Monteverdi (1567-1643) in 1630, painted by Bernardo Strozzi

On August 19, 1613 – 406 years ago today – Claudio Monteverdi was appointed Maestro di Capella di San Marco: the director of music at Venice’s St. Mark’s Basilica. It was the gig of a lifetime!

There’s no doubt about it: Claudio Monteverdi was one of the very, very greatest composers, up there with that handful (give or take) of dead Austrian and German cats whose marble, plaster, and chalk busts grace our pianos and music rooms.

He was born in the northern Italian city of Cremona on May 15, 1567. Located on the north bank of the Po River in the middle of the Po Valley, Cremona is famous for its vegetable and olive oils, mustard, sweets, and preserved meats. However, Cremona’s most famous product is not its foodstuffs, yum-licious though they may be, but rather, the stringed instruments built there. It was in Cremona that the violin family of instruments was born and where some of the all-time greatest violin builders (or “luthiers”) plied their trade. Cremona was home to the Amati family and its greatest violin-building son, Nicolò Amati (1596-1684); home to the Guarneri family, and its greatest luthier, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (1698-1744); finally, Cremona was the home of Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). 

The oldest surviving violin was built by Nicolò Amati’s grandfather, Andrea Amati (who lived from ca. 1520-ca. 1578). Known today as the “Charles IX” (because it bears the coat of arms of Charles IX of France), the violin was built in Cremona in 1564 (which was the same year William Shakespeare was born).

Monteverdi as a young man

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was born in Cremona three years later. He was a musically gifted child, and at an early age, he developed into an excellent violinist. (Most appropriate for a native Cremonese!)

The outline of Monteverdi’s musical life can be stated quickly: he learned his craft in Cremona; he matured in Mantua; he flourished in Venice.

Monteverdi’s early musical education was supervised by Marc’Antonio Ingegneri, an important composer of the Counter-Reformation and the maestro di capella of Cremona. In 1582, at the age of fifteen, young Claudio had his first publication: a collection of three-part motets printed by the prestigious Venetian publishing house of Gardane. Further publications followed, underwritten by the various Cremonese patrons to whom they were dedicated, including his first book of madrigals (of an eventual five), which was published in 1587.

In 1590, at the age of 23, Monteverdi was hired on as a suonatore di vivuola – a string player – in the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. Monteverdi also composed for the Mantuan court, and he very quickly became one of Mantua’s leading musicians. 

Monteverdi was an ambitious young man who longed for advancement. In May of 1601, when Benedetto Pallavicino, maestro di capella of Mantua, went into retirement, the 34-year-old Monteverdi was convinced that his time had come, and that the job was his. But six months passed, and no appointment was made. In November of 1601, Monteverdi – simmering, stewing, and finally boiling in his own juices – wrote a letter to the Duke, demanding to be appointed maestro di capella. It is an extraordinary letter, one that Monteverdi biographer Hans Ferdinand Redlich calls “a remarkably malicious document”. (Knowing what we know, today, about Monteverdi’s bad treatment there at Mantua, we would modify Herr Redlich’s evaluation and call the letter “a justifiably malicious letter.”) Over its course, Monteverdi points out that he has waited patiently for his many superiors to die off, and now that they were all dead,