In the late 1630s, Claudio Monteverdi set in motion two publications that together present a summary of nearly 30 years' work. In his Madrigali Libro ottavo, the Eighth Book of Madrigals (1638), Monteverdi laid out his case, in music and text, for his re-discovery of an ancient musical affect—the warlike genus. The well-organized volume has two sections, one of war madrigals and one of love songs, and each collection was the product of many years' worth of his compositional experimentation. He dedicated the Eighth Book to the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand II. Shortly after, Monteverdi produced another large printed collection, the sacred anthology Selva morale e spirituale, dedicated to the Emperor's wife Eleanora Gonzaga. As with the Eighth Book of Madrigals, Selva morale demonstrates a clear organizational structure, with liturgically appropriate sections devoted to Mass music, Psalms, Hymns, and Marian antiphons. Yet in this book, some pieces have a problematic relationship to the volume's structure. Its final pages contain a small collection of motets for single voices, among them the fascinating little piece Jubilet tota civitas.

Several features mark Jubilet tota civitas as a unique flower within Monteverdi's "Moral and Spiritual Garden." It is one of only two Latin pieces in the entire collection without a specific liturgical assignment and it consequently falls outside of the print's liturgical organization. Even the scoring of the motet is clouded by uncertainty: the version Monteverdi published explicitly labels it music for a solo voice, but "in dialogue." How can this be? Several times over the piece the single melody contains rubrics instructing canta (sing) or tacet (be silent); the most likely explanation has two equal voices (two sopranos) singing in unison, reduced to a solo in tacet sections. In fact, the three tacet sections display a more soloistic quality, with hints of text-driven recitative rhythms and even some soloistic ornamentation. The sections for both voices more often cycle through festive repetitions of quick, triple-time motives, with similarly predictable harmonic progressions in the keyboard basso continuo. This suits the non-liturgical text, the simple Latin prose of which calls for jubilation on a Saint's day. Monteverdi further evokes the text's celebration by frequent yet subtle echo effects between the voice(s) and the instrumental bass line. Finally, when the text returns to the text Jubilet, he treats the music as a ritornello, followed by a lengthy and musically sequential "Alleluia" section, once again with some composed-out ornamentation. The voices embody the praise of the whole city.

© Timothy Dickey, Rovi