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Title: A Popular History of the Art of Music
From the Earliest Times Until the Present
Author: W. S. B. Mathews
Release Date: January 5, 2007 [eBook #20293]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE ART OF MUSIC***
Author of "How to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty
Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate
Editor of
Mason's "Pianoforte Technics," etc., etc.
CHICAGO:
THE "MUSIC" MAGAZINE PUBLISHING CO.
1402-5 THE AUDITORIUM.
Copyright by W. S. B. Mathews, 1891.
HAVE here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire
history of the art of music, within the compass of a single small
volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development
with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the
greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times of
the reader.
The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table of Contents (pages 5-10). It will be seen that I have attempted to cover the same extent of history, in treating of which the standard musical histories of Naumann, Ambros, Fétis and others have employed from three times to ten times as much space. In the nature of the case there will be differences of opinion among competent judges concerning my success in this difficult undertaking. Upon this point I can only plead absolute sincerity of purpose, and a certain familiarity with the ground to be covered, due to having treated it in my lectures in the Chicago Musical College for five years, to the extent of about thirty-five lectures yearly. I have made free use of all the standard histories—those of Fétis, Ambros, Naumann, Brendel, Gevaert, Hawkins, Burney, the writings of Dr. Hugo Riemann, Dr. Ritter, Prof. Fillmore, and the dictionaries of Grove and Mendel, as well as many monographs in all the leading modern languages.
I have divided the entire history into books, placing at the beginning of each book a general chapter defining the central idea and salient features of the step in development therein recounted. The student who will attentively peruse these chapters in succession will have in them a fairly complete account of the entire progress.
W. S. B. MATHEWS.
Chicago, May 5, 1891.
Transcriber's Note: The listed illustration of Sterndale-Bennett is not in the original book, and the illustration of Gade is actually on page 518. There are additional illustrations, not listed above, of Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Dvorak, and Grieg. Some illustrations have been moved slightly from their original locations to avoid breaking the flow of text. The page numbers above are the originals; the links point to the actual locations of the illustrations in this e-text.
Music defined — general idea of musical progress — conditions of fine art — qualities of satisfactory art-forms — periods in musical history — difference between ancient and modern music.
| CHAPTER I — MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS | 27-39 |
Sources of information — antiquity of their development — instruments — uses of music — their ideas about music and education — "Song of the Harper" — kindergarten.
| CHAPTER II — MUSIC AMONG THE HEBREWS AND ASSYRIANS | 40-47 |
Music among the Hebrews — Jubal — kinnor — ugabh — musicians in the temple service — psaltery — flute — larger harp — Miriam — liturgy of the temple — musical ideal in Hebrew mind — music among the Assyrians — types of instruments.
| CHAPTER III — MUSIC AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS | 48-69 |
Importance of this development — extent of the time — date of Homeric poems — epoch of Æschylus — extracts from Homer — Hesiod — patriotic applications of music — choral song — festivals — lyric drama — début of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides — nature of the classic drama — orchestic — Socrates — Aristoxenus — problems of Aristotle — Greek theory of music — Pythagoras and ratios of simple consonances — devotional use of music — Greek scales — Claudius Ptolemy — Didymus — the lyre and cithara — magadis — flute — æsthetic importance — Plato on the noble harmonies — loyalty to the true — Greek musical alphabet — notation — Ode from Pindar.
| CHAPTER IV — MUSIC IN INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN | 70-77 |
Early beginning — use of the bow — national instruments — the vina — theory — ravanastron — music exclusively melodic — saying of the Emperor Tschun — the ke — Japanese ko-ko.[Pg 6]
| CHAPTER V — THE TRANSFORMATION AND ITS CAUSES | 81-86 |
General view of the transformation to modern music — causes co-operating — difference between ancient and modern music — harmony and tonality — consonance and dissonance — three steps in the development of harmonic perceptions — when were these steps taken? — tonality defined — growth of tonal perception — unconscious perception of implied or associated tones.
| CHAPTER VI — THE MINSTRELS OF THE NORTH | 87-108 |
Importance of Celtic development of minstrelsy — origin of the Celts — the minstrel — old Breton song — the druids — classification of bards — degrees — Fétis on the Welsh minstrel — "Triads of the Isle of Britain" — old harp music — "The Two Lovers" — Gerald Barry on the Welsh — old Welsh song — the Irish — Sir Brian Boirohen's harp — English and Saxon music — King Arthur as minstrel — organ at Winchester — Scandinavian scalds — Eddas — "Sumer is Icumen in" — Anglo-Saxon harp — source of the harp in Britain — the crwth — melody in pentatonic scale.
| CHAPTER VII — THE ARABS, OR SARACENS | 109-114 |
The Arab apparition in history — their taste for poetry — competitive contests of poetry and song — encouragement of literature — rebec — eoud — santir.
| CHAPTER VIII — ORIGIN OF THE GREAT FRENCH EPICS | 115-120 |
Period of the Chansons de Geste — social conditions of France as given by M. Léon Gautier — "Cantilena of St. Eulalie" — subjects of the Chansons de Geste.
| CHAPTER IX — TROUBADOURS, TROUVÈRES AND MINNESINGERS | 121-127 |
The troubadours — Count Wilhelm — varieties of their songs — melody from Thibaut — Adam de la Halle — "Story of Antioch" — "Song of Roland" — minnesinger Reinmar — Heinrich Frauenlob — minstrel harps — Hans Sachs — influence of these minstrel guilds.
| CHAPTER X — INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH | 128-133 |
Church not influential in the development of music as such — nature of the early Christian hymns — St. Ambrose — the Ambrosian scales — corruptions elsewhere — St. Gregory and his reforms — the Gregorian tones — many later reforms — limitations of these reforms — incidental influence of the Church through her great cathedrals.
| CHAPTER XI — MUSICAL DIDACTIC FROM THE FIFTH TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY | 134-147 |
Macrobus — Martinus Capella — Boethius — Cassiodorus — Bishop Isidore — Venerable Bede — Aurelian — Rémi of Auxerre — Hucbald — examples — instruments of music during the seventh and eighth centuries — Odon of Cluny — Guido of Arezzo — staff — Franco of Cologne — Franco of Paris.[Pg 7]
| CHAPTER XII — THE RISE OF POLYPHONY; OLD FRENCH AND GALLO-BELGIC SCHOOLS | 148-159 |
Origin and meaning of polyphony — monodic and homophonic — canonic imitation — chords as incidents — variety and unity — early French school — Coussemaker's researches — Léonin — descant — Pérotin — names of pieces — Robert of Sabillon — Pierre de la Croix — Jean of Garland — Franco of Paris — Jean de Muris — fleurettes — John Cotton — Machaut — Gallo-Belgic school — Dufay — Hans de Zeelandia — Antoine de Busnois.
| CHAPTER XIII — SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS | 160-167 |
Wealth of the Low Countries — freedom of the communes — strength of the burgher class — period of these schools — table of periods and masters — Okeghem — Tinctor — Josquin — his popularity — Arkadelt — Gombert — Willaert — Goudimel — Cypriano de Rore — Orlando de Lassus — his Munich school — his genius.
| CHAPTER XIV — POLYPHONIC SCHOOLS OF ITALY — PALESTRINA | 168-178 |
Prosperity of Italy in fifteenth century — great cathedrals and public works — conservatories founded at Naples — Willaert at St. Mark's, Venice — Zarlino — his reforms in theory — Cypriano de Rore — Goudimel — Palestrina — the council of Trent — Palestrina's music — Martin Luther.
| CHAPTER XV — CHANGES IN MUSICAL NOTATION | 179-188 |
General direction of musical progress toward classification and the establishment of unities of various kinds — early letter notation of the Greeks and Romans — Roman notation as used by Guido of Arezzo — neumæ — with lines — additional lines — "Lament for Charlemagne" — notation employed by the French Trouvères — clefs — new staff proposed by an American reformer.
| CHAPTER XVI — MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS — THE VIOLIN AND ORGAN | 189-207 |
Progress in tonal perceptions — influence of harp and lute — description of the latter — system of stringing — locating the frets — the violin — bow discovered in India — early forms of bowed instruments — rebec — barytone — viol da Gamba — Amati — Stradivari — peculiarities of his instruments — Maggini — Stainer — antiquity of the organ — early forms — organ sent Charlemagne — organs at Munich — Malmesbury Abbey — measure of organ pipes — portable organ — clumsiness of the old keyboards — the organ in 1500 A.D.
| CHAPTER XVII — CONDITION OF MUSIC AT BEGINNING OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY | 211-220 |
Justification of the name "apprentice period" — office of domestic musicians in England in the reign of Elizabeth — great fondness for music everywhere — casual influence of counterpoint in educating harmonic sense — madrigal — multiplicity of collections of this kind — absurd use of madrigals for dramatic monody — the work of the seventeenth century, free melodic expression — the new problem of the musical drama — the representative principle in music — music last of the arts — Florence and Venice the centers — statistics of books published from 1470 to 1500.[Pg 8]
| CHAPTER XVIII — FIRST CENTURY OF ITALIAN OPERA AND DRAMATIC SONG | 221-234 |
Circle of the Literati in Florence — Galilei and his monody — Peri's "Dafne" — Schütz's setting of the same — Peri's "Eurydice" — rare editions — Il stilo rappresentativo — Cavaliere's oratorio "The Soul and the Body" — second period of opera — Monteverde's "Arianna" — orchestra of the same — new orchestral effects — scene from "Eurydice" — director of St. Mark's — Legrenzi — Cesti — public theaters — Alessandro Scarlatti — recitativo stromentato — Corelli — sonatas for the violin — influence of the violin upon the art of singing — origin of Italian school of singing — artificial sopranos — Porpora — Selections from Monteverde, Cavalli and Scarlatti.
| CHAPTER XIX — BEGINNINGS OF OPERA IN FRANCE AND GERMANY | 235-243 |
Slow progress of opera to other parts of Europe — origin of French opera — ballets of Boesset — Perrin — Cambert — their first opera — their patent from the king — Lulli — his success and productivity — attention to verbal delivery and the vernacular of the audience — foundations of the French Académie de Musique — opera in Germany — Schütz — Hamburg and Keiser — selection from Lulli — "Roland" — Mattheson.
| CHAPTER XX — THE PROGRESS OF ORATORIO | 244-248 |
Oratorio invented simultaneously with opera — Cavaliere — mystery plays — Carissimi — two types of oratorio — cantata — Händel's appropriation from Carissimi — sacred oratorio — Schütz's Passions — "Last Seven Words."
| CHAPTER XXI — BEGINNINGS OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC | 249-260 |
Beginnings of instrumental music in seventeenth century — tentative character of instrumental music of sixteenth century — Gabrieli and organ pieces — imitations of vocal works — melodies not fully carried out — Swelinck — Scheidt — Schein — Frescobaldi — Reinken — Pachelbel — Muffat — Corelli — orchestra of the period — its defects.
| CHAPTER XXII — MUSIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY | 261-264 |
The flowering time of modern music — complexity of developments now taking place — principal actors — two main channels of improvement — fugue — sonata — Bach and Händel as writers of fugue — people's song makes its way into cultivated instrumental music — reference to Mozart's sonatas — thematic and lyric as elements of contrast.
| CHAPTER XXIII — JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH | 265-272 |
Bach as a composer — sketch — his clavier — attainments as virtuoso upon the clavier and the organ — choral works — Passion oratorios — his pre-eminence as writer of fugues — general sketch of the form of a fugue — prelude — mutually complementary — Bach's concertos — his rhythm.[Pg 9]
| CHAPTER XXIV — GEO. FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL | 273-281 |
The companion figure of Bach — early life — violinist at Hamburg — conductor, composer — first opera — Italy — successes there — England — Italian operas — oratorio "Messiah" — other oratorios — list of his works — Bach and Händel compared — Händel's place in art — personalities.
| CHAPTER XXV — EMANUEL BACH, HAYDN — THE SONATA | 282-291 |
The sons of Bach — Emanuel Bach as composer — difficulty of founding a new form — Haydn — early years — conductor for Prince Esterhazy — compositions — the visit to London — the money he made — "The Creation" — second visit to London — Haydn and the sonata form — "The Last Seven Words" — his rank as tone-poet.
| CHAPTER XXVI — MOZART AND HIS GENIUS | 292-304 |
Charming personality — childhood — early talent — concerts — Mozart at Bologna and the test of his powers — Haydn's opinion — early operas — "Marriage of Figaro" — success — accompaniments added to Händel's "Messiah" and other works — call to Berlin — mysterious order for the "Requiem" — death — general quality of Mozart's music.
| CHAPTER XXVII — BEETHOVEN AND HIS WORKS | 305-315 |
A worthy successor to Haydn and Mozart — early years — orchestral leader — piano playing — his friends — Count Waldstein — his first visit to Vienna — settled in Vienna — compositions — life — appearance — place in art.
| CHAPTER XXVIII — HAYDN, MOZART AND BEETHOVEN COMPARED | 316-326 |
Their relation to symphony — refinement of Mozart — early age of Mozart — Beethoven's independence — relation to sonata — Beethoven more free — climax of classical art — Beethoven adagios — summing up — tendency of progress.
| CHAPTER XXIX — OPERA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY | 327-351 |
Three great names — Graun — Gluck — his reforms — his ideal — early works — "Orpheus" — "Iphigenie" — Mozart's place in opera — Rameau — theoretical writings — Rousseau — Phillidor — Monsigny — Grétry — Gossec — Méhul — Lesueur — Boieldieu — French opera in general — Italian opera — Pergolesi — Jomelli — Sacchini — Paisiello — Piccini — Zingarelli — opera in England — Purcell — Dr. Arne.
| CHAPTER XXX — PIANO PLAYING VIRTUOSI — VIOLINISTS — TARTINI AND SPOHR | 352-369 |
Pianoforte established as domestic instrument — Scarlatti — Mattheson — Dr. Blow — John Bull — Clementi — Dussek — Cramer — Berger — Hummel — Moscheles — Tartini — Spohr.
| CHAPTER XXXI — THE NINETEENTH CENTURY — THE ROMANTIC — MUSIC OF THE FUTURE | 373-380 |
Classic and romantic defined — art in general — applied to music — illustrated by Schubert — Schumann — development of virtuosity Berlioz — "music of the future" — how originating — the outlook.[Pg 10]
| CHAPTER XXXII — SCHUBERT AND THE ROMANTIC | 381-391 |
Early life of Schubert — compositions — first songs — "Erl King" — rapidity of composition — unfinished symphony — industry — spontaneity — personal characteristics.
| CHAPTER XXXIII — STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE | 392-403 |
Origin of pianoforte — spinet — clavicembalo — Mozart's grand piano — Cristofori's design of action — Érard action — iron frame — Chickering — Steinway improvements.
| CHAPTER XXXIV — GERMAN OPERA — WEBER, MEYERBEER, WAGNER | 404-427 |
Tendency of German opera — Weber — "Der Freischütz" — romanticism — innovations in piano playing — Meyerbeer — early life — master works — place in art — Wagner — early life — early operas — "Lohengrin" — Zurich — Schröder-Devrient — "Nibelung's Ring" — peculiarities.
| CHAPTER XXXV — VIRTUOSITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY — PAGANINI, BERLIOZ, CHOPIN, THALBERG, LISZT | 428-454 |
Continuity of these appearances with those already recounted — Paganini — his playing — inspiring effect — Berlioz — works — place in art — progress of piano playing — virtuosi co-operating — Thalberg and his style — Parish-Alvars — Pollini — Chopin — place in art — Liszt — early appearances — rivalry with Thalberg — style — Weimar — Bonn Beethoven monument — as teacher — as composer.
| CHAPTER XXXVI — MENDELSSOHN AND SCHUMANN | 455-477 |
Mendelssohn — personality — talent — early works — maturity — as player Leipsic Conservatory — Hauptmann — "Elijah" — "St. Paul" — Schumann — early education and habits — works — strength of the romantic tendency — his "New Journal of Music" — music in Leipsic — Clara Wieck — larger works for piano — technical traits — songs — general characteristics.
| CHAPTER XXXVII — ITALIAN OPERA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 478-487 |
Spontini — Rossini — Donizetti — Bellini — Verdi — Boito — Ponchielli.
| CHAPTER XXXVIII — FRENCH OPERA AND COMPOSERS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 488-496 |
Auber — Hérold — Adam — Gounod — Massé — Massenet — Saint-Saëns — Délibes — Bizet — Ambroise Thomas.
| CHAPTER XXXIX — LATER COMPOSERS AND PERFORMERS | 497-508 |
Gade — Brahms — Tschaikowsky — Svensden — Grieg — Bruch — Bennett — Macfarren — Mackenzie — Nicodé — Moszkowsky — Dvorak — Henselt — Litolff — Wilmers — Heller — Hiller — Rubinstein — Bülow — Reinecke.
(Copyright.)
Explanation.—The heavy vertical lines are century lines. Light
vertical,
twenty-year lines. Horizontal lines, the life of the
composer.
(Copyright.)
From Palestrina to Present Time. (See explanation, page 11.)
(Copyright.)
From Orlando Lassus to the Present Time. (See page 11.)
(Copyright.)
From 1660 to the Present Time (1891).
HE name "music" contains two ideas, both of them important in our
modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing
modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by
poets, novelists and even in conversation—as when we speak of the
"music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of
nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological derivation
of the term, as something derived from the "Muses," the fabled retinue
of the Greek god Apollo, who presided over all the higher operations
of the mind and imagination. Thus the name "music," when applied to an
art, contains a suggestion of an inspiration, a something derived from
a special inner light, or from a higher source outside the composer,
as all true imagination seems to be to those who exercise it.
2. Music has to do with tones, sounds selected on account of their musical quality and relations. These tones, again, before becoming music in the artistic sense, must be so joined together, set in order, controlled by the human imagination, that they express sentiment. Every manifestation of musical art has in it these two elements: The fit selection of tones; and, second, the use of them for expressing sentiment and feeling. Hence the practical art[Pg 16] of music, like every other fine art, has in it two elements, an outer, or technical, where trained intelligence rules, and teaching and study are the principal means of progress; and an inner, the imagination and musical feeling, which can indeed be strengthened by judicious experience in hearing, but which when wanting cannot be supplied by the teacher, or the laws of their action reduced to satisfactory statement.
3. There is no fine art which reflects the activity of spirit more perfectly than that of music. There is something in the nature of this form of art which renders it particularly acceptable to quick and sensitive minds. If evidence of this statement were needed beyond the intuitive assent which every musical reader will immediately give, it could easily be furnished in the correspondence between the activity of mind in general and in the art of music in particular, every great period of mental strength having been accompanied by a corresponding term of activity in music. Furthermore, the development of the art of music has kept pace with the deepening of mental activity in general, so that in these later times when the general movement of mind is so much greater than in ancient times, and the operations of intellect so much more diffused throughout all classes, the art of music has come to a period of unprecedented richness and strength.
4. The earlier forms of music were very simple; the range of tones employed was narrow, and the habits of mind in the people employing them apparently calm and almost inactive. As time passed on more and more tones were added to the musical scales, and more and more[Pg 17] complicated relations recognized between them, and the music thereby became more diversified in its tonal effects, and therein better adapted for the expression of a more energetic or more sensitive action of mind and feeling. This has been the general course of the progress, from the earliest times in which there was an art of music until now.
The two-fold progress of an education in tone perception, and an increasing ability to employ elaborate combinations for the expression of feelings too high-strung for the older forms of expression, is observable in almost all stages of musical history, and in our own days has received a striking illustration in the progress made in appreciating the works of the latest of the great musical geniuses, Richard Wagner, whose music twenty-five years ago was regarded by the public generally as unmusical and atrocious; whereas now it is heard with pleasure, and takes hold of the more advanced musical minds with a firmness beyond that of any other musical production. The explanation is to be found in the development of finer tone perceptions—the ability to co-ordinate tonal combinations so distantly related that to the musical ears of a generation ago their relation was not recognized, therefore to those ears they were not music. Wagner felt these strange combinations as music. The deeper relations between tones and chords apparently remote, he felt, and employed them for the expression of his imagination. Other ears now feel them as he did. An education has taken place.
5. It is altogether likely that the education will still go on until many new combinations which to our ears would be meaningless will become a part of the ordinary vernacular of the art. Indeed, a writer quite recently (Julius Klauser, in "The Septonnate") points out a vast[Pg 18] amount of musical material already contained within our tonal systems which as yet is entirely unused. The new chords and relations thus suggested are quite in line with the additions made by Wagner to the vocabulary of his day.
6. There are certain conditions which must be met before a fine art will be developed. These it is worth while to consider briefly:
The state of art, in any community or nation, at any period of its history, depends upon a fortunate correspondence between two elements which we might call the internal and the external. By the former is meant the inner movement of mind or spirit, which must be of such depth and force as to leave a surplusage after the material needs of existence have been met. In every community where there is a certain degree of wealth, leisure and a vigorous movement of mind, this surplus force, remaining over after the necessary wheels of common life have been set in motion, will expend itself in some form of art or literature. The nature of the form selected as the expression of this surplus force will depend upon the fashion, the prevalent activity of the life of the day, or, in other words, the environment. Illustrating this principle, reference might be made to the condition of Greek art in the flowering time of its history, when the wealth of Athens was so great as to leave resources unemployed in the material uses of life, and when the intellectual movement was so splendid as to leave it until now a brilliant tradition of history. Only one form of art was pre-eminently successful here; it was sculpture, which at that time reached its fullest development—to such a degree[Pg 19] that modern sculpture is only a weak repetition of ancient works in this line. So also the brilliant period of Italian painting, when the mental movement represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo de Medici, and the pleasure-loving existence, the brilliant fêtes, in which noble men and beautifully appareled women performed all sorts of allegorical representations, and the colors, groupings, etc., afforded the painter an endless variety of material and suggestion. When Rubens flourished in the Netherlands, a century later, similar conditions accompanied his appearance and the prolific manifestations of his genius. In the same way, music depends upon peculiar conditions of its own. They are three: The vigor of the mental movement in general, its strength upon the imaginative and sentimental side, and the suggestion from the environment in the way of musical instruments of adequate tonal powers. Such instruments never existed in the history of the art until about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The organ, the violin and the predecessor of the pianoforte, the spinet, came to practical form at nearly the same time. At the same time the instruments of plucked strings—the guitars, lutes and other instruments which until then had occupied the exclusive attention of musicians—began to go out. Moreover, musical science had been worked out, and the arts of counterpoint, canonic imitation, fugue, harmony, etc., had all reached a high degree of perfection when Bach and Händel appeared.
