Emilio de' Cavalieri was born about the year 1550 in Rome into a noble family of marked cultural interests and achievements. He was involved for a number of years, from 1578, with the organization of Lenten music at the Oratorio del Crocifisso, in which his elder brother had long been concerned in the same capacity, and was associated in Rome with Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, superintending, after the Cardinal's accession as Grand Duke of Tuscany, the lavish wedding celebrations of Ferdinando with Christine of Lorraine and continuing to serve the Grand Duke in a further series of pastorals and in diplomatic intrigues over the papal succession. He left Florence, where he was replaced by Caccini, and returned to Rome, where he had continued his connection with the Oratorio del Crocifisso. It was there that in 1600 he produced two performances of his Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo. The work has considerable historical significance as the first staged work set to music from beginning to end Cavalieri died in Rome in 1602.

The period in which the Rappresentatione was written was one of much musical and acoustical experiment, not least in the divisions of the octave, so that Cavalieri could have a special organ made that allowed for enharmonic differences, the difference, that is, between, say, B flat and A sharp, notes which are identical on the modern keyboard. Gesualdo was among those composers writing for keyboard instruments of a similar kind. The Rappresentatione offers the first example of a score published with a figured bass, a bass line with numbers and other symbols to indicate the chord to be used by the addition of notes above. The influence of Platonic and Aristotelian theories of music had considerable importance in the development of the new music, exemplified by Cavalieri's work. From this arose the so-called doctrine of the affetti (affections), by which composers, like orators, were to induce a certain state of mind (or certain feelings) in their hearers. The theories being developed derived in part from Plato's Republic, with its discussion of the effects of music un character, and in part on the teachings of rhetoric, which remained an important element in education, and hence in both music and drama.