CHAPTER IX

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

Spirit of the Renaissance--_Trovatori_ and _cantori a liuto_; The Florentine _Ars nova_; Landino; _caccia_, _ballata_, madrigal--The fifteenth century; the Medici; Netherland influence; popular song forms--Adrian Willaert and the new madrigal--Orazio Vecchi and the dramatic madrigal.

We have learned in the previous chapters how music, an incipient art fastened in the bondage of religious mysticism, groped through the blackness of the mediæval night; how, bound by dogmatic rule, it became the object of intellectual lucubration, the scholastic medium of pedants, who reared their stupendous structure of Gothic intricacy beyond the reach of ordinary man, 'that tower of Babel, in the building of which tongues were confounded, till no one understood what he sang nor what he heard.’ And we have seen how this edifice, in adapting itself to the use of the denizens, softened its lines and its angles, broadened its spaces and became a thing of beauty--a process in which we see reflected the dawn of a new era, when humanity breathes a freer air; that glorious spiritual awakening which found its religious expression in the Reformation, its æsthetic revelation in the Renaissance. We shall presently consider the influence of the former upon the course of music in Germany; our immediate purpose is to follow the path of the parallel process accomplished through the Renaissance in Italy.

In the words of J. Addington Symonds, the history of the Renaissance is 'the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races.’ In politics it meant the breaking down of the reactionary forces vested in the church and the empire, in science it meant the substitution of knowledge for superstition, the fearless exploring of new continents and the demonstration of the infinity of the universe; in art it meant the firing of man’s imagination, the stimulation of his creative faculties by the Revival of Learning, 'that rediscovery of the classic past which restored the confidence in their own faculties to men striving after a spiritual freedom, ... which held up for emulation master works of literature, philosophy and art, provoked inquiry, shattered the narrow mental barrier imposed by mediæval orthodoxy.’

Just as the artist 'humanized the altar pieces and the cloister frescoes upon which he worked’ and so 'silently substituted the love of beauty and the interest of actual life for the principles of the church,’ so the musician 'humanized’ the service of the church, brought beauty, expression and emotion into his masses and motets, imbuing them with the dramatic spirit, the spirit of passion, which had never been absent from the _secular_ music of the people, the music that is always indigenous to the soil. It is in this music that we must first seek the embodiment of the Renaissance spirit, which means the direct expression of human emotions in terms of oral beauty. That spirit has been associated in the history of music with two things: the 'invention’ of monody[98] and the rise of opera, both of which are placed about the end of the sixteenth century. But recent research has shown these apparently sudden events to be the outcome of a development extending back nearly three hundred years, so that they become the objective rather than the starting point of our account, which will aim to trace the steps by which this momentous reform was accomplished.

I

Our story has a direct connection with Chapter VII, where we spoke of the art of the Provençal troubadours. Though their influence was not felt in Italy till late in the twelfth century it bore a fruit as rich as it had in France. In the middle of the thirteenth a number of troubadours and jongleurs visited Frederick II at Milan, in the train of Raymon Berengar, Count of Provence. The Emperor extended his patronage to them, as did also Charles d’Anjou, the king of Naples. They became known among the people as _uomini di corti_, and _ciarlatanti_ (because their chief theme was the exploits of Charlemagne), and the natives taught by them were called _trovatori_ and _giocolini_. These soon cultivated native poetry in the Italian vernacular, the _volgar poesia_, which spread its influence to northern Italy as well and found representatives especially in Florence and Bologna. The thirteenth century records the names of Quittona d’Arezzo, Guido Guincelli and Jacopone da Todi, and upon the threshold of the fourteenth stands Dante (1265-1321), one of the greatest poets of all times, who with Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375) finally demonstrates the power of the Italian language as an artistic medium. In these three, Symonds says, 'Italy recovered the consciousness of intellectual liberty.’ What is more to our purpose, they so clarified and amplified the Italian tongue that it became the vehicle for a national literature, in which were produced not only epics after the classic models, but also lyric gems in new and spontaneous forms, which would inspire the creation of melody.

