WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.759 Think of the last time a movie soundtrack made 00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:06.320 your palms sweat. Oh yeah, that instant tension. 00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:08.359 Right, like your heart starts racing, your jaw 00:00:08.359 --> 00:00:11.240 clenches, and you have this inescapable sense 00:00:11.240 --> 00:00:13.080 of anxiety. Yeah, your whole body just reacts 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:15.630 to it. Exactly. And, you know, we tend to think 00:00:15.630 --> 00:00:17.929 of that physical reaction as a modern Hollywood 00:00:17.929 --> 00:00:21.370 trick. We just accept it as a given that a composer 00:00:21.370 --> 00:00:23.609 with a synthesizer and a heavy string section 00:00:23.609 --> 00:00:26.350 can basically manipulate our nervous system on 00:00:26.350 --> 00:00:28.050 demand. Like they're just pushing buttons in 00:00:28.050 --> 00:00:30.449 a control room, yeah. Right. But what if I told 00:00:30.449 --> 00:00:33.630 you that the actual literal sheet music designed 00:00:33.630 --> 00:00:37.530 to hack your body and induce pure anxiety was 00:00:37.530 --> 00:00:40.149 engineered nearly 400 years ago? It's wild to 00:00:40.149 --> 00:00:42.770 think about. It really is. Welcome to the Deep 00:00:42.770 --> 00:00:45.039 Dive. Today, we are looking at an incredibly 00:00:45.039 --> 00:00:47.859 fascinating encyclopedia entry and a stack of 00:00:47.859 --> 00:00:51.140 historical notes on a concept called Steele Concertato, 00:00:51.820 --> 00:00:55.280 or in its original Italian, Generè Concertato. 00:00:55.439 --> 00:00:57.700 Which translates beautifully to the agitated 00:00:57.700 --> 00:01:01.060 style. The agitated style. I love that. And our 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:04.859 mission today is to explore how one single Baroque 00:01:04.859 --> 00:01:08.120 composer looked at the entire musical landscape, 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:11.560 realized human anger was completely missing from 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:15.140 it, and and just decided to invent a brand new 00:01:15.140 --> 00:01:17.700 musical language to trigger our deepest fight 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:19.659 or flight instincts. Yeah, he basically built 00:01:19.659 --> 00:01:22.439 the blueprint for musical anxiety. OK, let's 00:01:22.439 --> 00:01:24.640 unpack this. Because to really understand the 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:26.819 solution this composer came up with, we first 00:01:26.819 --> 00:01:29.540 have to understand the massive psychological 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:31.459 void he was trying to fill, right? Absolutely. 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:33.920 And the scope of that void is really what makes 00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:35.840 this history so compelling. So the composer we're 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:38.120 following today is Claudio Monteverdi. And to 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:40.879 really grasp his ambition here, we are zeroing 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.140 in on a specific public of his from 1638. It 00:01:44.140 --> 00:01:46.680 was his eighth book of madrigals, famously titled 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:50.140 Madrigale Guerrieri et Amorosi. Which means madrigals 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:52.879 of war and love. Exactly. The two absolute extremes 00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:55.099 of the human condition. Right, which is a very 00:01:55.099 --> 00:01:58.000 deliberate framing on his part because the earliest 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:00.299 most comprehensive description we have of this 00:02:00.299 --> 00:02:03.140 agitated style, it comes straight from the foreword 00:02:03.140 --> 00:02:06.230 Monteverdi wrote for this specific book. He didn't 00:02:06.230 --> 00:02:08.289 just write the music, he wrote the manifesto. 