Listening Assignment, MU111: #8, Part 2
The Early Baroque: Music in an Age of Excess

Prof. Saunders

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Listen next to an example of monody (Italian solo song with basso continuo accompaniment from the early 17th century), Giulio Caccini's "Amarilli, mia bella." The song comes from Caccini's Le nuove musiche [The New Music], a collection of works for solo voice and basso continuo published at Florence in 1602.

Caccini was born--so far as we know--in Rome, but spent most of his life in service of the Medici, the ruling family of Florence. There he belonged to a group of artists and intellectuals, Florentine Camerata. This group of Italian humanists developed some remarkable ideas about how a new, and more impassioned style of singing might be invented. Their goal was to have music imitate the emotional power of ancient orators like Cicero.

Caccini claimed that he tried to make his music "nothing but speech"? How did he strive to write music that would produce the wondrous emotional responses that he read about in Plato and other writers of Antiquity? To gain some idea, listen to "Amarilli mia bella."

At first hearing you should notice several features of "Amarilli mia bella":

• It is a monody, a song for solo voice with accompaniment by basso continuo WARNING: Don't confuse monody with monophonic texture, the single line texture of Gregorian chant. The texture of 17th-century monody--17th century solo songs in other words--is actually homophonic.)
• The basso continuo accompaniment is played by a lute on this recording
• The lute player is not playing single notes to accompany the singer, even though single notes are all that's written in the score. He is realizing the figured bass, playing extra notes implied by the printed numbers called continuo figures. This sparse, partially improvised accompaniment allows the singer to declaim the text with some freedom.

Listen again to "Amarilli, mia bella," concentrating on the form of this monody. The second half of the poem, lines 4-7, are repeated; not surprisingly, the music is repeated as well. Notice how the singer varies this written-out repeat, singing notes in addition to those that are written. He adds short groups of notes, embellishments or ornaments, at various places, especially before cadences. Listen for the added embellishments; a good singer in the 17th century was expected to be an expert at adorning a melody by adding these improvised notes. The continuo realization was also largely improvised according to the instructions provided by the figures; likewise, vocal embellishments were improvised.

Unlike later music, then, Caccini's printed score is not an exact blueprint for performance; it's more like a sketch with some suggestions. The history of music could almost be seen as an attempt by composers to write down their intentions more and more exactly--and in the process rob performers of more and more freedom!