thought at the time. The
philosophers began by questioning the authority of dogma. Next they
turned for instruction to the ancients, and finally they interrogated
nature. In the course of their development they revolted against the
deadening rule of the church and claimed for the human mind the right to
reason independently. The scientific investigation of natural phenomena
followed almost inevitably and the demonstrations of Giordano Bruno and
Galileo shook the foundations of the church.

In the field of polite literature men turned to nature for their laws of
daily life and believed that in the pastoral kingdom of Theocritus they
had found the promised land. Inevitably it followed that the figure of
Orpheus, singing through the earth, and bringing under his dominion the
beast and the bird, the very trees and stones, should become the picture
of their fondest dreams. He was the hero of Arcady "where all the leaves
are merry." In his presence the dust of dry theology and the cruel ban
of the church against the indulgence of human desires were impossible.
From solemn ecclesiastic prose the world was turned to happy pagan song.
The very music of the church went out into the world and became earthly
in the madrigals of love. The miter and the stole gave way to the buskin
and the pack; and the whole dreamland of Italy peopled itself with
wandering singers wooing nymphs or shepherdesses in landscapes that
would have fired the imagination of a Turner.

And withal the dramatic embodiment of this conception was prepared as a
court spectacle for the enjoyment of fashionable society. Thus we find
ourselves in the presence of conditions not unlike those which produced
the tomfooleries of the court of Louis XVI and the musettes, bergerettes
and aubades of French song.

The production of Poliziano's "Orfeo" may not have seemed to its
contemporaries to possess an importance larger than that which Rossi and
D'Ancona attribute to it; but its proper position in musical history is
at the foundation of the modern opera. Poetically it was the superior of
any lyric work, except perhaps those of Metastasio. Musically it was
radically different in character from the opera, as it was from the
liturgical drama. But none the less it contained some of the germs of
the modern opera. It had its solo, its chorus and its ballet.[12] But
while the characters of these were almost as clearly defined as they are
in Gluck's "Orfeo," their musical basis