Emilio de' Cavalieri (c.1550–March 11, 1602) was an Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer at the end of the Renaissance era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome, Florence and Venice, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque era. A member of the Roman School of composers, he was an influential early composer of monody, and wrote what is usually considered to be the first oratorio. Events February 7 - Julius III becomes Pope. ... March 11 is the 70th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (71st in Leap year). ... For the Marvel comic, see 1602 (comic). ... The Italians are a Latin ethnic group primarily associated with Italy and the Italian language. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... In the entertainment industry, a producer is generally in charge of, or helps to coordinate, the financial, legal, administrative, technological, and artistic aspects of a production. ... This article or section should be merged with Pipe organ The Casavant pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Montreal The organ is a type of keyboard musical instrument, distinctive because the sound is not produced by a percussion action, as on a piano or celesta, or by... A Choreographer is a person who makes choreographies and usually works with dancers, actors and singers. ... A contemporary dancer rehearsing in a dance studio Dance generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. ... Renaissance music is classical music written during the Renaissance period, approximately 1400 to 1600 CE. Defining the end of the period is easier than defining the beginning, since there were no revolutionary shifts in musical thinking at the beginning of the 15th century corresponding to the sudden development of the... Location within Italy The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of its Latium region. ... Florence - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Venice is known for its waterways and gondolas Gondola. ... Baroque music is Western classical music from the Baroque era, after the Renaissance music era and before the Classical music era proper. ... A Roman school day was believed to begin before sunrise, and lasted until late afternoon. ... Caccini, Le Nuove musiche, 1601, title page Monody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. ... An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus. ...

Life

Cavalieri was born in Rome of an aristocratic and musical family. He probably received his early training there, and was working as an organist and music director in the period from 1578 to 1584. In 1588 he moved to Florence, for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici had hired him as an overseer of artists, craftsmen and musicians; he helped produce the extremely opulent intermedi that the Medici family required for events such as weddings. Count Giovanni de' Bardi, the founder and patron of the Florentine Camerata, also collaborated on these productions. Cavalieri may have gotten some of his ideas for monody directly from Bardi, since Cavalieri was not a member of the Camerata during its period of activity a few years earlier. He may have developed his rivalry with Giulio Caccini, another extremely important early monodist, during this period. Events January 31 - Battle of Gemblours - Spanish forces under Don John of Austria and Alexander Farnese defeat the Dutch. ... Events June 1 - With the death of the Duc dAnjou, the Huguenot Henry of Navarre becomes heir-presumptive to the throne of France. ... Events May 12 - Day of the Barricades in Paris. ... The intermedio, in Italian Renaissance music, is a kind of music which was performed between acts of a play. ... The Medici family was a powerful and influential Florentine family during the Renaissance, whose wealth and influence initially derived from the textile trade guided by the guild of the Becoming first bankers, and later politicians, clergy and nobles, the Medici attained their greatest prominence during the 15th through 17th centuries... The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence that gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. ... Caccini, Le Nuove musiche, 1601, title page Monody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. ... Caccini, Le Nuove musiche, 1601, title page Giulio Caccini (c. ...

In the 1590s, while still in Florence, Cavalieri produced several pastorales (a semi-dramatic predecessor to opera, set in the country, with shepherds and shepherdesses as common characters). In addition to his musical activities, he was employed as a diplomat during this time, assisting in papal politics, including buying the votes of key cardinals for the elections of popes Innocent IX and Clement VIII. Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s - 1590s - 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s Years: 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 Events and Trends Categories: 1590s ... Innocent IX, born Gian Antonio Facchinetti de Nuce (July 22, 1519 - December 30, 1591), who was born to a modest working family in the mountainous commune of Cravegna, in the diocese of Novara, northern Italy, was a canon lawyer, diplomat, and chief administrator during the reign of Pope Gregory XIV... Clement, in the monument in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, erected by his Borghese heirs Clement VIII, born Ippolito Aldobrandini (March 1536 - March 5, 1605) was pope from 1592 to 1605. ...

During the 1590s he made frequent trips to Rome, remaining active in the musical life there. He premiered his famous Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo... in February 1600; this piece is generally held to be the first oratorio. Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s - 1590s - 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s Years: 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 Events and Trends Categories: 1590s ... Events January January 1 - Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Years Day February February 17 - Giordano Bruno burned in a stake for heresy July July 2 - Battle of Nieuwpoort: Dutch forces under Maurice of Nassau defeat Spanish forces under Archduke Albert in a battle on the coastal dunes. ... An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus. ...

