Chapter XV

THE MEDIUM FOR INDIVIDUAL UTTERANCE

A closer examination of the musical reforms instituted by the camerata which met at the Vernio and Corsi palaces will convince us that they were directed toward two objects; first, the restoration of the Greek method of delivering the declamation of a drama, and second, the reduction of purely lyric forms to a rational musical basis on which could be built intelligible settings of texts. The revolt was not only against polyphonic music in which text was treated without regard for its communicative purpose, but also against the decorative manner of solo singing, which made words only backgrounds for arabesques of sound. On this point we have the conclusive evidence of Caccini's own words as found in the preface to his "Nuove Musiche."36 He begins by giving the reasons why he had not earlier published his lyrics in the new style, though they had long been sung. He continues:

"But when I now see many of these pieces torn apart and altered in form, when I see to what evil uses the long runs are put, to wit, those consisting of single and double notes (repeated ones), as if both kinds were combined, and which were invented by me in order to do away with the former old fashion of introduced passages, which were for wind or stringed instruments rather than the human voice; when further I see how dynamic gradations of tone are used without discrimination, what enunciation now is, and how trills, gruppetti and other ornaments are introduced, I consider it necessary—and in this I am upheld by my friends—to have my music printed."

Furthermore he will explain in this preface the principles which led him to write in this manner for the solo voice. He says that for a long time he has been a member of the Florentine circle of cultivated men and that he has learned from them more than he acquired in thirty years in the schools of counterpoint.

"For these wise and noble personages have constantly strengthened me and with most lucid reasons determined me to place no value upon that music which makes it impossible to understand the words and thus to destroy the unity and meter, sometimes lengthening the syllables, sometimes shortening them in order to suit the counterpoint—a real mangling of the poetry—but to hold fast to that principle so greatly extolled by Plato and other philosophers: 'Let music be first of all language and rhythm and secondly tone,' but not vice versa, and moreover to strive to force music into the consciousness of the hearer and create there those impressions so admirable and so much praised by the ancients, and to produce which modern music through its counterpoint is impotent. Especially true is this of solo singing with the accompaniment of a stringed instrument when the words are not understood because of the immoderate introduction of passages."

This, he declares, can only extort applause of the "crowd" and such music can only result in mere tickling of the ear, because when the text is not intelligible there can be no appeal to the understanding.

"The idea came to me to introduce a style of music which makes it possible in a certain manner to speak musically by employing, as already said, a certain noble subordination of the song, with now and then some dissonances, while however holding the chord by means of the sustained bass, except when I follow the already common custom of assigning the middle voices to the accompanying instrument for the purpose of increasing the effect, for which purpose alone they are, in my opinion, appropriate."

He now tells us that, after he found that his principle stood the tests of practice and he was satisfied that in the new style lay a power to touch hearts far beyond that possessed by polyphony, he wrote certain madrigals for the solo voice in the manner described, which manner "I hereafter used for the representations in Florence." Then he went to Rome where the dilettanti, particularly Lione Strozzi, gathered at the house of Nero Neri, expressed themselves enthusiastically about the new revelation of the power of solo song to move the heart. These amateurs became convinced that there was no longer any satisfaction to be drawn from the old way of singing the soprano part of madrigals and turning the other parts into an instrumental accompaniment.

Caccini went back to Florence and continued to set canzonettas. He says that in these compositions he tried continually to give the meaning of the words and so to touch responsive chords of feeling. He endeavored to compose in a pleasing style by hiding all contrapuntal effects as much as possible. He set long syllables to consonances and let passing notes go with short syllables. He applied similar considerations to the introduction of passages "although sometimes as a certain ornamentation I have used a few broken notes to the value of a quarter, or at most a half note, on a short syllable, something one can endure, because they quickly slip by and are not really passages, but only add to the pleasant effect."

Caccini continues his preface with reiterated objections to vocal passages used merely for display, and says that he has striven to show how they can be turned to artistic uses. He deprecates the employment of contrapuntal device for its own sake, and says that he employs it only infrequently and to fill out middle voices. He forcefully condemns all haphazard use of vocal resources and says that the singer should labor to penetrate the meaning and passion of that which he sings and to convey it to the hearer. This he asserts can never be accomplished by the delivery of passages.

