1 I-Fas Archivio delle Tratte, 446bis, f. 106. The best biographical study of Peri to date is Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini, ‘Jacopo Peri e la sua famiglia’, Atti dell'Accademia del R. Istituto Musicale di Firenze Armo XXXIII. Commemorazione delta riforma melodrammatica (Florence, 1895), 33–71.Google Scholar

2 On his pretensions to nobility, see the title page of Euridice, and Francesco Cini's letter to Ferdinando Gonzaga, dated 26 October 1607, in Angelo Solerti, Gli albori de melodramma (repr. Hildesheim, 1969), i, 82–4.Google Scholar

3 I-Fas Conventi Soppressi, 119, 58, f. 87, 1 September 1573. He was replaced on 1 October 1579, ibid., f. 135v.Google Scholar

4 I-Fas Arte dei Mercatanti di Calimara, 35, f. 22v.Google Scholar

5 Giovanni Fedini, Le due Persilie (Florence, 1583), which contains details of the intermedi; Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (2nd edn., Turin, 1975), 228–9. Malvezzi and Alessandro Striggio also provided music for the occasion.Google Scholar

6 I-Fas Corporazioni Religiose Soppresse, 78, 265, f. 54v; 78, 91, f. 217. He held the post until April 1605, I-Fas cit., 78, 95, f. 51.Google Scholar

7 I-Fas Depositeria Generale, 389, p. 17. Peri provided an echo-madrigal ‘Dunque fra torbid'onde’ for the fifth of the 1589 intermedi, Malvezzi, Intermedii et concerti fatti, per la commedia roppresentata in Firenze nelle nozze del serenissimo don Ferdinando Medici, e madama Christiana di Loreno, gran duchi di Toscana (Venice, 1591), modern edition in Les fëtes du mariage de Ferdinand de Médicis et de Christine de Lorraine, 1589: musique des intermèdes de ‘La Pellegrina’ (Paris, 1963), 98–106.Google Scholar

8 He died, or was buried, on is August 1633, I-Fas Medid eSpeziali, 357, f. 179.Google Scholar

9 Claude V. Palisca, The First Performance of “Euridice” ‘, Department of Music, Queen's College of the City University of New York – Twenty-fifth Anniversary Festschrift (1937–1962) (New York, 1964), 1–23. Peri's setting was published as Le musiche di Jacopo Peri nobil florentino sopra I'Euridice (Florence, 1600 [=1601)). The dispute with Caccini continued into the second decade of the century, see H. Wiley Hitchcock, ‘Caccini's “other” Nuove musiche’. Journal of the American Musicological Society, xxvii (1974), 458–9.Google Scholar

10 Marco da Gagliano said he was ‘peritissimo nel contrapunto’, preface to Dafne (1608) in Angelo Solerti, Le origini del melodramma (repr. Hildesheim, 1969), 80; Pietro de' Bardi said ‘Il Peri aveva più scienza … Giulio [Caccini] ebbe più leggiadria’, Lettera a G. B. Doni in Solerti, op. cit., 146.Google Scholar

11 Cristofano Malvezzi, Il primo libro de recercan a quattro voci (Perugia, 1577); Il primo libro delli madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1583). Peri's ricercar del primo tuono also survives in I-Fn Magl., XIX, 107, f. 47v.Google Scholar

12 Le varie musiche … a una due, e tre voci con alome spirituali in ultimo per cantare nel clavicembolo [sic], e chitarrone, & ancora la maggior parte di esse per sonare semplimente nel organo (Florence, 1609).Google Scholar

13 Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatia alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637 (repr. New York, 1968), 57, n. 1. Caccini was musical director of the festivities and Santi Orlandi composed music for them, I-Fas Mediceo del Principato, 6068, passim; I-Fl Archivio Buonarroti, 60, passim.Google Scholar

14 Emil Vogel, ‘Marco da Gagliano: zur Geschichte des florentiner Musiklebens von 1570–1650’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft, v (1889), 555–7.Google Scholar

15 Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 39, n. 1. This letter dates from 1609 n.s.Google Scholar

16 Caccini's Le nuove musiche (1602) contains material dating back at least 15 years, see his preface in Solerti, Le origini, 57. Also Nancy Hockley, ‘Bartolomeo Barbarino e i primordi della monodia’. Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, vii (1972), 83–4.Google Scholar

