Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [76]
The polyphonic and monodic modes are at opposite ends of music’s emotional spectrum. Polyphony subsumes the individual voice within a choral harmony, reflecting the desire to conjure up an essentially otherworldly sound, such as the singing of the angelic host. Words are hard to distinguish in the layers of polyphonic singing. Syntax dissolves and sense is sacrificed for an effect of transcendence. By contrast, monody puts precise meaning and specific human emotions at the heart of music. The single melodic line, the solo voice, is easily understood. To follow its meanderings is to follow the contours of feeling expressed by words and music together (the theme of Vittoria Archilei’s song would, almost certainly, have been unrequited love). It might be said that while polyphony aspires to heaven, monody expresses man.
‘The solo voice contains all the purity of music, and style and melody are studied and appreciated more carefully when one’s ears are not distracted by more than one voice.’17 Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier of 1528 shows that the fashion for the solo voice had roots in an earlier period of the Renaissance. Further proof of this lies in the fact that the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, choirmaster at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice in the 1530s, had rearranged a number of polyphonic madrigals so that they could be sung for the solo voice. What seems to have been most strikingly new in the more experimental singing of Caravaggio’s time, seventy years later, was its strong emphasis on vocal expression. This was characterized by the development of the stile rappresentativo, a style of monodic singing that followed the natural accents and rhythms of spoken language. It was an innovation that transformed the performance of choral music, and the style in which Vittoria Archilei would have sung.
Emilio de’ Cavalieri was himself a composer at the forefront of this shift in musical sensibilities. He understood exactly what was going on in del Monte’s house that afternoon in 1602. What he describes, very precisely, is the shock experienced by the listeners as they encounter raw feeling through the medium of music. On this particular occasion, the already unfamiliar experience is amplified by the wildness of the singer’s own mood and the cavernous acoustic of a high-ceilinged room. The audience of cardinals Acquaviva and Paravicino is genuinely astonished, and Cavalieri’s parting shot – ‘they are both musicians’ – is meant to underscore the sheer novelty of the performance. These men are experienced listeners and practitioners; they know music very well; but they have never heard music quite like this.
The origins of the musical transformation epitomized by Archileo’s performance were (and still are) debated. A group of Florentine musicians active in the 1570s and 1580s had built a whole philosophy around the doctrine of a return to monody. For them, this was an extension of the Renaissance ideal of reviving the modes of classical antiquity. Their spokesman had been the humanist author Vincenzo Galilei – father of the scientist and astronomer – who was partly inspired by the mistaken belief that the drama of ancient Greece had been sung rather than spoken. Galilei argued in favour of the perceived simplicity and emotional directness of ancient monody, conjuring the romantic vision of a world in which singers might reclaim the fabled powers attributed to Orpheus. He urged that song and drama should be reunited once more, to tell the stories of ancient legend and move the hearts of men. The ideas expressed in Galilei’s Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, of 1581, would have profound implications for music in Italy and beyond. New and ever more nakedly emotional songs for the solo voice would be written and performed. The stile rappresentativo would triumph and the abstract patterns and harmonies of medieval polyphony fall out of fashion. In the music of court entertainment, individual performers separated from the chorus to sing passionate songs of love and death. Such songs