Oracle of Music: Some thoughts on the horoscope of Claudio Monteverdi by Angela Voss

The Astrological Journal, Nov. 2018, 10-13.

Monteverdi pioneered a new form of dramatic singing which led to the development of opera and away from the ‘old style’ of polyphonic composition. How does his Mercury-Venus conjunction in Gemini (among other chart features) help us understand the inner landscape of his creative genius?

On 21 May 2014 I happened to run on Radio 3, and was greeted by a magnificent performance of the early baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorina, a moving setting of of Tasso’s poem about a Christian knight inadvertently slaying the Muslim woman he loves. Spellbound, I listened to the rest of the programme which featured Monteverdi as ‘composer of the week’. and was particularly moved by the intensity and power of his music. Later I consulted the ephermeris and was astounded to see that during that very week Mercury was transiting over Monteverdi’s Venus-Mercury conjunction, which also happens to straddle my Descendant at 22 degrees Gemini. By what agency were Mercury, Monteverdi, myself and the BBC being brought into alignment? It was one of those spine-tingling moments when astrological symbolism becomes ‘realised’ as concrete, and two orders of reality meet across an impossible divide.

Continue reading: ‘Oracle of Music’_ Some Thoughts on the Horoscope of Monteverdi 

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