Week 32: Opera, quintessential art of the 17th century (part I)

1. Stuff done this week

• Reading about Opera in A History of Western Music (Burkholder et al., 2014), chapter 14. Please find my notes below.

• Practicing Sonatina in C Major (first part) by Ludwig van Beethoven on mandolin.

2. Listening done this week

Ludwig van Beethoven composed this delightful mandolin composition in the key of C major.

Each new line starts with an arpeggio. This performance is by mandolist Bryce Milano and fortepianist Sylvia Barry.

3. What I have learned

The Invention of Opera

Here are my first notes from Chapter 14 of A History of Western Music (Burkholder et al., 2014):

Opera was the quintessential art of the 17th century. It consists of a libretto (text, literally meaning "little book" in Italian), a play usually in rhymed or unrhymed verse, combined with continuous or nearly continuous music, and it is staged with scenery, costumes, and action.

Opera was on one hand a new invention. It was a contemporary attempt at recreating ancient Greek tragedy. Like Greek drama, it was sung throughout, and music served to convey emotional effects. On the other hand, opera was a blend of existing performing arts, like plays, theatre, dance, madrigals and solo song.

Foundations of opera

Earliest operas date from around 1600. Late Medieval and Renaissance plays often incorporated music. One source for opera was the pastoral drama. This is a play in verse with music and song which has a rural setting idealising classical mythology. An example is Angelo Poliziano's "Favola d'Orfeo", relating the legend of Orpheus.

Another source was the madrigal. Some madrigals were miniature dramas, using contrasting groups of voices, depicting dialogues between characters. In madrigals, expressing emotion musically was very important and this we also see in opera. Sometimes madrigals were grouped, to present a succession of scenes.This was known as a madrigal comedy or cycle. An example is "L'Amfiparnaso" by Orazio Vecchi (1550 - 1605).

A third - most important - source, was the intermedio, a musical interlude on a pastoral, allegorical or mythological subject performed between acts of a play. They served to mark scenes or the passage of time. The 1589 comic play "La Pellegrina", typically featured 6 intermedi.

Greek Tragedy served as a Model

Humanist scholars and artists aimed to revive Greek tragedy and its emotional effect through music.

Scholars disagreed amongst themselves about the role of music in ancient tragedy. One view contended that only the choruses were sung (for instance expressed in "Oedipus Rex" by Andrea Gabrieli). A contrary view, expressed by Girolamo Mei (1519 - 1594) was that the entire text was sung.

The central idea from taken from Greek music was, however, that music should serve to heighten the emotional experience, so that the listener would comprehend the moral lessons of the play.

The Florentine Camerata

Mei related his views to Count Bardi and composer Vincenzo Galileï (ca. 1520s - 1591), father of the famous astronomer. From around 1570, Bardi hosted an academic circle in Florence known as the Camerata in which science and arts were discussed. Mei's ideas were often discussed here. From these discussions, Galileï concluded that only a single line of melody could effectively express a given line of poetry. Counterpoint, in which several independent voices would sing different melodies, would cause chaos and never be able to deliver the emotional message of the text. He also believed that word painting, such as imitations of sighing, frequently used in madrigals, were childish. Only melody could enhance natural speech of a good orator or actor.

Galileï advocated monody (accompanied solo singing). True to these viewpoints expressed by the Camerata, Caccini wrote numerous songs for solo voice, which he published in 1602 under the title "Le nuove musiche" (The New Music). The songs with strophic poetry he called arias ("airs") and the others are known as solo madrigals, to distinguish them from the multivocal madrigals. He set each line of poetry as a separate phrase ending in a cadence, shaping the melody to the text. Faithful to the principles of the Camerata he enhanced the meaning of the text by adding ornamentation, not just to display vocal virtuosity.

4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A History of Western Music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton.


WGBH Music (2012) WGBH Music: Beethoven "Mandolin Sonatina in C", Youtube, viewed 4th of September 2017,<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmGraXcor-A>.