II
The opera, then, had arrived. But, unaware of the fact, its so-called inventors, caught in the spell of antiquarian research, their imaginations transported by the glories of the classic past, turned their vision back to ancient Greece—to Athens, that prototype of their own city of Florence—where Æschylus unfolds before the eyes of his countrymen a spectacle worthy of the gods. They see no analogy in their madrigals and the dithyrambic chorus of the ancients, no parallel in their sacre rappresentazione to the Eleusynian mysteries and Bacchic festivals, but, rejecting all that has gone before, attempt to resurrect the magic power of music as an organic part of human speech, and the revival of the greatest product of classic genius—the Greek tragedy. Such was the purpose of the camerata, that genial circle of amateurs, literati and musicians which gathered at the house of Giovanni Bardi, count of Vernio, in Florence, one of those famous ‘academies’ which were the centres of the intellectual life of Italy in the sixteenth century.
Jacopo Peri, an erudite musician and a favorite singer; his younger colleague Giulio Caccini of Rome; the already familiar Emilio de’ Cavalieri, inspector-general of the artists in Florence; Luca Marenzio, the most eminent musician of the city, and Christoforo Malvezzi, all of whom had collaborated on the intermezzi to Bardi’s L’Amico fido in 1589, were, together with Jacopo Corsi, a wealthy and intelligent patron of music, and Vincenzo Galilei, father of the great astronomer, the chief members of the circle, besides the host. These men, liberal thinkers, modernists, literati rather than professional musicians, were out of sympathy with the pedants of the contrapuntal school, the ‘Goths’ against whom Galilei[130] had already published his diatribe in 1551. The Latin translations of Aristoxenus’, Ptolemy’s and Aristotle’s treatises on music, published in 1562, aroused their keenest interest and discussion, and their admiration of the plastic arts which had signalized the Renaissance in the preceding centuries now found an echo in their attempt to reconstruct a lost ideal. In 1585 the great Andrea Gabrieli had written choruses for the solemn performance of Œdipus Rex at Vincenza, and in 1589 Luca Marenzio wrote a ‘Combat of Apollo and the Dragon,’ drawing his inspiration from the descriptions of the Nomos Pythikos of the Greeks (see Chap. IV, p. 127). Convinced, despite the lack of examples, of the greater expressive power of Greek music with the employment of simpler means, Galilei, after long research with the aid of Bardi, now composed for a solo voice and instrumental accompaniment Dante’s ‘Lament of Ugolino,’ in the so-called stile rappresentativo, the representative style. His experiment proved suggestive if not altogether successful, and the task was next taken up by Caccini,[131] who, with probably more natural talent than Galilei, set himself to the composition of several canzone in the new style, a simple cantilena over a figured bass (see Chap. XI, p. 355) which provided a harmonious support to be executed by instruments (lute or theorbo). Endowed with a beautiful and well-cultivated voice, he achieved a genuine success among his sympathetic circle. To make sure of himself, however, he proceeded to Rome, where his new songs were applauded by an assemblage of connoisseurs. Thus encouraged, he appealed to his literary friends for verses in all metres, which he promptly set to music. Some years later (1601) these were published under the title La nuove musiche (‘The New Music’) with a remarkable preface, in which their author claims the merit for having originated the stile rappresentativo, and which contains so much technical information for singers that it may well be considered the first vocal method. Caccini’s arie were disseminated largely through his vocal pupils, for they adapted themselves admirably to the beautiful Italian style of singing of which he was one of the first masters. We may mention incidentally that his daughter, Septimia, became one of the famous singers of the period and aroused the admiration of Monteverdi. Her sister, Francesca, achieved distinction both as singer and composer.
Caccini, though he was probably the first to use and secure public acceptance of the arioso style, was—despite his own claims—not the originator of the true recitative. That distinction belongs to Jacopo Peri, a more learned musician though a less genial personality, who meantime had begun the application of the representative style to the drama.[132] Corsi, the successor of Bardi (now become papal chamberlain in Rome), as host and patron, was a close friend of the poet Ottavio Rinuccini (d. 1623). Both were familiar with the experiments of Cavalieri in the realm of dramatic music. After joint deliberation, the two appealed to Peri ‘to give a simple proof of the power of modern music’ by setting Rinuccini’s dramatic poem Dafne, a scene of which had already been experimented with by Bardi. ‘Remembering that it was a question of dramatic poetry and that the melody must at all times be modelled after the words,’ Peri concluded ‘that the ancients employed musical forms which, more elevated than ordinary speech yet less regularly designed than common song melodies, were half-way between the two.’ In an effort to forget every known style, he at first attempted to rediscover the diastematica of the Greeks, the quarter-tone interval, in the inflections of ordinary speech. According to his own testimony, he closely observed persons speaking, so that he might reproduce as naturally as possible their expressions, whether moderate or passionate. Thus he decided to have quiet expressions sung in half-spoken tones over a resting instrumental bass. In emotional moments, however, the voices proceeded in a more animated tempo and by larger intervals instead of strictly conjunct motion, while the accompaniment indulged in more frequently changing, and sometimes dissonant, harmonies. In other words, he used what we know to-day as recitative.
The importance of the principle thus introduced—the preference of expressive quality to purely musical effect—cannot be plain-song germ of romanticism itself lies in this departure, the elements of Gluck’s reform, of Wagner’s creed, repose in the assertion of Caccini that ‘one is always beautiful when one is expressive.’
