Jacopo Peri (1561-1633): Aspects of His Life and WorksAuthor(s): Tim CarterSource: Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 105 (1978 - 1979), pp. 50-62Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766247 .Accessed: 05/04/2011 05:14

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Jacopo Peri (1561-1633): Aspects of his Life and Works

TIM CARTER

JACOPO PERI, the so-called 'inventor' of opera, is well known to music historians. To concentrate solely on his Dafne and Euridice, however, is to present a distorted picture of this court musician. The time has come to seek out a more balanced view of a composer who was not quite the revolutionary that the history books would have us believe.

Peri was born on 20 August 1561 into a Florentine family that had distinguished itself in republican service.' He himself insisted on the fact that he was a nobleman, but there are few reliable details of the circumstances surrounding his birth, and so his exact social standing remains obscure. Certainly he sought after the titles and trappings of nobility with a single- mindedness bordering on the obsessive.2 During his long lifetime he was a businessman and landowner, as well as a musician. In fact, he seems to have objected to the more mundane aspects of court service. This helps to explain his uncommitted attitude to composition and performance. It also casts new light on his attempts to ennoble the music of his time.

As a child he must have shown considerable talent, for at the age of twelve he was employed as a singer of laudi by the Servite monastery of SS Annunziata.3 His musical education continued under the maestro di cappella of the Duomo and S Giovanni Battista, Cristofano Malvezzi. Malvezzi later obtained for his pupil a post as singer in the choir of S Giovanni.4 He also introduced him into court circles by having him write the music for the first intermedio of Giovanni Fedini's comedy Le due Persilie, performed at court on 16 February 1583 (new style).5 In 1579 Peri was appointed principal organist at the church of the Badia,6 and by 1588 he had entered the select band of court musicians.7 He remained with the Medici court until his death in August 1633 as singer, accompanist and composer.8 Euridice, performed as part of the festivities for the wedding of Maria de'Medici to Henvy IV of France, did not mark the pinnacle of his career. Indeed, the disastrous performance of 6 October 1600, with the scenery unfinished and with Giulio Caccini's singers singing his own rather than Peri's music, must have seemed exactly the opposite.9 It was not until the second decade of the new century that he firmly established himself at the forefront of musical life in Florence.

The fact that Peri was a professional singer, and by all accounts a highly talented one, is of course important in accounting for the more pragmatic elements of the new recitative. What has not been fully appreciated, however, is that he was also a fully trained composer. His years of study at the choir school of SS Annunziata and under Malvezzi gave him a solid grounding in the techniques of polyphony. For his contemporaries it was precisely this that distinguished him from the other protagonists of the new music.10 In 1577

Malvezzi included a ricercare by his pupil in his first book of four-part ricercares, and in 1583 he added to his first book of five-part madrigals Peri's setting of'Caro dolce ben mio'." Both are obviously student pieces, but they reveal a more than passing'competence in polyphonic writing. Peri's skill in counterpoint was transferred to the music for solo voice and continuo, and Euridice and the songs owe much to the madrigalian tradition.

Apart from Euridice, Peri's only other published work is a volume of chamber songs, Le vane musiche, which appeared in 1609.12 As befitted a member of the nobility it was collected and edited not by Peri himself but by his publisher, Cristofano Marescotti. Peri, however, clearly had a hand in the matter, for it cannot be a coincidence that the volume should have appeared at a time when his prospects had just taken a turn for the better. In 1608 Caccini had fallen foul of the court after the celebrations for the wedding of Prince Cosimo de'Medici to Maria Maddalena of Austria. These festivities had once again been spoilt by petty squabbling among the court musicians.'3 In the same year, Marco da Gagliano, a close associate of Peri, had defeated Caccini's protege Santi Orlandi to replace Luca Bati as the Grand Duke's maestro di cappella.'4 With Caccini in semi-retirement and Gagliano firmly ensconced in the most important musical position in the city it is not surprising that Peri's future at last seemed secure. His situation was further improved by the succession of Cosimo II in early 1609. Unlike his father Ferdinando I, Cosimo had no anti-Florentine prejudices and as prince he had specifically patronized Peri.'5 Le varie musiche was clearly intended to cement Peri's new-found position within the court and to establish him as one of the leading musicians of the city.

