The essay "Modality and phonetic reality in the "Lamento d'Arianna" brings together all of Annibale Gianuario's interpretative thought concerning the art of Monteverdi.

What makes this thinker so special is that he distances himself from the usual order of things, an order that is both superficial and conditioning. He is moreover very sensitive as a musician to musical languages that are not merely limited to western civilisations. He manifests a deep awareness of linguistic problems and peculiarities, and all of this has enabled him to attain a deep and unparalleled understanding of Monteverdi's poiesis.

In this essay Gianuario not only clarifies the characteristics of Sung Speech, of which Arianna's scene constitues a summa, but supplies us with an interpretative key for the entire Seconda Pratica created by musician from Cremona, and includes it thereby in humanistic and Renaissance research linked to the Classic form.

Starting with a brief modal analysis of the start of the Lament by G.B. Doni, a contemporary of Monteverdi, Gianuario reconstructs the modal world in which the drama of Arianna evolves, in relation to the phonetic features of Rinuccini's poetic language. The reader in this way is supplied with an aesthetic and harmonious world of incomparable novelty and profundity.

The analysis is based on the Venetian edition of 1623 of which the unicum is found in the University library at Gent. This edition reveals a particularly interesting semiography which in the 17th and 18th was not taken into account. Even where there was at times a certain amount of imprecision, the semiography reveals the presence of chromatism and dissonances (superfluous octave) that we find in the Florentines Francesca Caccini and Jacopo Peri in their particularly pathetic moments. These are aspects that are still waiting to be completely dealt with.

The present essay also clarifies the executive aspect of the Genere Rappresentativo, which is to say Song in the highest sense of the term: voiced modulation of the word. We would like here to emphasise certain parts of this essay that enclose the fundamental thought of Annibale Gianuario:

"From what we have shown so far we have come to the point where it is necessary to determine the ethical and aesthetic difference inherent in the two dictions: Cantar parlando (SPOKEN SONG) and Parlar cantando (SUNG SPEECH) - the latter being Monteverdi's purest expression.
In Spoken song the word is used while singing or, rather, while modulating. A musical language is evolved thereby an emblematic set of phonics which utilises the word - the literary emblem - in its explanatory function.
Sung speech, on the other hand, is the expression of the modulated word which is to say, the expressive contemporaneity of the functions of the word inasmuch as it becomes a meaningful emblem and a phonic emblem according to the emotion, rationality and intention of the phonic area and the dynamic process of the thought.

Critics consider Monteverdi to be great among the great musicians and futuristic as perhaps no one else is. What, however, may appear to be portentous premonitions, appear as such to whoever analyses Monteverdi's work whit a mentality still based on principles suited to the artistic and cultural conception of Artusi. We can, therefore, say that we know a very great Monteverdi - but who is not monteverdiano. This may seem to be mere play ing with words, but it isn’t. Modern editions of Monteverdi's work do in fact tend to conduct Monteverdi's expression to harmonic limits that were outlined after the 17th century, while ignoring his particular semiography that must be referred back to his conception of music as verbal expression. In this way, phonic speech flections are ignored, and one approaches an estimation of Monteverdi's expression transferred from his phonic-semantic uniqueness to a set of phonic emblems, perhaps due to a convenient distorsion of the truth (and which therefore ceases to be truth), and to a further colouring of the literary emblem. In other words, we know and admire certain phonic emblems taken from Monteverdi's work but without really realising that they are only a part of his poetry, and therefore, when we take them on as expressive formulae, we ignore the real, total art of this musician from Cremona, and deal instead with his less poetic side. This is why we have been able to say that we know a great Monteverdi but not the real Monteverdi who can only really be identified if his poetic-musical conception is penetrated totally.

If we really want to identify Monteverdi's originality, we have to turn to classic poetry and Plato's aesthetics in order to then be able to lean forward and listen, as Monteverdi did, to the sounds of verbal expression which were formulated when creating those acts of life that imply overcoming the mimesi in a Platonic and artistic sense and the expression of the idea in expressive phonic-semantic uniqueness.

We pronounce, for example, a verse from Arianna, listen to its sonority while understanding the emotively detarmining factor. We therefore compare the SOUNDS AND THEIR HARMONIC COMPONENTS, AS WELL AS THE PARTICULAR DYNAMIC PROCESS, WITH MONTEVERDI'S NOTES. WE WILL THEN PICK UP THE MUSICALITY OF A LANGUAGE THAT, AT THE SAME IT IS EXPRESSED, CREATES THAT ACT OF LIFE WHICH BELONGS TO ARIANNA IN THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT DURING THE DRAMATIC EVENTS THAT SURROUND HER.

When we talk of Monteverdi's poetic choice, we have to overcome the concept of formal choice and consider the fact that Rinuccini, Tasso and others were culturally trained towards a reworking of classical poetics. They identified themselves with the humanists and Marsilio Ficino. They listened to the voiced flow of the word which arose from the affirmation of unmi stake able genetic qualities and which expanded, during liberation of the harmonic components, according to particular emotional states and according to the context of verbal expression.

The unreachable greatness of Monteverdi is found, therefore, in his having been able to perceive the deepest expressions of human thought, noting their phonic expression as referred to emotion, and managing in this way to reveal the phonic expression of the state of the soul where, on the other hand, all others tend to only translate into voiced emblems an "emotive subject" determined by the state of the soul. This is where the basic difference lies between the Imitation of the Act of life by means of the Art, and the Creation of the same Act of Life. The Creation of the Act of Life is activated in its reality, while Imitation by means of Art comprises only the emotive outcomes. It is to this difference that Monteverdi alludes when he writes: "... when I was about to write Arianna's lament, since I did not find a book that would open to me the natural path to imitation, nor which would enlighten me as to what I should imitate, there was only Plato by way of his enclosed light..." (see Doms letter [?] of the 22nd Oct. 1633).

In the Lament he in fact does not translate the emotive outcome of a state of soul into sound, but reveals the state of soul that, in the -word, which is sensation and rationality expressed in phonic-semantic uniqueness, creates itself as an act of life.

Monteverdi's research into phonetic reality becomes evident also in Artusi's polemic. In fact when he - on page 10 of his Imperfections of Modern Music (Venice, 1603) - criticises Monteverdi's use of the diesis at the third chord of the tetrachord Hiperboleon, thereby converting it from diatonic to chromatic, he confirms that for him there is no possible voiced accentuation leading to the creation of a chromatic motion in that "voiced area", while for Monteverdi this was possible.

Which is logical and can be proved scientifically inasmuch as there are in the revelation of the "affections" accentuations determined by the diction of vowels and syllables that in that very "voiced area " move chromatically as does Fa - Sol diesis in the Hiperboleon tetrachord".

Nella Anfuso