00:02:08.370 --> 00:02:10.629 Yeah, he doesn't just introduce new music, he 00:02:10.629 --> 00:02:13.409 lays out an entire psychological theory. He writes 00:02:13.409 --> 00:02:16.030 that he spent time deeply reflecting on the human 00:02:16.030 --> 00:02:18.550 mind, and he concludes that we are governed by 00:02:18.550 --> 00:02:23.030 three principle passions, or affections. And 00:02:23.030 --> 00:02:25.210 those three passions, according to his notes, 00:02:25.449 --> 00:02:28.449 are anger, moderation, and humility. which I 00:02:28.449 --> 00:02:30.349 think he also categorizes as supplication, right? 00:02:30.349 --> 00:02:33.310 Yes, exactly. So you have the fiery rage of anger, 00:02:33.469 --> 00:02:36.550 the steady baseline of moderation, and then this 00:02:36.550 --> 00:02:39.050 gentle yielding of humility. Right. And he takes 00:02:39.050 --> 00:02:41.710 those three human psychological states and maps 00:02:41.710 --> 00:02:43.969 them directly onto what he sees as their musical 00:02:43.969 --> 00:02:46.389 equivalence. He argues that the art of music 00:02:46.389 --> 00:02:48.949 naturally possesses these three gears. You have 00:02:48.949 --> 00:02:51.430 concertato, which is the agitated or warlike 00:02:51.430 --> 00:02:53.610 style. You have temperato, the moderate style. 00:02:53.650 --> 00:02:56.490 And you have mole, which translates to the soft 00:02:56.490 --> 00:02:59.020 style. So he builds this perfectly symmetrical 00:02:59.020 --> 00:03:02.000 framework. Anger pairs with the agitated style, 00:03:02.419 --> 00:03:04.819 moderation pairs with the moderate style, and 00:03:04.819 --> 00:03:06.979 humility pairs with the soft style. Exactly. 00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:09.879 It's very neat. It is. But here is the monumental 00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:12.740 claim he makes in that 1638 forward, which I 00:03:12.740 --> 00:03:15.599 find is so incredibly audacious. So bold. Right. 00:03:16.139 --> 00:03:18.219 He writes that he has studied all the works of 00:03:18.219 --> 00:03:20.240 the former composers who came before him, all 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:23.259 of them. And he found a massive abundance of 00:03:23.259 --> 00:03:25.900 the soft music. He found plenty of the moderate 00:03:25.900 --> 00:03:28.639 music. But he claims to have never, in all of 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:31.379 his studies, found a single example of the agitated 00:03:31.379 --> 00:03:33.680 style. Yeah, it's a sweeping indictment of his 00:03:33.680 --> 00:03:36.639 entire artistic heritage. It really is. He is 00:03:36.639 --> 00:03:38.979 essentially looking back at the whole history 00:03:38.979 --> 00:03:42.580 of Western music up to the year 1638 and telling 00:03:42.580 --> 00:03:45.240 his peers, you know, you missed a spot, a profoundly 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:47.819 important spot. Right. I keep picturing this 00:03:47.819 --> 00:03:50.259 through an analogy. Like, imagine Monteverdi 00:03:50.259 --> 00:03:52.539 is a master painter walking through the Louvre 00:03:52.539 --> 00:03:54.780 looking at centuries of masterpieces. Right, 00:03:54.780 --> 00:03:56.919 taking it all in. Yeah. and he suddenly stops 00:03:56.919 --> 00:03:59.280 and realizes that every single artist before 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:01.120 him has only been painting with blue and yellow. 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:03.319 Oh, that's a great way to put it. Like, they 00:04:03.319 --> 00:04:06.180 have painted beautiful oceans and bright suns, 00:04:06.219 --> 00:04:08.900 but they have completely, utterly ignored the 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:11.099 existence of the color red. Yeah, just completely 00:04:11.099 --> 00:04:13.219 left it off the palette. They've just been pretending 00:04:13.219 --> 00:04:16.339 that blood and fire and rage aren't part of the 00:04:16.339 --> 00:04:19.420 visible spectrum. So... What does this all mean 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:21.800 for how people experienced music before this? 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:24.800 I mean, if a third of the human emotional spectrum 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:27.660 was just missing from the art form. What's fascinating 00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:31.100 here is that this observation reveals a fundamental 00:04:31.100 --> 00:04:33.600 shift in what music was actually supposed to 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:37.040 do. How so? Well, if we look at the eras before 00:04:37.040 --> 00:04:40.139 Monteverdi's realization, music was heavily weighted 00:04:40.139 --> 00:04:42.699 toward the pleasing, the harmonious, you know, 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:46.420 the spiritually uplifting or or the sad but beautiful. 