[Some Forerunners of Italian Opera by William James Henderson]@TWC D-Link bookSome Forerunners of Italian Opera CHAPTER II 4/13
It appears to have made no difference to the Italians what kind of tune they employed.
They "sang the same strambotti to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose of Jericho and the red rose of the balcony." Here, then, we find a significant difference between the liturgical drama and the sacred representations.
The chant, which was the musical garb of the former appears to have had no position in the latter.
We shall perceive later that this difference marked a point of departure from which the entire lyric drama of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, prior to the invention of dramatic recitative by the Florentines, proceeded to move in a musical world of its own. The sacred representations built up a method complex and pregnant without chancing upon the defining element of opera.
And this result was reached chiefly, if not solely, because the ecclesiastic chant was not employed.
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