music in 1594 by the Florentine composers Corsi and Peri. The first opera to survive intact
is probably Euridice, set to music by Peri and Caccini and performed in 1600 as a wedding
gift to Maria de Medici and Henri IV. Opera, as a new art form, then spread to other Italian
courts with the better-known Orfeoof Monteverdi in 1604. Since that time, a question that
has interested both music analysts and composers has been to determine which of the
words or the music plays the most important role in opera. In his Life of Rossini, Stendhal
(1783–1842) argued that music is most important:‘its function is to animate the words’.
Later, ethnomusicologists, such as Levman,^70 pointed out that the lyrics are subordinate to
the music in tribal songs and rituals. By contrast, Richard Wagner (1813–83) considered
that both aspects are intrinsically linked:‘Words give rise to the music and music develops
and reinforces the language’, an opinion shared by Pierre Boulez:^71 ‘The text is the centre280 Figure 18.3ERP results for musicians and nonmusicians are presented separately for familiar and unfamiliar
musical phrases. The vertical lines mark the onset of the final note. Results are from one typical recording site, the
parietal location (Pz). The amplitude of the positive component, P600, is larger for nondiatonic than for diatonic
incongruity, for musicians than for nonmusicians and for familiar than for unfamiliar musical phrases. (Adapted
from Ref. 69.)
FamiliarMusiciansCongruous
Nondiatonic
DiatonicNonmusiciansP600P600P600P600- 5 μV
Unfamiliar0 400 800 ms 0 400 800 ms