Vokalwerk Hannover and Weckmann Consort

Monteverdi's Marian Vespers Claudio Monteverdi is a name that echoes down to us from centuries past. But his music is closer to us than one might think. The composer, who was baptized in Cremona, Italy, in 1567 (his exact date of birth is unknown), based his works on similar structures that still characterize pieces of music today: catchy melodies and rhythms. He also became famous for his opera "L'Orfeo," which was the first opera composition ever to become the nucleus of musical theater. The music Monteverdi encountered was characterized by solemn and complex polyphony, from the age of Renaissance vocal polyphony. But what is really exciting about the Italian is that he lived in a time of musical upheaval—the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque—and was at home in the musical languages of both eras. In addition to the then ultra-modern monody of the dawning Baroque era, the masterful composer also cultivated the polyphonic vocal music of his forefathers. Claudio Monteverdi combined these two fundamentally contrasting compositional styles in one of his greatest masterpieces, the "Vespro della Beata Vergine," also known as the "Marian Vespers."