Apollo's Gift

Bezuglaia Galina Aleksandrovna PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Music Art of Vaganova Ballet Academy 191023, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Zodchego Rossi, 2 bezuglaya@inbox.ru Other publications by this author

The historical stage of the genre formation of European ballet performance is a genuine field of research. An area that attracts the unwavering attention of historians is, first of all, the dance and musical heritage of French art, embodied in the first court ballet, Ballet Comique de la Reine (The Comedic Ballet of the Queen), presented in the Louvre Palace on October 15, 1581. Thanks to a publication a year later containing detailed illustrated descriptions of the production, the poetic text of the libretto, and most of the musical text, this experience of music and dance's artistic connection with stage action is available today for comprehensive study and reconstruction ^[1;2].

There are also unique publications among the historical materials that reveal the scope of Italian dance and stage art from the era of the birth and formation of the court ballet genre. Among them is an edition of Emilio de Cavalieri's ballo O che nuovo miracolo (Oh, what a new miracle), performed in May 1589 in Florence during the celebrations to mark the occasion of the wedding of the Florentine Grand Duke Ferdinando de Medici and Princess Christina of Lorraine. This work, which is part of the sixth and final interlude to Girolamo Bargagli's comedy La Pellegrina (The Pilgrim), is one of the few examples of theatrical dance performances from the end of the sixteenth century that have come down to us in a detailed recorded form. A description of de Cavalieri's ballo was published two years after the show ^[3], becoming a source that gives a very diverse view of the era's music and theatrical dances. The materials containing information about this ballo can be confidently called unique for music and dance synthesis research. They can be considered as such not only because they represent, along with text descriptions and illustrations, a full-fledged vocal multi-voice score, as well as for the instructions regarding the instrumental and dance parts of the performance. But most of all, because the author of O che nuovo miracolo, Emilio de Cavalieri, was the creator of both the music and the choreography of this work.

According to historians of theatrical art [Yu. Litvinova, D. Walker, N. Treadvale, etc.], the six interludes to La Pellegrina became the most significant phenomena of Florentine artistic and musical life in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, both in terms of the luxury of the stage embodiment and the grandiosity of the theatrical effects, and in terms of the richness of the artistic forces involved. The philosophical and aesthetic ideas of the mastermind of the Florentine Camerata, Giovanni de Bardi, who dreamed of reviving ancient forms of theatrical art, formed the basis for the poetic text of the interludes, which Ottavio Rinuccini created with the participation of Giovan Battista Strozzi and de Bardi himself. (The poetic text for the ballo O che nuovo miracolo was written by Laura Guidiccioni da Lucchesini). The interludes' stage design was carried out by the architect Bernardo Buontalenti, and the most significant part of the music was written by Cristofano Malvezzi (15 numbers) and Luca Marenzio (8 numbers). Five other composers took part in the composition of the interlude music, including de Bardi himself (2 numbers), Jacopo Peri (1 number), Giulio Caccini (1 number), Antonio Arquilei (1 number), and de Cavalieri, who, in addition to the ballo mentioned, also composed the vocal monody Godi, turba mortal (Hail, crowd of mortals) for the sixth interlude. The performing forces were represented by an orchestra that included at least twenty-five instrumentalists, more than forty singers, and twenty-seven dancers.

Emilio de Cavalieri (1550–1602) – an outstanding composer, organist, diplomat, dance master, and member of a Roman aristocratic family, gained close ties and a special place at the Florentine court of Ferdinando de Medici, who was reputed to be the patron of the sciences and arts. Having received extensive powers in connection with the appointment of the head of all artists, artisans, and musicians at the court of Ferdinando in 1588, the composer performed a wide range of diverse duties: he was engaged in diplomatic work and also supervised the construction of organs in Florence, Rome, and Pisa. In his line of service, de Cavalieri also organized festivals and theatrical performances − and in this activity, he established himself as a successful theater director and as a "very elegant dancer" ^{[4, p.159]}. The "bilingualism" of de Cavalieri's artistic gift, manifested in his skills as a musician and choreographer, was appreciated by many of his contemporaries. Recognizing the composer's high creative achievements, the Italian humanist, musicologist, and writer Giovanni Battista Doni saw the reason for the perfection of his works because their creator was equally talented in the art of dance and musical composition ^{[4, p. 160]}.

