Alexandra Coghlan

Thoroughly modern Monteverdi

Book VIII, for example, is the greatest and widest-ranging volume of secular music of its age – perhaps of any. Alexandra Coghlan celebrates the composer’s 450th anniversary

issue 18 February 2017

‘Eppur si muove’ — And yet it moves. Galileo’s defiant insistence that the Earth revolves round the Sun, his refusal to submit to the Inquisition, is a familiar one. It’s the battle cry not of a reformer but of a revolutionary, a passionate teller of truths.

It’s a credo he shared with composer Claudio Monteverdi.

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