Giovanni de' Bardi (1534-1612): Florentine Camerata
The Work place for people like Jacopo Peri: Birth of the Opera
.
The music you are listening to is "Ma Se Resti Al Mio Ben Al Mio Contento"
by Jacopo Peri. Peri's music was modeled by Claudio Monteverdi ("Seconda
prattica"). This music was considered to be the beginning of modern opera,
as now poetry could be set to music with a new, Humanist theory of rhetoric
tacens, and not the old, inflexible, strictly hierarchical Scholastic view of
reality.
A digression must be entered at this point to explain the new music of the Renaissance
and Baroque periods. It is recommended that the reader NOT skip this theoretical
foundation, as it not only explains the music, but is philosophically relevant today.
Humanists focused upon studia humanitatis, emphasizing moral philosophy (poetry
and history) over the Aristotelian natural philosophy of the Scholastics. A new "dialectic"
1 (logic and rhetoric) emerged, de-emphasizing
the views of Aristotle and instead emphasizing the views of Cicero and Quintilian. The
Scholastics' rigid logic of proof with a viewpoint of certitude was de-emphasized, replaced
with a view in which plausability replaced certitude. The ontological view posed was that human
will ceased to be a mediator between reason and passion; instead, human will holds its own
position, apart from and perhaps above both logical proof and the view of passions as being
base. In fact, passions, rather than being base, are what
makes us human, not logical proofs or certitude ("truth"). Passionate involvement in
social affairs is the basis for human will, the dynamic force that
directs human thought and action.2
Effectively, the Humanist view was that rhetoric, through invention and dispositio,
extended logical certitudes to include the highly probable and thus that a strict
methodology of logic was too restrictive to deal with reality (ie: logical method is deficient).
3
"Truth" is amplified when viewed as "probability" thus the Humanistic view
enlarges the view of reality to embrace not one social viewpoint, but the viewpoints held
by many societies. Modern anthropological ideas embrace Humanism more than the more narrow
views of Catholic Scholastic Logic. Given the Protestant Reformation, differing view here
had very large consequences: ideological conflict.
Furthermore, the enlarged geographic views due to the discovery of the New World and
encounters with the Ottoman Turk were reflected in conflicts between the Republic of Venice
and the Genoese over control of the Mediterranian: this also created problems in International
Law, sovereignty and Roman Law (see Hugo Grotius and Alberico Gentili). To further
complicate matters, Galileo Galilei (the son of Vincenzo Galilei, see below,
Florentine Camerata) and Nicolaus Copernicus were providing the scientific
foundation of the idea that the planet Earth and mankind were not the center of a Catholic
universe, hence further evidence that the Humanists were correct, not the Scholastics. The
ideas of the Humanists supported a view that propositions "p" were not so much as
"true" or "false", but rather had an associated probability. Thus if "1" = "true", and "0" =
"false", then truth might be a probability: 0 ≤ Probability(p) ≤ 1. Thus a
proposition "p" is Probability(p) "true", or 1 - Probability(p) "false".
Thus something like an antinomy. An interesting discussion concerning "counterfactuals"
and "antinomies" used in Victorian literature (Charles Dickens) is of interest here.
Clicking the red linkswill go off page, but clicking the
red links off page can return here.
Click to see.
How could any theory of music be unaffected by this new humanistic view of rhetoric emphasizing
passion deemphasized as base, recognizing the restrictive view of Scholastic logic?
As this rigid dialectic of the Scholastics was rejected, the Humanist view was relativistic.
People such as Coluccio Salutatii, Leonardo Bruni, and Poggio Bracciolini, all from Florence, led
the way. 2
According to the Humanists, the will seeks the good, while intellect seeks the truth,
but it is better to will the good than to know the truth, as truth (knowledge) may not be put
to good use. Thus Pier Paolo Vergerio united philosophy with rhetoric and history as a
basis of humanism.
2
Humanistic philosophy held a pessimistic view of an all-encompassing hierarchical
reality, asserting that man's intellect could not be refined to create an all-encompassing,
hierarchical reality. (Any view of a god and society must also reject an all-encompassing
hierarchical ontology.) Thus Paolo Sarpi's view:
2
"There are four modes of philosophizing: the first with reason alone, the second with
sense alone, the third with reason first and then sense, the fourth beginning with
sense and ending with reason. The first is worse, because from it we know what we would
like to be, not what is. The third is bad because we many times distort what is into
what we would like, rather than adjusting what we would like to what is. The second is
true but crude, permitting us to know little and that rather of things than of their
causes. The fourth is the best we can have in this miserable life."
