Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
Libretto from Torquato Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberata
Soloists: narrator (tenor), Tancredi (bass), Clorinda (soprano)
Ensemble: Violin I, Violin II, viola da brazzo, continuo
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Toward the end of his life, Monteverdi assembled a two-volume set of secular pieces, which he published as his eighth book of madrigals, Madrigals of War and of Love (1638). It had been more than 20 years since his previous book of madrigals, and, as with his church music in the Selve morale, this eighth madrigal book includes some music that had been written considerably earlier.
The dramatic piece, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (The combat of Tancred and Clorinda), comes from that late collection, but it was first performed during the carnival season of 1624, when it was semi-staged at the palace of a Venetian nobleman. In a famous preface, Monteverdi described the musical challenge that he had set for himself. Music, he wrote, had long been able to depict the emotions of love, but it needed a new language in order to truly express the more agitated emotions of anger and the violence of war. For this, he developed a stile concitato (agitated style), in which fast repeated notes or tremolos create an excited sound. Even the narrator sometimes delivers the text in very fast repeated notes for excited passages. Today tremolos on instruments are so common, that it is perhaps difficult to imagine them having been "invented," but it was a novel and surprising effect to Monteverdi's players, some of whom did not see the point in repeating the same note over and over.
There are other dramatic effects, as well, that were unusual for the time: pizzicato with instructions to pluck the strings with two fingers for depicting the short blows of the sword, dramatic pauses, instructions to taper the sound from loud to soft within a single bow stroke (i. e. diminuendo), and a final note that is to die away gradually. The level of detail in Monteverdi's instructions about how to perform this piece is unprecedented for his time.
Il combattimento is adapted from an episode in Torquato Tasso's great epic about the First Crusade, Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem delivered). Tancred, a Christian knight, challenges a Saracen to fight to the death. He does not know that, behind the Saracen's suit of armor, is the renowned woman warrior Clorinda, who refuses to reveal her identity. Following a lengthy and bloody battle, Tancred vanquishes his opponent, but, as he lifts the helmet of his dying foe, he realizes that this mysterious knight is the woman he loves. Clorinda asks him to baptise her, and she dies in peace.
Boston Baroque Performances
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
March 4 & 5, 2011
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Aaron Sheehan - narrator (testo)
Mary Wilson - Tancredi
Bradford Gleim - Clorinda