In 1600 Cavalieri produced Euridice, one of the first operas, by Jacopo Peri (libretto by Ottaviano Rinuccini); this was part of an elaborate set of festivities for the wedding of Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici. Unfortunately for Cavalieri, he was not given control of the main event, the production of Il rapimento di Cefalo--his rival Giulio Caccini took over from him--and he left Florence in anger, never to return. This article is about opera as an art form. ... Jacopo Peri (August 20, 1561 – August 12, 1633) was an Italian composer and singer, often called the inventor of opera. ... Libretto can also refer to a sub-notebook PC manufactured by Toshiba. ... By Frans Pourbus the younger. ...

Works

Cavalieri claimed to be the inventor of monody, often with considerable irritation: "everyone knows I am the inventor of monody," he said in a letter of 1600, "and I said so myself in print." Caccini seems to have gotten more of the credit, perhaps deservedly so, because of his early association with Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei in the 1570s in Florence, where the style was first discussed and probably invented. Comparing himself to Caccini, he said of their two styles: "[my] music moves people to pleasure and sadness, while theirs [i.e. Caccini's and Peri's] moves them to boredom and disgust." Events January January 1 - Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Years Day February February 17 - Giordano Bruno burned in a stake for heresy July July 2 - Battle of Nieuwpoort: Dutch forces under Maurice of Nassau defeat Spanish forces under Archduke Albert in a battle on the coastal dunes. ... Vincenzo Galilei (1520 – July 2, 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei. ... Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s 1560s - 1570s - 1580s 1590s 1600s 1610s 1620s Years: 1570 1571 1572 1573 1574 1575 1576 1577 1578 1579 Significant Events and Trends Transition from the Muromachi to the Azuchi-Momoyama period in Japan Categories: 1570s ...

Among Cavalieri's secular compositions were madrigals, monodies, and pieces he wrote for intermedi; his sacred compositions included a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo. This work, probably the most historically important composition of Cavalieri to survive, consists of alternating speech, strophic songs, recitative-like sections and madrigalian parts; subsequent oratorios often used it as a starting-point. It is the first work to be published with a figured bass. Most importantly, however, it was an attempt to demonstrate, at musically conservative Rome, that the modern monodic style was consistent with the aims of the Counter-Reformation and could be adapted to a religious as opposed to a secular purpose. The quick adoption of the modern musical style by other Roman composers attests to its effectiveness in this regard. A madrigal is a setting for 4–6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. ... The Book of Lamentations (Hebrew מגילת איכה) is a book of the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. ... Strophic form, or chorus form, is a sectional and/or additive way of structuring a piece of music based on the repetition of one formal section or block played repeatedly. ... Recitative, a form of composition often used in operas, oratorios, cantatas and similar works, is described as a melodic speech set to music, or a descriptive narrative song in which the music follows the words. ... Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervallic content (the intervals which make up a sonority), later chords, in relation to a bass note. ... The Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation was a strong reaffirmation of the doctrine and structure of the Catholic Church, climaxing at the Council of Trent, partly in reaction to the growth of Protestantism. ...

Most of his music is in the most advanced style of the time. His four-part vocal music usually has a highly ornamented and expressive melodic line; the differentiation of the melodic line from the others is one of the defining features of the early Baroque. Sometimes he experimented with enharmonic chromaticism which required microtonal tunings; apparently he built a special organ in the 1590s for playing this kind of music. Ornament is frequently used to denote: An element of decoration. ... In music, an enharmonic is a note which is the equivalent of some other note, but spelled differently. ... In music, chromatic indicates the inclusion of notes not in the prevailing scale and is also used for those notes themselves (Shir-Cliff et al 1965, p. ... Microtonal music is music using microtones -- intervals of less than a semitone, or as Charles Ives put it, the notes between the cracks of the piano. ... This article or section should be merged with Pipe organ The Casavant pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Montreal The organ is a type of keyboard musical instrument, distinctive because the sound is not produced by a percussion action, as on a piano or celesta, or by... Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century Decades: 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s - 1590s - 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s Years: 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 Events and Trends Categories: 1590s ...

Sources and Further Reading

• Articles Emilio de' Cavalieri, Giulio Caccini, Monody in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
• Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1947. ISBN 0393097455

Manfred Bukofzer (March 27, 1910–December 7, 1955) was a German-American musicologist and humanist. ...

External Link

Journal of Seventeenth Century Music article on Chiesa Nuova (http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/v9/no1/Morelli.html)