![]() ![]() The effect would be of a simply sung or declaimed play. What the members of the Camerata (who included Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo’s father) proposed was a drama featuring a single vocal (‘monodic’) line supported by a simple accompaniment, which would reproduce the rhythms of natural speech and highlight the words: in later times this, or something like it, would become known as recitative. This was a reaction against current musical trends: they were trying on one hand to correct the inability of polyphonic music – that is, multi-part, often rather austere choral pieces – to properly convey the meaning of words, and on the other to simplify the over-ornateness of madrigals, usually sung by four singers, which had become altogether too flowery for their tastes. In the 1580s a group of Florentine intellectuals known as the Camerata thought it would be a good idea to create a mixture of music and theatre along the lines of Greek drama – despite the minor drawback of actually having no idea what Greek drama either sounded or looked like. Opera has been around for over 400 years. Like all good things it is there to entertain but it is also, even at its most frivolous, deeply serious: it aims to explore, to wonder about the springs of human motivation, to ask the question of all grown-up art, how should we live? And it tries to do this through a combination of factors – music, drama, words, staging, design, movement and the most sophisticated use the human voice has ever been put to – that can seem to be in conflict with each other, each striving for first place. ![]()
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