Monody

The monody ( Greek " single song ") is a 1600 arisen in Italy new kind of music - nuove musiche, seconda pratica, the solo singing means with chordal accompaniments. Monodia was called by the Greeks a pre- rendered singing solo song or poem, in which the speaker himself accompanied by a stringed instrument ( kithara, lyre, lyre ).

History

According Thrasybulos Georgiades the word monody comes in ancient Greek literature for the first time in Aristophanes ' comedy The Frogs before, where it means " solo singing actor ". There, says verse from Aeschylus to Euripides 1325:

" And now I want to sing your monodies way. "

Monodies were as sung by the Greeks as dirges in tragedies.

In Italy, formed in the late late Renaissance, the stile recitative, a narrative song, result of practical experiments and theoretical discussions of the Florentine Camerata on the practice of the ancient Greek monody. Of which mainly benefited the newly created genre of opera.

Florentine Camerata

The monody as instrumental accompanied single song was the result of music-theoretical discussions of the artists and philosophers circle Florentine Camerata, which dealt with the revival of Greek music. The principle monody occurred successfully in competition with the hitherto increasingly complicated polyphonic counterpoint composed singing ( prima pratica ). In addition to the formal aspects, the biggest change was that the song made ​​the understanding of the text and the meaning of the text of the case. This was accompanied by the compositional design of moods, emotions, and the so-called " images " in short, the close interaction between text and music. Thus, the voice follows the speech rhythm, the melody flow to parts of sentences, and content meaningful words often correspond with clock priorities. It developed the musical figure teaching with musical phrases and phrases that, for example, the use of dissonances back worked on the conception harmony in music. This concept influenced the European musical language term.

Mono Dische pieces of music were first accompanied only by the basso continuo and were formally completely independent. Various strands of development of monody resulted in more specialized and partly orchestral accompanied recitative and aria forms like and their larger compositions such as opera, oratorio and cantata.