Divine Wisdom and Dolorous Mysteries: Habsburg Marian Devotion in Two Motets from Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale

The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 237–271, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2007 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’sRights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jm.2007.24.2.237.

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An earlier version of this article was presented at the 68th An-nual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Columbus,1 November 2002. For their valuable comments on earlier draftsI am very grateful to Robert Holzer, Jeffrey Kurtzman, MassimoOssi, Ellen Rosand, and Steven Saunders.

1 Claudio Monteverdi, Selva morale et spirituale (Venice: B. Magni, 1641). Facsimileand modern edition in idem, Opera Omnia: Edizione nazionale, vol. 15, ed. Denis Stevens(Cremona: Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi, 1998).

2 Claudio Monteverdi, Sanctissimae Virgini missa senis vocibus, ac vesperae pluribus de-cantandae (Venice: R. Amadino, 1610). The best overview of this print, as well as of messa

Divine Wisdom andDolorous Mysteries:Habsburg Marian Devotionin Two Motets fromMonteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale

ANDREW H. WEAVER

Claudio Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale,the last print issued by the composer during his lifetime, is both thelargest and most perplexing of his publications, particularly in its ad-mixture of music.1 The primary components of the print are not inthemselves puzzling: The stile antico mass for four voices and liturgicalmusic for vespers combine to create a messa e salmi collection along thesame line as Monteverdi’s celebrated Vespers of 1610.2 This basic collec-tion is then expanded with concertato mass movements (a large-scale

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Gloria and three sections of the Credo) and psalms for large, diverseperforming forces.3 The inclusion of small-scale, extra-liturgical worksadds to the complexity of the print. The most anomalous feature of theSelva morale is the set of five Italian madrigals that opens the volume,transforming it into an unorthodox multilingual sacred print.4 Theother extra-liturgical works are four solo motets; although such worksare more common in messa e salmi collections, two of them are puzzling,especially in terms of their texts, musical character, and placement.

Three of the motets appear at the end of the Selva morale (as is typi-cal), and two of these, Jubilet tota civitas and Laudate Dominum in sanctiseius, pose no conceptual problems in that they set texts that correspondthematically to much of the other music in the print yet are generalenough to be used in as wide a variety of contexts as the consumer

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e salmi collections of the seicento, is Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610:Music, Context, Performance (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999). The vespers items in-cluded in the Selva morale include psalms, hymns, Magnificats, and settings of the SalveRegina. Strictly speaking, the Marian antiphons belong liturgically with compline, butthroughout Europe it was standard for the seasonally appropriate antiphon to be per-formed at the end of vespers if a polyphonic performance of compline did not immedi-ately follow the service. Kurtzman has cited a liturgical rubric that dictates the singing ofa Marian antiphon after the last hour of the day; see his The Monteverdi Vespers, Appendix B,503.

3 With its immense scale and multiple large-scale settings of the psalm texts, theSelva morale is virtually unrivaled among 17th-century messa e salmi collections; only oneother print, in fact, approaches the grandeur of Monteverdi’s: This is Giovanni AntonioRigatti, Messa e salmi, parte concertati (Venice: B. Magni, 1640); modern edition ed. LindaMaria Koldau, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era 128–30 (Middleton:A-R Editions, 2003). In the Introduction to her edition, Koldau explicitly comparesRigatti’s print to the Selva morale (1: vii–xi), although Rigatti’s publication features noneof the anomalies that make Monteverdi’s print so enigmatic.

4 For an overview of the few 17th-century prints that mix Latin and Italian texts, seeJerome Roche, “On the Border Between Motet and Spiritual Madrigal: Early Seventeenth-Century Books that Mix Motets and Vernacular Settings,” in Seicento inesplorato: L’eventomusicale tra prassi e stile: un modello di interdipendenza, ed. Alberto Colzani et al. (Como: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1993), 305–17. Roche lists only 12 examples of thistype of publication, including the Selva morale ; Linda Maria Koldau supplements this list with six more prints in her Die venezianische Kirchenmusik von Claudio Monteverdi (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), 118n66. To this can also be added four prints by IsabellaLeonarda: Motetti a voce sola, Op. 12 (Milan: Fratelli Camagni alla Rosa, 1686), a book of12 motets containing two spiritual madrigals that open and close the volume; Motetti avoce sola, Op. 14 (Bologna: G. Monti, 1687), a book of nine motets that opens with a“canzonetta sagra”; Motetti a voce sola, Op. 15 (Bologna: P. Monti, 1690), a book of tenmotets that concludes with a “cantata morale”; and Salmi concertati, Op. 19 (Bologna: M. Silvani, 1698), a book of vespers psalms that concludes with a three-voice “canon coro-nato.” Facsimiles of Opp. 12, 14, and 15 are available in Anne Schnoebelen, ed., SoloMotets from the Seventeenth Century: Facsimiles of Prints from the Italian Baroque, 10 vols. (Lon-don: Garland, 1987–88), vols. 4 and 5; information on these prints is also available inStewart Carter, “The Music of Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704)” (Ph.D. diss., StanfordUniv., 1982).


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wished.5 The third, however, is problematic. Immediately following Ju-bilet tota civitas and Laudate Dominum is a work that contrasts in subject,mood, and style. The Pianto della Madonna, a Latin contrafactum ofMonteverdi’s celebrated Lamento d’Arianna, is an operatic, sorrowfulrecitative soliloquy in which the Blessed Virgin Mary laments the cruci-fixion of Christ. Likewise, the fourth motet in the Selva differs remark-ably from the other three. Ab aeterno ordinata sum sets a passage fromthe Old Testament book of Proverbs, an utterance by Divine Wisdomdescribing the creation of the world. Whereas the other three motetsare scored for solo soprano or tenor, Ab aeterno is a virtuosic showpiecefor solo bass, a very rare genre in Monteverdi’s oeuvre.6

The placement of these two works in the print is striking and un-doubtedly significant (see Table 1), especially considering that scholarshave commented on the seemingly deliberate placement of works inMonteverdi’s mature prints.7 The Pianto della Madonna stands out notonly because of its textual and stylistic incongruence with the two motetsthat precede it but also because as the final work in the Selva morale it oc-cupies a traditional place of honor in 17th-century musical prints. In ad-dition, Linda Maria Koldau has observed that the Pianto works together

2395 The combination of psalms and hymns provided by Monteverdi can be arranged

to form complete services for the feasts of male saints (see Koldau, Die venezianischeKirchenmusik, 105–10 and 126–31), so it is perfectly appropriate that Jubilet honors a spe-cific saint, whose name is characteristically omitted and replaced with “N” (nomen). Lau-date Dominum is a motet setting of the popular Psalm 150; although it does not specificallycelebrate saints, this ebullient song of praise could nonetheless have easily been sung ei-ther in conjunction with Jubilet or on almost any festive occasion during the church year.

6 There are only two known extended solo bass works by Monteverdi: this motetand the long second section of the madrigal Ogni amante è guerrier from his Eighth Book.On Monteverdi’s solo bass music, see Werner Braun, “Monteverdis große Baßmonodien,”in Claudio Monteverdi: Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ludwig Fin-scher (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1986), 123–39.

7 Massimo Ossi, for instance, has noted that the texts of the continuo madrigals ofBook Five are drawn from a single source (Guarini’s Rime) and that Monteverdi re-arranged them to form a continuous narrative that is reinforced by textual continuitiesand musical similarities among the works; see his “ ‘L’ordine novo e la via naturale all’im-mitatione’: Struttura e rappresentazione nei madrigali concertati del ‘Quinto Libro’ diMonteverdi,” in Monteverdi al quale ognuno deve cedere: Teorie e composizioni musicali, rappre-sentazioni e spettacoli dal 1550 al 1628 (Parma: Archivio di Stato di Parma, 1993), 113–31.For a larger discussion incorporating the entire Fifth Book as well as the Fourth Book, seeidem, Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi’s “Seconda Prattica” (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,2003), 58–110. Careful ordering of works has also been noted in Monteverdi’s sacredrepertoire; much has been written on the unusual placement of the motets in his 1610Vespers, where they are sandwiched between the psalm settings instead of forming a sepa-rate section at the end of the print; see, for instance, Stephen Bonta, “Liturgical Prob-lems in Monteverdi’s Marian Vespers,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 20(1967): 87–106; Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, Essays on the Monteverdi Mass and Vespers of 1610,Rice University Studies, vol. 64, no. 4 (Houston: Rice Univ., 1978), 127–31; idem, TheMonteverdi Vespers, 23–25, 35–36, 56–78, and 106–10; and John Whenham, Monte-verdi:Vespers (1610) (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), 19–22.


TABLE 1

Contents of Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spirituale (1641)Adapted from Linda Maria Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik von Claudio Monteverdi(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), 119.

Extra-liturgical Frame

Composition Setting (plus Bc) Ordering Principle

O ciechi, ciechi SSATB, 2VlVoi ch’ascoltate STTTB, 2VlÈ questa vita un lampo SSATB literary chronology (madrigali spirituali)Spontava il di ATBChi vol che m’innamori ATB, 2Vl

Messa a 4 da cappella SATBGloria a 7 voci SSATTBB, 2Vl

(4Vla/Tb)Crucifixus ATTB � Mass OrdinaryEt resurrexit SS/TT, 2VlEt iterum concertato AAB (4Tb/Vla)

Motetto Ab aeterno B

Dixit primo concertato SSAATTBB, 2Vl (4Vla/Tb)

Dixit secondo concertato SSAATTBB, 2Vl (4Vla/Tb)

Confitebor primo ATB, SSATB (rip.)Confitebor secondo conc. STB, 2VlConfitebor terzo alla francese SSATB or S, 4Vla

Beatus primo concertato SSATTB, 2Vl concertato(3 Vla/Tb) feastday/ da capella

Beatus secondo SATTB male saints

Laudate pueri primo conc. SSTTB, 2Vl � concertatoLaudate pueri secondo SATTB da capella Mass & �Vespers

liturgy

Laudate Dom. primo conc. SSTTB, SATB, 2Vl (4Vla/Tb)

Laudate Dom. secondo conc. SSAATTBBLaudate Dominum terzo SSAATTBB

Credidi da capella SATB, ATTB martyrs/ Memento da capella SATB, ATTB � confessors

Sanctorum meritis primo S, 2VlSanctorum meritis secondo T, 2VlDeus tuorum militum T, 2VlIste confessor primo T, 2Vl � Vespers hymnsIste confessor secondo SS, 2VlUt queant laxis SS, 2VlDeus tuorum militum TTB, 2Vl

Magnificat primo SATB, ST, AB/2 MagnificatVla(4Vla/Tb) settings concertato

Magnificat secondo SATB � da capella

��


240 � �


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8 Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 114 and 117–18. Although the text of thePianto is Latin, the piece was known by audiences first and foremost as an Italian work;the title, moreover, is Italian.

