Italian classical music is difficult to do if everyone is singing a melody at the same time; thus, polyphony gave way to homophony, and early opera consisted of relatively simple melodies with texts about Greek mythology, sung in Italian and supported by simple harmonies. The important city in Italy in this development of music in the 16th century was Florence. (See also: Florentine Camerata, Vincenzo Galilei, Jacopo Peri, Palestrina, Arcangelo Corelli.) Besides Florence, two other Italian cities are particularly worthy of mention in the period around 1600. There is somewhat of a friendly rivalry between advocates of the two cities as to which
Jacopo Mazzoni Jacopo Mazzoni Jacopo Mazzoni (Latinized as Jacobus Mazzonius) (27 November 1548 – 10 April 1598) was an Italian philosopher, a professor in Pisa, and friend of Galileo Galilei. His first name is sometimes reported as "Giacomo". Giacopo (Jacopo) Mazzoni was born in Cesena, Italy in 1548. Educated in Bologna in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and poetics, Mazzoni later attended the University of Padua in 1563 where he studied philosophy and jurisprudence. One of the most eminent savants of the period, Mazzoni was reported to have an excellent memory, which made him adept at recalling passages from Dante, Lucretius, Virgil, and