![]() Opera was initially commissioned by Italian noblemen, often for important occasions such as marriages or births, and performed in the halls of their castles and palaces. If the purpose of the recitative was to convey emotions through a simple melodic line, then the purpose of the aria was increasingly to impress the audience with the skills of the singer. As the century progressed, these melodies became increasingly difficult or virtuosic. The melodies sung in arias almost always conformed to a musical meter, such as duple or triple, and unfolded in phrases of similar lengths. ![]() Like recitatives, arias were homophonic compositions featuring a solo singer over accompaniment. Operas began with an instrumental piece called the Overture. Instrumental interludes tended to be sectional, that is, having different sections that sometimes repeated, as we find in other instrumental music of the time. Operatic dance numbers used the most popular dances of the day, such as pavanes and galliards. The choruses in opera were not unlike the late Renaissance madrigals that we studied in chapter three. ![]() This method created a homophonic texture, which consists of one melody line with accompaniment, as you might re- call from chapter one.Ĭomposers of early opera combined recitatives with other musical numbers such as choruses, dances, arias, instrumental interludes, and the overture. The singer of the recitative was given license to speed up and slow down as the words and emotions of the text might direct, with the instrumental accompaniment following along. The flexible nature of basso continuo also under- lined its supporting nature. This system of indicating chords by numbers was called figured bass, and allowed the instrumentalist more freedom in forming the chords than had every note of the chord been notated. The accompaniment was called the basso continuo.īasso continuo is a continuous bass line over which the harpsichord, organ, or lute added chords based on numbers or figures that appeared under the melody that functioned as the bass line, would become a defining feature of Baroque music. This individual would be accompanied by just one or two instruments: a keyboard instrument, such as a harpsichord or small organ, or a plucked string instrument, such as the lute. They identified a style that they called recitative, in which a single individual would sing a melody line that follows the inflections and rhythms of speech (see figure one with an excerpt of basso continuo). Less than impressed by the emotional impact of the rule-driven polyphonic church music of the Renaissance, members of the Florentine Camerata argued that a simple melody supported by sparse accompaniment would be more moving. Although today we believe that actually only the choruses of ancient drama were sung, these circa 1600 beliefs led to collaborations with musicians and the development of opera. This group, which included Vicenzo Galilei, father of Galileo Galilei, speculated that the reason for ancient drama’s being so moving was its having been entirely sung to a sort of declamatory style that was midway between speech and song. One particularly active group of scholars and aristocrats interested in the ancient world was the Florentine Camerata, so called because they met in the rooms (or camerata) of a nobleman in Florence, Italy. ![]() Scholars as well as educated noblemen read descriptions of the emotional power of ancient dramas, such as those by Sophocles, which began and ended with choruses. ![]() As we have seen in Chapter Three, Renaissance Humanism led to new interest in ancient Greece and Rome. Music drama had existed since the Middle Ages (and perhaps even earlier), but around 1600, noblemen increasingly sponsored experiments that combined singing, instrumental music, and drama in new ways. The beginning of the Baroque Period is in many ways synonymous with the birth of opera. ![]()
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