Music history of Italy

In 386, in imitation of Eastern models, St. Ambrose wrote hymns, some of whose texts still survive, and introduced antiphonal psalmody to the West.

[1] The earliest extant music in the West is plainsong,[2] a kind of monophonic, unaccompanied, early Christian singing performed by Roman Catholic monks, which was largely developed roughly between the 7th and 12th centuries.

[3] Crucial in the transmission of chant were the innovations of Guido d'Arezzo, whose Micrologus, written around 1020, described the musical staff, solmization, and the Guidonian hand.

The Albigensian Crusade, supposedly to attack Cathar heretics, brought southern France under northern French control and crushed Occitan culture and language.

[5] One important consequence of the troubadour influence during this period, in Italy and across Europe, was the gradual shift from writing strictly in Latin to the local language, as championed by Dante in his treatise De vulgari eloquentia; this development extended to the lyrics of popular songs and forms such as the madrigal,[6] meaning "in the mother tongue."

During the 15th century, Italy entered a slow period in native composition, with the exception of a few bright lights such as the performer and anthologist Leonardo Giustinian.

With the support of the Medici, the Florentine Mardi Gras season led to the creation of witty, earthy carnival songs called canti carnascialeschi.

Madrigalists aspired to create high art, often using the refined poetry of Petrarchan sonnets, and utilizing musically sophisticated techniques such as text painting.

Composers such as Cipriano de Rore and Orlando di Lasso experimented with increasing chromaticism, which would culminate in the mannerist music of Carlo Gesualdo.

In 1559, Antonio Gardano published Musica nova, whose politically pro-republican partisan songs pleased the northern Italian republics and riled the Church.

This music was characterized by increased dissonance and by sections of homophony, which led to such traits of the early baroque as unequal voices where the bass line drove the harmonies and the treble melody became more prominent and soloistic.

This transitional period between the Renaissance and baroque included the development of the Sicilian polyphonic school in the works of Pietro Vinci, the first extant polyphony written by women, the fusion of Hebrew texts and European music in the works of Salomone Rossi, and the virtuosic women's music of Luzzasco Luzzaschi performed by the Concerto delle donne in Ferrara.

What is important, however, for the later development of Italian and European music is that poets and musicians of the Florentine Camerata in the late 16th century thought—in the words of one of them, Jacopo Peri—that the "ancient Greeks sang entire tragedies on the stage".

A new dominance of melody within harmony at the expense of text led to great changes, including the expansion of instrumental resources of the orchestra.

The great opera houses in Naples and Milan were built: the Teatro di San Carlo and La Scala, respectively.

Important, too, is the restoring of balance between text and music in opera, largely through the librettos of Pietro Trapassi, called Metastasio.

Verdi's music "sought universality within national character";[16] that is, much of what he composed in terms of historical themes could be related to his pan-Italian vision.

Later in the century is also the time of the early career of Giacomo Puccini, perhaps the greatest composer of pure melody in the history of Italian music.

Many Italian composers, however, did write significant sacred music, such as Rossini a Stabat Mater and his late Petite messe solennelle and Verdi Messa da Requiem and Quattro pezzi sacri.