9 The gathering structure and pagination of the partbooks support this interpreta-tion, for in every book signature B begins with the first setting of the psalm Dixit Dominus,at which point the pagination returns to one. The only exception is the Alto e Basso Se-cundo partbook, in which the music for Ab aeterno spills over into the first page of B; how-ever, the fact that the bulk of the music is in signature A implies that the motet belongsprimarily in the earlier section. The index to each partbook places the letter B before thebass motet, but this was probably a printer’s error (of which there are many in the publi-cation). See Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, “Monteverdi’s ‘Mass of Thanksgiving’ Revisited,” EarlyMusic 22 (1994): 81n15 and Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 120–21.

10 Monteverdi’s Sixth and Eighth Madrigal books are similarly organized. As GaryTomlinson has commented, “Monteverdi’s strengthened urge to schematic clarity . . . isevident as well in the internal organization of the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Books. TheSesto libro de madrigali of 1614 falls into two sections, articulated by a series of lengthymadrigals that act as structural pillars” (Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance [Berkeley:Univ. of California Press, 1987], 156).

with the five opening madrigals to create an extra-liturgical “Italian”frame for the entire publication.8 The positioning of Ab aeterno is evenmore unusual; instead of being grouped at the end of the publicationwith the other three motets, it appears roughly a third of the way in,where it separates the vespers music from the preceding mass. Thisplacement does not seem to reflect any liturgical considerations butrather an abstract organizational concern, with Ab aeterno articulatingthe division between the two large sections of the print.9 Thus the twoanomalous motets serve important structural functions, closing off thetwo parts of the Selva morale.10

It is difficult to imagine that the placement of Ab aeterno and Piantodella Madonna is anything but a deliberate act by Monteverdi, and thispresumption opens the door to questions about the composer’s inten-tions in assembling the Selva morale. Such questions have not been over-looked by scholars. Most notably, in an article published in 1984, James H. Moore attempted to place much of the music of the Selva intothe services establishing the church of Santa Maria della Salute in

TABLE 1 (continued)

Salve Regina TTSalve Regina TT/SS Marian antiphonsSalve Regina ATB/SAB �Jubilet SLaudate Dominum S/T Motets/spiritual monody Pianto della Madonna S (free liturgical function)sopra il Lamento dell’ Arianna

Extra-liturgical Frame

� �04.JOM.Weaver_pp237-271 4/23/07 9:29 AM Page 241


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Venice in the face of the devastating plague of 1629–31; Moore also at-tempted to demonstrate that the organization of the print was deter-mined primarily by the function of the music during the services.11 AsJeffrey Kurtzman later pointed out, however, Moore’s conclusions arebased primarily on unsupported speculation and loosely connected cir-cumstantial evidence. Although very attractive, they cannot stand as adefinitive explanation of either the original function of the music orthe organization of the Selva morale.12 Recent scholarship has taken theopposite approach than that taken by Moore. Today the generally ac-cepted view is that the print is merely a retrospective, multipurposecompilation of sacred music written throughout Monteverdi’s nearlythirty years as maestro of San Marco.13 I concur with this view but never-theless maintain that even a retrospective collection may contain pieces(whether newly composed or not) that are directed to a specific pur-pose or that relate some kind of “program.”14 It is my contention thatAb aeterno and Pianto della Madonna fall into this category, and indeed, Ishall argue that Monteverdi included these motets in the Selva moralefor a specific reason. They are significant signposts whose inclusion—and prominent positioning—in the publication serves as a conspicuousact of homage to a valued patron.

I

The dedicatee of Monteverdi’s remarkable collection is EleonoraGonzaga, daughter of Monteverdi’s former Mantuan patron VincenzoGonzaga and widow of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (r. 1619–37). It would make sense, then, that it is she whom Monteverdi honorswith Ab aeterno and Pianto della Madonna. Scholars invariably mentionthis dedication in general overviews of the Selva morale, explaining it asan act of fealty to Monteverdi’s former patron, an acknowledgement bythe aged composer of the importance that Gonzaga patronage had

11 James H. Moore, “Venezia favorita da Maria: Music for the Madonna Nicopeia andSanta Maria della Salute,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 37 (1984): 299–355.

12 Kurtzman, “Monteverdi’s ‘Mass.’ ” Kurtzman is currently preparing another arti-cle refuting Moore’s conclusions.

13 For instance, the most recent overview of the Selva (Koldau, Die venezianischeKirchenmusik, 98–134) offers many illuminating observations and suggestions about theordering principles in the print but for the most part sidesteps considerations of the com-poser’s intent or the specific purpose of any piece.

14 I am not the only scholar to hold this view of the Selva morale. In his unpublishedpaper “The Madrigals of the Selva morale et spirituale,” Robert R. Holzer focuses on the fiveopening madrigals, using evidence from the composer’s life and contemporaneous liter-ary movements to posit an autobiographical narrative for the five works as a set. I amgrateful to Prof. Holzer for kindly sharing his paper with me.


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played in his long career. (This interpretation is reinforced, moreover,by the text of Monteverdi’s dedication.)15 It has also been noted thatthis dedication forms a pair with that of Monteverdi’s immediately pre-ceding publication, the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi of 1638, which isdedicated to Ferdinand III (r. 1637–57), the son and successor of Fer-dinand II.16 Even while honoring Eleonora’s Gonzaga lineage, then, itwould seem that Monteverdi was also addressing her as a Habsburg; infact, there is ample evidence indicating that Monteverdi included thetwo anomalous motets in the Selva morale specifically with the Habsburgcourt in Vienna in mind.17

Monteverdi was certainly no stranger to the concept of tailoring hispublications to his dedicatees; the contents of Book Eight clearlydemonstrate the extent to which Monteverdi’s choices could be condi-tioned by the Viennese court. Although he had originally planned todedicate the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi to Ferdinand II, the composerwas careful to craft a print that explicitly honored the new emperor. Anumber of the madrigals name Ferdinand III, allude to his recent coro-nation as King of the Romans, and exalt his military prowess.18 It is alsosignificant that Monteverdi’s homage to the emperor came in the formof a book glorifying the concept of war (regardless of whatever the ac-tual “war” represented by the predominantly amorous madrigal texts

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15 General overviews of the Selva morale include Giuseppe Biella, “I ‘Vespri dei Santi’di Claudio Monteverdi,” Musica sacra ser. 2, 6 (1966): 144–53; Denis Stevens, “ClaudioMonteverdi: Selva morale e spirituale,” in Congresso internazionale sul tema Claudio Monteverdi eil suo tempo: Relazioni e communicazioni, ed. Raffaello Monterosso (Verona: Valdonega,1969), 423–34; and Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi (Turin: EDT, 1985), 313–22.

16 This connection is made, for instance, in Fabbri, Monteverdi, 313. As is clear fromthe text of the dedication, Monteverdi had originally intended to dedicate Book Eight toFerdinand II, but the emperor’s death in 1637 caused a change in plans. For details onthe origins of this madrigal book, see Steven Saunders, “New Light on the Genesis ofMonteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals,” Music & Letters 77 (1996): 183–93. A modernedition of Book Eight is Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigals, Book 8: Madrigali guerrieri etamorosi, ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero with a preface and new translations by Stanley Ap-pelbaum (New York: Dover, 1991).

17 Simultaneously and independently, Koldau has also raised the question of a possi-ble relationship between the contents of the Selva morale and the Habsburg court; hermonograph contains a brief section entitled “Ausrichtung am Wiener Kaiserhof ?” (Dievenezianische Kirchenmusik, 110–16).

18 These works include the piece that opens the volume (Altri canti d’Amore), thesixth madrigal (Ogni amante è guerrier), and the Ballo that closes the section of madrigaliguerrieri. Ogni amante è guerrier addresses Ferdinand III by his full name (“gran FernandoErnesto”), making it absolutely clear that this is a reference to him, not his father. Signifi-cantly, the entire section of warlike madrigals is framed by proclamations of the Habs-burgs’ military glory. For an insightful look at the poetry of this book, see Nino Pirrotta,“Monteverdi’s Poetic Choices,” in Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to theBaroque: A Collection of Essays (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984), 309–11.



may be).19 The Habsburgs were embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War(1618–48), and Ferdinand III had recently led the imperial troops tovictory at the Battle of Nördlingen on 6 September 1634.20 Thus theoverall topos of the madrigal book would have been most welcome atcourt as a celebration of the emperor’s military might. Monteverdi mayeven have composed some of the music with an eye to the prevailingmusical tastes at the imperial court. Margaret Mabbett has pointed outthat many of the unusual features of the Book Eight madrigals, such asthe instrumentation and the use of the bass voice, seem more closely re-lated to the stylistic trends of Vienna than those of Venice or Mantua.21

Peter Holman, furthermore, has pointed to what he considers signs ofan Austrian tradition of string playing apparent in Monteverdi’s latermusic, including works from Book Eight and the Selva morale.22

That Monteverdi would have wanted to honor the Viennese courtwith two large publications is not surprising in light of his long andprofitable association with the Habsburg emperors. Their relationshipdates as far back as the last decade of the 16th century, when Monteverdimade several trips through Habsburg lands and Ferdinand II sojournedin Italy.23 A personal bond between the composer and the Habsburgscan be confirmed as early as 1604, for the godfather of Monteverdi’sson Massimiliano Giacomo (baptized on 10 May 1604) was MaximilianErnst, Ferdinand II’s younger brother.24 Eleonora Gonzaga’s marriage

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19 For a provocative interpretation of Monteverdi’s guerrieri madrigals as a whole,see Robert R. Holzer, “ ‘Ma invan la tento et impossibil parmi,’ or How guerrieri are Mon-teverdi’s madrigali guerrieri?” in The Sense of Marino, ed. Francesco Guardiani (New York:Lagas, 1994), 429–50.

20 Ferdinand III had become general of the imperial army in May of that year.21 Margaret Mabbett, “Madrigalists at the Viennese Court and Monteverdi’s Madri-

gali guerrieri, et amorosi,” in Monteverdi und die Folgen: Bericht über das Internationale Sympo-sium Detmold 1993, ed. Silke Leopold and Joachim Steinheuer (Kassel: Bärenreiter,1998), 291–310.

22 Peter Holman, “ ‘Col noblissimo esercitio della vivuola’: Monteverdi’s String Writ-ing,” Early Music 21 (1993): 577–90, esp. 580 and 587.

