“A Free and Knightly Art”: Monteverdi’s Toccata for Orfeo and the neo-chivalric ideal in early seventeenth-century Italy

The score for Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo, published in 1609, includes a preliminary “Toccata” scored for five-part trumpet ensemble. Monteverdi’s instructions are ambiguous as to how the Toccata should be performed. Investigation of trumpet manuals and related documents contemporary with Monteverdi confirm the military origins of the fanfare-like Toccata, and suggest that its inclusion in the score for what is otherwise a largely pastoral opera indicates that Monteverdi was responsive to the ideals of the neo-chivalric revival that was an important aspect of the self-refashioning of the aristocracy in the early-modern European state at the time of Orfeo.