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:49.569 Amali in the Temperata. Right, exactly. Its primary 00:04:49.569 --> 00:04:52.750 functions were to soothe the listener, to express 00:04:52.750 --> 00:04:55.829 religious devotion, or to just provide pleasant 00:04:55.829 --> 00:04:58.350 courtly entertainment. It was polite. Very polite. 00:04:58.949 --> 00:05:01.209 But Monteverdi is stepping in and demanding that 00:05:01.209 --> 00:05:03.670 music serve as a mirror to the complete human 00:05:03.670 --> 00:05:06.769 psychological experience. He's arguing that if 00:05:06.769 --> 00:05:09.509 the human mind is capable of violent, destructive, 00:05:09.689 --> 00:05:12.649 warlike anger, then our art is fundamentally 00:05:12.649 --> 00:05:15.370 failing us if it refuses to reflect that reality. 00:05:15.649 --> 00:05:18.550 He didn't want music to merely sound pretty anymore. 00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:21.610 He wanted it to be fiercely, sometimes uncomfortably, 00:05:21.970 --> 00:05:24.170 true to the darkest parts of our psychology. 00:05:24.810 --> 00:05:27.069 So he identifies the problem, which is brilliant. 00:05:27.410 --> 00:05:29.790 He sees that nobody is painting with the musical 00:05:29.790 --> 00:05:32.620 equivalent of the color red. but identifying 00:05:32.620 --> 00:05:34.660 a gap in the market is only half the battle. 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:37.060 Now he actually has to figure out the mechanics 00:05:37.060 --> 00:05:39.939 of it. I mean, how do you take the abstract internal 00:05:39.939 --> 00:05:43.180 feeling of pure bellicose anger and translate 00:05:43.180 --> 00:05:46.560 that into literal ink on sheet music? It's an 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:48.399 engineering problem at that point. Exactly. How 00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:50.540 do you write down agitation so a violinist can 00:05:50.540 --> 00:05:52.560 play it and a listener could actually feel it 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:54.660 in their gut? Well, we find the answer in the 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:57.279 specific mechanical notes of the Steele Concertato. 00:05:57.819 --> 00:05:59.699 According to the sources, Monteverdi deployed 00:05:59.699 --> 00:06:02.839 very specific sonic effects as symbols of this 00:06:02.839 --> 00:06:05.540 warlike agitation. Okay, what were they? The 00:06:05.540 --> 00:06:09.000 defining feature, the real engine of the style, 00:06:09.519 --> 00:06:12.399 was the rapid repetition of notes. Specifically, 00:06:12.660 --> 00:06:15.819 he demanded rapid repeated sixteenth notes from 00:06:15.819 --> 00:06:18.379 the string section. Oh wow, just hammering the 00:06:18.379 --> 00:06:21.740 same note. Exactly. And alongside that, he utilized 00:06:21.740 --> 00:06:25.079 extended, really aggressive trills. The timeline 00:06:25.079 --> 00:06:26.980 of when he figured this out is actually quite 00:06:26.980 --> 00:06:29.920 surprising, too, because while he published his 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:32.160 grand sweeping theory about the three passions 00:06:32.160 --> 00:06:35.459 in that 1638 forward, the sources point to a 00:06:35.459 --> 00:06:39.220 piece he wrote much earlier as the first true 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:41.560 laboratory test of this style. Right. He was 00:06:41.560 --> 00:06:43.500 experimenting way before he published the theory. 00:06:43.699 --> 00:06:46.540 Yeah. It's a piece called Il Combattimento di 00:06:46.540 --> 00:06:49.310 Tancredi e Clorinda. The Combat of Tancredi and 00:06:49.310 --> 00:06:52.490 Clorinda. He wrote it in 1624, which is 14 years 00:06:52.490 --> 00:06:54.269 before he formally announced his theory to the 00:06:54.269 --> 00:06:56.589 world. 14 years of just keeping it in his back 00:06:56.589 --> 00:06:59.250 pocket. Right. And the researchers highlight 00:06:59.250 --> 00:07:01.470 a very specific moment in that piece, measures 00:07:01.470 --> 00:07:05.449 172 to 173. That is the exact pinpoint where 00:07:05.449 --> 00:07:08.529 this rapid repetition of 16th notes just bursts 00:07:08.529 --> 00:07:10.810 onto the scene. It's a historic musical moment. 