Agonal Elements in the Depiction of War in Monteverdi ’ s Eighth Book of Madrigals

In the eighth book of madrigals, Monteverdi introduced a new style which he calls genere concitato. Some of these compositions are inspired by war. In the depiction of fighting, two opposing principles collide: agonal combat and agressive conduct of war. In 1638, the eighth book of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi was published in Venice under the title Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi (Warlike and Amorous Madrigals). Monteverdi included in it a number of earlier compositions: for example, Ballo delle Ingrate was premiered in 1608 in Mantua, Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda in 1624 in Venice, the madrigal Armato il cor d’adamantina fede appears as early as in the cycle Scherzi musicali (ed. 1632), and Lamento della ninfa may have been written in the early 1630s. The resulting mixture of styles thus appears at a time when the traditional structure of the 16th century Renaissance madrigal as a polyphonic vocal composition is on the decline, especially in Monteverdi’s work, and is being replaced by a recitative P . S Ý K O R A • A G O N A L E L E M E N T S I N T H E . . .

In 1638, the eighth book of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi was published in Venice under the title Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi (Warlike and Amorous Madrigals).Monteverdi included in it a number of earlier compositions: for example, Ballo delle Ingrate was premiered in 1608 in Mantua, Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda in 1624 in Venice, the madrigal Armato il cor d'adamantina fede appears as early as in the cycle Scherzi musicali (ed.1632), and Lamento della ninfa may have been written in the early 1630s.The resulting mixture of styles thus appears at a time when the traditional structure of the 16th century Renaissance madrigal as a polyphonic vocal composition is on the decline, especially in Monteverdi's work, and is being replaced by a recitative P .S Ý K O R A • A G O N A L E L E M E N T S I N T H E . . .form with the thorough-bass.However, this is also the epoch of the Thirty Years' War, the first ever pan-European war conflict.Monteverdi cannot have been unaware of the repercussions of the events constituting this war.Are they reflected in the cycle where the word 'war' (guerra) appears not only in the title, but also in the texts of numerous madrigals?
In a way, war connotations are invited by the dedication itself.Monteverdi dedicated the eighth book of madrigals, published in 1638, to the Austrian royal family, namely to Emperor Ferdinand III who was considered an eminent commander and brave warrior, having achieved a number of important military successes.In 1634, he succeeded Wallenstein as commander-in-chief of the imperial army.
Given the salutation 'o gran Fernando', madrigals Ogni amante e ` guerrier and Altri canti d'Amor may have been intended as a hommage to the sovereign.Interestingly, in the poem Ogni amante e ` guerrier, Monteverdi employed his invention called genere concitato in the passage containing the sovereign's name: 'carco di spoglie, o gran Fernando Ernesto, / t'inchineranno alla tua invitta spada'.
It must be noted, however, that individual compositions of the cycle were already in existence during the lifetime of Ferdinand II, who also instigated their printing.(Ferdinand III was crowned in 1636; at that time his father was seriously ill and died the following year.)And Ferdinand II was a true opposite of his son.Not particularly excelling on the battlefield, he was much more inclined to the world of the arts.Thus the dedication seems to be a matter of social obligation rather than a close relationship with the acceding monarch. 1 Of greater interest is the way in which not only Monteverdi, but also the authors of the poems set to music in the eighth book of madrigals, notably Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), relate to the war events.An episode from Tasso's epic, Gerusalemme Liberata (The Liberation of Jerusalem), served Monteverdi as the literary source for Il Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda (The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda, 1624), later included as the conclusion of the eighth book of madrigals.
Obviously, both Tasso and Monteverdi must have been aware of the tensions of their time.Leaving aside the Thirty-Years' War, which broke out much later after the creation of The Liberation of Jerusalem (published in 1580), Europe, a self-assured continent up to that time, had been threatened, predominantly by Turks, since the 15th century.It was this Turkish threat that inspired Tasso's epic about a crusade, which in its subject-matter heralds -or even opens -the era of Baroque poetry: in the words of Václav Černý, 'the idea of defending Christian Europe against Islam was one of Baroque epic poetry's greatest sources of inspiration'. 2he events of that period, culminating in the 1590s with increasing conflicts on the Hungarian border, made their mark also on Tasso: the Turks nearly dragged his sister away into slavery.Monteverdi encountered a war conflict as early as 1595, shortly after he had come to Mantua when he was visiting the strongholds against the Turks on the Danube with the Mantuan military corps who were in the service of Emperor Rudolph II.Vincenzo I Gonzaga, his employee, hoped to get the position of commander-in-chief on the Hungarian front.

