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The Baroque: The Revolution of the Song (c. 1600–1690)
The Italian seventeenth century stands at the heart of European Baroque music, marking an explicit break with the aesthetic norms of the Renaissance. The values of balance and restraint were replaced by dramatic, emotional, and “marvelous” forms. The song was the driving force of this revolution, transforming itself from the polyphonic madrigal into accompanied monody and into the succession of songs within the Drammi per Musica.
What Do We Mean by Song?
Throughout this journey, the term “song” is understood in the original sense of our tradition, that of Dante Alighieri, who defines the song as the final union of words and music. The song includes arias, salon romances, and chamber vocal pieces. They are all forms of the same great Italian family of sung poetry, and it is important to remember this in order to avoid modern misunderstandings that separate what historically has always been united.
The Birth of the Modern Language
The Baroque is defined by the affirmation of accompanied monody, a new structure that established a clear hierarchy among parts, approaching the model of song as we understand it today. The Upper Voice (Melody) assumed the principal role, conveying lyrical or dramatic expression, while the Basso Continuo, an essential yet independent bass line, provided structural and harmonic support.
The intermediate voices were integrated into the realization of the chords, which could also be improvised according to the science of partimenti, reflecting a freedom of performance far removed from later rigidity, as imagined by certain philologists. This turning point was theorized by the Florentine Camerata (or Camerata Bardi), a group of gentlemen, musicians, and poets (including Vincenzo Galilei, Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini) who criticized polyphonic song for its expressive inefficiency. They proposed a new melodic language, the recitar cantando, in which the song had primarily to enhance the emotional meaning of the words.
The Rise of New Chamber Song Genres
The principles of the Camerata quickly led to the formalization of two new categories of solo song, often intended for domestic performance (Musica da Camera). On the one hand emerged the Monodic Madrigal, characterized by non-strophic (free) text and music allowing extended ornamentation to intensify the affect of individual verses. Giulio Caccini, with Le nuove musiche (1602), provided the manifesto of this monodic secular song.
On the other hand arose the Aria, a strophic song with an almost entirely syllabic melody, more lyrical than dramatic. It was based on the principle of variation, where the bass line repeated in fixed form while the vocal line was varied, often with improvised embellishments by the performer. These forms soon evolved into collections of songs on a single subject, known as Cantatas, officially appearing around 1620.
The Cantata (a collection of songs on a given literary theme) assumed a more extended and complex structure, evolving toward the structural alternation of Recitative (narrative introduction, close to speech) and Aria (the song proper, lyrical and expressive moment). Alessandro Grandi, and later Giacomo Carissimi and Alessandro Stradella, were among the leading exponents of this genre. At the same time, the Chamber Duet, representing another type of song (the equivalent of a modern popular duet), re-emerged in a new guise, alternating homorhythmic writing with passages of imitative counterpoint.
The Birth of Opera
The search for recitar cantando culminated in the most enduring Italian invention: the Dramma per Musica (Opera), the direct ancestor of modern mass spectacles combining songs, dances, actors, and a narrative plot.
At the outset stood La Dafne (1597) by Peri/Rinuccini, considered the first dramma per musica. Opera is fundamentally a sequence of songs following the plot of a libretto—something akin to an ancestor of the modern musical, since it also included dances and choreographed movement. The first great masterpiece was Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607), which demonstrated the capacity of the new language to translate Greek tragedy into a sequence of songs while sustaining emotional intensity throughout.
In Venice, Opera Became a Business
Beginning with the Carnival season of 1637 and the opening of the Teatro di San Cassiano, opera moved from court spectacle to commercial enterprise (ticketed performance). The impresarial model was born in the seventeenth century and defined modern opera, with the progressive differentiation between Recitative (advancing the action) and Aria (the true song), which increasingly became the moment of vocal virtuosity designed to satisfy public demand. The cult of star singers, which would inflame audiences across Europe, also began here.
The Venetian Opera Style
Masters such as Francesco Cavalli (noted for dramatic recitative in works like Giasone) and Antonio Cesti (distinguished by lyrical cantability in works such as Il pomo d’oro) created a vast repertoire of songs that circulated, even in isolated numbers, throughout Europe.
Music, Society, and the Sacred Oratorio
Music became integrated into Baroque culture through the Festa, a total theater celebrating princely and ecclesiastical power, using music—and especially songs—as an instrument of governance.
The genre of the Oratorio (a succession of songs on religious themes, dramatic and narrative in function but without staging) also took shape in this period. The Latin Oratorio (such as Jephte by Giacomo Carissimi) relied on recitative for narration (Historicus), while the Italian Oratorio (such as San Giovanni Battista by Alessandro Stradella) approached opera in its alternation of recitatives and religious songs, also called Arie. The Oratorio served as an alternative to secular spectacle during Lent.
The Neapolitan Conservatories
The first public institutions for professional musical training (such as the Pietà dei Turchini) formed generations of composers and virtuoso singers who spread Italian songs throughout Europe, establishing Italian cultural hegemony in the musical field. It is no coincidence that Naples later developed a particularly fertile tradition of songwriters and composers of song.
Performance Practice
As in previous centuries, freedom of performance was the norm. Singers and instrumentalists enjoyed wide autonomy in adding ornamentation (diminutions or colorature), shaping the music according to the occasion. This free practice, far from any rigid approach, characterized the Italian song since the time of the troubadours. The Italian Baroque was the era in which the song, freed from the constraints of polyphony, became a direct, dramatic, and soloistic language, capable of expressing the shifting affections of the human soul.
Why Does Italian Song Begin Here in the Middle Ages?
In this history we do not separate what, in Italian culture, has always been united. For centuries, “song” meant what today we would call a poetic-musical form, regardless of duration. The troubadours, the Sicilian School, Dante, Petrarch, the madrigalists, opera composers—all wrote songs. The fracture between art music and song is a late nineteenth-century idea, not even originally Italian, but imported from the German-speaking world. It reflects other realities. For this reason, narrating the history of the Italian song means following a single thread that runs through seven centuries—from the Stil Novo to Metastasio, from monody to opera, from Monteverdi to Cherubini, from Puccini to our singer-songwriters. It is a continuous path, not a collection of disconnected episodes.
© Collezione Varrone & Romano (Tutti i diritti riservati).
Read the first complete and documented history of the Italian song tradition, with extended analysis and theoretical references.
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