I MAY write a better work," concludes Peri in his preface to Euridice.
"Yet, to have cut a path where some future musician may tread in my
footsteps to mastery which I am not destined to attain is something of an
achievement." ⁸ Instead of a "future musician," however, a contemporary
ten years Peri's senior enlarged the scope of dramma per musica.

Though music extends far into the background of Claudio Monteverdi
( 1567-1643), no influences which could have contributed to his mastery
of the new art-form have come to light. His ancestors were manufacturers
of musical instruments, the Monteverdis of Cremona on whom kings of
sixteenth-century Europe counted for winds for their court orchestras.
His father was an eminent surgeon. Claudio studied the humanities at
the local university and mastered composition under Marcantonio Ingeg-
neri, a strict polyphonist who was then choirmaster of the Cathedral of
Cremona. Despite this environment, he displayed a persisting passion for
drama and for portraying it in music which defied every convention.
Ingeaneri, however, had the wisdom to restrain the passion until the
youth was sufficiently master of the laws of his art to violate them success-
fully. A book of five-part madrigals written in his twentieth year ( 1587),
which we may assume to have been one of his earliest attempts at dramatic
expression, contains radical chord progressions and bold rhythms skil-
fully stressing the meaning of the verses. There are no scores in madrigal
literature which are more prophetic of opera.

In 1590, Monteverdi's second book of madrigals was published, which
appears to have brought him to the attention of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga
of Mantua. The same year, he became attached to the ducal orchestra and
thus to an outstanding court of the Renaissance. At the time, Mantua
could compete with Florence and Venice as an artistic center, eleven
beauty-loving Gonzaga despots having attracted many of the foremost
European poets, painters and composers to their capital during the two
preceding centuries. Petrarch had found honor in their service; Man-
tegna had limned their history on their palace walls; Alberti had designed

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