00:07:11.149 --> 00:07:14.839 It is. But. I have to push back a little on the 00:07:14.839 --> 00:07:17.279 mechanics here. OK, go for it. Is simply playing 00:07:17.279 --> 00:07:20.160 the same note really fast actually enough to 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:22.899 make a human being feel angry? I mean, is this 00:07:22.899 --> 00:07:24.980 a brilliant psychological trigger, or was it 00:07:24.980 --> 00:07:28.139 just a neat musical gimmick? I can imagine the 00:07:28.139 --> 00:07:30.480 composer thinking, well, swords swing fast in 00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:32.939 a battle, so I'll just write fast notes. It's 00:07:32.939 --> 00:07:35.620 a fair question. But if we connect this to the 00:07:35.620 --> 00:07:37.980 bigger picture of human biology, we can see why 00:07:37.980 --> 00:07:40.220 it is far more than just a cheap parlor trick. 00:07:40.360 --> 00:07:43.519 OK. Consider what happens to your physical body 00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:46.740 when you experience sudden, intense rage or panic. 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:49.339 Your autonomic nervous system completely takes 00:07:49.339 --> 00:07:52.379 over. Your heart rate violently spikes. Oh, right. 00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:54.779 Your muscles tense up. Your breathing becomes 00:07:54.779 --> 00:07:57.360 shallow and erratic. And your body actually starts 00:07:57.360 --> 00:07:59.819 physically trembling as it floods with adrenaline. 00:07:59.879 --> 00:08:02.399 So you're literally vibrating. Yes. And what 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:05.180 Monteverdi engineered with those rapid 16th notes, 00:08:05.220 --> 00:08:08.040 and especially those extended vibrating trills, 00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:11.120 was a direct sonic mimic. of the human nervous 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:13.899 system in distress. It is biological resonance. 00:08:14.220 --> 00:08:16.339 That's incredible. So when you hear a string 00:08:16.339 --> 00:08:19.860 section violently scrubbing the exact same note 00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:23.939 over and over at a frantic speed, your brain 00:08:23.939 --> 00:08:27.279 subconsciously recognizes that rhythm. It sounds 00:08:27.279 --> 00:08:29.819 like a racing heartbeat. Precisely the effect. 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:33.100 I mean, the sheer friction of a bow sawing back 00:08:33.100 --> 00:08:35.600 and forth on a string at that speed, it creates 00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:38.960 a sense of physical friction in the room. feel 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:41.539 it in your chest. Yeah, he was bypassing the 00:08:41.539 --> 00:08:43.259 listener's intellect entirely. You don't have 00:08:43.259 --> 00:08:45.580 to sit there and think, ah, the composer wishes 00:08:45.580 --> 00:08:47.720 to convey warfare. Right, he's not analyzing 00:08:47.720 --> 00:08:50.919 it. Exactly. Your body hears the rapid vibration 00:08:50.919 --> 00:08:53.779 and physically reacts to it. He was giving his 00:08:53.779 --> 00:08:56.700 musicians the sheet music to induce an adrenaline 00:08:56.700 --> 00:08:59.240 rush. So he was essentially mapping the human 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:01.549 nervous system. onto the musical staff. I mean, 00:09:01.549 --> 00:09:04.169 that elevates it entirely from a gimmick to a 00:09:04.169 --> 00:09:06.009 piece of psychological engineering. It really 00:09:06.009 --> 00:09:08.289 does. It forces the listener out of that comfortable, 00:09:08.289 --> 00:09:10.850 moderate state of mind and drags them into the 00:09:10.850 --> 00:09:12.250 panic of the moment. Whether they want to be 00:09:12.250 --> 00:09:15.970 there or not. Right. But here is the wrench in 00:09:15.970 --> 00:09:18.230 Monteverdi's PR machine. Oh, the controversy. 00:09:18.570 --> 00:09:21.409 Yes. Yeah. Because he claims he is the absolute 00:09:21.409 --> 00:09:24.129 sole inventor of this. Like we said, he looked 00:09:24.129 --> 00:09:26.990 at all former composers, found zero examples 00:09:26.990 --> 00:09:30.179 of the educated style, and then generously bestowed 00:09:30.179 --> 00:09:32.659 style concertado upon the world. Very humble 00:09:32.659 --> 00:09:34.940 of him. Right. But when we look at the scholars 00:09:34.940 --> 00:09:37.059 in our sources, they start pointing out precedents 00:09:37.059 --> 00:09:39.559 that seriously complicate his claim of absolute 00:09:39.559 --> 00:09:41.679 originality. I was looking at the notes from 00:09:41.679 --> 00:09:44.279 scholar Kate Van Orden, and she points directly 00:09:44.279 --> 00:09:47.399 to a piece of music by the composer Clamor Shonikin. 