How does he do that?

Well, you heard Mr. Rogers sing it, Mr. Nigel Rogers,
now let's see what Monteverdi does here.
As you remember, he starts off with just a chord.
You just get this chord for atmosphere, and gets out of the way.
And you don't know what he's going to sing.
He sings, “Tu se’ morta.”
There's a little space after the word “tu.”
The first word he says, you all by itself, the only sound in the universe.
“Tu se’ morta.”
So, and it's sort of in spoken rhythm.
“Tu se’ morta.”
Let me ask you this.
Why didn't Monteverdi write, “tu se’ morta?”
That would be a much smoother, nicer melody.
Why does he write an ugly melody?
“Tu se’ morta.”
Well, for two reasons, I think.
One, is he wants the angularity.
He wants the shock of the angularity.
Experts will notice that he sings a B flat followed by an F sharp.
Ooh, that's a really ugly interval, deliberately ugly.
It's what is, it's officially a diminished fourth, if you experts out
there know what that is.
So, he's making a deliberately angular melody,
because Orpheus is feeling wrenched.
Not only, but that second note makes a strong dissonance with that underlying
chord.
“Tu se’ morta.”
So I think he's trying to make something anguished,
not only in the angularity of the melody,
but in the dissonance of the harmony, all in three different pitches.
“Tu sei morta.”
And then just in case you thought the singer had
made a mistake in singing that ugly note,
he changes and has him do it again, but with a different chord, “se’ morta.”
So, there's another same kind of thing, “se’ morta, mia vita.”
And on the word, “vita,” you are dead, my life.
“Vita,” we have this beautiful, bright kind of light-filled chord, “vita.”
Actually, the note that he sings on “vita” is the same note
that he just sang as an ugly note on “se’ morta.”
“Se’ morta, mia vita.”
It all depends on what the underlying harmony is.
The note either is part of the harmony, or is not.
Here it's dissonant, “se’ morta, mia vita.”
And here, it's part of the chord, “vita.”
So we have this “tu, tu se morta,” and “mia vita.”
We have sort of death and life, “vita.”
And then Monteverdi gives a really jarring next chord, “vita.”

I don't know if that sounds jarring to you.

But it does to me.
Normally after a chord like this, you might expect this, or, or this,
or, or I don't know, or something.
But you don't expect that.
So he's trying to make a very strong antithesis here between “vita,”
my-- you, beautiful you, “mia vita,” and me “ed io,” and I, “ed io respiro.”
So he emphasized those antitheses with harmony,
with rhythm and with the dissonance between the melody and the chords.
“Tu sei morta, se morta mia vita,” and then this big disjunction, “ed io respiro.”
And then Orpheus asks the question again at greater length.
“Tu se da me partita?”
Are you gone away from me forever and I remain here?
So Monteverdi sets it to sort of the same music, but amplified.
So instead of going “tu se’ morta.”
He goes, “dah, dah, dah-dah.”
He starts higher.
“Tu sé da me partita,” but with that same dissonant note, “sé da me partita.”

“Sé”— same dissonance again-- “sé da me partita, per mai più.”