The Gallant Combat
These external circumstances having been examined, the analyses will now focus on Monteverdi's concept of war in terms of structure.Is it a realistic depiction of the horrors of war?
Monteverdi's seventh and eighth books of madrigals start to include a warlike theme.The traditional amorous content typical of the previous stage in the development of the madrigal receives here its counterpart: there emerges a symbiosis of these two primarily irreconcilable modes of expression.Except Il Ballo delle Ingrate (The Dance of the Ungrateful Women, premiered in 1608), individual parts of the cycle were composed during the Thirty Years' War.The question is whether the compositions were written under the influence of the historical context and the first pan-European war conflict, i.e. whether they reflect the real atmosphere of that time.
One of the favourite -and often overused -words in mannerist poetry, whose texts dominate the eighth book of madrigals, is the word 'blood'.Blood is often connected with dying and death, one of the main features of war.
A lot of blood is spilt during Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda written at the very beginning of the Thirty Years' War (1624).Monteverdi sets a scene from Canto XII of Gerusalemme Liberata, stanzas 52-62, 64-68.This passage deals with the combat of the Christian knight Tancred with an unknown opponent from the enemy's camp.Tancred does not know that the opponent is a Saracene girl with whom he had earlier fallen in love, and therefore spared her life.
The blood motive is among the basic topoi of Tasso's poem and the composer does not remain neutral to it either.At the end of the longest battle scene (bars 133-202),3 the composer, who until now respected the formal structure of the literary source as if he wanted to outdo in effects the poet himself, interrupts the scene not only half-way through the stanza, but directly in the middle of the verse.The impulse for this is the word blood ('molto sangue', bar 202): Actually, too much blood is shed in the whole Combattimento.Consequently, the blood becomes one of the form-generating motives.Its effect is intensified through its connection with a beautiful woman, as it is Clorinda who bleeds ever more profusely.At the end, the outpour of blood is compared to a hot river: 'caldo fiume' (Liberata XII,  64, 7; bars 333-334).
And it is this motive of a beautiful bleeding woman that points to the style of Renaissance troubadour poetry or Petrarchian poetry with its typical love-death contrast rather than to the realistic depiction of the events of that period.The love-death contrast is heightened at the close of the set scene.In the mortal combat, Tancred fatally wounds his opponent, and after taking off the combatant's helmet, he finds out that it is a beautiful girl, Clorinda.
The troubadour contrast of love and death is prominent in the title of the cycle -Warlike and Amorous Madrigals.This contrast, however, is not entirely symmetrical.While amorous madrigals appear as independent compositions in which the individual degrees of amorous excitement are rendered in a wide range of musical means, in the warlike madrigals the love-death opposition is encountered and expressed -in accordance with the text -by the contrast of lyrical and aggressive music within one composition.
An example of the symbiosis of the war and love themes is the madrigal Ogni amante e ` guerrier, composed on Rinuccini's adaptation of Ovid (Amores, I, 9).The poem abounds in collocations such as 'amoroso guerrier', statements that 'nel suo gran regno / ha ben Amor la sua milizia anch'egli', with the love and war finally merging together:

Riedi ch'al nostr'ardir, ch'al nostro canto ch'ora d'armi e d'Amor confuso suona scorger ben puote omai ch'Amor e Marte e ` quasi in cor gentil cortese affetto.
In the second verse of the passage quoted, the harmony of contrasts is created formally as well, with the help of a mannerist figure (Curtius' classification), 4 annominatio; here, two similarly sounding words of opposite meaning are juxtaposed: 'd'armi e d'amor'.
The powerful effect of poems set to music is often produced by the fact that battle scenes and military terminology contain hidden erotic meanings.For example, in Combattimento, erotic insinuations creep into the text at first imperceptibly and then ever more artfully.First, only a firm embrace is mentioned: 'D'or in or piu ` si mesce, e piu ` ristretta' ('At last, thus tangled in their fierce debate', Liberata XII, 56, 5; bars 172-173), 'Tre volte il cavalier la donna stringe' ('Three times the warrior has embraced the maid', 57, 1; bars 181-185).These insinuations are subtly intensified, seemingly paradoxically: Clorinda's body is bleeding ever more copiously: 'Vede Tancredi in maggior copia il sangue / del suo nemico e se ` non tanto offeso' ('Now Tancred sees his enemy has shed / more blood than he, himself not hurt as much', 58, 5-6; bars 231-234).Hence, the erotic tinges heart-wrenchingly graduate with her approaching end.The beauty of the maid's body is thrown into relief by her inevitable death.
The realism of the war apocalypse also clashes with the combat scene being set into a glorious dawn.The rest of the two knights between fierce combats (Clorinda is already bleeding profusely) includes the following contrasting verses clearly derived from the favourite troubadour form of alba, about two lovers parting at dawn:

Gia ` de l'ultima stella il raggio langue
The last stars fade behind them.Up ahead su'l primo albor ch'e ` in oriente acceso.the east already glows at dawn's first touch. 5Liberata XII, 58, 3-4) A moment earlier, Testo had set the combat in the depths of night ('Notte, che nel profondo oscuro seno… ', 54; bars 88-133).Monteverdi reinforces these lines with the longest, in fact the one and only, arioso in the whole work.
Testo's passage, a kind of epic intermezzo, is also out of tune with the depiction of war fury.His panegyric and bombastic rhetoric, however, inherently evokes typical circumstances peculiar to the state of war throughout human history.It contains plenty of high-flown expressions ('gloria', 'fosco') and collocations: 'profondo oscuro seno' ('the deep dark fold'), 'fatto s` grande' ('an event so magnificent'), 'pieno teatro' ('the full theatre'), 'viva la fama lor' ('let their fame live') etc.The exaggerated mannerist rhetoric is also reflected in music.Monteverdi highlights the elaborate words with rich ornamentation, so that the whole achieves an almost unnatural effect.The exaggerated ornamentation on the word 'alta' in the collocation 'l'alta memoria' (bars 130-133) sounds downright pompous: To sum up, in terms of the above-mentioned characteristics Monteverdi does not strive to depict war horrors.On the contrary, the combat is conceived in the traditional Renaissance spirit as a knightly play, a contest.With regard to the period events of the Thirty Years' War, the gallant account of an idealized fight, with the ancestry of the courtly troubadour poetry much in evidence here, can appear quite anachronistic -unless it is intended as a parody, that is.

Homo Ludens
The Monteverdian 'war play' will now be examined in the light of the famous book by Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (published in 1938).As its subtitle, A Study on the Play-Element in Culture, 6 suggests, Huizinga searches for elements of play in individual human acts, including combat.
He distinguishes an 'agonal' way of combat from 'modern war'.The agonal fight is based on the principle of play and is conducted according to given rules.Into this category falls, for example, the knightly mode of combat -a gallant fight with elements of a noble play and valour.In modern times, however, war rises above this age-old fight.It breaks the rules of play and is based on the friend-enemy principle.7However, Huizinga's text implies that the term modern war cannot be understood in terms of time alone.In archaic times, too, the agonal element was breached when, for example, the will to prevail led to the degradation of the ideals of honest fight.
Taking into consideration some of the principles cited by Huizinga as examples, reveals that the eighth book of madrigals contains both agonal elements and modern war features.Those present in Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda will now be examined closely.
For Huizinga, one of the typical characteristics of the agonal principle of combat is the display of courteousness towards the enemy, or the mutual exchange of civilities. 8During the rest between fights, Tancred indeed addresses his adversary in a long, respectful monologue (Liberata XII, 60; bars 263-283).He courteously, even nobly, asks his opponent about his origin: 6 Homo ludens: Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur.Haarlem, 1938.
silence conceals it such great prowess reigns.Ma poi che sorte rea vien che ci nieghi But since our ill luck must make us despair e lode e testimon degni de l'opra, of praise or witness worthy of our pains, pregoti, se fra l'armi han loco i prieghi, I pray (if one who fights may pray), declare che 'l tuo nome e 'l tuo stato a me tu scopra, your name, degree, your titles and domains, accio ` ch'io sappia, o vinto o vincitore, that (win or lose) it may be known to me chi la mia morte o la mia vita onore.' who gives me honour in death or victory.' He respects his opponent and his speech is rather long, given the circumstances.Its strongly rhetorical character could be a proof of Huizinga's tenet about satirical features found in these courteous dialogues.
The polite structure is, however, interrupted by Clorinda's fierce ('feroce') answer (61, 1-4; bars 285-291).Tancred immediately abandons his role of a courteous opponent, mortally offends his rival and both knights fight for the last time.This asymmetric structure is expressed also with quickening the time-flow of the music.In his polite monologue, Tancred sings 8 verses in 45 seconds 9 (bars 263-283), whereas only about 12 seconds are needed for Clorinda's fierce answer (bars 285-291).As the musical space is now less than half of the former, i.e. three and a half verses (61, 1-4), the conclusion is that Clorinda speaks approximately twice as quickly.Tancred's following hot-tempered reaction (61, 6-8; bars 294-298) adjusts to this tempo -3 verses in 9 seconds.