17 Cini is mentioned in Peri's preface to Euridice, Solerti, Le origon, 47.Google Scholar

18 He was in Florence for the 1600 festivities, I-Fas Strozziane, I, 27, f. 38bis.Google Scholar

19 Edmond Strainchamps, ‘New Lights on the Accademia degli Elevati of Florence’, Musical Quarterly, lxii (1976), 507–35. Ferdinando Gonzaga frequently asked Peri for new music, generally without success, Solerti, Gli albori, i, 77–89.Google Scholar

20 Settings of Petrarch appear in I-Fn Magl., XIX, 66, B-Bc MS 704, and the early monody publications of Brunetti, Rasi and d'India. With the exception of the Rasi, however, these settings are all related to the sixteenth-century practice of improvised recitation over standard harmonic formulae. Rasi's through-composed setring of ‘Che fai alma, che pensi’ heads his Vaghezza di musica (Venice, 1608). Remembering that Rasi was a partisan of the Caccini camp, this may well have led Peri to include the sonnets in his own volume.Google Scholar

21 Severo Bonini, Prima parte de' discorsi e regole sovra la musica, I-Fr MS 2218, f. 70: ‘quando cantava materie lugubri, come suo proprio talento, subito moveva gl'occhi dell'Uditore al lagrimare’.Google Scholar

22 Only once does Peri use the ABB form, in ‘Lungi dal vostro lume’.Google Scholar

23 Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558), 226: ‘Fuggir la cadenza sia … un certo atto, il qual fanno le parti, accennando di voler fare una terminatione perfetta, secondo l'uno de i modi mostrati di sopra, & si rivolgono altrove.’Google Scholar

24 Vincenzo Galilei had emphasized the importance of awkward harmonic movement in adding expression to a song; see Claude V. Palisca, ‘The “Camerata Fiorentina”: a Reappraisal’, Studi Musicali, i (1972), 230.Google Scholar

25 On the expressive capabilities of chords of the sixth, see Zarlino, op. cit., 339–40.Google Scholar

26 Claude V. Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei's counterpoint treatise: a code for the “Seconda Pratica”’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, ix (1956), 81–96. Galilei willingly condoned the irregular resolution of suspensions as in Tutto ‘l di’ bar 3. This explains Giovanni Battista Doni's somewhat curious comment, ‘il Peri poco si diparte dalle regole comuni’, Trattato della musica scenica, in De' trattati di musica … tomo secondo (Florence, 1768), 128.Google Scholar

27 In his preface to the volume Marescotti emphasized the importance of the accompaniment. Also Severo Bonini in Solerti, Le origini, 137: ‘fu … nell'accompagnare il canto con le parti di mezzo, unico e singolare’.Google Scholar

28 The feminine endings at the end of most lines in Euridice had a theoretical justification. Galilei had insisted that in setting verse to music it was most important to emphasize the rhyme, even at the expense of enjambment: Dialogo della musica antica, et della moderna (Florence, 1581), 90.Google Scholar

29 Caccini had noted the pointlessness of this exercise: preface to Le nuove musiche, in Solerti, Le origini, 58. Luzzaschi, with his Madrigali … per cantare a uno, e dm, e tre soprani (Rome, 1601), had also shown that it could be done with little success.Google Scholar

30 D'India, preface to his Le musiche … da cantar solo (Milan, 1609), ed. Federico Mompellio (Cremona, 1970), 24: ‘dicendo non aver udito stile ch'avesse tanta forza e che insieme spiegasse il concetto con tal diversità di corde, varietà d'armonia e con si nova maniera di passeggiare’.Google Scholar

31 Ed. Federico Mompellio (Milan, 1942).Google Scholar

32 In La Flora, ed. Knud Jeppesen (Copenhagen, 1949), ii, 6.Google Scholar

33 La Flora, ii, 5. Jeppesen omits the text from the bass line.Google Scholar

34 Putnam Aldrich, Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (New York, 1966), 126–9.Google Scholar

35 La Flora, ii, 7. Rinuccini had submitted his poem to the Accademia degli Alterati on 31 October 1589, I-Fl Ashburnham, 558², f. 85.Google Scholar

36 Peri's hitherto unknown relationship with the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello is documented by the company's records in I-Fas Compagnie Religiose Soppresse, A. CXLVII, 162, 21–3, passim.Google Scholar

