Emilio de' Cavalieri

Emilio de' Cavalieri (c.1550–March 11, 1602) was an Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer 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.

Works

Cavalieri claimed to be the inventor of monody, often with considerable irritation: "everyone knows I am the inventor of monody," 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: " music moves people to pleasure and sadness, while theirs moves them to boredom and disgust."

Related Topics:
1600 - Vincenzo Galilei - 1570s

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Among Cavalieri's secular compositions were madrigals, 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.

Related Topics:
Madrigal - Lamentations - Strophic - Recitative - Figured bass - Counter-Reformation

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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 organ in the 1590s for playing this kind of music.

Related Topics:
Ornamented - Enharmonic - Chromaticism - Microtonal - Organ - 1590s

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