Monteverdi, Claudio (Giovanni Antonio)

(baptized May 15, 1567, Cremona, Duchy of Milan

died Nov. 29, 1643, Venice) Italian composer.

The first of his nine books of madrigals appeared in 1587, the second in 1590. He visited the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua, and his next book (1592) shows freer use of dissonance and close coordination of music and words. He married in 1599 and settled in Mantua. Attacked in 1600 for the even freer dissonance in his newest works, he replied that music now had two "practices," the stricter first practice for sacred works and the more expressive second practice for secular music. It was his first opera, Orfeo, performed in 1607, that finally established him as a composer of large-scale music rather than of exquisite miniature works. In 1610 he completed his great Vespers. Having long tried to obtain his release from Mantua, he was finally granted it in 1612, and the next year he was put in charge of music at San Marco Basilica, Venice. After the first opera house opened in Venice (1637), he wrote his last three operas, including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and the remarkable Incoronazione di Poppea (1643). Monteverdi is the first great figure of Baroque music, a remarkable innovator who synthesized the elements of the new style to create the first Baroque masterpieces of both sacred and secular music.

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