7. The entire history of music is merely an illustration of these principles. Wherever there has been vigorous movement of mind and material prosperity (and they have always been associated) there has been an art of music, the richness of which, however, has always[Pg 20] been limited by the state of the musical ears of the people or generation, and the perfection of their musical instruments. The instruments are an indispensable ingredient in musical progress, since it is only by means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated, the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to retain them—in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following, the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that usually allotted them in concise accounts of the history of this art.
8. The conditions of a satisfactory Art Form are three: Unity, the expression of a single ruling idea; variety, the relief of the monotony due to the over-ascendency of unity (or contrast, an exact and definite form of variety); and symmetry, or the due proportion of the different parts of the work as a whole. These principles, universally recognized as governing in the other fine arts, are equally valid in music. As will be seen later, all musical progress has been toward their more complete attainment and their due co-ordination into a single satisfactory whole. Every musical form that has ever been created is an effort to solve this problem; and analysis shows which one of the leading principles has been most considered, and the manner in which it has been carried out. Ancient music was very weak in all respects, and never fully attained the first of these qualities. Modern music has mastered all three to a very respectable degree.
9. The art of music appears to have been earliest of all the fine arts in the order of time; but it has been longer than any of the others in reaching its maturity,[Pg 21] most of the master works now current having been created within the last two centuries, and the greater proportion of them within the last century. Sculpture came to its perfection in Greece about 500 B.C.; architecture about 1200 to 1300 A.D., when the great European cathedrals were built; painting about 1500 to 1600 A.D. Poetry, like music, representing the continual life of soul, has never been completed, new works of highest quality remaining possible as long as hearts can feel and minds can conceive; but the productions of Shakespeare, about 1650, are believed to represent a point of perfection not likely to be surpassed. Music, on the other hand, has been continually progressive, at least until the appearance of Beethoven, about the beginning of the present century, and the romantic composers between 1830 and the present time.
10. The history of music may be divided into two great periods—Ancient and Modern—the Christian era forming a dividing line between them. Each of these periods, again, may be subdivided into two other periods, one long, the other quite short—an Apprentice Period, when types of instruments were being found out, melodic or harmonic forms mastered; in other words, the tonal sense undergoing its primary education. The other, a Master Period, when an art of music suddenly blossoms out, complete and satisfactory according to the principles recognized by the musicians of the time. In the natural course of things such an art, having once found its heart, ought to go on to perfection; but this has not generally been the case. After a period of vigorous growth and the production of master works suitable to the time, a[Pg 22] decline has ensued, and at length musical productivity has entirely ceased. Occasionally a cessation in art progress of this kind may have been dependent upon the failure of one or other of the primary conditions of successful art mentioned above, especially the failure of material prosperity. This had something to do with the cessation of progress in ancient Egypt, very likely; but more often the stoppage of progress has been due to the exhaustion of the suggestive powers of the musical instruments in use. The composers of the music of ancient Greece had for instruments only lyres of six or eight strings, with little vibrative power. After ten centuries of use every suggestion in the compass of these instruments to furnish, had been carried out. If other and richer instruments could have been introduced, no doubt Greek music would have taken a new lease of life, i.e., supposing that the material prosperity had remained constant.
The apprentice periods of ancient history extend back to the earliest traces of music which we have, beginning perhaps with the early Aryans in central Asia, whom Max Müller represents as circling around the family altar at sunrise and sunset, and with clasped hands repeating in musical tones a hymn, perhaps one of the earliest of those in the Vedas, or a still older one. From this early association of music with religious worship we derive something of our heredity of reverence for the art, a sentiment which in all ages has associated music with religious ritual and worship, and out of which has come much of the tender regard we have for it as the expression of home and love in the higher aspects.
All the leading types of instruments were discovered in the early periods of human history, but the full powers of the best have been reached only in recent times.[Pg 23]
11. The art of music was highly esteemed in antiquity, and every great nation had a form of its own. But it was only in three or four countries that an art was developed of such beauty and depth of principle as to have interest for us. The countries where this was done were Egypt, Greece and India.
12. Modern music differs from ancient in two radical points: Tonality, or the dependence of all tones in the series upon a single leading tone called the Key; and Harmony, or the satisfactory use of combined sounds. This part of music was not possible to the ancients, for want of correctly tuned scales, and the selection of the proper tone as key. The only form of combined sounds which they used was the octave, and rarely the fifth or fourth. The idea of using other combined sounds than the octave seems to have been suggested by Aristotle, about 300 B.C. The period from the Christian era until about 1400 A.D. was devoted to apprentice work in this department of art, the central concept wanted being a principle of unity. After the beginning of the schools of the Netherlands, about 1400, progress was very rapid. The blossoming time of the modern art of music, however, cannot be considered to have begun before about 1600, when opera was commenced; or 1700, when instrumental music began to receive its full development. Upon the whole, the former of these dates is regarded as the more just, and it will be so used in the present work.
KING DAVID, PLAYING ON THE THREE-STRINGED CRWTH.
[From a manuscript of the eleventh century now in the National Library, Paris.]
Y a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate
idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about
4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent
traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the
equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the
pursuit of the husbandman above the uncertainties incident to less
favorable climates, while at the same time the mild climate reduced to
a minimum the demands upon his productive powers for the supply of the
necessaries of life. This interesting people had the curious custom of
depositing the mummies of their dead in tombs elaborately hewn out of
the rock, or excavated in more yielding ground, in the hills which
border the narrow valley of the Nile. Many of these excavations are of
very considerable extent, reaching sometimes to the number of twenty
rooms, and a linear distance of 600 feet from the entrance. The walls
of these underground apartments are generally decorated in outline
intaglio if the rock be hard; or in color if the walls be plaster, as
is often the case. The subjects of the decorations embrace the entire
range of the domestic and public life of the people, among them[Pg 29]
being many of a musical character. One of the first discoveries of
this kind was made toward the close of the preceding century, when
Bruce, an English traveler, found in a tomb at Biban-El-Moulouk
representations of two magnificently decorated harps played by
priests. These have since generally been called "Bruce's Harpers." The
instruments have been represented in many ways by different writers,
the most curious perversion of the facts being found in Burney's
"History of Music," where they have the form of the modern harp.
Harps, pipe, and flute, from an ancient tomb near the Pyramids.
Fig. 1.
EXPLANATION OF FIG. 1.—(1) Harper, with harp, bent, of seven cords; over him is inscribed in hieroglyphs sqa em bents (a), "player [literally "scraper"] on the harp." (2) Singer, seated; above him, hes t (b) "singer." (3, 4) Similar harper and singer, and same inscriptions (c, d). (5, 6) Singer and player on the direct flute or pipe; before the former, hes (h) "singer"; before the latter, mem t (g) "pipe." (7, 8) Singer and player on the oblique flute, seba (e); before the former, hes (f) "singer."
Several large works have been devoted to plates of the pictorial discoveries in these ancient tombs, but not until the colossal work of Lepsius, issued under the auspices of the German government, were we in possession of data for the study of this civilization from the standpoint of a progressive development.
The oldest of the musical representations are found in tombs near Thebes, and already we find the art in an advanced state. The preceding cut shows one of these pictures. A musical group is represented, consisting of eight figures. Their occupations are designated by the hieroglyphics above them. The harper is designated as "harp scraper."
It is not possible to make out in the present state of these drawings the exact number of strings upon the harps, but explorers agree that it must have been either five or seven. From the length of the strings and the structure of the instrument without a "pillar" in front for resisting the pull of the strings, the tones must have been within the register of the male voice. The long flute played by the figure bearing the number 8 must also have produced low tones. It is not plain whether these players are supposed to be all playing at the same[Pg 31] time, or whether their ministrations may have taken place separately. Most likely, however, they all played and sang together.
Fig. 2.
BRUCE'S HARPERS.
The most advanced harps found in Egypt were the elegantly colored and ornamented priestly instruments which Bruce found in what was afterward discovered to be the tomb of Rameses III, at Biban-El-Moulouk. The black and white cuts give but a poor idea of the elaborate structure and rich ornamentation of these fine instruments (Fig. 2). The instruments are not playing together; each harper plays before his own particular divinity. They occupy opposite sides in the same hall. The players, by their white robes and positions, evidently belonged to the highest order of the priesthood. The harp upon the right is represented by some writers as having had twenty-one strings; whereas the one upon the left has only eleven. This would be an interesting fact if it were well founded. But, unfortunately, the truth is that the painting was somewhat defaced after Bruce saw it, and it was only within later years that a clever explorer discovered that by passing a wet sponge over it the original lines could be made out. According to Lepsius it has thirteen strings.
In the XXth dynasty, about 1300 B.C., there were harps having twenty-one strings, of which a good example is shown in Fig. 3. This instrument, also, is elaborately colored and ornamented in gold and carving. The strings are shorter than those of Bruce's harpers, and the pitch was most likely within the treble register. The second figure clapping hands is marking time. The one upon the right is playing upon a sort of banjo, of which mention will be made presently.
Fig. 3.
Some time before the period of the Hyksos, the[Pg 32] "Shepherd Kings" of the Exodus, there is a scene of a procession of foreigners presenting tribute to one of the sovereigns of Egypt. Among the figures is one playing upon a sort of lyre. Later this instrument became the established instrument of the higher classes, as it was afterward in Greece and Rome. Several complete instruments have been found, which, although dating most likely from a period near the Christian era, are nevertheless sufficiently like the representations of ten centuries earlier to make them instructive as well as interesting. Figs. 4 and 5 are from Fétis. One of these lyres had originally six strings, as is shown by the notches in the cross-piece at the top. They were tuned approximately by making the cord tense and then sliding the loop over its notch. From the clever construction of the resonance cases these instruments should have[Pg 33] had a very good quality of tone. In some of the later representations there are lyres of twenty strings.
Fig. 4.
LYRE AT BERLIN.
Fig. 5.
FROM THE LEYDEN MUSEUM.
Fig. 6.
A GROUP OF STREET MUSICIANS.
(1) Woman with tall light harp, of fourteen strings. (2) Cithara. (3) Te-bouni, or banjo. (4) Double flute. (5) Shoulder harp. (6) Singer, clapping hands.
It will be observed that up to this point all the musicians represented are men. In later representations women are more common. Fig. 6 represents the entire musical culture of the later empire, this particular representation belonging apparently to an epoch not more than a few centuries before the Christian era. The harp in this case is of a different construction, and lighter[Pg 35] than those in the former examples. It would seem to have been played while the player walked, for we find it in what seems to be moving processions. The lyre occupies here the post of honor next the harp. The banjo and double flute come next, and then a curious instrument of three or four strings, played while carried upon the shoulder. Several of these instruments have been found in a very respectable state of preservation. Their construction is better shown in the illustrations following:
Fig. 7.
The tonal relation of these instruments to the larger harps is difficult to conceive. Wilkinson gives the dimensions of the most perfect one in the British Museum as forty-one inches long, the neck occupying twenty-two inches, and the body being four inches wide.
The instrument with the long neck and the short body, seen in Figs. 3 and 6, belongs to the banjo family. Its resonance body consisted of a sort of hoop, or a hollowed out piece of sycamore, the sounding board being a piece of parchment or rawhide. Some of these have two strings, others one; three are occasionally met with. The name of this instrument was te-bouni, and it was of Assyrian origin. It was afterward known as[Pg 36] the "monochord," and by its means all the ancients demonstrated the ratios of the octave, fourth and fifth, as we will later see.
We have no knowledge whatever of the tonal sound of the music which so interested these ancient players and singers. There is, however, an ancient poem, called "The Song of the Harper" found in a papyrus dating from about 1500 B.C., which gives an idea of the sentiments the music was intended to convey. Here it is, from Rawlinson's "History of Ancient Egypt," p. 48:
"THE SONG OF THE HARPER."
[From a papyrus of the XVIIIth Dynasty.]
| The great one has gone to his rest Ended his task and his race; Thus men are aye passing away, And youths are aye taking their place. As Ra rises up every morn, And Tum every evening doth set. So women conceive and bring forth, And men without ceasing beget. Each soul in its turn draweth breath, Each man born of woman sees death. Take thy pleasure to-day, Father! Holy one! See, Spices and fragrant oils, Father, we bring to thee. On thy sister's bosom and arms Wreaths of lotus we place; On thy sister, dear to thy heart, Aye sitting before thy face. Sing the song, let music be played, [Pg 37]And let cares behind thee be laid. Take thy pleasure to-day; Mind thee of joy and delight! Soon life's pilgrimage ends, And we pass to silence and night. Patriarch, perfect and pure, Neferhotep, blessed one! Thou Didst finish thy course upon earth, And art with the blessed ones now. Men pass to the silent shore, And their place shall know them no more. They are as they never had been Since the sun went forth upon high; They sit on the banks of the stream That floweth in stillness by. Thy soul is among them; thou Dost drink of the sacred tide, Having the wish of thy heart, At peace ever since thou hast died. Give bread to the man who is poor, And thy name shall be blest evermore. |
All princely households appear to have had their regular staff of musicians, at the head being the "Overest of Musicians," whose tombs still furnish some of the most instructive information upon this part of the ancient life. People of lower social grade had to be content with the temporary services of the street musicians, such as those represented in Fig. 6. They played and sang and danced for weddings and festivities, and undertook the entire contract of mourning for the dead, the measure being the production of a small vial full of tears, under the immediate inspection of the relative of the deceased whose grief might happen to need this official assistance.[Pg 38]
For warlike purposes the Egyptians had a short trumpet of bronze, and a long trumpet, not unlike a straight trombone. They had drums of many kinds, but as none of these instruments have reference to the development of the higher art of music, we do not delay to describe them.
One thing which might surprise us in casting an eye over the foregoing representations as a whole is the small progress made considering the immensely long period covered by the glimpses we have of the music of this far-away race. From the days of the harpers in our earliest illustrations to those of the last is more than 2,000 years, in fact considerably longer than from the beginning of the Christian era until now. The explanation is easy to find. In the first place, the incitations upon the side of sense perception were comparatively meager. Neither in sonority nor in delicacy of tonal resource were the Egyptian instruments a tenth part as stimulating as those of to-day. Moreover, we have here to deal with childlike intelligences, slow perceptions, and limited opportunities of comparison. Hence if these were all the discouraging elements there would be but little cause for wonder at the slow progress. But there was another element deeper and more powerful. The Egyptian mind was conservative to reaction. Plato in his "Laws," says: "Long ago the Egyptians appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking—that their young citizens must be habituated to the forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples, and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is allowed in these arts nor in music[Pg 39] at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or modeled in the same forms that they were 10,000 years ago. This is literally true, and no exaggeration—their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than those of to-day, but are with just the same skill." This, which Dr. Draper calls the "protective idea," was undoubtedly the cause of their little progress.
In another place Plato gives a very interesting glimpse of the Egyptian method of education, and describes something having in it much the spirit of the modern kindergarten. He says ("Laws," Jowett's translation, p. 815): "In that country systems of calculation have been actually invented for the use of children, which they learn as a pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands, adapting the same number to either a larger or less number of persons; and they distribute to pugilists and wrestlers, or they follow one another, or pair together by lot. Another mode of amusing them is by taking vessels of gold, and brass, and silver, and the like, and mingling them, or distributing them without mingling. As I was saying, they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a household they make people more useful to themselves, and wide-awake." This, together with the well known expectation of the Egyptians to be judged after death according to the "deeds done in the body," as our sacred writings have it, affords a high idea of their serious and lofty turn of mind, as well as of the great advance they had made toward a true notion of the means of education.
ECOND in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes
the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria
and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The
place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and
important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music
into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a
progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this
people. As they were when first we meet them, so they continued until
they pass out of the view of history as a nation, when the sacrificial
fires went out in the great temple at Jerusalem on the 11th of July,
A.D. 70, and the heathen Roman defiled the altars of God. In the
beginning Genesis tells us of one Jubal, who was the father of such as
handle the harp and the organ (kinnor and ugabh—the little triangular
harp of Assyria, and the shepherd's pipe, which here stands for all
sorts of wind instruments). In the course of the centuries the harp
changed its form somewhat, and perhaps had an increased number of
strings; the flute was multiplied into several sub-varieties, and the
horn was added. From Egypt they had the timbrel, a tambourine, to[Pg 41]
which Miriam, the sister of Moses, intoned the sublime canticle, "The
horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." There were also the
sistra, those metallic instruments serving in the temple service the
same purpose that the bells serve in the mass at the present
day—that, namely, of letting the distant worshipers know when the
solemn moment has arrived.
Vast numbers of musicians were employed in the greater temple service, 4,000 being mentioned in I Chronicles xxiii, 5, as praising God with the kinds of instruments appointed by David. According to Josephus, this great number was vastly increased in still later times, the numbers given being 200,000 trumpeters and 40,000 harpers and players upon stringed instruments. Even if we take the figures as greatly exaggerated, they show nevertheless that the art of music had a great place among this people.
The instruments known were few in number, and their type underwent little change from the earliest days. The principal instrument of the older time was the Kinnor, or little triangular harp, which we find in the record of the primeval Jubal, and which more than 1,000 years later was played before Saul to defend him from the evil spirit. This also was the instrument most prominent in the temple service, and this again was hung upon the willows of Babylon. The name kinnor is said to have been Phœnician, a fact which points to this as the source of its derivation. It is not easy to see how this could well be, unless we regard the name as having been applied to the invention of Jubal at a later time, for Jubal lived many years anterior to the founding of the great metropolis of the Mediterranean. The kinnor was a small harp having from ten to twenty[Pg 42] strings. The usual forms are shown in the accompanying illustration. The strings were fastened upon a metal rod lying along the face of the sounding board. The type of construction is totally unlike that of the Egyptian harps, and its musical powers were apparently considerably inferior. Its form was the following:
Fig. 8.
Another instrument often mentioned in the English version of the Bible is the psaltery, of which the form is somewhat uncertain, but is thought to have been four-sided. Various ancient representations have been supposed to be this instrument, but none of them satisfactorily, at least not authoritatively. It was probably a variety of harp. The nebel is also said to have been a psaltery, but its etymology points to the Phœnician nabel, a triangular harp like a Greek delta. The forms of the psaltery were four-sided or triangular. It was probably the predecessor of the Arab canon, which again is much the same as the santir. (See Fig. 25.)
There were two kinds of flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel."[Pg 43]
Many of the different names of musical instruments in the common version of the Scriptures are merely blunders of the Septuagint translators, who rendered the word kinnor by about six different terms, where no distinction had been originally intended by the sacred writers.
Fig. 9.
Among the Hebrews we find the same progression from men alone as musicians to women almost exclusively, and it is likely that the Hebrews gained the idea from Egypt. Jubal was the discoverer of the harp, according to the tradition in Genesis, and David manifested no loss of manliness while playing before the Lord. Nevertheless when he sang and danced before the ark his wife despised him in her heart. Miriam, the sister of Moses, may well have been a professional musician, one of the singing and dancing women, such as are represented over and over again in the monuments. In the time of Moses, and for some time later, women had no status in[Pg 44] the public service; but in the later days of the second temple the women singers are an important element of the display. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of them, and the son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha, recommends the reader to "beware of female singers, that they entice thee not with their charms."
According to the views of many writers, the Hebrews had a larger harp than the small one represented in Fig. 8. It may have been something like one which was found in Egypt, but the form is clearly Assyrian, belonging to the same type as the small harps already given. It certainly is not Egyptian. (See Fig. 9.)
The liturgy of the temple must have been singularly noble and imposing. Never had a church so grand a body of poetry as this of the Hebrews, which they heard in the very sonorous words of David, Moses, Isaiah and Ezekiel, with all the subtle suggestion of a vernacular as employed by minds of the first poetic order. The Hebrew parallelism afforded exactly the kind of formula in which one congregation could most effectively respond to another.
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"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; The world and they that dwell therein; For He hath founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place?" |
When the priests had intoned one line, we may suppose that the whole choir of Levites made answer in the second line, completing the parallelism.
There are other psalms in which the people have a refrain which comes in periodically, as, for instance, in[Pg 45] the one: "O give thanks unto the Lord; [refrain] for His mercy endureth forever." (Ps. cxxxvi.)
Fig. 10.
The voice of these masses stood to the Hebrews' mind as the feeble type of the great song which should go up from the entire Israel of God when the scattered members of the cult were gathered in their time of fullness and glory. For us also the same image stands. And while the art of this venerable and singularly gifted people did not attain a place of commanding influence upon the tonal side of music, it nevertheless has borne no small part in affording a vantage ground for later art in the line of noble conceptions, inspiring motives and brilliant suggestions. It has been, and still is, one of the most potent influences in the art-music of the world. Nor is it without interest that the scattered[Pg 46] representatives of this race have been and continue to be ministers of art in all the lands into which they have come. The race of Israel has made a proud record in modern music, no less than that of the ancient temple.
The Assyrians held music in honor, and employed it for liturgical purposes, as well as those of social and private life. Among the discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon are many of a musical character. Strong bearded men are playing upon harps which are of a triangular form, but of a different structure to any which we have thus far given. (See Fig. 10.)
The one upon the left is a eunuch. In the following figure we have the banjo-like instrument so constantly seen in the Egyptian representations.
