The big turnaround on “sol io” (I alone) is signaled by a brusque chromaticism, signaling a new tonal
and emotional terrain. Really intense dissonance will follow when the bitter complaint against the lady’s
cruelty is enunciated. Monteverdi well understood the paradox of “persona” in the madrigal—a group of
singers impersonating a single poetic sensibility—and exploited it. The line beginning “Certo!” is set on
every occurrence for two singers in unison, so that it sounds like a single voice that “breaks” into a
grating minor second when cosi crudeleria (“such a heartless one”) is recalled (Ex. 17-18b). Thereafter,
the two voices move in a suspension chain to a cadence, but a cadence that is trumped and frustrated
every time by the next semitone clash. The dissonance is kept gnashingly high at all times and can seem
excessive even now; this lover’s pain remains palpable after four centuries.
Monteverdi’s “baroque” dissonances were notorious. His madrigal Cruda Amarilli, published in
1605 in his fifth book, had already been a cause célèbre for five years because it had been angrily
attacked by Giovanni Maria Artusi (1540–1613), a pupil of Zarlino and a latter-day proponent of the ars
perfecta, in a treatise published in 1600 and pointedly titled L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della
moderna musica (“Artusi’s book concerning the imperfections of modern music”). Like most treatises it
is in dialogue form. Artusi puts his criticisms in the mouth of a wise old monk, Signor Vario, to whom the
other character, Signor Luca, has brought the unnamed Monteverdi’s latest. “It pleases me, at my age,”
says Signor Vario, “to see a new method of composing, though it should please me much more if I saw that
these passages were founded upon some reason which could satisfy the intellect. But as castles in the air,
chimeras founded upon sand, these novelties do not please me; they deserve blame, not praise. Let us see
the passages, however.”^12 Then follow seven little extracts from Cruda Amarilli, each containing some
offense against the rules of counterpoint as laid down by Zarlino. The most famous infraction is the first, a
skip in the most exposed voice, the soprano, from an A that enters as a dissonance against the bass G to an