Guilo Caccini

The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. Their gatherings had the reputation of having all the most famous men of Florence as frequent guests. 

After first meeting in 1573, the activity of the Camerata reached its height between 1577 and 1582.  While propounding a revival of the Greek dramatic style (Greek tragedy and Greek mythology) , the Camerata's musical experiments facilitated the composition of dramatic music and the development of opera.  Known members of the group besides Bardi included Giulio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, and Vincenzo Galilei (the father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei).  

Member Jacopo Peri composed the very first opera, Dafne, in 1597 (most of the music is lost today, but the libretto by Ottovio Rinuccini survives).  They wrote a second opera, Euridice, with additional music by Guilo Caccini in 1600.  It survives but is seldom performed. (Caccini also set the libretto of Euridice to his own score in 1600).  The "orchestras" for these operas were very small (less than 12 players).   

Unifying the Camerata members was the belief that music had become corrupt, and by returning to the forms and style of the ancient Greeks, the art of music could be improved, and thereby society could be improved as well.

The criticism of contemporary music by the Camerata centered on the overuse of polyphony at the expense of the sung text's intelligibility. Excessive counterpoint offended so the ears of the Camerata because it muddled the affetto (the "affection") of the important visceral reaction in poetry.  It is the job of the composer to communicate the affetto into an audible, comprehensible sound. The Camarata pioneered the monodic style with the basso continuoso. 

The Camerata gained an indirect influence on the flow of music history, as Galilei challenged artists to rethink the palette of sound they had been utilizing for decades.  The greatest innovation to emerge from the Camerata was not a piece of music or aesthetic ideal, but rather a door opened for further composition of dramatic music.



Guilo Caccini  (1551 - 1618)  influenced early opera.

Caccini was predominantly a composer of monody and solo song accompanied by a chordal instrument (basso continuo), and it is in this capacity that he acquired his immense fame.  He published two collections of songs and solo madrigals, both titled Le nuove musiche, in 1602 (new style) and 1614 (the latter as Nuove Musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle).  Most of the madrigals are through-composed and contain little repetition; some of the songs, however, are strophic (they have repeated sections). 

Among the most famous and widely disseminated of these is the madrigal Amarilli, mia bella.  It uses stile recitivo, a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech.  Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do.  It resembles sung ordinary speech more than a formal musical composition. 


Amarilli, mia bella  (madrigal, 1602)  (4:00)

Amarilli, mia bella,                       Amaryllis, my beloved,
Non credi, o del mio cor,              Do you not believe
dolce desio,                                   Sweet desired one,
D’esser tu l’amor mio?                 That you are my love?
Credilo pur:                                   Believe only this: 
e se timor t’assale,                        And if fear assails you,
Prendi questo mie strale               Take one of my arrows
Aprimi il petto.                             Open my breast
e vedrai scritto in core:                 And see written in my heart,
Amarilli, Amarilli, Amarilli         Amaryllis, Amaryllis, Amaryllis,
è il mio amore.                             Is my beloved.