Fig. 11.
There are several instances of some sort of an instrument, apparently consisting of metallic plates or rods,[Pg 47] played by means of a hammer. Many have considered these to have been the original type of the modern instruments of percussion, where metal plates are vibrated by means of hammers or mallets. The following is one of this kind.
Fig. 12.
The general appearance of these processions indicates that the Assyrians were in the habit of massing a large number of players upon important occasions. We have no idea what the effect of this music can have been, but upon the tonal side it cannot have had any great resonance or power. Enough if it satisfied the ears of the dignified players and those who employed their services as a part of the pageant of their great festivals.
PON several accounts the development of the art of music among the
ancient Greeks is both important and interesting. Our word "music" is
theirs; it carries within its etymology the derivation from the Muses,
the nine agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and
nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much
more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included
pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar,
history, rhetoric, mathematics, poetry and song—all were included in
this one elastic and comprehensive term. Music itself, the art of
tone-sequence, they called harmony.
Our information concerning the general course of the development of music among this people is pretty accurate through a period of about 1300 years. The entire course of the Greek history of music may be divided into four great divisions, each of which was principally devoted to a certain part of the art. These divisions begin at a date which we might take approximately at about 1000 B.C., when the Homeric poems began to be chanted or sung by traveling minstrels called Rhapsodists. The schools of rhapsodies lasted for about 250[Pg 49] years, when choral and patriotic song began to be developed. In connection with this part of the history, there was in the later portion of it a more ornamental and fanciful development of the smaller and social uses of song, represented by Sappho, Anacreon and others. This period endured for about two centuries and a half, and by insensible degrees passed into the Attic drama, which came to its maturity at the hands of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides about 450 B.C.
Here was the culmination of Greek musical art upon the purely artistic and æsthetic side. Then followed a period of philosophizing, theory and mathematical deduction, which extended to the end of the Alexandrian schools, about 300 A.D. The limits of the present work do not permit tracing this course of progress with the amplitude which its relation to liberal education would otherwise warrant, or even to the extent which its bearing upon the present ideals of the tonal art would justify, were not the range of subjects indispensable to even a summarized treatment of musical history so wide as it has now become. But the general features of the different steps in the Greek music are the following:
As already noticed, the earliest traces of music are those in the Homeric poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C. In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several centuries later, Solon, one of the famed seven wise men of[Pg 50] Greece, composed the rhapsody of "Salamis, or the Lost Island," and sang it in a public assembly of the Athenians with so much effect that an expedition was organized, with Solon at its head, for its recovery, which presently followed triumphantly.
Many passages in the Odyssey will occur to the classical reader in illustration of the position of the minstrel in Argos in the earlier times. For example (Odyssey I, 400, Bryant's translation):
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"Silent all They sat and listened to the illustrious bard Who sang of the calamitous return Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain, And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs She came, but not alone; there followed her Two maidens. When the glorious lady reached The threshold of the strong-built hall, where sat The suitors, holding up a delicate veil Before her face, and with a gush of tears, The queen bespake the sacred minstrel thus: 'Phemius, thou knowest many a pleasing theme— The deeds of gods and heroes, such as bards Are wont to celebrate. Take, then, thy place, And sing of one of these, and let the guests In silence drink the wine; but cease this strain; It is too sad. It cuts me to the heart, And wakes a sorrow without bounds—such grief I bear for him, my lord, of whom I think Continually; whose glory is abroad Through Hellas and through Argos, everywhere.' "And then Telemachus, the prudent, spake— Why, O my mother! canst thou not endure That thus the well graced poet should delight His hearers with a theme to which his mind Is inly moved? The bards deserve no blame; Jove is the cause, for he at will inspires The lay that each must sing.'" |
Later than the Homeric rhapsodists, the Hesiodic poems were composed and sung similarly by wandering minstrels, who, although wandering, were not on that account lowly esteemed. There were regular schools, or more properly guilds, of rhapsodists, into which only those were admitted as masters who were able to treat the current topics with the light and inspiring touch of real poetry, and only those taken as apprentices who evinced proper talent and promise. The training of these schools was long, partly spent in acquiring technique of treating subjects and the mastery of the lyre, and partly in memorizing the Homeric and Hesiodic hymns. It is supposed that these poems were transmitted for more than three centuries orally in this way, before having been reduced to writing.
In Hesiod's poem of "The Shield of Hercules" (Bank's translation, 365), the general idea of the Greek festive processions is illustrated:
|
"There men in dances and in festive joys Held revelry. Some on the smooth-wheeled car A virgin bride conducted; then burst forth Aloud the marriage song; and far and wide Long splendors flash'd from many a quivering torch Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls Preceded, and the dancers followed blithe: These, with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip, Breath'd melody, while broken echoes thrill'd Around them; to the lyre with flying touch Those led the love-enkindled dance. A group Of youths was elsewhere imaged, to the flute Disporting; some in dances, and in song; In laughter others. To the minstrel's flute So pass'd they on; and the whole city seem'd As fill'd with pomps, with dances, and with feasts." |
So again in the same poem (274) there is a scene of a minstrel contest among the immortal gods themselves, described by the poet from one of the scenes upon the shield of Hercules.
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"And the tuneful choir appear'd Of heaven's immortals; in the midst, the son Of Jove and of Latona sweetly rang Upon his golden harp; th' Olympian mount, Dwelling of gods, thrill'd back the broken sound. And there were seen th' assembly of the gods Listening; encircled with beatitude; And in sweet contest with Apollo there The virgins of Pieria raised the strain Preluding; and they seemed as though they sang With clear, sonorous voices." |
As early as 750 B.C. we find the famous rhapsodist, Terpander, summoned to Sparta to sing patriotic songs, in the hope of preventing a secession of this rather unruly state. He accomplished his mission, a circumstance creditable alike to the talent of the poet-minstrel and the high estimation in which the class was held.
The application of music to patriotic purposes was no novelty. Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," says that "Thales was famed for his wisdom and his political abilities; he was withal a lyric poet who, under cover of exercising his art, performed as great things as the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasions to obedience and unanimity, and as by means of numbers they had great grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience, drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united them in zeal for excellence and virtue." Again, of the subject matter of the Spartan songs, he says: "Their[Pg 53] songs had a spirit which could arouse the soul and impel to an enthusiastic action. The language was plain and manly; the subject serious and moral. For they consisted chiefly of praises of heroes who had died for Sparta, or else of expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the glorious privilege."
About this time the art of choral song began to be much cultivated in Greece, particularly in connection with the cult of certain divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison, accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.
Plato speaks of the imitative and semi-dramatic character of the choral dance ("Laws," II, 655): "Choric movements are imitations of manners occurring in various actions, chances, characters—each particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, the song or the dances are suited, either by nature or habit, or both, cannot help feeling pleasure in them and calling them beautiful."
About 500 B.C. a room was rented upon the market place for the practice of the chorus. Every town had its body of singers, who sang and performed the evolutions of the representative dance appropriate to the service of the particular divinity to whom they were devoted. Presently competitive singing came into vogue, in connection with the famous games, and the art of the poet was taxed, as well as the musical and more purely vocal arts of the singers themselves, striving in honorable competition for the glory of their native towns.
In some of the festival occasions the proceedings of the choral songs were varied by the leader, who improvised[Pg 54] rhapsodies upon topics connected with the life of the divinity or upon national stories. At proper points the chorus came in with the refrain, which remained a fixed quantity, being put in, apparently, at whatever points the inspiration or breath of the leader needed a point of repose. None of these compositions have come down to us, but the allusions to them in ancient writings give, perhaps, a sufficiently accurate idea of their nature.
The added interest incident to the fresh improvisations of the leader in this form of choral song presently opened toward a lyric drama. Thespis is credited with having been the first to place the leader upon a centrally located stage where he could be plainly seen and heard by all concerned. Now the recitations became more dramatic, the choruses more varied. The speaker illustrated by gestures the acts which he described; he varied his style of delivery according to the feeling appropriate to the incidents represented. The chorus meanwhile was not upon the stage, but in a central location below, and during their strophes they circled around the platform of the leader in a sort of mystic dance, each man accompanying himself upon his cithara. From this to adding a second speaker to the one already upon the stage was but a short step. It was taken, and the result was a drama with a chorus in connection. In the earlier plays the speakers represented as many characters as necessary for carrying out the action. Later they changed costume to some extent, the chorus meanwhile occupying the time with their own songs, which generally had the character of a comment upon the action as developed at the moment. The changes of costume were extremely slight, merely a different head dress, a mantle or some slight modification of appearance more or less symbolical[Pg 55] in character. All the dialogue was delivered in a musical voice, and, it is thought, all accompanied by the cithara, which every player carried in his hand. The instrument was sometimes played all the time, in the same notes as those of the song or chant; at other, times the speaker employed it for ritournelles, for affording breathing time or points of emphasis. Once in a great while, it is thought, the instrument had a note different from that of the song in connection with it. Upon this point great uncertainty prevails.
At length, about 470 B.C., Æschylus, the great tragedian, made his début as actor and author, and placed three speakers upon the stage. Besides the three principals, each man had a suite, if his station demanded such an appendage according to the ideas or customs of the times. These, however, had the rank of supernumeraries, merely following the speaker around, but never taking part in the dialogue. The principals each represented more than one character, effecting some slight change of costume for indicating the transformation. The stage was simply an open platform, with three doors in the rear. The actor entering by one door represented a prince at home; from another a prince abroad; by another door he represented a common person. The chorus occupied the central place in front of the stage, much in the same location as the parquet is now. In the center of this space was an altar, originally dedicated to Dionysos, and an offering was probably placed upon it. Later the Choreagos, or leader of the chorus, sat upon it and directed the movements of the singers, much as the operatic director does now. The theaters were very large, being vast amphitheaters, open to the sky, but with an awning available over the more[Pg 56] expensive seats. The seats were of stone, arranged exactly like those in a modern circus. The theater in Athens is said to have held 25,000 persons. At first admission was free, the theater being conducted by the state. The plays were mounted very expensively at times, although with the absence of scenery or properties of an elaborate character it is not easy to imagine what was the use made of the vast sums reported to have been expended in different productions. There was a rivalry of leading citizens, each taking upon himself the expense of mounting a new play, and striving to outdo the last before him upon the list.
There were three great dramatic authors whose names have come down to us as the Shakespeares of the Athenian drama. They were Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. All were great poets, the first perhaps the greatest. Sophocles was a fine musician and an elegant poet, and for many years he remained the popular idol. All these men wrote not only the words of the plays, but the music as well, every phrase of every character having been noted for musical utterance, and all the choral effects carefully planned. Besides this he composed what was then called the "Orchestic," whence we have our word orchestra. By orchestic they meant an apparatus of mystical dancing or posturing and marching and certain gestures. We do not know precisely what this famous orchestic was, for no example of it has come down to us in intelligible form. But from the descriptions of it by contemporary writers, it seems to have formed the pantomimic complement of the acting, with a certain added grace of art in grouping and posturing, suited to attract and satisfy the eye of a public accustomed to national games, and the beautiful conceptions[Pg 57] of Phidias upon the Parthenon frieze. Thus, as will be readily seen, this drama was essentially opera. For reasons to be hereafter detailed, the music is thought to have been of slight tonal value. This is inferred from the compass of the instruments and the general deficiency of the Greeks upon this side, although popular report assigns them a place entirely different. This mystical drama, leaving so much to the imagination, and supplementing its actual representation by the help of chorus and a sort of sanctity derived from music, lasted but a few years. Other causes were at work destined to bring it to a close.
Almost immediately after Euripides, appeared the great comedy writer, Aristophanes, about 420 B.C. This great artist was not simply a dramatist, but also a patriot and a philosopher. In several of his plays he satirizes the classical dramas effectively, parodies their effects, and in general pokes fun at them. He was, however, a well accomplished musician, who might, if he had chosen, have gone on in the steps of his predecessors. But the times were not favorable to this. Previous to the time of Socrates, orators in addressing popular assemblies, lawyers in pleading cases, and all public speakers, appear to have made use of the cithara as a sort of accompaniment, if for no other purpose than to assure themselves of securing a proper pitch of the voice. But Socrates drew attention to verbal distinctions, made words the image of exact concepts, and in general set in operation an era of scientific classification and purely intellectual development, into which music could not enter, especially in a form so poor upon the tonal side as Greek art then was, and always remained. Then came the great orators, of whom Demosthenes was the greatest, who[Pg 58] seems to have been the first to speak without musical aids; and Plato, with his philosophy; and after him the great Aristotle, the father of scientific classification and orderly knowledge.
To a disciple of Aristotle, Aristoxenus, we are indebted for the first really musical work which has come down to us. It is true that the so-called Problems of Aristotle contain many of a musical character, showing that this great master observed tonal effects in a purely musical spirit, but he did not make a scientific treatise upon the art. In his Politics he has much admirable matter relating to music, and its influence upon the feelings and its office in life has hardly been better explained than by him. But music upon the practical side remained a sealed book.
Among the lucid musical questions of Aristotle's Problems (which, if not by Aristotle himself, are at least the product of his time or the succeeding century) he refers to the phenomena of sympathetic resonance; he asks further, why it is that when mese (the keynote of the lyre) is out of tune everything is out of tune; yet when any other string is out of tune it affects only the particular string which is not correctly adjusted. One of his most instructive, but also, as it turned out, most misleading questions was why they did not magadize (sing in) fourths and fifths as well as in octaves, since the consonances of the fourth and the fifth are almost as well sounding as those of the octave. This question appears to have led to the practice of what Hucbald called "diaphony." This question, it may be remarked incidentally, is conclusive that they did not use the third as a consonance in Aristotle's time, nor sing together in fourths, fifths, or any other intervals than the octave.[Pg 59]
In spite of the talk about music by the Greek writers, musical theory, in an exact form, occupies but a small place in the volume of their works. The earliest theorist of whom we have any account was Pythagoras, who lived about 580 B.C. He was one of the first of the Greek wise men to avail himself of the opening of Egypt to foreigners, which took place by Psammeticus I in the year 600 B.C. Pythagoras lived there twenty years in connection with one of the temples, where he seems to have gained the confidence of the priesthood and learned much of his philosophy and so-called musical science. He defined the mathematical relation of the octave as produced by half of a given string, the fifth produced by two-thirds and the fourth by three-fourths. He also found the ratio of the major step by subtracting the fourth from the fifth. This was the ratio 9:8. With this as a measure he attempted to place the tones of the tetrachord, or Greek scale of four tones, which was the unit of their tonal system. This gave him two major steps, and a half step somewhat too small, being equal to the ratio of 256:243.
The most important part of Pythagoras' influence upon the art of music was of a sentimental character. From Egypt he acquired many ideas of a musical nature, such as that certain tones represented the planets, and that time was the essence of all things. It was one of the laws of his religion that before retiring at night his disciples should sing a hymn in order to compose their spirits and prepare them for rest. The verses selected for this use were probably of a devotional character, like what are now known as the Orphic hymns, of which the lines upon the next page may be taken as a specimen. Ambros well remarks that such hymns could only have been sung appropriately to melodies of a choral-like character.[Pg 60]
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"Thou ruler of the sea, the sky, and vast abyss, Thou who shatterest the heavens with Thy thunder peals; Thou before whom spirits fall in awe, and gods do tremble; Thou to whom fates belong, so wise, so unrelenting Thou; Draw near and shine in us." |
Various musicians and theorists later are credited with having made additions to the musical resources of the Greeks, and it was a proverb, said of any smart man, that he "added a new string to the lyre." This was said of Terpander especially; but it is pretty certain that the lyre had six or seven strings some time before Terpander, and that the form of expression was purely symbolical, as if they had said of him "he set the river on fire." The first real contributions to musical science after the Problems of Aristotle, already cited, are the two works of his pupil Aristoxenus—one on harmony, the other on rhythm. These give a full account of the Greek musical systems, and are the source of the greater part of our information upon the subject. From them it appears that the basis of their scale was the tetrachord of four tones, placed at an interval of two steps and a half step. The outside tones of the tetrachord remained fixed upon the lyre, but the two middle ones were varied for the purpose of modulation. The Dorian tetrachord corresponded to our succession mi, fa, sol, la; the Phrygian re, mi, fa, sol; the Lydian from do. Besides these modes, the Greeks had what they called genera, of which there were three—the diatonic, to which the examples already given belong; the chromatic, in which the tetrachord had the form of mi, fa, fi, la, the interval between the two upper tones being equal to a step and a half; and the enharmonic, in which the first two intervals were one-quarter of a step and the upper one a major third.[Pg 61] We are entirely ignorant of the practical use made of these different forms of scale. Whether the quarter tones were used habitually, or were glided like appoggiaturas, or passing tones, has been vigorously maintained on both sides by different writers. The evidence seems to point to the enharmonic as having been the most ancient, and the chromatic and diatonic gradually superseding it. In Plato, Aristotle and many of the Greek writers, especially in Athenæus, much is said about the characteristic expression of the different modes, but as they are mutually contradictory, one saying of a given mode that it is bold and manly, while another calls it feeble and enervating, we may leave this for the antiquarians to settle for themselves.
After Aristotle, there were several Greek theorists who devoted themselves to mathematical computations, the favorite problem seeming to be to find as many ways as possible of dividing the major fourth, or the ratio 4:3, into what they called super-particular ratios—that is to say, a series of fractions in which each numerator differed from the denominator by unity. They had observed that all the ratios discovered by Pythagoras had this character, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 8/9, and they attributed magical properties to the fact, and sought to demonstrate the entire theory of music by the production of similar combinations. The latest writer of the Greek school was Claudius Ptolemy, who lived at Alexandria about 150 A.D. In his work upon harmony he gives a very large number of tables of fractions of this kind—his own and those of all previous Greek theorists, and it is to his book that we principally owe all the exact knowledge of Greek musical theory which we possess. Among other computations, Ptolemy gives the precise formula of the first four notes[Pg 62] of the scale as we now have it, but as this occurred only as one among many of a similar character, and is in no way distinguished from any of the others by any adjective implying greater confidence in it, we can only count it as a lucky accident. The eminence that has been awarded to Ptolemy as the original discoverer of the correct ratio of the major scale, therefore, does not properly belong to him.
This will more clearly appear from the entire table of the various determinations of the diatonic mode made by Ptolemy, taken from his work. (Edition by John Wallis, Oxford, 1682, pp. 88 and 172.) He gives no less than five of his own forms of diatonic genus, as follows: (The fractions give vibration ratios.)
Soft diatonic, 8/7 × 10/9 × 21/20 = 4/3.
Medium diatonic, 9/8 × 8/7 × 28/27 = 4/3.
Intense diatonic, 10/9 × 9/8 × 16/15 = 4/3.
Equable diatonic, 10/9 × 11/10 × 12/11 = 4/3.
Diatonic diatonic, 9/8 × 9/8 × 256/243 = 4/3.
Among these there is no one that is correct or rational. The proper ratios are given in the diatonic intense, but the large and small steps stand in the wrong order. It is in Ptolemy's record of the determinations of Didymus (born at Alexandria, 63 B.C.) that the true tuning of the first four tones of the scale occurs. This is it:
Diatonic (Didymus), 9/8 × 10/9 × 16/15 = 4/3.
Thus it appears that it was Didymus, and not Ptolemy, who proposed the tuning of the tetrachord which is now accepted as correct. It is very evident from the entire course of the discussion as conducted by Ptolemy that his calculations were purely abstract. He is to be reckoned among the Pythagoreans, who held that in time and number all things consist. It was not until[Pg 63] some centuries later that the happy thought of Didymus came to recognition as the true statement of the mathematical relation of the first four tones of the scale, and then only through the ears of a race of musicians following the great thesis of Aristoxenos, that in music it is always the ear which must be the arbiter, and not abstract reasoning or calculation. The ratios of the major and minor third also occur among the calculations of Didymus; but here, again, they count for nothing in the history of art, because these intervals derive their value and expressive quality from their harmonic relation, while Didymus and all the Greeks employed them as melodic skips only, and reckoned them in with a multitude of other skips and progressions, without distinguishing them in any way.
The one characteristic instrument of Greek music from the earliest to the latest days was the lyre. In the oldest times, those of Homer and Hesiod, it was called phorminx, which is believed to have been the form so often represented on Greek vases of a turtle shell with side pieces like horns, an instrument having but little effective resonance. The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the square pianoforte. This instrument rarely had more than six strings, and as it had no finger board it could have had no more notes than strings. Chappell, the English historian, attempts to demonstrate that certain ones of these instruments had a bridge dividing the string into two parts, thus largely increasing the compass, but the evidence supporting this hypothesis is not satisfactory. Plato speaks of instruments of many strings imported from Asia, which seem to have been the fashion or fad in his day. He[Pg 64] disapproved of them very heartily, but the terms in which he speaks of them show that he cannot have been very familiar with their appearance, for it is impossible to make out what he is driving at.
 |
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| Fig. 13. LYRE. |
Fig. 14. CITHARA. |
There is considerable doubt as to the extent to which the larger instruments of Asiatic origin penetrated the general musical practice of Greece. Athenæus, in his "Banquets of the Learned" (B. xvi, C), quotes Anakreon as saying:
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"I hold my magadis, and sing, Striking loud the twentieth string, Leucaspis at the rapid hour Leads you to youth and beauty's bower." |
Most certainly the lyre of Terpander had no twenty strings.
The so-called Greek flute was a very reedy oboe or clarinet, a pipe played with a reed, the pitch determined by holes stopped by the fingers. These instruments[Pg 65] were so hard to blow that the players wore bands over their cheeks because there were cases on record where, in the contests, they broke their cheeks by the wind pressure. The flute or aulos does not seem to have been used in connection with the cithara at all, and the Greeks had nothing corresponding to what we call an orchestra. The aulos was appropriate to certain religious services and to certain festivals, and it had a moderate status in the various contests of the national games, but the great instrument of Greek music, the universal dependence for all occasions, public and private, was the lyre.
