preconceived plan or model for the reformers to work by, the
development was gradual and natural instead of violent.

The year 1600 marks with considerable accuracy the transition from the
old order to the new. The two greatest masters of the old school had
recently died, and with them their work expired. At the wedding of
Henri IV. of France with Maria de' Medici in Florence, in that year,
was performed the opera _Euridice_, the joint work of Caccini and
Peri, which is the starting-point of the new music.

The details of the invention of the _nuove musiche_, the ideas
which brought it forth, how these were nursed in the salons of
Florentine noblemen, especially in that of Bardi Conte Vernio, are all
well known. They did not proceed in the first instance from musicians,
but from scholars, who, having read in the course of their studies
about Grecian (or Roman--it was all the same to them) dramatic music,
determined to add to the other accomplishments of the new order that
of reviving the ancient drama with its music. They were vehement in
their denunciations of the barbarous institutions of counterpoint and
loudly called for a return to the only true principles of music as
taught by the ancients. With this end in view they drew into their
circle the most gifted musicians whom they could find, and expounded
to willing and zealous ears the principles of music as embodied in the
rules of Plato and Aristotle, omitting, however, to state where they
found them in the works of those philosophers. The first result was
the opera, or operas (for there seem to have been two, one by Caccini
and one by Peri, welded into one) _Euridice_ performed at the
royal wedding. It was followed by other similar works and the series
has continued in unbroken course for three centuries, through
Monteverde, Carissimi, A. Scarlatti, down to our own time. The