ay delighted
to cater for it. Monteverde's most famous pupil was Cavalli, to whom may
with some certainty be attributed an innovation which was destined to
affect the future of opera very deeply. In his time, to quote Mr.
Latham's 'Renaissance of Music,' 'the _musica parlante_ of the earliest
days of opera was broken up into recitative, which was less eloquent,
and aria, which was more ornamental. The first appearance of this change
is to be found in Cavalli's operas, in which certain rhythmical
movements called "arias" which are quite distinct from the _musica
parlante_, make their appearance. The music assigned by Monteverde to
Orpheus when he is leading Eurydice back from the Shades is undoubtedly
an air, but the situation is one to which an air is appropriate, and
_musica parlante_ would be inappropriate. If the drama had been a play
to be spoken and not sung, there would not have been any incongruity in
allotting a song to Orpheus, to enable Eurydice to trace him through the
dark abodes of Hades. But the arias of Cavalli are not confined to such
special situations, and recur frequently,' Cavalli had the true Venetian
love of colour. In his hands the orchestra began to assume a new
importance. His attempts to give musical expression to the sights and
sounds of nature--the murmur of the sea, the rippling of the brook and
the tempestuous fury of the winds--mark an interesting step in the
history of orchestral development. With Marcantonio Cesti appears
another innovation of scarcely less importance to the history of opera
than the invention of the aria itself--the _da capo_ or the repetition
of the first part of the aria in its entirety after the conclusion of
the second part. However much the _da capo_ may have contributed to the
settlement of form in composition, it must be admitted that it struck at
the root of all real dramatic effect, and in process of time degraded
opera to the level of a concert. Cesti was a pupil of Carissimi, who is
famous chiefly for his sacred works, and from him he learnt to prefer
mere musical beauty to dramatic truth. Those of his operas which remain
to us show a far greater command of orchestral and vocal resource than
Monteverde or Cavalli could boast, but so far as real expression and
sincerity are concerned, they are inferior to the less cultured efforts
of the earlier musicians. It would be idle to attempt an enumeration of
the Venetian composers of the seventeenth century and their w