Work

The signs of Monteverdi's maturity are many in his second book of five-part madrigals. Although he was only 23 when he published it, he had begun to shed his early works' frivolously light, dancy characteristics and move decisively into a richer kind of composition that mixes vivid, full emotions and changing vocal colors. The poetry he chose to set reflects this. Instead of using rather disposable texts like those found in Il libro primo, he turns mainly to the ever-rich poems of his tragic contemporary Torquato Tasso, whose mannerist lyrics are rife with conflicted emotion and images of all kinds. They provide a great starting point for an imaginative musician working in a form primarily bent toward expressing its text as well as possible.

Monteverdi's charming setting of Tasso's "Dolcissimi legami" is composed of several relatively short sections, in each of which a principal musical idea receives a full, balanced working out. This balanced working out of musical ideas was done against the direction of his contemporaries, like Luca Marenzio, who were tending more and more to atomize their music in their word-setting zeal. Instead, Monteverdi is so careful, and poetically sensitive, that the lines containing "bound hearts" and the "gentle arms" of the beloved, although separated by a fair bit of time, are set to similar traditional Renaissance imitative polyphony, drawing out the textual parallel in clear musical terms. The nascent Baroque features elsewhere in the music, such as simple tonal motions, and an often purely functional bass, and the weighting of the novel elements versus the careful ordering of parts make this piece a thoroughly seductive exploration of Tasso's little poem.

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