ABSTRACT
Monteverdi was widely recognized as the leading composer in Italy, was head of a prestigious musical establishment, and was supported by gifted assistants who could carry the day-to-day burdens of administering, rehearsing, and directing music in the Basilica. Monteverdi's music is rich in examples of his making something precious from something base. The importance of representation in early seventeenth-century musical endeavour goes without saying: witness the term stile rappresentativo, which could be, and was, applied widely to monody or to polyphony, and to music for the theatre, chamber, and church. Monteverdi well knew that dance-derived aria styles articulated the relationship between the triumvirate of oratione, harmonia, and rhythm that together made up melodia in ways very different from the formula proclaimed as the credo of the seconda prattica in the 1600s. The play of signs in Monteverdi's Venetian secular music—and for that matter, later music as well—can variously depend on both 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque' modes of signification.
