, Italian for "second practice", is the counterpart to (or ) and is sometimes referred to as . The term first appeared in 1603 in

Giovanni Artusi Giovanni Maria Artusi (c. 154018 August 1613) was an Italian music theory, music theorist, composer, and writer. Artusi fiercely condemned the new musical innovations that defined the early Baroque music, Baroque style developing around 1600 in h ...

's book (''The Second Part of The Artusi, or, Imperfections of Modern Music''), where it is attributed to a certain L'Ottuso Accademico. In the first part of ''The Artusi'' (1600), Artusi had severely criticized several unpublished madrigals of

Claudio Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string instrument, string player. A composer of both Secular music, secular and Church music, sacred music, and a pioneer ...

. In the second part of this work, L'Ottuso Accademico, whose identity is unknown, defends Monteverdi and others "who have embraced this new second practice". Monteverdi adopted the term to distance some of his music from that of e.g.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de V ...

and

Gioseffo Zarlino Gioseffo Zarlino (31 January or 22 March 1517 – 4 February 1590) was an Italian Music theory, music theorist and composer of the Renaissance music, Renaissance. He made a large contribution to the theory of counterpoint as well as to musical t ...

and to describe early music of the Baroque period which encouraged more freedom from the rigorous limitations of dissonances and counterpoint characteristic of the . was coined as an expression by Giulio Caccini in his 1602 work which contained numerous monodies. New for Caccini's songs were that the accompaniment was completely submissive in contrast to the lyric; hence, more precisely, Caccini's -monodies have ornamentations spelled out in the score, which earlier had been up to the performer to supply. Also this marks the starting point of

basso continuo Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...

which also was a feature in Caccini's work. In the preface of his fifth ''Book of Madrigals'' (1605) Monteverdi announced a book of his own: (''Second Practice, or, Perfection of Modern Music''). Such a book is not extant. But the preface of his eighth ''Book of Madrigals'' (1638) seems to be virtually a fragment of it. Therein Monteverdi claims to have invented a new “agitated” style (, later called ) to make the music "complete/perfect" ("perfetto").Gerald Drebes: "Monteverdis ''Kontrastprinzip'', die Vorrede zu seinem 8. Madrigalbuch und das ''Genere concitato''", in: ''Musiktheorie'', vol. 6, 1991, pp. 29-42, online:

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Further reading