Giulio Caccini

Title page of Le nuove musiche (1601)

Giulio Romolo Caccini (also Giulio

Romano) (8 October 1551 – buried 10
December 1618), was an Italian
composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist
and writer of the very late Renaissance
and early Baroque eras. He was one of
the founders of the genre of opera, and
one of the most influential creators of the
new Baroque style. He was also the
father of the composer Francesca
Caccini and the singer Settimia Caccini.

Life
Little is known about his early life, but he
was born in Italy, the son of the carpenter
Michelangelo Caccini; he was the older
brother of the Florentine sculptor
Giovanni Caccini. In Rome he studied the
lute, the viol and the harp, and began to
acquire a reputation as a singer. In the
1560s, Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke
of Florence, was so impressed with his
talent that he took the young Caccini to
Florence for further study.

By 1579, Caccini was singing at the

Medici court. He was a tenor, and he was
able to accompany himself on the viol or
the archlute; he sang at various
entertainments, including weddings and
affairs of state, and took part in the
sumptuous intermedi of the time, the
elaborate musical, dramatic, visual
spectacles which were one of the
precursors of opera. Also during this
time he took part in the movement of
humanists, writers, musicians and
scholars of the ancient world who
formed the Florentine Camerata, the
group which gathered at the home of
Count Giovanni de' Bardi, and which was
dedicated to recovering the supposed
lost glory of ancient Greek dramatic
music. With Caccini's abilities as a singer,
instrumentalist, and composer added to
the mix of intellects and talents, the
Camerata developed the concept of
monody—an emotionally affective solo
vocal line, accompanied by relatively
simple chordal harmony on one or more
instruments—which was a revolutionary
departure from the polyphonic practice
of the late Renaissance.

In the last two decades of the 16th

century, Caccini continued his activities
as a singer, teacher and composer. His
influence as a teacher has perhaps been
underestimated, since he trained dozens
of musicians to sing in the new style,
including the castrato Giovanni Gualberto
Magli, who sang in the first production of
Monteverdi's first opera Orfeo.

Caccini made at least one further trip to

Rome, in 1592, as the secretary to Count
Bardi. According to his own writings, his
music and singing met with an
enthusiastic response. However, Rome,
the home of Palestrina and the Roman
School, was musically conservative, and
music following Caccini's stylistic lead
was relatively rare there until after 1600.

Caccini's character seems to have been

less than perfectly honorable, as he was
frequently motivated by envy and
jealousy, not only in his professional life
but for personal advancement with the
Medici. On one occasion, he informed to
the Grand Duke Francesco on two lovers
in the Medici household—Eleonora, the
wife of Pietro de' Medici, who was having
an illicit affair with Bernardino Antinori—
and his informing led directly to
Eleonora's murder by Pietro. His rivalry
with both Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo
Peri seems to have been intense: he may
have been the one who arranged for
Cavalieri to be removed from his post as
director of festivities for the wedding of
Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici
in 1600 (an event which caused Cavalieri
to leave Florence in fury), and he also
seems to have rushed his own opera
Euridice into print before Peri's opera on
the same subject could be published,
while simultaneously ordering his group
of singers to have nothing to do with
Peri's production.

After 1605, Caccini was less influential,

though he continued to take part in
composition and performance of sacred
polychoral music. He died in Florence,
and is buried in the church of St.
Annunziata.

Music and influence

The stile recitativo, as the newly created
style of monody was called, proved to be
popular not only in Florence, but
elsewhere in Italy. Florence and Venice
were the two most progressive musical
centers in Europe at the end of the 16th
century, and the combination of musical
innovations from each place resulted in
the development of what came to be
known as the Baroque style. Caccini's
achievement was to create a type of
direct musical expression, as easily
understood as speech, which later
developed into the operatic recitative,
and which influenced numerous other
stylistic and textural elements in Baroque
music.