00:09:47.639 --> 00:09:50.279 Right, yes. And the piece is literally called 00:09:50.279 --> 00:09:54.120 Ligere the War. And Janikin wrote it in 1528. 00:09:54.500 --> 00:09:57.019 That is almost a full century before Monteverdi 00:09:57.019 --> 00:10:01.620 wrote Tancredi e Clorinda in 1624. It is a massive 00:10:01.620 --> 00:10:05.120 chronological gap. I mean, a hundred years. And 00:10:05.120 --> 00:10:07.259 Janeykin's Laguerre is a clear example of an 00:10:07.259 --> 00:10:09.639 earlier composer attempting to capture the chaos, 00:10:09.759 --> 00:10:12.460 the clamor and the agitation of a battlefield 00:10:12.460 --> 00:10:14.899 long before Mondo Verdi supposedly pulled the 00:10:14.899 --> 00:10:16.960 concept out of thin air. Here's where it gets 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:19.360 really interesting, though, because it reminds 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:21.460 me of how technology companies operate today. 00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:24.019 Oh, how so? Well, think of a modern tech CEO 00:10:24.019 --> 00:10:27.000 standing on a stage claiming they have completely 00:10:26.860 --> 00:10:29.740 invented the concept of the smartphone. Right, 00:10:29.779 --> 00:10:32.240 yes. They talk about their grand revolutionary 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:35.240 vision and they gracefully ignore the fact that 00:10:35.240 --> 00:10:37.639 other companies had released clunky early touch 00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:41.200 devices a full decade earlier. That is a perfect 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:44.440 analogy. Right, yes. Jenkin's 1528 piece might 00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:47.100 have been more of a literal sound effect imitation 00:10:47.100 --> 00:10:50.299 of battle rather than a grand psychological ecosystem, 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:54.440 but the core attempt to sound agitated was undeniably 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:56.799 there. It feels like Monteverdi is doing the 00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:59.620 ultimate PR spin for his own legacy. He's controlling 00:10:59.620 --> 00:11:01.960 the narrative. Exactly. He didn't just invent 00:11:01.960 --> 00:11:04.480 a product. He invented the marketing for it. 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:07.019 This raises an important question, though. What 00:11:07.019 --> 00:11:11.259 does it actually mean to invent an artistic style? 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:14.100 Is it being the first person to ever attempt 00:11:14.100 --> 00:11:16.259 the sound, or is it being the person who builds 00:11:16.259 --> 00:11:18.720 the underlying theory that makes it a universal 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:21.379 tool? That's a great distinction. Because another 00:11:21.379 --> 00:11:24.240 scholar in our sources, Agatha Sewer, brings 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:27.419 up a fascinating layer to this debate. She points 00:11:27.419 --> 00:11:29.759 out the deep similarities and the historical 00:11:29.759 --> 00:11:32.539 ambiguities between Monteverdi's musical generia 00:11:32.539 --> 00:11:35.360 concertato and the style concertato that had 00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:38.000 already existed for centuries in the realms of 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:41.039 rhetoric and poetry. That blew my mind when I 00:11:41.039 --> 00:11:43.440 read it. The agitated style wasn't even strictly 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:45.799 a musical invention to begin with. No, not at 00:11:45.799 --> 00:11:48.039 all. It was a spoken word technique. Exactly. 00:11:48.899 --> 00:11:51.509 Rhetoric. the classical art of public speaking 00:11:51.509 --> 00:11:55.490 and persuasion, had long established highly formalized 00:11:55.490 --> 00:11:58.490 methods for conveying deep agitation to a crowd. 