ABSTRACT
The reconstruction of Vincenzo Galilei’s presumed presentation of Dante’s verses has shown the sort of auditory experience that the learned public enjoyed when listening to epic poems and other kinds of high-quality poetry, delivered by expert and intelligent performers. Galilei’s experiment in performing the Lament of Count Ugolino with instruments at the end of the 1570s or the beginning of the 1580s transferred monody to a written musical practice. However, the genesis of early operatic monody in the ‘music of words’ and the latent rhythm of Italian verse is evident. For many of Galilei’s contemporaries the idea of the syncretic unity of music and poetry was more a fine metaphor than a concrete state of affairs. Giulio Caccini never mentioned Galilei’s presentation of Dante, though acknowledging the inspiration he received at the assemblies of the Camerata. Galilei’s priority could have provided Caccini with a good argument against Emilio de’ Cavalieri’s claims ‘to have been the first to use Greek-inspired recitative’.
