Mankind must have recognized very early the many and varied artistic possibilities in the combination of poetry and music. Every poetic statement, however clearly formulated it may be, is capable of interpretation through a variety of nuances and stresses, so that several entirely different interpretations are often possible.
Music knows no concrete statement, and yet already in its earliest beginnings it was able to arouse the emotions of human beings-to move, to delight, to excite. These effects of music were always felt to be magical, which is why music has played an essential part in the ritual of all religions.
It will thus be readily understandable that poets have, since earliest times, made use of these possibilities and performed their poems in song. In some cultural regions singer und poet mean one and the same thing. The Greek epics, and possibly even the dramas, must be imagined presented in song.
In the Christian-Western culture of the middle ages and earlier modern times, poetry and art-music were not so intimately connected. ln the ballades, virelais and motets of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries written in several voices and extremely complex settings, the music is very much in the foreground; the text frequently can hardly be understood. Later, in the high renaissance, enthusiasm for ancient Greek poetry was so strong that it was even attempted to reintroduce the ancient manner of recitation - even though there was only the vaguest conception of this. There thus arose around 1600 a completely new musical style - the recitative, monody the vocal concerto. The sole object here was to reproduce the text as understandably as possible and with the maximum expression. The music had to remain completely in the background; its task was to provide an unobtrusive harmonic basis. ln passages of particularly intense expression the content of the words was highlighted as clearly as possible through suitable musical and harmonic interpretation, frequently of powerful effect.
The rhythm of this recitation song had to follow the speech rhythms, which were thus rendered more forceful. The poetry made its point more intensively than in mere declamation.
Monteverdi's Orfeo came into being only a few years after the first experiments had been made in this new recitative dramatic style. The author of the text, A. Striggio, a court official of the Duke of Mantua, was a friend of the composer’s, so this work is sure to have been born of a close collaboration. It is the first opera in which, on the one hand, poetry had primacy of place in accordance with the new ideals, but on the other music too was fully employed with all its abundance of forms. In this first of Monteverdi’s operas all those forms and possibilities are anticipated or intimated that appear in the operas of the following centuries: the characterizing overture, the aria (even with “da capo’), the strophic song, various ‘leitmotivs’, dramatically motivated instrumentation and, as a matter of course, the recitative. All these forms were not newly created by Monteverdi; he blended the entire stock of newest and older possibilities into a unity that was indeed new. Thus the opera with which the baroque period in music is so splendidly opened is, at the same time, the last large-scale work in which the wealth of forms and the rich and colourful sound palette of renaissance music are laid out: the orchestra demanded for Orfeo corresponds down to the smallest detail to that of the ‘intermedia’ that were played decades earlier as entractcs in theatrical performances. The shepherds’ scenes of the first and second acts are full of the traditional pastoral madrigal.
The new monody (the recitative) was intensified by Monteverdi to the highest power of expression, many a taboo of the rules of harmony being ruthlessly broken - "for the sake of truth" as he emphasized in the course of a dispute.
The choice of Orpheus as a subject for his first dramatic work is typical: as "Greek drama" suited to the new style based on antiquity, and at the same time programmatic, singing the praises of music which conquers all.
Although Monteverdi states the orchestra required on the first page of his printed full score, he nevertheless leaves the exact use of these media to the interpreter in each case, as was a matter of course at that time. This freedom - in any case reduced here - has two reasons. First, the constitution of the orchestra was different in every place, and the local conductor had to be able to adapt each work to his own particular possibilities: reducing the orchestration ehen his resources were not sufficient, but also using all the available forces when this enhanced the work. Second: nearly all the instrumentalists of that time were also composers; it was a matter of course for them to collaborate creatively in every interpretation, and not merely reproduce a given musical text.