P . S Ý K
Tancred's aggressivity is in keeping with Huizinga's view that the agonal principle was broken as early as in archaic times.Drunk with victory, he continues tormenting his opponent in the context tinged with the above-mentioned eroticism: 'Spinge egli il ferro nel bel sen di punta ' (64, 3; bars 324-325).In the following passage (65, 1-2; bars 341-343), the eroticism gradates to unbearability.The knight still holds ('preme') the impaled virgin ('trafitta vergine').This holding strikingly evokes embracing.The courteous knight becomes a barbarian.Thus, in a limited space, it can be clearly observed the transition from the gallant combat to the modern style of warfare.
According to Huizinga, the fight also adheres to the rules when the stronger contender is disadvantaged (for example when he has to stand in a hollow).Combattimento clearly contradicts this thesis.For most of the combat, Tancred is an equal contender, even having an advantage at the beginning: he chases his weaker opponent on horseback, which is underlined with sound-painting -employing concitato.Tancred, of course, does not know that the other combatant is a woman, but the composer reveals this before the fight begins: 'Tancredi, che Clorinda un uomo stima' ('Tancred, believing Clorinda is a man', 52, 1; bars 2-5).
A remarkable attribute pertaining to the agonal combat, and one which could also be applied on Combattimento, is masking.According to Huizinga, a disguised or masked man plays a different being or even is a different being.As a result, the fight play acquires elements of mystery.It should be noted in this connection that the mask-helmet does inspire the greatest effect in the work.Tancred still does not know who the mysterious stranger is.He asks him in vain to reveal his identity (60, 5-8).At the end of the scene, after the 'mask' is taken off, he is horrified to learn that he has killed the beautiful girl he loved.
The moment of this shocking revelation is musically treated with the most intensive affect.When Tancred takes off his oponent's helmet, the horrific discovery first renders him speechless: 'e resto ` senza / e voce e moto' ('then was he bereft of speech and movement ', 67, 7-8; bars 412-415).Here, the composer uses the principle of a kind of interrupted speech.Then follows the cry: 'Ahi vista!ahi conoscenza!' (bars 417-420) in contrasting dynamics, forte-piano: Example 4: Combattimento, bars 411-420.