23 In 1595 and 1599, Monteverdi headed the groups of musicians who accompa-nied Vincenzo Gonzaga on trips north of the Alps, where they passed through Habsburgcities such as Innsbruck and Prague. In 1598, moreover, the future emperor traveledthrough Mantua on a tour of Italy and most likely heard Monteverdi perform at the Gonzaga court. Ferdinand’s Italian sojourn is discussed in detail in Theophil Antonicek,“Italienische Musikerlebnisse Ferdinands II. 1598,” Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademieder Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse 104 (1967): 91–111. On Monteverdi’s re-lationship with the Habsburgs, see also idem, “Claudio Monteverdi und Österreich,”Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 26 (1971): 266–71; Saunders, “New Light”; and HerbertSeifert, “Monteverdi und die Habsburger,” in Monteverdi und die Folgen, 77–92.

24 Claudio Gallico, “Newly Discovered Documents Concerning Monteverdi,” Musi-cal Quarterly 48 (1962): 68–72. See also Seifert, “Monteverdi und die Habsburger,” 81.Eleven years later a work by Monteverdi was included in the Parnassus musicus Ferdinan-daeus (Venice: G. Vincenti, 1615), an anthology of small-scale motets dedicated to Ferdi-nand II. For more information on this anthology, see Hellmut Federhofer, “Graz Court


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to Ferdinand II in 1622 served only to strengthen this relationship; un-doubtedly helping to facilitate communication between Monteverdiand the imperial court was the fact that a number of his former Man-tuan colleagues had traveled with Eleonora to Vienna.25 In 1627 thecomposer even considered using his relationship with Eleonora toleverage the acquisition of a benefice in Cremona, a plan that eventu-ally came to fruition in 1633 when Ferdinand II wrote a letter of recom-mendation for the composer after receiving a gift of musical works (nodoubt an early version of the Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi ).26

So strong were Monteverdi’s ties to the Habsburgs that they wereno secret among his Venetian compatriots. An anonymous denuncia-tion of the composer from the late 1620s or early 1630s went so far as toclaim that Monteverdi “said that he still hopes to see the Eagle rule thisPiazza in place of the symbol of St. Mark.”27 In light of this strong (andapparently public) relationship between Monteverdi and the imperialcourt, it is quite probable that the composer did indeed have Viennesetastes in mind as he compiled the Selva morale et spirituale. This idea isstrengthened, moreover, by the fact that both Ab aeterno ordinata sum andPianto della Madonna play directly into the most important elements ofthe Habsburgs’ much-flaunted public piety, the Pietas Austriaca.

Originating in Habsburg legends that extend as far back as theirfirst ruler Rudolph I (r. 1273–91), the Pietas Austriaca was a unique moraland religious code promulgated by the Habsburg dynasty throughout the16th and 17th centuries.28 Strongly influenced by the Jesuits, with whomthe Habsburgs had a long-standing and very close relationship,29 this

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Musicians and Their Contributions to the Parnassus musicus Ferdinandaeus (1615),” Mu-sica disciplina 9 (1955): 167–244.

25 For further information on the artistic connections between Mantua and Vienna,see Paola Besutti, “I rapporti musicali tra Mantova e Vienna durante il Seicento,” in InTeutschland noch gantz ohnbekant: Monteverdi-Rezeption und frühes Musiktheater im deutschs-prachigen Raum, ed. Markus Engelhardt (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996), 45–62. FerdinandII’s court also maintained close artistic ties with Venice, and Monteverdi most likely cameinto contact with the emperor’s two Venetian chapel masters, Giovanni Priuli and Gio-vanni Valentini. On the influence the Serenissima had on the imperial court, see HerbertSeifert, “La politica culturale degli Asburgo e le relazioni musicali tra Venezia e Vienna,”in L’Opera Italiana a Vienna prima di Metastasio, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence:Olschki, 1990), 1–15 and Steven Saunders, Cross, Sword and Lyre: Sacred Music at the Imper-ial Court of Ferdinand II of Habsburg (1619–1637) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 61–92.

26 Saunders, “New Light,” 183–86.27 See Paolo Preto, “Una denuncia anonima contro Claudio Monteverdi,” Rassegna

veneta di studi musicali 5–6 (1989–90): 371–73 and Jonathan Glixon, “Was Monteverdi aTraitor?” Music & Letters 72 (1991): 404–6 (translation from Glixon).

28 Anna Coreth, Pietas Austriaca, trans. William D. Bowman and Anna Maria Leitgeb(West Lafayette: Purdue Univ. Press, 2004).

29 Beginning with Ferdinand II, all Habsburg emperors were educated by the Jesuits.The relationship between Ferdinand II and his Jesuit confessor William Lamormaini was



Pietas consisted of four pillars: the Blessed Virgin Mary (especially thecontroversial doctrine of her Immaculate Conception), the cross (withspecial emphasis on the five wounds of Christ), the Eucharist, andsaints. The Pietas Austriaca, furthermore, was closely related to the on-going Thirty Years’ War and served as a powerful political weapon forthe Habsburgs. As nominal ruler of a realm that was deeply dividedover religious matters, Ferdinand III (like his father before him) con-sidered it his divine mission to unify the Holy Roman Empire under thebanner of the Catholic church. This, ultimately, was what the ThirtyYears’ War was about for the Habsburgs, and religious goals remainedthe emperor’s top priority until the war’s bitter end.30 This Counter-Reformation program permeated all aspects of imperial life and mani-fested itself in many forms, but by far one of the Habsburgs’ most im-portant means of re-Catholicization was the Pietas Austriaca, throughwhich they aimed both to attract dissenting Protestants back to thechurch and to provide an exemplary model for their subjects to follow.31

Accordingly, it was precisely during this time that the Pietas reached its

246 so close that Lamormaini was his most influential advisor in political matters; this rela-tionship is examined in detail in Robert Bireley, Religion and Politics in the Age of the Coun-terreformation: Emperor Ferdinand II, William Lamormaini, S.J., and the Formation of ImperialPolicy (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1981). See also Gernot Heiss, “Princes,Jesuits and the Origins of the Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands,” in Crown,Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (London: Macmillan, 1991), 92–109.

30 This remained the case even in the final decade of the conflict, by which pointthe war had grown well beyond the confessional issues that had sparked it in 1618; onthis point, see especially Andrew H. Weaver, “Music in the Service of Counter-ReformationPolitics: The Immaculate Conception at the Habsburg Court of Ferdinand III (1637–1657,” Music & Letters 87 (2006): 361–78, and idem, “Piety, Politics, and Patronage:Motets at the Habsburg Court in Vienna During the Reign of Ferdinand III (1637–1657)” (Ph.D. diss., Yale Univ., 2002), 10–17. The best general account of the ThirtyYears’ War is the multi-author book edited by Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years’ War (Lon-don: Routledge, 1984; 2nd ed., 1997). A more succinct book is Ronald G. Asch, TheThirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618–48 (New York: St. Martin’s,1997), and the “classic” account of the war is C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (1938;repr., Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961).

31 On the Habsburgs’ Counter-Reformation program and its relationship to politicsand culture, see especially Robert Bireley, “Confessional Absolutism in the HabsburgLands in the Seventeenth Century,” in State and Society in Early Modern Austria, ed. Charles W.Ingrao (West Lafayette: Purdue Univ. Press, 1994), 36–53; idem, “Ferdinand II: Founderof the Habsburg Monarchy,” in Crown, Church and Estates, 226–44; idem, Religion and Poli-tics in the Age of the Counterreformation; Robert Douglas Chesler, “Crown, Lords, and God:The Establishment of Secular Authority and the Pacification in Lower Austria, 1618–1648” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1979); R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the HabsburgMonarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); Charles W. Ingrao,The Habsburg Monarchy 1618–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 23–52;and Kurt Piringer, “Ferdinand des Dritten Katholische Restauration” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. ofVienna, 1950). These issues are also discussed in Weaver, “Piety, Politics, and Patronage,”1–4 and 10–37.


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apex, being frequently lauded in printed historical works.32 It is un-likely that Monteverdi ever read (or even knew about) any of thesebooks, but even so he could have easily been aware of the important el-ements of the Pietas Austriaca. This is because the Pietas was also im-printed onto every artwork that emanated from the Habsburg court, es-pecially the music of Ferdinand’s renowned court chapel.33

In this regard, one composer stands out as the most important fig-ure of the late 1630s and early 1640s through whom Monteverdi couldhave become aware of the Pietas Austriaca: Giovanni Felice Sances (ca.1600–79). Though not widely known today, Sances was one of thebrightest stars of the mid 17th century and among the most prolificcomposers at the Habsburg court.34 Originally from Rome, where hereceived his earliest training at the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, Sancesspent the early 1630s in Northern Italy (including a brief stint inVenice) and became famous for four publications of small-scale secularcantatas as well as his opera Ermiona, performed in Padua in April1636.35 He joined the imperial court chapel as a tenor later in 1636,

24732 Examples include Wenceslaus Adalbert Czerwenka, Annales et acta pietatis augustis-simae ac serenissimae Domus Habspurgo-Austriacae (Prague: J. M. Störitz, 1694); DidacusLequille [Diego Tafuri], De rebus Austriacis tomus tribus: Piissima atque augustissima DomusAustria (Innsbruck: M. Wagner, 1660), the second volume of which is explicitly entitledPietas Austriaca ; Johann Peter Lotichus, Austrias Parva: id est, gloriae Austriacae, et belli nuperGermanici, sub divo Matthia, Ferdinandis II. et III. Impp. gesti, compendaria (Frankfurt: J. Schönwetter, 1653); Phosphorus Austriacus de Gente Austriaca libri tres, in quibus gentis illiusprima origo, magnitudo, imperium, ac virtus asseritur, et probatur (Louvain: H. Coenestenius,1665); Nikolaus Vernulz, Virtutum augustissimae gentis Austriace libri tres (Louvain: J. Zeger,1640); and Eberhard Wassenberg, Panegyricus Sacritissimiso Imperatori Ferdinando III.(Cologne: J. Kalkhoff, 1647).

33 See, for example, Adam Wandruszka, “Ein Freskenzyklus der ‘Pietas Austriaca’ inFlorenz,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 15 (1962): 495–99; Saunders, Cross,Sword and Lyre, 178–222; and Weaver, “Piety, Politics, and Patronage,” 305–417.

34 The best biography of Sances is in Steven Saunders’s edition of the composer’sMotetti a una, due, tre, e quattro voci (1638), Recent Researches in the Music of the BaroqueEra 126 (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2003), ix–xii. See also John Whenham and StevenSaunders, “Sances, Giovanni Felice,” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nded. (New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 2000); Peter Webhofer, Giovanni Felice Sances (ca.1600–1679): Biographische-bibliographische Untersuchung und Studie über sein Motettenwerk(Rome: Pontificio Istitutio di Musica Sacra, 1964); and Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and Mu-sic, vol. 1, A Study of the Musicians Connected With the German College in Rome During the Seven-teenth Century and of Their Activities in Northern Europe (Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute; St.Louis: St. Louis Univ. Press, 1970), 141–43.

