THE “MONODIC REVOLUTION”
The arias by Caccini and Peri were the only moves toward “monodic insurgency” (in the words of music
historian Piero Weiss) in the 1589 intermedii.^6 The expression is a witty one, because historians have
fallen into the habit of calling what happened scarcely a dozen years later the great “monodic revolution,”
and because many of the same names as took part in the 1589 festivities—Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini,
Cavalieri—are to be found among the turn-of the-century monodic “revolutionaries.” Yet what actually
happened around 1600 was no sudden musical revolution, but only the emergence into print of musical
practices that had been in the process of formation over the whole preceding century. These practices had