Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi's Seconda Prattica (review)

Abstract

Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi's Seconda Prattica. By Massimo Ossi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. [xviii, 280 p. ISBN 0-226-63883-9. $60.] Music examples, illustrations, index, bibliography. In his fifth book of madrigals (1605), Claudio Monteverdi announced his treatise seconda prattica, oven Perfettione della modema musica in response to Giovanni Maria Artusi's attacks included in two works published respectively five and two years earlier. Artusi-Monteverdi controversy, as Claude Palisca named it, continued with the famous defense written by the musician's brother, Giulio Cesare, included in Claudio's Scherzi musicali (1607); but in a sense it can be said to span the whole life of the composer, since decades later, in a 1633 letter to Giovanni Battista Doni, he was still alluding to the Artusi polemic, again promising to finish the treatise, which he never did. In Divining the Oracle Massimo Ossi takes the stance that, though we regret the loss of that treatise, we still have enough material to surmise-or divine-Monteverdi's views on seconda prattica, a term the composer himself claimed to have invented. text that best speaks to us about seconda prattica is Monteverdi's own music, in particular the madrigal books from the fourth to the eighth; dramatic music such as Orfeo and Lasciatemi morire (Arianna's lament); seemingly light pieces such as the Scherzi musicali; and sacred music such as the Gloria a 7 concertata from the Selva morale e spirituals (1640-41). A convincing exegesis of Monteverdi's views arises precisely from considering both documents and music, although Ossi goes far beyond the issue of mere dissonance treatment or observance of modal boundaries, ostensibly the main topics addressed in the documents. Accordingly, Divining the Oracle is organized effectively into chapters alternating a study of the documents (chaps. 1 and 5, both entitled The Public Debate and subtitled respectively Prima and Seconda Prattica and The Philosopher's Seconda Prattica) with close musical readings (chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 6). In light of this combined analysis Ossi provides a new interpretation of the famous statement that, for Monteverdi, the text should be the mistress and the music the servant, a notion that, for Ossi (who seems to almost dislike it), could not be further from the aesthetic ideal that Monteverdi was trying to achieve (p. 21). Music, in Monteverdi, acquires independence and autonomy in conveying meaning, itself organizing large-scale structures (e.g., through ostinato patterns) and connoting symbolic events (e.g., through the use of canzonetta style). Not a servant, then, but an equal partner, music realigns itself with the text, their combination achieving greater representational power than the sum of its parts. In Ossi's view, Monteverdi's true modernity lies not so much in the conquest of human affections, as Leo Schrade believed, but in the way in which the composer achieved this goal, through the equation of music and text. Key to this process is a dramatization of musical language that allowed Monteverdi to blur the traditional boundaries between genres, reaching such powerful hybrids as Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clonnda (1624 or 1625). This is a crucial point in Ossi's argument. Monteverdi expanded the scope and limits of a musical language that was initially devised for a chamber music genre, namely, the madrigal, a language mainly adopted to set introspective Petrarchist lyrical poetry. At the end of the sixteenth century, as is well known, the experiments made by the musicians operating in Mantua and Ferrara expanded the representational power of madrigalist language. Together with the style of the canzonetta this expansion was appropriated by Monteverdi, who channeled it into dramatic works such as Orfeo, which, in this light, achieved a magnificent stylistic synthesis, well illustrated by Ossi (chap. 3). Ossi also points out that Giulio Cesare's defense in the Scherzi musicali was drafted before and during the composition of the opera, showing a connection between seconda prattica and musical theater. …