The orchestra in “L’Orfeo" is divided into “foundation” and “ornament” instruments. The foundation instruments, which are responsible for the playing and harmonization of the bass part, are the chitarrone, lute, harp, harpsichord, virginals, organ und regal. The ornament instruments are all the wind instruments, the string instruments and the lutes as far as they do not play the bass. Monteverdi allots the two worlds of this opera, the world of the shepherds in Thrace and the realm of shadows of the Underworld, to two fundamentally different groups of instruments: flutes, strings and plucked instruments for the pastoral sphere, and cornetts, trombones and regal for the Underworld. The distribution of the "foundation instruments" as accompaniments for the various characters is, with few exceptions, left to the performer. In this performance the most important figures have been accompanied as far as possible by the same instruments, so that a kind of characterization in sound makes the dialogue more easily understood. Orpheus is accompanied by the noble sounds of the harp and the organ, the shepherds by the harpsichord, lute or chitarrone, the gods of the Underworld by the regal, sometimes on its own, sometimes with trombones. According to the rules of that time, these instruments should never push their way into the foreground through over-rich passage work or skillful improvisations. Their task is always to serve the song, the declamation, and they should only underline the accent of the words through their tone colours, harmonies and combinations of notes. In order to be able to react spontaneously to the singers’ nuances, these parts must be improvised.
One of the most widely-discussed problems in the performance of older music is the whole complex of improvisation and embellishment. In our view, present-day performances that aim at the greatest possible authenticity often go too far in this respect. Continuo players demonstrate industrious contrapuntal feats which are indeed at times brought off with great skill, but which are only rarely stylistically suited. The continuo, after all, must never divert the attention from the main musical elements; this applies in a special degree to the early period of the baroque.
For improvisatory embellishments bv the singers there are indeed many instructional works, but there are also contemporary voices, particularly regarding the works of Monteverdi, warning that nothing, or as little as possible, should be added to the musical text. Indeed, Monteverdi has written out more embellishments himself than any other composer of his time, and it is quite obvious that where he did not write any embellishments he did not want any sung. In this performance only some cadences have been embellished, mainly in the “lighter” roles, least of all for Orfeo himself. In our opinion embellishment should be applied even more sparingly in a gramophone recording than in a concert, since every improvisation is fundamentally something unique which, when heard again - especially when heard again repeatedly - becomes ridiculous.
Monteverdi was a practical musician. He had joined the orchestra of the Duke of Mantua as a violinist at the age of twenty-three. Here he found an abundance of stimuli, for some of his colleagues were famous composers (Giacches de Wert, Giovanni Gastoldi, Benedetto Palavicino). ln the course of his travels - 1595 to Hungary, 1599 to Flanders - he had the opportunity of hearing other leading European orchestras and making the acquaintance of other composers. These musical stimuli bore fruit in the madrigals he wrote during these years, and also very clearly in the pastoral scenes of his Orfeo, In 1601 Monteverdi became "Maestro della Musica", that is, Director of the Court Music. He wrote his "favola in rnusica l’Orfeo for a performance in the Academia degl’ lnvaghiti" on the 22nd February 1607. lt was later repeated in the Court Theatre, and also performed in other cities such as Cremona and Turin. The two printed editions of 1609 and 1615, dedicated to the Gonzaga Prince Francesco, prove the work’s extraordinary success.
The places where it was performed were, by today’s standards, quite tiny, and the audience hardly numbered more than the performers. From the printed list of the orchestral forces, it would seem that only the string instruments were doubled in the tutti (thus two players to each part), all the other ornament instruments were singly represented. The choruses too are conceived for the smallest forces (the madrigal ensembles of that time were hardly more than one voice to each part), also on account of the balance with the instruments and within the worlt as a whole.