2
Poetry, music, pictorial arts and plastic arts (architecture) were to be informed by rhetoric
and guided by cultural relativism, not eternal certitudes. Thus the Classics
(ancient Greek and ancient Roman societies — different societies) could now be used as
a teaching and learning model. 2
The differing viewpoint between the Humanists vs Scholastics was not monolithic.
While views might be somewhat settled in science, the viewpoints still differed in music.
The Scholastic party placed music in the Quadrivium, as opposed to the Humanist party which
allied music with poetry and rhetoric and thus associated music with the Trivium.
4 (Note, in music, a performative
rhetoric not based upon textual speech, more upon "gesture", the term
"harmonic orator or harmonic rhetor" has been used.
5) Humanist musicians included Jacopo
Peri (the music you are listening to), Giulio Caccini, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Giaches de Wert,
Luca Marenzio, and Monteverdi. According to the "Seconda prattica" of Monteverdi,
the composer's first concern was expressive force (passion, rhetoric, affettuoso or emotion),
NOT structural perfection (the Scholastic view). Hence music is "... the mistress of the
harmony and not the servant". 6
Thus Music should be in the Trivium, not in the Quadrivum (Music based upon Pythagorean
harmonic ratios usually put Music in the Quadrivium).
The Humanistic view of Monteverdi was that music is to be joined with poetry and rhetoric.
The argument might seem insignificant, but this very difference enabled poetry to be
joined with music to achieve a new rhetoric tacens, exemplified by the music of Jacopo Peri,
and Monteverdi expressing emotions or "affettuoso" found in the new musical form
called "opera". 7
"Dafne" (c. 1597), or "Euridice" (c. 1600) by Jacopo Peri are considered to
be the first true operas, using "recitatives". You can hear "recitatives"
in the music of Jacopo Peri, now being played. Monteverdi was greatly in debt to Peri, and
this is apparent in Monteverdi's "Orfeo" of 1607. 8Click here for more information.
The influential views of Claudio Monteverdi were challenged by Giovanni Maria Artusi. To
gain a little insight about these differences of viewpoint, click here.
The view was expressed that the composer or musician is the "harmonic orator"
(establishing a connection between music and rhetoric). Thus the composer must know the
accents of the passions, and use rhetorical "figures". 9
"Catharsis" (purification by the release of repressed emotion), can be attained by
adding "gravità" (an emotion), thereby eliciting compassion from the audience
by using rhythms and melody. 10
Thus the "harmonic orator" works with aesthetic (beauty) in music
and rhetoric by explicit reference to passions. 11
Both Monteverdi and Mersenne were quite familiar with Aristotle's concept of "pathopoeia"
12 (pathos: speech that arouses
emotions) discussed in "Rhetoric" and "Poetic": passions aroused by sound. Thus a "musical rhetoric".
13
One can say that there is an "emotional quality inherent in tonal patterns" exactly like the
"emotional quality inherent in verbal patterns." 14
The key: "Nonverbal patterns (tonal and gestural) used as emotional catalysts...".
14
Girolamo Mei felt that music as practiced at the time failed to produce any appreciable emotional effects
on the listener, and that this was a grevious shortcoming. Mei chose high tonos for a mood of
excitement, a low tonos for a depressed affection, while the middle tonos could move up (into excitement)
or down (into depressed affection): netoid, mesoid, or hypatoid.
15
What exactly are these nonverbal tonal and gestural catalysts?
Monteverdi tells us:
"I took into consideration that, according to all the best philosophers, it was
the fast pyrrhic meter that was used for bellicose and excited dances, while the
slow spondaic meter served for the opposite expression; consequently, I began to
see that ... the semibreve (full note) divided into sexteen semicromes (sixteenth
notes), beaten one after the other, and connected with a text that contained
wrath and indignation, could well resemble the affection of which I was in search,
although the text might not be able to follow the fast tempo on the instruments."
.
Foreword to the "Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi", 1638, by Cluadio Monteverdi
16
Thus "pyrrhic meter" scansion (click here)
is referred to, as well as tempo (semibreve, semicromes)
mensuration (click here).
