the specific feast and connect the Old Testament psalms to Christian theology. Vespers are traditionally framed by the opening versicle and response from Psalm 70, and the closing blessing. On ordinary Sundays, the vespers service might by sung in Gregorian chant, while on high holidays, such as the feast day of a patron saint, elaborate concertante music was preferred. In his Vespers, Monteverdi may have offered such music without necessarily expecting that all of it would be performed in a given service. Monteverdi deviated from the typical vespers liturgy by adding motets (concerti or sacri concentus) between the psalms. Scholars debate if they were meant to replace antiphons or rather as embellishments of the preceding psalm. Monteverdi also included a Marian litany, "Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis" (Holy Mary, pray for us). All liturgical texts are set using their psalm tones in Gregorian chant, often as a cantus firmus. Graham Dixon suggests the setting is more suited for the feast of Saint Barbara, claiming, for example, that the texts from the Song of Songs are applicable to any female saint but that a dedication to fit a Marian feast made the work more "marketable". There are just two Marian songs in the whole work ("Audi coelum" and "Ave maris stella"); and the sonata could easily be rearranged to any saint's name. First publication The first mention of the work's publication is in a July 1610 letter by Monteverdi's assistant, Bassano Casola, to Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, the duke's younger son. Casola described that two compositions were in the process to be printed, a six-part mass (Messa da Capella) on motifs from Nicolas Gombert's In illo tempore, and psalms for a vespers setting for the Virgin (Salmi del Vespro della Madonna). He described the psalms as "varying and diverse inventions and harmonies over a canto fermo" (cantus firmus), and noted that Monteverdi would travel to Rome to personally dedicate the publication to the Pope in the autumn. The printing was completed in Venice, then an important centre for music printing. The printing of collections of sacred music in Italy at the period was described as "a fast-growing and very large and lucrative market", with around 50 collections in 1610 alone, 36 of them for offices such as Vespers. The publisher was Ricciardo Amadino, who had published Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo in 1609. While the opera was published as a score, the Vespers music