The part-song differs from the madrigal in derivation and character, being primarily an attempt to arrange a folk-song or similar melody for three or more voices with little more than note-for-note part-writing. The madrigal was the secular counterpart of the motet, the part-song the companion of the chorale. In the latter there was usually a continuous dominating melody in either the tenor or the treble, a division into lines or strophes with cadences, and a tendency to use the form over and over for successive stanzas, while the harmonic basis was not confined to the ecclesiastical modes. Yet in practiee everywhere the madrigal and the part-song lay so close together that they influenced each other and often coalesced.
Thus in Italy the 'villanella' or 'villota' was explicitly a part-song based upon a popular air, and even the 'frottola' was not strictiy a contrapuntal form, though developed thus for a time. In Germany true part-songs were the rule and reached a notable prominence with both secular and sacred words. In France and the Low Countries the' chanson' often veered toward the part-song, probably reverting thus to its primitive type. I n England the line between the madrigal and the part-song was always fluctuating, and finally disappeared in what was called the' glee.' The part-song, then, illustrates a process of evolution common in I 6thcentury music - a form that originated almost within the circle of unconscious folk-music, was adopted into artistic use without a full sense of its significance, and then proved so consonant with the trend of technical progress as to become typical. . In most countries the pursuit, of the strict madrigal died out in the 17th century, but the part-song, both in its normal form and with contrapuntal. elaboration, has survived with unlessened vigor to the present day.
Throughout the later 16th century composers were groping toward dramatic music. So long as the only recognized type of writing was contrapuntal, nothing significant could be accomplished, since without the solo the element of personality in song was kept at a minimum. Several experiments were tried with incidental music for plays (lnterlnezzi) in madrigal style, as by A. della Viola (1541-63), Striggio (1565-85), Merolo (1579), A. Gabrieli (1585) and Orazio Vecchi (1594). Only the last of these was specially successful, and one of them, at the wedding of Duke Francesco of Tuscany at Venice in 1579, led to a war of pamphlets between Venetian and Florentine critics.
About 1575 there began at Florence a movement that had important consequences. A wealthy and cultivated nobleman, Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio, himself a poet and amateur musician, drew about him a group of dilettanti in literature and art who were all inquiring after some method of dramatic expression of an intenser form than was then known. Their ambition was to restore the Greek drama in its entirety. This raised the question of musical declamation as a n1eans. Such declamation was practically a lost art, and numerous attempts were made to rediscover it. These experiments were called 'monodies,' the first of which were simply recitatives with a slight accompaniment.
The circle of Florentine dilettanti was originally a social club drawn together by common tastes, but before long became animated by a positive purpose of revolution in the direction of solo music. The chief names, besides Bardi, were ]acopo Corsi (d. 1604), a rich patron of the arts and a good player on the gravicembalo, who from 1592 was the head of the movement, Bardi having moved to Rome; the poet Ottavio Rinuccini (d. 1621), afterwards most serviceable as librettist; Emilio del Cavaliere (d. 1602), a Roman noble, at the time Ducal Inspector of Art at Florence, who was well versed in musical work and later one of the composers in the new style; Vincenzo Galilei (d. c. 1600), not so famous as his son, the astronomer, but a talented lutist and a good student and writer, who led the way in practical experiments and zealously defended the new ideas in pamphlets (from J 581); Giulio Caccini (d. 1618), singer in the Ducal Chapel from 1565 and a lutist whose versatile skill powerfully aided the movement; ]acopo Peri (d. 1633), also a welltrained musician, ducal choirmaster at Florence and later at Ferrara, who likewise served notably as a composer in the new style; Pietro Strozzi, who took part with Merulo and Striggio in the wedding music at Venice mentioned above and later heartily accepted the new ideas; Marco da Gagliano (d. 1642), at the time a young student for the priesthood, but later a composer in the monodic form.
The Madrigals and Secular Vocal Music
