Galileo turns his telescope outwards towards the heavens. Monteverdi turns his microscope inwards towards emotions. The background dark, the coat even darker, in Strozzi’s portrait. Monterverdi’s eyes probing, intense. His left hand rests on one of his innovative scores, his right hand touching its notes as if to explore his new world of sounds. Forget (but don’t forget) Monteverdi’s Orfeo, the world’s first opera. Monteverdi’s eight books of Madrigals shift paradigms. Just as Galileo inherited (then crashed) a universe where the heavenly bodies moved in divinely ordained spheres, Monteverdi inherited a Renaissance vocal style with an emphasis on creating a sonorous, balanced whole that calms and elevates. But in Monteverdi’s late Madrigals, the world’s uncertain, emotions intense. In Lamento della Ninfa from Book 8, harsh dissonances help a woman express her anguish. All other voices are subordinate to her pain. Could be a jazz standard, a pop hit, the beginning of opera. Was it Monteverdi or Orpheus who invented song?
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