35 Sances’s earliest surviving publications are his Cantade . . . a voce sola (Venice: B. Magni, 1633) and Cantade . . . a doi voci (Venice: B. Magni, 1633). He also published an earlier collection of cantatas that has not survived and Il quarto libro delle cantate, et ariea voce sola (Venice: B. Magni, 1636). On Ermiona, see especially Ellen Rosand, Opera inSeventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,1991), 67–70. We know precious little about Sances’s activities in Venice or even preciselywhen he lived there; our only information is that he worked in the service of NicolòSagredo, future ambassador to the imperial court. Sances mentions this service in the



and almost immediately after his move to Vienna he began publishingsacred music. Two books of small-scale motets appeared in 1638, andhe issued five more publications within the next decade.36 This flurryof publication was undoubtedly a calculated attempt by Sances to makea name for himself as a prominent court composer by spreading theglory of the imperial musical establishment—and of the Habsburgs—toa wide audience. Most of the publications, in fact, were dedicated toFerdinand III or members of his immediate family.37 Sances even an-nounced his intentions in the dedicatory text (to the emperor) of hisfirst motet book from 1638, which begins, “Previously I devotedly dedi-cated to you my voice; today I reverently dedicate to you my pen, withthe sentiment of making known to the world in these little notes mycurrent service, in which I take pride, and to Your Majesty my ardentdesire.”38 Sances also cleverly designed the prints to emphasize impor-tant aspects of Habsburg piety and promote the Counter-Reformation,placing particularly significant texts at prominent locations and employ-ing striking musical features to highlight the meaning of the words.39

Sances’s attempts to endear himself to his patron were ultimately suc-cessful: In 1649 he rose to the position of vice chapel master, eventuallybecoming maestro di cappella.

One of Sances’s sacred prints is of particular importance for ourconsideration of Monteverdi’s Selva morale : his Motetti a voce sola of1638, the second print he issued after becoming a member of the im-

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dedication of his Capricci poetici (Venice: Gardano, 1649), in which he refers to “that former service that I rendered to you many years ago in Venice” (quall’antica servitù,ch’in Venetia già molti anni sono le consecrai).

36 Giovanni Felice Sances, Motetti a una, due, tre, e quattro voci (Venice: B. Magni,1638); idem, Motetti a voce sola (Venice: B. Magni, 1638); idem, Antifone e litanie della Bea-tissima Vergine a più voci (Venice: B. Magni, 1640); idem, Motetti a 2. 3. 4. e cinque voci . . .con le letanie della B.V. a sei voci . . . opera quarta ecclesiastica (Venice: B. Magni, 1642); idem,Salmi a 8 voci concertati, con la comodità de suoi ripieni per chi li desiderasse (Venice: B. Magni,1643); idem, Salmi brevi a 4 voci concertate (Venice: Gardano, 1647); and idem, AntiphonareSacrae B.M.V. per totum annum una voce decantandae (Venice: Gardano, 1648).

37 Dedicatees of Sances’s prints include: Ferdinand III (1638), Eleonora Gonzaga(1638), Ferdinand III’s wife Maria of Spain (1640), Ferdinand III’s brother ArchdukeLeopold Wilhelm (1643), and Ferdinand III’s eldest son Ferdinand IV (1647). The dedi-catee of his 1642 motet book is Count Vilem Slavata, chancellor of Bohemia and one ofthe men who had survived being hurled out of a window at the Defenestration of Praguein 1618.

38 “Già divoto dedicai la Voce; hoggi consacro riverente la penna, con sentimento difar noto al Mondo in queste poche Note l’attual servitù, di cui mi glorio, e alla MaestàVostra l’ardente desiderio.”

39 On these points, see especially Weaver, “Music in the Service of Counter-ReformationPolitics”; idem, “Piety, Politics, and Patronage,” 246–52 (and passim); and Saunders’s In-troduction to Sances, Motetti, xiii–xv. See also the Introduction to my forthcoming editionof Sances’s Motetti a 2, 3, 4, e cinque voci (1642), Research Researches in the Music of theBaroque Era (Middleton: A-R Editions, in press).


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perial chapel.40 Whereas Sances had dedicated his first sacred print tohis new employer, for this second publication under Habsburg patron-age the honor went to the next most prestigious figure at the imperialcourt: the dowager empress Eleonora Gonzaga. That both Sances’sprint and the Selva morale bear dedications to the same person (andwere issued by the same publisher) may at first seem mere coincidence,but there are undeniable similarities between the two prints. Even ifMonteverdi did not know Sances personally,41 there can be little doubtthat the older composer was at least acquainted with Sances’s Motetti avoce sola. If nothing else, he used it as a reference for selecting motetsthat would have been especially appreciated at the Viennese court.42

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40 A facsimile edition of this print is available in Schnoebelen, Solo Motets, vol. 8. Inthe copy reproduced in Schnoebelen’s facsimile, a later hand has altered the publicationdate on both the title page and the dedication to read “1643,” but this alteration appearsonly in the basso continuo partbook and not in any of the vocal partbooks (see Schnoeb-elen, Solo Motets, vol. 8, xviii, n1). This alteration is inexplicable and almost certainly notauthentic; not only had Sances already established the practice of publishing multipleprints in the same year (e.g., his books of cantatas in 1633), but the order of his dedica-tions to the imperial family also follows a strict hierarchy, in which the dowager empress issecond only to the current emperor.

41 There is, however, tantalizing evidence to suggest that Monteverdi was aware ofSances and his music. For instance, we know that Sances spent time in Venice, even if (asmentioned earlier) we know practically nothing about his activities there. There are nev-ertheless other possible biographical intersections between the composers. Sances’s olderbrother Lorenzo, a renowned opera singer, was employed at the Mantuan court shortlyafter Monteverdi’s move to Venice; we do not know, however, precisely what—if any—contact Monteverdi had with Mantuan musicians at that time. For more information onLorenzo, see especially Susan Helen Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua, 1587–1627: An Archival Study,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1989), 2: 499–500 and Culley, Jesuits and Music, 155–56 and 230. Even more intriguing,the cast of Sances’s Ermiona included not only Sances himself but also Francesco Mon-teverdi, Claudio’s eldest son, who was at that time employed under his father’s directionat San Marco; see Denis Stevens, The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, rev. ed. (Oxford: Claren-don, 1995), 140–41. Silke Leopold has pointed to what she sees as evidence for compo-sitional emulation, and perhaps even a direct rivalry, between the two composers, basedon similarities between Sances’s cantatas of the early 1630s and works by Monteverdi, especially those written over ostinato basses, such as Monteverdi’s famous Zefiro tornapublished in his Scherzi musicali (Venice: B. Magni, 1632; modern edition in Monteverdi,Opera omnia, vol. 12, ed. Frank Dobbins and Anna Maria Vacchelli, 72–83); see SilkeLeopold, Al modo d’Orfeo: Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des frühen 17.Jahrhunderts, Analecta Musicologica 29 (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1995), 270–78. The cur-rent state of research on the Monteverdi-Sances relationship is laid out by Saunders inSances, Motetti, ix–x.

42 It is quite possible that Monteverdi may have been directed to Sances’s print byhis Venetian publisher Bartolomeo Magni. Jeffrey Kurtzman has suggested to me that inthe early 1640s Magni appears to have been very interested in honoring the Habsburgswith a number of impressive publications dedicated to them; it is surely significant thatRigatti dedicated his large-scale Messa e salmi, parte concertati to Ferdinand III, even thoughhe had no known connections to the imperial court. (In comparing Rigatti’s print to theSelva morale, Koldau has also considered the role that Magni may have played as instigatorbehind the publication of both prints; see Rigatti, Messa e salmi, ed. Koldau, 1: vii–xi.) Al-though as yet we have no answers as to why Magni would have wanted to do this, it is



II

The text of Ab aeterno ordinata sum, Proverbs 8:23–31 (Table 2), isfound only rarely in the 17th-century motet repertoire. It is striking,then, that one of the bass motets in Sances’s Motetti a voce sola, Dominuspossedit me, sets exactly this same text, with just one verse added to thebeginning and end. I have located only one other surviving setting ofthis passage, a motet by the obscure composer Giovanni Battista Trevisopublished in an anthology from 1645.43 Significantly, the text was alsoapparently set by Antonio Bertali, the maestro di cappella of the Viennesecourt from 1649 to 1669; a motet by him entitled Ab aeterno ordinata islisted in an inventory of the imperial music library that dates from thereign of Ferdinand III’s successor Leopold I.44

What meaning could this rarely-used motet text have held for 17th-century composers and listeners? In his attempt to place Monteverdi’smotet into the 1631 Venetian plague ceremonies, Moore sought to situ-ate this text in the liturgy for the feast of the Presentation of the Virgin;although the Proverbs passage is not a standard component of thisfeast, he nonetheless located a portion of Monteverdi’s motet text inClement VIII’s revised Roman breviary of 1606, where it appears inmatins.45 To strengthen his claim, Moore then drew upon a wealth oficonographic evidence to formulate an interpretation of Ab aeterno as acelebration of Venetia aeterna, the perfect republic that had existed fromthe beginning of time and would remain forevermore, despite the re-cent scourge of the plague. Moore’s interpretation is both eloquentand eminently plausible. In fact, David Rosand has shown that as earlyas the 12th century, Venetian clergy drew upon the Old Testament Wis-dom texts when praising the Serenissima; one prayer for the doge, for in-stance, declares that “God himself had wonderfully arranged the Vene-tian republic ab eterno.”46 Even if the motet were not planned as part ofthe plague ceremonies, Monteverdi almost certainly would have known

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possible that perhaps he was still suffering financially from the lag in publications broughton by the plague of 1629–31 and was therefore hoping to secure substantial financialsupport from the imperial court as a means of helping him get back onto his feet.

43 The anthology is Motetti a voce sola de diversi Eccelentissimi Autori (Venice: Gardano,1645); facsimile edition in Schnoebelen, Solo Motets, vol. 3. Our only information aboutTreviso comes from a biographical blurb in another anthology containing motets by him,Teatro musicale de concerti ecclesiastici a due, tre, e quattro voci di diversi celebri e nomati autori . . .(Milan: G. Rolla, 1649), which describes him as “Maestro di Cap. Del Santiss. Rosario inS. Tomaso di Pavia.”

44 The inventory is the so-called Distinta specificatione (Vienna, Österreichische Na-tionalbibliothek, Cod. Suppl. mus. 2451), in which Bertali’s motet is listed on fol. 18r.

