Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine. (Rene Jacobs's Nederlands Kamerkoor and Concerto Vocale)

Monteverdi's 16010 Vespers continues to fascinate performers and scholars alike: for all its familiarity--and for all the conventional notion of Monteverdi at the watershed between Renaissance and Baroque--we still know little about the circumstances of its genesis and performance. Also, problems of performing practice abound. Is it a liturgical rite, a concert piece or a pot pourri? And, whatever the case, what is the role of the interposed sacri concerti? One voice to a part or more, with or without instrumental doubling? And how to interpret Monteverdi's instruction for Laudate pueri, `a 8 voci sole nel organo'? To transpose or not the pieces in chiavette (the Lauda Jerusalem and the large Magnificat)? And, either way, what about the difficulties of range? Exact proportional relationships between the carefully notated duple and triple times? And, if so, precisely what relationship? The movements of the Vespers are not easy to perform either individually or together: when psalms by Monteverdi (unspecified but presumably from the 1610 set) were performed in Modena Cathedral at Christmas 1611, it was `to everyone's disgust'. And, contrary to a common view, it was not the 1610 Vespers that directly secured for Monteverdi his appointment as maestro di cappella of St Mark's, Venice, in 1613: his audition piece was a Mass.

Rene Jacobs's new recording with his trusty Nederlands Kamerkoor and Concerto Vocale, …