ted only in the folk song, in the
rhapsodies of religious ecstatics and in the uncertain lyrics of the
minnesingers and troubadours. Of these the folk song, and the troubadour
lyrics had some musical figure, out of which a clear form might have
been developed. But, as all students of musical history know, the study
of the art originated among the fathers of the church and in their
pursuit of principles of structure they chose a path which led them
directly away from the rhythmic and strophic basis of the song and into
the realm of polyphonic imitation. The vocal solo had no place in their
system and hence it never appears in the art music of their time.

Consequently the advent of the dramatic recitative introduced by Peri,
Caccini and Cavaliere appears to be a striking phenomenon in the growth
of music, and we are easily induced to believe that this new species
burst upon the artistic firmament like a meteor. The truth is, however,
that the vague desire for solo expression had made itself felt in music
for centuries before the Florentine movement. The real significance of
the Florentine invention was its destruction of the musical shackles
which had so long hampered the advance toward truthful utterance.

We read frequently that the first instance of solo singing was the
delivery of a madrigal of Corteccia in a play of 1539. The character
Sileno sang the upper part and accompanied himself on the violone, while
the lower parts were given to other instruments. But this was nothing
new. This kind of solo was considerably older than Sileno and the
performance of Baccio Ugolino in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was unquestionably
of the same type. And this manner of delivering a solo, which
Castiglione called "recitar alla lira," was a descendant of the art of
singing with lute accompaniment which was well known in the fourteenth
century.

Doubtless Casella, who was born in 1300 and set to music Dante's sonnet
"Amor che nella mente," was one of the _cantori a liuto_. Minuccio
d'Arezzo, mentioned by Boccaccio, was another. Here again we must recur
to the observations of Burney and the examinations of Ambros. The former
records that in the Vatican there is a poem by Lemmo of Pistoja, with
the note "Casella diede il suono." It is likely that this musician was
well known in Italy and that he would not have had to rely for his
immortality upon the passing mention of a poet if the art of notation
had been more advanced in his day.

The