Among these poetic forms we frequently meet with _canzone_ and _madrigals_ (then called _mandriale_, from Ital. _mandra_ = hearth), which were evidently written to be sung. Their melodies, however, were no longer composed by the poets themselves but by a class of musicians characteristic of Italy during the Renaissance, the _cantori a liuto_, lutenists, who were essentially composers and singers, as distinguished from the _trovatori_, who were poets primarily. One of these _cantori a liuto_ was Dante’s friend, Casella, whose name he has perpetuated in the _Purgatorio_.[99] The importance of the lutenists in this and succeeding periods of music calls for a brief explanation of their instrument. The lute was a plucked string instrument, somewhat resembling the guitar. Its origin was oriental. The favorite instrument of the Arabs, it reached Italy by way of Spain, and thence spread all over Europe. In the fifteenth to the seventeenth century it came to hold a place relatively as prominent as our pianoforte to-day--it was the household instrument _par excellence_ and an important member of early orchestras. In shape the lute resembles the mandolin rather than the guitar, but it was made in various sizes, varieties, and ranges (chitarrone, theorbo, etc.). The number of strings was variable. Five pairs running across the fingerboard and an additional single one for the melody were fretted; the rest running _outside_ were used only as open strings. The tunings varied at different periods, and, as in the case of the organ, a special kind of notation, or tablature, was used (_cf._ Vol. VIII, Chap. II).

It must not be supposed, however, that these lutenists were learned musicians in the sense of the contrapuntists who, at this same period, flourished in the Netherlands, and who had already begun to invade Italy. They were not familiar with the complicated musical science of the time. The ecclesiastical modes, mensural science, notation and its ramifications, ligatures, prolation and proportions, the theory of consonance and dissonance, the laws of voice progression, etc., all combined to form a science so formidable as to baffle all but those devoting their lives to its study. A boy put to school in childhood could achieve only in manhood the knowledge of a 'cantor.’ As for composing, he would first have to be, as Kiesewetter says, a 'doctor of counterpoint.’ The lutenists were none such; they were essentially _dilettanti_ and hence their art, which was transmitted from ear to ear, has not been preserved to us. To gain a knowledge of the nature of their music we must turn to the more learned native musicians, who, we know, cultivated the same forms in the fourteenth century.

Here we meet with the most remarkable revelations. We will recall how music in its course of development under the guidance of the church 'chose a path which led directly away from the solo style of the folk song or the song of the troubadours and into the realm of polyphonic imitation.’ It has been supposed, therefore, that the vocal solo had no place in the system and never appeared in the art music of the time. But recent investigators have unlocked for us a treasure of song by a school of Italian musicians of the early fourteenth century who perpetuated not only the solo style, but the solo song with instrumental accompaniment, which is the supposed 'invention’ of the Florentine monodists of 1600! Fétis was the first to make known to the world the existence of the precious manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, dated 1375, which contains the specimens of these early Renaissance masters, among whom we should mention Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia (1329-1351), Francesco Landino (1325-1397) and Ghiradellus de Padua. Their worth was appreciated not only by Fétis who, in speaking of Giovanni da Cascia, says that 'Guillaume de Machault, who was the most celebrated French musician of the same epoch, does not show greater ability,’[100] but also by other historians. Ambros says, 'If their (the Italians’) works take an inferior position to that of the Netherlanders the reason is not lack of talent, but the fact that because of a disposition deeply rooted in the Italian nature and character, which later bore the richest fruits, the Italians were to develop certain sides of the art, before it had to be subjected to the indispensable school of contrapuntalism.’ But none of the historians were aware of the full significance of this music until Johannes Wolf’s[101] study of mensural notation appeared and until Hugo Riemann’s deductions[102] for the first time placed it in its true light. It is this school, which he characterizes as the Italian _Ars nova_, whose influence upon the French _Ars nova_ and its chanson literature we have already emphasized.

