FIG. 19-5 Giulio Caccini, Amarilli mia bella (Le nuove musiche, 1601).
The expressive harmonies occur at cadences, under long drawn-out notes whose delayed resolutions
not only represent but actually evoke in the listener the desire that is the main subject matter of any love
poem. Thus the ancient Greek ideal of ethos—affective “contagion”—is realized (not that Plato would
have approved of spreading this particular affect around!). At this early stage of continuo practice, the
figures represent specific pitches fixed in register, rather than generic intervals. The main cadential
formula—11–#10–14 (occurring six times, beginning with the second system)—would later be
represented as 4–3–7, subtracting an octave (= 7 steps) from every figure; it is now recognizable as the
familiar “four–three” suspension, another term that we have retained from early “thoroughbass” notation.
(Later still, the sharp would by itself come to imply a raised third, and the figures would read 4–#–7. The
line cannot come to rest until two dissonances—the suspension fourth and the appoggiatura seventh (not
allowed in ars perfecta writing)—have been resolved. Such a harmonic intensifier will reinforce any
emotion with rhetorical emphasis.
EX. 19-2 Giuliu Caccini, Amarilli mia bella, first couplet in transcription, mm. 1–10