Baroque Recitative Training Manual: Caccini's ‘New Music’ Revelation

Abstract

Baroque recitative singing is relatively marginal in the field of vocal art, partly because of the distance between the Baroque period and modern times, and partly because of the lack of specialised materials and systematic theoretical guidance for recitative compared to aria. The origins of the recitative are inextricably linked to the monody, and early recitatives were separated from the chanting melodies of the monody. Caccini's ‘New Music’ was the forerunner of the monophonic song and led to the development of the Baroque recitative. This paper re-examines the artistic value of Caccini and his ‘new music’ from the perspective of psychoanalysis, and analyses the historical development, musical characteristics, compositional techniques and singing theories of Caccini's ‘new music’ and the Baroque recitatives by means of contextual analysis and comparative analysis, thus expanding the repertoire of vocal learners. It also provides a reference framework and learning methodology of scholarly value on recitative, enriching the theoretical resources for learning recitative in the Baroque period. It can be regarded as a systematic training manual for recitative.