Caccini claimed the new style as his invention, and it is certain that
parts of _Euridice_ were composed by him, though Peri’s name alone
appears on the title page of the published work. Emulating the success
of his colleague, the former soon set the same drama to music.
=Characteristics of the Early Opera=.—The two settings are so similar
that one might almost be taken for the other. Both display the same
characteristics. Of dramatic feeling or characterization as understood
at the present day there is no sign; development of musical thought,
none whatever; a dreary waste of recitatives is but slightly relieved
by the occasional flourishes (_giri e gruppi_, that is, runs and turns)
allowed the singers by the taste of the times. The choruses, however,
which are introduced freely, serve to vary the monotony somewhat. They
exhibit a singular mingling of the old and new styles, natural under
the circumstances. The voices sing either in a recitative-like unison,
or begin in fugato, and later move in simple harmonic progression.
Their distaste for the contrapuntal style led these reformers to
reject it so far as they could. Its appearance at all is due to the
fact that no other mode of writing for a number of voices had as yet
been devised—a strictly harmonic treatment had not been thought of.
Since, then, they were at a loss as to the management of choral masses,
they were obliged to have recourse in part to old methods.
Another name associated with the Florentine school deserving mention is
that of =Marco da Gagliano=, a priest who soon took the lead in the new
movement. His first opera was _Dafne_ (1607), composed to Rinuccini’s
drama which had already served Peri; it was a common practice in those
days for composers to use the same text. As a scholar and musician,
Gagliano was superior to his predecessors. He shows a greater warmth
of feeling and a tendency toward melody which they considered as a
lowering of their ideals.
=The Florentine School=.—One particular characteristic of the
Florentine school was a sedulous _avoidance_ of anything like _extended
melody_ or definite form. To the composers of this school, music was
not an end in itself; it was subordinate to the distinct, _impassioned
declamation_ of the poet’s verses. They held that any independent
development of musical thought was a weakness; that it tended to
distract the attention of the hearer from the drama, and to interfere
with its logical continuity. The predominant influence was that of
the scholar, not of the musician. This was to be expected from the
character of the little coterie interested in the new art-form. The
majority were wealthy amateurs, zealous students of the classics and
aflame with the desire for the actual revival of the Greek tragedy.
Peri and Caccini were the only musicians and they were strongly averse
to the contrapuntal music of the day. Its persistently ecclesiastical
effect debarred it from expressing the personal feeling which was
the object of their research. In the effort to escape its ban, they
unwittingly emancipated their art from the control of the Church, and
made it accessible to mankind in general. This, therefore, is the great
service of the Florentine reformers: the establishment of a purely
secular school of music susceptible of indefinite development.
Making allowance for the vast difference in means due to the practical
creation of independent instrumental music since the 17th century,
their practice was precisely the same as that of the modern composer
who writes a music drama and uses the same term to define his work.
When _Dafne_ and _Euridice_ first saw the light, however, there was
neither knowledge nor experience to point the way; it was found only
after a slow and laborious process of experimentation, involving the
acceptance of much that was rejected after having served its turn.
Though Peri and Caccini with their confrères did not succeed in the end
they had in view, they accomplished far more by originating the Opera,
the point of departure for the whole modern art of music.