ITALIAN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SONGS and DUETS
Sung by BEATRICE BEAUFORT and JANET CHRISTOPHER
MANTUA AND BOLOGNA IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI (1567) was the greatest musician of his age, and the inventor of a system of harmony which has remained in uninterrupted use to the present day. To Monteverdi we owe the development of tha recitative which led to the beginning of Opera-a most important moment in the history of music. He early became violinist, and in 1602 Maestro di Cappella, at the Ducal Court in Mantua, and in 1605 printed his 5th Book of Madrigals, in which, ignoring the established laws of counterpoint, he laid the foundation of what wo call modern music. In 1607 he produced his opera Orfeo, and the next year Arianna, from both of which examples are now to be taken.
GIOVANNI MARIA BONONCINI was father of the more famous G. B. Buononcini , who was so well known in England at the end of the century, and who adopted this spelling of his name to distinguish him from his father.
BASSANI was conductor of the Cathedral music in the middle of the century and Principal of the Philharmonic Academy.
ALDROVANDINI and DEL PISTOCHI were members of the Philharmonic Academy at Bologna. Del Pistochi was also a famous male contralto, and founded a singing school in 1700 which made Bologna famous.