In spite of the meager resources of Greek music upon its tonal side, this development of art has had a very important bearing upon the progress of music, even down to our own times. Opera was re-discovered about 1600 in the effort to re-create the Greek musical drama, and the ideal proposed to himself by Richard Wagner was nothing else than that of a new music drama in which the severe and lofty conceptions of the old Greek poets should be embodied in musical forms the most advanced that the modern mind has been able to conceive. Upon the æsthetic side musical theory is entirely indebted to the Greek. Nothing more suitable or appropriate can be said concerning musical taste and cultivation than what was said by Aristotle 300 years before Christ. For example, he has the following (Politics, viii, C. Jowett's translation, p. 245): "The customary branches of education are in number four. They are: (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic exercises, (3) music, to which is somewhat added (4) drawing. Of these, reading, writing and drawing are regarded as useful to the purposes of life in a variety of ways."[Pg 66] He recommends the study of music as part of the preparation of the fit occupation of leisure. "There remains, then, the use of music for the intellectual enjoyment of leisure; which appears to have been the reason of its introduction, this being one of the ways in which it is thought that a freeman should pass his leisure; as Homer says:
'How good it is to invite men to the pleasant feast,'
and afterward he speaks of others whom he describes as inviting
'The bard who would delight them all' (Od. xvii, 385);
and in another place he says that there is no better way of passing life than when
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'Men's hearts are merry, and the banqueters in the hall Sitting in order hear the voice of the minstrel.'" |
Plato is particular that only the noble harmonies shall be permitted in his state. He says, "Of the harmonies I want to have one warlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and he is going to wounds or death, or is overtaken by some other evil, and in every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity—expressive of entreaty or persuasion or prayer to God, or of instruction to man, or again willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice. These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of[Pg 67] temperance; these, I say, leave." These he explains will be only the Dorian and the Phrygian harmonies. In another place Plato shows himself a disciple of the Egyptian ideas of conservatism, already mentioned. "And therefore when one of these clever and multiform gentlemen who can imitate anything comes to our state, and proposes to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as he is in our state—the law will not allow him. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city." (Republic, Jowett, iii, 398.)
In fact, upon the subject of music, Plato is one of the least satisfactory of writers. He has many noble sentiments which might well be printed in letters of gold and hung upon the walls of educational institutions to-day, as ("Laws," Jowett's translation, 668): "Those who seek for the best kind of song and music, ought not to seek for that which is pleasant, but for that which is true." In another place, however, he speaks of music as a kind of imitation. He says that music without words is very difficult to understand. ("Laws," ibid., 668.) All these inconsistencies disappear, however, as soon as we recognize the limitations of the music which Plato knew, upon its tonal side. All the richness of sense incitation, and all the definiteness of expression which come into our modern music through the magic of "tones in key," were wholly outside the range of Plato's knowledge.
The musical notation of the Greeks consisted of letters of the alphabet placed over the syllables to which[Pg 68] the tones indicated were to be sung. The letters represented absolute pitch, and as, owing to the variety of genera, modes and chroa, the total number of tones was very large, parts of older forms of the alphabet were also employed, the whole number of characters thus demanded being upwards of seventy. There was little or no classification of tones, and the entire twenty-four letters were applied in regular order to the diatonic series of the Dorian mode. Tones in the chromatic or enharmonic modes were named by other letters, and the system was extremely complicated. The notes of the instrumental accompaniment were still different from those of the vocal part. No genuine example of this music has come down to us in reliable form, and curiously enough, no classical writer gives any idea of the notation of music. All that we know of this notation we derive from Alypius, who lived about 150 A.D. Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit of a monastery in Sicily, published in the last century the text of what purported to be a fragment of the first Pythic Ode of Pindar. (See page 69.) In the original the musical characters stood in immediate proximity to the words of the text. At the middle of the third line begins the chorus of Citharodists. As all the musical characters of the Greeks indicated absolute pitch, the student will discover the difference between the vocal and instrumental notation by comparing the notes in the early part of the ode with those of the same pitches noted for instruments later.
Three other pieces of similar apocryphal character have come down to us. It is likely that these melodies, if not really genuine, as related to the composition of Pindar, nevertheless belong to a period a little anterior to the Christian era.[Pg 69]
FRAGMENT OF THE FIRST PYTHIC ODE OF PINDAR,
According to the musical notation given by Athanasius Kircher, (F.A. Gevaert's "La Musique dans l'Antiquité.")
[Transliteration of Greek lyrics]
Note.—The amateur unfamiliar with the C clef, will obtain the true tonal effect of the above fragment from Pindar, by considering the clef to be G, and the signature five flats. This will transpose the piece one degree lower than above written, but the melody will be preserved. In other words, read it exactly like the treble part of any piano piece, only considering the signature to be five flats.
ERY important developments of the art of music took place in India
from a remote period, but dates are entirely uncertain. When the hymns
of the Rig-Veda were collected into their present form, which appears
to have been about 1500 B.C., music was highly esteemed. It was in
India that the art of inciting vibrations of a string by means of a
bow was discovered; and our violin had its origin there, but the date
is entirely unknown. The primitive violin was the ravanastron, which
the Ceylonese claim to have been invented by one of their kings, who
reigned about 5000 B.C. The form of this instrument is given in Fig.
16. It must have been some time before the Mohammedan invasion, for
they brought a rude violin back to Arabia, from whence it came into
Europe after the crusades. They had many forms of guitar, instruments
of percussion, and the varieties of viol, as well as trumpets and the
like. The national instrument was the vina. This was a sort of guitar,
its body made of a strip of bamboo about eight inches wide and four
feet long. Near each end a large gourd was fixed, for reinforcing the
resonance. In playing, it was held obliquely in front of the player,
like a guitar, one gourd[Pg 71] resting upon the left shoulder, the other
under the right arm. It was strung with six strings of silk and wire,
and had a very elaborate apparatus of frets, much higher than those of
a guitar, many of them movable, in order to permit modulation into any
of the twenty-four Hindoo "modes." The instrument had a light, thin
tone, not unpleasing. A fine specimen is figured in "Hipkins' Plates
of Rare Instruments" in the South Kensington Museum, a copy of which
may be seen in the Newberry Library.
Fig. 15.
JIWAN CHAH.
[Portrait of Jiwan Chah, one of the latest masters of the vina. He died about 1790.]
The Hindoos carried the theory of music to an extremely fine point, having many curious scales, some of them with twenty-four divisions in an octave. Twenty-two was the usual number. The pitch of each note in[Pg 72] every mode was accurately calculated mathematically, and the frets of the vina located thereby, according to very old theoretical works by one Soma, written in Sanskrit at least as early as 1500 B.C. When this work first became known to Europeans, its elaboration led it to be regarded as a purely theoretical fancy piece, and it was thought to be impossible that practical musicians could have been governed by theories apparently so fine-drawn. A study of the structure of the vina, however, perfectly adapted to these theories, set all doubts at rest. None of the intervals of the Hindoo scale exactly correspond to our own. Harmony they never conceived. Well sounding chords are impossible in their scales. All their music was monodic—one-voiced.
Fig. 16.
There was a curious development of the musical drama in India about 300 B.C., having certain of the traits of modern opera. Several of these ancient pieces have come down to us, but without the musical notes. They are long, consisting of as many as eleven acts, part of them sung, part spoken. Curiously enough, the different acts are not all in the same dialect. The musical acts are in Sanskrit, which had then ceased to be a spoken language for at least 500 years; the spoken acts were in Pakrit, a dialect of Sanskrit, which likewise had ceased to be spoken for several centuries. A fuller account of the Hindoo drama is given in Wilson's "Theater of the Hindoos." The curious circumstance of the drama of the Hindoos of this epoch is that it was contemporaneous with another very celebrated development of musical drama in Greece.
Besides the primitive form of the bowed instrument, the ravanastron (Fig. 16), many forms more advanced are figured among the instruments from India in European museums, but as they are all of absurd and impossible acoustical conception, besides being most likely of comparatively modern origin, we do not present them at this point. Later, in the history of the violin, one or two of the most curious will be given.
China has had an art of music from extremely remote periods, and singularly sagacious ideas concerning the art were advanced there very long ago, at a time when Europe and most other parts of the world were still in the darkness of barbarism. For example: There is a saying of the Emperor Tschun, about 2300 B.C., "Teach the children of the great; thereby reached through thy[Pg 74] care they will become mild and reasonable, and the unmanageable ones able to receive dignities without arrogance or assumption. This teaching must thou embody in poems, and sing them therewith to suitable melodies and with the play of instrumental accompaniment. The music must follow the sense of the words; if they are simple and natural then also must the music be easy, unforced and without pretension. Music is the expression of soul-feeling. If now the soul of the musician be virtuous, so also will his music become noble and full of virtuous expression, and will set the souls of men in union with those of the spirits in heaven." (Quoted by Ambros.)
Fig. 17.
The principal instruments of Chinese music are the Kin and the Ke. The former is a sort of guitar, of which no illustration has come to hand. The main instrument of their culture-music is the ke, a stringed instrument entirely unlike any other of which we have accounts, saving the Japanese ko-ko, which was most likely derived from it. The ke is strung with fifty strings of silk. Originally it had but twenty-five, but in the reign of Hoang-Ti, about 2637 B.C., it is said to have been enlarged to its present dimensions and compass. The appearance of the ke and the arrangement of its bridges are shown in Fig. 17. The strings were plucked with the fingers.
In the earlier times the Chinese had the pentatonic scale, approximately the same as that of the black keys[Pg 75] of the piano. Later it was enlarged to seven notes in the octave, and it is claimed by some that long before the Christian era they had a complete chromatic scale of twelve tones in the octave. The evidence upon this point, however, is insufficient. And even if they had this musical resource at so early a period the fact counts very little to their credit, since at best the chromatic scale is only an impure harmonic compromise, which they have never learned to use understandingly. Chinese music has always been monodic, and they use a great variety of melodic shadings composed of intervals of small fractions of a step. These they call lu. There are movable bridges which can be placed in such way as to divide the strings of the ke at proper proportions of its length for producing the lu. The places for the fingers upon the finger board are marked by small brass points. Besides the intonations due to stopping the strings, the players upon the ke are in the habit of adding expression in a manner analogous to that of the tremolo of the modern violinist. With the left hand he touches the string beyond the bridge and pulls it slightly, thus imparting to the tone a sliding intonation upward or downward, familiar to all who have experimented with strings. This habit the Japanese still have in playing their ko-ko, and the results are said to be not unpleasing. The volume of tone in the ke is very light, but the quality is sweet.
As a natural consequence of the long existence of this nation and their commercial relations to the other parts of the world, which with all their care they have never been able wholly to avoid, the Chinese have many other varieties of instruments, including many trumpets; an unexampled wealth of instruments of percussion, and a[Pg 76] few of the ruder types of the violin kind, which seem to have come in from India or Thibet by the way of the Buddhist monks. The ravanastron is a common instrument with the mendicant friars of this order. The characteristic instrument of the Chinese, however, the one which stands as the representative of all their higher musical culture, is the ke.
In common with all other nations of antiquity, and with some of the present day, the Chinese have always held strong conservative opinions. The principle has been held among them from the earliest times that the pattern of a good thing, whether a religion, an art or a mechanism, having once been found satisfactory, should be made official and never afterward changed. This principle, taken in connection with the limited powers of their chief instrument, accounts for the small progress they have made in music within the past 2000 years. It must be remembered, however, that our knowledge of the music of this country is still far from perfect, the travelers and missionaries from whom it has reached us not having been practical musicians, nor having had sufficiently long opportunities for mastering musical systems so different from what they had previously known, and so contrary to all their inherited percepts of tone.
Fig. 18.
The Japanese are a very musical people in their way. The chief instrument of their culture is the ko-ko. (See Fig. 18.)
In structure it much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they have never had harmony until since they began to learn it from the Europeans.
CCORDING to the division of the subject in the beginning of this
work, the period from the Christian era to that of Palestrina, A.D.
1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were
being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of
the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat
obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more
than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe.
Nevertheless, the most important changes in the history of music took
place during this period. The monody and empyrical tonality of the
ancients gave place to polyphony and harmonized melodies resting upon
the relations of tones in key. New instruments came in, and the entire
practice of the art of music was deepened, ennobled and immeasurably
enlarged in every direction. There were four causes co-operating in
this transformation of the art, and it is not easy to say of any one
of them that this one was the chief. First of these, in the Roman
empire, or in the south of Europe more particularly, for about 800
years the Greek principles remained more or less in force. The Church
is here the foremost[Pg 82] influence, and its part in the transformation
already noted will be considered presently. In the north of Europe the
Goths, Celts and Scandinavians built mighty empires and impressed
their enthusiastic and idealistic natures upon the whole form of
modern art. The Saracens conquered a foot-hold in the south of France
about 819, and remained there for twenty years. Their influence was
very important in the development of music, and became still more
active after the crusades, where the armies of the west came again in
contact with this peculiar civilization. Besides these three sources
measurably unprofessional and outside of music, or amateur, as we say
now, there was the work of the professional musicians strictly
so-called, who, from about 1100 in the old French school, commenced
the development of what is now known as polyphony, which culminated in
the hands of the Netherlanders, about 1580, Palestrina himself being
one of the latest products of this school. These influences reacted
upon each other, and all have entered into modern art, and have
imparted to it their most essential elements.
All modern music differs from the ancient in two important particulars—Harmony and Tonality. Harmony is the use of combined sounds. These may be either dissonant, inharmonious in relation to each other, or harmonious, agreeable. All points of repose in a harmonized piece of music must be consonant; or, to say it differently, the combined sound (chord) standing at the beginning or end of a musical phrase must be harmonious. All the elements in it must bear consonant relations to all the others. Between the points of repose the combined sounds may or may not be consonant. Under certain conditions dissonances make an effect even better[Pg 83] than consonance—better because more appealing. The law of the introduction of dissonances is that every dissonance must arise out of a consonance, and subside into a consonance. When this law is observed there is hardly any combination possible in the range of music which may not be employed with good effect. Here already we have a progress in perception of tones, in the ability to discriminate between those which harmonize and those which dissonate. All consonance and dissonance are purely relative. There is no such thing as a dissonant tone in music, by itself considered; a tone becomes dissonant by being brought into juxtaposition with some other tone with which it does not agree. This part of the development of a tonal sense had its beginnings in Greece, but only reached the point where the most elementary relations were regarded as agreeable. The octave, the fourth and the fifth, were the only consonances which they knew, and of these they used in the combined sounds of their music only the octave. The third, which with us is the most agreeable part of a pure harmony, because it adds so many elements of agreement to the combined sound into which it enters, was not only regarded as a dissonance by them, but actually was a dissonance as they tuned their scale.
The entire course of harmonic perception in modern music may be roughly divided into three steps: First, the recognition of consonance, especially of the most fruitful consonance of all—that of the thirds, and the differentiation between consonance and dissonance. A second step involved the recognition of dissonance as an element in musical expression, on account of the motion it imparts to a harmonic movement. Third, the establishment of these materials of music in the mind in such[Pg 84] depth and fullness that their æsthetic implications became realized as elements of expression, so that when a composer had a certain feeling to express, the proper combination of consonance and dissonance immediately presented itself to his mind. The first of these steps was taken by the minstrels of the north, somewhere between the Christian era and the tenth century. The second was the particular work of the old French school, the Netherlanders, and of all who composed music between about 1100 A.D. and the epoch of Palestrina, about 1600. The third, the spontaneous application of musical material to the expression of feeling, had in it another element, that of tonality, concerning which it is proper to say something at this point.
By "tonality" is meant the dependence or interdependence of all the tones in a key upon some one principal tone called the Key-tone. The tonality of the music of the ancients was wholly artificial and unreal. A mode and a point of repose for the melody were chosen arbitrarily; the beginning was here made, and still more the ending was conducted to this point of repose. Between the beginning and the ending the same tones were employed, whether the melody proposed to repose upon re, upon fa or do. The usual points of repose in Greek music were mi, fa and re; never upon do, the real key tone, and rarely upon la, the natural tonic of the minor mode.
One of the chief elements of modern musical expression, particularly in the expression of melody, is the unconscious perception of the "relation of tones in key." With every tone sung the singer conceives not only that tone, its predecessor and its follower, but all other tones in the entire course of the melody; and the expression[Pg 85] of every tone in the series rests upon its place in rhythm, and still more upon its "place in key." Change a single tone in a melody, as, for instance, to make fa a half step sharp, and the expression of the entire melody is thereby changed, until such time as the hearer has forgotten the change of key effected by the introduction of the foreign tone. It is not at all unlikely that what little of melodic expression the music of the Greeks had, may have rested to some extent upon an unconscious perception of these relations, which, although foreign to their musical theory, may nevertheless have made their way into the ears of these acute minstrels. The discovery of simple tonality seems to have been due to the northern minstrels, for it is here that we find the earliest melodies purely tonalized. But the natural bounds of a melodic tonality as established by these northern harpers have been very much exceeded in modern times, so that now there is hardly a chord possible which might not be introduced in the course of a composition in any key whatever, without effecting a digression into the new key suggested by the strange chord. Not only all the natural or diatonic notes are regarded as belonging to a key, but also all the chromatics, the sharps and flats, and the double sharps and double flats.
All this implies a growth of tonal perception on the part of the hearers, and especially of the ability to co-ordinate tonal impressions over a wide and constantly increasing range. For the hearer has in mind not only the particular tone which at the moment occupies his ear, and the others which preceded it, and a sort of inner feeling of the tone which will follow the present one, but also all the other tones over which the singer would pass in going from one tone to another. And[Pg 86] unless he has this he cannot realize the true place of the melody tone in key, and therefore rests unconscious of its real expression. It is, indeed, possible for him to make a mistake in regard to the tones which he unconsciously associates with the tones actually heard—as, for example, when one hears an E followed by a C higher, and one thinks of the four white keys of the piano between them, while the melody may be thinking of the black keys between them. In the one case the melody would be in the key of C, in the other of C sharp minor. And the expression of the melodic skip would be enormously changed thereby. This larger education of the faculties of tonal perception and tonal co-ordination has been the work mainly of the last century and a half, and more particularly of the present century itself. During this period the progress has been more rapid than within any other in the entire course of the history of our art, and it is to the successive steps preparing for this that we now address ourselves.
PON many accounts the development of minstrelsy by the Celtic singers
and harpers was one of the most important of all the forces operative
in the transformation of the art from the monody of the ancients to
the expressive melody and rich harmony of modern music. As it is to a
considerable extent one side of the direct course of this history,
which hitherto has dealt largely with the south of Europe, the present
is the most convenient time for giving it the consideration its
importance deserves. I do this more readily because English influence
upon the development of music has generally been underrated by
continental writers, the erudite Fétis alone excepted; while their own
national writers, even, have not shown themselves generally conscious
of the splendid record which was made by their fathers.
The Celts appear upon the field of history several centuries before the Christian era. Cæsar's account of them leaves no doubt of the place which music held in their religion, education and national life. The minstrel was a prominent figure, ready at a moment's notice to perform the service of religion, patriotism or entertainment. There is a tradition of one King Blegywied ap[Pg 88] Scifyllt, who reigned in Brittany about 160 B.C., who was a good musician and a player upon the harp. While we have no precise knowledge of the music they sang in the oldest times, it was very likely something like the following old Breton air, which is supposed to have come down from the Druids. It is full of a rude energy, making it impressive even to modern ears. By successive migrations of Angles, Danes and Northmen, the Celts were crowded into Wales, where they still[Pg 89] remain. The harp has always been their principal instrument, and for many centuries a rude kind of violin called the crwth, of which there will be occasion to speak in connection with the violin, at a later period in this work.
According to the best authorities the bards were divided into three great classes. The first class was composed of the historians and antiquaries, who piqued themselves a little upon their sorcery, and who, upon occasion, took up the rôles of diviners and prophets. The second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses, quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy patrons. The third class, the heraldic bards, was the most influential of all. They wrote the national annals. All these classes were poet-bards as well as musicians.
The musical bards were divided into three classes. In the first were the players upon the harp; they were called doctors of music. To be admitted into this class it was necessary that they should perform successfully the three Mwchwl—that is, the three most difficult pieces in the bardic repertory. The second class of musical bards was composed of the players upon the crwth, of six strings. The third class were the singers. From the wording of the requirement it would seem that these must have had the same qualification as the first class, and therefore have been true doctors of music. For, in addition to being able to accord the harp or the crwth, and play different themes with their variations, two preludes and other pieces "with their sharps and their flats," they had to know the "three styles of expression," and accent them with the voice in different styles[Pg 90] of song. They had also to know the twenty-four meters of poetry as well as the "twenty-four measures of music." Finally, they must be able to compose songs in many of these meters, to read Welsh correctly, to write exactly, and to correct an ancient poem corrupted by the copyists.
The classification of new bards was made at an Eisteddfod once in three years. It was a public contest, after the custom of the Greeks. The degrees were three, conferred at intervals of three years respectively. The organization of the bards existed until the sixteenth century; it was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth. The Eisteddfod has been maintained until the present time. The learned musical historian, J.J. Fétis, attended one in 1829, of which he has left an interesting account. The performances of the blind minstrel of Caernarvon, Richard Robinson, excited his admiration beyond anything else that he mentions. He says: "His skill was something extraordinary. The modern harp of Wales has no pedals for the semitones in modulations. It is supplied with three ranks of strings, of which the left and right give diatonic notes, those in the middle the half-tones. Nothing more inconvenient could be imagined; in spite of his blindness, this minstrel, in the most difficult passages, seized the strings of the middle ranks with most marvelous address. The innate skill of this musician of nature, the calm and goodness painted upon his visage, rendered him an object of general interest."