Marescotti cobbled together a mixed bag of songs, some of which had probably been composed several years earlier. This was not unusual in early monody publications. 16 There are eighteen settings, fourteen for solo voice and two each for two and three voices. These comprise four sonnets, nine madrigals, four arias, and one set ofstrophic variations. The poets represented are Rinuccini, Petrarch, Chiabrera, Guarini, Alessandro Striggio the younger, Francesco Cini, and Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger. Peri's literary tastes were both too conservative and too exacting to find a place for the excesses of Marino, a poet who had already been introduced to monody by Domenico Maria Melli and Severo Bonini. The five settings by Rinuccini testify to Peri's continuing association with the poet of the first operas. Cini and Buonarroti, distinguished Florentine academicians, were to be counted among Peri's circle of friends.'7 Alessandro Striggio had frequently been in Florence,'8 but it is more likely that his verses had been sent to Peri by Ferdinando Gonzaga, the chief patron of Gagliano's Accademia degli Elevati.19

Peri's literary acumen is well demonstrated by the inclusion of so much Petrarch. He was the first, indeed the only, monodist to devote so much attention to Petrarch's sonnets in a single volume of songs.20 Up to now the sonnet had by and large been considered the province of the serious five-part madrigal. It is easy to see why, for its length and intensity demanded a degree of compositional control which few composers of monody could provide. In Peri,

JACOPO PERI 51

however, Petrarch found a perfect match. The nobility of his verse accorded with Peri's own pretensions, its superb quality met his own high standards, its intense emotionalism gave him the opportunity to excel in the type of lyricism to which he was most suited.2'

The sonnets alternate with arias to open the volume. They are all through- composed settings, as befits their grand manner. 'In qual parte del ciel', the first and shortest, is something of an exception. It is apparently an early work and in style it resembles the blander pages of Euridice. True, the text does not allow much opportunity for expressive writing, but the song's weakness lies chiefly in the fact that Peri has not yet devised a style suitable for the solo song in the chamber rather than on the stage. Only with the second sonnet of the volume, 'Tutto '1 di piango', does he seem to have appreciated that the more intimate acoustics and the closer proximity of singer and accompanist, often one and the same person, meant that the chamber song could not work on the same principles as the operatic recitative (ex. 1).

Ex. 1

irti X X J j2 . 'j j fJ ! Tut - to 'di pian - go, e poi la not -

y 0. ; q o :.. f r I|o :? [6] [P] 1 2 # 2

^U =i i -fr --IA J I L J IJ - te,quan - do Pren - don ri - po - soi mi - s-ri mor-ta - li

X .0 0 J J IS

Many of the techniques used in 'Tutto '1 di piango' can be traced back to the more expressive sections of Euridice, but Peri achieves a new level of emotional intensity. It is a monumental setting that makes the most of Petrarch's powerful verse. Peri is now in such control of his medium that he can afford to slow down the delivery of the words and concentrate on purely musical development. Although he maintains the division of the sonnet into four parts that was common in the sixteenth-century reciting formulae, in fact like most polyphonic sonnet settings the song falls into two sections, corresponding to the octave and the sestet. The last line of each half is repeated to form the climax of the section and, in the case of the sestet, the climax of the song. In the octave the repeat of the final line strengthens the cadence by expanding the melody and further developing an imitative tag between the voice and the bass. In the sestet the last line is first set in a low register, cadencing on the dominant. Momentum is maintained over the cadence by an interrupted progression

JACOPO PERI 52

JACOPO PERI 53

which can also be found in Euridice. The line is then repeated sequentially a fourth higher, although the rhythm is slowed down considerably, and comes to rest on the tonic. It is a forceful conclusion that makes up for the previous harmonic instability (ex. 2). This use of repetition with melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic variation/development contrasts with the by and large literal repetition used by Caccini in the ABB form of most of the madrigals of Le nuove musiche.22 It is an extremely effective way of building up a climax and it appears frequently in both the sonnets and the madrigals of Peri's volume.

Ex. 2

_ - J.,i ~;'j J'_hi i' :- n

Ve - dem' ar- der nel fo - co, e non m'a - i - ta, vedem'ar-

t I? 11 * 7 6 4 A

-b4 / rJ r r , ?: o o - dernel fo - - co, e non m'a - i ta.

':-- fC 'r r rf J o o 11 b 7 RS I, 7 ,i 11 [,4 11

The strength of these cadences is emphasized by the fact that they are the most firmly established in the song. The first part of the sonnet, for example, provides a compendium of the various techniques with which Peri can avoid the halting effect of a cadence, the ways in which he can 'fuggire la cadenza'.23 Thus he gives the song its forward momentum and maintains the emotional tension. The pitch of these avoided cadences is also important. The setting moves over a wide harmonic spectrum, ranging from F to A. F and A are each two degrees on either side of the song's tonic, G, in the circle of fifths, and Peri's harmony frequently moves by fourths and fifths. G is conspicuous by its absence, but Peri does not wander haphazardly through different keys. The tonic continually makes its presence felt, it is the focal point to which this wide-ranging harmonic movement gradually but inexorably progresses. Such large-scale tonal planning allows Peri to look beyond the progression of one chord to the next, of one line to the next, of one part to the next, to view the setting from beginning to end as a unified whole.

