Approaches to opera, 1590–1650

Music

Battle of Styles: The Story of Opera 1590-1650

The Renaissance represented a flowering of Western European Civilization in all its aspects. As the name suggests, it was a "renascence," or "rebirth" of high culture that took hold of much of Western Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. Philosophers, painters, sculptors, architects - and yes composers and musicians, too - set themselves to the task of reviving the lost glories of Ancient Greece and Rome. Taking their cues from the still-standing and recently unearthed relics of the Classical world, they attempted to reconstruct their own modern-day surroundings along Antique lines. What they could not learn about the past through direct observation i.e. from statues and buildings and the like, they attempted to piece together indirectly from those Latin and Greek texts that had come down to them. Of all the great Classical arts, however, it was music that proved most difficult to reconstruct. Having no recordings of the ancient music's actual sound, and possessing very few examples of Antique musical notation, the scholars of the Renaissance were forced to come up with what they believed to be an accurate replica of Classical music.

This ideal music -- as such they thought it was - would consist of dramatic presentations accompanied by both instrumental and vocal music; the vocal portions being further broken down into choral parts, and parts for a single voice. Such musical performances would best approximate the musical presentations of the Ancient Greeks who, unlike the Moderns, understood, and produced, the purest, most desirable, and most highly developed forms of each and every art. This new music would be called opera ("works" in Latin). It would first appear in Italy at the end of the Sixteenth Century.

The first composers of opera - in the period 1590 to 650 - were faced, therefore, with the difficulties of "reconstructing" a lost art. As they had little to work from save for theories, it was inevitable that their creations should proceed in different directions. Though all agreed that operas should be entirely sung, composers faced the problem of connecting actual songs, or arias, with the sung dialogue of the recitative.

The striving to achieve a seamless linkage between the powerful sentiments expressed by the aria, and the need to fill in the "back story" through use of recitative was emblematic of a basic philosophical goal of the Renaissance period. "It reflects the paradigmatic views of its time -- in particular, views of the mind/body relation. Early opera had no unconscious; it was not yet dualistic. Philosophers looked for ways to make soul and substance one."

For many composers of opera, however, this presented an interesting dilemma i.e. If opera was essentially a performance of song, was not the quality of the singing the most important feature? Giulio Caccini discourse at length on the beauty of the voice, and on the idea that only the solo voice can attain to true virtue. Giovanni de' Bardi summed up the viewpoint in a letter to Caccini:

The art of good singing, by implication far superior to counterpoint, comprises ensemble or solo performance. For ensembles, Bardi recommends blending the voices, ornamentation in strict time, and a reserved style of production.... The noblest aim of the singer -- to express exactly the affections of the song with all the suavity and sweetness he can muster. Dolcezza in voice and melody represents the most important aesthetic foundation of good singing, and in Bardi's estimation, Caccini is unsurpassed in this regard.

For Caccini, Bardi, and others, an opera was essentially an ensemble of beautiful songs. These songs must inspire emotions in their purest and most powerful forms.

Caccini featured his new singing style in his 1600 opera, Euridice, but it was Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo, in 1607, that represented the first true embodiment in opera of Caccini's monody. In this seminal work, Monteverdi employs the human voice in exactly the transcendent and unifying manner that the Renaissance philosophers believed had been the highest ideal of the Greeks. In Orfeo, Eternal truths are conveyed through the vehicle of the single human voice; the Voice is Musica, personification of the timeless art:

The prologue is a manifesto that renegotiates the meaning of the self as a monodic presence with power to influence the world. Nothing could be more modern than this supposedly ancient method of singing through which Musica simultaneously explains and demonstrates her instrumentality. Whereas in the past, humanity was fixed like alphabets upon the cosmic page, with opera, man has become a flexible, linguistic being; he is now the prologue that authorises the text.

Monteverdi strove to translate complex stories into the narrative of song. Renaissance thinkers saw Classical Mythology as containing much that was useful to men and women of their own age. The myths of the Ancient Greeks were timeless tales filled with characters whose dilemmas and successes spoke to the universal human condition. The thoughts and feelings of these characters were precisely what composers like Monteverdi hoped to express through the new medium of opera - "What is re-created is not a set of words ('oratione'), but rather the universal emotions ('affetti') of human beings"

Monteverdi's Orfeo is ultimately transcendent. Ostensibly a dramatization of the story of Orpheus, it is in reality an exposition of Orpheus' reactions to all that befalls him. His reactions are our reactions, for would we not feel the same if these things had happened to us?

