Peri, Caccini, Bardi and others of the Florentine "camerata" were engaged as composers, stage managers, actors and singers in many of the elaborate court spectacles, intermezzi and madrigal dramas produced toward the end of the sixteenth century. Peri and Caccini were professional singers, and their experiences were not only those of students, but also those of practitioners. Their revolt against the contrapuntal lyric drama was largely, though not wholly, based on deep-seated objection to the unintelligibility of the text. It does not require profound consideration to bring us to the opinion that the method of Vecchi was in part an attempt to overcome the innate defect of the polyphonic style in this matter of intelligibility. The resort to the spoken text on the stage while the music was sung behind the scenes appears on the face of it to have been compelled by a wish for some method of conveying the meaning of the poet to the audience.
Why, then, did not these young reformers find at hand in the madrigal arranged for solo voice the suggestion for their line of lyric reconstruction? Partly by reason of the confusion caused by obedience to old polyphonic customs in making the accompaniments, and partly because the madrigal had become a field for the display of vocal agility. Already the development of colorature singing had reached a high degree of perfection. Already the singer sought to astonish the hearer by covering an air with a bewildering variety of ornaments. The time was not far off when the opera prima donna was to become the incarnation of the artistic sensuousness which had beguiled Italy with a dream of Grecian resurrection. The way had been well built, for the attention of the fathers of the Roman church had been turned early to the necessity of system in the delivery of the liturgical chants. The study of a style had developed a technic and to the achievement of vocal feats this technic had been incited by the rapid rise of the act of descant.
Hand in hand the technic and the art of descant had come down the years. The sharp distinction early made between "contrapunctus a penna" and "contrapunctus a mente" showed that composers and singers to a certain degree actually stood in rivalry in their production of passage work for voices. The rapid expansion of the florid element in the polyphonic music of the composers indicates to us that the improvised descant of the singer had a sensible influence. We need not be astonished, then, to learn that long before the end of the sixteenth century a very considerable knowledge of what was later systematized as the so-called "Italian method" had been acquired. The registers of head and chest were understood, breathing was studied, the hygiene of the voice was not a stranger, and vocalizes on all the vowels and for all the voices had been written. Numerous singers had risen to note, and the records show that their distinction rested not only on the beauty of their voices and the elegance of their singing, but also on their ability to perform those instrumental feats which have from that time to this been dear to the colorature singer and to the operatic public.
In the closing years of the sixteenth century we find that the famous singers were heard not oftener in public entertainments than in private assemblies. Occasionally a madrigal arranged as a solo figured in a lyric play, but the singing of madrigals for one voice was a popular field for the exhibition of the powers of celebrated prima donnas such as Vittoria Archilei and eminent tenors like Jacopo Peri. Kiesewetter[35] gives a madrigal sung as a solo by Archilei. The supporting parts of the composition were transferred from voices to instruments apparently with little trouble. Mme. Archilei herself played the lute and her husband, Antonio Archilei, and Antonio Nalda played two chitarroni. The music of the madrigal was composed by Signor Archilei. Here are the opening measures of this lyric:
Here is the beginning of the composition as Mme. Archilei decorated it with her extraordinary skill in the vocal ornamentation of the period:
