Mei did not know what Greek music sounded like, but he knew (or thought he knew) what it did not
sound like. It was not full of counterpoint, the invention of conceited sensualists preoccupied with their
own technique and with mere aural titillation. Their music was just a lot of sound and fury signifying
nothing, because its many simultaneous melodies “convey to the soul of the listener at the same time
diverse and contrary affections.”^1 It was precisely because their music was monophonic, Mei believed,
and because their modes did not all use the same set of pitches, that the Greeks were able to achieve their
miracles of ethos, or moral influence through music.
Mei’s researches became known to a group of Florentine humanists who in the 1570s and 1580s were
meeting at the home of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi, a hero of the defense of Malta against the Turks and a
favorite courtier of Grand Duke Francesco I of Tuscany, for whom he had the job of organizing court
entertainments, including musical spectacles. It was in this latter capacity that Bardi became interested in
theatrical or dramatic music. He corresponded with Mei about the music of the Greek tragedies and
comedies, and also put Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 1530–91), a lutenist-singer in his employ, in touch with the
great scholar.
Galilei, who had studied with Zarlino (and whose son Galileo, as we know, made something of a
name for himself in another field), was the best-trained musician in Bardi’s inner circle. He had already
published a treatise on arranging polyphonic music for solo voice accompanied by lute, and had begun a
gloss on Zarlino’s Istitutioni harmoniche, supplemented with information on ancient music theory as it
was being disseminated among humanists. It was in connection with this project that Galilei began
corresponding with Mei, whose research had revealed the differences between the ancient system of
modes and tunings and the modern, contradicting Zarlino’s assertion that the new had grown directly out
of the old. This challenge to the historical legitimacy of the ars perfecta estranged Galilei from Zarlino. It
became Galilei’s mission to effect a true reconciliation of ancient theory and modern practice.
FIG. 19-1 Title page of Vincenzo Galilei’s Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna.
This he never achieved; indeed such a thing was scarcely achievable. But his correspondence with
Mei won him over to the view that the ars perfecta, far from the ultimate perfection of music, was a
frivolous deviation from the true meaning and purpose of music as practiced by the ancients, and that the
only way of restoring to music the expressive powers of which the ancients wrote would be to strip away