Caccini's most influential work was a

collection of monodies and songs for
solo voice and basso continuo, published
in 1602, called Le nuove musiche.
Although it is often considered the first
published collection of monodies, it was
actually preceded by the collection by
Domenico Melli. In fact, the collection
was Caccini's attempt, evidently
successful, to situate himself as the
inventor and codifier of monody and
basso continuo. Although the collection
was officially published in 1602, Caccini
is careful to maintain the date 1601 in his
dedication of the collection to Signor
Lorenzo Salviati. This likely explains why
the collection is often dated to 1601.
Moreover, he explicitly positions himself
as the inventor of the style when
describing it in the introduction. He
writes:

Having thus seen, as I say, that

such music and musicians
offered no pleasure beyond that
which pleasant sounds could
give – solely to the sense of
hearing, since they could not
move the mind without the
words being understood – it
occurred to me to introduce a
kind of music in which one could
almost speak in tones,
employing in it (as I have said
elsewhere) a certain noble
negligence of song, sometimes
passing through several
dissonances while still
maintaining the bass note (save
when I wished to do it the
 ordinary way and play the inner
parts on the instrument to
express some effect – these being
of little other value).[1]

The introduction to this volume is

probably the most clearly written
description of the performance of
monody, what Caccini called affetto
cantando (passionate singing), from the
time (a detailed discussion of the affetto
cantando performance style can be
found in Toft, With Passionate Voice,
pp. 227–40). Caccini's preface includes
musical examples of ornaments—for
example how a specific passage can be
ornamented in several different ways,
according to the precise emotion that the
singer wishes to convey; it also includes
effusive praise for the style and amusing
disdain for the work of more
conservative composers of the period.

The introduction is also important in the

history of music theory, as it contains the
first attempt to describe the figured bass
of the basso continuo style of the
Seconda pratica. Caccini writes:

Note that I have been

accustomed, in all places that
have come from my pen, to
indicate with numbers over the
bass part the thirds and the
sixths – major when there is a
sharp, minor when a flat – and
likewise when sevenths or other
dissonances are to be made in
the inner voices as an
accompaniment. It remains only
to say that ties in the bass part
are used thusly by me: after the
[initial] chord, one should play
again only the notes [of the
harmony] indicated [and not the
bass note again], this being (if I
am not mistaken) most fitting to
 the proper usage of the archlute
(and easiest way to manage and
play it), granted that this
instrument is more suitable for
accompanying the voice,
especially the tenor voice, than
any other.[2]

This passage is often overlooked,

because it is brief, and located at the very
end of the introduction. It is even
indicated by Caccini as a "note"; an aside
or addendum to the main purpose. It is
important to observe, however, that the
first explanation of this practice is in the
context of an essay about vocal
expression and intelligibility. Indeed, it
was largely the aim of textual
intelligibility that led to the development
of this musical style, and to the music of
the common practice period.

Works
Caccini wrote music for three operas—
Euridice (1600), Il rapimento di Cefalo
(1600, excerpts published in the first
Nuove musiche), and Euridice (1602),
though the first two were collaborations
with others (mainly Peri for the first
Euridice). In addition he wrote the music
for one intermedio (Io che dal ciel cader
farei la luna) (1589). No music for
multiple voices survives, even though the
records from Florence indicate he was
involved with polychoral music around
1610.

He was predominantly a composer of

monody and solo song accompanied by
a chordal instrument (he himself played
harp), and it is in this capacity that he
acquired his immense fame. He
published two collections of songs and
solo madrigals, both titled Le nuove
musiche, in 1602 (new style) and 1614
(the latter as Nuove musiche e nuova
maniera di scriverle). Most of the
madrigals are through-composed and
contain little repetition; some of the
songs, however, are strophic. Among the
most famous and widely disseminated of
these is the madrigal Amarilli, mia bella.

Recordings
Euridice. Scherzi Musicali with Nicolas
Achten, conductor. 2009, Ricercar RIC
269

References
Notes

1. Caccini, Giulio, Introduction to Le nuove

musiche edited and translated by H. Wiley
Hitchcock, A-R Editions, Inc., p. 3.