Some Forerunners of Italian OperaHenderson, W. J. (William James)
History
Some Forerunners of Italian Opera
Henderson, W. J. (William James)
Opera -- Italy
This, he declares, can only extort applause of the "crowd" and such
music can only result in mere tickling of the ear, because when the text
is not intelligible there can be no appeal to the understanding.
"The idea came to me to introduce a style of music which makes it
possible in a certain manner to speak musically by employing, as
already said, a certain noble subordination of the song, with now
and then some dissonances, while however holding the chord by means
of the sustained bass, except when I follow the already common
custom of assigning the middle voices to the accompanying
instrument for the purpose of increasing the effect, for which
purpose alone they are, in my opinion, appropriate."
He now tells us that, after he found that his principle stood the tests
of practice and he was satisfied that in the new style lay a power to
touch hearts far beyond that possessed by polyphony, he wrote certain
madrigals for the solo voice in the manner described, which manner
"I hereafter used for the representations in Florence." Then he went to
Rome where the dilettanti, particularly Lione Strozzi, gathered at the
house of Nero Neri, expressed themselves enthusiastically about the new
revelation of the power of solo song to move the heart. 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. He says
that in these compositions he tried continually to give the meaning of
the words and so to touch responsive chords of feeling. He endeavored to
compose in a pleasing style by hiding all contrapuntal effects as much
as possible. He set long syllables to consonances and let passing notes
go with short syllables. He applied similar considerations to the
introduction of passages "although sometimes as a certain ornamentation
I have used a few broken notes to the value of a quarter, or at most a
half note, on a short syllable, something one can endure, because they
quickly slip by and are not really passages, but only add to the
pleasant effect."
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. He forcefully condemns all
haphazard use of vocal resources and says that the singer should labor
to penetrate the meaning and passion of that which he sings and to
convey it to the hearer. This he asserts can never be accomplished by
the delivery of passages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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