Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

EX. 19-5B   Claudio Saracini,   Da  te  parto,  end

FAVOLE IN MUSICA

The style developed by Caccini and the others in camera (or in Camerata) did not stay long in private
chambers but was immediately returned to the theater whence, in a sense, it came. The monodist’s
objective was to recapture the emotional and ethical contagion of the Greek poet-musicians—in effect, the
idea was to resurrect or reinvent the Greek (sung) drama as reimagined by Girolamo Mei. Galilei had
exhorted his musician contemporaries to copy the inflections of actors, which implied from the beginning
that the ideal destination of the monody would be the mouths of actors—singing actors, who would add
the powers of music to their already highly developed histrionic skills.

EX. 19-6    Romanesca   tenor,  with    Caccini’s   and Frescobaldi’s   variants