Harmony is also important for its expressive capabilities. Peri's favourite progression of major triads a major or minor third apart appears frequently,24 and as in Euridice the 6 has an affective connotation.25 Another of his finger- prints is the 4 5, which appears on expressive words in many of his works. On the whole, his dissonance treatment is not as irregular as is commonly

believed. In fact, his primary and secondary dissonances often adhere to the rules of polyphony as formulated by the more enlightened theorists of the time and as practised by most modern composers. This applies to Euridice as well as to the chamber songs.26 Also, these dissonances are never accentuated to the extent of distracting our attention from the flow of the verse. The inner parts, too, have a new role to play, and either explicitly, by way of the figures, or implicitly Peri will exploit rich harmonies within his accompaniments. The continuo no longer provides merely a skeleton harmonic background for the voice. Now both voice and accompaniment work together to give the song its expressive effect.27

The wide-ranging melody moves in broad sp'ans and seeks extremes of register for emotional effect. Chromaticism, too, has its part to play, and indeed there are several touches of madrigalistic word-painting which would hardly have found approval in the Camerata. Out of respect for the verse, however, ornaments are by and large avoided. The speed of delivery of each line of the sonnet varies according to its affective content. Syncopation is used to create a feeling of free declamation, almost of written-out sprezzatura. This is enhanced by the fact that Peri attempts to follow Petrarch's use of enjambment; enjambment was something to which he had paid less than rigorous attention in Euridice.28 Above all, Peri never loses sight of balance and proportion. He gives his music a noble simplicity that forms the perfect counterpart to Petrarch's verse. 'Tutto 'I di' seems to owe a considerable debt to the past. The formal and the expressive devices used therein had all been characteristic of the best polyphonic madrigals. Obviously Peri is remembering the lessons learnt from Malvezzi. But he does not simply rearrange a five-part madrigal for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment.29 Rather, he takes the techniques of the madrigal and rethinks them in terms of the new medium.

For Caccini, the solo madrigal was to express the text by means of beautiful melody. The essence of his songs lies in their vocal line. His genius is that of a

performer, not that of a composer. Such a view of monody, however, was

ultimately shallow and lacked any real potential for further development. Peri

escaped this cul-de-sac by adapting techniques originally developed within the

polyphonic madrigal. Of course something was lost in the process. In his songs we miss the spontaneous lyricism that gave Caccini ajustifiable claim to success. At times they seem to bejust a little too thought-out, as if artifice has taken the

place of art. This was the price that had to be paid. In compensation, however, the foundations upon which the solo song rested became much more solid, the

emphasis shifted from the performer to the composer, and the monody on the

printed page became a finished work of art. Not only did Peri bring to monody a poetic form which had hitherto been the province of the five-part madrigal, but he also proved that monody could match, if not surpass, the madrigal in

expressive power and artistic integrity. In fact, Peri does not deserve all the credit for raising monody to a new level.

In late 1607 or early 1608 Sigismondo d'India had visited Florence and had heard his songs performed by the virtuoso Vittoria Archilei. Not only that, but

JACOPO PERI 54

JACOPO PERI 55

she declared 'that she had never heard a style [of music] which had such power and which could express the conceit with such a variety of notes, such a variety of harmonies and with such a new manner of ornamentation'.30 D'India, a major composer of the early seventeenth century, was one of the few to divide his attention equally between the polyphonic madrigal and the solo song throughout his career. In the songs of his 1609 Musiche we see exactly the same use of polyphonic techniques in a monodic context as in Peri's 'Tutto '1 di'. Indeed, two of the songs, 'Intenerite voi' and 'Crud' Amarilli', rework settings which he had published in his first book of five-part madrigals of 1606.31 The many correspondences between the songs of Peri and d'India suggest that Peri knew the work of his distinguished contemporary. Certainly the influence of d'India can help explain the vast difference in quality between the older songs of Le varie musiche, as perhaps 'In qual parte', and the later sonnets and madrigals. The main point, however, is not Peri's originality or lack of it, but that his own training and outlook made him a worthy imitator.

The four solo madrigals reveal Peri in a more relaxed and uninhibited mood. Doubtless he was helped by the fact that a madrigal text is generally more manageable than a sonnet. Here too we find a clear concern for tonal planning. The song need not necessarily end in the same key in which it began, in fact three of the madrigals do not; nevertheless the pitch of the final cadence is always well prepared within the song itself. The harmony frequently vacillates between major triads a tone apart, notably G and A and their respective dominants. A is not as unrelated to G as it may seem, by virtue of Peri's favourite dominant-of-the-dominant progression (A-D-G) which is often to be found in Euridice. On the whole, however, the madrigals do give a curious impression of harmonic instability. This is matched by the awkward melodies, which move more by leap than by step, and by the few ungainly ornaments, which lack the easy flow of Caccini's. But Peri uses these devices with moderation, and does not indulge in excess for excess's sake.

