Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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556 SONG
Fragmenit of a MadrigaX. Sonato da Sileno
con violone, soncmdo tutte U parti, e ccmtando
il Soprano.
^^pg^g^^
CORTEOOIA, 1539.
lor non e • ra vis-co ne lac • - clo . .
^j3:^a^
folk-music before being formulated and taught
in schools.
According to the historian 6. B. Doni, *
V. Galilei was the first composer who wrote
actual melodies for one voice. ^ He further
tells us that Galilei set to music the passage of
the 'Inferno,' which narrates the tragic fate of
Count Ugolino, and that he performed it himself
' very pleasingly, ' with viola accompaniment.
But be that as it may, an epoch, in musical
history was undoubtedly marked by Giulio
Caccini, when he published in 1601, under the
title of Le Nuove Musiche, ' ' a collection of
madrigali, canzoni, and arie for one voice.
These compositions have a figured bass, and
some are embellished with fioriture. In the
preface " to his collection, Caccini gives minute
directions as to the proper mode of singing
his pieces, and his airs are well supplied with
marks of expression, as the following example
will show ' :
Ex. 2.
(Scemar di voce. Esdamaziime spvritosa.) Caccini.
0% ^
in the mass. Thus ecclesiastical music was
gradually driven from the field by secular
music ; and choral or collective song by pure
solo-song, which was the medium best fitted
for the expression of the thoughts, emotions,
and actions of individuals. Poetry, which had
hitherto been smothered in the web of contrapuntal
music (where many voices were simultaneously
singing difterent words) once again
asserted herself, and claimed attention to her
meaning and form, i Further, the art of singing,
which by the close of the 16th century had
reached a highly advanced stage, demanded the
prominence of the solo -singer. In short, a
different kind of music was now required, and
the monodio style supplied the want. Who
were the actual inventors of this kind of music
it is impossible to decide. Historians have
clearly shown that the latent germs must have
been present wherever folk-music existed.
The predilection for a marked rhythm, the
disuse of the old Church scales, the feeling for
tlie dominant, the use of the leading -note
which is an essential feature in melody,^
all these elements, which form the basis of
modem music, were instinctively present in
1 Ambrofl, iv. 178, et aeq.
2 See Parry's Art o/ilvHc. and Monodia (vol. HI. p. 247).
8 Zarlino vtitea in 1558 that the peasants \vho sing \Tith0utan7
art all proceed by the inteival of the semitone In forming their
closes.