ing of vocal ornaments and the display of ingenuity in
the interweaving of parts for their own sakes, just as Wagner decried
the writing of tune for tune's sake, and on one of the same grounds,
namely, that nothing could result but a tickling of the ear. Yet these
young reformers had no intention of throwing overboard all the charms of
floridity in song. Here are two examples of their treatment of
passionate utterance in recitative. The first is by Peri and the second
by Caccini. Both are settings of the same text in the "Euridice."

[Musical Notation: two excerpts]

Caccini was somewhat more liberal than Peri in the use of floridity and
always showed taste and judgement therein. Here is a sample of his style
taken from a solo by one of the nymphs in "Euridice":

[Musical Notation]

Caccini also showed that he was not averse to the lascivious allurements
of two female voices moving in elementary harmonies. Here is a passage
from a scene between two nymphs upon which rest many hundreds of pages
in later Italian operas.

[Musical Notation]

This was the immediate predecessor of the well-known "Saliam cantando"
in Monteverde's "Orfeo."

The innovations of the Florentine reformers included also the invention
of thorough bass, or the basso continuo, as the Italians call it.
Ludovico Grossi, called Viadana from the place of his birth, seems to
have been the first to use the term basso continuo and on the authority
of Praetorius and other writers was long credited with the invention of
the thing itself. But it was in 1602 that he published his "Cento
concerti ecclesiastici a 1, a 2, a 3, e a 4 voci, con il basso continuo
per sonar nell' organo." The basso continuo had been in use for some
time before this. It appears in the score of Peri's Euridice as well as
in the "Nuove Musiche" of Caccini. It was employed in Cavaliere's "Anima
e Corpo" and was doubtless utilized in some of the camerata's earlier
attempts which have not come down to us.

Just which one of the Florentines devised this method of noting the
chords arranged for the support of the voice in the new style matters
little. The fact remains that the fundamental principle of related chord
harmonies, as distinguished from incidental accords arising in the
interweavings of voice parts melodic in themselves, had been recognized
and the basis of modern melodic composition established. This, indeed,
was not the achievement of the young innovators, but the re