The centre of this art is Florence, which Fétis calls 'the cradle of modern music.’ Its principal representative is Francesco Landino, mentioned above. The facts of his life are brief. He was born in Florence about 1325, the son of a painter of some reputation. Having lost his sight in his youth, he sought consolation in the study of music. He learned to play all the instruments then in vogue and, it is said, even invented others. But it was his ability on the organ that made him famous. In this he surpassed his contemporaries to such an extent that he was aptly styled _Francesco degli organi_. The chief musicians of his time united to bestow upon him a laurel wreath, with which the king of Cyprus crowned him in Venice. He died in his native city in 1390.

What is true of his music applies in a great measure to that of his contemporaries--those named above and a number of others. The three principal forms into which their compositions are cast are the _caccia_, the _ballata_ and the madrigal. The _caccia_ is the one indigenous form of the three, being of truly Tuscan origin. It is a canon for two voices, with or without a third as bass foundation, which does not participate in the canon (like the drone bass of 'Sumer is i-cumen in’). As its name implies (_caccia_ = chase) it is a hunting song, though later it is applied to the humorous description of a market scene. The _ballata_ is clearly derived from the dance songs of the troubadours. Its form as cultivated by the Florentines shows at the beginning a phrase whose text and melody serve as a chorus refrain (_ripresa_). This is followed by a middle section which is repeated (_piedi_) over a different text; then the opening section is again taken up with fresh text as a _volta_, after which it is repeated as refrain. Often there are a number of strophes (_copla_) which are alike except for the texts of the _piedi_.

The madrigal, too, originated in Provence, being derived from the _pastourelle_. While the latter, however, recounts amorous adventures with rural belles, the madrigal poems of Dante and his successors have for their subject the contemplation of the beauties of nature, with a whimsical, philosophical or sentimental conclusion. Its musical form is similar to the ballad and _rondeau_; it is divided into two parts with repeats and its melodic phrases are usually not of greater length than would be required for about five text lines. We shall see later a new development of the madrigal in the polyphonic _a capella_ style, which became significant for the development of opera; the present form is, however, entirely monodic and accompanied.

Herein indeed lies the most remarkable feature of these early forms of secular music; in that they present a definitely thought-out combination of vocal and instrumental music, whose existence at this period was until recently unsuspected. But the latest research has definitely shown that the doubtful melismatic figures without words which precede and follow the individual phrases are nothing but instrumental preludes, interludes and postludes. Riemann[103] calls attention to the surprisingly definite _harmonic_ basis of these songs; which seems far in advance of diaphony, _faux-bourdon_ and all the primitive forms of polyphony. There is a remarkably varied combination of intervals--octaves, sixths, fifths, thirds, also sevenths and ninths used in the nature of passing notes or over a pedal--foreshadowing the manner of a much later day. Consecutive fifths and octaves occur rarely, and when they do are used in a way which is not very objectionable even to modern ears. A strictly modal character is avoided by the frequent use of chromatics. 'Indeed this Florentine “ars nova” of the fourteenth century has no connection with the laborious attempts of the Paris school. This is evident from the fact that it does not build “motets” upon a tuneless tenor, or construct _rondeaux_ and “conducts” in the clumsy manner of the organum, but that it appears with entirely new fundamental forms, and with such a certainty and natural freshness, that a theoretical process of creation seems absolutely out of the question. No, this Florentine New Art is a genuine, indigenous flower of Italian genius. If we nevertheless insist upon tracing its roots beyond the rich soil of Tuscan literature, we can only find it in the troubadour poetry of Provence.’[104]

According to our authority, there took place in the second half of the fourteenth century an active exchange of the achievements between the Florentines and the Paris school, in which France took from Italy a greater rhythmic variety, while Italy gained from France the manner of writing over a _faux-bourdon_ foundation, the result being a decided detriment to the Florentine school, which lost much of its freedom in the invention of independent voices, though it gained in harmonic purity, while of course the consecutive octaves and fifths naturally disappear entirely. Examples of madrigals, _cacci_, etc., of the Florentine school may be examined in Johannes Wolf’s _Geschichte der Mensuralnotation_. A notable specimen by Giovanni da Cascia is 'The White Peacock,’ quoted by Riemann (I²). The _cantori a liuto_, who flourished probably throughout the fifteenth century, performed, no doubt, the compositions of these masters, no less than their own inventions and the popular songs of the day, the _frottole_, the _canzone_, _villanesche_ and _villanelle_, which resounded through the streets and the _campagna_ of Renaissance Italy.