Genere Concitato
In Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda, Monteverdi for the first time introduced a new way of expressing combat and impassioned speech, called genere concitato. 10nd he further employed it in the eighth book of madrigals.
Genere concitato (an agitated style) emerges as a contrast to the molle and temperato styles, used by the composer to express mildness, sorrow, pleading and death.In Combattimento, concitato appears mainly in the three battle scenes.In the eighth book of madrigals the importance of concitato is then reinforced in relation to the words concerning war, such as guerra, guerriere, battaglie, bombeggiare etc.
The contrast between the fight and rest is expressed in the contrast between two basic metrical patterns deriving from the theories of philosophers of antiquity, Plato in particular.In order to express dramatic tension, Monteverdi uses the so-called pyrrhic tremolo, while for the scenes of rest, but also of dying, he employs the spondaic metre.Monteverdi transforms Plato's theories.In The Laws (Nóμo ), Plato distinguishes two types of metre: quick pyrrhic for lively warlike dances -it is a stylized adaptation of Doric warlike dances -and slow spondaic for rest.For Monteverdi, the pyrrhic metre is a specific type of a precise tremolo which he realizes as 16 semiquavers within one bar.
In connection with Plato's assumptions regarding concitato, a thought arises whether Monteverdi's musical transformation has the characteristics of the agonal or the aggressive conduct of war.Obniska believes that the very substance of genere concitato itself clashes with the troubadour concept of fight.The main problem lies in the dominance of rhythm over other expressive musical means: in the eighth book of madrigals concitato is used to express various kinds of movement.Far removed from the dancing grace of knightly tournaments, these sounds of war are in themselves chaotic and brutal, 11 as exemplified in the longest battle scene in Combattimento (bars 133-202) where Monteverdi uses all the resources of concitato and combines them artfully in as quick a sequence as possible.This aggressivity contrasts with the calm scenes which in the eighth book of madrigals are associated with words amore, morte etc.The contrast is achieved also by alternating forte for concitato, and piano for the molle and temperato styles.
According to Huizinga, the spirit and mood of a true play is one of cheerful enthusiasm, not a hysterical agitation.And this hysteria is an inextricable ingredient of Monteverdi's genere concitato.He used this means for the first time in his favola in musica L' Orfeo (1607) Incidentally, the word furire and its derivatives (furor, furibondo) appear quite frequently in the eighth book of madrigals.Its meaning (aggression, ferocity, anger) is largely in accordance with the substance of concitato as the agitated style.
In Combattimento, scenes of agitated fighting, and dialogues in which the two fighters attack and offend each other, alternate with scenes of rest required by the need to relax after such an exhausting fight.At the beginning of the work, Tancred chases the girl as a hunted game.Clorinda hears the clattering of his arms ('in guisa avien, che d'armi suone ', bars 18-37).Then follows an agitated dialogue of telling military brusqueness (bars 40-48).After that, the opponents, maximally tensed up, await the other's move before charging towards each other through the sound of concitato tremolo (bars 58-72).After another fight, Tancred quite politely asks his opponent about his origin.But Clorinda's answer is ferocious, 'feroce', Tancred mortally offends her (bars 263-298) and they fight for the last time.In the text of this last combat (bars 299-316), the clangour of arms mixes with ferocity and hatred.

A Knight or a Barbarian?
The substance of genere concitato, therefore, removes Monteverdi's concept of fight from the world of courtly knightly tournaments and brings it closer to the aggressive conduct of war when the enemy presents an obstacle and must be destroyed.The preceding analysis leads to a conclusion that in Monteverdi's depiction of war, two opposing principles collide.On the one hand, we find ourselves in the realm of phantasy and fairy-tale, in the sphere of troubadour lyrical poetry, knighly virtues and courtly love.On the other hand, this world is violently disrupted by the realism of genuine fight with its aggressivity and ideological hatred towards the opponent.
This concept of fight is in keeping with Monteverdi's epoch, i.e. the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the old world which had been building its immutable order for centuries, collapses and a modern world full of insecurities is born in which traditional values lose their meaning.And in Combattimento especially, both the knightly and modern wars are featured.
The question as to which world will prevail can be answered only by the work of art itself.According to Huizinga, 'true play knows no propaganda'. 12Considering the ideological substance of Combattimento and especially of Tasso's literary source, both works can be totally excluded from the agonal context.Their ideological basis is the clash of Christian and Islamic worlds and there is no doubt on which side the truth lies.However, both artists let a kind of charm of the unexpected slip into this sphere of Jesuit period propaganda.Instead of celebrating Christian ideals, they depict, with great imagination, a man's inner world, full of sensual passions and desires.
And from this point of view, the paradoxical wish of the mortally wounded opponent, who a moment before hated his ideological enemy, becomes logical: 'Amico, hai vinto: io ti perdon.' -'Friend, you have won.I pardon you.'