2.E dicea l'una sospirando

On the title page/frontispiece of Monteverdi's first publications he had modestly styled himself the "disciple of Mr. Ingegneri." While in Cremona, where Monteverdi received his first significant musical training, he had been the pupil of the Veronese Marc'Antonio Ingegneri. Although Monteverdi's music shows little of Ingegneri's influence, his early precociousness, publishing his first book at age 15, must be attributed to a presumably excellent tutelage. Il Secondo libro, the second book of madrigals, is the last of the books to openly acknowledge the debt. It is fitting that it be the last, for the sumptuous works therein, while being cloaked in the polyphonic finery of the Renaissance, point beyond it in many significant ways.

The exquisitely balanced, richly colored E dicea l'una sospirando is the second madrigal in the book, intended to be performed with the first, Non si levava. It is outwardly a work of Renaissance polyphony, in which charmingly careful attention is paid to the quality of the text-setting, but the structural soul of it is already Baroque. That means that the lines of the polyphony, instead of all having strong melodic integrity are more subordinate to the harmonic scheme. Much of the piece is made up of homophonic, or semi-homophonic statements of chord-melodies, and the sugary, delicious little tunes that arise from the interactions would be impossibly bland without their harmonic support.

Monteverdi, while making advancements on his inherited techniques, follows Ingegneri's lead, however, in the careful ordering and varying of tone colors and vocal/chordal balances. Ingegneri was fundamentally a craftsman, and Monteverdi carries forth that legacy. Every musical event is weighted in meticulously careful balance with its surroundings. Like parts of a mosaic, pretty but inconsequential on their own, each brilliant chord presented, sweet or sour, is there to contribute to the creation of a spellbinding totality.

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