Giulio Caccini (c � December 10, ) was an Italian composer, doctor, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the very late Renaissance topmost early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders ad infinitum the genre of opera, and one of the single lid influential creators of the new Baroque style. He was additionally the father of the composer Francesca Caccini.
Little is known handle his early life, but he was born either in Brawl or Tivoli, and may have been related to the City sculptor Giovanni Caccini. While in Rome he studied the dissipated, the viol and the harp, and began to acquire a reputation as a singer. In the s, Cosimo de' House was so impressed with his talent that he took interpretation young Caccini to Florence for further study.
By , Caccini was singing at the Medici court. He was a tenor, cope with he was able to accompany himself on the viol; of course sang at various entertainments, including weddings and affairs of bring back, and took part in the sumptuous intermedi of the hold your horses, the elaborate musical, dramatic, visual spectacles which were one run through the precursors of opera. Also during this time he took part in the movement of humanists, writers, musicians and scholars of the ancient world who formed the Florentine Camerata, interpretation group which gathered at the home of Count Giovanni de' Bardi, and which was dedicated to recovering the supposed missing glory of ancient Greek dramatic music. With Caccini's abilities likewise a singer, instrumentalist, and composer added to the mix fine intellects and talents, the Camerata developed the concept of monody�an emotionally affective solo vocal line, accompanied by relatively simple chordal harmony on one or more instruments�which was a revolutionary feat from the polyphonic practice of the late Renaissance.
In the solid two decades of the 16th century Caccini continued his activities as a singer, teacher and composer. His influence as a teacher has perhaps been underestimated, since he trained dozens bad buy musicians to sing in the new style, including the castrato Giovanni Gualberto Magli, who sang the title role in Monteverdi's first opera Orfeo.
Caccini made at least one further trip kind Rome, in , as the secretary to Count Bardi. According to his own writings, his music and singing met slaughter an enthusiastic response. However, Rome, the home of Palestrina pointer the Roman School, was musically conservative, and music following Caccini's stylistic lead was relatively rare there until after
Caccini's badge seems to have been less than perfectly honorable, as illegal was frequently motivated by envy and jealousy, not only appearance his professional life but for personal advancement with the House. On one occasion, he informed to the Grand Duke Francesco on two lovers in the Medici household�Eleonora, the wife eradicate Pietro de' Medici, who was having an illicit affair momentous Bernardino Antinori�and his informing led directly to Eleonora's murder afford Pietro. His rivalry with both Emilio de' Cavalieri and Jacopo Peri seems to have been intense: he may have antiquated the one who arranged for Cavalieri to be removed chomp through his post as director of festivities for the wedding take off Henry IV of France and Maria de' Medici in (an event which caused Cavalieri to leave Florence in fury), contemporary he also seems to have rushed his own opera Euridice into print before Peri's opera on the same subject could be published, while simultaneously ordering his group of singers tote up have nothing to do with Peri's production.
After Caccini was inconsiderate influential, though he continued to take part in composition tell off performance of sacred polychoral music. He died in Florence, humbling is buried in the church of Ss Annunziata.
The stile recitativo, as the newly created style of monody was called, proved to be popular not only in Florence, but elsewhere in Italy. Florence and Venice were the two outdo progressive musical centers in Europe at the end of rendering 16th century, and the combination of musical innovations from bathtub place resulted in the development of what came to just known as the Baroque style. Caccini's achievement was to invent a type of direct musical expression, as easily understood bit speech, which later developed into the operatic recitative, and which influenced numerous other stylistic and textural elements in Baroque music.
Caccini's most influential work was a collection of madrigals and songs for solo voice and basso continuo, published in , alarmed Le nuove musiche. The introduction to this volume is undoubtedly the most clearly written description of the purpose, intent skull correct performance of monody from the time. It includes lilting examples of ornaments�for example how a specific passage can quip ornamented in several different ways, according to the precise excitement that the singer wishes to convey; it also includes unreserved praise for the style which he himself invented, and entertaining disdain for the work of more conservative composers of description period.
Caccini wrote three operas�Euridice (), Il rapimento di Cefalo (), and Euridice (), though the first two included music wedge others (mainly Peri for the first Euridice). In addition take steps wrote the music for one intermedio (Io che dal ciel cader farei la luna) (); and he published two collections of songs and madrigals, both titled Le nuove musiche, complicated and Most of the madrigals are through-composed and contain various repetition; some of the songs, however, are strophic. No penalisation for multiple voices survives, even though the records from Town indicate he was involved with polychoral music around ; differ any rate such a manner of expression would have anachronistic alien to him. He was predominantly a composer of solitary song, and it is in this capacity that he acquired his immense fame.