Thus pyrrhic is fast tempo ^ ^. Thus the beginning of combat
can use anapest ^ ^ /, full combat using pyrrhic ^ ^.
In the Institutio Oratoria, Quintialian points out that iamb ^ /
can be used for the ascent (emotional) of violence, while trochee / ^
is used for gentle descent (of emotions). 17
Thus Monteverdi distinguished between "parts that are excited and soft"
( concitati e molli). Mersenne related the pyrrhic foot to
anger and used rapid sixteenth notes. 18
Thus Monteverdi in his foreword to the "Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi", describes
three genera of emotions to registers of the voice: vehement (high), tempered (middle), lax (low)
represented by three genera of emotions: anger, temperance, and humility. These were the same as
those mentioned by Girolamo Mei:
vehement soul: animo concitato (netoid)
quiet soul: animo posato (mesoid)
lax soul: animo pigro (hypatoid)
Hence Dionysius of Hallicarnassus said "the science of public oratory is ... a sort of
musical science, differing from vocal and instrumental music in degree, not in kind."
19
The "Musical Humanism" of the sixteenth century was an attempt to capture the ideas
about music from ancient Greece and Rome: the relationship between rhythm,
rhythmizomenon, and rhythmopoeia. 20
.
" 'We must imagine'he says, 'two different natures, that of rhythm and that of
the rhythmizomenon, having the same relations to one another as a plan has to
the object that is planned.' The rhythmizomenon is the raw material which is
subjected to rhythm; and there are three kinds of rhythmizomenon, namely,
music, poetry, and dancing. Melody alone consists of a succession of intervals,
without meaning. Only when it is subjected to rhythm does it take shape and
form. Ordinary speech consists of a succession of accented and unaccented syllables
in no definite order; when, however, these are subjected to rhythm, the speech
becomes poetry. The steps of a person walking or running are continuous, but if they
become ordered in some recognizable arrangement by rhythm, the dance arises. Intervals,
speeds and steps are the three rhythmizomena, the respective materials to which
rhythm is applied." 20
.
"Rhythmopoeia is the art of applying rhythm to the rhythmizomenon.
This art was carefully studied, and more attention was given to it in theory than is
the case with us. It has to do, not only with the construction of phrases, but of the
measures themselves. ... Aristoxenus calls the rhythmopoeia of the complete
phrase, as opposed to that of single measures, 'continuous rhythmopoeia.' "
20
Monteverdi's score for Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda associates
these three genera of emotions with specific registers:
21
"Molle" is the fifth from C to G, Soft or hypatoid: humility compassionate appeal
22
"Temperato" is the fifth from D to A, mesoid: narrative, neutral recounting of fables
"Concitato" is the fifth from G to D, netoid: bellicose, battle scenes
Harmonic rhetoric has also been identified in yet another somewhat abstract context.
Theatre obeyed the unities of Aristotle. What are
these unities?
Continuity of time: localized to about one day.
Continuity of place: localized to one (or a small number of places, in related location).
Continuity of action: one set of related ideas (war, love, economic disaster, etc.)
Continuity of frame: same or closely related people.
The unities are important, else the opera, play, or other theatrical piece
will appear confused and chaotic. The audience will lose track of what,
where, who is going on, and will talk as they boisterously leave the theatre.
.
Assuming that the unities are obeyed, the play must compress the fictional
time of about one day, into the performance time (excluding interruptions)
of about four or five hours. 23
This is "... akin to the artificial compression of space achieved by
either linear or theatrical perspective."
23
.
Thus, just as linear perspective is a version of rhetoric tacens, or
rhetoric muette, we see that theatre (music) uses a version of rhetoric
(harmonic rhetoric) akin to linear perspective. How is this accomplished?
.
At this time, "intermedi" took place (moresche or jester inter-acts)
dancing, or canzonetta (madrigal singing). The singing was thought of as
being modeled on choruses that could reflect (be a commentary upon) the
theatrical piece. In such cases, the performers stood outside of time:
in musical time. This allowed time to appear reduced between acts (thus
further compressing "temporal perspective").
24
.
Intermedi often decpict a fictional, mythical time, heaven or hell (Eurydice).
This depiction is very compressed in time, however, as often there can be
several intermedi. These intermedi have been described, and aside from
impressive costumes, musical instruments were used, commonly used by J. Peri,
Caccini, Monteverdi, etc. Musical instruments included: sackbut (trombone),
dolzaina (dulcimer), violone (bowed lyre), fife, flute, lute, storta and
stortina (krumhorns), cornetta, drum, whistle, rebechino (rebec), harp, organ.
