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LETTER of the MONTH
Not the full Monteverdi
Nicholas Kenyon wonders what the BBC broadcast in 1928 of Monteverdi’s in Vincent d’Indy’s edition sounded like (, Christmas). We have evidence of this in an article by JA Westrup in the for 2 April 1928. It is sad, but perhaps not surprising, to read his comment that a listener with no knowledge of Monteverdi’s work ‘must have thought him a dull composer, which he is not when sung on the stage’. Westrup’s criticisms were directed in part at the edition, for its extensive and sometimes arbitrary cuts and its inappropriate and anachronistic harmonisation. But he also commented adversely on the slow and rigid delivery of the recitative and on the poor enunciation of the text, sung
