Emilio de' Cavalieri
Encyclopedia
Emilio de' Cavalieri was an Italian composer
, producer
, organist
, diplomat, choreographer and dance
r at the end of the Renaissance
era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome
, Florence
and Venice
, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque
era. A member of the Roman School
of composers, he was an influential early composer of monody
, and wrote what is usually considered to be the first oratorio
.
Cavalieri was born in Rome of an aristocratic and musical family. He was the son of Tommaso de' Cavalieri (ca. 1509–1587), the close friend of Michelangelo
. He probably received his early training there, and was working as an organist and music director in the period from 1578 to 1584. He spent much of his time in Rome as an organiser of Lent
en oratorios. While in Rome he became associated with Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici.
In 1587, Ferdinando de' Medici succeeded his brother as Grand Duke of Tuscany, and in 1588 he brought Cavalieri to Florence as an overseer of artists, craftsmen and musicians. Cavalieri was master of ceremonies for the extremely opulent intermedi
that the Medici
family required for events such as weddings. Count Giovanni de' Bardi
, the founder and patron of the Florentine Camerata
, also collaborated on these productions. In May 1589, the festivities for the marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinando to Christina of Lorraine
included a performance of Girolamo Bargagli's La pellegrina
, with six especially elaborate intermedi. The 1st number of the final intermedio (6) was initially a piece by Bardi but was replaced in the actual intermedio by Cavalieri's virtuosic number based on the Aria del Gran Duca
which became popular all over Europe and occurs in many arrangements and variations such as that made by Peter Philips
in Antwerp. Cavalieri may have gotten some of his ideas for monody
directly from Bardi, since Cavalieri was not a member of the Camerata during its period of activity a few years earlier. He may have developed his rivalry with Giulio Caccini
, another extremely important and influential early monodist during this period.
In the 1590s, while still in Florence, Cavalieri produced several pastorale
s (a semi-dramatic predecessor to opera, set in the country, with shepherds and shepherdesses as common characters). In addition to his musical activities, he was employed as a diplomat during this time, assisting in papal politics, including buying the votes of key cardinals for the elections of popes Innocent IX and Clement VIII who were expected to favour the Medici.
During the 1590s he made frequent diplomatic trips to Rome, remaining active in the musical life there. He premiered his famous Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
... in February 1600; this piece is generally held to be the first oratorio
. According to Roman records the piece was produced twice that year at the Oratorio de Filippini adjacent to Santa Maria in Vallicella
, and was witnessed by thirty-five cardinals.
In 1600 Cavalieri produced Euridice, one of the first opera
s, by Jacopo Peri
(libretto
by Ottavio Rinuccini
); this was part of an elaborate set of festivities for the wedding of Henry IV of France
and Maria de' Medici. Unfortunately for Cavalieri, he was not given control of the main event, the production of Il rapimento di Cefalo
—his rival Giulio Caccini took over from him—and he left Florence in anger, never to return.
, and he made the claim with considerable irritation: "everyone knows I am the inventor of [this style]," he said in a letter of 1600, "and I said so myself in print." Caccini seems to have gotten more of the credit, perhaps deservedly so, because of his early association with Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei
in the 1570s in Florence, where the style was first discussed and probably invented. Comparing himself to Caccini, he said of their two styles: "[my] music moves people to pleasure and sadness, while theirs [i.e. Caccini's and Peri's] moves them to boredom and disgust."
Among Cavalieri's secular compositions were madrigal
s, monodies, and pieces he wrote for intermedi; his sacred compositions included a setting of the Lamentations
of Jeremiah, and the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
. This work, probably the most historically important composition of Cavalieri to survive, consists of alternating speech, strophic songs, recitative
-like sections and madrigalian parts; subsequent oratorios often used it as a starting-point. It is the first work to be published with a figured bass
. Most importantly, however, it was an attempt to demonstrate, at musically conservative Rome, that the modern monodic style was consistent with the aims of the Counter-Reformation
and could be adapted to a religious as opposed to a secular purpose. The quick adoption of the modern musical style by other Roman composers attests to its effectiveness in this regard. Cavalieri was followed by other Roman School
composers of the 17th century who included Domenico Mazzocchi
, Giacomo Carissimi
and Alessandro Scarlatti
.
