The Evolution of Music. 395 



advancing school of polyphonic composition was alone fitted 

 to highly develop that form of art. The Protestant spirit 

 gave it increasing influence and effect, and its grandest re- 

 sults were achieved in the Passion Music of Bach and the 

 incomparable works of HandeL 



Vincenzo Galilei, at the beginning of the seventeenth cent- 

 ury, was one of a band of nobles and gentry who devised for 

 music-lovers of his day that form of free musical declama- 

 tion known as the recitative. It was the era of the Renais- 

 sance, which extolled everything Grecian, and the new de- 

 parture was an attempt at a revival of the Greek practice of 

 rhapsodizing with musical accompaniment. In a line with 

 this was Galilei's endeavor to resuscitate the ancient Pytha- 

 gorean doctrine of the scales. It was an attempt to media- 

 tize between the strictly rhythmical and oft-repeated stanzas 

 of the volk-song and the cumbersome phrases of contrapun- 

 tal and fugal music. Such was the so-called " musica par- 

 lante," or spoken music, the direct precursor of modern op- 

 era. Two operas The Combat of Apollo and the Serpent, 

 and The Satyr were represented in 1590. Caccini and Peri 

 produced Daphne in about 1594, and Eurydice in 1600. The 

 new style was hailed with great enthusiasm. It had a strong 

 fascination for all classes, which the severe forms of oratorio 

 could not possess, and it appealed both to the imagination 

 and to history and personal experience as well. It was great- 

 ly advanced by Monteverde, who produced his Arianna and 

 Orpheus in 1607-1608. Monteverde anticipated Gluck and 

 Wagner in his theory that musical form should yield to text- 

 ual expression, and not be allowed to disfigure it with vocal 

 gymnastics. TVith the recitative came to be interspersed in 

 time regular melodic subjects, corresponding to the arias of 

 our modem opera. Cardinal Mazarin introduced the new 

 music into France, where, in the seventeenth century, Lully 

 gave it the permanent form of the French lyrical drama. 

 Schutz furthered its adoption into Germany. In England, 

 Purcell was the most prolific composer of his time. In Italy, 

 Scarlatti (1659-1725) put forth no less than one hundred 

 and fifteen operas and invented the overture. Furthermore, 

 the adoption of the recitative form in shorter compositions 

 like the cantata by Carissimi and Stradella gave wide preva- 

 lence to the new idea. 



Gluck, as is well known, labored to restore opera to its 

 original significance, as the appropriate exponent, in music, 



