A group of intellectuals, musicians and musical amateurs who frequented the salon of Count Giovanni de' Bardi in Florence between approximately 1573 and 1587. The term has sometimes been extended to cover the group that experimented with music drama under the auspices of Jacopo Corsi in the 1590s leading to the production of Dafne in 1598 and Euridice in 1600.
The first to use the term ‘camerata’ for Bardi's circle was Caccini in his dedication of the score of Euridice to Bardi (20 December 1600). Bardi's son Pietro also called it the ‘Camerata’ in a letter to Giovanni Battista Doni in 1634. Only three musicians can be linked securely with the Camerata: Caccini, Vincenzo Galilei and Pietro Strozzi. Caccini, however, testified that ‘a great part of the nobility and the leading musicians and men of genius and poets and philosophers of the city’ convened there, and Galilei recalled that many noblemen used to go there to pass the time in songs and discussions, which, according to Pietro Bardi, ranged over a variety of subjects, including poetry, astrology and other sciences. The earliest evidence of a meeting at Bardi's is in the Diario of the Accademia degli Alterati of 14 January 1573, where it is recorded that the Regent of the Academy, Cosimo Rucellai, ‘sent someone from his household to say that he could not come because he went to the home of Monsig. de' Bardi to make music’ (I-Fl Ashburnham 558, ii, f.3v).
Bardi's leadership was undoubtedly responsible for Galilei's research into Greek music and his contacts with Girolamo Mei, who by 1573 had studied every source then known about Greek music. One can easily imagine the excitement that the letters from Mei in Rome stirred in Bardi's circle, culminating in Galilei's attempts in 1582 to imitate the ancient songs in a setting of the lament of Conte Ugolino from Dante's Inferno (xxxiii, 4–75), and in his Lamentations and responsories for Holy Week, all now lost. Caccini mentioned having first performed three songs for the Camerata, Perfidissimo volto, Vedrò il mio sol and Dovrò dunque morire, in a manner of ‘speaking in melody’ and treating dissonances passing over a held chord with ‘a certain noble carelessness (‘sprezzatura’)’.
Two important manifestos issued from Bardi's Camerata, a discourse by Bardi addressed to Caccini (c1578) and Galilei's Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (1581). They have a number of principles in common, understandably, since they both derive from Mei: the ancient tonoi should be imitated, because they allow the affections of the texts to be expressed by the appropriate range of the voice; only one melody should be sung at one time, counterpoint being useful only for assuring fullness of harmony in the accompaniment; and the rhythm and melody should follow carefully the manner and speaking voice of someone possessed of a certain affection. Galilei, in addition, propagated Mei’s theory that the ancient Greek dramas were sung continuously, a belief that is reflected in the prefaces of Rinuccini, Caccini and Peri to their editions of the poetry and music for Euridice.
PirrottaDO
V. Galilei: Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (Florence, 1581/R)
P. de' Bardi: [Letter to G.B. Doni, 16 Dec 1634], ed. in A.M. Bandini: Commentariorum de vita et scriptis J.B. Doni … libri quinque (Florence, 1755), 117–20; repr. in A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R), 143–7; Eng. trans. in StrunkSR1
G. Bardi: ‘Discorso mandato a Caccini sopra la musica antica e'l cantar bene’ (c1578), in G.B. Doni: Lyra Barberina, ii, ed. A.F. Gori and G.B. Basseri (Florence, 1763), 233–48; ed. and Eng. trans. in C.V. Palisca, The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Haven, CT, 1989), 90–131
A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R)
A. Solerti: Gli albori del melodramma (Milan, 1905/R)
F. Ghisi: Alle fonti della monodia (Milan, 1940/R)
N. Pirrotta: ‘Temperaments and Tendencies in the Florentine Camerata’, MQ, xl (1954), 169–89
C. Palisca: Girolamo Mei (1519–1594): Letters on Ancient and Modern Music to Vincenzo Galilei and Giovanni Bardi, MSD, iii (1960, 2/1977)
C. Palisca: ‘Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of Emilio de'Cavalieri’, MQ, xlix (1963), 339–55, repr. in Palisca, 1994 [see below]
C.V. Palisca: ‘The Alterati of Florence, Pioneers in the Theory of Dramatic Music’, New Looks at Italian Opera: Essays in Honor of Donald J. Grout, ed. W.W. Austin (Ithaca, NY, 1968), 9–38, repr. in Palisca, 1994 [see below]
E. Pöhlmann: ‘Antikenverständnis und Antikenmissverständnis in der Operntheorie der Florentiner Camerata’, Mf, xxii (1969), 5–13
C.V. Palisca: ‘The “Camerata Fiorentina”: a Reappraisal’, Studi musicali, i (1972), 203–36
D. Giacotti: ‘Il recupero della tragedia antica a Firenze e la camerata de' Bardi’, Contributi dell'Istituto di filologia moderna, Serie storia del teatro, i (Milan, 1968), 94–132
J.W. Hill: ‘Oratory Music in Florence, I: “recitar cantando”, 1583–1655’, AcM, li (1979), 108–36
B.R. Hanning: Of Poetry and Music's Power: Humanism and the Creation of Opera (Ann Arbor, 1980)
T. Carter: ‘Peri's “Euridice”: A Contextual Study’, MR, xliii (1982), 83–103
M. Fabbri: ‘La vicenda umana e artistica di Giovanni Battista Jacomelli “del Violino” deuteragonista della camerata fiorentina’, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del Cinquecento, ed. N. Pirrotta (Florence, 1983), ii, 397–438
R. Katz: ‘Collective Problem-Solving in the History of Music: the Case of the Camerata’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xlv (1984), 361–77
C.V. Palisca: Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, CT, 1985)
R. Katz: Divining the Powers of Music: Aesthetic Theory and the Origins of Opera (New York, 1986)
Z. Szweykowski: ‘Giulio Caccini wobec teorii Cameraty Florenckiej’, Muzyka (Poland), xxxi/1 (1986), 51–65 [with Eng. summary]
T. Carter: Jacopo Peri 1561–1633: his Life and Works (New York, 1989)
C.V. Palisca: The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Haven, CT, 1989)
C.V. Palisca: Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994) [incl. repr. of ‘Musical Asides’ and ‘The Alterati of Florence’]
CLAUDE V. PALISCA