raditions of the lyric drama as it had been known in Italy
for a century, while there is also a little that approaches the new
style then in process of development. This is not strange, indeed, since
several of the men most deeply interested in the search after the
ancient Greek declamation were active in the preparation of this
entertainment. Nevertheless we learn from Malvezzi's publication that
the pieces were all written in the madrigal style, frequently in
numerous voice parts. The entire orchestra was employed in company with
the voices only in the heavier numbers.

It is plain that in these musical plays there was no attempt at complete
setting of the text. There was no union of the lyrics by any sort of
recitative. The first Italian to write anything of this kind in a play
seems to have been Cavaliere, but unfortunately his "Il Satiro" (1590)
and "La Disperazione di Sileno" (1595) are known to us only through a
comment of Doni, who censures them for pedantic affectations and
artificialities of style, inimical to the truth of dramatic music. The
dates of the production of these works show us that they were not as old
as the movement toward real monodic song, and it is certain that in
France, at any rate, the Italian Balthazarini had already brought out in
1581 a ballet-opera, "Le Ballet Comique de la Reine," which contained
real vocal solos. At the same time the evidence is conclusive that the
madrigal was acquiring general popularity as a form of dramatic music,
and the madrigal drama reached the zenith of its glory at the very
moment when its fate was preparing in the experiments of Galilei and
others in the new monodic style destined to become the basis of modern
Italian opera.

CHAPTER XII

Influence of the Taste for Comedy

An illuminative fact in the history of the madrigal drama is the growth
of the comic element. Poliziano's dream of Arcadia was perhaps neither
deep nor passionate, but it was at any rate serious and for some time
after its production the lyric drama aspired to the utterance of high
sentiments. But the incongruous mingling of Arcadian shepherds and
shepherdesses with the gods and heroes of the classic literature in a
series of musical actions, conceived with the desire to gratify that
passionate sensuality which governed Italian thought, was sure in time
to lead the typical insincerity and satiric view-point of the Italian
mind to the delights of physical realism, and the free