II

The fifteenth century saw Italy well advanced toward the state in which it has been compared to ancient Greece. The work begun by Petrarch had made mighty strides, the recovery of ancient learning and ancient art had become the great passion of the age, and the worship of beauty was the second, if not the first, creed of a people but recently emerged from the broils of civil war and settled down to a prosperous period, under a benevolent tyranny of which the rule of the Medici at Florence was the arch-type. Learning and culture had become a badge of nobility and the patronage of the arts an instrument of power. That music shared in the boon which came to art is unquestionable; a musical education was once again, as in ancient Greece, an essential part of a gentleman’s equipment; poets and musicians shared the patronage of princes, who themselves had no greater ambition than to be accounted men of genius--in truth, Florence had become the Athens of the modern world.

Cosimo de Medici returned from his Venetian exile in 1434 and, once installed in power, we see him surrounded by such men as Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Luca della Robbia. Gemistos Plethos, the Byzantine Greek, fires his passion for Plato’s philosophy and Marsilio Ficino is trained under his patronage to translate the works of the sage. Vespasiano assures us of his versatility as follows: 'When giving audience to a scholar, he discoursed concerning letters; in the company of theologians he showed his acquaintance with theology, ... astrologers found him well versed in their science, ... musicians in like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he much delighted.’

Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), far surpassed his grandsire in talent and culture. He was a writer of prose and poetry, gave the impulse to the revival of a national literature, and may be said to have raised popular poetry to the dignity of an art, in writing new verses for the _canzone a ballo_ which the young men and girls sang and danced upon the squares of Florence to celebrate the return of May, and the _canti carnascialeschi_, the songs that the Florentine populace sang, masked, at carnival times. He organized for these occasions great pageants in which he himself took part, engaging the best artists for the embellishment of chariots and the designing of costumes, while he himself wrote songs appropriate to the characters represented on the cars, causing new musical settings to be made by eminent composers. 'Every festivity,’ says Symonds, 'May morning tournaments, summer evening dances on the squares of Florence, weddings, carnival processions, and vintage banquets at the villa, had their own lyrics with music and the _Carola_.’

Lorenzo’s famous academy constituted perhaps the greatest intellectual galaxy of the age, for at his table sat Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Luigi Pulci. Surrounded by these companions we behold him in the streets of Florence, not disdaining to perform his own songs, in the midst of an approving populace, or, perchance, 'when Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno and the large Italian stars come forth above,’ accompanied by a few kindred spirits, lute in hand, singing the verses of a Dante or a Petrarch to the accompaniment of soft Italian zephyrs; or, again, in his villa 'on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole,’ with Michael Angelo, 'seated between Ficino and Politian, with the voices of prophets vibrating in his memory and with the music of Plato sounding in his ears ... till Pulci breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo’s last-made _ballata_.’[105]

To such gatherings of boon companions and to the small domestic circle the _cantori a liuto_ were finally relegated, for, as we shall see, their usefulness had been outlived. Such men as these were the perpetuators of their art and the last, perhaps, to cultivate the spontaneous monodies of their Florentine forbears, for it is unthinkable that these worshippers of beauty, these æsthetic sentimentalists should have escaped the charm of that school and have forgone it in favor of that which followed. For meantime the musicians of the Netherland school continued to spread their propaganda in Italy, and so successfully, that their contrapuntal works began to supersede the native monodic style.

Luca Marenzio (b. near Brescia, 1550-1560) was probably the most distinguished of all the madrigalists, though he by no means limited himself to this field. His contemporaries called him _il piu dolce cigna_ (the sweetest swan), _divino compositore_, etc., and he enjoyed the highest musical eminence. About 1584 he was _maestro_ to Cardinal d’Este, later at the court of Sigismund III of Poland received the unusual salary of 1,000 _scudi_, and was organist of the papal chapel in Rome from 1585 till his death in 1594, caused, it was said, by a broken heart because of his love for a relative of Cardinal Aldobrandini whom he could not marry. His printed compositions comprise no less than eighteen books of madrigals (4 to 6 voices) and many ecclesiastical works.