Independently of the minstrels of this high class, they had also wandering minstrels who played the crwth of three strings, and who made themselves useful in the customary dances and songs of the peasants and the common people.[Pg 91]
There exists an old manuscript, supposed to have been begun in the third or fourth century, Y Trioeddy nys Prydain ("The Triads of the Isle of Britain"). It contains the traditions from the ancient times until the seventh century. Among the famous triads of this book are: The three bards who bore the cloth of gold, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin, son of Morvryn, and Taleisin, chief of the bards. There were three principles of song: Composition of poetry, execution upon the harp, and erudition. In the sixth century we see the bards playing the harp and singing their stirring songs with inspiring effect in animating the hearts of their compatriots again in their successful combats against the Saxons. Edward Jones, bard of the Prince of Wales in the last part of the eighteenth century, preserved the names of twenty-three bards who lived in the sixth century. The principal were Taleisin pen Beirrd, Aneurin Gwawrydd, Gildas ab Caw, Gildas Badonius. Taleisin was bard of Prince Elphin, then of King Maelgwin, and in the last place of Prince Urien Reged. He lived about 550; a number of his poems remain, but no fragment of his melody. Aneurin was author of "Gododn," one of the best Welsh poems that has come down to us.
In the British Museum there is a manuscript supposed to have been begun in the eleventh century, containing much music for the harp. Among it are exercises in the curious notation of the Welsh, in which chords are freely used, and in positions suggesting the immediate occasion of their introduction—that, namely of supplementing the small power of the instrument by sounding several tones together, which, as octaves were impossible outside the middle range or pitch, were necessarily chords. Among the songs given are several which[Pg 93] betray the transition period of tonality, when chords had come into legitimate use, but the true feeling for a tonic had not yet been acquired. The preceding, for instance, proceeds regularly in the key of G in all respects but the very ending of each strain, which takes place in the key of C. Or to speak tonically, the melody and accompaniment after being written nearly all the way in the key of Do, suddenly diverge to the key of Fa, and there close.
This old song was a great favorite with Henry V, while he was yet Prince of Wales, and with his jolly companions he used to shout it vigorously at the Bear's Head tavern, about 1410. (Edward Jones' "Relics of the Welsh Bards," p. 176)
Another (p. 94) is quite modern in spirit and treatment. It is a vigorous love song, and there is a boisterous chorus of bards which comes in with the refrain. A curious feature of this melody is the full-measure rest, immediately following the strong chorus of the bards. During the rests we seem to hear the chorus repeated.
OLD WELSH SONG, IN PRAISE OF LOVE.
In the eleventh century, Gerald Barry, an entertaining writer, made a tour of Britain, and his account of the people in different parts of the country is still extant and full of interest. Of the Welsh he says: "Those who arrive in the morning are entertained until evening with the conversation of young women, and the music of the harp, for each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. In each family the art of playing the harp is held preferable to any other learning."
He adds (chapter XIII, "Of their Symphonies and Songs"): "In their musical concerts they do not sing in unison, like the inhabitants of other countries, but in many different parts, so that in a company of singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear as many different parts and voices as there are performers, while all at length unite with organic melody in one consonance, and in the soft sweetness of B-flat.[Pg 95] In the north district of Britain, beyond the Humber and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of the same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety, singing in only two parts, one murmuring in the bass, the other warbling in the acute or treble. Neither of the two nations has acquired this peculiarity by art, but by long habit, which has rendered it natural and familiar; and the practice is now so firmly rooted in them that it is unusual to hear a single and simple melody well sung, and what is still more wonderful, the children, even from their infancy, sing in the same manner. As the English in general do not adopt this mode of singing, but only those to the north of the countries, I believe it was from the Danes and Norwegians, by whom these parts of the island were more frequently invaded, and held longer under their dominion, that the natives contracted this method of singing." In further token of the universality of music among these people, Gerald mentions the story of Richard de Clare, who a short time after the death of Richard I, passed from England into Wales, accompanied by certain other lords and attendants. At the passage of Coed Grono, at the entrance into the woods, he dismissed his attendants and pursued his journey undefended, preceded by a minstrel and a singer, the one accompanying the other on the fiddle. ["Tibicinem præviens habens et precentorem cantilenæ notulis alternatim in fidiculare respondentem."]
Similar devotion to music he found in Ireland. He says: "The only thing to which I find this people to apply commendable industry is playing upon musical instruments, in which they are incomparably more skillful than any other that I have seen. For their modulation on these instruments, unlike that of the Britons, to[Pg 96] which I am accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the harmony is both sweet and gay. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers the musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their various instruments the harmony is completed with so sweet a velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a concord, as if the chords sounded together fourths and fifths. They enter into a movement and conclude it in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass strings, enlivening with wanton levity, or communicating a deeper internal sense of pleasure, so that the perfection of their art appears in the concealment of it. From this cause those very strains afford an unspeakable mental delight to those who have skillfully penetrated into the mysteries of the art; fatigue rather than gratify the ears of others, who seeing do not perceive, and hearing do not understand, and by whom the finest music is esteemed no better than a confused and disorderly noise, to be heard with unwillingness and disgust. Ireland only uses and delights in two instruments—the harp and tabor. Scotland has three—the harp, the tabor and the crowth or crowd. Wales, the harp, the pipes and the crowd. The Irish also used strings of brass instead of catgut."
The brilliant time of Ireland was the reign of Sir Brian Boirohen, in the tenth century. After his victory over the Danes, and their expulsion from the island, he opened schools and colleges for indigent students, founded libraries, and encouraged learning heartily. He was one of the best harpers of his kingdom. His harp is preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and a well made instrument it is, albeit now somewhat[Pg 97] out of repair. It is about thirty inches high; the wood is oak and arms of brass. There are twenty-eight strings fixed in the sounding table by silver buttons in copper-lined holes. The present appearance of the instrument is this:
Fig. 19.
The Anglo-Saxons also were great amateurs of music. Up to the sixth century they remained pagan. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to them, and more than 10,000 were baptized in a single day. The Venerable Bede represents St. Benoit as establishing the music of the new church, substituting the plain song of Rome for the Gallic songs previously used.
While few remains of the literature of the early English have come down to us, we have enough from the period of the Venerable Bede and the generation immediately following to give an idea of the vigor and depth of the national consciousness here brought to expression. From the seventh to the tenth centuries there was in England a movement more vigorous, more productive and consequently more modern, than any[Pg 98]thing like it in any other part of Europe for three centuries later. The Saxon poets Cædmon, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin, the friend, teacher and adviser of that mighty genius Charlemagne, were minds of the first order.
King Arthur the Great was an enthusiastic and talented minstrel. It is told of him that in this disguise he made his way successfully into the Danish camp, and was able to spy out the plans of his invading enemies. The incident has also a light upon the other side, since it shows the estimation in which the wandering minstrel was held by the Danes themselves. King Alfred also established a professorship of music at Oxford, where, indeed, the university, properly so-called, did not yet exist, but a school of considerable vigor had been founded. All the remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are full of allusions to the bards, the gleemen and the minstrels; and the poems themselves, most likely, were the production of poet-musicians classed under these different names. Many additional reasons might be given for believing that the art of music was more carefully cultivated in England at this time than in any other European country. For instance, at Winchester, in the year 900, a large organ was built in the cathedral—larger than had ever been built before. It had 400 pipes, whereas most of the organs previously in use had no more than forty or fifty pipes. There is reason to believe that among the other musical devices here practiced that of "round" singing was brought to a high degree of popular skill. Apparently also they had something like what was afterward called a burden, a refrain which, instead of coming in at the end of the melody, was sung by a part of the singers continually with it.[Pg 99]
Nor was musical cultivation confined to England. In the eighth and ninth centuries the Scandinavians had a civilization of considerable vigor. The minstrels were called Scalds, polishers or smoothers of language. Fétis well says: "As eminently poets and singers as they were barbarians, they put into their songs a strength of ideas, an energy of sentiment, a richness of imagination with which we are struck even in translations, admittedly inferior to the originals. Not less valiant than inspired, their scalds by turns played the harp, raising their voices in praise of heroes, and precipitated themselves into the combat with sword and lance, meeting the enemy in fiercest conflict. Most that remains from these poet-minstrels is contained in the great national collections called Eddas, of which the oldest received their present form early in the eleventh century. The sagas contained in the Eddas form but a mere fragment of this ancient literature. More than 200 scalds are known by name as authors of sagas. These warriors, so pitiless and ferocious in battle, show themselves full of devotion to their families. They were good sons, tender husbands and kind fathers. The Eddas contain pieces of singular delicacy of sentiment." Their songs, when compared with those of other races, are more musical, the sentiment is richer and more profound, and the rhythms have more variety. The melodic intervals, also, indicate a more delicate sense of harmony than we find in other parts of Europe at so early a date. Their instrument was the harp. Iceland was the foremost musical center of the civilized world in the ninth century, and it is said that kings in other parts of Europe sent there for capable minstrels to lead the music in the courts.[Pg 100]
A very highly finished English composition, a round with strict canon for four voices, with a burden of the kind already mentioned, repeated over and over by two other voices has been discovered. It is the famous "Summer is Coming In," composed, apparently, some time before the year 1240.
On page 101 is given a reduced fac simile. It is written on a staff of six lines, in the square notes of the Franconian period. The clef is that of C. The asterisk at the end of the first phrase marks the proper place of entrance for the successive voices, each in turn commencing at the beginning when the previous one has arrived, at this point. Below is the pes, or burden, which is to be repeated over and over until the piece is finished. The complete solution is reproduced in miniature from Grove's Dictionary, on pages 102 and 103. The elaborateness of this piece of music led the original discoverers to place it much later than the date above given, but more careful examination of the manuscript justifies the conclusion that it was written some time before 1240. It is by far the most elaborate piece of ancient part music which has come down to us from times so remote. It indicates conclusively that early in the thirteenth century, when the composers of the old French school were struggling with the beginnings of canonic imitation, confining their work to ecclesiastical tonality, English musicians had arrived at a better art and a true feeling for the major scale and key. Following is the manuscript, the original size of the page being seven and seven-twelfths inches by five and five-twelfths inches. The reduced page before the reader represents the original upon a scale of about two-thirds. The Latin directions below the fourth staff indicate the manner of singing it.[Pg 101]
FAC SIMILE OF MSS. OF "SUMER IS ICUMEN IN."
[View modern transcription (PDF)]
Fig. 20.
SAXON HARP.
[From manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.]
The harp was the principal instrument of these people, and their songs and poems contain innumerable references to it. Sir Francis Palgrave says in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons": "They were great amateurs of rhythm and harmony. In their festivals the harp passed from hand to hand, and whoever could not show himself possessed of talent for music, was counted unworthy of being received in good society. Adhelm, bishop of Sherbourne, was not able to gain the attention of the citizens otherwise than by habilitating himself as a minstrel and taking his stand upon the bridge in the central part of the town and there singing the ballads he had composed." One of the earliest representations of[Pg 105] the English harp that has come down to us is found in the Harleian manuscript in the British Museum. It is presumably of the tenth century.
Fig. 21.
KING DAVID.
[From Saxon Psalter of the tenth century.]
The harp was three or four feet in height. It had eleven strings. It was held between the knees, and was played with the right hand. In the thirteenth century it appears to have been played with both hands.
Two circumstances in this account may well surprise us; nor are there data available for resolving the questions to which they give rise. The presence of two such instruments as the harp and the crwth in this part of Europe is not to be explained by historical facts within our knowledge. The harp does not appear in musical[Pg 106] history after its career in ancient Egypt until we find it in the hands of these bards, scalds and minstrels of northern Europe. The Aryans who crossed into India do not seem to have had it. Nor did the Greeks, nor the Romans. We find it for a while in Asia, but only in civilizations derived from that of Egypt, already in their decadence when they come under our observation. Inasmuch as there are no data existing whereby we can determine whether these people discovered the harp anew for themselves or derived it from some other nation, and greatly improved it, either supposition is allowable. Upon the whole, the probabilities appear to be that this instrument was among the primitive acquisitions of the Aryans. All of them were hunters, to whom the clang of the bow string must have been a familiar sound. As already suggested, it seems that the harp must have been the oldest type of stringed instrument of all. The Aryans who crossed the Himalayas into India may have lost it, in pursuit of some other type of instrument of plucked strings.
The crwth presents still more troublesome questions, which we must admit are still less hopeful of solution. (See Fig. 22.)
In this case we find an instrument played with a bow in northern Europe, far one side the course of Asiatic commerce, at a time when there was no such instrument elsewhere in the world but in India. Whence came the crwth? The rebec was not known in Arabia until nearly two centuries after we find the crwth mentioned by Venance Fortunatus. We have seen that the Sanskrit had four words meaning bow, a fact affording presumptive evidence of the knowledge of this mode of exciting vibrations, while the Sanskrit was still a spoken language.[Pg 107] It is possible that the bow was a discovery of the Aryans in their early days, ere yet the family had begun to separate. The crwth may have been a survival of this primitive discovery, still cherished among a people not able to employ it intelligently, and not able to develop its powers. For while the crwth was in Europe two centuries before the violin, the improvement of this instrument was due to stimulation from quite another quarter. It was the Arab rebec that afforded the starting point for the modern violin, and this instrument was not known in Europe until it came in by way of the crusaders or the Spanish Arabs.
Fig. 22.
Another popular instrument of music in all parts of Britain from the earliest of modern times, was the bagpipe, a reed instrument generally of imperfect intonation, the melody pipe being accompanied by a faithful[Pg 108] drone, consisting of the tonic and its octave, and occasionally the fifth. It was the witty Sidney Smith who described the effect as that of a "tune tied to a post." This instrument was common in all parts of Britain until driven out by better ones. It still survives in Scotland. Its influence is distinctly to be traced in the Scotch melodies founded upon the pentatonic scale, of which the following is a specimen:
SCOTCH MELODY (IN THE PENTATONIC SCALE).
PON many accounts the influence of the Arab civilization was
important in this quarter of the musical world, and it may here well
enough engage our attention, since its most important aspects are
those in which it operates upon the European mind, awakening there
ideas which but for this stimulus might have remained dormant
centuries longer.
From the standpoint of the western world and the limited information concerning the followers of Mahomet which enters into our educational curricula, the Arab appears to us an inert figure, picturesque and imposing, upon the sandy carpet of northern Africa, but a force of little influence in the world of modern nineteenth-century thought.
Nevertheless, there was a time when this picturesque figure became seized with an activity which shook Europe and Christendom to its very center. The voice of the prophet Mahomet awakened the Arab from his slumber. He aroused himself to the duty of proselyting the world to the doctrine of the One God and the Great Prophet. With sword in hand and the rallying cry of his faith he went forth, with such result that a vast proportion of the inhabitants of the globe at this very hour[Pg 110] profess the tenets of his religion. Once awakened into life, he penetrated the distant east, and brought back thence the foundation of our arithmetic, the predecessor of our greatest of musical instruments, the violin, and discovered for himself the productions of the greatest of the Greek minds, the works of the philosopher Aristotle. He established a new state in Spain, and for several centuries confronted Christendom with the alternative of the sword or his faith. One of the best characterizations of this people upon the musical-literary side is that of the eminent M. Ginguène, who in his "History of Italian Literature," remarks as follows, concerning the points under immediate consideration:
"In the most ancient times the Arabs had a particular taste for poetry, which among almost all people had opened a way to the most elevated and abstract studies. Their language, rich, flexible and abundant, favored their fertile imagination; their spirit lively and sententious; their eloquence natural and artless, they declaimed with energy the pieces they had composed, or they sang, accompanied with instruments, in a very expressive chorus. These poems make upon the simple and sensitive auditors a prodigious effect. The young poets receive the praises of the tribe, and all celebrate their genius and merit. They prepare a solemn festival. The women, dressed in their most beautiful habits, sing a chorus before their sons and husbands upon the happiness of their tribe. During the annual fair, where tribes from a distance are gathered for thirty days, a large part of the time is spent in a contest of poetry and eloquence. The works which gain praise are deposited in the archives of the princess or emirs. The best ones are painted or embroidered with letters of gold[Pg 111] upon silk cloth, and suspended in the temple at Mecca. Seven of these poems had obtained this honor in the time of Mahomet, and they say that Mahomet himself was flattered to see one of the chapters of the Koran compared with these seven poems and judged worthy to be hung up with them. Almansor, the second of the Abassides, loved poetry and letters, and was very well learned in laws, philosophy and astronomy. They say that in building the famous town of Bagdad he took the suggestions from the astronomers for placing the principal building. The university at Bagdad was honored and very celebrated. Copious translations from the Greek were made, and many original treatises produced in other parts of Arabia, but the most brilliant development of Arabic letters was in Spain. Cordova, Grenada, Valencia were distinguished for their schools, colleges and academies. Spain possessed seventy libraries, open to the public in different towns, when the rest of Europe, without books, without letters, without culture, was sunk in the most shameful ignorance. A crowd of celebrated writers enriched the Spanish-Arabic literature in all its parts. The influence of the Arab upon science and literature extended into all Europe; to him are owed many useful inventions. The famous tower at Seville was built for the observatory. It is to be noticed, however, that the Arabs, while taking much from the Greeks, did not take any of their literature, properly so-called—neither Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, nor Demosthenes. The result is that their own literature preserved its original character; they preserved also in all purity the peculiarity of their music—an art in which they excelled and in which the theory was very complicated. Their works are full of the praises of music[Pg 112] and its marvelous effect. They attributed very powerful effects not alone to music sung, but to the sound of certain instruments and to certain instrumental strings and to certain inflections of the voice."
Fig. 23.
THE ARAB REBEC.
The modern world is indebted to the Arab for at least three of its most important instruments of music. The ravanastron he brought home with him from India, and under the name Rebec it found its way into Europe, where in an appreciative soil it grew and expanded into that miracle of sonority and expression, the modern violin. The instrument of the south of Europe during the latter part of the Middle Ages was the lute, which had its origin in the Arab Eoud. (See Fig. 24.)[Pg 113]
Fig. 24.
THE EOUD.
Still more familiar to domestic eyes is that descendant of the Arab santir, the modern pianoforte. This, under the name of psaltery, begins to figure in manuscript as early as the ninth century. The Arab canon, which is commonly taken as the immediate predecessor of the pianoforte, had the important difference of being strung with catgut strings. The essential foundation of the pianoforte was the metal strings, necessitating hammers for inciting the vibrations, and affording in the superior solidity incident to metal support a firmness and susceptibility to development. This is the santir. It has survived in Europe as the dulcimer, or the German hackbrett.[Pg 114]
Fig. 25.
THE SANTIR.
Yet while the Arab wrote so abundantly upon the subject of music, and while it filled so prominent a part in his social and official life, and in spite of his sagacity in seizing perfectible types of instruments, there is very little in his treatment of the art which need delay us in the present work. His music belongs entirely to the ancient period of monody. He never had a harmony of combined sounds, nor a scale with intervals permitting combined sounds. He was sufficiently scientific to carry out the intonations of the Pythagorean theory, and when he went beyond this and formed a scale for himself he devised one which did not permit the association of sounds into chord masses; and, more fatal still, he not only invented such a scale, but carried it into execution so exactly that the ear of the race was hopelessly committed to monody, and has remained so until this very day. The scale of the Arabs in the latter times contained twenty-two divisions in the octave, of which only the fifth and fourth exactly correspond with the harmonic ratios. The place of the Arab in music, therefore, is that of an unintentional minister to a higher civilization and to the art of music.
NE of the earliest developments of popular music on the continent was
that of the Chansons de Geste ("Songs of Action"), which were, in
effect, great national epics. The period of this activity was from
about 800 to 1100 or 1200, and the greatest productions were the
"Songs of Roland," the "Song of Antioch," etc., translations of which
may be found in collections of mediæval romances. The social
conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by
M. Léon Gautier, in his "Les Épopées Françaises": "If we transport
ourselves in imagination into Gaul in the seventh century, and casting
our eyes to the right, the left, and to all parts, we undertake to
render to ourselves an exact account of the state in which we find the
national poetry, the following will be the spectacle which will meet
our gaze: Upon one hand in Amorican Brittany there are a group of
popular poets who speak a Celtic dialect, and sing upon the harp
certain legends, certain fables of Celtic origin. They form a league
apart, and do not mix at all in the poetic movement of the great
Gallo-Roman country. They are the popular singers of an abased race,
of a conquered people. Toward the end of the twelfth century we see
their legends emerge from[Pg 116] their previous obscurity and conquer a
sudden and astonishing popularity, which endured throughout all the
remainder of the Middle Ages. But in the seventh century they had no
profound influence in Gaul, and their voice had no echo except beyond
the boundary straits among the harpers and singers of England, Wales
and Ireland.
"Upon another side, that of the Moselle, the Meuse and the Rhine, in the country vaguely designated under the name of Austrasia, German invasions have left more indelible traces. The ideas, customs and even the language have taken on a Tudesque imprint. There they sing in a form purely Germanic the 'Antiquissima Carmina' ["Most Ancient Songs"] which Charlemagne was one day to order his writers to compile and put in permanent form. Between these two extreme divisions there was a neutral territory where a new language was in process of forming—that of the 'Oc' and 'Oil.' Here the songs were neither German nor Gallo-Roman, but Romance. And here were the germs of the future epics of France."
Out of this combination of contrasting spirits of race, the movement of awakened national life, arose, first, what were called Cantilenas—short songs of a ballad-like character. The language is a mixture of German, Latin and French, intermingled in a most curious manner. For example, consider the following verses from the cantilena of St. Eulalie, as given by M. Gautier, p. 65:
|
"Buona pulcella fût Eulalia; Bel avret corps, bellezour anima. Voldrent la vientre li Deo inimi, Voldrent la faire diaule servir. Elle n'out eskoltet les mal conselliers Qu'elle Deo raniet chi maent sus en ciel." |
Which being somewhat freely rendered into English, it says that:
|
"A good virgin was Eulalia; She had a beautiful body, more beautiful spirit; The enemies of God would conquer her, Would make her serve the devil; But never would she understand the evil ones who counsel To deny God, who is above all in heaven." |
And so the ballad goes on twenty-three verses more to narrate how she withstood the exhortations of the king of the pagans, that she would forsake the name of Christian; and when they threw her into the fire the fire would not burn her, for the fire was pure; and when the king drew his sword to cut off her head the demoiselle did not contradict him, for she wished to leave the world. She prayed to Christ, and under the form of a dove she flew away toward heaven. These charming verses of the ninth century were probably sung to music having little of the movement which we now associate with the term melody, but which was more of a chant-like character.
