The composition of polyphonic music was at its peak in the late 16th century. By that time, however, the lute started to gain popularity, and was very common among educated people by 1600. The Italians were trying to recapture a simpler vocal style, to mimic Greek models. Giulio Caccini and the Florentine Camerata developed the monody, for solo voice with lute accompaniment, around 1600. Caccini traveled around Europe, other countries begin developing their own solo songs with lute, especially the English composers. John Dowland (1563–1626) and Thomas Campion (1567–1620) emerged as the best-known and most respected of the composers of lute song. Later in the 17th century, Henry Purcell (1659–95) composed many solo songs for his semi-operas, and his songs are also generally considered among the best early English songs.[1]
Other English Art song composers in the 17th century
William Byrd (1543–1623), composed "consort songs" with viol consort accompaniment, 1588 collection of Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs
Thomas Morley (1557–1603), his songs may have been used in Shakespeare's plays, well-known song "It was a Lover and his Lass" from his First Book of Ayres, 1607
Michael Cavendish (c.1565-1628), published one volume of madrigals and lute songs in 1598
Francis Pilkington (1582–1638), lute song composer
Robert Jones (fl. 1597-1615); 5 books of ayres, 1600–1610
Tobias Hume (d. 1648), serious and comic songs
Philip Rosseter (c.1567-1623), prolific song composer and friend of Campion, a few of his lute songs are still performed
Henry Lawes (1595–1662); prolific song composer, set texts by court poets (Herring, Suckling, and Carew) for his vocal works
English Art song in the 18th Century
As Italian opera composition developed in the later 17th century, recitative and aria began to split apart as separate parts of solo vocal music. Four types of vocal music began to blossom in the 18th century: church music, early oratorio (esp. with Carissimi in Italy), opera, and the secular (or "chamber") cantata. In the early 18th century, George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) made Italian opera very popular in London, but The Beggar's Opera in 1729, a parody of Handel's Italian operas, created a new fad for English popular opera, and Italian opera in London faded by 1740. Thus, the two important types of English solo vocal music in the mid 18th century are oratorios by Handel, and "pastiche operas" or "ballad operas" from Arne, Boyce and other English composers. The publication of solo vocal music (songs often called "canzonets" or canzonettas") with English texts at the end of the 18th century helped to establish the art song genre in subsequent years.