Discorsi Delle Comete

“The human soul is so eager for novelty, noble listeners, that, tired sometimes of the perpetuation even of favorable situations, it wants to pursue improvement by alternating with a little suffering. So, in song and music, we love melodies less which are performed with a stable and permanent harmony of voices, whereas music is much nicer if it is made up of consonants and dissonants, and if the strong harmony of the voices is repeatedly weakened and broken by sounds that clash sharply with one another.”
In the decades around 1600, sparks flew not only in discussions on unknown celestial bodies (to which Galileo Galilei contributed, for example, with his Discorso delle Comete), but also in discussions about the development of music. Avant-garde composers tried to rid themselves of the rules of counterpoint in vocal polyphony and experimented with a freer use of the rules of dissonance, of time and of dynamics. While the musicians and scholars in the flourishing field of opera propagated the monodic style, in which the communication of text and expression was displayed as the main focus of the composition, composers of instrumental music also sought a more immediate emotional expression. They enjoyed playing with strong contrasts and surprising effects and invented independent forms like the instrumental Canzona or the Sonata which developed from it. Dario Castello offers in his Sonate concertate in stil moderno some of the most unusual examples.