37 Facsimile of the Pande version, ‘Poichè la notte con l'oscure piume’, surviving in I-Fc Barbera Codex, p. 132, in Federico Ghisi, ‘Ballet entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608–1625’, Musical Quarterly, xxxv (1949), facing p. 424. For the reworkings of the poem, and another version provided for Peri's use, see I-Fl Archivio Buonarroti, 84, ff. 180v-181v. The alternation of recitative and aria had a precedent in Domenico Brunetti's setting of ‘O miei pensieri’ in L'Euterpe (Venice, 1606). Marco da Gagliano, too, provided music for the 1608 festivities. The ottava ‘Ovunque irato Marte in terra scende’ published in his Musiche … a una, due e tre voci (Venice, 1615), is from the fifth intermedio, I-Fl Archivio Buonarroti, 84, f. 169v.Google Scholar

38 Carlo Lozzi, ‘La musica e specialmente il melodramma alla cone medicea’, Rivista Musicale Italiana, ix (1902), 314. On Peri's appointment, see his letters to Belisario Vinta of 18 and 21 November 1600 in I-Fas Mediceo del Principato, 900, if. 142, 171.Google Scholar

39 Riccardo Gandolfi, ‘Lettere inedite scritte da musicisti e letterati appartenenti alla seconda metà del secolo XVI, estratte dal R. Archivio di Stato in Firenze’, Rivista Musicale Italiana, xx (1913), 528–36.Google Scholar

40 In 1618 Peri was appointed camarlingo to the Ane della Lana: I-Fas Arte della Lana, 308, ff. 60v–61. He held the post until his death.Google Scholar

41 Torna, deh torna' was published in Piero Benedetti, Musiche (Florence, 1611); ‘O dell'alto Appenin’ in Antonio Brunelli, Schcrzi, arie, canzonette, e madrigali … libro secando (Venice, 1614). For the text of Rinuccini's Mascherata, see Solerti, Gli albori, ii, 261–94. Peri's ottava reworks his setting of ‘Chi da’ lacci d'amor' from Dafne, given in William V. Poner, ‘Peri and Corsi's Dafne : Some New Discoveries and Observations’ Journal of the American Musicological Society, xviii (1965), 179. A fragment of Peri's recitative for the Mascherata di ninfe di Senna, ‘Bella madre d'Amor che l'aer e l'onda’, survives in I-Fc Barbera Codex, p. [172]. ‘O dell'alto Appenin’, to a text by the prominent courtier Ferdinando Saracinelli, is inscribed ‘per le nozze del Sig. Francesco Torelli’.Google Scholar

42 ‘Queste lacrime mie, questi sospiri’, ‘Itene ò mai, voi che felice ardete’ (a 2 + b.c.), ‘Occhi, fonti del core’, in I-Fn Magl., XIX, 114, pp. 38–48. The songs can be attributed to Peri on both internal and external evidence. ‘Queste lacrime mie’ is a lament provided by the poet Giovanni Villifranchi for a barriera performed before the court on 17 February 1613 (n.s.), Villifranchi, Descrizione della barriera e della mascherata … (Florence, 1613), 55–6.Google Scholar

43 I-Fc Barbera Codex, pp. 59–60 (first stanza only); Cs-Pnm Lobkowitz MS II La s, pp. 50–2; GB-Lbm MS Add. 30491, ff. 42v-43v; modern edition in The Solo Song, 1580–1730, ed. Carol MacClintock (New York, 1973), 13–20.Google Scholar

44 Nigel Fortune, ‘Italian secular monody from 1600 to 1635: an introductory survey’, Musical Quarterly, xxxix (1953), 175, 185.Google Scholar

45 Le varie musiche … con aggiunta d'arie nuove (Florence, 1619). The volume is dedicated to Ferdinando Saracinelli, some of whose poetry, according to the dedication, is contained in the volume.Google Scholar

46 Cs-Pnm Lobkowitz MS II La 2, pp. 45–9; I-Bc MS Q49, ff. s 1–3; modern edition in Solerti, Gli albori, i, facing p. 32. On the Salvadori-Caccini dispute, see Ademollo, Alessandro, La bell'Adriana ed altre virtuose del suo tempo alla corte di Mantova (Città di Castello, 1888), 147–9, but this needs modification in the light of Andrea Cavalcanti's Theatrum illustrorum virorum, I-Fr MS 2270, ff. 170–182v. The dispute took place before January 1626.Google Scholar

47 The laments were published in d'India's Le musiche … libro quarto (Venice, 1621), and Le musiche … libro quinto (Venice, 1623). See also Nigel Fortune, ‘Sigismondo d'India, an introduction to his life and works’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, lxxxi (1954–5), 41–4.Google Scholar

48 Marco da Gagliano, La Flora (Florence, 1628).Google Scholar