4. How music catches up - Monteverdi and his constellation

Music can help us to grasp the true modernity of this enormous shift in human consciousness. Monteverdi’s first opera, L’Orfeo (1607), is almost a manifesto for the power of music now elevated to a level of virtuoso craftsmanship and universal human emotion far beyond anything previously attained or experienced - an example of what Stephen Sondheim describes as “skill in the service of passion.” Monteverdi was mapping out a new terrain for music, capable henceforth of pursuing a life if its own - a fresh vision which would dominate composition for ever afterwards. John Eliot Gardiner guides listeners through two centuries of musical and poetic evolution which laid the foundations for this remarkable achievement.

Om Podcasten

John Eliot Gardiner, Founder and Artistic Director of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, presents eight podcasts that explore Monteverdi’s role at the centre of seismic shifts and tumultuous advances in all the arts and sciences during the early 1600s, spearheaded by his contemporaries - Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Shakespeare, Caravaggio and Rubens. With the help of specially recorded musical illustrations and a handpicked team of experts, Gardiner guides listeners through an in-depth investigation into the development of the early-modern mind.