Masques
During Henry VII’s reign (1485–1509), which began the Tudor period, the moralities and religious pageantry were at their best, and the Masques began. Nobles, who appeared at balls in gorgeous costumes with masked faces, danced, had a jolly time, and usually surprised the guests with an elaborate entertainment in pantomime with much music and dancing. This became more and more important until it combined poetry, instrumental and vocal music, scenery, dancing, machinery, splendid costumes, and decorations in the Masque.
The greatest masques were written in the reigns of the Stuarts (17th century), by Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Milton. Comus and Shakespeare’s Tempest were set to music in this form. While the Italians were experimenting with Dramma per Musica (drama with music), England was finding a new musical entertainment in the masque, and opera was its direct descendant.
The custom of masking for the ball came from Italy, and before that, the actors in the Greek drama (400 B.C.) wore masks, and that is why the mask is used in art to represent the theatre.
Italian Opera’s Beginnings
In Italy during the second half of the 16th century, a group of people tried to combine music and drama to fit the new ideas of art. The Renaissance had influenced poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, and now it was music’s turn to profit by the return to Greek ideals. The Florentines and the Venetians felt that the madrigal was not the best form to express the feelings and emotions of the subjects of their plays. In the Middle Ages, the subjects were always Biblical, but now, as a result of the new learning they were chosen from Greek mythology and history. From the first operas at the close of the 16th century, to those of Gluck in the 18th, the names of Greek gods and heroes are used as the titles of operas: Orpheus, Euridice, Daphne, Apollo and Bacchus. These first operas were a combination of early ballets, and a sort of play called a pastorale.
Torquato Tasso, the Italian poet of the 16th century, wrote several pastorales, and was interested in music with drama. Like Ronsard in France, Tasso wrote beautiful poems for madrigals, which were set to music by the composers. He was a friend of Palestrina and of Don Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a famous patron of art, particularly of music. In the Prince’s palace at Naples, a group of men met to spread and improve the taste for music. They also wished to create music that would fit the stage-plays better than the polyphonic or poly-melodic style imported from the Northern countries. They wanted melody and they wanted it sung by one voice alone, as were their popular songs, accompanied by the lute, called frottoli, vilanelles, etc. Tasso, no doubt, talked over his ideas with composers from Florence who had formed a club, and who were directly responsible for the first opera in Italy, Daphne by Jacobo Perti.
The Camerata
This Florentine club was called the “Camerata”; it met at the home of Count Bardi, himself a poet, and among its members were Vincenzo Galilei, an amateur musician and father of the famous astronomer; Emilio del Cavalieri, a composer and inventor of ballets; Laura Guidiccioni, a woman poet; Giulio Caccini, a singer and composer; Ottavio Rinuccini and Strozzi, poets; and Peri, a composer and singer. They must have had wild times at their club meetings, for the musicians who were not amateurs did not want the popular song with lute accompaniment to replace polyphonic music, which was the “high-brow” art of that time. But the poets and singers and less cultured musicians won the day. Pretending to return to Greek music drama of which they knew less than nothing, they made a series of experiments which led to the invention of the artsong, or homophonic style (one voice, or melody, instead of polyphonic—many voices), which seemed to satisfy the Italian’s natural love for melody.
Galilei set a scene from Dante’s Inferno, for solo and viola da gamba, an instrument of the violoncello type. Following this, Peri invented the “speaking style” of singing now called recitative. This was a very important step in the making of opera and oratorio, for it did away with spoken words, and instead, the conversation was sung, or intoned, to satisfy the poets who wanted the meaning of their words made very clear. It was accompanied by simple chords on the lute, and later, the harpsichord.