45 Moore, “Venezia favorita da Maria,” 340–42.46 David Rosand, “Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth,” in Interpretazioni

Veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice:Arsenale, 1984), 184–85.


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that it could be interpreted as honoring the city that for nearly thirtyyears he had called home.47 It is also highly probable, however, thatMonteverdi would have known that the motet could also serve as a songof praise to the aspect of the Pietas Austriaca that was of utmost impor-tance to Ferdinand III: the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Vir-gin Mary.48

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47 If this were the case, however, we might wonder why the Ab aeterno text does notseem to have been more popular among Venetian composers.

48 On the importance of the Immaculate Conception to Ferdinand III, see espe-cially Weaver, “Music in the Service of Counter-Reformation Politics” and idem, “Piety,Politics, and Patronage,” 347–415.

TABLE 2

Text and Translation of Ab aeterno ordinata sum

Ab aeterno ordinata sum et ex antiquis antequam terra fieret.Nondum erant abyssi et ego iam concepta eram.Necdum fontes aquarum eruperant

necdum montes gravi mole constiterantante omnes colles ego parturiebar.

Adhuc terram non fecerat et flumina et cardines orbis terrae

quando praeparabat caelos aderam

quando certa lege et gyro vallabatabyssos

quando aethera firmabat sursum et librabat fontes aquarumquando circumdabat mari terminum

suumet legem ponebat aquis ne transient

fines suosquando appendebat fundamenta

terrae

cum eo eram cuncta componenset delectabar per singulos dies ludens coram eo omni tempore ludens in orbe terrarumet deliciae meae esse cum filiis

hominum.

I was set up from everlasting before the earth was made.The depths were not yet in existenceand I had already been conceived.When there were no fountains

erupting with water,before the mountains were constituted,before all of the hills I was brought

forth.When he had not yet made the earth,nor the rivers, nor the ends of the

earth,when he prepared the heavens I was

there;when he placed a compass upon the

abyss,when the clouds were made firm,and he liberated fountains of water,when he gave to the sea his decree,

that the waters not pass his commandment,

when he appointed the foundations ofthe earth

then I was with himand I was his daily delightrejoicing before him at all times,rejoicing in the whole world,and my delights were with the sons of

men.



By the 17th century, the Old Testament text from which Ab aeternois drawn was most readily understood not in connection to the Presen-tation of the Virgin but as a prefiguration of her Immaculate Concep-tion, the belief that Mary had been conceived by human parents with-out acquiring any touch of Original Sin. This is one of the fewdoctrines of the Catholic faith for which there is no direct Biblical evi-dence, a fact that ignited a heated controversy over the doctrine lastinguntil the 19th century; not until 1854 did it finally became dogma ofthe Catholic church and receive an official liturgy.49 Already by the12th century theologians seeking to defend the doctrine were turningto Old Testament texts, including Proverbs 8, in search of whatevertraces of proof they could find.50 By equating the Blessed Virgin withthe figure of Divine Wisdom, sapiential passages such as Proverbs 8 anda similar text from Ecclesiasticus 24:14 (“Ab initio et ante saecula cre-ata sum”) came to be explained as allegories for Mary’s predestinationand conception in the mind of God before the creation of the world, thefall in Eden, and the inception of Original Sin. In the early 17th century,moreover, this interpretation was widely propagated in the influentialBible commentaries of Cornelius a Lapide, a Flemish Jesuit theologianwho taught at the renowned Collegio Romano in Rome from 1616 untilhis death in 1637 and who was widely considered (even by many Protes-tants) as one of the most authoritative figures of the time.51 As Lapidewrote in his exegesis of Proverbs, “The Lord created and possessed theBlessed Virgin, the Mother of Christ, in the beginning of his ways, thatis, of his works. . . . Moreover, the Blessed Virgin was in that beginning

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49 This controversy accounts for a large part of why the Immaculate Conception wasso important to Ferdinand III, as it not only helped differentiate the Habsburgs’ Catholi-cism from that of other leading families and the laity at large, but it also forced them touphold the doctrine with especially strong fervor. On the controversy surrounding theImmaculate Conception, see especially Nancy Mayberry, “The Controversy over the Im-maculate Conception in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Literature, and Society,” Journalof Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21 (1991): 207–24; and Wenceslaus Sebastian, “TheControversy over the Immaculate Conception from after Scotus to the End of the Eigh-teenth Century,” in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. Ed-ward Dennis O’Connor (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1958), 228–41. Forgeneral discussions of the history of the Immaculate Conception, see especially MarinaWarner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1976), 236–54; Mirella Levi D’Ancona, The Iconography of the Immaculate Conceptionin the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance ([New York]: College Art Association of America,1957); and the excellent study by Suzanne L. Stratton, The Immaculate Conception in Span-ish Art (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).

50 Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine (New York: Paulist Press,1985), 45.

51 Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria in Salomonis Proverbia (Antwerp, 1635; repr.,Antwerp: J. Meursius, 1659), 181–94; idem, Commentaria in Ecclesiasticum (Antwerp, 1634;repr., Antwerp: J. Meursius, 1663), 515–16. Lapide cites Prov. 8:22 in his exegesis of Ecclus. 24:14.


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of his ways and in that moment of conception and life granted by Godalone the most illustrious inheritance, in particular as the most delight-ful future mother of God. Therefore the Blessed Virgin had been pre-destined ab aeterno.”52 He even dedicated his Proverbs commentary tothe Virgin and included a lengthy quotation from Proverbs 8 in hisdedicatory text. So great was Lapide’s importance and influence thatany literate Catholic of the mid 17th century (surely including the maestro di cappella of Venice’s most important church, who had becomea priest in 1632) would have immediately recognized Ab aeterno as a Marian, Immaculist text.

There is ample documentary evidence that the Habsburgs followedthe Divine Wisdom exegetical tradition especially closely. Both Old Tes-tament passages are found in Marian liturgies at the imperial court:The Ecclesiasticus text was read as the lesson at mass on the feast of thePurification of the Virgin and as the chapter at second vespers on allMarian feasts; the passage from Proverbs was read as the lesson at massonly on the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Nativity of theVirgin.53 The texts were also frequently cited in sermons on the Immac-ulata given at court. For example, four published orations delivered inSt. Stephen’s Cathedral on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in1649–51 and 1653 frequently quote these passages in direct referenceto the Blessed Virgin. To give just two instances, the 1650 sermon,which compares the Immaculate Virgin to the dove, quotes Proverbs 8in saying that “the delights of the Virgin are with the sons of men.”54 Thesermon given the following year, which compares the Virgin to a spot-less mirror, cites Ecclesiasticus 24:14 in declaring that “the eternal father in heaven, born on earth, was begotten by her who was created in

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52 “Dominus creavit et possedit B. Virginem, utpote Christi matrem, quasi princi-pium viarum, id est, operum suorum . . . Insuper B. Virgo in ipso initio viarum, ipsoquemomento conceptionis et vitae, a Deo solo postessa fuit tamquam hereditas amplissima,mater utique Dei dilectissima futura. Igitur B. Virgo ab aeterno praedestinata fuit, ut essetprincipium, id est, prima, princeps et domina omnium operum Dei, puta omnium pu-rarum creaturum” (Lapide, Commentaria in Salomonis Proverbia, 181).

53 The placement of these texts (which was consistent in many Catholic liturgiesthroughout Europe) is attested to by printed 17th-century service books such as Missae deSanctis ex Proprio Viennensi (Vienna: M. Cosmerovius, 1668) and Missale Romanum ex De-creto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini Restitutum, Pii V. Pont. Max. Jussu Editum, et Clementis VIII.Primum, Nunc Denuo Urbani Papae octavi auctoritate Recognitum (Antwerp: B. Moreti, 1691).The use of these texts in Vienna is further confirmed by manuscript service books copiedat the Habsburg court in the 17th century such as Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbib-liothek, Cod. 11691 and Cod. 11674.

54 Maria Virgo sine macula concepta Ferdinando III. Romanorum Imperatori in columbarepraesentata (Vienna: M. Cosmerovius, 1650), sig. A4v : “Sociabile genus avium columbaest: Deliciae Virginis sunt eße cum filiis hominum.” Another citation to Proverbs 8 appears onsig. B3r : “De ista dicitur: Qui me invenerit, inveniet vitam.”



the beginning and before the ages.”55 Another slightly later sermon thatcompares the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception to Eve refers onceto Ecclesiasticus 24:14 and makes no fewer than five references toProverbs 8 in descriptions of the Immaculata.56 Furthermore, a manu-script treatise compiled at the Habsburg court in the early 1660s, whichdefends the Immaculate Conception from a variety of angles, makesthe connection between Proverbs 8 and this doctrine explicit in its pro-logue: “That the future Mother of God would be immune from all stainof original sin is for the greater part unarguable and for the lesser partheld by Proverbs 8: Ab aeterno ordinata sum.”57

The frequent appearance of these Old Testament quotations inHabsburg sermons is of special significance, for by hearing these wordsspoken aloud in explicitly Immaculist contexts, the Viennese congrega-tions would have immediately connected the passages to this importantMarian mystery. Just as sermons were valuable tools in promoting doc-trine and interpreting Biblical passages, so too could motets offer anequally effective means of achieving these same ends; musical settingsof these same passages would have powerfully reinforced the doctrinefor imperial listeners.58 This is perhaps what Sances intended with his

25455 Gotthulphus Khueffstain, Maria Virgo sine macula concepta Ferdinando III. Romano-

rum Imperatori in speculo repraesentata (Vienna: M. Cosmerovius, 1651), sig. B2v : “AeternoPatre in coelo genitus in terris nascitur ab illa, quae ab initio, et ante saecula creata est.” Ad-ditional printed sermons that contain citations are Cornelius Gentilotto, Maria Virgo sinemacula concepta Ferdinando III. Romanorum Imperatori in arcu coelesti repraesentata (Vienna:M. Cosmerovius, 1649), which cites Prov. 8 on sig. Bv (“quandoquidem Deus in hac Vir-ginea nube libravit fontes aquarum”), and Johannes Ernestus Lindelauf, Maria Virgo sinemacula concepta, in rosa repraesentata (Vienna: M. Cosmerovius, 1653), which cites Ecclus.24 on sig. B2v (“Moriatur ille cum surgit, haec ab initio et ante saecula creata, et in futurumsaeculum non desinet ”).

