"Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was not only an exceptional musician; he was great because of the power of meditation and poetical concentration, the seriousness and perseverance which he applied in the pursuit of his ideals. He was the first artist to revive the spirit of antique tragedy and create a music drama which was classical and modern at the same time. He was the creative musical genius whose aim was not the realization of the ideals of the distant past but the expression of the life and ardor that was in him. His grandiose imagination, his colorfulness, the never-abating richness of his musical invention, his tragic rhythm and astounding force of dramatic expression could not find an adequate field in the musical forms of his time. When the greatest musical genius of the early baroque speaks of a "seconda prattica musicale", he announced to the world that an entirely new musical style had been born, and that he was embarking on a "second", that is, new, musical practice." {Paul Henry Lang - Music in Western Civilization - 1941}

As I had mentioned before in a previous review, Claudio Monteverdi lived during a crucial period of profound change in music. The shift from late Renaissance to early Baroque, when composers were becoming more concerned with the meaning and feeling behind the words they set to music. Henceforth vocal music was supposed to derive the rules of its development more from the words than from the cantus firmus. The number of excellent madrigal composers at that time was large, and Monteverdi was one of the best at capturing the impetus and momentum of this new free and passionate art. The work in question here, the Vespro della Beata Vergine, was apparently not conceived as a whole, but was constructed out of various songs and madrigals written at different times, that came together to form one of the most ambitious sacred works of that period.

In this recording captured live at the Church of St. Jean Baptiste, New York City, in January 2020, the Tenet Vocal Artists along with the Dark Horse Consort, as part of their Green Mountain Project (appropriately named since Monteverdi is Italian for Green Mountain), provide a performance that well underpins the music's revitalized spirit. Not surprising when you consider that they set this project in motion with a 400th anniversary performance of this work in January of 2010, and have presented it in many cities, including Venice, ever since. With a single voice to each part and a small ensemble of cornetts, sackbuts, theorbos, organ and strings, the sound is clear and powerful without being opaque. The audio recording also well captures and projects the building's open acoustics, which augments the scope and size of the ensemble. Sit back and listen, and your favorite chair may well become a time-travel machine that takes you back 400 years.