Peri's craftsman-like approach can also be seen in the arias, the triple-time strophic dance songs, of the volume. 'Un di soletto' gives him an opportunity to show off how clever he was at composing, and singing, complicated rhythmic patterns.32 As a result it is far too clever to be musically successful. The other three arias are simpler, and consequently more effective. Their success is all the more remarkable when one considers that Peri was no real lyricist, as the arias of Euridice well reveal. In the case of 'Tra le donne', however, judging from the awkwardness of an earlier version surviving in manuscript, he had to strive consciously for such a spontaneous effect. In 'Tra le donne' Rinuccini adopted the alternation of ottonari and quatenari (A8A4B8CsC4B8) beloved of his mentor Gabriello Chiabrera. This verse pattern was extremely popular in the early Florentine aria, and Peri clearly remembered Caccini's 'Belle rose porporine' when setting Rinuccini's poem (ex. 3). But 'Tra le donne' surpasses Caccini's song in the tautness of its melodic and harmonic construction. Peri judges his melodic climaxes more carefully than does Caccini, his bass line has the new fluency that characterizes all of Peri's arias, and he does not descend to the

56 JACOPO PERI

repetition of stereotyped rhythmic cliches. This careful approach is apparent in even such a simple song as 'Al fonte al prato'.33 Here the six quinari of each stanza are set with rhythmic variety and to a melody that creates a broad arch spanning the whole paragraph, rather than halting at the end of each line.

Ex.3

(a) Peri, 'Tra le donne onde s'onora' o -J

r Xi J ^ ^J J : J' f J r' n f f Tra le don - ne onde s'o - no - ra Ar- no e Flo - ra Di bel-

^r rr r r-TMr f r r r ;r rf-r [6]

[i l [.]

0 T 1 - -I t f F r F

- lez - zae d'hone - sta - te

fr- -I y J j JJ : r

[?] [?]

(b) Caccini, 'Belle rose porporine', Le nuove musiche, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock (Madison, 1970), 135

'j- j

E Bele ro re r r n C tra spi - Bel-le ro - se por- po-ri - ne__ Che tra spi - ne_ Sul-l'au-

I

- ro - ra_ non a - pri - te

6 6 11 tt

The most progressive of the arias, however, is 'Bellissima regina'. Each stanza consists of six settenari, a verse-form that was less popular for arias than ottonari, quaternari, or quinari because its length and frequently irregular accentuation often precluded a regular setting in triple or duple metre.34 These very features, however, allowed more opportunity for musical development and variation, and Peri produces a setting that provides a fitting antidote to the rhythmic simplicity of most contemporary arias. The melody takes the basic corrente

pattern that became associated with settenari in the next decade, but alters and adapts this for each line of verse. This allows for the variations in the accentuation of the verse and also maintains interest and variety. Melodic and harmonic cadence points are carefully designed to keep up the momentum through to the final line, and the flowing bass is raised above the status of mere accompaniment. The importance of the continuo is also reflected in its interjections within the song and in the ritornello at the end of each stanza - ritornelli appear in all the arias of the volume. With its suave use of triple time, freed from the stock cliches, it is a remarkably prophetic setting. If 'Tra le donne' looks backwards to Caccini, then 'Bellissima regina' looks forwards to the next decades of the century.

The other songs of the volume seem to have been introduced as makeweights. The two spiritual madrigals, '0 miei giorni fugaci'35 and 'Anima ohime' che pensi', both in a suitably restrained style, reflect Peri's association with the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello. In the 162os Peri was to provide much music for the sacre rappresentazioni performed by this religious guild in S Maria Novella.36 'Se tu parti da me' reworks the music which Peri had provided for the final chorus of Act 3 of Buonarroti's II giudizio di Paride, performed during the 1608 festivities.37 This is not the only example of Peri re-using old music. Its juxtaposition of recitative and aria was intended to portray the contrast of night and day in Buonarroti's original text. In the new version it is incongruous, and the song suffers from being forced into a pre-existing mould. 'Con sorrisi cortesi' is a madrigal set, like 'Al fonte al prato', for soprano and bass. Such duets, or perhaps better, monodies with an unusually active bass line, were not uncommon in early monody publications.

The two trios, 'Caro e soave legno' and '0 dolce anima mia', were probably composed for the concerto de'castrati when Peri was their accompanist from 1600 to 1603.38 The castrati, trained by Emilio de' Cavalieri, had replaced Francesco de' Medici's concerto delle donne, Florence's answer to the famed concerto of Ferrara, in 1587. The Ferrarese style of concerted music was well known in Florence, partly by way of Alessandro Striggio,39 and Peri's two madrigals continue this tradition. They are for two sopranos, bass and continuo, and not unexpectedly Peri indulges in virtuosic vocal writing. As with the fine trio 'Ben nocchier, costant' e forte' in Euridice, which was presumably written for the same forces, he produces songs which look backwards to the sixteenth century rather than forwards to the nascent secular duet. He tries to combine polyphonic and solo voice writing but is restricted by the limitations of the medium. The points of imitation are awkward and undeveloped and only when he reverts to expressive homophonic writing does something effective emerge. But polyphony and monody were uneasy bedfellows, and it took a greater composer, Monteverdi, to merge them successfully.