56 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 11683, Maria Immaculata Sig-num cui contradicetur, sive Sermo Panegyricus in quo Maria Immaculata Evae contradictio EvaMaria Immaculata Antithesis demonstratur, fols. 2r (“Una Mulier cum eo erat cuncta com-ponens”), 4v (“Ecce nascientis MARIAE uterum: Cor Patris! Et rursum ipsa: Ab initio et antesaecula creata sum. Ecce vulvam MARIAE puerperam Caput Divinitatis! Hoc in utero cumnondum essent abyssi . . . hic ante omnes colles parturiebatur . . . hic priusquam terra fieret, abaeterno formabatur”), and 5v (“Quodsi tamen MARIA, cum eo erat cuncta componens”). Thesermon was given for the Habsburgs in Prague on the octave of the Immaculate Concep-tion in 1666.

57 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 11540, De Mysterio ImmaculataeConceptionis SS. Dei Genitricis Mariae Devotissimus Tractatus, fol. 8v: “Dei futura Mater immu-nis esset ab omni Labe orginalis peccati, maior est inaltercabilis minor habetur ex Prov. 8.Ab aeterno ordinata sum, et ex antiquis antequam terra fieret, nondum erant abyssi, etego iam concepta eram.”

58 It is quite likely, moreover, that the Viennese people had the opportunity to hearFerdinand III’s musicians perform Sances’s and Monteverdi’s motets. Beginning in Ferdi-nand II’s reign and continuing into the next century, the emperor and his retinue fol-lowed a regular schedule of celebrating mass and vespers in the various churches of Vienna and outlying areas, on which occasions the imperial chapel always performed theservice. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the emperor always heard mass in


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setting of Proverbs 8, which includes several musical details that rein-force an Immaculist interpretation and serve the Habsburgs’ Counter-Reformation aims. The work opens with a long duple-meter section fea-turing a wealth of madrigalisms that vividly depict the creation of theworld, most of them virtuosic melismas that illustrate the meaning ofsuch evocative words as “eruperant” (erupted), “gyro” (circle), and“fontes aquarum” (fountains of water). The first melisma in the motet,however, is not pictorial but occurs on the word “concepta” (see Exam-ple 1). If this motet were intended for any occasion other than the Immaculate Conception, the heavy emphasis on this seemingly insignif-icant word would be unwarranted; surely, then, the melisma purpose-fully highlights the very event celebrated by the work. Moreover, be-cause Dominus possedit me sets more verses than found in Monteverdi’sAb aeterno, Sances’s motet corresponds more fully to the complete textas found in the Immaculate Conception liturgy. In addition, the finalverse ends the motet with a didactic lesson addressed directly to the lis-tener that stresses the importance of following Mary.59 This passage ismusically set apart from the rest of the motet with a shift from tripleback to duple meter, the harmonic juxtaposition of G- and E-major tri-ads, and the most declamatory writing in the motet (see Example 2).This ensures that no listener can miss this final lesson, thereby turningthe work into valuable Counter-Reformation propaganda.

Although Monteverdi’s Ab aeterno does not feature any of the spe-cific details described above,60 there are nevertheless basic musical sim-ilarities between it and Sances’s Dominus possedit me. Not only is eachwork a virtuosic showpiece for bass voice, but Monteverdi’s setting alsoopens in a similar manner to Sances’s, with a long duple-meter sectionfeaturing many of the same melismatic madrigalisms. Both settingsthen give way to a more melodious triple-meter aria style at exactly thesame point, marking a shift in the text from narrative description toemotional rejoicing at the words “cum ero eram.”61 It may be possible

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St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the largest church in the city. See Friedrich W. Riedel, Kirchen-musik am Hofe Karls VI. (1711–1740): Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Zeremoniell undmusikalischen Stil im Barockzeitalter (Munich: Emil Katzbichler, 1977); Saunders, Cross,Sword and Lyre, 33–37 and 43–44; and Weaver, “Piety, Politics, and Patronage,” 102–18.

59 The text of this final verse is “Now therefore, sons, listen to me: Blessed are theywho keep to my ways” (Nunc ergo filii audite me: beati qui custodiunt vias meas).

60 There is one possible exception: Monteverdi includes a lengthy melisma on thephrase “et ego iam concepta eram”; however, the melisma appears on “ego” instead of“concepta.” This could be an instance in which the melisma on “ego” functions as adeictic, pointing to the important word “concepta.” On this concept, see Mauro Calcagno,“ ‘Imitar col canto chi parla’: Monteverdi and the Creation of a Language for MusicalTheater,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002): 383–431.

61 None of these features, furthermore, appears in the setting of this text by Treviso.On the conventional use of triple meter as the preferred medium for emotional passages,



to dismiss these similarities as merely conventional approaches to thesame text, but it is equally possible to see Sances’s motet as a model forMonteverdi’s own setting of Proverbs 8.

This suggestion receives further support from Monteverdi’s use ofthe bass voice in Ab aeterno. I have already noted the rarity of this virtu-osic bass style in the composer’s oeuvre, and Monteverdi’s compositionalchoice seems even more odd in light of the fact that the speaker ofProverbs 8 is a woman (made apparent by both the Latin grammar andthe symbolic association with the Blessed Virgin). As has been discussedby Massimo Ossi, Monteverdi made the correlation between singingvoice and the gendered speaker an important part of his seconda pratticaaesthetic; by paying careful attention to such matters he was able to addverisimilitude to miniature dramatic scenes (as in the Book Six dia-logue Addio Florida bella), to dramatize otherwise reflective texts (as in

256

see especially Tim Carter, “Resemblance and Representation: Towards a New Aesthetic inthe Music of Monteverdi” and John Whenham, “ ‘Aria’ in the Madrigals of GiovanniRovetta,” both in Con che soavità: Studies in Italian Opera, Song, and Dance, 1580–1740, ed.Iain Fenlon and Tim Carter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 118–34 and 135–56.

example 1. Sances, Dominus possedit me, mm. 17–25

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Book Five’s T’amo mia vita, in which the words of the poet’s lover—onlyremembered in the poem—are assigned to a soprano soloist), or to addnew layers of meaning to a work (as in Eccomi pronta ai baci from BookSeven, in which Monteverdi blatantly reverses the gender of the singingand speaking voice, assigning the words of Ergasto’s female lover tothree male singers).62 This is also an important issue in Monteverdi’sonly known extended virtuosic bass solo in a madrigal, Book Eight’s

257

62 Massimo Ossi, “ ‘Pardon me, But Your Teeth are in my Neck’: GiambattistaMarino, Claudio Monteverdi, and the bacio mordace,” Journal of Musicology 21 (2004): 175–200. Most of Ossi’s article is a detailed discussion of Eccomi pronta ai baci, but on p. 199 hediscusses the importance of voice in Monteverdi’s madrigals and mentions the otherpieces considered here.

example 2. Sances, Dominus possedit me, mm. 151–67

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Ogni amante è guerrieri, in which the bass soloist, speaking in the firstperson, becomes a representation of the masculine, heroic warrior/lover (and possibly even a representation of Ferdinand III himself, whois praised by name in this very section). It is undoubtedly significant,moreover, that the virtuosic bass style appears in a madrigal book—andin a madrigal—that openly praises Ferdinand III, for this style wasavidly cultivated at the Habsburg court.63 Sances’s Dominus possedit me isjust one of many solo bass motets in the repertoire of the imperialcourt chapel, and works for multiple voices by such varied court com-posers as Sances, Bertali, Pietro Verdina, Wolfgang Ebner, and Ferdi-nand III himself almost invariably single out a bass soloist for special at-tention, often assigning the most important passages of text to the bass.Thus it is likely that the use of the bass voice in both Sances’s and Mon-teverdi’s Proverbs motets was conditioned not by any desire for musicalverisimilitude but rather by the performance options and the musicalpreferences at the Viennese court.64 Although it is still possible thatMonteverdi wrote Ab aeterno long before he compiled the Selva morale, itappears much more likely that in wishing to honor the imperial courtwith a specific motet he turned to Sances’s Dominus possedit me, with itsImmaculist interpretation and its use of the bass voice, as a model.

III

Skeptical readers may still wish to view the presence of Proverbs 8motets in the Selva morale and Sances’s Motetti a voce sola, as well as themusical similarities between them, as merely a string of coincidences.

258

63 On the use of the bass voice in imperial motets, see Weaver, “Piety, Politics, andPatronage,” 217 (and passim). It has also been argued that the most heavily revised musicin the closing work of Book Eight, the Ballo delle ingrate (originally performed in 1608),was probably that for Pluto, sung by a bass; see Mabbett, “Madrigalists at the VienneseCourt,” 304–6 and Tomlinson, Monteverdi, 206–7.

64 Sances most likely even wrote the work with an individual in mind. We know thatSances sometimes wrote music for specific singers; he even indicated that two solo bassmotets in his Antiphonae Sacrae B.M.V. of 1648 were written at the insistence of the courtsinger Carlo Benedetto Riccioni. The works, O dulcis Virgo and O Domina gloriae, are the fi-nal two pieces in the print, and each is labeled in the score with the rubric, “MotettoDella Glo. B. V. ad instanza del Sig. Carlo Benedetto Riccioni Musico di Sua Maestà Cesarea” (for more information on these works, see Weaver, “Music in the Service ofCounter-Reformation Politics,” 372–73). Unfortunately, very little is known about thebass singers at court at the beginning of Ferdinand III’s reign. Of the three basses withthe highest salary, the Roman singer Agostino Argomenti seems most likely to be the per-former for whom Sances wrote his motet; he was very well connected with other musi-cians at the court and received special monetary gifts on 13 May 1640 and again in late1641. The gifts are documented in Herwig Knaus, Die Musiker im Archivbestand des kaiser-lichen Obersthofmeisteramtes (1637–1705), 3 vols. (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus, 1967–1969),1: 106 and 110. The other two highest paid bass singers at court were Giovanni Bernardiand Virgilius Bickel.


