The resort to the spoken text on the stage while the music was sung behind the scenes appears on the face of it to have been compelled by a wish for some method of conveying the meaning of the poet to the audience.
Why, then, did not these young reformers find at hand in the madrigal arranged for solo voice the suggestion for their line of lyric reconstruction?
Partly by reason of the confusion caused by obedience to old polyphonic customs in making the accompaniments, and partly because the madrigal had become a field for the display of vocal agility.
Already the development of colorature singing had reached a high degree of perfection.

Already the singer sought to astonish the hearer by covering an air with a bewildering variety of ornaments.

The time was not far off when the opera prima donna was to become the incarnation of the artistic sensuousness which had beguiled Italy with a dream of Grecian resurrection.

The way had been well built, for the attention of the fathers of the Roman church had been turned early to the necessity of system in the delivery of the liturgical chants.

The study of 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.