theown all the rules overboard: dissonances on strong beats, wide intervals in individual voices, violent changes of affect and so on. But I don't want to bore you with technical details. They aren't the most important thing! As usual, there was no theoretical basis for our new music. But I have to laugh a bit when I think fo my fellow composers on the other side of the Alps, accustomed to thoroughness, who looked for theoretical principles for our new music and even found some in their teachings, making them up with hindsight as it were. Yes, people seem to require certainties, rules of engagement if you like, even in composition, to earn recognition without risk of losing face.

In 1607 your brother announced a book of yours in which you set out and defend the new compositional style "seconda prattica". Did you ever get to write is?
I've read many books, always been interested in research and have done research myself into different things: I devoted myself to alchemy for example )I can admit that now without risk). But let me explain why it's irrelevant whether this book was written or not. I greatly admire colleagues who have tried to put something down in writing that's hardly possible to explain in words. You'll find lots to read about note values, different rhythms, tempi, intervals, harmonies, instruments and much more. I too treid to give as many details and performing instructions as possible in my printed works. Just think of the scores of L'Orfeo or Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

It sounds as if you preferred making music to writing about it...
Everything is done publicly today, "transparent" is the word, I think. You can reas about the things that interested me and my colleagues in my writings, letters or prefaces. For instance, if I say about the performance of Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda that the audience was moved to tears, then that shows that I am concerned about the emotional reaction of my listeners. In music we can only hope for positive emotions, we can't prescribe them. Of course we also had set-pieces, such as the ciaconna, or devices such as melting thirds in the voices or violins.
By the way, the great "Giovanni da Firenze" (Jean-Baptiste Lully is meant here) introduced the ciaconna almost as a standard element in Louis XIV opera. But still these are not recipes for good opera, any more than tearjerking scenes alone make a good film, and fresh tomatoes are not enough to make good pasta. What could I say about the closing duet in my Ulisse, except that it is a dance that never wants to end, joyous and melancholy at the same time, like the Danube Waltz, mirroring the peaks and troughs of human existence.

"L'Orfeo", a "favola in musica", is particularly importasnt among your stage works, not all of which, sadly, have survived. On the one hand, lt's your first opera and on the other, it's the only one to have appeared in print during your own lifetime.
1607, the year in whlch L'Orfeo was first performed, was a memorable yeur in my life. The crucial date was the 253rd day of that year, the 10th September, a Monday; my beloved wife Claudia, daughter of my colleague Giacomo Cattaneo (a viola-player, like myself at one timo) diod on this terrible day. She was a singer at the Mantua court and had suffered the death of our daughter. but she also bore our two magnificent sons.
L'0rfeo was first performed for the "Accademia degli lnvaghiti" on 24th February - a few weeks before my fortieth birthday - to great acclaim. You can't imagine how much tlme and nervous energy the rehearsals had cost. As is stlll often the case today, many changes were made (including mine) right up until the dress rehearsal. The end of the opera was particularly affected; in the printed libretto of 1607 the god-like singer comes to a tragic end, as in the mythological version. We only decided on the conciliatory "lieto fine" as printed in the score at the very last moment. I worked very closely with the librettist Alessandro Striqgio on this matter.

Talking about the score: I assume that a desire to impress was one of the reasons for its publlcation two years after the first performance.
Getting a score into print around 1600 was no easy task. A real challenge for the printer Riccardo Amadino ln Venice. Just thlnk of the layout of Oefeo's "Possente Spirito" aria with its many diminutions. Of course getting the score into print was a matter of prestige, for Francesco Gonzaga too, to whom I dedicated the work on 22nd August 1609. But its publlcatlon was also very useful for me and certainly helpul for my candidature in Venice.

The first edition of the opera throws up a lot of question for us today: on  the one hand there are discrepancies between the instruments listed in the "tavola" and those called for in the score, and on the other, we still puzzle over where the two instrumental ensembles were placed for example.
Like Heinrich Schütz after me, I tried to give as many performance directions as possible. The printed edition of the work naturally reflects details arising from the opera's first performance, although I can’t recall them all exactly now. But these are all only aids to allow an interpretation of the music from the notes which moves the senses, metaphysically. These directions can still be useful to musicians performing my music in the 2lst century.
I've followed the renaissance of L'Orfeo on so-called original instruments in the 20th century with great interest. Although the results all sound very different from each another, they do all attempt to get to the bottom of the music. We could talk for hours just about the declamation of the text. I'm particularly pleased that my composer colleague Paul Hindemlth (who I believe I even heard playing the cornetto in Georg Schünemann's "Historic Concerts" in Berlin) was the person to lead the first scenic performance on old instruments since my time. Josef Mertin (l904-1988) - an early music
pioneer in Austria - even built an Organo dl legno for it. People nowadays still use organs with stopped pipes for Italian music far too often!
It's worth noting that for this special occasion Nikolaus Harnoncourt contributed not only the instruments from his collection, but also brought in like-minded musicians. Practically the whole Concentus Muslcus Wien played, albeit anonymously, in this performance. The music world owes a great deal of thanks to this ensemble and above all to its founder and director Nlkolaus Harnoncourt.
Hindemlth’s speech to the public in 1954 also reflects a lot of the pioneer spirit: "Today, we want to attempt to perform this opera again under the original conditions. We have reconstructed the orchestra exactly as he prescribes it. We have done everything possible to recreate the original sound. What we do may sum somewhat unusual to you at first, but don't forget, that is indeed how it sounded at the time."
By the way, did you keep hearing the prompter’s voice on the radio recording? That lady must have been very enthusiastic about the performance, just as I was.

If you were given the chance to compose again, what would you choose to write - an opera, madrigals, songs, sacred music, or a genre which you neglected, such as instrumental music?
That's a hard question, maybe even impossible to answer. I achieved and experienced a lot, both professionally and in my so-called private life: For example, the death of my daughter, only a few months old, and that of my wife soon after, or seeing one of my sons arrested by the Inquisition. But I also spent many happy moments in Venice, survived the plague in the city in the early 163O's, and made a mark as "Reverendo" in taking the cloth.
It certainly can’t be easy writing music for the 21st century. Today's public has to take in such a flood of information and is overwhelmed with music. It's everywhere, sounding and pounding all the time. Then there are so many styles, quite unlike anything I had in Venice in those days.
And yet I notice, not without pride, just how much today’s listeners long for "simple" means of music-making. Like Henry Purcell, it was important for me to achieve a maximum of expression with a minimum of means. Just think of the Messenger's appearance in L'Orfeo for example.
Of course Man is a rational being, wanting explanations for things that are inexplicable. As far as music is concerned, you actually want to know today how my music sounded back then.
To finish, I'd like to answer you with a quotation from Giovannino Guareschi’s "Don Camillo and Peppone": "It doesn't matter how it’s written, but rather what it’s like in your heart...»
Bernhard Trebuch (Translation: Roderick Shaw)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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