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There is, however, another striking parallel between the two publica-tions: Sances’s print, like the Selva morale, concludes with a work forsolo soprano entitled Pianto della Madonna. Furthermore, as in theSelva, the overall organization of Sances’s print immediately draws at-tention the final work (see Table 3). The organization of Sances’s printis eminently logical, with four discrete groups of four motets each,scored respectively for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass; the Pianto, how-ever, is notably out of place, occurring outside of this four-by-four struc-ture and appearing far removed from the other works for soprano inthe basso continuo partbook. The parallel title and placement of Mon-teverdi’s and Sances’s pieces could scarcely be happenstance. It wascommon enough for sacred prints to conclude with a work in praise ofthe Virgin Mary, but the standard choice throughout the 17th centurywas either one of the four Marian antiphons or the Litany of Loreto. Ihave found only two other publications prior to 1638 that close withMarian laments: a pair of collections of vernacular spiritual madrigalsissued by the Sienese composer Claudio Saracini in 1620.65

Unlike the two composers’ Proverbs settings, there are no musicalor textual parallels between Monteverdi’s and Sances’s Pianti, asidefrom the fact that both are Latin laments on the crucifixion of Christ setin a patently operatic style. Whereas Monteverdi’s work consists of en-tirely freely composed text joined to the preexisting music of Ariadne’sfamous lament, Sances’s Pianto transforms a well known text, the Stabatmater sequence, into a dramatic, first-person lament. In Monteverdi’scase, moreover, the impetus for including the work in the Selva moralemay have been largely commercial. Ever since the 1608 Mantuan pre-miere of Arianna, the famous lament had been one of the composer’sgreatest hits, and the recent successful revival of Arianna in Venice in

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65 Claudio Saracini, Le seconde musiche (Venice: A. Vincenti, 1620) and idem, Le terzemusiche (Venice: A. Vincenti, 1620). Modern editions of both prints are in Éva Pintér,Claudio Saracini: Leben und Werk, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), 2: 369–456. Le se-conde musiche concludes with a Lamento della Madonna that sets Marino’s Sospirava e spargeadi pianto, and Le terze musiche closes with a Planctus B. Mariae Virginis that sets the Stabatmater sequence in the style of a spiritual madrigal (see also Roche, “On the Border,” 311).Although it is possible that these prints were known to Monteverdi or Sances (Saracini, infact, dedicated the opening madrigal of Le seconde musiche to Monteverdi), there is no evi-dence connecting them to either the Selva morale or Sances’s Motetti. Sances’s and/orMonteverdi’s prints may nonetheless very well have set the precedent for a later publica-tion from Magni’s presses: Maurizio Cazzati, Il primo libro de motetti a voce sola (Venice: B. Magni, 1647), which closes with an Italian work entitled Pianto di S. Pietro. For more onthis print, see Roche, “On the Border,” 307. One additional sacred print (again with noconnection to Monteverdi or Sances) concludes with a setting of the Stabat mater : Anto-nio Coma, Sacrae cantiones 1.2.3.4. voc. concinendae et in fine Stabat Mater (Bologna: G. Rossi, 1614). I am very grateful to Elizabeth Roche for kindly searching her late hus-band’s index of 17th-century Latin motets for me.



the 1639–40 season undoubtedly tempted Monteverdi to capitalizeonce again on its popularity.66

The appearance of these two extra-liturgical works in both com-posers’ prints nonetheless raises questions about their possible perfor-mance contexts; here a number of possibilities present themselves. Ei-ther work could have been performed during the services of Marianconfraternities, in either Venice or Vienna.67 As Jonathan Glixon has

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66 Even Moore (“Venezia favorita da Maria,” 339) suggests that this could have playeda factor in the inclusion of the Pianto in the Selva morale.

67 I am grateful to Jonathan Glixon for bringing this possibility to my attention.

TABLE 3

Contents of Sances’s Motetti a voce sola (1638)

CANTO Solo.

Audite me divini fructusDomine Deus meusBenedicam DominumO Bone Jesu

ALTO Solo.

O Domine Jesu ChristeLettamini omnesO Maria Dei genitrixQuerite Dominum

TENOR Solo.

O Deus meusSolvatur lingua meaDomine quid multiplicati suntVenite ad me omnes

BASSO Solo.

O vos omnesDominus possedit meJesu dulcis memoriaBonum est confiteri Domino

Pianto Della Madonna. Soprano Solo.Stabat Mater dolorosa


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pointed out, the Venetian confraternities were an important part of thethriving musical culture of the Serenissima and served as an importantsource of additional income for Monteverdi.68 The various Marian con-fraternities in Vienna, furthermore, not only received financial supportfrom the emperor but also counted imperial musicians among theirmembers.69 Either lament would also have worked extremely well as acomponent of a sacra rappresentazione (Latin sacred drama), a genrethat was particularly popular at the imperial court.70 Indeed, Koldauhas raised the possibility that Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna may havebeen performed at the imperial court prior to 1641 with a different sa-cred text. In 1629 the Mantuan troupe I fedeli mounted a production inVienna of La Maddalena, a work that had already been performed inMantua in 1617 with music contributed by a number of composers in-cluding Monteverdi. Although the music of La Maddalena has been lost,the libretto (published in Vienna in 1629) calls special attention to alament for Mary Magdalene, the music of which may have been basedon Ariadne’s lament.71 Because there is no documentation for any per-formances of either Monteverdi’s or Sances’s Pianto della Madonna, it isimpossible to answer this question definitively, and it is probably unwiseto assume that both works were conceived for the same purpose. Never-theless there remains another possible performance context for theseworks, one both unique to Vienna and directly related to the dedicateeof Monteverdi’s and Sances’s prints.

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68 Jonathan Glixon, Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities,1260–1807 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), esp. 252.

69 Two of the most important Marian confraternities in 17th-century Vienna wereone devoted to the rosary at the church of the Dominicans and one in honor of the Im-maculate Conception at the Jesuit church am Hof ; unfortunately we know very little abouttheir specific musical activities. On the Immaculate Conception brotherhood, see ErnstTomek, “Das kirchliche Leben,” in Geschichte der Stadt Wien, ed. Anton Mayer (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1914), 304. Information on the rosary confraternity is in Edmund M.Prantner, Die Dominikanerkirche in Wien (Vienna: Verlag des Dominikanerklosters, 1912).See also Geraldine M. Rohling, “Exequial and Votive Practices of the Viennese Bruder-schaften: A Study of Music and Liturgical Piety” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic Univ. of America,1996).

70 In fact, by the 1640s the Habsburgs had instituted the tradition of the sepolcro, adramatic oratorio-like work in Italian that was performed during Holy Week in front of areplica of the holy sepulcher. On the early history of the sepolcro, see Steven Saunders,“The Antecedents of the Viennese Sepolcro,” in Relazioni musicali tra Italia e Germania nel-l’età barocca: atti del VI convegno internazionale sulla muisca italiana nei secoli XVII–XVIII, ed.Alberto Colzani et al. (Como: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1997), 63–83.

71 Koldau, Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 112–13. Koldau’s hypothesis is based onthe fact that two different contrafacta of the Lamento d’Arianna with texts sung by MaryMagdalene survive in Italian manuscripts; on these sources, see Lorenzo Bianconi, Musicin the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987),210–11. For further information on the production of La Maddalena in Vienna, see Saun-ders, Cross, Sword and Lyre, 182 and Herbert Seifert, Die Oper am Wiener Kaiserhof im 17.Jahrhundert (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1985), 29–30 and 434.



The Immaculate Conception was the most prominent aspect of theHabsburgs’ Marian devotion, but it was not the only component of thePietas Austriaca. In fact, both Ferdinand II and Eleonora Gonzaga aug-mented their fervent love of the Blessed Virgin with an especially deepattachment to the rosary. Eleonora’s most overt support for this Mariansymbol came after her husband’s death, when in 1637 she institutedthe Celebration of the Fifteen Mysteries, a commemoration of the 15 miraculous events in the life of the Blessed Virgin upon which thepious soul reflects when reciting the rosary. Beginning in that year andcontinuing into the 18th century, the Viennese court observed this de-votion in the Augustinian church annually on the last three Saturdaysbefore Easter, with each day devoted respectively to the five joyous, do-lorous, and glorious mysteries. The most important elements of the cel-ebration were five sermons on each day (one for each mystery), paintedscenic backdrops, and motets performed by the court chapel.72

The subject matter of Monteverdi’s and Sances’s Pianti della Madonnawould have been perfectly suited for the fifth—and most important—dolorous mystery: the crucifixion. Both works express the Virgin’s pointof view, making them particularly appropriate for a celebration devotedto the rosary, and there is also evidence that the operatic style of theseworks would have been especially suitable for this celebration.73 Per-forming the service in front of a scenic backdrop implies that it fea-tured overtly dramatic elements; the later Viennese sepolcri (Holy Weekoratorios), which we know were acted out by the performers, also in-cluded similar backdrops. Musical evidence from the 18th century alsoimplies a dramatic component to the Fifteen Mysteries Devotion: Workswritten for the celebration by the important court composers JohannJoseph Fux and Johann Georg Reinhardt feature more recitative than iscommon in motets of the time, such that they resemble miniature dra-matic scenes.74 That this use of dramatic music was a long-standing tra-

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72 Saunders has cited a 17th-century manuscript that mentions the singing of amotet during a procession for the second dolorous mystery; see his “The Antecedents,”69–70 and “Sacred Music,” 1: 153. The source, “Tomus II. Protocolli conventus nostri Vi-ennensis ab anno introductionis nostrae ad annum 1696,” is housed in the Augustinianchurch in Vienna.

73 Koldau has also tentatively suggested the Fifteen Mysteries Celebration as a possi-ble context for Monteverdi’s lament (Die venezianische Kirchenmusik, 113). Another possi-ble clue pointing to the appropriateness of Sances’s Pianto for the Mysterien-Andachtencomes from the opening work in his solo motet book, Audite me divini fructus, which setsEcclesiasticus 39:17–19. Portions of this text appear in the Viennese liturgy during masson the feast of the Most Holy Rosary (see Sances, Motetti, ed. Saunders, xiv and xxvi). Ifthe Pianto were also intended for a rosary celebration, this would then create a “rosaryframe” for the entire motet book, a feature that would have undoubtedly pleased Eleonora.

74 Gabriela Krombach, “Die Musik zu den Mysterien-Andachten in der Wiener Augustiner-Kirche,” in Johann Joseph Fux und seine Zeit: Kultur, Kunst und Musik im Spätbarock,ed. Arnfried Edler and Friedrich W. Riedel (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1996), 203–18.


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dition extending back to the origins of the celebration is supported,moreover, by the one work that we can definitely assign to the Mysterien-Andachten during Ferdinand III’s reign: a setting of Popule meus by noneother than the emperor himself.