Eleven years later, de Cavalieri realized his main work, imprinting his name in the history of musical art as the creator of the first spiritual opera Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo (The Representation of the Soul and Body) (its Russian premiere was carried out only in 1997, thanks to the efforts of the remarkable musician, researcher, and reenactor Maria Batova). But in his post at the Medici court, Cavalieri was absorbed in the idea of theater and dance.

The six interludes shown together with the comedy La Pellegrina in May 1589 were not bound by a single libretto. They were united only by the idea of turning to the ancient images of the arts, patronized by the gods. The music of the last interlude, "La discesa di Apollo e Bacco col ritmo e l'armonia" ("The Descent of Apollo and Bacchus with Rhythm and Harmony"), was created by Cristofano Malvezzi (numbers 1, 2, and 4) in collaboration with de Cavalieri (number three and the finale). The action began with an instrumental introduction, during which a panorama of seven clouds was revealed, on which the Olympian gods were located – Jupiter, Venus, Apollo, Hymenaeus, Bacchus, Flora, and others. Apollo, who descended from the central cloud to the earth, together with Bacchus, Harmony, Rhythm, and his other companions, performed the first number of the interlude, the six-voice madrigal "Dal vago en el sereno" ("From the misty to the beautiful"). Next came the six-voice chorus "O qual risplende nube" ("O that cloud that shines"), performed by twenty-four singers with instrumental accompaniment. The third solo number, the monody "Godi turba mortal" ("Hail, crowd of mortals"), composed by de Cavalieri, was sung by the male soprano Onofrio Gualfreducci to the accompaniment of chitarrone. (The chitarrone is a type of bass lute, as is the theorbo. In 1600, in the preface to the Representation of Soul and Body, de Cavalieri mentioned, "chitarrone or theorbo, as it is called" ("un chitarone, tiorba che si dica"). Thus, by 1600, the names chitarrone and theorbo were considered synonymous ^{[5, p. 408]}).

Gualfreducci's performance was followed by a thirty-voice choir, performed by sixty participants (gods and mortals), praising the marriage of Ferdinando "O fortunato giorno" ("Oh, happy day"), "minus" to the accompaniment of the entire line-up of instrumentalists. At the end of this number, all the clouds with the gods on them finished their descent, and the Olympians joined in the final general dance "O che nuovo miracolo" ("Oh, what a new miracle"):

"Oh, what a new miracle

here, when they come down to earth

in the noble, heavenly light

Gods who light up the world!" − sang the chorus of "mortals," and the gods answered, "Jupiter from heaven, from his holy place, sends you a dance and a song."

Figure 1. Stage view of the sixth interlude, "The Descent of Apollo and Bacchus with Rhythm and Harmony" ("La discesa di Apollo e Bacco col Ritmo e l'Armonia"). Based on a drawing by Bernardo Buontalenti.

The dance line-up for the ballo O che nuovo miracolo consisted of twenty corps de ballet dancers and seven soloists. A corps de ballet and four shepherdess dancers represented humans (mortals), and three male soloists represented the gods and danced to the singing of the three soloists: Vittoria Arquilea (La Romanina), Lucia Caccini, and Margherita Caccini.

The vocal component was performed by three sopranos and a choir of forty singers. The choir was accompanied by an orchestra, which included two chitarrones, two lyres, four lutes, four viols, two bass viols, a citra, a psaltery, a mandola, a bowed lyre, violins, and trombones − that is, the full instrumental composition of the participants in the sixth interlude. All musical forces participated in the performance of the final part of the ballo: "This dance was performed by all voices and played on all the mentioned instruments" ^{[3, p. 140]}.

In order to turn to the consideration of the musical and dance properties of O che nuovo miracolo, it is necessary to make a digression here, initially touching on the question of the interaction of music, poetic text, and dance, "minus" as it was understood and revealed in the artistic practice of the era under consideration.