The second decade of the century at last saw Peri firmly established within the hierarchy of the court music. He was frequently called upon to provide music, generally recitatives, for court entertainments. The fact that what survives of this music is not of the highest quality does not necessarily suggest that his

JACOPO PERI 57

talents were on the decline. Rather, it reflects the ad hoc nature of these entertainments which would hardly inspire a composer to produce his best. It should also be said, however, that at this same time he was achieving a new prominence in civic affairs and so he seems to have been less than conscientious in providing good music for court consumption.40 His next two surviving songs, 'Torna, deh torna, pargoletto mio', a setting of Venus's ottava from Rinuccini's Mascherata di ninfe di Senna, and 'O dell'alto Appenin', an occasional wedding piece, are not particularly inspired.41 They were included in volumes by Peri's associates Piero Benedetti and Antonio Brunelli, reflecting his new- found prestige.

When he was not faced with the irksome task of producing stage music on demand, or when he was given better poetic material to work on, then he could still compose fine music. Three songs surviving in manuscript in Florence which can be tentatively attributed to Peri reveal that he had lost none of his skill in

expressive writing.42 Similarly, 'Tu dormi, e '1 dolce sonno' shows his talents undiminished.43 All these songs, however, are somewhat passe in style. Even 'Tu dormi', an intense setting that is extreme in its use of non-harmonic tones, has a strangely conservative air. Peri has now been overtaken by contemporary developments in the solo madrigal. He and d'India had brought it to a 'classical' peak; they did for monody what Cipriano de Rore had done for the

sixteenth-century madrigal. Now, however, Benedetti and Claudio Saracini were filling their monodies with the dense chromaticism and wayward melodic and harmonic movement that they had derived from Gesualdo. It is curious that the changes occurring within the monody should so closely mirror those of its polyphonic counterpart. In 'Tu dormi' Peri flirts with the moderns, but he

surely preferred a more moderate course. He had officiated at the birth of the new music, but now, at fifty, he had been left behind.

When all was said and done, the solo madrigal had not offered the key to the future. Rather, it had only granted a temporary stay of execution to the forms of the past. Its decline, too, was accelerated by the changing tastes of the time. It was rapidly losing ground to the aria, which was to lead to the cantata of the 162os.44 Peri tried to accommodate himself to this change of fashion, but he seems to have had little enthusiasm for the task. In 1619, perhaps significantly the year after Caccini's death, the publisher Zanobi Pignoni reprinted Le vane musiche.45 'Se tu parti da me' and 'Con sorrisi cortesi' were omitted, justifiably, and replaced by seven arias, bringing the total number of arias in the volume to eleven. 'Qual cadavero spirante' is reminiscent of 'Se tu parti da me' in its

attempt to combine recitative and aria, and 'Care stelle' is in common time in

something approaching the modern idiom. 'Che veggio, ohime che sento' and 'O core infiammato', the last a duet for soprano and bass, are arias in recitative

style. The others stay with the old Florentine triple time. Peri attempts to inject a measure of novelty into the familiar formulae, but he quickly lapses into the

repetition of standard rhythmic cliches. Compared with the arias of the 1609 volume, the melodies seem contrived and uninspired. Only the flowing bass lines provide relief from what comes dangerously close to monotony.

58 JACOPO PERI

Occasionally we catch a glimpse of a new approach to aria-writing, but in the main these songs belong to the past. Part of the blame can be laid on the verse, which is not of the best quality, but the basic problem has deeper roots. The new arias are in a style which even at its best had depended on the skilful manipulation of stock rhythmic and melodic patterns. These patterns, however, had been so overworked that the idiom had succumbed to atrophy.

Peri remained happiest in the style of writing to which he was best suited, the pathetic arioso. For the festivities celebrating the wedding of Margherita de'Medici to Odoardo Farnese of Parma in 1628, he and the poet Andrea Salvadori hoped to stage the opera lole ed Ercole. Their plans were scotched by the vindictive scheming of Francesca Caccini, who saw to it that the court cancelled the commission, even though the verse and music had already been written. A fragment of the opera, however, survives: the moving lament 'Uccidimi, dolore'.46 It relies heavily on an obvious model, Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, but Sigismondo d'India, with his five great laments of the early 162os, had already demonstrated that there was no harm in re-using a successful formula.47 Peri's is a fine setting, indeed it is remarkable for a man in his sixties, and he clearly revels in its intense emotional expression.