Of similar literary texture were a multitude of songs, of which many different ones related to the same hero. Hence in time there was a disposition on the part of the cleverer minstrels to combine them into a single narration, and to impart to the whole so composed something of an epic character. Thus arose the famous Chansons de Geste already mentioned, the origin and general character of which have been most happily elucidated in the work of M. Gautier, already referred to. He says:
"The great epics of the French had their origin in the romantic and commanding deeds of Charlemagne and the battles against Saracens in 792. The fate of civilization trembled in the balance at Ville Daigne and at Poitiers.[Pg 118] It is the lot of Christianity, it is the lot of the world, which is at stake. The innumerable murders, the torrents of blood, these thousands of deaths have had their sure effect upon history. The world has been Christian in place of being Arab. It appertains to Jesus instead of Mahomet. This civilization, of which we are so proud, this beauty of the domestic circle, this independence of our spirit, this free character of our wives and children it is to Charles Martelle, and above all to William of Orange, that we owe them, after God. We possess only a limited number of these primitive epics, the Chansons de Geste, and are not certain that we have them in the second or even the third versions. At the head of the list we place the 'Song of Roland,' the Iliad of France. All the other songs of action, however beautiful and however ancient they may be, are far inferior. The text of the 'Song of Roland' as it has come down to us cannot have been written much before 1100. Besides this there is the 'Chanson de Nimes,' 'Ogier le Danois,' 'Jour de Blaibes,' all of which were written in the languages of Oc and Oil. All these have something in common; the verse is ten syllables, the correspondences are assonances and not rhymes. In style these Chansons de Geste are rapid, military, but above all dramatic and popular. They are without shading, spontaneous, no labor, no false art, no study. Above all it is a style to which one can apply the words of Montaigne, and it is the same upon paper as in the mouth. Really these verses are made to be upon the living lip, and not upon the cold and dead parchment of the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are small, in order that they may be carried in the pocket for use of traveling jongleurs and singers. They have Homeric epithets. The style is singularly grave. There[Pg 119] is nothing to raise a laugh. The first epics were popular about the end of the eleventh century. The idea of woman is purer in the early poems. There is no description of the body; there is no gallantry. The beautiful Aude apprehends the death of Roland; she falls dead. In the second half of the twelfth century our poets would have been incapable of so simple and noble a conception. We find, even in 'Amis et Amelis,' women who are still very German in physiognomy, and alluring, but they are Germans, so to say, of the second manner. They have a habit of throwing themselves into the arms of the first man who takes their fancy.
"Each one of the races which composed France or Gaul in the sixth or seventh century, contributed its share toward the future epics. The Celts furnished their character, the Romans their language, the Church its faith; but the Germans did more. For long centuries they had the habit of chanting in popular verse their origin, their victories and their heroes. Above all they penetrated the new poetry with their new spirit. All the German ideas upon war, royalty, family and government, upon woman and right, passed into the epic of the French.
"Our fathers had no epics, it is true, but they had popular chants, rapid, ardent and short, which are precisely what we have called cantilenas. A cantilena is at the same time a recitation and an ode. It is at times a complaint and more often a round. It is a hymn, above all religious and musical, which runs over the lips and which, thanks to its brevity, mainly, is easily graven upon the memory. The cantilenas were a power in society; they caused the most powerful to tremble. When a captain wished to nerve himself up against a bad action he said, 'They will make a bad song about me.'[Pg 120]
"The heroes and the deeds which gave birth to French epics are those of the commencement of the eighth century to the end of the tenth. France is then more than a mere land; it is a country; a single religious faith fills all hearts and all intelligence. Toward the end of the tenth century we see the popular singers arresting crowds in all public places. They sing poems of 3,000 or 4,000 verses. These are the first of the Chansons de Geste. Out of the great number of cantilenas dedicated to a single hero it happened that some poet had the happy thought of combining them into a single poem. Thus came a suite of pieces about Roland or William, and from these, in time, an epic. The latest of the epic cycles was that concerning the crusades. The style is popular, rapid, easy to sing. It recalls the Homeric poetry. The constant epithets, the military enumerations, the discourses of the heroes before combat, and the idea of God, are simple, childlike, and superstition has no place. The supernatural exists in plenty, but no marvels."
O the full account of the origin of the Chansons de Geste in the
foregoing chapter, it remains now to add a few notes concerning the
personnel of the different classes of minstrels through whose
efforts these great songs were created.
The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were love songs, canzonets, chansons; serenade—that is, an evening song; auberde, or day song; servantes, written to extol the goodness of princes; tenzone, quarrelsome or contemptuous songs; and roundelays, terminated forever with the same refrain. There was also what was called the pastourelle, a make-believe shepherd's song.
The so-called chansonniers of the north, who flourished toward the end of the twelfth century, were also troubadours. Among them the name of Count[Pg 122] Thibaut of Champagne, king of Navarre, stands celebrated—1201-1253. He composed both religious and secular songs. The following is one of his melodies unharmonized. Its date is about the same as that of "Summer is Coming In." Another celebrated name of these minstrels was Adam de la Halle, of Arras in Picardy—1240-1286. Upon many accounts the music of this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall speak of this later, in connection with the development of opera in general.
Immediately following the troubadours came the trouvères, who were simply troubadours of nobler birth, and perhaps of finer imagination. There were so[Pg 123] many of these singers that it is quite impossible here to give a list of their names. Among the more celebrated, forty-two names are given by Fétis, the most familiar among them being those of Blondel, the minstrel of Richard Cœur de Lion, and the Châtelaine de Coucy (died about 1192), from whom we have twenty-three chansons.
It was the trouvères who invented the Chansons de Geste already mentioned—songs of action; in other words, ballads. One of the most celebrated of these was the "Story of Antioch," a romance of the crusades, extending to more than 15,000 lines. This poem was not intended to be read, but was chanted by the minstrels during the crusades themselves. One Richard the Pilgrim was the author. The song is, in fact, a history of the crusade in which he took part, up to a short time before the battle in which he was killed. Another very celebrated piece of the same kind, the "Song of Roland," the history of a warrior in the suite of Charlemagne, is said to have been chanted before the battle of Hastings by the Jongleur Taillefer. Other pieces of the same kind were the "Legend of the Chevalier Cygne" ("Lohengrin") "Parsifal" and the "Holy Grail." Each one of these was sung to a short formula of melody, which was performed over and over incessantly, excepting variations of endings employed in the episodes. A very eminent author of pieces of this kind was the Chevalier de Coucy, who died 1192, in the crusade. There are twenty-four songs of his still in the Paris Library.
Fig. 26.
REINMAR, THE MINNESINGER.
[From a manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the National Library at Paris.]
A similar development of knightly music was had in Germany from the time of Frederick the Red—1152-1190. These were known as minnesingers. Among the most prominent were Heinrich of Beldeke, 1184-1228,[Pg 124] an epic writer; Spervogel, 1150-1175; and Frauenlobe, middle of the twelfth century. The forms of the minne songs were the song (lede), lay (lerch), proverb (spruch). The song rarely exceeded one strophe; the lay frequently did. A little later we encounter certain names which have been recently celebrated in the poems of Wagner, such as Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar von Hagenau, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, Klingsor, Tannhäuser, etc. All of these were from the middle of the thirteenth century. A portrait of Reinmar, the minnesinger, has come down to us with a manuscript now contained in the National Library at Paris. The last of the minnesingers was Heinrich von Meissen, 1260-1318. His poems were always in the praise of woman, for which reason he was called Frauenlob ("Woman's Praise"). An old chronicle tells us that when he died the women of Mayence[Pg 125] bore him to the tomb, moistened his grave with their tears, and poured out libations of the costliest wines of the Rhineland. The following illustration is supposed to be a representation of this minstrel, although the drawing is hardly up to the standard of the modern Academy.
Fig. 27.
MASTER HEINRICH FRAUENLOB.
[From a manuscript in the Manesse collection at Paris.]
The work of the minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a class of humbler minstrels of the common[Pg 126] people, known as the Mastersingers, the city of Nuremberg being their principal center. A few of these men were real geniuses—poets of the people. One of the most celebrated was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs was a very prolific poet and composer, his pieces being of every kind, from the simpler songs of sentiment and home to quite elaborate plays. About nine volumes of his poems have been reprinted by the Stuttgart Literary Union.
Fig. 28.
MINSTREL HARPS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
The principal influence of these different classes of popular minstrel was temporary, in keeping alive a love for music and a certain appreciation of it. The most of their music was rather slow and labored, and it is impossible to discover in the later development of the art material traces of their influence upon it. In this respect they differ materially from the Celtic and English bards mentioned in the previous chapter. Although the productions of those minstrels have all passed away, they[Pg 127] have left a distinct impress upon musical composition, even to our own day, in certain simple forms of diatonic melody of highly expressive character. The troubadours, trouvères and minnesingers, on the other hand, never acquired the art of spontaneous melody, and as for harmony, there is no evidence that they made any use of it. Their instrument of music was a small harp of ten or twelve strings, but no more—a much smaller and less effective instrument than the Irish harp of the eleventh century, or the Saxon of the tenth. (See Fig. 28.)
T is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this
transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was
slight, although upon the æsthetic side it was of very great
importance. From the circumstance that all the early theoretical
writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or
ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played
by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many
historians have concluded that to the Church almost this entire
transformation of the art of music is due. This, however, is wide of
the truth. The Church as such had very little to do with developing an
art of music through all the early centuries. The early Christians
were humble people, for the most part, who had embraced a religion
proscribed and at times persecuted. Their meetings were private, and
attended by small numbers, as, for instance, in the Catacombs at Rome,
where the little chapels in the dark passage ways under ground were
incapable of holding more than twenty or thirty people at a time.
Under these circumstances the singing cannot have been essentially of
more musical importance than that of cottage prayer meetings of the
present day. In another way the Church, indeed, exercised a[Pg 129] certain
amount of influence in this department as in all others, an influence
which might be described as cosmopolitan. The early apostles and
bishops traveled from one province to another, and it is likely that
the congregation in each province made use of the melodies already in
existence. The first Christian hymns and psalms were probably sung to
temple melodies brought from Jerusalem by the apostles. As new hymns
were written (something which happened very soon, under the
inspiration of the new faith and hope), they were adapted to the best
of these old melodies, just as has been done continually down to
nearly our own time. Our knowledge of the early Church, in this side
of its activity, is very limited. It is not until the time of St.
Ambrose, who was bishop of Milan in the last part of the fourth
century, that the Church began to have an official music. By this time
the process of secularization had been carried so far that there was a
great want of seriousness and nobility in the worship. St. Ambrose,
accordingly, selected certain melodies as being suitable for the
solemn hymns of the Church and the offices of the mass. He himself was
a poet of some originality. He composed quite a number of hymns, of
which the most famous is that noble piece of praise, Te Deum
Laudamus, a poem which has inspired a greater number of musical
settings than any other outside the canon of the Scriptures. The
melodies which St. Ambrose collected were probably from Palestine, and
he selected four scales from the Greek system, within which, as he
supposed, all future melodies should be composed. This was done, most
likely, under the impression that each one of the Greek scales had a
characteristic expression, and that the four which he chose would
suffice for the varying[Pg 130] needs of the hymns of the Church. In naming
these scales a mistake was made, that upon re being called the Dorian,
and all the other names being applied improperly. The series upon mi
was called Phrygian, upon fa Lydian; upon sol Mixo-Lydian. The
melodies of St. Ambrose were somewhat charged with ornament, a fact
which indicates their Asiatic origin. It is probable that a part of
the melodies of the Plain Song still in use are remains of the
liturgies of St. Ambrose. The Church at Milan maintains the Ambrosian
liturgy to the present date. In this action of St. Ambrose we have a
characteristic representation of the influence which the Church has
exerted upon music in all periods of its career. Upon the æsthetic and
ethical sides the Church has awakened aspirations, hopes and faith, of
essentially musical character, and in this respect it has been one of
the most powerful sources of inspiration that musical art has
experienced. But upon the technical side the action of the Church has
been purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic.
The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been
that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain
hymns—a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns
themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question
which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should
have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the
fathers of the Church.
Notwithstanding the firmness with which the Church at Milan maintained the Ambrosian liturgy, in other provinces this conservatism failed; and within the next two centuries very great abuses crept in through the adoption of local secular melodies not yet divested of[Pg 131] their profane associations. St. Gregory the Great (540-595), who was elected pope about 590, set himself to restore church music to its purity, or rather to restrict the introduction of profane melodies, and to establish certain limits beyond which the music should not be allowed to pass. St. Gregory himself was not a musician. He therefore contented himself with restoring the Ambrosian chants as far as possible; but the musical scales established by Ambrose he somewhat enlarged, adding to them four other scales called plagal. These were the Hypo-Dorian, la to la; Hypo-Phrygian, si to si; Hypo-Lydian, do to do; Hypo-Æolian, mi to mi. I do not understand that the terminal notes of these plagal scales of St. Gregory were used as key notes, but only that melodies instead of being restricted between the tonic and its octave, were permitted to pass below and above the tonic, coming back to that as a center; for we must remember that in the ancient music the tonality was purely arbitrary, and, so to say, accidental. While all kinds of keys used the series of tones known by the names do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, do, it was within the choice of the composer to bring his melodies to a close upon any one of these tones, which, being thus emphasized, was regarded as the tonic of the melody. Whatever of color one key had differing from another was due therefore to the preponderance of some one tone of the scale in the course of the melody. The Plain Song of the Roman Church, and of the English Church as well, has been called Gregorian, from St. Gregory, and the majority of ecclesiastical amateurs suppose that the square note notation upon four lines was invented by St. Gregory. This, however, is not the case. The melody, very likely, may have come down to us with few alterations. The notation, however, has undergone[Pg 132] several very important changes, of which there will be more particular mention in chapter XV. The Gregorian notation of the sixth century was probably the Roman letters which we find in Hucbald, as will be seen farther on. Several of the tunes well known to Protestants have been arranged from the so-called Gregorian chants. They are "Boylston," "Olmutz" and "Hamburg." The eighth tone, from which "Olmutz" was arranged, has always been appropriated to the Magnificat ("My Soul doth Magnify the Lord").
The following are the ecclesiastical scales and names, as established by St. Gregory:
[Listen: Dorian Phrygian Lydian Mixo-Lydian]
With the labors of St. Gregory the influence of the Church upon the course of musical development by no means ceased. At various epochs in its history synods, councils and popes have effected various reforms, every reform consisting in barring out a certain amount of novelty which had crept in, and in a supposed "restoration" of the service to its pristine purity. The restoration, however, has never been complete. Church music, like every other department of the art, has gone on in increasing complexity from the beginning until now. The main difference between the Church and the world in any century consists in drawing the line of the permissible at a different point. One of the latest reforms was that begun by Pope Marcellus and the Council of Trent, which ordered from Palestrina an example of church music as it should be.
Incidentally, in another direction, the Church has been of very great influence upon the course of musical development. The great cathedrals of the commercial centers of the world, in the effort to render their service worthy of the congregation, have afforded support to talented composers in all ages, and some of the most important movements in music have been made by ecclesiastics or officials deriving support from these sources. More extended particulars of this part of her influence will be given later. It may suffice to mention the cathedrals of Westminster and St. Paul in England, of Notre Dame in Paris, to which we owe the old French school and the beginning of polyphony; the cathedral at Strassburg, which supported important musicians; Cologne, where the celebrated Franco lived; St. Mark's, at Venice, where, from about 1350 to the end of the last century, an extremely brilliant succession of musical directors found a field for their activity.
HERE is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of
interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at
Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote
a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from
Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is
it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the
harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just
proportion, results from the impulse and movements of the spheres
themselves, and of which the sharp sound tempered by the grave sound
produces continually varied concerts." (Cicero, "De Republica," VI.)
Commenting upon this passage, Macrobus says that Pythagoras was the
first of the Greeks who divined that the planets and the sidereal
universe must have harmonic properties such as Scipio spoke of, on
account of their regular movements and proportions to each other. We
find in the writings of Macrobus an advance upon the musical theories
of Ptolemy. He shows that contrary to the doctrine of Aristoxenus
there is not a[Pg 135] true half tone, and that the relation 8:9 does not
admit of being equally divided. In place of the three symphonies of
the octave, fourth and fifth, mentioned by his predecessors, he makes
five, including the octave and the double octave. "Such," he says, "is
the number of symphonies that we ought to be astonished that the human
ear can comprehend them."
Another of the Roman writers upon music was Martinus Capella. His work is called the "Nuptials of Philologus and Mercury" ("De Nuptiis Philologiæ et Mercurii"). The little upon music which the book contains was only an abridgment of the Greek treatise of Aristides Quintilianus.
The most important of the earliest treatises upon music, and by far the most famous, is that of Boethius, as it is also the most systematic. The following summary is from Fétis' "History of Music," Vol. IV:
"Born at Rome between 470 and 475, Boethius made at home classical studies, and went, they say, to Athens itself, where he studied philosophy with Proclus. He was of the age of about thirty-five when, in 510, he was made president of the senate. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, called him to himself, on account of his reputation for wisdom and virtue; he confided to him an important position in the palace, and intrusted to him many important diplomatic negotiations. Boethius did nothing which was not to his credit, but this made him only the more hostile to the interests of the courtiers; he was therefore overthrown and cast into prison, where he composed his 'Consolations of Philosophy.' He was put to death 524 or 526."
Boethius' treatise on music is divided into five books. It is a vast repertory of the knowledge of the ancients[Pg 136] relative to this art. Its doctrine is Pythagorean. The first book is divided into thirty-four chapters. In the first he develops the thought of Aristotle, that music is inherent in human nature. He there renders the text of a decree which the Ephori of Sparta rendered against Timotheus of Miletus, but which better critics have regarded as fictitious. The second chapter establishes that there are three sorts of music: the worldly, which is universal harmony; the human, which has its source in the intelligence, which reunites and co-ordinates the elements; finally, the third kind is artificial, made by instruments of different sorts. The chapters following treat of the voice as the source of music; of consonances and their proportions; of the division of the voice and its compass; of the perception of sounds by the ear; of the correspondence of the semitones; of the division of the octave; of tetrachords; of the three genera—enharmonic, chromatic and diatonic; of intervals of sounds compared to those of the stars; of the musical and different faculties.
All the second book, divided into thirty chapters, is speculative, and devotes itself to the different kinds and relations of intervals, according to the different systems of theoreticians. The third book, in seven chapters, is a continuation of the subject of the second. It is particularly employed in refuting the errors of Aristoxenus. The fourth book, in eighteen chapters, is entirely relative to the practice of the art, particularly to the notation. It is in this book that Boethius makes known the Latin notation of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet without preparation, without the slightest explanation, and as if he had done something which any one concerned with music at Rome would readily understand, as[Pg 137] a matter of course. There is not one word to show that it was new, or that he claimed the invention. It was undoubtedly the usual notation.
The fifth book of this treatise has for its object the determination of intervals by the divisions of a monochord, and a refutation of the systems of Ptolemy and Archytas. We here find this proposition, remarkable if we recall the time when the author lived, that: "If the ear did not count the vibrations, and did not seize the inequalities of movement of two sounds resonating by percussion, the intelligence would not be able to render account of them by the science of numbers." After Boethius there is nothing in Roman literature concerning music. Notwithstanding that Italy fell under the dominion of the Goths and Lombards after 476, it preserved Greek traditions in music to the end of the sixth century.
Cassiodorus, who lived still in 562, aged almost 100 years, left a souvenir for music in the fifth chapter of his treatise on the "Discipline of Letters and Liberal Arts" (De Artibus ac Disciplinis Litterarum). He enumerates the fifteen modes of Alypius as not having been abandoned, and establishes them in their natural order, calling them tones. Here also we find the classification of six kinds of symphonies, about 300 years after this enumeration, first realized in notes by Hucbald. He gives a series of fourths and of fifths, occasionally for two voices, occasionally with the octave added. These are the most important of all the things concerning music to be found in that part of Cassiodorus' book dedicated to music.
In the seventh century the first, or perhaps the only author who wrote upon music was Bishop Isidore, of[Pg 138] Seville. In his celebrated treatise on the etymologies or origins ("Isidori Hispaniensis Episcopi Etymologiarum, Libri XX") divided into twenty books, chapters XIV to XXII of the third book relate to music. These are the chapters published by the Abbé Gerbert, under the name of "Sentences de Musique," in the collection of ecclesiastical writers upon this art, after a manuscript in the imperial library at Vienna. While many of these chapters contain nothing more than generalities and pseudo historical anecdotes concerning the inventors of this art, this is not the case with the nineteenth chapter, the sixth in Gerbert's edition, for here he speaks "Of the First Division of Music, called Harmony." The definitions given by St. Isidore have a precision, a clearness not found in other writers of the Middle Ages. "Harmonic music," says he, "is at the same time modulation of the voice, and concordance of many simultaneous sounds. Symphony is the order established between concordant sounds, low and high, produced by the voice, the breath or by percussion. Concordant sounds, the highest and the lowest, agree in such way that if one of them happens to dissonate it offends the ear. The contrary is the case in diaphony, which is the union of dissonant sounds." Here we find St. Isidore employing the term diaphony in its original sense, as a Greek word, meaning dissonance—a sense exactly opposite to that of Jean de Muris.