Of the instruments used here, some are original, others copies made after painstaking study. Practical music-making of diverse character has shown that the entire instrumental group, despite all its variety and colourfulness, adds up to a unity, and that it is impossible to incorporate instruments of other epochs or other tone conceptions. For example, any modern harp, however sensitively it may be played, falls completely out of the picture among these renaissance sounds - its reverberation is too long, its tone too dark and cloudy. The baroque harp has, however, on account of its small resonating body and since it is not encumbered by any mechanical action, a light, airy tone that stands out clearly from the other plucked instruments, the lutes and the harpsichords, yet not too obtrusively. The group of continuo instruments with plucked strings thus ranges from the big Italian harpsichord with its brilliant tone through the clearly defined virginals (a little cross-strung harpsichord with only one 8’ register), the chitarrone, equipped with metal strings in accordance with Praetorius’s data (the favourite instrument for the accompaniment of singers in the new monodic style) and the soft and sensitive-sounding lute to the harp.
ln addition, Monteverdi demands an “organs di legno”, a gently sounding organ with pipes only of wood. Its tone often provides the background for the harp, the lute or the chitarrone; it welds the entire sound together in the tutti without obtruding. The regal, with its snarling tone, demanded for the Underworld acts, also places these in the strongest contrast to the pastoral scenes as regards tone colour.
The string ensemble is richer than at any time before or since: violini piccoli (tuned a fourth higher than normal violins and sounding an octave higher than written), ordinary violins, violas, ’cellos (Monteverdi calls the ’cello "Viola da brazzo” to underline its membership of the violin family, in contrast to the gambas), gambas and violone. The recorders (renaissance instruments made of one piece) belong to the world of the shepherds; cornets, dulcian and trombones, together with the regal, make up the orchestra of the Underworld scenes.
The four trumpets, which are used only in the brief Toccata before the beginning of the Prologue, for an exception. This Toccata has no connection with the rest of the work; it has a similar function to a national anthem played today at the beginning of a festive concert - it is a kind of Gonzaga fanfare. Monteverdi writes on it as follows: "This Toccata should be played three times before the curtain rises, by all the instruments. lf it is desired that the trumpets play with mutes, it must be played one tone highet". The reason for this instruction is that the trumpet mutes of that time made the instrument sound one tone higher. lt is very probable that Monteverdi gave preference to the D major version (with mutes) over the C major version, on account of the key relationship with the first ritornello, which begins in D minor. Muted natural trumpets sound much softer than open ones; the four court trumpeters, who did not belong to the orchestra but were officers, probably stood in front of the curtain, while the orchestra sat behind ir. For the sake of tonal balance, and probably also so as not to disconcert the audience sitting quite near in the small room, the trumpets were to be muted. All three repetitions must naturally be played either with or without mutes; a contrast effect perhaps in one of the repetitions would be stylistically false, and impossible of execution on natural trumpets on account of the transposing effect of the mutes. With the muted natural trumpets used in this recording, correction of the flat-sounding notes (f and a) by means of the embouchure was only possible to a limited degree.
ln the setting up of the orchestra, musical and dramatic grounds alike were taken into consideration. Strings and wind were treated as separate choirs, not divided according to parts in the usual fashion. We thus hear the string orchestra from the left, while the cornets, trombones and the regal are placed on the right. ln this manner a localization of certain scenes is attempted: the world of the shepherds on the left, the Underworld on the right. The continuo instruments are distributed across the entire width, in order to achieve a suitable background in the tutti. The stereophonic distribution is therefore not conceived for the individual sections, but for the work as a whole. It can thus easily happen that a lengthy scene comes only from one side when the singer and the instruments accompanying him are on this side. The positioning of the orchestra remains unchanged throughout the work; the positions and movements of the singers follow a detailed plan. In the first act, for instance, Orpheus comes to meet the shepherds from lhe right - the messenger of ill tidings in the second act comes from the left - in the third act Charon and the spirits of the Underworld are on the right, from where the sounds of the trombones and regal also come; Orpheus and Speranza (Hope) come from the left. Orpheus later crosses the Styx in the boat, and is then also on the right. This sketch of the seating of the orchestra is intended to facilitate the recognition of the instruments when listening.
The allegorical Prologue from Musica is introduced by a Ritornello heard four times in the course of the opera. lt represents the gay, bright world of music, devoid of any tragedy or mystery. (At the end of the second act it is like a recollection of lost happiness, a farewell to the world of the shepherds. At the beginning of the fifth act this piece has the effect of the mint cruel irony Orpheus has been hurled back to the light, he must live on whether he wants to or not, outwardly the world of the shepherds has remained as it was.)