Iole ed Ercole was replaced by Salvadori's La Flora.48 The music was composed in the main by Marco da Gagliano, although Peri was allocated the recitatives for the role of Clori. His contribution begins with a sparkling strophic aria 'O campagne d'Anfitrite', reminiscent of 'Qual honor di te fia degno' in Monteverdi's Orfeo. He also provided a notable lament and echo-scene, which exploit all his favourite expressive devices. Clori's last speech, 'Gioite al gioir mio', is a mixture of aria and recitative that recalls Aminta's 'Non piu, non piu lamenti' in Euridice. It is revealing that this the last piece of music we have by Peri is so little different from the first major work he had composed 28 years earlier.

The fact that Peri was so unable to adapt to the times can be explained by his age, his non-musical interests and activities, and his inherent conservatism. He was not the only composer to see his music become outmoded, but his predicament is especially intriguing because he had once stood at the forefront of the new music. In fact, however, his conservatism also offers the key to Euridice and Le vane musiche. For all their modernity they are the products of a composer who could not forget the tradition into which he had been born and raised. His was a split personality, torn by conflicting loyalties to the past and the future. It is precisely because of this curious mixture of old and new that he is such a fascinating figure for anyone who seeks to understand the musical revolution of the 16oos.

NOTES

1 I-Fas Archivio delle Tratte, 446bis, f. 106. The best biographical study of Peri to date is Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini, 'Jacopo Peri e la sua famiglia', Atti dell'Accademia del R. Istituto Musicale di Firenze Anno XXXIII. Commemorazione della riforma melodrammatica (Florence, 1895), 33-71.

JACOPO PERI 59

2 On his pretensions to nobility, see the title page of Euridice, and Francesco Cini's letter to Ferdinando Gonzaga, dated 26 October 1607, in Angelo Solerti, Gli albori de melodramma

(repr. Hildesheim, 1969), i, 82-4. 3 I-Fas Conventi Soppressi, 119, 58, f. 87, 1 September 1573. Hewas replaced on 1 October 1579,

ibid., f. 135v. 4 I-Fas Arte dei Mercatanti di Calimara, 35, f. 22v. 5 Giovanni Fedini, Le due Persilie (Florence, 1583), which contains details of the intermedi; Nino

Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (2nd edn., Turin, 1975), 228-9. Malvezzi and Alessandro Striggio also

provided music for the occasion. 6 I-Fas Corporazioni Religiose Soppresse, 78, 265, f. 54v; 78, 91, f. 217. He held the post until

April 1605, I-Fas cit., 78, 95, f. 51. 7 I-Fas Depositeria Generale, 389, p. 17. Peri provided an echo-madrigal 'Dunque fra

torbid'onde' for the fifth of the 1589 intermedi, Malvezzi, Intermedii et concerti,fatti, per la commedia rappresentata in Firenze nelle nozze del serenissimo don Ferdinando Medici, e madama Christiana di Loreno, gran duchi di Toscana (Venice, 1591), modern edition in Lesfetes du mariage de Ferdinand de Midicis et de Christine de Lorraine, I589: musique des intermides de 'La Pellegrina' (Paris, 1963), 98-io6.

8 He died, or was buried, on 12 August 1633, I-Fas Medici e Speziali, 257, f 179. 9 Claude V. Palisca, 'The First Performance of "Euridice" ', Department of Music, Queen's College of

the City University of New YorA - Twenty-fifth Anniversary Festschrift ( 93 7-r962) (New York, 1964), 1-23. Peri's setting was published as Le musiche di Jacopo Peri nobil fiorentino sopra l'Euridice (Florence, 16oo [=1601]). The dispute with Caccini continued into the second decade of the century, see H. Wiley Hitchcock, 'Caccini's "other" Nuove musiche', Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxvii (1974), 458-9.

10o Marco da Gagliano said he was 'peritissimo nel contrapunto', preface to Dafne (1 6o8) in Angelo Solerti, Le origini del melodramma (repr. Hildesheim, 1969), 8o; Pietro de' Bardi said 'II Peri aveva piu scienza . .. Giulio [Caccini] ebbe piuti leggiadria', Lettera a G. B. Doni in Solerti, op. cit., 146.

ii Cristofano Malvezzi, II primo libro de recercari a quattro voci (Perugia, 1577); II primo libro delli madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1583). Peri's ricercar delprimo tuono also survives in I-Fn Magl., XIX, 107, f. 47v.

12 Le varie musiche . . . a una due, e tre voci con alcune spirituali in ultimo per cantare nel clavicembolo [sic], e chitarrone, &6 ancora la maggior parte di esse per sonare semplicemente nel organo (Florence, 1609).