It is known that the musical and dance relations in the Renaissance and early Baroque periods were based on the principles of similarity, on the historical kinship of the arts, as well as on structural and rhythmic correspondences. "[Dance] is nothing but an action that demonstrates agreement with the measured melody of a voice or instrument" ^{[6, p. 27–28]}," argued one of the first theorists of the dance art, the Italian master of the fifteenth century, Giovanni Ambrosio (before converting to the Catholic faith, Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro). Italian and French dance masters regarded the manifestation of musicality in dance as the most important element of coordination, requiring a good knowledge of music from the dancer: "If you want to dance mixed Branly properly, you must learn their melodies by heart and sing them mentally together with the viola" ^{[7, p. 121]}. Musicality was also regarded as an important component of the process of the inspired composition of a dance composition, as a manifestation of the skill of its creator: "When a gentle harmony (euphony) and a sweet melody are heard, go to the heart, passion is born from this great sweetness, and a dance that is so pleasant arises from it" ^{[8, p. 7]}.

Thanks to the close musical and choreographic connections and the influence of dance plasticity, the musical structures of the Renaissance began to find a more vivid reflection of human physicality, the kinetic features of movement, and the order of dance: steps, turns (right-left, forward-backward), as well as the periodicity and squareness of dance structures. For dance and music, the desire to achieve similarity was not limited to the common areas of rhythm and structure. It could also be traced in the smallest professional details: "The performance of dances depends on the music and its modulations since, without the help of rhythm, the dance would be unclear and confused. It is also necessary that the movements correspond to the cadences of musical instruments; it is bad when the foot does one thing, and the instruments do another," noted Tuano Arbo ^{[7, p. 137]}.

As you may know, musical and poetic connections also had a deep significance in Renaissance and early Baroque dance culture. The historical proximity of dance and the vocal, song-and-word sphere led to the development of new musical and theatrical genres in this era, combining dance, poetry, drama, scenography, as well as vocal and instrumental components. Among the flourishing dance and music genres of late sixteenth-century European theater, along with the court ballet (French ballet de cour, Italian ballo a corte, festa a ballo), madrigal comedies (commedia harmonica), balletti, interludes, as well as pastorals, masquerades, etc. were widespread.

In line with the Renaissance paradigm of the revival of the ideals of ancient art, vocal-plastic relations in many new theatrical forms demonstrated the artists' attempts to revive the metrical connections that unite music and the poetic word in the conditional space of the ancient quantitative syllabic union. They were repeatedly undertaken by French and Italian poets in collaboration with musicians and dance masters.

It is known that equirythmic ideas, following the metrical form of the verse, were the basis for the design and production of the first court ballet (Ballet Comique de la Reine). In accordance with the idea of its director, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, the dance steps were performed in a measured and synchronized manner, in metrical unity with the accompanying measured verse and music. These dance steps became a choreographic illustration of the idea of the quantitative "singing verse" of Baïf's Academy: "Verse, music, and dance were combined into one metrical property and thus became a powerful and sonorous symbol of Harmony" ^{[9, p. 91]}. The music was created by Girard de Beaulieu (bass singer, composer, theorbist) and Jacques Salmon (composer, violinist), and the writing of the poetic text for the Ballet Comique de la Reine by Nicolas Fille de la Chesne was carried out "according to the canvas provided to him by de Beaujoyeulx" ^{[10, p. 85]}.

The founders of the French Academy of Poetry and Music (Académie de Poésie et de Musique), Jean-Antoine de Baïf and Joachim Thibaut de Courville, highly appreciated de Beaujoyeulx's experience, expressing support for him: "Beaujoyeaulx was the first to revive Greece from the ashes and give the art of ballet a measured dimension" ^{[10, p. 84]}. A year later, Beaujoyeaulx, in the poetic lines of a reply letter, again claimed that he sought to create a complete stage picture in an attempt to revive the "Greek drama in the unity of its elements, with all its musical and dance accompaniment" ^{[11, p. 61]}.

Here it should be noted that the rhythm of the music and dance steps, correlated in the "Comedy Ballet" with the poetic basis, was proportionate to it in length but not always in harmony with it in accentuation. As a result of artificially giving the sounds of French speech the values of longitude and brevity, when achieving the unity of the longitude of the sung words and the rhythmic fullness of the movements, in some cases, a conflict between verbal accents and musical accentuation was simultaneously created ^{[4, p. 160.]}.

Back to de Cavalieri's ballo: It is noteworthy that the problem of the interaction of poetic text, music, and dance in this theatrical work, staged in Florence only eight years after the Ballet Comique de la Reine, was carried out differently. The composer initially carried out the development of a musical and dance metro-rhythmic plan and then received, at his disposal, a poetic component that equirithmically coincided with the structure that he prepared.

