In Il Combattimento the orchestra and voices form two separate entities. The strings are divided into four independent parts instead of the usual five – an innovation that was not generally adopted by European composers until the eighteenth century.
Il combattimento contains one of the earliest known uses of pizzicato in classical music, in which the players are instructed to set down their bows and use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings. It also contains one of the earliest uses of the string tremolo, in which a particular note is reiterated as a means of generating excitement. This latter device was so revolutionary that Monteverdi had considerable difficulty getting the players of his day to perform it correctly. These innovations, like the fourfold division of the strings, were not taken up by Monteverdi’s contemporaries or immediate successors.
Media
References
- Libretto of Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda
- Carse, Adam (1925, 1964). The History of Orchestration. Dover Publications, Inc., New York. ISBN 0-486-21258-0.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Sunday May 18, 2008 at 20:05:32 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.