Of further names we need only mention Constanzo Porta, of Padua (1530-1601); Giovanni Croce, of Venice (1557-1609); Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli (of whom we shall speak in a later chapter); Claudio Merulo, of Correggio (1553-1604), and Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa (1560-1614), 'the most daring and most genial harmonist of the sixteenth century,’, and finally the princely Lassus and the great Palestrina himself, as a few of the endless host of madrigal writers. Not thousands, but tens of thousands of madrigals were composed in this period; it was the accepted medium for the expression of every poetic idea, every pretty sentiment. People sang madrigals at home and abroad, in society and for private pastime; in short, its popularity has not been surpassed even by the modern song.

IV

A distinct departure from the madrigal of Willaert, and one in which historians are wont to see a direct step toward the opera, is seen in the descriptive, or dramatic, madrigals of Allessandro Striggio (b. Mantua, 1535) and Orazio Vecchi. The descriptive element had indeed invaded song composition much earlier. The French 'program _chansons_,’ notably those of Clement Jannequin, who attempted to reproduce in vocal music the song of birds and the noise of battle, were, perhaps, the most remarkable phenomena of this kind. Though not an Italian, Jannequin deserves notice here because of his influence in this direction. He was a pupil of Josquin and, besides a varied lot of sacred works, issued a great number of _chansons_ which became popular as bravura pieces in instrumental form, being printed in Italy without texts in 1577 (_partite in caselle per sonar_). His great chansons (_inventions_), which stamp him _the_ programmistic composer of the sixteenth century, include _La bataille_ (on the battle of Marignano [1515]), _La guerre_, _Le caquet des femmes_ (women’s gossip), _La jalousie_, _La chasse au lièvre_ (rabbit hunt), etc., etc. A curious example is the excerpt reprinted in our supplement. In it the cuckoo’s call, the nightingale’s song, the notes of the thrush and other sounds of nature’s music are introduced simultaneously.[112]

Verdelot’s realistic description of the chase, Eckhard’s tumult of the people at St. Mark’s and Striggio’s dispute of the washerwomen at the brook are additional instances in which vocal music appropriated the dramatic elements of action, movement--the passing shapes and the play of colors. In the hands of these composers, the madrigal became a vehicle for humorous or whimsical moods no less than for the expression of tender sentiments, or 'a charming, picturesque and dramatic symphony,’ for which Romain Rolland finds an analogy in the 'Romeo and Juliet’ symphony of Berlioz. Such are Orazio Vecchi’s _La selva di varia ricreatone_ (1590), 'Musical Banquet’ (1597) and _Amfiparnasso_. They are in reality series of madrigals which follow out a continuous idea as in dramatic action, their text comprising the dramatic forms of monologue and dialogue, but, curious as it may seem, never set to music in the way that seems natural to us--as solos, duets, etc.--but always in madrigalesque polyphony. Thus, instead of having the singers represent the different characters of the piece, the actual practice was to have the monologue sections sung by all of them, while the dialogue would be carried on between sets of two or three singers each. For example, if Isabella (in _Amfiparnasso_) speaks to her lover Lucio, a group of three voices represents each of them; Isabella is characterized by a soprano and supported by an alto and a 'quinto,’ Lucio represented by a tenor sustained by a quinto and a bass. Never did it occur to the composer, even when the text was marked _Lucio solo_, actually to write for a solo voice! By this we may understand what a revolution was necessary in men’s minds to accomplish the essential step to dramatic fidelity.