The extant materials of ballo O che nuovo miracolo, which include poetic and musical texts, as well as dance descriptions, provide an opportunity to study it as an example of an artistic solution to the problem of metric unity in theatrical and choreographic works and the creation of "harmony" in dance and singing.

Poetic text

The ratio of musical-poetic and dance time in this ballo was also based on the unity and proportionality of longitude and brevity. The author of O che nuovo miracolo sought to give "the art of ballet 'regularity'" ^{[10, p. 84]} and "revive the style that, according to legend, the ancient Greeks and Romans used in their theaters to produce different effects on the audience" ^[12]. And here, in comparison with the French models, a different hierarchy of musical and poetic unity was built. De Cavalieri first developed the choreography and composed the music. Then, the poet Laura Guidiccioni from Lucca wrote the poetic text in full accordance with the rhythmic outline of dance and music ^{[4, p. 159; 13]}. It is noteworthy that in the libretto of six intermezzos published in 1589 (that is, almost immediately after the production) by Bastiano de Rossi ^[14], de Cavalieri's ballo was presented in the form of poetic lines by Ottavio Rinuccini. However, the rhythm of Rinuccini's verse does not coincide with the metro-rhythmic structure of de Cavalieri's music and dance ^{[4, p. 159; 12]}. It is assumed in this connection ^{[4, p. 159; 12]} that the composer did not use Rinuccini's already created text but preferred to implement his own ideas, turning to Laura Guidiccioni with a request to compose a verse with specified metric parameters. Thus, in the form of the relationship between music and poetic text used by de Cavalieri, the words became "the final addition to the already formed structure with the found correspondence of choreography and staging" ^{[4, p. 159–160]}.

This experience of solving the problem of rhythmic interaction was positively perceived by the Italian tradition and was used in theater and dance practice in the future. For example, the ballo Giuoco della cieca (Blind Man's Bluff, Act 3, Scene 2) in Battista Guarini's dramatic pastoral Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd, 1592, Mantua) was similarly composed and staged ^{[4, p. 29]}.

Music

The melody of the choral chorus, with which begins the ballo O che nuovo miracolo, has vividly characteristic features. Simplicity and conciseness, combined with an exquisite rhythm, bright melody, and clear structure, contributed to its success and popularity. Thanks to Fabritio Caroso, who published the chant (without specifying the author's name) as music for the dance Laura Soave (Gentle Laura) ^{[15, p. 116]} in his dance treatise Nobiltà di Dame (1600), it gained great fame. Having become anonymous and received the name Ballo del Granduca (or, Aria di Fiorenza, Aria del Gran Duca), the melody of de Cavalieri's ballo formed the basis of a considerable number of works, becoming one of the "hits" of Baroque musical culture. Variations on a Florentine aria were written by Adriano Banchieri (Sonata sopra l'aria del gran duca Op. 42), Giovanni Battista Buonamente (Ballo del Gran Ducca from Quarto Libro de Varie Sonate), Lodovico Grossi da Viadana (Sinfonie musicali à 8; La Fiorentina), Giovanni Kapsberger (Aria di Fiorenza), Jan Sweelinck (Ballo del Granduca, SwWV 319) and many other composers. In the 20th century, Ottorino Respighi included the melody of Laura Soave in his second suite of Ancient Airs and Dances (1923), citing Caroso's treatise as the source. The name of its real creator, however, was undeservedly forgotten.

The choral chant of de Cavalieri's ballo has many properties akin to others popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ostinato themes and formulas served as the basis for variational cycles, such as folia, ruggiero, passamezzo (antico and moderno), and romanesque. First of all, it is a square structure, as well as a descending pattern of movement of the bass voice (typical, for example, for Romaneschi and Ruggiero). The major mood combines the de Cavalieri chant with passamezzo moderno, ruggiero, and the early folio form. However, unlike the popular formulas listed above, whose harmonic bases are based on functional combinations of tonics, subdominants, and dominants, de Cavalieri rhythmically relies on the I, VI, and IV stages, producing a different resource that is very attractive for improvisational variation.