13 Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal I6oo al 1637 (repr. New York, 1968), 57, n. 1. Caccini was musical director of the festivities and Santi Orlandi composed music for them, I-Fas Mediceo del Principato, 6o68,passim; I-FlArchivio Buonarroti, 6o, passim.

14 Emil Vogel, 'Marco da Gagliano: zur Geschichte des florentiner Musiklebens von 1570-1650', Vierteljahrsschriftfiir Musikwissenschaft, v (1889), 555-7.

15 Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 39, n. 1. This letter dates from 1609 n.s. 16 Caccini's Le nuove musiche ( 1602) contains material dating back at least 5 years, see his preface in

Solerti, Le origini, 57. Also Nancy Hockley, 'Bartolomeo Barbarino e i primordi della monodia', Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, vii (1 97 2), 83-4.

17 Cini is mentioned in Peri's preface to Euridice, Solerti, Le origini, 47. 18 He was in Florence for the 16oo festivities, I-Fas Strozziane, I, 27, f. 38bis. 19 Edmond Strainchamps, 'New Lights on the Accademia degli Elevati of Florence', Musical

Quarterly, Ixii (1976), 507-35. Ferdinando Gonzaga frequently asked Peri for new music, generally without success, Solerti, Gli albori, i, 77-89.

20 Settings of Petrarch appear in I-Fn Magi., XIX, 66, B-Bc MS 704, and the early monody publications of Brunetti, Rasi and d'India. With the exception of the Rasi, however, these settings are all related to the sixteenth-century practice of improvised recitation over standard harmonic formulae. Rasi's through-composed setting of 'Che fai alma, che pensi' heads his

Vaghezza di musica (Venice, 16o8). Remembering that Rasi was a.partisan of the Caccini camp, this may well have led Peri to include the sonnets in his own volume.

21 Severo Bonini, Primaparte de'discorsi e regole sovra la musica, I-Fr MS 2218, f. 70: 'quando cantava materie lugubri, come suo proprio talento, subito moveva gl'occhi dell'Uditore al lagrimare'.

22 Only once does Peri use the ABB form, in 'Lungi dal vostro lume'.

6o JACOPO PERI

23 Gioseffo Zarlino, Le ititutioni hamoniche (Venice, 1558), 226: 'Fuggir la cadenza sia... un certo atto, il qual fanno le parti, accennando di voler fare una terminatione perfetta, secondo l'uno de i modi mostrati di sopra, & si rivolgono altrove.'

24 Vincenzo Galilei had emphasized the importance of awkward harmonic movement in adding expression to a song; see Claude V. Palisca, 'The "Camerata Fiorentina": a Reappraisal', Studi Musicali, i (1972), 230.

25 On the expressive capabilities of chords of the sixth, see Zarlino, op. cit., 339-40. 26 Claude V. Palisca, 'Vincenzo Galilei's counterpoint treatise: a code for the "Seconda Pratica"',

Journal of the American Musicological Society, ix (1956), 81-96. Galilei willingly condoned the irregular resolution of suspensions as in 'Tutto '1 di' bar 3. This explains Giovanni Battista Doni's somewhat curious comment, 'il Peri poco si diparte dalle regole comuni', Trattato della musica scenica, in De'trattati di musica . . . tomo secondo (Florence, 1768), 128.

2 7 In his preface to the volume Marescotti emphasized the importance of the accompaniment. Also Severo Bonini in Solerti, Le origini, 137: 'fu ... nell'accompagnare il canto con le parti di mezzo, unico e singolare'.

28 The feminine endings at the end of most lines in Euridice had a theoretical justification. Galilei had insisted that in setting verse to music it was most important to emphasize the rhyme, even at the expense of enjambment: Dialogo della musica antica, et della modena (Florence, 158 1), 9o.

29 Caccini had noted the pointlessness of this exercise: preface to Le nuove musiche, in Solerti, Le origini, 58. Luzzaschi, with his Madrigali. .. per cantare a uno, e doi, e tre soprani (Rome, 1601), had also shown that it could be done with little success.

3o D'India, preface to his Le musiche . . . da cantar solo (Milan, 16o09), ed. Federico Mompellio (Cremona, 1970), 24: 'dicendo non aver udito stile ch'avesse tanta forza e che insieme spiegasse il concetto con tal diversita di corde, varieta d'armonia e con si nova maniera di passeggiare'.

31 Ed. Federico Mompellio (Milan, 1942). 32 In La Flora, ed. KnudJeppesen (Copenhagen, 1949), ii, 6. 33 La Flora, ii, 5. Jeppesen omits the text from the bass line. 34 Putnam Aldrich, Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (New York, 1966), 126-9. 35 La Flora, ii, 7. Rinuccini had submitted his poem to the Accademia degli Alterati on 31 October

1589, I-FlAshburnham, 5582, f. 85. 36 Peri's hitherto unknown relationship with the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello is

documented by the company's records in I-Fas Compagnie Religiose Soppresse, A. CXLVII, 162, 2 1-3, passim.

