Monteverdi

3.     The 1610 Vespers. French, Spanish and Italian music of Claudio Monteverdi’s time, especially anything Venetian, has been a passion of mine since my early thirties. At home we sometimes play nothing but Venice (Lassus, the Gabrielis, &c.) whole weekends, especially at Easter, which has the effect of floating continuously hours on the second glass of prosecco. The operas and madrigals delight in their discovery of a colour, light and movement (‘mo-bi-le’ as the Italians say, also ‘so-a-ve’) not previously translatable into sounds. Jerusalem is the centre of the world, but when I hear Venice singing about Jerusalem in 1610, Venice is the centre of the world. I had cassette copies off the radio of this 1966 recording, which is a landmark of Early Music. Concentus Musicus Wien (pictured on sleeve) play on original instruments under the inspiration of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and direction of Jürgen Jürgens. ‘Original instruments’ was an emerging concept that assisted in the almighty war of attitudes about how to play and sing this music that has raged ever since. That’s their problem and our good fortune if it makes more prosecco music. I have several recordings of the 1610 Vespers that chart fifty years of progress, from Monteverdi-if-he-was-Beethoven to Monteverdi-if-he-was-Ligeti. I bought this set (‘Grand Prix du Disque’) for $5 at the Spensley Street Primary School Fair in Clifton Hill in 1997. I could hardly believe what I was looking at in the milk crate.