Figure 2. A fragment of the musical text of the vocal parts of O che nuovo miracolo by Emilio de Cavalieri from the description of Malvezzi (1591) ^[3].

Let us turn to the musical form of de Cavalieri's ballo O che nuovo miracolo. The analysis of the ballo's musical text was carried out in this article based on two publications presented in the Petrucci online library: in the transcript by Andrea Bornstein ^[16] and Lorenzo Girodo ^[17].

The complex ballo composition at the base has a repeating AA motif, which sounds initially in a five-voice choral presentation in a four-donal meter. This choral section with five parts (a 5, twenty-four bars) has a simple four-bar structure, its first and last phrases are repeated, forming a non-reprise structure AA BC DD.

The following section, performed by three soloists (a 3, 30 bars), is distinguished by the change in the meter to a three-part one. The melody is set out in five-beat phrases, and in its structure, it also has repetitions: α α β α 1γ γ. The musical unfolding of the first movement is thus based on tempo, texture, and metro-rhythmic contrasts. It contrasts four-note, square, and mostly chordal verticals with the texture of "note versus note," embodied in the choral sound, "minus" three-line, five-bar structures, and the polyphonic flexibility of the presentation of the trio part.

All of the ballo's intonational material (as well as his structurally metrical "intrigue") is presented by de Cavalieri in the fifty-four bars of the first movement. Having established the melodic and metric bases of the form, the composer decorates, varies, and transforms its fabric within the limits that ensure the unity of all parts and levels of the work.

The following three parts of the ballo's music represent the development of the original material, consisting of combinatorial alternation and variation (including variant-strophic) of its individual segments. The fragmentation is outlined in part two. Then, it is very noticeable in the third part, confusing the inertia of perception as metric transformations begin. The next choral chant (from bar 83 in modern notation) is now set out in three parts, "minus," while the four parts are "transmitted" to the soloists' response. Therefore, the third movement, along with the melodic variation, represents a phase of symbolic "metrical exchange." In the fourth movement, another modification of the material exhibited in the first movement takes place. Here, all the chorus and soloists are in "unity" based on the reigning threedolarity. In the fifth movement, the chorus "returns" to its original four-part metrical basis, and the section thus, in a remarkable way, acquires the properties of a reprise. However, instead of the expected "in accordance with the logic of the deployment of the reprise" response of the soloists, the last section suddenly includes a powerful five-voice of all the participants singing to the glory of the Grand Duke Ferdinando.

The musical and choreographic structure of the ballo O che nuovo miracolo. Uppercase Latin letters indicate the structure of the five-voice sections (a 5), lowercase − trio of soloists (a 3).

Choreography

All the dancers participated simultaneously only in the last two parts of the ballo. The first four movements, which formed a dialogue between the mortals and the gods, were performed by ensembles of small groups of solo dancers. They would begin the ballo by joining in the dance in turn. Then, in a dialogue between the mortals and the gods, the four women (shepherdesses) danced and moved to the sound of a five-voice choir of mortals, and the three male gods danced to the singing of three sopranos.

"When de Cavalieri composed the music for this ballo, he created a basic structure around which and on which the musical form could be spread and developed. He used the same process for choreography," noted Jennifer Neville, a choreographic historian who penned a publication describing her modern reconstruction of de Cavalieri's ballo ^{[18, p. 387]}.

In accordance with the tradition adopted in dance practice, the ballo's choreographic material was presented in parts: Usually, the balletti of the second half of the sixteenth century were divided into sections that had the names either parti or tempi, and this ballo is no exception. Turning to the description of the choreography for O che nuovo miracolo, we can find that it is also divided into six parts and that these parts correspond to the six main parts in the music ^{[18, p.387]}. Moreover, we note that de Cavalieri used a special "geographical" technique that emphasizes the visual deployment of the form. As a kind of "marker" marking each section of the ballo, the repeated position of the dancers was used: seven soloists lined up in front of twenty other dancers in a semicircle, facing the audience. At the beginning of each movement, all the dancers returned to this position (they could change places with each other).

Figure 3. Graphic diagram of the initial (for each part) arrangement of the dancers from the description of Malvezzi (1591) ^[3].