The Venerable Bede was the light of the eighth century, and the glory of the Anglo-Saxons. His treatise upon music, however, deals in theories and generalities, throwing no light upon the music of his day. The elevation of his ideas may be seen in the following sentence, with which he introduces his subject: "It is to be[Pg 139] remarked that all art is contained in reason; and so it is that music consists and develops itself in relations of numbers." ("Notandum est, quod omnis ars in ratione continetur. Musica quoque in ratione numerorum consistit atque versatur.")
Only two treatises upon music have come down to us from the ninth century. The first is by a monk, named Aurelian, in the abbey of Réomé or Montier-Saint-Jean, in the diocese of Langes, who appears to have lived about the year 850. His book, called "Musicæ Disciplina," in twenty chapters, is a compilation of older anecdotes and theories, throwing no light upon the actual condition of the art in his day. The sole remaining work of this period was by Rémi, of Auxerre, who had opened the course of theology and music at Rheims in 893, and afterward at Paris in the earlier years of the tenth century. His book, like the preceding, is wholly devoted to the ideas of the ancients.
This brings us to the first writer on music, during the Middle Ages, whose work throws any important light upon the actual practice of the art in the period when it was written, namely, Hucbald, a monk of the convent of St. Armand, in the diocese of Tournay, in French Flanders. Gerbert gives two treatises upon music, as having come down to us from this author. Nevertheless there is reason to doubt the genuineness of one of them—whereof presently. The first of these, the so-called "Treatise," from a manuscript in the library of the Franciscan convent at Strassburg, collated with another from Cesene, bears this title: "Incipit Liber Ubaldi Peritissimi Musici de Harmonica Institutione." The other is[Pg 140] called "Hucbaldi Monachi Elonensis Musica Enchiriadis," or "Manual of Music, by the Monk Hucbald." The former work is of little interest, and if a genuine production of Hucbald's, probably belongs, as M. Fétis suggests, to his earlier period, when he was still teaching at Rheims, along with his former classmate, Rémi, of Auxerre.
The manual of Hucbald is not to be regarded as a complete treatise upon music. It has three principal subjects, namely: The formation of a new system of notation, the tonality of plain song, and symphony, or the singing of many voices at different intervals—in other words, harmony.
In treating the scale he divides it into tetrachords, precisely according to the Greek method, as far as known to him, and he nowhere appears to perceive the inapplicability of this division to the ecclesiastical modes. For representing the sounds of the scale, divided into four tetrachords, Hucbald proposed the Greek letters, which in effect, would have been a notation of absolute pitch, with the farther disadvantage of ignoring the harmonic principles of unity already discovered, and in fact involved in his own method of enlarging a two-voice passage by adding a third at the interval of an octave with the lowest.
He recognizes six kinds of symphony; in reality he employs only three, the others being reduplications. His symphonies are those of fourths, fifths and octaves. In all parts of his work but one he uses the term diaphony as synonymous with symphony; there he gives its ancient meaning of dissonance.
He proposed a sort of staff notation, upon which all the voices could be represented at once. The following[Pg 141] illustration represents his staff and his diaphony, or harmony:
POLYPHONIC NOTATION OF HUCBALD.
The initial letters, T and S, at the beginning of the lines in the preceding staff indicate the place of the steps (tones) and half steps (semitones).
DECIPHERING OF ABOVE.
M. Fétis gives a two-voice parallelism in fifths, which is progressively enlarged to three voices by adding an[Pg 142] octave to the lower voice; and then to four by doubling the original upper voice in the octave above. Thus:
In addition to mechanical progressions of parallel motion in this way, Hucbald in another place gives an account of a so-called "roving" organum, in which, while parallel progressions of fourths and fifths still are found, there are also other intervals, while the beginning and the end must be in unison. This form of the harmony of simultaneous sounds has in it much of the character of counterpoint, especially in the restriction that the voices must begin and end in unison. This roving organum, or free organum, was also known as "profane" or "secular" organum, in contradistinction to the "sacred organum" already given, upon the sweetness of which Hucbald greatly prided himself.
Fétis has well said that Hucbald must be considered as one of those superior spirits who impress upon their epoch a movement in an art or science. Besides this, he merits particular mention in the history of music because his works are the first since those of Boethius—a period of four centuries—in which the art of music is treated systematically and without obscurity.
In the "Epistola de Harmonica Institutione ad Rathbodum Episcopum Trevinesem" ("Letter to Rathbodum, Bishop of Treves"), there is mention of the instruments of music during the seventh and eighth centuries. They are the cithara and harp as the stringed instruments;[Pg 143] musetts, syrinx and organ among the wind instruments; cymbals and drums, instruments of percussion. In the tenth century there was a methodical treatise upon music in dialogue form, published by Odon, abbot of Cluny, who died in this monastery November 18, 942. This work, which was wrongfully attributed to Guido of Arezzo, contains a number of analyses of intervals showing an understanding of the exact dimensions of the various kinds of fourths, fifths, thirds and sixths. According to his doctrine, the intervals of the fourths, fifths and octaves are more natural for the voice than the others called thirds and sixths, because the former are invariable, while the latter may be larger or smaller by a half step. He makes a summary of ecclesiastical chant, mentioning the modes as established by St. Gregory, illustrating each of them by a selection from the "Plain Song." It is a fact significant of the unsettled condition of musical theory and the complete unconsciousness of musical amateurs that any essential change in the art was being undergone, that as late as 1000 or 1020 Adelbold, Bishop of Utrecht, published a treatise upon music in which the proportions of the tetrachords are calculated carefully according to the Greek theories, and demonstrated upon the monochord.
The most important writer upon music in the eleventh century, and one of the most famous in the history of the art, was a monk named Guido, living at Arezzo, in Tuscany, a Benedictine in the abbey of Pontose. He was a remarkably skillful teacher of ecclesiastical singing, both in his own monastery and at Rome, and in the effort to systematize the elements of music he introduced[Pg 144] a number of important reforms, and is credited by later writers with many others which he did not himself originate, but which grew out of some of his suggestions. He is generally credited with having invented the art of solmization, the introduction of the staff, the use of the hand for teaching intervals, and the introduction of notes. He was not the first who introduced the staff. Hucbald, as we have already seen, employed the spaces between the lines for designating pitch. Between his time and that of Guido, one or more lines were introduced in connection with the neumæ, as will be more particularly illustrated in chapter XV. Guido, however, employed both the lines and the spaces, but instead of notes he wrote the Roman letters upon the lines and spaces according to their pitch. The notes were invented shortly after his time. For determining the correct pitch of the[Pg 145] notes of the scale he explains the manner of demonstrating them upon the monochord. He mentions organum and diaphony, and remarks that he finds the succession of fifths and fourths very tiresome. The last treatise of the thirteenth century was written by John Cotton, an English monk, whose entire theory of music is made up from the Greek works.
Fig. 29.
GUIDO OF AREZZO.
This summary of the didactic writers between Boethius and Franco at Cologne fully confirms the justice of the remark, in the chapter previous, concerning the influence of the Church upon music. At the very time when a well marked beginning was being made in counterpoint by the old French school at Paris, and when the English, Welsh and Scandinavian musicians were in possession of an art of expressive melody resting upon a simple harmonic foundation, these writers can find nothing to say but to repeat over and over again their tedious calculations concerning the intonations of nete hypate and the other Aristoxinean notes in the enharmonic and chromatic genera, which had been dead names in the art of music for more than ten centuries.
With the appearance of Franco at Cologne, there is something new in music. Late in the twelfth century he wrote a treatise upon measured music, the first one in all the history of the art, so far as we know, in which musical measure is treated independently of verse, and a notation given for representing it. He recognizes two kinds of measure—triple or perfect, and duple or imperfect. He gives four kinds of notes—the shortest being the brevis, an oblong note having twice the value of a whole note; a short stem affixed to this note doubled its value. It was then called the longa. A note head twice as long represented a still longer duration, called[Pg 146] the maxima or longest. There was also a semibreve, a diamond-shaped note which was used when two or more tones were sung to one syllable. There were no bars for indicating the place of the strong pulse in the measure, but a bar was used to show the end of the musical phrase belonging to a line of verse. The notation was made still more uncertain by the license of the breve in triple time being equal to three semibreves, and so in general each long note in triple measure being equal to three of the next class shorter. In short, the time notation was of the most crude and imperfect description, but it was at least a beginning, and all the theoretical writers upon music for the next two centuries rest in the precepts of Franco of Cologne, as a sure stronghold, where no false doctrine can find admission. Franco remarks, concerning the dissonances, that the imperfect dissonances, the thirds and sixths, go very well between two consonances, showing that in his time the third and sixth were still regarded as licenses in harmony to be explained or excused. The general principle that any dissonance is admissible when smoothly placed between two consonances is a fundamental law of modern counterpoint.
There was another Franco whose work has often been confounded with that of the celebrated master at Cologne. Franco of Paris was connected with the Sorbonne or with Notre Dame, and his writing had mostly to do with harmonic music. He classifies the consonances as—complete, the unison and octave; the incomplete, the major and minor thirds; the middle, the fourth and fifth. This is the first instance in musical theory where the third has been recognized as a consonance. Among the dissonances he classes the major[Pg 147] and minor sixth as incomplete, and says concerning these two only that immediately before a consonance any incomplete dissonance goes very well. From the superior celebrity of the Cologne Franco the work of the Parisian master was overlooked for many years, and it is only through the investigation of Coussemaker that his real standing and importance have been ascertained.
E here enter upon one of the most interesting and important chapters
in the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the
same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe,
which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of
music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with
high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in
their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same
country, too, arose the Gothic arch, the beauties of the shrine of
Notre Dame in Paris, and the involved and massive polyphony of music.
Polyphonic is a term which relates itself to two others, as the
leading types of all effort toward the expression of spirit through
organized tones. They are Monodic and Homophonic. The musical art
of the ancients was an art in which a single melodic formula was
doubled in a lower or higher octave, but where no support of harmony
was added, and where the only realization of variety could come
through the province of rhythm alone; or, perhaps, to a very limited
extent through changes in the[Pg 149] mode or color of the scale from which
the melody had been derived. Monodic art was an art of melody only,
rhythm finding its explanation and source in the words, and so far as
we understand the case, scarcely at all in the music. Our modern art
of homophony is like that in having but a single melody at each moment
of the piece; but it differs from the ancient in the important
particular of a harmonic support for the melody tones composed of
"chords in key." This harmonic accompaniment rules everything in
modern music. It is within the power of the composer to confirm the
obvious meaning of the melody tone by supporting it with the chord
which would most readily suggest itself, within the narrowest
limitations in the concept of key; or, second, it is within his reach
to impart to any tone, apparently most commonplace, a deeper and a
subtler meaning, by making it a peculiarly expressive tone of some
related key. Instances of this use of harmonic accompaniment are
numerous in Wagner's works, and form the most obvious peculiarity of
his style, and the chief reason why the hearers to whom his works were
first presented did not recognize the beauties and the novelties of
poetic expression in them. Half way between these two types of musical
art stands polyphony, which means etymologically "many sounds," but
which in musical technique means "multiplicity of melodies." In a true
polyphony not only has every tone of the leading voice a melodic
character, but all the tones which sound together with it are
themselves elements of other and independently moving melodies.
Polyphony comprehends the most recondite elements of musical theory,
but its essence consists of one leading concept—that of canonic
imitation. The simplest form of this is furnished by that musical[Pg 150]
construction known as "round," in which one voice leads off with a
phrase, and immediately a second voice begins with the same melodic
idea at the same pitch, and follows after. At the proper interval a
third voice enters and follows the procession at a corresponding
distance behind. Thus, when there is only one voice singing we have
monody; when the second voice enters we have combined sounds
consisting of two elements; and when the third enters we have at each
successive step chords of three tones. If there are four voices, as
soon as the fourth enters, we have combined sounds of four elements.
This form of musical construction was much practiced in England, as
already noticed. A round, however, does not come to a close, but goes
on in an endless sequence until arrested arbitrarily by the
performers. Such a form is not proper to art, since it lacks the
necessary element of completeness, for at whatever point it may have
been arrested there was no innate reason why it might not have gone on
indefinitely.
The polyphonic compositions of the schools in consideration in the present chapter go farther than this. While they consist of imitative treatment of a single subject carried through all the voices, or of several subjects which come together in such a way that the ear is not able to follow them as individuals, there is a conclusion, and the canonic imitation has a legitimate ending. Besides those compositions consisting of repetitions of the same subjects, these schools gave rise to other works in which several subjects are treated more or less in the same manner as a single subject would have been in a simpler composition. Nevertheless, in the earlier stages of the development, all the chords arose as incidents, and not as ends. The composer brought in his leading[Pg 151] melodic idea at the interval prescribed or chosen. If crudities arose when all the voices were employed, he took no notice of them; the hearers, apparently, being too intent upon following the individual voices to notice the forbidden parallels of fifths or octaves, which inevitably arose until the composer had learned which intervals might be used without harmonic offense, and which not.
Before proceeding to the story of this chapter, the definition of a few terms may be advisable, in the interests of clearness. By "imitation," then, we mean the exact repetition of the melody of one part by another part, at the same or a different pitch. Such an imitation may be "strict," as when the intervals and progressions are exactly repeated; or "free," as when certain changes are made here and there in order to lead the imitation around better to the principal key. Canonic imitation is one in which the imitation is strict, the repeating voice exactly repeating the melody of the principal. By "counterpoint" we mean a second voice added to a melody already existing, the counterpoint having a strict relation to the leading melody, but a wholly independent movement. This conception had its origin in the art of extemporaneous descant, in which, while the choir and congregation repeated the melody of the plain song, a few talented singers performed variations to it, guided solely by ear and tradition, returning to the tone of the plain song at all the points of repose. We do not know when extemporaneous descant gave place to written composition, but it was probably early in the twelfth century. By "double counterpoint" is meant a counterpoint which, although written to be sung an octave lower than the principal song, can be transposed an octave and[Pg 152] sung higher than the principal song without giving rise to forbidden progressions. This will be the case only when the original relations of the two voices have been restricted to certain prescribed intervals. By "fugue" is meant a form of composition in which every voice in turn enters with the leading melody of the piece, the same given out by the leading voice at first, called the "subject," responding alternately in tonic and dominant. This form comes later than the period we are now about to consider, but it grew out of the devices of polyphony, and accordingly is always to be kept in mind as the goal toward which all this progress was tending.
The art of polyphony is to be understood as an effort toward variety and unity combined. The unity consisted in all the voices following with the same melodic idea; variety, in the different combinations resulting in the course of the progress. The limitations of polyphony were reached when the true expression of melodic intervals was lost through their intermingling with so many incongruous elements.
The beginnings of contrapuntal and polyphonic music have been traced to what is now known as the old French school, having its active period between about 1100 and 1370, or thereabouts. The principal masters known to us now by name, were all, or nearly all, connected with the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and several of them with the university of the Sorbonne. Paris, during the earlier part of this period, in fact during the greater part of it, was the most advanced and active intellectual center of the entire civilized world. When the French school had ceased to advance, as[Pg 153] happened some time before the close of the history in 1370, as above assigned, it found a successor in what is known as the Gallo-Belgic school, which was active between 1350 and 1432. This, in turn, was succeeded by the Netherland school, extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is not now time or space. To return to the old French school—the recognition of the importance of this school is due to a learned Belgian savant, M. Coussemaker, who happening to discover in the medical library at Montpelier, France, an old manuscript of music, analyzed it, and found that it represented masters previously unknown, and, for the most part, belonging to the period under present consideration. In several monographs upon the history of "Harmony in the Middle Ages," he traced the steps through which polyphony had arisen, and was able to show that, instead of dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, as previously supposed, it had its beginnings more than three centuries earlier, and that Paris was the first center of this form of musical effort.
For convenience of classification the entire duration of the old French school may be divided into four periods, of which the first may be taken to extend from 1100 to 1140, the great names being those of Léonin and Pérotin, both organists and deschanteurs at Notre Dame. The Montpelier manuscript contains several compositions[Pg 154] by both these masters, and in them we find the germs of the most important devices of counterpoint.
Léonin was known to his contemporaries as "Optimus Organista," on account of his superior organ playing. He wrote a treatise upon the art, a manuscript copy of which appears to be in the British Museum, and its contents have been summarized by an anonymous observer, but never published in full. He is said to dwell mainly upon the proper manner of performing the antiphonary and the graduale. It is also stated that he noted his compositions according to a method invented by himself. If this work could be fully examined it might throw important light upon the point reached in the practice of church music in his day; his notation, also, would be a matter of interest and possibly of importance. Quite a number of compositions by Léonin have been discovered. The successor of Master Léonin, as director of the music at Notre Dame, was one Pérotin, who, besides being a capable deschanteur, was an even greater organist than his teacher, Léonin. He was also a very prolific composer, many of his compositions being still extant. He made additions to his predecessor's manual of the organ.
By descant in the foregoing account, reference is made to the practice of extemporaneous singing of an ornamental part to the plain song or a secular cantus fermus. This art had its origin one or two centuries earlier than the period now under consideration, in the secular organum of Hucbald (see p. 142), and all the more talented singers, who were also composers as well, were expert masters of it. Descant was the predecessor of counterpoint.
The chief forms of composition in vogue during this period were motette, rondo and conduit. The terms were[Pg 155] rather inexactly applied, but in general the motette appears to have been a church composition, in which often the different voices had different texts, so that the words were wholly lost in performance. The rondo seems to have been a secular composition, and was sometimes written without words. The conduit was an organ piece, occasionally, if not generally, of a secular character. All of these forms were also distinguished as duplum, triplum and quadruplum, according to the number of voices. The harmonic treatment in them is still crude, occasional passages of parallel fifths occurring, after the manner of Hucbald, but in the works of Pérotin passages of this kind are softened somewhat by the device of contrary motion in the other parts. He made a beginning in canonic imitation, Coussemaker and Naumann, after him, giving examples from a composition of his called "Posuit Adjutorium." In these works of Pérotin, and in many others of that day, traces are to be seen of an amelioration of the musical ear, and a preference for thirds and sixths, such as but a short time previously had been unknown to musical theory. This influence was probably due to what was called "Faux Bourdon," a system of accompanying a melody by an extemporaneous second and third part in thirds or sixths.
This art, again, is clearly due to the influence of the round singing of the British isles. Thus we have already a beginning of at least three important elements of good music: The recognition of the triad, or, more properly, of the third and sixth, a beginning in imitation, and the contrapuntal concept of an independently moving melodic accompaniment to a second voice, which in turn had been the outcome of extemporaneous descant. The works of Pérotin were undoubtedly in advance of[Pg 156] his time, having in them no small vitality, as is shown in their having formed a part of the repertory of Notre Dame for more than two centuries.
The second period of the old French school extended from about 1140 to 1170, and great improvements were made in the art of harmony meanwhile. The three great masters of this period were Robert of Sabillon, his successor in Notre Dame, Pierre de la Croix, and a theoretical writer named Jean de Garland. The first of these men was distinguished as a great deschanteur, in other words, a ready hand at extemporaneous counterpoint. Pierre de la Croix made certain improvements in notation, the nature of which, however, the musical historians fail to give us. Garland divided the consonances into perfect, imperfect and middle—a system which has remained in use, with slight alteration, to the present day. The thirds and sixths, however, still rank as dissonances. He also defines double counterpoint, and gives examples. The illustrations are crude, but the idea is correct.
The third period of the old French school is sometimes known as the Franconian period, from the two great names in it of Franco of Paris and Franco of Cologne, whose theories have already been noticed. (See page 146.)
Another celebrated name of this period was that of Jerome of Moravia, also a theoretical writer, whose treatise has been published along with the others in Coussemaker's "Mediæval Writers upon Music." He was a teacher and a Dominican monk at Paris. He was contemporaneous with Franco of Cologne.
The fourth period of the old French school extended from 1230 to 1370. The three great names were Phillippe[Pg 157] de Vitry, Jean de Muris and Guillaume de Machaut. They were regarded by their contemporaries as exponents of the ars nova, in contradistinction to the Franconian teaching, which was called ars antiqua. One of these differences was the use of a number of signs permitting singers to introduce chromatics in order to carry out the imitations without destroying the tonality. Jean de Muris was born in Normandy. He was a doctor in the Sorbonne, and from 1330 a deacon and a canon. He died in 1370. He was a learned man of an active mind. He speaks of three kinds of tempo—lively, moderate and slow. He says that Pierre sometimes set against a breve four, six, seven and even nine semibreves—a license followed to this day in the small notes of the fioratura. This kind of license on the part of the deschanteurs had been carried to a great length, the melodic figures resulting being called "fleurettes" ("little flowers"). John Cotton compared the singers improvising the fleurettes of this kind to revelers, who, having at length reached home, cannot tell by what route they got there. Jean de Muris reproved them in turn, saying: "You throw tones by chance, like boys throwing stones, scarcely one in a hundred hitting the mark, and instead of giving pleasure you cause anger and ill-humor." Machaut was born in Rethel, a province in Champagne, in 1284. He was still living in 1369. He was a poet and musician who occupied important positions in the service of several princes, and wrote a mass for the coronation of Charles V. Naumann thinks that Machaut was the natural predecessor of the style of Lassus and Palestrina. He says that the use of double counterpoint slackened from this time, whereby the music of the Netherland composers—Dufay, Willaert and Palestrina—is simpler and less[Pg 158] artificial than that of Odington and Jean de Garland. Chords were more regarded. This also had its source in the north.