“Mai più non tornare, ed io rimango, no.”
And here he does a little trick for us musicians.
“Ed io rimango,” and I remain here, and I remain behind?
“Ed io rimango.”
Well you'd think he would write, “ed io rimango.”
But he doesn't.
He writes “ed io rimango.”
You see what happens is that the accompaniment remains behind.
It lags behind by one beat, and only then catches up on the word
remain behind.
“Ed io rimango.”
I don't think it's an accident.
I think Monteverdi knows exactly what he's doing.
Then he says, “no, no-o-o, che se i versi alcuna cosa ponno, no no.”
So then he sings “no, no.”
And in the middle of that second no, while he's saying “no,” he's thinking
and he decides what he's going to do.
Then he says what he's going to do.
If verses can do anything, I'll go down to the deepest abysses.
Another very cool thing that Monteverdi does for his fellow musicians, maybe
not everybody would get this, “ed io rimango,”
“no, no-o-o” In the middle of that second very long “no,” the harmony changes.
“Ed io rimango, no, no-no.”
So, the first, it's part of the chord, “no.”
And then the chord changes, and it's not part of the chord.
It becomes a dissonance.
He hasn't done anything.
He's still singing the same note.
There's a technical musical term for this when the chord changes under you,
and you're left kind of dangling in the note that was part of the chord
becomes dissonant, and then you move down to a note that is in the chord.
“Ed io rimango-- io rimango, no, no-o-o.”
See, when he says this first thing, now it's part of the chord.
That's called a suspension.
You know a suspension.
It's when you go this.
it's when you have a chord, and the chord changes, this note is left here.
Sometimes we decorate it, and a suspension
officially in musical technical terminology has three parts.
The preparation where it's part of the chord, the suspension itself
where the chord changes, leaving this guy
suspended, and what's called the resolution of the suspension.
So preparation, suspension, and resolution, well,
this is the suspension.
“Ed io rimango, no, no-o-o,” suspension, resolution.
And on the resolution of the suspension, Orpheus
has resolved what he's going to do.
I think Monteverdi knows exactly what he's doing.
“Ed io rimango, no, [INAUDIBLE], che se versi alcuna cosa ponno,
n'andra sicuro a piu profondi abissi,” I will go down to the deep abysses.
Get it?
Low note, “abissi.”
And then “e intenerito il cor-“ on the word, “intenerito,”
and having well, tenderized sounds like something you do to a cut of meat.
But it's what it means, having made tender, having persuaded
the heart of the King of shadows.
And he puts this sort of slimy music in here, “intenerito.”
It's sort of a picture of how I'm going to do it.
“e intenerito il cor del re de l'ombre.”
I'll bring you back with me.
“meco trarotti a riverder le stelle,” to see the stars again, “stelle.”
Get it?
“Abissi, stelle.”
We have a geography depicted by high notes and low notes.
To see again, the starlight, or, we changed to a sad chord, a minor chord.
“o se cia negherammi, empio destino, rimarro teco in compagnia.”
I'll stay with you.
And there's this wonderful blue note leading up to death.

“rimarro teco in compagnia di morte.”

And his beautiful, repeated farewell each time higher.

“A dio terra, a dio ciello,” to the sky, and the sun,
“e sole,” and that is my father Apollo, and all the things that I
love in music and everything, a dio.

Well, sung properly, I think that should be

sung in the rhythm in which an actor might deliver it
in an impassioned speech on the stage.
And Monteverdi writes it in such a way that if you speak or sing the rhythms,
you're actually doing the rhythms that an actor might use,
“tu se morta, se morta mia vita, ed io respiro, tu se da me
partita, se da me partita, mai piu, mai piu, non tornade, ed io rimango.
no.”
You see what that mean that he's trying to be reciting in a way.
This is speech rhythm.
This is talk delivered in speech.
And yet, with so much musical added stuff, think how Monteverdi does it.
He does it with rhythms.
He gets more excited as he goes along.
He does it with harmony, with juxtapositions
of chords that don't really go next to each other to make a sudden change.
He does it with the dissonance, where a note is not
part of the underlying chord.
He does it with dissonant, jagged intervals in the melody.
He does it with little musical tricks that we might not even catch on to.
They're sort of insider jokes for musicians, like where the chord remains
behind, a picture of remaining.
Or the picture of the high note for the stars,
and the low note for the abysses.
There are a million musical things going on,
whether we notice all of them as all of this is going on
is a question for you to decide.
It takes me a very long time to think about and unpack musically,
something that actually goes by in real time quite quickly.
But that, of course, is the amazing thing about music
is that it has so much in it that takes so long to unpack in language.
But all of which we feel when it happens in music.