Most of his music is in the most advanced style of the time. His four-part vocal music usually has a highly ornamented
and expressive melodic line; the differentiation of the melodic line from the others is one of the defining features of the early Baroque. Sometimes he experimented with enharmonic
chromaticism
which required microtonal tunings; apparently he built a special pipe organ
in the 1590s for playing this kind of music.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
, diplomat, choreographer and dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
r at the end of the Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
era. A member of the Roman School
Roman School
In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced...
of composers, he was an influential early composer of monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
, and wrote what is usually considered to be the first oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
.
Life
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
. He probably received his early training there, and was working as an organist and music director in the period from 1578 to 1584. He spent much of his time in Rome as an organiser of Lent
Lent
In the Christian tradition, Lent is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer – through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial – for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and...
en oratorios. While in Rome he became associated with Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici.
In 1587, Ferdinando de' Medici succeeded his brother as Grand Duke of Tuscany, and in 1588 he brought Cavalieri to Florence as an overseer of artists, craftsmen and musicians. Cavalieri was master of ceremonies for the extremely opulent intermedi
Intermedio
The intermedio, or intermezzo, in the Italian Renaissance, was a theatrical performance or spectacle with music and often dance which was performed between the acts of a play to celebrate special occasions in Italian courts. It was one of the important predecessors to opera, and an influence on...
that the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
family required for events such as weddings. Count Giovanni de' Bardi
Giovanni de' Bardi
Giovanni de' Bardi , Count of Vernio, was an Italian literary critic, writer, composer and soldier.- Biography :Giovanni de' Bardi was born in Florence....
, the founder and patron of the Florentine Camerata
Florentine Camerata
The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama...
, also collaborated on these productions. In May 1589, the festivities for the marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinando to Christina of Lorraine
Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
Christina of Lorraine or Chretienne de Lorraine was a member of the House of Lorraine and was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany by marriage...
included a performance of Girolamo Bargagli's La pellegrina
La Pellegrina
The Pilgrim Woman was a play performed at the Florentine Intermedi of 1592. The play was written by the Italian sixteenth-century playwright and librettist Girolamo Bargagli of Sienna in 1579 but was performed for the first time on 2 May 1589, after the author's death in 1586...
, with six especially elaborate intermedi. The 1st number of the final intermedio (6) was initially a piece by Bardi but was replaced in the actual intermedio by Cavalieri's virtuosic number based on the Aria del Gran Duca
Aria del Gran Duca
Aria del Gran Duca is a popular melody and ground bass originating in a number by Emilio de Cavalieri in the Florentine Intermedio of 1592. It spread over Europe and was used as a basis of compositions by numerous other Renaissance composers, both anonymous and named, such as Peter Philips,...
which became popular all over Europe and occurs in many arrangements and variations such as that made by Peter Philips
Peter Philips
Peter Philips was an eminent English composer, organist, and Catholic priest exiled to Flanders...
in Antwerp. Cavalieri may have gotten some of his ideas for monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
directly from Bardi, since Cavalieri was not a member of the Camerata during its period of activity a few years earlier. He may have developed his rivalry with Giulio Caccini
Giulio Caccini
Giulio Caccini , also known as Giulio Romano, 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 single most influential creators of the new Baroque style...
, another extremely important and influential early monodist during this period.
In the 1590s, while still in Florence, Cavalieri produced several pastorale
Pastorale
For Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, see Symphony No. 6 Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood....
s (a semi-dramatic predecessor to opera, set in the country, with shepherds and shepherdesses as common characters). In addition to his musical activities, he was employed as a diplomat during this time, assisting in papal politics, including buying the votes of key cardinals for the elections of popes Innocent IX and Clement VIII who were expected to favour the Medici.
