Scholarly support?

Clefs and transposition rarely grab the musicological headlines, so perhaps I may be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at Jeffrey Kurtzman's claim to having pioneered the idea of downward transposition in Monteverdi's 1610 Mass and Vespers (EM, xxxv/1 (Feb 2007), p.166).

In his 1978 monograph Kurtzman notes Monteverdi's use of high-clef notation, then briefly reiterates established scholarly understanding—from Mendel (1948) and others—that these clefs 'often indicated downward transposition by a fourth or some other interval'. For vocal music with or without continuo, such as the Mass, Lauda Jerusalem and Magnificat a6 in the 1610 collection, the circumstance is commonplace. What is utterly exceptional, however, is the Magnificat a7, where the additional use of obbligato instruments brings the issue of transposition to a head. Crudely put: why on earth would Monteverdi write dazzlingly high cornett and violin parts only for them to be transposed down (and, if so, by what interval?), and can he really have intended the seemingly climactic, high vocal writing instead to be pitched 'uncomfortably low'? Faced with this major musicological conundrum Kurtzman concludes merely that 'Clefs in the Magnificat s are a more complicated problem'—one which is 'not to be settled by any hard and fast rule'—and that transposition is 'by no means essential'.

While in 1978 this may have seemed to represent up-to-date scholarly thinking, matters had moved on in the parallel universe of performance. By the previous summer, in a broadcast performance of the 1610 Vespers from the BBC Promenade Concerts (July 1977), I had already taken up a rather less equivocal position by presenting the problematic Magnificat a7 (along with Lauda Jerusalem) down a 4th, having first gathered a considerable body of evidence for regarding the transposition as mandatory.

My EMI recording was made several years later and—as far as the transpositions were concerned—against a background of widespread scepticism and incomprehension (and, in some quarters, hostility), at which point it seemed wise to set aside time to present my findings in print. The ensuing article in EM, xii/4 (Nov 1984), drew a swift response from Kurtzman: 'even before the appearance of this article, the scholarly support for interpreting high clefs as a sign of transposition was stronger than Parrott implies' (EM, xiii/1 (Feb 1985))—a view which once more ignored the riddles of the Magnificat a7 (and, not least, its exact interval of transposition). Instead, whilst almost imperceptibly endorsing my conclusions, Kurtzman focused firmly on his own work in hand: 'My forthcoming critical edition, while preserving Monteverdi's original pitch notation, will make an even stronger case for transposition of all the pieces in chiavette, and Parrott's article will provide additional confirmation of my position.'

In the event Kurtzman's long-awaited edition (1999) also included appropriately transposed versions of Lauda Jerusalem and both Magnificats, 'allowing conductors a choice of pitch', on the basis that 'These transpositions reflect our current state of knowledge regarding the significance of high clefs'. Nowhere in the companion study, however, does his 'even stronger case for transposition' materialize. Nor, as it happens, does the body of its 500-page text make any mention of my own contribution to the subject—apart, that is, from a single, succinct sentence relating to the 1984 recording: 'Noting the chiavette notation of Lauda Jerusalem and the Magnificat, Parrott transposed these works down a fourth.'

It is perhaps all too easy for the scholarly community to overlook the numerous advances in musical understanding that have been made in recent decades by the many who work outside its walls.