How did Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals change after he moved to Mantua?

Upon moving to the court of Mantua around 1590, Claudio Monteverdi’s approach to madrigals underwent a dramatic transformation influenced by the modernist composer Giaches de Wert.

Previously focused on charm, Monteverdi shifted toward a style where music was required to match the mood and natural declamation of the verse with precision. His subsequent works featured increasingly dissonant harmonies, angular melodies, and a tense, highly emotional quality that prioritized the nuance of the poetry—often by Battista Guarini—sometimes at the expense of traditional musical balance.

As he matured in his role, Monteverdi better assimilated these avant-garde techniques. While his dissonances remained severe, his later madrigals became more varied in emotion, incorporating lightness and humor by capturing the essence of a poem rather than just its details. This evolution eventually established him as a central figure of the avant-garde, leading to his famous defense of the "two practices" in music, which distinguished between the older, polyphonic tradition and the modern, expressive style used in his opera and other works.12