During the 1590s he made frequent diplomatic trips to Rome, remaining active in the musical life there. He premiered his famous Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
Emilio de Cavalieri regarded himself as the composer of the first opera or oratorio, with the Rappresentatione di anima e di corpo,...
... in February 1600; this piece is generally held to be the first oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
. According to Roman records the piece was produced twice that year at the Oratorio de Filippini adjacent to Santa Maria in Vallicella
Santa Maria in Vallicella
Santa Maria in Vallicella, also called Chiesa Nuova, is a church in Rome, Italy, which today faces onto the main thoroughfare of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele...
, and was witnessed by thirty-five cardinals.
In 1600 Cavalieri produced Euridice, one of the first opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s, by Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera...
(libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini
Ottavio Rinuccini was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras...
); this was part of an elaborate set of festivities for the wedding of Henry IV of France
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
and Maria de' Medici. Unfortunately for Cavalieri, he was not given control of the main event, the production of Il rapimento di Cefalo
Il rapimento di Cefalo
Il rapimento di Cefalo was one of the first Italian operas. Most of the music was written by Giulio Caccini but Stefano Venturi del Nibbio, Luca Bati and Piero Strozzi also contributed...
—his rival Giulio Caccini took over from him—and he left Florence in anger, never to return.
Works
Cavalieri claimed to be the inventor of the stile rappresentativo, what is now usually known as monodyMonody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
, and he made the claim with considerable irritation: "everyone knows I am the inventor of [this style]," he said in a letter of 1600, "and I said so myself in print." Caccini seems to have gotten more of the credit, perhaps deservedly so, because of his early association with Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei...
in the 1570s in Florence, where the style was first discussed and probably invented. Comparing himself to Caccini, he said of their two styles: "[my] music moves people to pleasure and sadness, while theirs [i.e. Caccini's and Peri's] moves them to boredom and disgust."
Among Cavalieri's secular compositions were madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
s, monodies, and pieces he wrote for intermedi; his sacred compositions included a setting of the Lamentations
Book of Lamentations
The Book of Lamentations ) is a poetic book of the Hebrew Bible composed by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. It mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple in the 6th Century BCE....
of Jeremiah, and the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo
Emilio de Cavalieri regarded himself as the composer of the first opera or oratorio, with the Rappresentatione di anima e di corpo,...
. This work, probably the most historically important composition of Cavalieri to survive, consists of alternating speech, strophic songs, recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
-like sections and madrigalian parts; subsequent oratorios often used it as a starting-point. It is the first work to be published with a figured bass
Figured bass
Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones, in relation to a bass note...
. Most importantly, however, it was an attempt to demonstrate, at musically conservative Rome, that the modern monodic style was consistent with the aims of the Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
and could be adapted to a religious as opposed to a secular purpose. The quick adoption of the modern musical style by other Roman composers attests to its effectiveness in this regard. Cavalieri was followed by other Roman School
Roman School
In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced...
composers of the 17th century who included Domenico Mazzocchi
Domenico Mazzocchi
Domenico Mazzocchi was an Italian baroque composer of the generation after Claudio Monteverdi. He was a composer of only vocal music, motets, oratorios and madrigals which have continuo, similar to the late Monteverdi's ones....
, Giacomo Carissimi
Giacomo Carissimi
Giacomo Carissimi was an Italian composer, one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque, or, more accurately, the Roman School of music.-Biography:...
and Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...
.
Most of his music is in the most advanced style of the time. His four-part vocal music usually has a highly ornamented
Ornament (music)
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody , but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central note...
and expressive melodic line; the differentiation of the melodic line from the others is one of the defining features of the early Baroque. Sometimes he experimented with enharmonic
Enharmonic
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently...
chromaticism
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
which required microtonal tunings; apparently he built a special pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
in the 1590s for playing this kind of music.
Secondary or tertiary
- The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, (MacMillan,1992). entries under Cavalieri, Peri, and Rappresentatione.
- Claude V. Palisca: "Emilio de' Cavalieri", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 17, 2005), (subscription access)