THE CAMERATA This Florentine club was called the “Camerata”; it met at the home of Count Bardi, himself a poet, and among its members were Vincenzo Galilei, an amateur musician and father of the famous astronomer; Emilio del Cavalieri, a composer and inventor of _ballets_; Laura Guidiccioni, a woman poet; Giulio Caccini, a singer and composer; Ottavio Rinuccini and Strozzi, poets; and Peri, a composer and singer. They must have had wild times at their club meetings, for the musicians who were not amateurs did not want the popular song with lute accompaniment to replace polyphonic music, which was the “high-brow” art of that time. But the poets and singers and less cultured musicians won the day. Pretending to return to Greek music drama of which they knew less than nothing, they made a series of experiments which led to the invention of the artsong, or homophonic style (one voice, or melody, instead of polyphonic—many voices), which seemed to satisfy the Italian’s natural love for melody. Galilei set a scene from Dante’s _Inferno_, for solo and _viola da gamba_, an instrument of the violoncello type. Following this, Peri invented the “speaking style” of singing now called _recitative_. This was a very important step in the making of opera and oratorio, for it did away with spoken words, and instead, the conversation was sung, or intoned, to satisfy the poets who wanted the meaning of their words made very clear. It was accompanied by simple chords on the lute, and later, the harpsichord. Here were all the parts needed for a real opera,—the solo song, or aria; the recitative, or story telling part; the chorus or ensemble, which was the old madrigal used in a new way; and the accompanying instruments which grew into the orchestra. Peri was the first to put all these parts together in an opera for which Rinuccini wrote a real play based on the Greek story of Daphne. Caccini and his daughter Francesca sang it, and no doubt made many suggestions as to how it should be done. Its first private performance (1597) was an important event for the closing of an important century. The audience thought that it was listening to a revival of Greek music drama, but we know that it was another case of Columbus’s passage to India! Although the Greek drama was not like this, after 2000 years it helped to create modern music.