Florentin Camerata Research Paper

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Recommended: Greek theatre and modern drama

Tanner Ballingall
Music History 1
Dr. Tarrant
End-Semester Essay
The Florentine Camerata: Ideals and Beliefs
The Florentine Camerata held many beliefs about the revival of Greek Drama. Many of these beliefs concerned the current style of music, which was polyphonic. They believed that this was not the correct way to efficiently emphasize the text found in these manuscripts. From this, they created a new style of music: the monody, or solo voice.
The Florentine Camerata was a small group of humanistic musicians who gathered to discuss trends in the arts. Known members of the Camerata included of Giovanni Bardi, Guilio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, and Vincenzo Galilei. It was through many discussions and experiments that they decided that the group believed in. The Camerata found some issues when it came to the revival of Greek Drama, particularly with the style and textures of the …show more content…

They believed that if poets were to create plays in true Greek fashion, that music must supplement the text as well. The main issue with this is that the current style of music was polyphonic. This posed a serious problem because they believed that one could not express a single line of poetry in a polyphonic way(Kallen), with the other voices creating confusion amongst listeners, and ultimately the distortion of words.
The Florentine Camerata firmly believed that the only way to revive Greek Drama was to put the texts into music. Based on their beliefs for how the texts should be implemented with music, they created what was known as a monody. What they defined as a monody was based on three basic principles. The first of these is that the text be clearly understood(Grout). The performances of these would include a solo singer and the simplest accompaniment that could be written, usually on an instrument such as a lute or other

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