The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de' Bardi, were a group of
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
s, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...
who gathered under the patronage of Count
Giovanni de' Bardi
Giovanni de' Bardi (5 February 1534 – September 1612), Count of Vernio, was an Italian literary critic, writer, composer and soldier.
Biography
Giovanni de' Bardi was born in Florence.
While he received a deep classical education, becoming pr ...
to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama.
They met at the house of Giovanni de' Bardi, and their gatherings had the reputation of having all the most famous men of Florence as frequent guests. After first meeting in 1573, the activity of the Camerata reached its height between 1577 and 1582. While propounding a revival of the Greek dramatic style, the Camerata's musical experiments led to the development of the ''
stile recitativo''. In this way it facilitated the composition of dramatic music and the development of
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
.
Membership
The term ''camerata'' is entirely a new construct coined by the members of Bardi's circle, although apparently based on the Italian word for "chamber", ''camera'', a term used for a room where important meetings were held.
The name for Bardi's group comes from
Giulio Caccini
Giulio Romolo Caccini (also Giulio Romano) (8 October 1551 – buried 10 December 1618) was an Italian composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders of the genre o ...
's score for ''
Euridice'', wherein he dedicates the work to Count Bardi, remembering the "Camerata's good years."
The earliest recorded meeting was 14 January 1573 at Count Giovanni Bardi's house. Known members of the group besides Bardi included
Giulio Caccini
Giulio Romolo Caccini (also Giulio Romano) (8 October 1551 – buried 10 December 1618) was an Italian composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders of the genre o ...
,
Pietro Strozzi, and
Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei (born 3 April 1520, Santa Maria a Monte, Italy died 2 July 1591, Florence, Italy) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist. His children included the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and the lute virtuoso and ...
(the father of the astronomer
Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He wa ...
).
Girolamo Mei also participated, and at a young age,
Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini (20 January 1562 – 28 March 1621) was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. In collaborating with Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, '' Dafne'', i ...
(1562-1621), likely the first opera
librettist
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major litu ...
, may have also participated.
Less prominent members of the Camerata may have included the musicians
Emilio de' Cavalieri, Francesco Cini,
Cristoforo Malvezzi, and
Alessandro Striggio
Alessandro Striggio (c. 1536/1537 – 29 February 1592) was an Italian composer, instrumentalist and diplomat of the Renaissance. He composed numerous madrigals as well as dramatic music, and by combining the two, became the inventor of madrigal c ...
. Literary figures included
Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini (10 December 1538 – 7 October 1612) was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.
Life
Guarini was born in Ferrara. On the termination of his studies at the universities of Pisa, Padua and Ferrara, he was appointed pr ...
,
Gabriello Chiabrera, and Giovanni Battista
Strozzi the younger.
The social circle of
Jacopo Corsi
Jacopo Corsi (17 July 1561 – 29 December 1602) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque and one of Florence's leading patrons of the arts, after only the Medicis. His best-known work is '' Dafne'' (1597/98), whose sc ...
should not be confused with the Camerata of Bardi. Though they included many of the same luminaries, the rivalry between Corsi and Bardi was fierce and constant.
Unifying the Camerata members was the belief that music had become corrupt, and by returning to the forms and style of the
ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...
, the art of music could be improved, and thereby society could be improved as well. Though they did not originate many of their conclusions about music, the Camerata of Bardi solidified the ideas gleaned from outside thinkers like Girolamo Mei.
Foundation
Prior to the Camerata's inception, there existed a popular sentiment among the Camerata's Renaissance contemporaries that music should mimic the ancient roots of the Greeks. The current day's thought held that the Greeks used a style between speech and song, and this belief guided the Camerata's discourse.
They were influenced by
Girolamo Mei, the foremost scholar of ancient Greece at the time, who held—among other things—that ancient Greek drama was predominantly sung rather than spoken.
Foundational for this belief was the writing of the Greek thinker
Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been ...
, who proposed that speech should set the pattern for song.
Largely concerned with a revival of the Greek dramatic style, the Camerata's musical experiments led to the development of the ''
stile recitativo''. Cavalieri was the first to employ the new recitative style, trying his creative hand at a few pastoral scenes.
The style later became primarily linked with the development of opera.
The criticism of contemporary music by the Camerata centered on the overuse of
polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...
at the expense of the sung text's intelligibility.
