CARISSIMI, GIACOMO (c. 1604-1674), one of the most celebrated masters of the Italian school of music, was born about 1604 in Marino, near Rome. Of his life almost nothing is known. At the age of twenty he became chapel-master at Assisi, and in 1628 he obtained the same position at the church of St. Apolli naris belonging to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, which he held till his death on Jan. 12, 1674, at Rome. He seems never to have left Italy. The two great achievements generally ascribed to him are the further development of the recitative, previously introduced by Monteverde, and of infinite importance in the his tory of dramatic music ; and the invention of the chamber-cantata, by which he superseded the madrigals formerly in use. It is impossible to say who was really the inventor of the chamber cantata ; but Carissimi and Luigi Rossi were the composers who first made this form the vehicle for the higher kind of chamber music, a function which it continued to perform until after the time of Alessandro Scarlatti, Astorga and Marcello. His oratorios in turn were of the first importance as having definitely estab lished the form and style of that class of work.