00:11:58.529 --> 00:12:01.110 Right. If you think about a great orator delivering 00:12:01.110 --> 00:12:04.309 a furious warlike speech or a poet reciting a 00:12:04.309 --> 00:12:06.870 tale of violent revenge, they do not speak in 00:12:06.870 --> 00:12:09.370 smooth flowing melodic paragraph. No, they would 00:12:09.370 --> 00:12:12.610 speak in aggressive staccato bursts. I imagine 00:12:12.610 --> 00:12:16.009 it almost like a modern rap artist using rhythm 00:12:16.009 --> 00:12:18.450 and sharp consonants to create tension. That's 00:12:18.450 --> 00:12:20.919 a really good Like if you are angry, you use 00:12:20.919 --> 00:12:22.700 close -up sounds, you repeat syllables, your 00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:25.509 pacing gets erratic and fast. And that is exactly 00:12:25.509 --> 00:12:28.529 Agatha Suhr's observation. Her work suggests 00:12:28.529 --> 00:12:31.149 that Monteverdi might not have invented the concept 00:12:31.149 --> 00:12:34.330 of agitation from a blank slate. Instead, he 00:12:34.330 --> 00:12:37.549 was an incredibly astute observer of human communication. 00:12:37.629 --> 00:12:40.649 He took the agitated cadences, the rapid fire 00:12:40.649 --> 00:12:43.070 syllables, and the aggressive repetitions that 00:12:43.070 --> 00:12:45.850 already existed in spoken poetry and angry rhetorical 00:12:45.850 --> 00:12:48.470 speech, and he mathematically translated those 00:12:48.470 --> 00:12:51.330 exact rhythmic patterns into a formal musical 00:12:51.330 --> 00:12:54.419 system. Wow. So he essentially transcribed an 00:12:54.419 --> 00:12:57.639 angry rand into 16th notes. That's exactly what 00:12:57.639 --> 00:13:00.100 he did. That makes so much sense. I mean, Jane 00:13:00.100 --> 00:13:03.220 Eakin's Ligere in 1528 might have been a brilliant 00:13:03.220 --> 00:13:05.620 one -off attempt to imitate swords clashing, 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:08.720 but Monteverdi was the one who actually codified 00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:11.139 the psychology behind it. Yes. He wrote the developer 00:13:11.139 --> 00:13:13.879 manual. He took the physiological reality of 00:13:13.879 --> 00:13:16.740 an angry speaker, turned it into a specific arrangement 00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:19.179 of strings and trills, and basically said to 00:13:19.179 --> 00:13:21.659 the musical world, here is the exact formula. 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:24.340 Here is the framework for anxiety. He provided 00:13:24.340 --> 00:13:26.700 both the theoretical justification with his essay 00:13:26.700 --> 00:13:29.159 on the three passions and the practical toolkit 00:13:29.159 --> 00:13:31.379 for how to execute it. And regardless of whether 00:13:31.379 --> 00:13:33.919 he was truly the first to play a fast note, there 00:13:33.919 --> 00:13:36.200 is no denying that Monteverdi's codification 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:39.639 was a triumph. The manual he wrote worked perfectly. 00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:42.679 It caught on, and it permanently altered the 00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:45.340 trajectory of Western music. So if Monteverdi 00:13:45.340 --> 00:13:47.940 has essentially codified the musical operating 00:13:47.940 --> 00:13:50.860 system for human agitation, how long does it 00:13:50.860 --> 00:13:53.940 take for the rest of the artistic world to download 00:13:53.940 --> 00:13:56.159 the update? I mean, it didn't just stop with 00:13:56.159 --> 00:13:59.919 that one combat piece in 1624. Oh, no. The spread 00:13:59.919 --> 00:14:03.120 was both rapid and profound. Monteverbi himself 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:06.019 knew he had struck gold, and he continued to 00:14:06.019 --> 00:14:08.340 deploy the stale concertato in his later heavily 00:14:08.340 --> 00:14:11.100 influential operas. He kept using it. Yeah. We 00:14:11.100 --> 00:14:14.200 see it utilized in 1639 in Il ritorno di Lice 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:16.220 in Patria, the return of Ulysses to his homeland. 00:14:16.759 --> 00:14:19.559 We see it again in 1642 in L 'incarnazione di 00:14:19.559 --> 00:14:22.299 Poppea, the coronation of Poppea. Right. By weaving 00:14:22.299 --> 00:14:24.460 it into these major works, he proved that this 00:14:24.460 --> 00:14:26.899 rapid fire agitation wasn't just a novelty trick 00:14:26.899 --> 00:14:29.100 for a specific magic goal about a sword fight. 00:14:29.620 --> 00:14:32.440 It was a fundamental structural tool for high 00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:34.340 dramatic art. And then he hands the toolkit off 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:36.379 to the next generation of composers. Because 00:14:36.379 --> 00:14:39.659 the notes highlight Giacomo Carissimi using this 00:14:39.659 --> 00:14:42.929 exact style in a piece called Jeff Day. Charismy's 00:14:42.929 --> 00:14:46.809 timeline is 1605 to 1674, so he is operating 00:14:46.809 --> 00:14:48.809 directly in the wake of Monteverdi's massive 00:14:48.809 --> 00:14:50.830 cultural footprint. He's right there picking 00:14:50.830 --> 00:14:53.490 up the baton. Yeah. But there is another example 00:14:53.490 --> 00:14:55.470 in our stack of sources that I think is the most 00:14:55.470 --> 00:14:57.610 compelling piece of this entire story. Oh, the 00:14:57.610 --> 00:15:00.830 Stratzi piece. Yes. The composer Barbara Stratzi, 00:15:01.049 --> 00:15:05.070 who lived from 1619 to 1677, utilized this exact 00:15:05.070 --> 00:15:07.809 agitated style in a piece titled Trattamento. 00:15:08.139 --> 00:15:09.740 Now, I really want to pause and look at that 00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:12.879 title. Tridento translates to betrayal. Right. 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:15.740 When Monteverdi first unleashed these rapid 16th 00:15:15.740 --> 00:15:18.799 notes in Tancredi e Clorinda, it was to depict 00:15:18.799 --> 00:15:23.240 literal physical combat, a battlefield, two warriors 00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:26.860 clashing armor. Very external. Yes. But betrayal 00:15:26.860 --> 00:15:28.639 is an entirely different landscape. How do you 00:15:28.639 --> 00:15:31.059 view that evolution from the external violence 00:15:31.059 --> 00:15:33.240 of a battlefield to the internal concept of betrayal? 00:15:33.399 --> 00:15:35.620 The shift from physical warfare to emotional 00:15:35.620 --> 00:15:38.299 warfare is where the style reaches its true potential. 00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:41.659 Wow. When you analyze Stratzi's use of it in 00:15:41.659 --> 00:15:44.500 Tradimento, you realize the style concertato 00:15:44.500 --> 00:15:47.539 has fully transcended its origins as literal 00:15:47.539 --> 00:15:51.340 sound effect music. Betrayal is, in its own devastating 00:15:51.340 --> 00:15:54.259 way, an internal combat. It really is. It is 00:15:54.259 --> 00:15:56.440 the profound emotional violence of discovering 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:58.539 that someone you trusted has turned against you. 00:15:58.740 --> 00:16:00.879 And the physiological reaction is identical. 00:16:01.360 --> 00:16:02.960 I mean, when you find out you've been deeply 00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:06.580 betrayed, your heart races. You tremble. You 00:16:06.580 --> 00:16:09.299 get that same flush of adrenaline and panic that 00:16:09.299 --> 00:16:11.120 you would if someone literally swung a sword 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:13.519 at you. Exactly the same biological response. 00:16:13.779 --> 00:16:15.940 The racing heartbeat and the trembling body that 00:16:15.940 --> 00:16:18.799 Monteverdi's rapid notes mimic. They are triggered 00:16:18.799 --> 00:16:21.019 by physical danger on a battlefield, absolutely, 00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:24.100 but they are also triggered the exact second 00:16:24.100 --> 00:16:27.399 your reality shatters from a betrayal. But taking 00:16:27.399 --> 00:16:29.700 Monteverdi's strict musical code for physical 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:32.179 warfare and applying it to a story of intimate 00:16:32.179 --> 00:16:35.240 emotional betrayal, composers like Stracci were 00:16:35.240 --> 00:16:38.039 proving just how versatile and profoundly human 00:16:38.039 --> 00:16:40.259 this musical language really was. It wasn't just 00:16:40.259 --> 00:16:42.700 about war anymore. It was about the war inside 00:16:42.700 --> 00:16:45.740 our own heads. It became a shared universal code 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:49.200 for all composers in the Baroque era. They finally 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:51.559 had the color red on their palette, as you put 00:16:51.559 --> 00:16:53.759 it earlier, and they were using it to paint the 00:16:53.759 --> 00:16:57.100 complete, terrifying, violent spectrum of the 00:16:57.100 --> 00:16:59.019 human soul. That's incredible. They could express 00:16:59.019 --> 00:17:02.379 the darkest interior emotions with a precision 00:17:02.379 --> 00:17:04.619 that simply didn't exist a generation prior. 