Neville's choreographic description ^{[18, pp. 372–385]} gives the idea that de Cavalieri used the traditional vocabulary from the Italian balletti arsenal for ballroom and stage dances of the second half of the sixteenth century. He used dance movements such as the riverenza, trabuchetto, seguito, steps of galliard, and canario. Most of these dance steps were foot movements performed with little or no involvement of the hands and body. The dancers performed sequences of movements, moving in space and forming various dance figures. And thus, the complex pattern of alternating two-and three-part musical rhythms, choral and solo sections were decorated with an abundance of constantly changing geometric dance patterns.

It is hardly possible today to determine which of the two essences of de Cavalieri's artistic "bilingualism" was decisive in the conception and composition of O che nuovo miracolo. It can be noted that the change of the metric bases of each of the form's sections was quite traditional for the ballo dance culture of the sixteenth century. The alternation of two and three-danced measures was a fairly prominent feature of the figure dance forms represented, for example, by Fabritio Caroso in his treatise Il Ballarino (The Dancer, 1581). Therefore, the idea of multiple metric switches, giving broader combinational possibilities for choreographic implementation (that is, for the use of dance steps that differ in rhythm), could form the basis of the musical idea. At the same time, choreographically, it acquired a special dramatic tension and ambiguity, given that all the ballo participants, including three singing soloists, were engaged in the dance performance. After all, the description noted that the singers "sing, dance, and play at the same time, embodying the Platonic concept of music as a gift from the gods" ^[12].

The use of the multi-faceted talents of the participants in the performances, including the ability to sing, play various musical instruments, and dance, was widespread in the theatrical practice of the era. Like the Ballet Comique de la Reine of Beaujoyeulx, where violinists played and danced ^{[10, p. 100]}, Italian productions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were decorated with dancing musicians and singing dancers. "It would be good for the dancers to sing while they are dancing and if there is a good opportunity to hold the instruments in their hands," he pointed out, for example, in a letter to the directors, Claudio Monteverdi, who showed an active interest in the dance side of his operas ^{[19, p.133]}. Thus, in Monteverdi's ballet Thyrsis and Chloe, staged in Mantua in 1616, according to the composer's plan, the main characters, Chloe and Thyrsis, "both hold a chitarrone" in their hands, and "after their dialogue, they are included in the general ballet" ^{[20, pp. 60–61]}.

But de Cavalieri's choreographic design could also be such that the singers were more energetically involved in the dance when they stopped singing at the moments of the choir's introduction. In this case, the interaction of the musical and dance aspects gained additional depth and intersections: "These three ladies could easily sing and play a 3 for all sections in parts I–IV, and then dance in parts V and VI, when their singing and instrumental skills were no longer required" ^{[18, p. 363]}.

Musical and choreographic interactions

The musical and dance deployment was carried out so that the metrical contrasts in de Cavalieri's work were enhanced by timbral and textural contrasts, not only due to changes in the choral and solo sound but also in the instrumentation. The choir was accompanied by a full instrumental ensemble, and the vocalists accompanied themselves, using Spanish and Neapolitan guitars and a tambourine: "Vittoria Arquilei played the Spanish guitar, Lucia Caccini played the Neapolitan guitar, Margherita Caccini played the tambourine decorated with silver bells" ^{[18, p. 359]}.

It is interesting that de Cavalieri's attention to the many-faceted forms of the relationship between timbre-intonation and plasticity later acquired particular relevance in Italian musical theater. Here is an example of the instrumental-plastic isomorphism characteristic of Claudio Monteverdi's compositional fantasy. It is known that Monteverdi "as a composer [of music] not only followed the instructions of choreographers but also independently produced his own ideas of choreography" ^{[19, p. 46]}. In one of his letters, the composer outlined the idea of a dance number, the "Dance of the Stars" for the ballet Endymion (1604) that he was creating. It was based on the instrumental-choreographic juxtaposition of fifteen star dancers representing the "tutti" dance and two soloists: "The plan of the 'tutti' dancers is contrasted with the sections for performance by two star soloists, which is also emphasized by the number of accompanying instruments. Hence, when all the stars begin to dance at the beginning, all the fifteen instruments begin to play together; when only two stars dance, [fewer instruments] should only play (five violas da braccio)" ^{[21, p. 46]}.