Musica greets the audience in the Prologue and sings of the power of music. Between the verses of her song a part of the opening Ritornello is repeatedly played, each time in a different instrumentation to symbolize the variety of music: strings, recorders, plucked instruments, trombones. The first act begins with a 'da capo’ aria for Pastor II, its form underlined by the change of continuo instrument: harpsichord, chitarrone, harpsichord.
The pastoral idyll of the First Act has a particularly clear musical form: the pair of choruses that is repeated in reversed order "Vieni Imeneo" and "Lasciate i monti" frames the central song of praise of Orpheus and Eurydice; the songs of joy and thanksgiving of the shepherds before the closing chorus "Ecco Orfeo" are bound together into an entity by the three-fold repetition of a string ritornello.
The Secound Act begins with a joyful ballet scene between Orpheus and the shepherds. Dance songs and dance-like solo ritornelli here follow one another without a break. Monteverdi has obviously made use here of the stimuli he had gathered on his journeys, especially as regards French dance music.
Unexpectedly, Silvia (Messagiera), Eurydice's friend, interrupts the idyll. As the bringer of ill tidings she tells of Eurydice’s sudden death. Here and in the dialogue that follows, as well as in Orpheus's lament, Monteverdi uses all possibilities of interpretation of the test through the harshest treatment of dissonances and the unexpected juxtaposition of unrelated keys.
The change of scene to the Third Act is illustrated by the completely new sounds of the cornets, the trombones and the regal. Monteverdi writes: “here the trombones, cornets and the regal beginn to play and the violins, the organ and the harpsichord are silent, the scene changes".
The main part of the third act consists of Orpheus’s attempt to overcome the insensitive watchman Charon through the power of his music. This scene is framed by a gentle Sinfonia played at the beginning and at the end in different instrumentation. (The same piece is heard again in the last act before the appearance of Apollo. lt symbolizes the super-natural power of music, with which Orpheus bewitches the gods of the Underworld just as much as the lord of Parnassus.) The chorus with which the third act closes is framed by the same Sinfonia as introduces the act, so that this act again displays a self-contained musical form.
The Fourth Act continues from the third without a break. Orpheus has entered the Underworld. Proserpina, deeply moved by his singing, implores her husband Pluto to set Eurydice free. In the middle of the completely impersonal coldness of the world of shadows, her singing is now full of the deepest feeling and human warmth. The spell is broken, this act is dominated by a "sympathetic" music, the Underworld has thawed as it were. All the harder and more dramatically effective is the renewed freezing into relentlessness after Orpheus’s failure through doubt.
Both acts in the Underworld close with the big, impersonally commenting chorus of the spirits of the shadows "E la virtute"; this again is framed by the cold sounds of a sinfonia with cornets, trombones and regal. The Underworld again shows itself to be of stone, unconquerable, devoid of human feeling.
At the beginning of the Fifth Act we are led back again to the world of the shepherds by the familiar Ritornello. The monologue of Orpheus, who wanders around lamenting, accompanied only by the chitarrone and the organ, is one of the most broadly spannend and greatest recitatives in the whole of operatic literature.
Thie actual ending of the Orpheus saga, in which the despairing singer turns away from women altogether and is finally torn to pieces by the raging Maenads, was altered in nearly all retellings of the story in the renaissance and baroque eras. It is probable that a first version of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, which is even reputed to have been performed at Cremona, had a tragic ending. Such an "unbaroque" conclusion could not satisfy at that time. So Striggio and Monteverdi finally found a “compromise” solution. Orpheus may not, as in other versions, live on with Eurydice - an all too smooth ending to the fable; he is, however, not killed but led up to Parnassus by Apollo. The dance chorus of the shepherds sung to end the opera turns into a wild Moresca, which may well be a recollection of the wild dance of the cruel Bacchantae. In this dance the entire orchestra - pastoral world and Underworld - are united in a symbolic conclusion.