The following is Romain Rolland’s pen picture of the most interesting exponent of the dramatic madrigal: 'Orazio Vecchi (b. Modena 1550; d. there 1605) was a man of the Renaissance. He possessed its superabundance of vigor, the desire for action, and a robust good humor. Chapel master at Modena, we find him on the highways and by-ways of Italy, indoors only to take part in brawls and _coltellate_. Commissioned as archdeacon of Correggio to correct the Gradual of the Roman Catholic church; he is occupied in 1591 with directing private and public masquerades in Modena. A writer of celebrated masses, he becomes at the same time the creator of _opera buffa_. Three times the Bishop of Reggio dismissed him from his function, but his reputation was enormous--the house of Este and the great Italian lords extended their favor to him, while his name spread to Austria, to Denmark and to Poland. At his death in 1605 he was regarded not only as one of the foremost musicians of the century and the inventor of musical comedy, but as one of the greatest geniuses of the age.’ Comedy is, indeed, his sphere; rarely does he ascend to the height of pathos or passion, though he amply proves himself capable of portraying earnest sentiment and sometimes pathos; but the question whether he merits the reputation of having created comic opera or not we shall leave to the judgment of the reader.

First we shall let him speak for himself. 'I know well,’ he says, 'that peradventure some will consider my “caprices” as unworthy and light, but they should learn that as much grace, art and fidelity is required to trace a comic part as in representing an old reasoning sage.’ And elsewhere, 'Music is poetry by the same right as poetry itself.’ That the conscious purpose of his music was the expression of ideas is evident from these directions which preface his _Amfiparnasso_: 'Everything here has a precise purpose; it is necessary to find this, and only by expressing it well and intelligently will you give life to the performance.... The moral import [of the piece] is of less consequence than the simple comedy; since music appeals to the emotions rather than the intellect, I have been obliged to compress the development of the action into the smallest space, for speech is more rapid than song. Hence it is necessary to condense, contract, suppress detail and only to take the capital situations, the moments characteristic to the subject. The imagination must supply the rest.’

Vecchi’s disciple, Banchieri, gives a clear account of the manner of performing these madrigals in the preface to _La comedia di prudenza giovenile_: 'Before the music one of the singers will read in a loud voice the name of the scene, the names of the characters and the argument. The place of performance is a room of medium size, as closed-in as possible (for the sake of acoustics); in one corner of the room two large carpets are laid on the floor and an agreeable decoration is used for the background. Two seats are placed at the right and left respectively. Behind the “back-drop” are benches for the singers, who must turn toward the audience and be seated at a hand’s breadth from each other. Behind them is an orchestra of lutes, _clavicembali_, etc., attuned to the voices. Above is a large sheet which hides both singers and musicians. The singers (invisible) follow the music of their parts; there should be three (or better six) at a time. They must give animation to the cheerful words, pathos to the sad ones, and enunciate loudly and intelligibly. The reciting actors (alone on the scene) must prepare their rôles, know them well by heart and follow the music closely. It would not be amiss to have a prompter aid the singers, instrumentalists and reciters.’

These 'actors’ do not, as may be supposed, perform pantomime; they simply pronounce the prologue and announce the scenes. At the end they would, perhaps, dance a few ballet steps in order to leave the spectator in a happy frame of mind. By way of example we shall briefly recount the plot of Vecchi’s _chef-d’œuvre_, that _commedia armonica_ of the strangely inexplicable title _Amfiparnasso_. The story centers around the love intrigue of Lucio and Isabella, the daughter of Pantalone, who has determined to marry her to the pedantic Gratiano. Lucio attempts to commit suicide but is saved. Isabella, about to follow him into death, declares her love. They are married and in the last scene receive the forced consent and the presents of all concerned. Meantime, Pantalone serenades and is rejected by the courtesan Hortensia, Lelio pursues another adventure with the beautiful Nisa, and the captain, Cardone, believing himself loved by Isabella, makes advances and is promptly rebuked. Doctor Gratiano sings absurd serenades while Francatrippa, the valet of Pantalone, goes to borrow money at the Jews’ house, who reject him under pretext of the Sabbath. The book for this amazing comedy, as indeed for all the others, was written by Vecchi himself. He makes all his characters speak in their various dialects and the 'score’ is full of humorous descriptions and characterizations. The piece had great success and, while there were many adverse criticisms, the number of his imitators attests the continued popularity of the form which he developed.

