An Outline of The History of Western Music Grout ... - The Reel Score

1. Forerunners
a) Opera is a drama that combines soliloquy, dialogue, scenery, action, and
continuous (or nearly continuous) music
(1) Earliest works in this genre date from the very end of the 16th century
(2) But the association of music with drama goes back to ancient times
i) the choruses and some lyric speeches in the plays of Euripides and
Sophocles were sung
ii) medieval liturgical dramas were sung and music figures - if incidentally - in
the religious mystery & miracle plays of the late middle ages
b) Renaissance theater of the 16th century
(1) Many tragedies & comedies imitated Greek models - the choruses were
sometimes sung - at the opening or ending of an act
i) Greek tragedy served as a distant model for the Renaissance theater -
scholars of the time disagreed on how centrally music figured in Greek
drama
a- only choruses sung
b- entire text was sung - including actors' parts as expressed by Girolamo
Mei (1519-1594)
(2) Intermedi: pastoral, allegorical, or mythological interludes- offering
spectacular and elaborate musical productions, with choruses, soloists, and
large instrumental ensembles - between acts of a comedy or tragedy
(3) Madrical Cycles: the madrigal as a miniature drama - represented a series of
scenes or moods or wove a simple comic plot in dialogue
(4) The Pastoral: the pastoral poem - telling of idyllic love in loosely dramatic
form - a predominant genre of Italian verse composition provided one model
for early musical plays
i) music seemed not only the natural mode of communication but the missing
link to the poets' visions and longings
ii) pastoral poetry was at once the last stage of the madrigal and the first stage
of the opera libretto
c) The Florentine Camerata
(1) Girolamo Mei (1519-1594) a Florentine scholar who had edited a number of
Greek tragedies and when in Rome had embarked on a thorough
investigation of Greek Music - particularly its role in theater
i) between 1562 & 1573 he read - in Greek - almost every ancient work on
music that survived
ii) reported his work in 4 books - "De Modis" (Concerning the Modes) - parts of
which were communicated to his colleagues in Florence.
a- the Greeks obtained powerful effects with their music because it
consisted of a single melody - whether sung by a soloist with or without
accompaniment or by a chorus
b- this melody could move the listener through the natural expressiveness of
vocal registers, rises and falls in pitch, and the changing rhythms and
tempo
(2) Giovanni Bardi (1534-1612) one of his most frequent correspondents - with
Vincenzo Galilei (1520?-1591) - hosted and informal academy at his palace
in Florence with discussions on literature, science, and the arts with
musicians perfoming new music