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In 1589, on the occasion of the marriage in Florence of the Grand Duke Ferdinand with Princess Christine of Loraine, there was a festal entertainment under the general direction of Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio, at whose palace afterward met the founders of modern opera.
The Medium for Individual Utterance A closer examination of the musical reforms instituted by the camerata which met at the Vernio and Corsi palaces will convince us that they were directed toward two objects; first, the restoration of the Greek method of delivering the declamation of a drama, and second, the reduction of purely lyric forms to a rational musical basis on which could be built intelligible settings of texts.
But the Bardi hands were of the sort that not only clutch the sword-hilt with vigour, but love the more delicate pleasure of fingering minted metal: they were matched, too, with true Florentine eyes, capable of discerning that power was to be won by other means than by rending and riving, and by the middle of the fourteenth century we find them risen from their original condition of popolani to be possessors, by purchase, of lands and strongholds, and the feudal dignity of Counts of Vernio, disturbing to the jealousy of their republican fellow-citizens.
In one of these Neri houses there lived, however, a descendant of the Bardi, and of that very branch which a century and a half before had become Counts of Vernio: a descendant who had inherited the old family pride and energy, the old love of pre-eminence, the old desire to leave a lasting track of his footsteps on the fast-whirling earth.
The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca and Palazzo Vernio at Florence remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music. At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical types deserved to be particularly noticed.
The details of the invention of the nuove musiche, the ideas which brought it forth, how these were nursed in the salons of Florentine noblemen, especially in that of Bardi Conte Vernio, are all well known. They were vehement in their denunciations of the barbarous institutions of counterpoint and loudly called for a return to the only true principles of music as taught by the ancients.
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