Tim Carter served at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music from 2001 until his retirement in 2021, having previously taught at the Universities of Leicester and Lancaster, and Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (University of London). His works include Staging "Euridice": Theatre, Sets, and Music in Late Renaissance Florence (co-authored with Francesca Fantappiè); Understanding Opera; Orpheus in the Marketplace (co-authored with Richard A. Goldthwaite); Monteverdi's Musical Theatre; and Music, Patronage and Printing in Late Renaissance Florence.Among his other publications are books on Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and on Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti (Florence), the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the National Humanities Center. He is an honorary member of the American Musicological Society, the Royal Musical Association, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

A long-awaited probing digest of Monteverdi's madrigals from the foremost Monteverdian scholar of our time. Tim Carter sets himself apart from the musicological fray by his sensitivity to the contextual backdrop to these all-absorbing miniatures and by treating them as essentially performative acts. He has fascinating things to reveal about the different ways Monteverdi plays with sonic space and (most innovatively) with time. Never blind to Monteverdi's occasional errors and quirks, Carter focuses on the intriguing interface between poetry and music: he lifts the lid on how Monteverdi responded to the poetry he was setting, how he enriched and enlivened it, and occasionally contradicted it. Most of all he shows how it became the launchpad for flights of musical fantasy previously unimaginable.

• List of music examples, figures, and tables Acknowledgments Editorial (etc.) principles 1 Introduction2 The apprentice composer3 The madrigal "book"4 Monteverdi's performers5 Poetic voices6 Songbirds7 Monteverdi's "mistakes"8 Musical (im)pertinence9 The "representative" style10 Playing with time Bibliography Index of Monteverdi's MadrigalsGeneral Index

Tim Carter served at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music from 2001 until his retirement in 2021, having previously taught at the Universities of Leicester and Lancaster, and Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (University of London). His works include Staging "Euridice": Theatre, Sets, and Music in Late Renaissance Florence (co-authored with Francesca Fantappiè); Understanding Opera; Orpheus in the Marketplace (co-authored with Richard A. Goldthwaite); Monteverdi's Musical Theatre; and Music, Patronage and Printing in Late Renaissance Florence.Among his other publications are books on Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and on Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti (Florence), the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the National Humanities Center. He is an honorary member of the American Musicological Society, the Royal Musical Association, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

A long-awaited probing digest of Monteverdi's madrigals from the foremost Monteverdian scholar of our time. Tim Carter sets himself apart from the musicological fray by his sensitivity to the contextual backdrop to these all-absorbing miniatures and by treating them as essentially performative acts. He has fascinating things to reveal about the different ways Monteverdi plays with sonic space and (most innovatively) with time. Never blind to Monteverdi's occasional errors and quirks, Carter focuses on the intriguing interface between poetry and music: he lifts the lid on how Monteverdi responded to the poetry he was setting, how he enriched and enlivened it, and occasionally contradicted it. Most of all he shows how it became the launchpad for flights of musical fantasy previously unimaginable.

• List of music examples, figures, and tables Acknowledgments Editorial (etc.) principles 1 Introduction2 The apprentice composer3 The madrigal "book"4 Monteverdi's performers5 Poetic voices6 Songbirds7 Monteverdi's "mistakes"8 Musical (im)pertinence9 The "representative" style10 Playing with time Bibliography Index of Monteverdi's MadrigalsGeneral Index

Tim Carter served at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music from 2001 until his retirement in 2021, having previously taught at the Universities of Leicester and Lancaster, and Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (University of London). His works include Staging "Euridice": Theatre, Sets, and Music in Late Renaissance Florence (co-authored with Francesca Fantappiè); Understanding Opera; Orpheus in the Marketplace (co-authored with Richard A. Goldthwaite); Monteverdi's Musical Theatre; and Music, Patronage and Printing in Late Renaissance Florence.Among his other publications are books on Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and on Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!. He has held fellowships at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti (Florence), the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the National Humanities Center. He is an honorary member of the American Musicological Society, the Royal Musical Association, and the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music.

A long-awaited probing digest of Monteverdi's madrigals from the foremost Monteverdian scholar of our time. Tim Carter sets himself apart from the musicological fray by his sensitivity to the contextual backdrop to these all-absorbing miniatures and by treating them as essentially performative acts. He has fascinating things to reveal about the different ways Monteverdi plays with sonic space and (most innovatively) with time. Never blind to Monteverdi's occasional errors and quirks, Carter focuses on the intriguing interface between poetry and music: he lifts the lid on how Monteverdi responded to the poetry he was setting, how he enriched and enlivened it, and occasionally contradicted it. Most of all he shows how it became the launchpad for flights of musical fantasy previously unimaginable.

• List of music examples, figures, and tables Acknowledgments Editorial (etc.) principles 1 Introduction2 The apprentice composer3 The madrigal "book"4 Monteverdi's performers5 Poetic voices6 Songbirds7 Monteverdi's "mistakes"8 Musical (im)pertinence9 The "representative" style10 Playing with time Bibliography Index of Monteverdi's MadrigalsGeneral Index