Here, then, we have a clear statement of the artistic ideals cherished by Caccini, and these, we may take it, were shared by the other members of the camerata who were engaged in the pursuit of a method of direct, eloquent, dramatic solo expression. The opening measures of one of the numbers in the "Nuove Musiche" will serve to show in what manner Caccini developed his theories in practice and equally what close relation this style had to that of the new dramatic recitative.

MIDI file

In the preface to his score of "Euridice" Peri has set forth his ideas about recitative. He has told us how he tried to base its movement upon that of ordinary speech, using few tones and calm movements for quiet conversation and more extended intervals and animated movement for the delineation of emotion. This was founded upon the same basis as the theory of Caccini, which condemned emphatically the indiscriminate employment of swelled tones, exclamatory emphases and other vocal devices. Caccini desired that the employment of all these factors in song should be regulated by the significance of the text. In other words these reformers were fighting a fight not unlike that of Wagner. They deplored the making of vocal ornaments and the display of ingenuity in the interweaving of parts for their own sakes, just as Wagner decried the writing of tune for tune's sake, and on one of the same grounds, namely, that nothing could result but a tickling of the ear. Yet these young reformers had no intention of throwing overboard all the charms of floridity in song. Here are two examples of their treatment of passionate utterance in recitative. The first is by Peri and the second by Caccini. Both are settings of the same text in the "Euridice."

MIDI file (without figured bass)

MIDI file

Caccini was somewhat more liberal than Peri in the use of floridity and always showed taste and judgement therein. Here is a sample of his style taken from a solo by one of the nymphs in "Euridice":

MIDI file

Caccini also showed that he was not averse to the lascivious allurements of two female voices moving in elementary harmonies. Here is a passage from a scene between two nymphs upon which rest many hundreds of pages in later Italian operas.

MIDI file

This was the immediate predecessor of the well-known "Saliam cantando" in Monteverde's "Orfeo."

The innovations of the Florentine reformers included also the invention of thorough bass, or the basso continuo, as the Italians call it. Ludovico Grossi, called Viadana from the place of his birth, seems to have been the first to use the term basso continuo and on the authority of Prætorius and other writers was long credited with the invention of the thing itself. But it was in 1602 that he published his "Cento concerti ecclesiastici a 1, a 2, a 3, e a 4 voci, con il basso continuo per sonar nell' organo." The basso continuo had been in use for some time before this. It appears in the score of Peri's Euridice as well as in the "Nuove Musiche" of Caccini. It was employed in Cavaliere's "Anima e Corpo" and was doubtless utilized in some of the camerata's earlier attempts which have not come down to us.

Just which one of the Florentines devised this method of noting the chords arranged for the support of the voice in the new style matters little. The fact remains that the fundamental principle of related chord harmonies, as distinguished from incidental accords arising in the interweavings of voice parts melodic in themselves, had been recognized and the basis of modern melodic composition established. This, indeed, was not the achievement of the young innovators, but the result of a slow and steady development in the art of composition. The introduction of thorough bass shows us that the reformers had found it essential to the success of their experiments that, in their effort to pack away in solid chords the tangle of parts which had so offended them in the old counterpoint, they should codify to some extent the relations of fundamental chords and contrive a simple method of indicating their sequence in the new and elementary kind of accompaniments. They at any rate perceived that the vital fact concerning the new monophonic style was that the melody alone demanded individual independence, while the other parts could not, as in polyphony, ask for equal suffrage, but must sink themselves in the solid and concrete structure of the supporting chord. Thorough bass was in later periods utilized in such music as Bach's and Handel's, but its original nature always stood forth most clearly when it was employed in the support of vocal music approaching the recitative type.

Here, then, we may permit the entire matter to rest. It ought now to be manifest that in their experiments at the resuscitation of the Greek manner of declamation the ardent young Florentines were impelled first of all by the feeling that the obliteration of the text by musical device was a crying evil and that by it dramatic expression was rendered impossible. Doubtless they felt that their art lacked a medium for the publication of the individual, but it is by no means likely that they realized the full significance of this deficiency or of their own efforts to supply it. Nevertheless, what they did under the incentive of a genuine artistic impulse was in direct line with the whole intellectual progress of the Renaissance. The thing that was patent to them was the importance of studying the models of antiquity to find out how dramatic delineation was to be accomplished; but in doing so they discovered the one element which had been wanting in the Italian lyric drama since its birth in the Mantuan court, namely, the way to set speeches for one actor to music having communicative potency and capable of preserving the intelligibility of the text.

