f a style
had developed a technic and to the achievement of vocal feats this
technic had been incited by the rapid rise of the act of descant.

Hand in hand the technic and the art of descant had come down the years.
The sharp distinction early made between "contrapunctus a penna" and
"contrapunctus a mente" showed that composers and singers to a certain
degree actually stood in rivalry in their production of passage work for
voices. The rapid expansion of the florid element in the polyphonic
music of the composers indicates to us that the improvised descant of
the singer had a sensible influence. We need not be astonished, then, to
learn that long before the end of the sixteenth century a very
considerable knowledge of what was later systematized as the so-called
"Italian method" had been acquired. The registers of head and chest were
understood, breathing was studied, the hygiene of the voice was not a
stranger, and vocalizes on all the vowels and for all the voices had
been written. Numerous singers had risen to note, and the records show
that their distinction rested not only on the beauty of their voices and
the elegance of their singing, but also on their ability to perform
those instrumental feats which have from that time to this been dear to
the colorature singer and to the operatic public.

In the closing years of the sixteenth century we find that the famous
singers were heard not oftener in public entertainments than in private
assemblies. Occasionally a madrigal arranged as a solo figured in a
lyric play, but the singing of madrigals for one voice was a popular
field for the exhibition of the powers of celebrated prima donnas such
as Vittoria Archilei and eminent tenors like Jacopo Peri.
Kiesewetter[35] gives a madrigal sung as a solo by Archilei. The
supporting parts of the composition were transferred from voices to
instruments apparently with little trouble. Mme. Archilei herself played
the lute and her husband, Antonio Archilei, and Antonio Nalda played two
chitarroni. The music of the madrigal was composed by Signor Archilei.
Here are the opening measures of this lyric:

[Musical Notation]

[Footnote 35: "Schicksale und Beschaffenheit des Weltlichen
Gesanges," by R. G. Kiesewetter. Leipsic, 1841.]

Here is the beginning of the composition as Mme. Archilei decorated it
with her extraordinary skill in the vocal ornamentation of the period:

[Musical Notation]

We are told that despite