And here it behooves us to record another peculiar fact: These minor voice parts were often actually played on instruments, not only in the dramatic madrigal, but in the other vocal forms as well; sometimes because of the lack of singers and sometimes for the sake of variety. The first recorded instance of this kind of solo singing was supposed to have occurred in 1539 when Sileno sang in an intermedio the upper part of a madrigal by Francesco Corteccia (d. 1571), accompanying himself on the violone, while the other parts, representing satyrs, were taken by wind instruments. Caccini, the reputed inventor of ‘monody,’ in an intermezzo by Pietro Strozzi performed at the marriage of Duke Francesco and Bianca Capello (1579), himself sang the rôle of Night with an accompaniment of viols. These instances are, however, not isolated. The experiment proved popular and became common practice. A number of the frottole, villanelle, madrigals, etc., which came from Petrucci’s press, appeared, indeed, in the guise of lute arrangements.[113]

But all this was as far from true ‘monody,’ or solo melody, as the dramatic madrigal was removed from opera, for the mere emphasizing of an upper part, which was developed out of, or as counterpart to, another, could not make it express the sentiment intended by the text or follow the accents and natural inflections of the spoken word. Monody was as much a lost art as the Greek tragedy, which the ‘inventors’ of opera thought they were reviving from a slumber of well-nigh two thousand years. Its reinstatement was the result of a deliberate reform, a revolt against the prevailing polyphonic method, accomplished by a limited number of individuals. Even if the analytical historian must reject the possibility of the sudden invention of an artistic form, we cannot deny the merit of the most definite step toward the creation of opera to the Florentine camerata, an account of whose activities we shall reserve for a later chapter. Our object in this discussion has been to emphasize the fact that monody, the most natural form of musical expression, was not an arbitrary invention such as the contrapuntal style evidently was; that it lay, indeed, at the very foundation of that style, but was so effectually displaced by it that only the faintest memories of it survived. It was from these memories that the new art of the seventeenth century, with its new dramatic significance, sprang—just as the Ars nova, the new art of the fifteenth century, had sprung from their source. The intervening space of two centuries was a period of prodigious development both in secular and church music, and of the most active exchange between the two. But in this exchange the church unquestionably remained the debtor, for it acquired from the secular art most of its really vital elements, even dramatic force. Only thus could it become the ideal expression of that new religious spirit with which both the Catholic and Protestant faiths were to be imbued. The development of this religious art, which forms the parallel to the movements just described, is our next subject.

C. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The word monody may be applied to the purely melodic, unaccompanied music of ancient times and the plain-song era, which, however, is better described as homophony, in contradistinction to monody in the present sense, namely, solo melody with instrumental accompaniment. In monodic music the upper voice predominates throughout and determines the harmonic structure. In vocal polyphony, or counterpoint, the principal voice (cantus firmus) was usually in the tenor, and had no such determining significance.

[99] Dante’s ballate were everywhere known and sung, according to Saccheti’s novels, and when Dante overheard a blacksmith singing his song he scolded him for having altered it. Dante himself was, according to an anonymous writer of the thirteenth century, dilettore nel canto e ogni suono.

[100] F. J. Fétis: Hist. Gén. de la Musique, V. 308.

[101] Joh. Wolf: Geschichte der Mensuralnotation von 1260-1450 (2 vols., 1904).

[102] Cf. H. Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte I², pp. 305 ff.

[103] H. Riemann: Op. cit., I², pp. 305 ff.