Gounod's recitative and choral writings are modern and sweetly melodious without subtlety. Chapter XVIII The Birth of Opera Festival plays and intermezzi--Dreary character of music in plays--Influence of Greek learning--Attempt to resuscitate the dramatic declamation of the Greeks--Galilei and his "Ugolino"--Caccini's Nuove Musiche--Peri's setting of "Daphne"--Production of Rinuccini and Peri's "Eurydice"--The character of the new music. The modern opera was the result of a deliberate attempt to revive the Greek drama, and that attempt was caused chiefly by dissatisfaction with the music of medieval festival plays. The direction of the attempt was guided by the revival of Greek learning in Italy, a revival of which the reader has already been informed in Chapter VI. In order, however, that the reader may have a clear understanding of the conditions which led to the birth of opera, it is necessary that the author should briefly review the state of vocal music employed in plays in the sixteenth century. The reader will best understand this by recollecting that the entire art music of the time was colored by the use of the ecclesiastical scales and the complete devotion of composers to church counterpoint. The result was that in the beginning there was no difference, except in the subjects of the libretti, between the religious dramas, from which the oratorio was developed, and the secular plays with music, which may be regarded as the forerunners of the opera. These plays contained no recitative, because recitative had not yet been invented. They consisted of dialogue interspersed with choruses, and these choruses were always written, like the madrigals and other secular songs of the time, in one or the other of the ecclesiastical scales and in three, four, or five part polyphony.