Peri’s Dafne, after charming the circle of intimates, was performed at the house of Corsi one evening during the carnival of 1597, the composer singing the rôle of Apollo, in the presence of the Grand Duke Ferdinando de Medici, the cardinals dal Monte and Montalto, the poets Piero Strozzi and Francesco Cini and ‘a great number of gentlemen.’ ‘The pleasure and the stupor which seized the audience is inexpressible,’ said Gagliano later in the preface to his own Dafne. Every person there felt that he was in the presence of a new art. Spurred on by this victory, Rinuccini composed his Euridice for the festivities occasioned by the marriage of Maria de Medici to Henri IV, king of France, in 1600. Peri again wrote the music, though at the performance, which took place on October 6 at the Pitti palace, some of the numbers of Caccini’s version (composed after Peri’s) were substituted because of Caccini’s influence with the singers. The title rôle was sung by the famous Vittoria Archilei, ‘the Euterpe of Italy,’ while Peri himself impersonated Orpheus. The event not only aroused the greatest enthusiasm among the distinguished assemblage, but its echoes resounded through all the courts of Europe and tremendously stimulated interest in the new art.
The score of Euridice has been reprinted in Florence in 1863 and may be examined by the student. It consists of 48 small octavo pages of simple recitative dialogue written over a figured bass, interspersed with five-part choruses in predominatingly diatonic harmony. The preface indicates that the figured bass was executed by a clavier, a chitarrone, a lira grande and a large flute (in one place a triflauto—triple flute—is added), but it is not clear how the musicians managed to produce effective harmony without written-out parts. The impoverished quality of the music indicates a distinct retrogression from the contrapuntal compositions of the day, and vastly so when we consider the a capella style of Palestrina. Its striking novelty alone accounts for the extraordinary effect it had upon the hearers. Its value was not in its intrinsic quality but in the direction which it indicated, the path which was to lead to untold riches of sound.
Following closely upon the heels of Peri’s work came the setting of the same poem by Caccini, who had already produced Il rapimento di Caffalo (1597, performed 1600); Marco da Gagaliano (1575-1642) was already at work along similar lines and in 1608 produced his Dafne at Mantua—one year after Monteverdi’s ‘Orfeo’ which, however, marked so great an advance that it might have been written a generation later. Before discussing that master, it will be necessary to consider the utilization of the representative style in another field—that of the sacred drama or oratorio—by Emilio de’ Cavalieri,[133] whose dramatic essays in connection with Laura Guidicioni have already been mentioned.
The origin of the oratorio is twofold: the prose oratorio latino and the Italian oratorio volgare. The former is derived from the mediæval liturgical plays already spoken of, and the ‘mysteries’ and ‘moralities’ of the fifteenth century are clearly forerunners of it. The oratorio volgare, a didactic poem independent of scripture text, had its point of departure in the esercizii spirituali (scriptural lessons), instituted by the priest Filippo Neri (afterward canonized) at Rome. He became the founder of the congregation of Oratorians, which regularly met for Bible study under his leadership. On certain evenings of the week his sermons were preceded and followed either by a selection of popular hymns or by the dramatic rendering of a biblical scene. From the place in which these were first enacted, the oratory of the church of S. Maria in Vallicella, they received their name—Oratorio.
Just as the dramatic madrigal was built upon the style of the secular madrigal, so these sacred dramas probably modelled themselves after the ‘spiritual’ madrigal. While Peri and Caccini were still engaged in their experiments, Cavalieri, in 1600, staged in Neri’s oratory his most important creation La Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo, slightly antedating Peri’s Euridice. Like that work, it was written in ‘expressive’ style, of which Cavalieri may indeed have been the real originator. Cavalieri’s work belongs to the province of sacred opera, being the first of this important branch of the music drama, which is further represented by such works as Landis’ S. Alessio (1637) and Marazolli’s allegorical opera La Vita humana (1658). It is distinguished from the true non-scenic oratorio, which is associated with the artistic personality Carissimi. To show the distinction between his work and that of Florentines, however, we quote the criticism of his Il Satiro, by Giovanni Battista Doni, the historian of the Florentine monodists: ‘It must, however, be well understood,’ he says, ‘that these melodies are very different from those of to-day (seventeenth century) which are written in the stile recitativo; the others (of Cavalieri, etc.) are nothing but ariettas with all sorts of artifices and repetitions, echoes and other similar things, having nothing to do with the good and true dramatic music....’
On the other hand, Cavalieri’s own instructions show his wonderful practical knowledge in the performance of opera, and give us an exact idea of the first operatic theatre: ‘The hall should not hold more than a thousand spectators comfortably seated, in the greatest silence. Larger halls have bad acoustics: they make the singer force his voice and they kill expression. Moreover, when the words are not understood the music becomes tiresome. The number of instruments must be proportioned to the place of performance. The orchestra is invisible, hidden behind the drop. The instrumentation should change according to the emotion expressed. An overture, an instrumental and vocal introduction, are of good effect before the curtain rises. The ritornelle and sinfonie should be played by many instruments. A ballet, or better a singing ballet, should close the performance. The actor must seek to acquire absolute perfection in his voice, physique, gestures, bearing, and even his walk. He should sing with emotion—as it is written—not one passage like the other; and he must be careful to pronounce his words distinctly, so that he may be heard che siano intese. The chorus should not think they are excused from acting when they do not have to sing. They must feign to listen to what is going on; they must occasionally change their places, rise, sit down, make gestures. The performance should not exceed two hours.... Three acts suffice and one must be careful to infuse variety, not only into the music but also the poem, and even the costumes....’
‘Gluck and Wagner,’ says Romain Rolland, ‘have added little to these rules!’