Nevertheless, an opera is more than a set piece, it is also a story, and so the early composers of opera found themselves faced with another difficulty - how to balance the portrayal of emotion with the needs of telling a story. An opera, like any other good narrative, consist of a beginning, middle, and end. In the case of an operatic work, these sections of the tale correspond to the prologue, the body of the opera, and the finale. Time is important in so far as these different sections describe a progression. Something happens at the beginning that must be satisfactorily - from an aesthetic viewpoint at least - resolved at the end. Ottavio Rinuccini dealt with this problem of narrative organization in what is widely considered to be the very first opera ever written, Dafne, in 1597. Rinuccini followed Horace's dictum that, "A play that wants to be in demand and to be revived must not be shorter or longer than five acts."

In keeping with what was believed to be the ideal of Greek and Roman drama, Rinuccini and others endeavored to combine the properties of story with music that set a lyric tone. "The central focus of early opera is on narrative and lyrical recitative. This in itself represents the novelty and meraviglia of the favola in musica as well as its pseudo-classical pretensions -- both qualities being essentially manneristic."

In Dafne, Rinuccini uses one musical composition and technique to lead the listener to the next; the musical itself thus becoming a narrative device.

This wealth of resources never obscures the difference between the expressive solo singing that precedes the finale and the ample sonority of the closing chorus. Rinuccini seems to have been particularly intent on providing the composer with such a plan: in Dafne... Apollo's lament and hymn to the laurel usher in the 'Bella ninfa' finale; and in Euridice Orpheus' attractive and melodic 'Gioite al canto mio' (a modified strophic song) precedes the choral stanza 'Biondo arcier', where all sing and dance.

Where Monteverdi would use music and song as expressive of universal emotions, Rinuccini would use these elements to construct the tale on which other themes of human existence could be explored. By being faithful to the Renaissance interpretation of the Classical order of musical composition, Rinuccini and his fellow composers could hope to achieve the same breadth of impact as their Ancient counterparts. As emotion was universal so was technique.

As opera developed further during the course of the next few decades, the component parts and goals of the new form became more settled, and composers began to concentrate more enriching the specific features of the operatic style. The Venetian composer, Francesco Cavalli, is a good example of an artist who refined such elements of operatic musical and presentation technique as the lament, and the basso continuo. In L'Ormindo, there are certain features that seem to immediately stand out. For a long time, in Act V, there appear to be only two characters onstage: Erisbe and Mirinda. Erisbe is a beautiful young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to an old King. Mirinda is her faithful serving maid. The scene begins with a repetitive lament by Erisbe, her mournful cadences answered by Mirinda. The serving maid's song underscores the important phrases: "Golden tresses waving, winding...You restore by your sweet reconciling...bonds newly binding...." Erisbe's golden tresses are as ropes fluttering in the wind, ropes that shall bind the young queen to her beloved, the young prince Ormindo. Mirinda's echoing of her mistresses' words - always a bar or two behind - is evocative of her function and station in life. She is both subordinate to, and a supporter of Erisbe. The continuous repetition of the same phrases also serves to weave a kind of emotional melody, one that impresses the audience with the meaning and depth of Erisbe's feelings.

Laments fulfill an... integral role in the works of...Cavalli. All Cavalli's operas include at least one lament, and some of them several. Moreover, these threnodies fulfill their task admirably: they 'purge' the passions in the Aristotelian sense...they act as an effective foil for the lieto fine -- and they provide opportunities for good solo singing and for good music to boot. Since twenty-seven operatic scores of Cavalli survive, it is of course much easier to generalize about him [than about other composers of his time].... Everything...is fairly formulaic: the descending tetrachord in the minor mode; the cadential extension; intensification by the repetition of words.

While in the above example, Erisbe's and Mirinda's words are not sung in a minor key, they are in fact accompanied by another hallmark of the period: basso continuo. Running throughout the scene, always there, but always just below the surface, the chords of the basso continuo function as a sort of thematic glue, a theme song that continually replays the sense of doom and despair that fills the lovelorn Erisbe. The notes descend and rise again, but never to as high as the point where they began. And then again, they descend. It is an ever repeated set-piece, much like, were we to select a contemporary example, the killer's theme music in some Hollywood slasher. Basso continuo was much used by Cavalli's mentor Monetverdi, and in fact, became a stock feature of Baroque music. However, while providing a linking force, or undercurrent, to the entire piece, it also offered significant opportunities in regard to the dramatic presentation and effect of the piece. At such an early period as that at which L'Ormindo was composed (1644), there was little in the way of actual, notated direction that was given to the accompanist. A talented accompanist, therefore, could add real depth and poignancy to a piece.

A basso continuo part... was usually notated as a bass line with figures placed above it, the figures indicating to the player of a chordal instrument, such as the archlute, the harpsichord or the organ, the harmonies he was to play in addition to the bass line itself. The bass line was often supported by a sustaining instrument -- the bass viol, the cello, the bassoon, sometimes the violone or the double bass. It is usually fairly easy to deduce, where there is no explicit direction, what instrument or combination of instruments is most suitable...vocal music for some kind of lute early in the period.