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but it is also set on a ciaccona ostinato, another rhetorical figure of exultation. Cazzati’s Capriccio sopra 7 note also uses the ostinato technique, only abandoning its syncopated rhythm to guarantee even more freedom to the 82 variations allotted to the upper instruments. Such figures were not the exclusive property of sacred music; the origins of the ostinati are to be found in popular improvised music of the time, whilst the passus duriusculus is in fact a chromatically coloured version of the passacaglia bass as can be seen in Piccinini’s version for archlute (called variously passacalle, passacaglio, etc.). Monteverdi was notably to use it in his Lamento della Ninfa, a madrigal in stile rappresentativo. The ciaccona bass is also to be found in a good number of madrigals and operas of the period, in which it always expresses unbounded joy. The by turns sacred and profane character of religious music was regularly criticised at the time and in Rome in particular. Venice, on the other hand, in its position as the greatest city of Northern Italy, was so proud of its political and religious independence that it frequently ignored Papal Bulls, to the point of being excommunicated as a city in 1606 by Pope Paul V. The City of the Doges kept to no lesser extent its identity and its taste for a symbiosis of artistic expression independent of its social function. Claudio Monteverdi, ordained priest in 1632, was undoubtedly the most worthy representative of this Humanist movement, for which the exterior expression of feeling was not an offence against the expression of faith, but rather a demonstration of its truth. «Believe indeed that the modern composer writes on the foundations of truth» (Monteverdi, Preface to the 5th book of madrigals, Venice 1605). JEAN TUBÉRY TRANSLATION: PETER LOCKWOOD