Marco Mangani and Daniele Sabaino, Is Modality still a Compositional Tool in Monteverdi’s 1610 Mass?

Abstract

The Mass for six voices that opens Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610) is
a parody of Nicolas Gombert’s motet In illo tempore loquente Iesu (1539). Both works
are written in the tonal type g2
--C, whose modal representation, from an emic point of
view, is anything but straightforward. If there are no reasons to suppose that Gombert
could have adhered to the twelve-mode system, such an adherence is sure and well documented in the case of Monteverdi. Facing this discrepancy, the paper makes three
major observations. 1. Monteverdi’s fughe are by no means all Gombert’s subjects,
but instead an a posteriori explanation of the motifs drawn by Monteverdi himself,
possibly to demostrate his ability in writing in the prima pratica style. 2. The range
of Monteverdi’s cadential goals is significantly restricted, in order to give modality
for granted and focus on other technical and expressive devices. 3. Monteverdi shifts
the foundation of the contrapuntal fabric from the tenor to the bassus, thus reorienting
the whole polyphonic ambitus from Gombert’s plagal transposed Lydian to authentic
Ionian. Modality, then, still seems to be a compositional tool in Monteverdi’s Messa,
although in a sense which cannot be fully traced back to previous practices.