Excessive counterpoint offended so the ears of the Camerata because it muddled the ''affetto'' ("affection") of the important visceral reaction in poetry. It is the job of the composer to communicate the ''affetto'' into an audible, comprehensible sound. Intrigued by ancient descriptions of the emotional and moral effect of ancient Greek
tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
and comedy, which they presumed to be sung as a single line to a simple instrumental accompaniment, the Camerata proposed creating a new kind of music. Instead of trying to make the clearest polyphony they could, the Camerata voiced an opinion recorded by a contemporary Florentine, "means must be found in the attempt to bring music closer to that of classical times."
Composition
In his formative days, Vincenzo Galilei was trained in music theory by the famed
Gioseffo Zarlino.
In 1582 Vincenzo Galilei performed a setting, that he composed himself, of
Ugolino's lament from
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...
's ''
Inferno
Inferno may refer to:
* Hell, an afterlife place of suffering
* Conflagration, a large uncontrolled fire
Film
* ''L'Inferno'', a 1911 Italian film
* Inferno (1953 film), ''Inferno'' (1953 film), a film noir by Roy Ward Baker
* Inferno (1973 fi ...
''. Caccini also is known to have performed several of his own songs which were more or less chanted melodically over a simple chordal accompaniment.
The Camerata composers sought to recreate the style of Greek music, even though actual transcribed Greek music had been lost for centuries.
The musical style which developed from these early experiments was called
monody. In the 1590s, the monody developed into a vehicle capable of extended dramatic expression through the work of composers such as
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri (20 August 156112 August 1633), known under the pseudonym Il Zazzerino, was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera. He wrote th ...
, working in conjunction with poet
Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini (20 January 1562 – 28 March 1621) was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. In collaborating with Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, '' Dafne'', i ...
. In 1598, Peri and Rinuccini produced ''
Dafne
''Dafne'' is the earliest known work that, by modern standards, could be considered an opera. The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini survives complete; the mostly lost music was completed by Jacopo Peri, but at least two of the six surviving fragment ...
'', an entire drama sung in monodic style: this was the first creation of a new form called "opera".
Though Peri's ''Dafne'' was the first performed opera, its music has been lost to the centuries. Instead, ''
Euridice'', his second opera is most-often heralded as the history-making work.
The new form of opera also borrowed, especially for the
librettos, from an existing pastoral poetic form called
intermedio
The intermedio (also intromessa, introdutto, tramessa, tramezzo, intermezzo, intermedii), in the Italian Renaissance, was a theatrical performance or spectacle with music and often dance, which was performed between the acts of a play to celeb ...
; it was mainly the musical style that was new. The instrumentation for an opera from the Camerata composers (Caccini and Peri) was written for a handful of gambas, lutes, and harpsichord or organ for
continuo.
Other composers quickly began to incorporate the ideas of the Camerata into their music, and by the first decade of the seventeenth century the new "music drama" was being widely composed, performed and disseminated. Instead of an immediate decline in contrapuntal vocal music, there was a time of coexistence and then an eventual synthesis of
monody and
polyphony
Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...
. Florence, Rome, and Venice became the Italian capitals of innovation and synthesis.
The Camerata's view on
counterpoint and monody did not rise to prominence without opposition. Galilei's famed theory teacher Zarlino countered, "What has the musician to do with those who recite tragedies and comedies?"
In the compositions of the Camerata members, the theory preceded the practice; the men decided how the music should sound before they set to compose it.
The composers of the Camerata became so faithfully committed to the exploration of their declamatory style that often their pieces became rife with monotone sonorities.
Eventually the influence of the Bardi circle waned as Giovanni Bardi fell out of favor. Bardi publicly endorsed the marriage of
Francesco I de' Medici and his mistress
Bianca Cappello. This endorsement was in stark contrast to the feelings of Francesco's brother
Ferdinando I de' Medici, who was a cardinal in Rome at that time.
Legacy
Bardi, Galilei, and Caccini left writings expounding their ideas. Bardi wrote the ''Discorso'' (1578), a long letter to Giulio Caccini, and Galilei published the ''Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna'' (1581–1582).
In 1602, long after the group had disbanded, Caccini wrote "Le nuove musiche".
The members of Bardi's circle may not have recognized the full importance of their labors, as no one named the group until Caccini's label in 1600. Galilei once marked that Bardi aided noblemen in the study of music.
Yet, through the critical efforts of men like Galilei, the Camerata gained an indirect influence on the flow of music history, as Galilei challenged artists to rethink the palette of sound they had been utilizing for decades.
The greatest innovation to emerge from the Camerata was not a piece of music or aesthetic ideal, but rather a door opened for further composition of dramatic music.
References
Citations
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Florentine Camerata
History of Florence
Renaissance music
Italian Renaissance humanists
Italian music history
16th-century Italian composers
Italian male composers
1570s establishments in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany
1573 establishments in Italy
Culture of Tuscany