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La raccolta Messa a quattro voci et salmi di Monteverdi, curata e pubblicata dallo stampatore veneziano Alessandro Vincenti nel 1650, tende ad essere marginalizzata negli studi sul compositore. Tuttavia, essa costituisce un importante documento sia in sé sia per le questioni che solleva sulle fonti a cui Vincenti attinse per la pubblicazione e sulla prassi di lavoro utilizzata da Monteverdi nel comporre più versioni di un limitato numero di salmi, sia per la basilica di San Marco a Venezia, sia per far luce su altri committenti che per oltre un trentennio pagarono per avere i servizi del compositore. L'articolo si propone di dimostrare che Monteverdi non depositò i manoscritti dei suoi salmi in stile concertato nell'archivio della cappella di San Marco, ma più probabilmente li conservò nella sua biblioteca personale, portandoli nella basilica marciana o in altre chiese quando era necessario. Inoltre, è probabile che Vincenti avesse acquistato i manoscritti con i brani che compaiono nella raccolta Messa a quattro voci et salmi del 1650 subito dopo la morte di Monteverdi, prima che i beni del compositore fossero dispersi. Uno dei maggiori privilegi concessi al maestro di cappella della basilica ducale di San Marco era la libertà di poter scrivere musica sacra su commissione di altri committenti. Attraverso questi incarichi Monteverdi riusciva a guadagnare ogni anno una cifra che poteva arrivare a metà del suo stipendio regolare, e possiamo desumere che la richiesta di comporre nuove versioni dei salmi più comuni dovesse essere incessante. La raccolta del 1650, considerata in coppia con la Selva morale (1641), mostra come il compositore riutilizzasse materiali musicali da una versione all'altra dello stesso salmo, rielaborando, espandendo o accorciando, e mascherando il riuso per mezzo di un nuove sezioni iniziali. Conservando i manoscritti nella sua biblioteca, Monteverdi era così in grado di nascondere i procedimenti di riuso, dei quali poco o nulla sapremmo se Vincenti non avesse pubblicato la raccolta postuma del 1650. In ultimo, l'articolo fa luce su un'area della committenza monteverdiana, meritevole di ulteriori indagini, costituita dalle comunità straniere presenti a Venezia. Al riguardo vengono offerte alcune tracce di commissioni da parte della comunità milanese e di quella fiorentina a Venezia. Monteverdi's Messa a quattro voci et salmi collected by the Venetian music printer Alessandro Vincenti and published in 1650, tends to be marginalised in studies of the composer, but it is an important document both in its own right and for questions that it raises about the musical sources on which Vincenti based his publication and about Monteverdi's working practices in composing multiple settings of a limited number of psalm texts both for San Marco, Venice, and for other patrons who paid for his services over a period of thirty years. This paper argues that Monteverdi did not deposit the manuscripts of his concertato psalms in the choir library of San Marco, but rather retained them in his own private library, bringing them to San Marco or other churches as required. It further argues that Vincenti probably acquired the manuscripts of the 1650 collection very soon after Monteverdi's death, before the dispersal of the composer's Nachlass. One of the attractions of the position of maestro di cappella at San Marco was that it allowed the incumbent the freedom to provide sacred music for other patrons, and through this Monteverdi was able to earn up to half as much again as his regular salary, though the demands on him for new versions of a common repertoire of psalms must have been considerable. The 1650 collection, viewed in tandem with the Selva morale of 1641, shows that Monteverdi re-used material from one setting to another, revising, expanding and cutting it, and disguising the reuse of material by writing, in particular, different openings to the settings in which material is duplicated. By retaining the settings in his own library Monteverdi was able to hide this process, and it would have remained largely hidden but for the 1650 collection. Finally, the paper highlights one area of such patronage that would deserve further research – commissions from the foreign communities working in Venice. Evidence is provided of such commissions from the Milanese and Florentine communities.

Monteverdi's Selva morale e[t] spirituale presents us with a number of intriguing bibliographical questions, of which the problem of the dual title pages in the Bologna exemplar—one dated 1640, the other 1641—is well known. This essay supports Jeffrey Kurtzman's conclusion that the volume was actually published in 1641, after a delay. It also considers the anomalous structure of the tavole found at the end of the partbooks. Taken together with watermark evidence, these show that the first section of the book was printed later than the second. The most probable reason is that the music of the first section was still incomplete in 1640. This leads to reassessment of the dating of music in the first section, not least that of the great concertato Gloria a 7. The essay goes further by showing that the '1641' title page was itself printed in 1640, and considers such other anomalies as why instrumental parts were published in place of the Alto and Basso secondo vocal parts for the first of the two Magnificat settings (SV 281); finally, an explanation is offered for the apparently rather clumsy typographical choices for the 1641 title.

Whenham praises Nigel Fortune, who died at his home in Birmingham on Apr 10, 2009. He was co-editor of Music and Letters for 28 years from 1980 to 2008. As an active writer, editor, teacher, and administrator, he was one of a group of scholars who established musicology as a serious professional discipline in Britain after the WWII. To the very end, although almost completely immobilized, he continued to enjoy visit from his friends and telephone conversations that enabled him to keep up with at least some of the gossips of the musicological world. One of his greatest pleasures, however, was to listen to concerts and other musical offerings on Radio 3.