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The year 1600 marks with considerable accuracy the transition from the old order to the new. The two greatest masters of the old school had recently died, and with them their work expired. At the wedding of Henri IV. of France with Maria de' Medici in Florence, in that year, was performed the opera Euridice, the joint work of Caccini and Peri, which is the starting-point of the new music.
The verse was by Giovanni Rucellai, the distinguished author of "Rosamunda" and the "Api," and the music by Pietro Strozzi. One of the singers was a certain young Giulio Caccini, who lived to be famous. Torquato Tasso's pastoral play "Aminta" had choruses though we cannot say who composed the music.
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.
Galileo treats his opponents with severity and sarcasm He is aided by the sceptics of the day The Church party the most powerful Galileo commences the attack, and is answered by Caccini, a Dominican Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in support of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun Galileo visits Rome Is summoned before the Inquisition, and renounces his opinions as heretical The Inquisition denounces the Copernican System Galileo has an audience of the Pope, but still maintains his opinions in private society Proposes to find out the Longitude at Sea by means of Jupiter's Satellites His negociation on this subject with the Court of Spain Its failure He is unable to observe the three Comets of 1618, but is involved in the controversy to which they gave rise.
We must content ourselves with the conclusion that the vocal music of the entire drama was simple in melodic structure, for such was the character of the part music out of which it was made. It was certainly well fitted to be one of the parents of the recitative of Peri and Caccini with the church chant as the other. The Orchestra of the "Orfeo"
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." Caccini was somewhat more liberal than Peri in the use of floridity and always showed taste and judgement therein.
But in the beginning it was unquestionably the outcome of a hostility to these very things, or at any rate to their merely spectacular employment. 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.
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.
The second shows the same music as arranged for solo voice and lute by Franciscus Bossinensis as found in a collection published by Petrucci in 1509. How far removed this species of lyric solo was from the dramatic recitative of Peri and Caccini is apparent at a single glance.
This story was utilized by Peri and Caccini in their "Euridice," which is accepted as the first opera written in the new representative style of the sixteenth century to receive a public performance.
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