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Unifying them was the belief that music had become corrupt, and by returning to the forms and style of the ancient Greeks, the art of music could be improved, and thereby society could be improved as well. They were influenced by Girolamo Mei, the foremost scholar of ancient Greece at the time, who held--among other things--that ancient Greek drama was predominantly sung rather than spoken. While he may have been mistaken, the result was an efflorescence of musical activity unlike anything else at the time, mostly in an attempt to recover the ancient methods.

The criticism of contemporary music by the Camerata centered on the overuse of polyphony, at the expense of intelligibility of the sung text. Ironically, this was the same criticism leveled at polyphony by the Council of Trent which had met in the immediately preceding decades; though the world-view of the two groups could not have been more different. Intrigued by ancient descriptions of the emotional and moral effect of ancient Greek tragedy and comedyComedy is the use of humor in the performing arts. It also means a performance that relies heavily on humor. The term originally comes from theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. The humor, once an incid, which they presumed to be sung as a single line to a simple instrumental accompaniment, the Camerata proposed creating a new kind of music. In 1582Events January 15 Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to Poland February 24 Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15, skipping over 10 days. Other cou Galilei performed a setting, which he composed, of Ugolino's lament from Dante'sDante Alighieri was Florentine poet and author of the Divine Comedy Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a poet, a painter and a translator. Inferno, which was a frank imitation of what he thought to be an ancient Greek type of music (unfortunately, the music for this is lost). Caccini also is known to have performed several songs which were more or less chanted melodically over a simple chordal accompaniment. The musical style which developed from these early experiments was called monodyMonody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. Although such music is found in various cultures throughout history, the term is generally applied to Italian song of the early 17th century. It is contrasted with; it developed, in the 1590s, through the work of composers such as Jacopo PeriJacopo Peri ( August 20, 1561 August 12, 1633) was an Italian composer and singer, often called the inventor of opera. He wrote the first work to be called an opera today, Dafne (around 1597), and also the first opera to have survived to the present day,, working in conjunction with poet Ottavio Rinuccini , into a vehicle capable of extended dramatic expression. In 1598Events January 7 Boris Godunov seizes the throne of Russia following the death of his brother-in-law, Tsar Feodor I April 13 Edict of Nantes Henry IV of France grants French Huguenots equal rights with Catholics. Considered the end of the French Wars of R, Peri and Rinuccini produced Dafne, an entire drama sung in monodic style: this was the first creation of a new form called " opera." Other composers quickly followed suit, and by the first decade of the seventeenth century the new "music drama" was being widely composed, performed and disseminated. It should be noted that the new form of opera also borrowed from an existing pastoral poetic form called the intermedio, especially for the librettos: it was mainly the musical style that was new.

Of all revolutions in music history, this one was perhaps the most carefully premeditated: it is one of few examples in music, before the twentieth century, of theory preceding practice.

Both Bardi and Galilei left writings expounding their ideas. Bardi wrote the Discorso ( 1578), a long letter to Giulio Caccini, and Galilei published the Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna ( 1581- 1582).