So they completed a cycle of the art of dramatic music, and, having found the link that was missing in the musical chain of Poliziano's "Orfeo," reincarnated Italy's Arcadian prophet, and built the gates through which Monteverde ushered lyric composition to the broad highway of modern opera.

Footnotes

INDEX

Agility, vocal 214

Alemannia, Rudolfo de 41

Alessandro, Gian Andrea di 46

Ambros, August Wilhelm 107

"Amfiparnaso" 191 et seq.

"Apollo and the Python," spectacular intermezzo 174

Arcadia, the Italian 62 et seq.

Archilei, Vittoria 216, 218

Argyropoulos, John 69

"Arion," spectacular intermezzo 175

Ariosto, performance of his "Suppositi" 90, 136

Ballata 76, 116, 144

"Ballet Comique de la Reine" 178

Banchieri, Adriano 198

Banquets, music at 139

Basso continuo 232

Bati, Luca 30

Beccari 170

Bembo, Pietro 61

Boccaccio 59

Botta, Bergonzo, festal play by 161

Busnois, Antoine 115

Caccini, Giulio 172

"Nuove Musiche," its aim 221 et seq.

"Calandra," performance of 96

Cantori a liuto 119, 121 et seq.

Carnival Song (canto carnascialesco) 76, 105, 116

Casella 119

Castiglione 61, 114

performance of his "Tirsi" 164

Cavaliere, Emilio del, first recitatives written by 177

Chant, music of liturgical drama 11

disappearance from "Sacre Rappresentazioni" 24

Chartreux, Jean le 40

Chorus, in first secular drama 89, 116

Comedy, influence on lyric drama 179 et seq.

Vecchi's theories 192

Compère, Loyset 115

Concerts, early 142

Corteccia 119

Costumes in early lyric plays 92

Dance, dramatic, in church ritual 2, 3

in open-air plays 16

orchestral music for 144

executed to concealed chorus 172

characteristic national 176

Dante 58

Della Viola, Alfonso 170

Della Viola, Gian Pietro 45

Des Prés, Josquin 104

Disciplinati di Gesu Cristo 22

"Divozione" 25 et seq.

Drama, lyric, sources 4

open-air religious 13

at Florence 19

revival in Europe 54

causes of disappearance 53

Dramatic dialogue, in madrigal drama 184

Dramatic element, in early church music 2

in ceremonials 4, 5

"Esaltazione della Croce," sacred play 29

orchestra in 138

"Euridice," Peri's 219

Feltre, Vittorino da 37, 41

Ferrara, musical relations with Mantua 46

Festa, Constanzo 165

Fête of the Ass 14

Ficino, Marsilio 70

Florence, reform of dramatic music 220, 234

Florid element, in early church music 1

its disappearance 2

in madrigal 214

in early operas 231

Frottola 76, 101, 102, 104 et seq., 122

distinguished from madrigal 108, 112

arranged for solo voice 124 et seq.

Gaffori, Franchino 43

Gonzaga, house of 35 et seq.

Gian Francesco 37

Ludovico 38

Grecian ideals in Italian literature 54, 58 et seq., 62 et seq.

Gualterotti, spectacular festal play 171

"Harmony of the Spheres," intermezzo by Cavaliere 173

Harmony, modern begun 233

Individuality, medium of expression sought 155, 157

found 220 et seq.

Intermezzi, spectacular in 1589 173

Intermezzo 91

Isaak, Heinrich 107

Italian, Latin preferred to 59

Poliziano's use of 72

Italian music, defining its character 149

Italian thought, state of in sixteenth century 181, 209, 210, 211

Italy, lack of national unity 60

Kallistos, Andronicus 69

Landino 61, 69

Lauds 21 et seq.

music of 23

development of 25

Lavagnolo, Lorenzo, teacher of dance at Mantua 45

Lighting in early plays 95

Liturgical drama 1 et seq.

early examples 6 et seq.

its longevity 9

character of music 5, 6, 10

French as related to opera 12

costumes, etc. 26

stage used 26

Luzzaschi, music to "Pastor Fido" 172

Lyra di braccio 134

Lyre 130

Madrigal 102, 104, 105, 112

Italian 148

solo 168, 216, 217, 218, 219, 223

florid element in 214

ornamented by singer 217, 218

Madrigal drama, transition to from frottola 147 et seq.

in maturity 191 et seq.