The evidence placing Ferdinand III’s Popule meus, which survives inmanuscript in the emperor’s own hand, into the Fifteen Mysteries De-votion is twofold.75 First, the work was mentioned by Ferdinand in a letter to his brother Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in 1646, and second,it is listed in an inventory of the imperial music library under the rubric“3. Mottetti per gl’ultimi 3. Sabati della quadragesima a S. Augustinoalle Cinque Prediche.”76 Like Monteverdi’s and Sances’s Pianti, Ferdi-nand’s Popule meus, the text of which (Table 4) is drawn from a tradi-tional Holy Week chant, would have been sung for the fifth dolorousmystery.77 Despite the venerable source of the text, Ferdinand manipu-lated the structure of the chant to create a work that contains dramaticmusical features and that also bears resemblances to the conventional17th-century operatic lament generally and to Sances’s and Mon-teverdi’s Pianti specifically.78

Popule meus, uttered by Christ on the cross, is a scathing rebuke ofthe Hebrew people, in which Jesus reproaches them for repaying hisboundless love with torture. Scored for solo alto and tenor, the work

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75 The manuscript that contains this motet is Lüneburg, Ratsbücherei, Mus. ant.pract. K.N. 28, fols. 1–5. For further details on this source (including a reproduction ofone of the pages in Ferdinand III’s hand), see Steven Saunders, “The Emperor as Artist:New Discoveries Concerning Ferdinand III’s Musical Compositions,” Studien zur Musikwis-senschaft 45 (1996): 9–14. For more information on Ferdinand III as a composer, see alsoTheophil Antonicek, “Die italienischen Text-vertonungen Kaiser Ferdinands III.,” inBeiträge zur Aufnahme der italienischen und spanischen Literatur in Deutschland im 16. und 17.Jahrhundert, ed. Alberto Martino, Chloe 9 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990), 209–33; H. V. F. Somerset, “The Habsburg Emperors as Musicians,” Music & Letters 30 (1949):204–15; and Guido Adler, ed., Musikalische Werke der Kaiser Ferdinand III., Leopold I. undJoseph I., 2 vols. (Vienna, 1892; repr., Westmead: Gregg International, 1972).

76 Ferdinand’s letter to his brother, dated 1 February 1646, is quoted in Saunders,“The Emperor as Artist,” 14 and Antonicek, “Musik und italienische Poesie,” 1. The in-ventory is the Distinta specificatione (cited above for listing Bertali’s setting of Ab aeterno), inwhich Ferdinand III’s Popule meus is listed on fol. 2r.

77 The chant, known as the Improperia, is generally sung on Good Friday. In the Vi-ennese liturgy, the Improperia was sung during mass on that day, usually in a well-knownpolyphonic setting by Marc’Antonio Ingegneri, which appears in a manuscript collectionof Holy Week music (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 15943) that wascopied at the Habsburg court during Ferdinand III’s reign and was still being used in the18th century. For further information on this manuscript, see Riedel, Kirchenmusik amHofe Karls VI., 74–86 and Herbert Kellman and Charles Hamm, ed., Census-Catalogue ofManuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400–1550, 5 vols., Renaissance Manuscript Studies1 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler/American Institute of Musicology, 1979–88), 4: 102.

78 For more information on the operatic lament in the seicento, see especially Mar-garet Murata, “The Recitative Soliloquy,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 32(1979): 45–73; Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, 209–19; and Rosand, Opera inSeventeenth-Century Venice, 361–86.



opens with a recurring refrain (see Ex. 3, mm. 1–52) in which bothvoices sing in imitation, with extensive musical and textual repetitionplaintively highlighting the clauses “quid fecit tibi” (what did I do to you) and “responde mihi” (answer me). The intervening sections arethen sung by the solo alto and tenor in turn; the music remains intriple meter and features sequential repetitions common in the mid-century motet, yet the melodic lines are primarily declamatory in style.Although the work by no means sounds operatic and could never be mis-taken for an operatic scene (as could Sances’s or Monteverdi’s laments),it nevertheless relates to dramatic conventions of the seicento. The over-all structure, in which two solo voices alternate with each other, exploitsthe style of the dramatic dialogue, in a manner similar to dialoguemotets by court composers such as Giovanni Valentini.79 In addition,

264

79 See, for example, Valentini’s five dialogue motets (including his own setting ofPopule meus) venerating the wounds of Christ from his Sacri Concerti a due, tre, quattro etcinque voci (Venice: A. Vincenti, 1625); on these works, see Saunders, Cross, Sword andLyre, 204–22. Modern editions of three of these works (Salve tremendum, Deus qui pro re-demptione mundi, and O vos omnes) are in ibid., 307–31 and idem, ed., Fourteen Motets Fromthe Court of Ferdinand II of Hapsburg, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era75 (Madison: A-R Editions, 1995), 47–68.

TABLE 4

Text and Translation of Popule meus

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?Aut in quo contristavi te?Responde mihi.

Ego te eduxi de Aegypto,et tu me tradidisti principibus

sacerdotum.Ego te praeivi in columna nubis,et tu me duxisti ad praetorium Pilati.

Popule meus . . . Responde mihi.

Ego te exaltavi magna virtute,et tu me suspendisti in patibulo Crucis.

Ego te potavi aqua salutis de petra,

et tu me potasti felle et aceto.

Popule meus . . . Responde mihi.

My people, what did I do to you?Or in which way did I upset you?Answer me.

I led you out of Egypt,and you betrayed me to the high

priests.I guided you in the cloud column,and you led me to Pilate’s court.

My people . . . Answer me.

I exalted you with great power,and you hung me on the scaffold of

the Cross.I gave you the healthy water of the

rock to drink,and you gave me gall and vinegar to

drink.

My people . . . Answer me.


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267

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but also sings throughout, remarking on her grief. From very early on itwas also common for commentary to be provided by the lamentingcharacter herself, in the form of a recurring refrain.

Popule meus also shares specific similarities with both Sances’s andMonteverdi’s Pianti della Madonna. For instance, Sances’s motet, like theemperor’s, is based on a traditional plainchant text that is transformed bythe music into a dramatic utterance. Sances achieved this without evenrearranging or changing the original text; instead, he set the morenarrative passages (e.g., “the blessed mother stood by the cross” and“she saw Jesus”) as recitative in duple meter, alternating with expressivetriple-meter sections based entirely on the minor descending tetra-chord filled in with chromatic passing tones (see Ex. 4). Although per-formed throughout by the same singer (who speaks entirely in the thirdperson), the end result is that of a vivid and heart-wrenchingly emo-tional outpouring of grief punctuated with choral commentary in ex-actly the same vein as Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa (with which it,perhaps not coincidentally, shares the descending tetrachord).80 Fur-thermore, like Monteverdi’s Pianto Ferdinand III’s work is a highly-charged soliloquy declaimed in the first person and addressed to a sec-ond party who does not respond. As does Jesus in Popule meus, theVirgin Mary of Monteverdi’s lament displays an uncharacteristic harsh-ness when she, following Ariadne’s lead, forcefully rebukes her son fornot answering her questions. It should also not be forgotten that in itsoriginal operatic context (which may have been known at the imperialcourt) the individual sections of Ariadne’s lament were separated by achorus of fishermen commenting upon the princess’ misfortune.

Although this discussion of Ferdinand III’s Popule meus by no meansconfirms that either Monteverdi or Sances intended their Marianlaments for Eleonora’s Fifteen Mysteries Devotion (there are, after all,just as many—if not more—differences between the pieces than similar-ities), it should still be clear that these Pianti della Madonna would havebeen welcome additions to this annual service. This is something thatSances must have known when he placed his lament in the place ofhonor at the end of his motet book dedicated to Eleonora Gonzaga.And perhaps even Monteverdi was aware of this when he borrowed

268

80 After the fourth section of Sances’s motet, the strict allocation of narrative in theduple-meter recitative and emotional response in the triple-meter lament breaks down,only because the text remains emotionally consistent from there on. The final duple-meter section thus serves a purely musical function, breaking up the triple-meter lament.Sances’s lament, which contains the first known example of the chromatic descendingtetrachord bass, is not mentioned in Ellen Rosand’s groundbreaking article, “The De-scending Tetrachord: An Emblem of Lament,” Musical Quarterly 65 (1979): 346–59.


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from the younger composer the idea of concluding his Selva morale etspirituale with his own Pianto della Madonna.

IV

Despite some solid evidence (including Monteverdi’s documentedrelationship with the Habsburgs, the similarities between the two prints,



and the liturgical appropriateness of the Proverbs text), my argumentdepends on quite a bit of circumstantial evidence and therefore cannotoffer a completely definitive account of Monteverdi’s intentions in com-piling the Selva morale et spirituale. After all, by its very nature as a publiccommodity, Monteverdi’s print was designed to be as general as possi-ble and appeal to the widest possible audience. Ab aeterno may haveheld polyvalent readings for 17th-century listeners, and any number ofreasons could be postulated as to why Monteverdi decided to concludehis print with the Pianto della Madonna.81 Nevertheless, when consid-ered together, the circumstances presented here add up to be morethan a coincidence. There can be no doubt that Sances knew that bothhis Dominus possedit me and Pianto were especially appropriate for hisemployer’s devotional needs, and in light of the similarities betweenthe two composers’ prints as well as Monteverdi’s own connections tothe Habsburg court, Monteverdi might very well have chosen his twoprominently positioned, anomalous motets for precisely this reason.These new insights into two of the motets in the Selva morale et spiritualemay not have answered all of the questions surrounding this enigmaticprint; if anything, the Habsburg implications of Ab aeterno and Piantodella Madonna raise new issues about the rest of the music in the publi-cation. (Why, for instance, aren’t there more Marian works?) Yet locat-ing these two motets in their Habsburg context does more than just laythe groundwork for more questions. It also provides further evidenceof Monteverdi’s close artistic ties to the imperial court—and even toSances himself—while helping to illuminate the varied political and devotional functions of 17th-century sacred music.

Catholic University of America

ABSTRACT

Despite recent scholarly interest in Monteverdi’s Selva morale et spir-ituale (1641), many aspects of this large, complex print remain enig-matic, and the intended context for much of the music in the collec-tion has long been a matter of pure conjecture. Yet two of the mostanomalous features of the Selva morale, the solo motets Ab aeterno ordi-nata sum and Pianto della Madonna, can now be placed into the contextof the Habsburg court in Vienna during the reign of Ferdinand III(1637–57).

270

81 In addition to the commercial appeal of Ariadne’s lament and the relationship ofthe Pianto to Habsburg Marian devotion, another factor that may have played into Mon-teverdi’s inclusion of the work is that it could serve as an homage to the Gonzagas, who ofcourse financed the original production of the opera that made Monteverdi a star.


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Both of these works play directly into the most important aspects ofHabsburg Marian devotion. Ab aeterno is a setting of Proverbs 8:23–31, atext that although very rare for seventeenth-century motets wouldnonetheless have been widely understood as a celebration of the Im-maculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. The Pianto, a Latin con-trafactum of Monteverdi’s celebrated Lamento d’Arianna, would havebeen perfectly suited for the Habsburgs’ Fifteen Mysteries Celebration,a Lenten devotion in praise of the Most Holy Rosary. Various types ofevidence, including liturgical and other religious writings, Habsburgsermons, and additional musical works, support these interpretations ofMonteverdi’s motets and reveal their importance to the imperial court.That the composer did indeed include the motets in his print with theHabsburg court in mind is further indicated by similarities between theSelva morale and an earlier publication stemming directly from Ferdi-nand III’s court: Giovanni Felice Sances’s Motetti a voce sola of 1638.

Keywords:Claudio MonteverdiSelva morale et spiritualeHabsburgGiovanni Felice SancesMotets

271


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