Scan 47
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
8 lines. Read by computer on 9 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1bones, one regale (folding organ), two cornetti (wooden horns), one flute, one trumpet, and three sordeni (muted trumpets). A conception so vast naturally crowned Monteverde with glory and dowered him with numerous pupils and imitators. The expense of such productions being great, they were designed only for the edification of princes, and as yet the people had no taste of opera.
3Lusty growth became discernible in the infant form. For instance, two new orchestral effects had been introduced by Monteverde, the pizzicato of plucked strings, and the violin tremolo. Alessandro Scarlatti, founder of the great Neapolitan school, and the most learned musician of the day, divided dramatic expression into three forms—recitative secco, or unaccompanied, for the ordinary business of the stage; recitative stromento, or accompanied, for the expression of deep emotion; and the aria, for impassioned soliloquy. In 1647, the opera reached Paris, which was destined to be the scene of many of its later triumphs and reforms. The first opera to be performed there was Peri's "Eurydice," which remained in favor despite newer developments. The performance was under the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin, who was thanked very poorly one hundred and fifty years later by being made the villain in one of Cherubini's compositions.
5Robert Cambert, against whom the intriguing Jean Baptiste Lully contrived so effectually, tried his hand at the new music, his "Pomone" and "The Pains and Pleasures of Love" being still extant. Lully, taking his predecessor's operatic form as he found it, wrote twenty operas in less than that number of years, reflecting the manners and tone of the French court. In the history of the opera, this shrewd gentleman is important for having put the French school on a firm basis, and for the invention of the overture, then consisting of a prelude, a fugue, and a dance movement.
7Why foolishly insist upon the absence of wise deeds in the career of Charles II., when it was he who sent Pelham Humphries over to Paris to study the opera from Lully?
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