25
Vincenzo Galilei established the Florentine Camerata, which included Girolamo Mei.
Recitativo secco was created. This was music that
emphasized plucked strings, small organs (hand bellows: sound more like wind
instruments); later, it included the harpsichord, viols or violoncello (basso
continuo). Composers of this kind of music included Jacopo Peri (1609), Giulio
Caccini (1550-1618), Emilio de' Cavaliere. Other composers also participated,
such as Cristoforo Malvezzi. Finally, opera might be said to have been created
when the views of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) were accepted.
Cantar recitando: presentational (singing while reciting), aria
Recitar cantando: representational (reciting while singing), recitativo
canzonetta, ballet, and choral music are more presentational.
26
"Orfeo" by Monteverdi prefers:
Keys G, g (Canzonetta, choral parts): presentational.
Keys d, a, F, C: representational.
This devolves around who is being addressed as opposed to affect,
though the performers (singers) have some leeway to interpret this
(thus each performance can differ).
27
Caccini's interpretation of "sprezzatura" as "cantar recitando",
with Peri's interpretation of basso continuo accompaniment as "recitar contando"
resulted in "stile rappresantativo" or "stile recitativo".
28
Thus opera might be thought of as a combination of meter (scansion) combined
with affettuoso (expression of emotions or passions) using concitato/temperato/molle
tonal ranges, expressed in recitativo. Note, recitativo secco
is recitativo without the accompaniment of instruments, while
Recitativo accompagnato (or obbligato, or stromentato)
is recitativo with the accompaniment of instruments.
1
"Dialectic" here has nothing whatsoever to do with Hegelian, Marxian,
philosophy, just uncritically referring to logic and rhetoric.
.
2
Tomlinson, Gary; "Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance", University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 6-9
.
3
Tomlinson, Gary; "Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance", University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. 254
.
4
The "Seven sisters" referred to the "Trivium" and the "Quadrivium".
The "Trivium" being Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. The "Quadrivium" being
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. Statues depicting the "seven sisters"
are found on the Cathédrale de Chartres.
.
5
Ranum, Patricia M.; "The Harmonic Orator: The Phrasing and Rhetoric of the
Melody in French Baroque Airs", 2001, Pendragon Press Musicological Series
.
6
Tomlinson, Gary; "Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance", University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 21-23
.
7
Tomlinson, Gary; "Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance", University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 29-30
.
8
Tomlinson, Gary; "Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance", University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1987, pp. 131, 132
.
9
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 165
.
10
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 166
.
11
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 167
.
12
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 167
.
13
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 168
.
14
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
footnote 15, p. 168
.
15
Mei, Gerolamo; "Letters on Ancient and Modern Music",
Musicological Studies and Documents 3", American Institute
of Musicology, 1977, pp. 45, 48
.
16
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
pp. 168, 169
.
17
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
pp. 169, 170
.
18
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 169
.
19
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 172.
.
20
Houle, George; "Meter in Music, 1600-1800: Performance, Perception,
and Notation", Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1987, pp. 62-63
.
21
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 173.
.
22
Le Coat, Gerard; "The Rhetorical Element in Monteverdi's
Combattimento: A study in 'Harmonic Oratory'",
Western Speech Communication, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1975,
p. 174.
.
23
Pirrotta, Nina, Povoledo, Elena; "Music and Theatre from Poliziano
to Monteverdi", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982, p. 129
.
24
Pirrotta, Nina, Povoledo, Elena; "Music and Theatre from Poliziano
to Monteverdi", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982, pp. 153, 154, 156
.
25
Pirrotta, Nina, Povoledo, Elena; "Music and Theatre from Poliziano
to Monteverdi", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982, pp. 155-158, 160, 163
.
26
Calcagno, Mauro; "From Madrigal to Opera: Monteverdi's Staging of the Self",
University of California Press, 2012, p. 36
.
27
Calcagno, Mauro; "From Madrigal to Opera: Monteverdi's Staging of the Self",
University of California Press, 2012, p. 37
.
28
Pirrotta, Nina, Povoledo, Elena; "Music and Theatre from Poliziano
to Monteverdi", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982, pp. 241-252
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