In the direct Florentine succession was the setting, in 1607, by Marco da Gagliano (d. 1642) of Rinuccini's Dafne, a work cognate in style with those
of Peri and Caccini, but slightly more expanded.
77. Monteverdi.—While the Florentine enthusiasts are to be honored as pioneers in the New Music, their efforts might not have had at once so large an influence if a new factor in the situation had not been introduced. The movement presently lost its local character and was transferred to Venice, where, through the genius of the mature and experienced musician Monteverdi it achieved a success that brought it before the whole musical world. Part of this was due to the readiness of Monteverdi to cast aside whatever was not serviceable for his immediate dramatic purpose, and part to the peculiar musical eminence of Venice. His series of dramas (1607-42) made the opera the most popular form of composition in Italy and started an interest that gradually spread everywhere. He stood forth as an innovator in his disregard of the customary conjunct voice-writing so far as dramatic effect demanded sudden and even difficult leaps, in his vigorous pushing of the solo beyond the tame and timid limits of the early recitative to at least the stage of the arioso, in his sense of the value of a somewhat symmetrical phrase-plan, and in his experiments with instrumentation. Gradually his efforts incited imitation and further advance by other composers. They also led, in 1637, to the establishment in Venice of the first opera-house—the beginning of a long line elsewhere.
Monteverdi's fame spread speedily throughout Europe, and he must still be regarded as one of the formative geniuses of musical history. This fame was different from that of any of his great predecessors. They were invaluable students of the structural texture of composition as an end in itself, while he brought to the front the importance of so adapting musical procedure, even by revolutionary changes, to the utterance and delineation of every phase of warm emotion that it might become a many-sided rescript of life in all its intenser aspects. The old polyphony was apt for certain kinds of feeling only. The New Music now became at least the promise of a voice for many more, and for those closest to the popular heart.
Claudio Monteverdi (d. 1643) was born of humble parents at Cremona in
1567, early showed musical aptitude, studied under Ingegneri, became violist