37 Facsimile of the Paride version, 'Poiche la notte con l'oscure piume', surviving in I-Fc Barbera Codex, p. 132, in Federico Ghisi, 'Ballet entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608-1625', Musical Quarterly, xxxv (1949), facing p. 424. For the reworkings of the poem, and another ver- sion provided for Peri's use, see I-Fl Archivio Buonarroti, 84, if. 18ov- 8 iv. The alternation of recitative and aria had a precedent in Domenico Brunetti's setting of 'O miei pensieri' in L'Euterpe (Venice, 16o6). Marco da Gagliano, too, provided music for the 16o8 festivities. The ottava 'Ovunque irato Marte in terra scende' published in his Musiche ... a una, due e tre voci (Venice, 1615), is from the fifth intermedio, I-Fl Archivio Buonarroti, 84, f. 169v.

38 Carlo Lozzi, 'La musica e specialmente il melodramma alla corte medicea', Rivista Musicale Italiana, ix (1902), 314. On Peri's appointment, see his letters to Belisario Vinta of 18 and 21

November 16oo in I-Fas Mediceo del Principato, 9oo, if. 142, 171. 39 Riccardo Gandolfi, 'Lettere inedite scritte da musicisti e letterati appartenenti alla seconda meta

del secolo XVI, estratte dal R. Archivio di Stato in Firenze', Rivista Musicale Italiana, xx (1913), 528-36.

40 In 1618 Peri was appointed camarlingo to the Arte della Lana: I-Fas Arte della Lana, 308, ff. 6ov-61. He held the post until his death.

41 'Torna, deh torna' was published in Piero Benedetti, Musiche (Florence, 161 l); 'O dell'alto Appenin' in Antonio Brunelli, Scherzi, arie, canzonette, e madrigali . . . libro secondo (Venice, 1614). For the text of Rinuccini's Mascherata, see Solerti, Gli albori, ii, 261-94. Peri's ottava reworks his setting of'Chi da' lacci d'amor' from Dafne, given in William V. Porter, 'Peri and Corsi's Dafne: Some New Discoveries and Observations',Journal of the American Musicological Society, xviii ( 1965), 179. A fragment of Peri's recitative for the Mascherata di ninfe di Senna, 'Bella madre d'Amor che

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I'aer e l'onda', survives in I-Fc Barbera Codex, p. 1 72]. 'O dell'alto Appenin', to a text by the

prominent courtier Ferdinando Saracinelli, is inscribed 'per le nozze del Sig. Francesco Torelli'. 42 'Queste lacrime mie, questi sospiri', 'Itene 6 mai, voi che felice ardete' (a 2 + b.c.), 'Occhi, fonti

del core', in I-Fn Magi., XIX, 114, pp. 38-48. The songs can be attributed to Peri on both internal and external evidence. 'Queste lacrime mie' is a lament provided by the poet Giovanni Villifranchi for a barriera performed before the court on 17 February 1613 (n.s.), Villifranchi, Descrizione della barriera e della mascherata . .. (Florence, 1613), 5.5-6.

43 I-Fc Barbera Codex, pp. 59-60 (first stanza only); Cs-Pnm Lobkowitz MS II La 2, pp. 50-2; GB- Lbm MS Add. 30491, if. 42v-43v; modern edition in The Solo Song, I580o-730, ed. Carol MacClintock (New York, 1973), 13-20.

44 Nigel Fortune, 'Italian secular monody from 1600 to 1635: an introductory survey', Musical Quarterly, xxxix (1953), 175, 185.

45 Le varie musiche . . . con aggiunta d'arie nuove (Florence, 1619). The volume is dedicated to Ferdinando Saracinelli, some of whose poetry, according to the dedication, is contained in the volume.

46 Cs-Pnm Lobkowitz MS II La 2, pp. 45-9; I-Bc MS Q,49, ff. 21-3; modern edition in Solerti, Gli albori, i, facing p. 32. On the Salvadori-Caccini dispute, see Alessandro Ademollo, La bell'Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tempo alla corte di Mantova (Citta di Castello, 1888), 147-9, but this needs modification in the light of Andrea Cavalcanti's Theatrum illustrorum virorum, I-Fr MS 2270, ff. 17o-1 82v. The dispute took place beforeJanuary 1626.

47 The laments were published in d'India's Le musiche ... libro quarto (Venice, 1621), and Le musiche. . . libro quinto (Venice, 1623). See also Nigel Fortune, 'Sigismondo d'India, an introduction to his life and works', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, Ixxxi (1954-5), 41-4.

48 Marco da Gagliano, La Flora (Florence, 1628).

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