jan 1, 1602 - Le nuove musiche

Description:

Volume of solo songs with figured bass by Giulio Caccini. The songs are of two different types: arias, which are strophic, and madrigals, which are through-composed.


A Madrigal is therefore no longer necessarily a multi-voice piece. Any setting of a single stanza in a word-sensitive style that employs no formulaic repetitions or refrains could go by "madrigal".


In his experimental madrigals, Caccini developed a style that, better than any other, could "move the soul's affection," or, as we might put it now, move the listener emotionally.

Amarilli mia bella sets words by Alessandro Guarini... Caccini's setting was an attempt to show that only monody could really do a madrigal's job. And yet this is a madrigal without obvious pictorial "madrigalisms."There is no rapid scale to show the arrow's flight; there is no thumping throb to show the beating heart. Rather, the concentration is on speech, delivered at something close to normal speech tempo and restricted to something like normal speech range so that the words can be understood. The entire vocal part is confined to an octave, which is broken only by a single high ninth that occrus near the end to emphasize a key moment in the lyric. That rhetorical emphasis is the principal purpose of the song. Everything is correlated with it, including the harmonies specified by the figured bass.

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