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Notes 58.4 (2002) 929-932



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Music Review

Vespro della Beata Vergine:
Vespers


Claudio Monteverdi. Vespro della Beata Vergine: Vespers (1610). Performing score edited by Jeffrey Kurtzman. (Oxford Choral Works.) Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, c1999. [Introd., p. v-vi; vocal and instrumental requirements and ranges, p. vii-ix; editorial principles, p. ix-xi; facsims., p. xii-xiv; score, 254 p.; antiphons for feasts of the B.V.M., p. 255-62; examples of embellishments, p. 263-66; performance notes, p. 267-74. ISBN 0-19-337588-5. $24.95. Critical Appendix. ISBN 0-19-337587-7. $24.95.]

Jeffrey Kurtzman's new edition of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine poses an inevitable question: can there possibly be justification for yet another version of [End Page 929] the 1610 Vespers, a work that has now appeared in nearly a dozen editions? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding yes. Kurtzman's intimate knowledge of the music, its sources, and its performance challenges—along with his willingness to adopt innovative solutions to editorial problems—produces something close to that Holy Grail of early music editing, an edition that meets the needs of both scholars and informed but nonspecialist performers. Particularly when used in conjunction with Kurtzman's recent book, The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: Music, Context, Performance (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; see my review in Notes 57, no. 3 [March 2001]: 626-28), his edition provides a wealth of insights into the knotty textual and musical problems posed by Monteverdi's enduring sacred masterpiece.

The edition comprises two volumes, the main one dedicated to the full score and ancillary materials, including a brief introduction, charts of the vocal and instrumental ranges, a section on editorial principles, three facsimiles, chant antiphons for the psalms and Magnificat, and examples of embellishments. The separate "Critical Appendix," available from the Oxford University Press Rental Department, contains the scholarly apparatus. Performance parts are also available for rent from the publisher. Publishing critical notes in a separate volume, although somewhat unusual in a stand-alone edition, is standard practice for many monuments and collected editions, and it not only reduces the cost of this score but makes it more manageable in size, important considerations in an edition well suited for use as a conducting or choral score. Moreover, Kurtzman compensates for the division into two volumes by including a carefully considered appendix of performance notes along with the main edition (see below).

A listing of the edition's many thoughtful, even ingenious features will illustrate the intelligence and insight that characterize these volumes. Kurtzman includes not only the opulent "Magnificat à 7," but also the oft-omitted "Magnificat à 6" for voices and organ. He also provides two versions of the works noted in chiavette clef combinations ("Lauda Jerusalem" and the two Magnificats), one version at the original pitch and another transposed down a fourth. In light of research by Andrew Parrott and by Kurtzman himself, there can no longer be any doubt that downward transposition of these pieces is, at the very least, a viable performance option, and perhaps a necessity. Kurtzman finds eminently reasonable ways to incorporate all the significant rubrics from both the vocal partbooks and bassus generalis into the score, and even collects rangefinders together in his introduction rather than scattering them at the beginnings of pieces, where they would be far more difficult to compare. For those intending to perform the Vespers in a liturgical reconstruction, he provides chant antiphons for all the significant Marian feasts, judiciously taken from a seventeenth-century Venetian breviary. The edition contains stylish continuo realizations, and decisions about the length of barlines (generally equal to the tactus) and choices of clefs likewise seem appropriate (the very low alto in "Dixit Dominus," for example, is given in octave-treble clef indicating transposition downward one octave). One quibble: the clefs used for the short ritornellos for unspecified instruments in "Dixit Dominus" might be more convenient if they matched those used for one of the other instrumental ensembles in the collection, perhaps those of the six-part ensemble in the preceding "Dominus...

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