Madrigal dramas 166

comedy in 179 et seq.

dialogue in 181, 198 et seq., 201, 203

instruments in 185, 199

manner of performance 198 et seq.

voices in 200

solo in 201

unintelligibility of text 213

Mantegna 38, 39, 40

Mantua, birthplace of secular drama 35

sketch of the marquisate 35 et seq.

literary and artistic importance 36

music at 40 et seq.

musical relations with Ferrara 46

Marenzio, Luca 50

"Marienklage, die," liturgical drama 9

"Mary Magdalen," sacred play 33

Masques 32, 33

Medici, Lorenzo de, writer of sacred plays 29

Merulo, Claudio, his "Tragedia" 171

Minuccio 119, 120

Monody, movement toward 149

Caccini's 222, 225

Music, in sixteenth century lyric dramas 164

The letter N is absent from the Index. Possible entries include: Namur, Naples, Narcissus, Naumann, Nero Neri, Netherlands, Noirville, Novellara, Nuove Musiche, Nuremberg, nymphs.

Oboe 145

Opera buffa, germs of 188

Orchestra, in "Sacre Rappresentazioni" 30, 31

at Mantua 44

in first secular drama 89; 136 et seq.

Striggio's 138, 185, 186

in other early lyric plays 161, 162, 174, 175, 177, 199

"Orfeo," performed at Mantua 52, 55, 68

Italian estimates of 55, 56

importance of its production 57, 66

its lyric character 66, 77, 79

description of poem 76 et seq.

how written 72

Sismondi's comments on 73

Symonds on 74

editions compared 75, 79, 80

how performed 85 et seq.

examination of its music 98 et seq.

choruses 101, 116

solo parts 101, 117 et seq.

solo parts, frottola as basis of 124

instrumental parts 101, 129, 136 et seq., 144

Orpheus, embodiment of Arcadian ideal 63, 65

Paganism, Italian medieval 62

Pageant of St. John's Day, Florence 28

Pageants, relation to "Sacre Rappresentazioni" 27

Part singing, its popularity in fifteenth century 103

Passion, early performances of 17

French fourteenth century version 17

Pastoral drama 170

Peri, Jacopo 216, 219

Petrarch 59

Philosophy, its effect on medieval literature 64

Poliziano, Angelo 52, 55

sketch of career 68 et seq.

Procession, succeeds dance 3

Prompter 200

Realism, Italian 61

"Recitar alla lira" 114, 170

Recitative, in liturgical drama 10

in first secular plays 114

Florentine 118, 212, 224

beginnings 177

in comic opera 181

impulses leading to modern 207 et seq.

Caccini's 224, 225, 229

Peri's 227, 229

Romano, Giulio 39

"Sacre Rappresentazioni" 13, 21 et seq.

music of 24

time of origin 27

sources of 27

their construction and performance 29

scenic effects 30

as forerunners of opera 32

"Saint Uliva," sacred play 29

Sannazzaro, Jacopo, his "Arcadia" 62

Scene painting, in early plays 93

Scenic effects, in "Sacre Rappresentazioni" 30

in Poliziano's "Orfeo" 86, 93

Schalmei 145

Sensualism, esthetic in Italy 61

Singing, development of technic 214, 215

Solo, superseded by part song 117

in madrigal drama 198, 205

vocal 114, 119, 222 et seq., 227

adapted from part songs 119 et seq.

florid element abused 222

Songs, arranged for lute accompaniment 121

Spectacular, element in early plays 93, 155, 166

in early dramatic music 158

predominance of the 160 et seq.

in music of sixteenth century 207 et seq.

in music of sixteenth century, revolt against 212

Striggio, Alessandro 51, 185

his art work 185

Table music 139

Tasso, "Aminto," music of 172

Technic, vocal 214

Thoroughbass 154, 232

Todi, Jacopone da 23

Tromboncino, Bartolomeo 46, 115

Ugolino, Baccio, original Orfeo 79, 87

Vecchi, Orazio 190 et seq.

artistic theories 192

Viadana, Ludovico 232

"Vierges sages et Vierges folles" 6 et seq.

Villanelle 112

Violinists, early 142

Virgil, Italian worship of 59

Visconti, Nicolo de Corregio, his "Cephale et Aurore" 163

Voices, in madrigal plays 200, 203

Voice, technic in early music 215

Wert, Jacques de 49

Willaert, Adrian 104, 112, 151, 165

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