But let us return to the consideration of the metro-rhythmic relations of choreography and music in de Cavalieri's ballo. The description of de Cavalieri's dance production reports that, in general, the two-floor musical sections used movements typical of this meter, for example, the seguito (the main passing step of Italian ballettos, which has a characteristic size of 2/4, 4/4 ^{[21, p.126]}), and the three-floor dance steps from the arsenal of three-floor dances, canarios, galliards. At the same time, the execution of the main step of the galliard, cinquepasso (five steps), which is "four jumping weight transfers from one leg to the other, ending with the final jump on both legs" ^{[22, p. 102]}, usually took two three-note bars. However, in some parts (particularly in section 14, during the musical "metric exchange"), the cinquepasso steps were correlated with three two-note bars. Since the longitude of each step/jump of the cinquepasso does not change, the metric change did not violate the rhythmic alignment of the verse/step/sound, based on the measurement of longitude: "even though the music is tactile in double integer durations of semibreves, one step of the galliard is still equal to two triple semibreves, that is, six minims" ^{[18, p.367]}. A similar kind of musical-dance coordination, also used in Italian ballettos, gave an additional color to the rhythm while observing the general principle of unity of time dimension of "dance-music."

Let us note another of de Cavalier's artistic discoveries that significantly enriched the complex picture of the subtle structural and rhythmic interactions of music and movement. In the episodes of vocal imitation occurring in the soloists' parts (episodes γ in sections 2, 8, 14), the dance pattern was also a rhythmic "counterpoint." The analysis shows that the fugato sections were danced in strict accordance with the music; i.e., each of the three men began their sequence of steps together with their "singer." In the endings, when the vocalists "gathered" together in a homophonic cadence, the dancers also finished their phrases simultaneously ^{[19, p. 140]}.

Figure 4. Vocal and dance imitations in the three-voice section 2.

The inclusion of multi-level intertextual intersections, as well as rhythmic dance counterpoints, likened to the contours of musical imitation, anticipates the rhythmic and dramatic discoveries of the ballet theater of new eras – thus combining the name of the creator of O che nuovo miracolo with those of Salvatore Viganò and choreographers of the twentieth century, Kasyan Goleizovsky and George Balanchine.

To the "new miracle" of Harmony

New forms of rhythmic interaction and other musical and dance innovations formed a different artistic level, set by the "experimental" multi-dimensional form of de Cavalieri's creation. Having shown his skill in developing a variety of rhythmic variations on the same sequence of harmonic and melodic material, de Cavalieri essentially discovered a method for creating more complex and extended ballet scenes ^{[4, p. 160]}. The line of deployment of the musical and plastic form found by de Cavalieri has acquired a special dramatic significance in the scale of a large stage work.

Let us return in this connection to the description of the action that preceded the beginning of the ballo: Apollo, descending to earth, accompanied by his companions, passed on to mortals the gift that gives birth to a "new miracle" (nuovo miracolo): comprehension of harmony. The stage action stopped there, giving way to the de Cavalieri dance form, where the unfolding of the meaning of high philosophical ideas, consonant with the poetics of the late Renaissance, representing the symbolic meaning of harmony as concors discordia (Latin: "harmonious discord") in the spirit of Adriano Banchieri, passed into the sphere of the modalities of music and choreography. And here, what was happening on the stage took on a metaphorical meaning. Mortals' acquisition of the "gift of Harmony and Rhythm" was realized in the alternation of complex visual and musical-intonation modifications, the polyphonic "shimmer" of contrasting and simultaneously symmetrically unfolding and harmoniously matching rhythmic essences of dance and music.

The many-sided connections formed as a result of constantly changing visual/intonation/rhythmic patterns formed a unique ballo composition. Furthermore, the innovative techniques used by the creator of O che nuovo miracolo gave birth to new forms of synthesis, based on the complex coordination of structures and rhythms and plasticity of dance with rhythmointonations, textures, and timbres of musical fabric, entering the arsenal of musical, stage, and dramatic choreographic means.

Not all of de Cavalieri's artistic discoveries were progressively developed in the later history of ballet theater. Due to the high skill and unique combination of talents the creator of O che nuovo miracolo had, many of them were not reproducible in the conditions of ordinary dance practice and remained unclaimed for long periods of development. However, even in an indirect form, they certainly had a serious impact on the formation of theatrical and dance genres of European theater, writing the name of Emilio de Cavalieri in the history of outstanding artistic achievements.