Just to keep everyone up to date, I will be publishing Book 5 of the madrigals within the next week. Then I'll probably have a bit of a break before I tackle Book 7.
This book contains all sorts of tools that Monteverdi later used in his operas, including monody, semi-recitatives, instrumental numbers, solo arias and duets with chorus and so on. The challenge is going to be keeping it to 5 parts as much as possible, while retaining the distinctive blend of sounds. There are some numbers where it will definitely be impossible to keep it to 5 players because of the density of the music. I have yet to decide if I am going to keep up the practice of including them in the complete version. If there are too many, I'll have to separate them out. We'll see!