00:17:04.839 --> 00:17:07.599 It's just brilliant psychological engineering. 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:11.880 So bringing all these threads together, We started 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:14.180 with Claudio Monteverdi looking back at the vast 00:17:14.180 --> 00:17:16.779 history of music and realizing that an entire 00:17:16.779 --> 00:17:19.559 third of the human experience, the anger, the 00:17:19.559 --> 00:17:21.779 agitation, the fight or flight response, was 00:17:21.779 --> 00:17:24.079 completely missing from the sheet music. Right. 00:17:24.259 --> 00:17:26.440 We explored how we engineered a mechanical solution 00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:29.420 utilizing rapid 16th notes and extended trills 00:17:29.420 --> 00:17:32.680 to literally bypass the intellect and mimic the 00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:35.579 biological reality of a racing heart. The adrenaline 00:17:35.579 --> 00:17:38.500 rush. Exactly. And then we unpack the controversy 00:17:38.500 --> 00:17:41.009 of his ego. the fact that he likely borrowed 00:17:41.009 --> 00:17:43.789 from earlier attempts like Jenneken's 1528 piece, 00:17:43.829 --> 00:17:46.450 and that he brilliantly translated the educated 00:17:46.450 --> 00:17:49.329 rhythms of spoken poetry and rhetoric into a 00:17:49.329 --> 00:17:52.509 formal musical system. The PR spin. Yeah. And 00:17:52.509 --> 00:17:55.549 finally, we saw how that system evolved. It started 00:17:55.549 --> 00:17:58.190 as a way to mimic a literal battlefield and grew 00:17:58.190 --> 00:18:00.509 into a profound tool for composers like Barbra 00:18:00.509 --> 00:18:03.289 Stratzi to express the internal devastation of 00:18:03.289 --> 00:18:06.329 betrayal. It's a massive, enduring legacy. It 00:18:06.329 --> 00:18:09.250 really is. Honestly, Understanding the mechanics 00:18:09.250 --> 00:18:11.930 of this completely changes how I will listen 00:18:11.930 --> 00:18:14.250 to media from now on. I mean, the next time you 00:18:14.250 --> 00:18:16.470 are sitting in a theater watching a modern thriller 00:18:16.470 --> 00:18:19.529 and the villain is slowly creeping up and the 00:18:19.529 --> 00:18:21.970 string section starts violently sawing back and 00:18:21.970 --> 00:18:25.490 forth on a single, rapid, repetitive note to 00:18:25.490 --> 00:18:27.609 make you feel anxious. Remember, you are hearing 00:18:27.609 --> 00:18:30.170 the direct cultural descendants of Monteverdi 00:18:30.170 --> 00:18:33.430 -style concertato. Yes. You are experiencing 00:18:33.430 --> 00:18:37.130 a centuries old biological hack designed specifically 00:18:37.130 --> 00:18:39.609 to manipulate your nervous system. Leaving us 00:18:39.609 --> 00:18:42.069 with a very compelling reflection regarding our 00:18:42.069 --> 00:18:45.609 own modern era. What's that? Well, if Monteverdi 00:18:45.609 --> 00:18:48.670 realized in 1638 that the art of his time was 00:18:48.670 --> 00:18:50.390 completely missing the notes for human anger, 00:18:50.869 --> 00:18:52.869 what complex human emotions are we currently 00:18:52.869 --> 00:18:55.390 missing the notes for today? As our modern lives 00:18:55.390 --> 00:18:58.410 generate entirely new psychological states, like 00:18:58.410 --> 00:19:01.410 the unique paralyzing anxiety of digital information 00:19:01.410 --> 00:19:04.549 overload or the strange buzzing isolation of 00:19:04.549 --> 00:19:07.009 being constantly connected to a screen, is there 00:19:07.009 --> 00:19:10.150 a new undiscovered style concertato waiting to 00:19:10.150 --> 00:19:12.309 be invented to capture exactly how that modern 00:19:12.309 --> 00:19:14.809 agitation feels? That is a wild thought to leave 00:19:14.809 --> 00:19:16.809 on, the idea that there are entirely new colors 00:19:16.809 --> 00:19:19.130 of anxiety waiting to be painted. We will leave 00:19:19.130 --> 00:19:21.069 you to ponder what the accurate soundtrack to 00:19:21.069 --> 00:19:23.289 your own modern digital anxiety should actually 00:19:23.289 --> 00:19:25.329 sound like. Thank you so much for joining us 00:19:25.329 --> 00:19:27.309 for this deep dive into the agitated style. We 00:19:27.309 --> 00:19:28.009 will see you next time.