The Florentine Camerata

A circle trying to sing Greek tragedy back into existence ended up inventing opera.

Related

RenaissanceMadrigal

In late sixteenth-century Florence a circle of nobles, poets and musicians met regularly to ask how music could move listeners the way Greek drama supposedly had. Their answer was that polyphony tangled the words, so a single line had to sing them clearly.

Time and place

From the 1570s the group gathered at Count Bardi's palace, including Vincenzo Galilei, Caccini and Peri, later moving to Corsi's house. The meetings ran into the late 1580s and their conclusions entered musical practice.

What happened

They studied ancient Greek theory and concluded that drama had been sung, with melody following the stress and accent of speech. Out of this came monody: one vocal line over simple harmonic support, with the text in charge. Peri and Caccini later used the manner in the first operas, staged around 1600.

What changed

Polyphony stopped being the only way to carry drama. Composers began writing for solo voice and continuo, singers gained room for ornament and expression, and drama moved from interwoven parts to accent and plot. The road led straight to opera, oratorio and cantata, and reshaped vocal writing for four centuries.

Listen for the turn

In Caccini's solo songs, hear the melody follow the stress of the words while the accompaniment only supports. Then hear an early Monteverdi madrigal, where polyphony remains but drama has entered. The turn is not the abandonment of counterpoint but the clearing of space for one intelligible line.

Related

See the Renaissance and Baroque period pages, the monody and madrigal entries, and the birth of opera on this site.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Camerata" and "Caccini" — dates and membership checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music — narrative checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.