Adriano Banchieri of Bologna (1567-1634) was Vecchi’s chief disciple and one of his great admirers. He frankly imitated him in his _Studio dilettevole_ for three voices (1603), while in his _Saviezza giovenile_ he yields to the influence of the Florentine reform (of which later) and endeavors to present a compromise between the 'representative’ and the polyphonic styles. He was, moreover, a musician of great merit, composed, like Vecchi, numerous organ pieces and was the author of a number of theoretic works and polemics. The vogue of the dramatic madrigal continued throughout the north of Italy for twenty years after Vecchi’s death; in Bologna it survived to the end of the seventeenth century. Whatever its importance in the development of the opera, however far removed from realistic action, the dramatic principle is there--we have, in fact, a musical drama, or, at least, a dramatic symphony, especially if we regard the voices which accompany the characters in the nature of instruments.

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.

[104] H. Riemann: _Op. cit._, I², pp. 305 ff.

[105] J. A. Symonds: 'Renaissance in Italy,’ Vol. II.

[106] During 1471 to 1488 Josquin was at the papal chapel in Rome. His popularity there is illustrated by the following episode. When a motet was performed in a distinguished social circle it passed almost without notice until the hearers became aware that Josquin was its composer, when all hands promptly proceeded to express their admiration of it.

[107] B. Chioggia (Venice), 1517; d. Venice, 1590; was a pupil of Willaert. In 1565 succeeded Cipriano de Rore as _maestro_ at St Mark’s. Most of his compositions have been lost. His theoretical works were of the greatest importance. Like M. Hauptmann later, he already recognized but one kind of third, the major, and distinguishes the thirds of the major and minor triad not by size but by position, upon which principle he based the entire theory of harmony. Only the introduction of the thorough bass soon after, which reckoned all intervals from the bass up, prevented a development of this rational theory. (Cf. Riemann: _Gesch. der Musiktheorie_, pp. 369 ff.)

[108] _Cf._ Chap. X, pp. 284 ff.

[109] The frottola 'stood midway between the strict and complicated madrigal and the _villotta_ or _villanella_, which was a mere harmonization of a tune; and in fact as the use of counterpoint increased it disappeared, its better element went into the madrigal, its lower into the _villanella_.--Grove’s 'Dictionary.’

'If we consider the frottole as contrapuntal exercises they appear very meagre. If, however, we consider them as attempts to free the _cantabile_ melody, the declamatory rhythm which is analogous to the verse metre, from the imitative web, and as an attempt to endow musical pieces with architectural symmetry in the construction of its consecutive (not simultaneous) elements they are significant phenomena.’--Ambros.

[110] 'History of Music,’ III, 303.

[111] The inscription _Cromatici, a note nere_ on the title page of some of di Rore’s madrigals, which has been thought to indicate the chromatic nature of these compositions, refers, as Riemann clearly shows (_Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_ II¹. 411), simply to the color of the notes, _croma_ being a current name for the eighth note since early times.

[112] _Musikgeschichte in Beispielen._ Excerpt, etc., in _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, II¹. 407 ff.

[113] That these vocal compositions were often performed entirely by instruments is indicated by the direction which we meet frequently on sixteenth century title pages: 'practical for all instruments.’ The kind of instruments was not indicated and the choice was left to the direction of the performer. Not till the end of the century did musicians begin to discriminate and to recognize the value of instrumental timbre. In the _intermezzi_ arrangements of madrigals, etc., were often performed by many instruments, as for instance in those produced in 1565 by Striggio and Fr. Corteccia (d. 1571), who assembled an orchestra of 2 clavicembali, 4 violini, 1 liuto mezzano, 1 cornetto muto, 4 tromboni, 1 flauti diritti, 4 traverse, 1 liuto grosso, 1 sotto basso di viola, 1 soprano di viola, 4 liuti, 1 viola d’arco, 1 lirone, 1 traverso contralto, 1 flauto grande tenore, 1 trombone basso, 5 storte, 1 stortina, 2 cornetti ordinarii, 1 cornetto grosso, 1 dolzaina, 1 lira, 1 ribecchino, 2 tamburi.