The Gallo-Belgic school occupies an intermediate place between the old French and Netherlandish. Its time was from 1360 to 1460, and Tournay the central point for most of the time. The first great name in this school was Dufay, 1350-1432. The compositions remained the same as formerly, triplum, quadruplum, etc. One of the masters of this school, Hans Zeelandia, who died about 1370, is to be noticed on account of his part writing being more euphonious than that of his predecessors. He uses the third more freely, and he gives the principal melody in his chansons to the treble, and not to the tenor, as do the others. This also is in line with the British influence. Dufay was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest composer of his time. The open note notation succeeded the black notes about 1400, or, according to Ambros, as early as 1370. Coussemaker dates Dufay 1355 to 1435. The introduction of popular tunes as a cantus fermus in masses and other such compositions is due to him; there are a large number of such works still in the library of the Vatican. He was the first, so far as we know, who introduced "L'Omme Armé," and the same subject was treated by several other composers after him. Naumann thinks that the most noticeable peculiarity of the work of Dufay is the interrupted part writing, the imitation not running through the whole composition, but appearing here and there, according to the fancy of the composer. Dufay is also credited with[Pg 159] having written pure canonic imitations without descending to the level of the rota, with its endless phrases. Quite a number of his compositions are preserved at the Vatican and the Royal Library at Brussels. The other great name of the first period of this school was that of Binchois, born in Hennegau, died about 1465. A few of his compositions are preserved, but they hardly present important differences from those of Dufay. There were several masters intervening between those just mentioned and Busnois, who closed the school, but at this lapse of time their work hardly retains sufficient individuality to warrant burdening the memory with them. Antoine de Busnois was born in Flanders in 1440, and died in 1482. During a great part of his active life he was chapelain-chanteur in the household of Charles the Bold, and that of his successor, Maria of Burgundy. His salary in this position was extremely meager, ranging between twelve and eighteen sous a day, or, in our currency, between about twenty-five cents and forty-eight cents a day, but as the position carried provision for all the real needs of a man in the matter of food and clothing, perhaps the salary was not so insufficient, considering the greater purchasing power of money, which must have been at least three or four times as great as at the present. Busnois appears to have been on cordial terms with the duke, accompanying him in his travels.
HE wealth and commercial activity of the Low Countries, known as
Flanders, Brabant and Hainault, had now become greater than that of
any other part of Europe, Italy perhaps excepted. The organization of
the Communes, which began, indeed, in France as early as the tenth
century, naturally reached a greater extent during the crusades, when
so many of the higher and more energetic nobility were absent in the
Holy Land, since the defense and order of the people at home had to be
maintained by those who were left behind. Under these circumstances,
the power naturally drifted into the strongest hands available, which
quite as naturally were those of the capable merchants and
manufacturers of the burgher class. Hence the condition of society,
while much hampered by the restrictions of the guilds requiring
children to be brought up to the occupation of the parents, was
nevertheless more favorable to the freedom of the individual than at
any previous period. These social elements combining with the wealth
aforesaid, and the public spirit which has always distinguished the
mercantile classes engaged in foreign commerce upon a large scale,
united to form an environment favorable to the development of art;
and, as music was the form of art which happened to be most in[Pg 161] demand
at the time, the effects of the stimulating environment were
immediately seen. It was perhaps partly in consequence of the burgher
character of the classes most engaged in music in Flanders that the
form music there developed should have been so exclusively vocal. All
the work of this school, extending over two centuries, was either
exclusively vocal, or written with main consideration for the voice,
the instrumental additions, if any, having never taken on a
descriptive or colorative character.
The schools of the Netherlands came into prominence about 1425, and endured, with little loss of prestige, for two centuries, or until 1625. During this period there was a succession of eminent names in music in these countries, and a great progress was made in polyphony, and a transition begun out of that into harmony (which was in part accidental, owing to their outdoing themselves, as we shall see). Moreover, in the later times, quite a number of eminent men emigrated to foreign countries, and there kindled the sacred fires of the art, and set new causes in operation, leading to the development of national schools of great vigor. The three most eminent names in the category last referred to were those of Tinctor, who founded the school of Naples shortly before 1500; Willaert, who founded that of Venice soon after 1500, and Orlando Lassus, who founded that of Munich a trifle later. The great Palestrina himself was an outcome of these schools of the Netherlands, and, aside from the independent musical life in Spain, there was no strong cultivation of music anywhere in Europe during this period, which did not have its source in these schools of the Netherlands. The entire relation of these schools is perhaps better shown in the following[Pg 162] table taken from Naumann, than is possible in any other manner:
THE NETHERLAND SCHOOL. (1425-1625 A.D.)
| Belgian School. | Dutch School. |
| First Period—1425-1512. | First Period—1430-1506. |
| OKEGHEM, Compère, Petrus, Platenis, Tinctor. | Hobrecht. |
| Second Period—1455-1526. | Second Period—1495-1570. |
| JOSQUIN DES PRÈS, Agricola, Mouton. | ARKADELT, Holländer. |
| Third Period—1495-1572. | Third Period—1440-1622. |
| GOMBERT, WILLAERT,
Goudimel, Clemens (non papa), Cyprian de Rore. |
SCHWELINCK. |
| Fourth Period—1520-1625. | |
| ORLANDO LASSUS, Andreas Pavernage, Phillippus de Monte, Verdonck. |
The first composer of the Belgian branch of the Netherlandish school was Joannes Okeghem, who was a singer boy in the choir of the Antwerp cathedral in 1443, and is supposed to have been a pupil of Binchois. Directly after the date just mentioned he gave up his place at Antwerp, and entered the service of the king of France. For forty years he served three successive kings, having been in especial favor with Louis XI. He resigned his position at Tours soon after 1490, and lived in retirement until his death in 1513, at the age of nearly 100 years. Okeghem was a very ingenious and laborious composer, who carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab,[Pg 163] etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin directions printed with the music. The other composers belonging to this period were comparatively unimportant, with the exception of Johannes Tinctor, who was born about 1446 and died in 1511. Tinctor, after being educated to music in Belgium, emigrated to Naples. In early youth he studied law, and took the degree of doctor of jurisprudence, and afterward of theology; was admitted to the priesthood, and became a canon. He then entered the service of Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples, who appointed him chaplain and cantor. He founded a music school in Naples, and published a multitude of theoretical works of the nature of text books. He is entitled to the honorable distinction of having published the first musical dictionary of which we have any record. This book is without date, but is supposed to have been printed about 1475. None of the compositions of Tinctor have been printed, and his importance in music history ranks mainly upon the theoretical works which he composed, and his relation as founder of the Naples school.
The second period of the Belgian school has the great name of Josquin des Près, who was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably at St. Quentin, in Hainault. He was a pupil of Okeghem; was chapel master in his native town, and in 1471 was a musician at the papal court of Sixtus IV. This great master is to be remembered as the first of the Netherlandish school whose works still have vitality. He was a man of genius and of musical feeling. Martin Luther said of him that[Pg 164] "Other composers make their music where their notes take them [referring to their canonic devices]; but Josquin takes his music where he wills." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, speaks of him as having been the idol of Europe. He says: "They sing only Josquin in Italy; Josquin alone in France; only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Hungary, in Bohemia, in Spain—only Josquin." ("Si canta il solo Jusquino in Italia; il solo Jusquino in Francia; il solo Jusquino in Germania," etc.) Josquin was a musician of ready wit, and many amusing stories are told of the skill with which he overcame obstacles. Among others it is told that while he was at the French court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off with the answer, "Lascia fare mi." Weary of waiting, Josquin composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette: "Portio mea non est in terra viventium" ("My portion is not in the land of the living"); and "Memor esto verbi tui" ("Remember thy words"). Another anecdote of similar readiness is that of the motette which the king, who was a very bad singer, asked Josquin to write, with a part in it for the royal voice. Josquin composed a very elaborate motette, full of all sorts of canonic devices, and in the center of the score one part with the same note repeated over and over, the one good note of the king's voice—the inscription being "Vox regis" ("voice of the king"). It will be too much to claim Josquin as a composer of expressive music. The mere fact of his having written motettes upon the genealogies in the first chapters of St. Matthew[Pg 165] and St. Luke sufficiently defines the importance he attached to the words. Speaking of Josquin's treatment of effects, it is recorded of him that a single word is sometimes scattered through a whole page of notes, showing that he attached no importance to the words whatever. One of the most beautiful of his pieces was a dirge written upon the death of Okeghem. Owing to the good fortune of the invention of music printing from movable types, in 1498, when Josquin was at the height of his powers, a large number of his works have come down to modern times.
In the corresponding period of the Dutch school the name of Jacob Arkadelt is to be remembered, who, although not a composer of the first order, was nevertheless a man of decided power, and is known to us through a number of his works still existing in considerable freshness. Arkadelt was a singing master to the boys in St. Peter's in Rome in 1539, and was admitted to the college of papal singers in 1540. About 1555 he entered the service of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, duke of Guise, and went to Paris, where probably he died. Besides a large number of motettes and masses, he was one of the most famous of the Venetian school of madrigal writers, a form of composition of which it will be in order to speak later. One of the most pleasing of Arkadelt's compositions is an Ave Maria which is often played and sung at the present day.
The third period of the Netherlandish school embraced four very eminent names—Gombert, Willaert, Goudimel and Cyprian de Rore. The three latter were successively chapel masters at the cathedral of St. Mark's in Venice, and were eminent lights of the Venetian school. It is a significant indication of the commercial decadence of[Pg 166] the Netherlands, which had now set in, that all the composers of this period distinguished themselves in foreign countries. Nicholas Gombert, a pupil of Josquin, became master of singers, and afterward directed the music at the royal chapel in Madrid from 1530. He was a prolific composer of masses, motettes, chansons and other works. Of the remaining members of this period mention will be made in connection with the account of the music in St. Mark's, where they all distinguished themselves.
The most gifted of all these Netherlandish masters was Orlando de Lassus, who was born in Belgium, educated at Antwerp, spent some time in Italy, and finally settled at Munich, where he lived for about forty years, as musical director and composer. The compositions of this great man fill many volumes. He distinguished himself in every province of music, being equally at home in secular madrigals—quite a number of which are heard even at the present day with satisfaction—masses and other heavy church compositions, and instrumental works. He was a cultivated man of the world who held an honored position at court and made a great mark in the community. He founded the school at Munich which, with rare good fortune, has occupied a distinguished position ever since, and has been, and still is, one of the most important musical centers in Europe, as all who are acquainted with the history of Richard Wagner, or the reputation of the present incumbent, the Master Rheinberger, will readily see. In Lassus we begin to have the spontaneity of the modern composer. The quaintness of the Middle Ages still lingers to some extent, and learning he had in plenty when it suited him to use it, but he was also capable of[Pg 167] very simple and direct melodic expression and quaint and very fascinating harmony. While the tonality is still vague, like that of the church modes, the music itself is thoroughly chordal in character, and evidently planned with reference to the direct expression of the text. A large number of madrigals have come down to us from this great master; among them is the one called "Matona, Lovely Maiden," which is one of the most beautiful part songs in existence. The life of Lassus was full of dignity and honor. He was extremely popular in Munich and in all other parts of Europe. He is to be considered the first great genius in the art of music.
Fig. 30.
ORLANDO DE LASSUS.
[From a contemporary print by the French engraver Amelingue.]
TALY in the fifteenth century was in a highly prosperous condition.
The great commercial cities had a profitable commerce with all parts
of the then known world, and great public works had been under way for
more than two centuries. The beginning of the Renaissance was marked
by the great cathedrals, of which St. Mark's at Venice was a little
earlier than Pisa, Siena, Florence and Milan. All these were built
before 1300. Vast public works were undertaken in all parts of the
country, such as the canal that supplied Milan with water, and
irrigated a large part of the plain of Lombardy; the great sea wall of
Genoa; roads, bridges, municipal buildings, fortresses and the like.
By the beginning of the sixteenth century the art of painting had
reached a very high eminence; the master Raphael was already at work,
as was also that remarkable genius, Leonardo da Vinci—the most
universally gifted artist who ever appeared. Michael Angelo was at
work in the Sistine Chapel, and his plans for St. Peter's were partly
being carried out. It was in this time that Johannes Tinctor, the
Netherlandish composer, founded a music school at Naples. The school
itself was short-lived, but[Pg 169] it was presently succeeded by four others
of a different kind which eventually produced a large number of
eminent musicians, several of whom will occupy our attention later.
Tinctor's music school appears to have been a private affair. Those
which followed it were charitable institutions, taking poor boys from
the streets, furnishing them with a living, the rudiments of an
education, and musical training enough to make them available in the
service of the Church. The founding of these schools took place some
time later than the period under immediate discussion. Santa Maria di
Loreto was founded in 1535, by a poor artisan of the name of
Francisco, who received in his house orphans of both sexes, and caused
them to be fed and clothed and instructed in music. He was assisted by
donations from the rich, and presently a priest named Giovanni da
Tappia undertook to raise a permanent endowment by begging alms from
house to house. At the end of nine years he had accomplished his task.
The building was called the Conservatorio, and in 1536 received
certain government allowances. The pupils reached the number of 800,
and among the illustrious musicians produced by this school were
Alessandro Scarlatti, Durante, Porpora, Trajetta, Sacchini, Gugliemi
and many more. The second school of this kind organized was that of
San Onofrio a Capuana, in 1576. It received 120 orphans, who were
instructed in religion and music. In 1797 the pupils of this school
were transferred to Santa Maria. The third school of this kind was
that of De Poveri di Gesu Cristo, established in 1589, for
foundlings. In 1744 this conservatory was made into a diocesan
seminary. The fourth of these schools was that of Della Pieta di
Turchini, which originated about 1584. Quite a number of eminent[Pg 170]
composers were produced in this school. All of these conservatories
were consolidated in 1808 as the Reale Collegio di Musica (Royal
College of Music). The example of Naples was followed with more or
less rapidity in the other principal Italian cities. The most
important musical center of Italy during this time was Venice, where
Adrian Willaert became musical director in the cathedral of St.
Mark's, in 1527. Here he remained until 1562. The church of St. Mark's
had already held a prominent position as a musical center at least two
centuries of the four which it had been in existence. The recently
published history of the music in St. Mark's extends back to 1380,
from which time to the beginning of the present century there has been
a succession of eminent musicians as organists and musical directors.
There were two organs in this church, standing in galleries on
opposite sides of the chancel. This circumstance had an important
influence on the development of music in the cathedral, as will
hereafter be seen. It was in this church, according to Italian
tradition, that pedals were first applied to the organ. It is probable
that these appliances were very rude at first, and few in number, but
they served to supplement the resources of the hands of the organist,
and enabled him to produce effects not otherwise obtainable. The
existence of the two choirs and two organs, and no doubt the habit of
antiphonal singing in the Plain Song of the Church, led Willaert to
invent double choruses, and finally to divide his choir into three or
more parts. Willaert is regarded by many as the founder of the
madrigal, of which there is more to be said presently. He was also the
teacher of two very eminent musicians who succeeded him in his
position at St. Mark's—Zarlino and Cyprians de[Pg 171] Rore. To go on with
the story of St. Mark's from this point, the most important successor
of Willaert was Gioseffo Zarlino, who spent his youth in studying for
the Church, and was admitted to minor orders in 1539, and ordained
deacon in 1541. He was a proficient scholar in Greek and Hebrew, in
mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. After studying for some years
with Willaert he was elected in 1555 first Maestro di Capella at St.
Mark's. In this position his services were required not alone as
director of music in the church, but also as a servant of the
republic, and it was his duty to compose or arrange music for all of
the public festivals. After the battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571,
Zarlino was appointed to celebrate the victory with appropriate music.
When Henry III visited Venice, in 1574, he was greeted by music by
Zarlino. This same composer is also credited with having composed a
dramatic piece called Orpheo, which was performed with great
splendor in the larger council chamber. Again, in 1577, Zarlino was
commissioned to compose a mass for the commemoration of the terrible
plague which devastated Italy and carried off Titian, among other
great men. His ecclesiastical standing was so good that in 1583 he was
elected bishop, but his accession to the see was so strongly opposed
by the doge and the senate that he consented to retain the appointment
of St. Mark's, where he remained until his death in 1590. Zarlino was
very famous as a composer, in his own day, but few of his works have
come down to us. He is best known by certain works of his on harmony
and the theory of music, of which the most important was the
Institutioni Armoniche (Venice, 1558), and his Demonstrationi
Armoniche (Venice, 1571). Zarlino's distinction rests upon[Pg 172] his
having restored the true tuning of the tetrachord to that of 8:9,
9:10, 15:16, as opposed to the Pythagorean tuning of 9:8, 9:8,
256:243. He was the most important scientific authority in the music
of the new epoch. His discoveries in harmony were afterward
supplemented by those of Tartini, almost two centuries later. Among
other strong points of Zarlino was his demonstration of equal
temperament, which came into general use about 100 years later.
Cypriano de Rore, whose name was mentioned above in connection with
St. Mark's, held a position as master in that eminent cathedral only
one year, his tenure of office falling between the death of Willaert
and the appointment of Zarlino. He was a very prolific composer of
motettes and madrigals, and after resigning his position at St. Mark's
went to the Court of Parma, where he died at the age of forty-nine.
The later eminent masters holding positions in this church will come
into view in the next book, in connection with the opera, for
Monteverde was director of the music here during the greater part of
his career as a dramatic composer.
The most eminent development of the polyphonic school, and at the same time the dawn of a better era in church music, took place in Rome, where the influence of the Netherlandish composer is noticeable. Claude Goudimel, whose name appears in the table of the Netherlandish school in the preceding chapter, opened a music school in Rome in the early part of the sixteenth century, and among his pupils was the name of Palestrina. Goudimel's residence in Rome was not very long. He afterward returned to Paris, and in some way was connected with Calvin in preparing psalm books for the[Pg 173] Calvinists. He was killed finally at Lyons in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.
The culmination of the contrapuntal school and the dawn of the new era in church music came about through the labors of the pupil of Goudimel, the great Palestrina. This master, whose name was Giovanni Pierluigi (English, John Peter Lewis), was born of humble parents at Palestrina, a small town in the vicinity of Rome. The date is uncertain, but it was probably about 1520. As early as 1540 he came to Rome to study music, where he made so good progress that in 1551 he was appointed musical director at the Julian chapel in the Vatican. He then commenced the publication of a series of remarkable musical works, the first of which were in the style prevalent in his day. There was much learning of every sort; all the devices of polyphony were freely and luxuriantly employed, but along with them were other passages of true expression. The dedication of some of these books to the pope secured for him certain small preferments, which, in his most profitable condition, aggregated about thirty scudi a month (perhaps equal to $20 of our money). On this miserable pittance he supported his wife and four children. In 1556 he was discharged from his place as a pontifical singer, on account of his marriage, a fact which had been ignored by the pope who appointed him. He then held the post of chapel master at the Lateran. In 1561 he was transferred to Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained ten years at a monthly salary of sixteen scudi, until 1571, when he was once more elected to his old office of master at the Vatican. It would take us too long to speak of his various works in detail, although his numerous publications during this period demonstrate his claim to mastership of the first[Pg 174] order. The best of his pieces had already been adopted in the apostolic chapel, and his reputation was now greater in Italy than that of any other musician. But the taste for elaboration in church music had reached a point where reform was imperatively demanded. Not content with having secular melodies employed as canti fermi in the music sung to the words of the mass, the words of these secular songs themselves were often written in and sung by a majority of the singers in the choir, only those in the front rows singing the solemn words of the ecclesiastical office. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) commented upon this state of things with great severity, and appointed a commission to inquire into the abuse and decide upon a remedy. It was contemplated to entirely do away with elaborate music in the Church, and sing only the Gregorian songs. A few of the music-loving cardinals succeeded in preventing so sweeping an order, and a commission was appointed to take the matter in hand. Two of the most active of these were Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi. The former reported of the singing in the pontifical chapel, to the following effect: "These singers," said he, "count it for their principal glory that when one sings sanctus, another sings Sabbaoth and another gloria tua, and the whole effect of the music is little more than a confused whirring and snarling, more resembling the performance of cats in January than the beautiful flowers of May." At the same time Palestrina was desired to write a mass in a style suitable for the sacred office. Too modest to rest the case upon one work, he wrote three, which were performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, and all were much admired, but the third, known as the mass "Papæ Marcelli," in memory of the pope[Pg 175] who had appointed Palestrina to one of his positions, was recognized as of transcendent excellence. It was copied in the collection of the Vatican, and the pope ordered a special performance of it in the Apostolic chapel. At the end of it he declared that it must have been some such music as this that the apostles of the Apocalypse heard sung by the triumphant hosts of angels in the New Jerusalem. Palestrina continued to write masses, motettes and other works during the remainder of his life, but during the entire time lived in the extremely limited condition already mentioned, and was subject to much enmity from jealous singers and composers. The most pleasing incident of his later life happened in 1575, when fifteen hundred singers from his native town came to Rome in two confraternities of the Crucifix and the Sacrament, making a solemn entry into the city, singing the music of their great townsman, who conducted at their head. The long and active life of this great master came to an end January 22, 1594. Among his greater works are ninety-three masses, a very large number of motettes, forty-five hymns for the whole year, sixty-eight offertories, and a large number of litanies, magnificats and madrigals.
It is not unlikely that reform in Catholic Church music had been very largely influenced by the Protestant music of Germany. Martin Luther (1483-1546) in arranging music for the Protestant Church, invented the chorale and added to the best melodies from the Plain Song some wonderfully fine ones of his own, such as "Eine Feste Burg," and caused many others to be written by the best composers of the Netherlandish school. The chorale was the exact opposite of the motette of the Netherlands. In the chorale all of the voices moved together. The[Pg 176] same music was invariably sung to the same words, whereby an association was created, intensifying the effect of the music and the words respectively.
As examples of Palestrina's music are not common I have thought best to allow space for the following from his music for Holy Week. The pieces will produce a much better effect if sung by good voices than when played upon an instrument. They are written for the voice.
"TENEBRÆ FACTÆ SUNT," BY GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA.
HE entire movement of musical thought since three or four tones began
to be put together into scales, melodies and unities of various kinds,
has been in the direction of classification. This is shown very
conclusively in the history of musical notation, which, at the end of
the period just now under consideration, had reached a form nearly the
same as we now have it. The early notation regarded tones as
individual, and wholly without classification of any kind. The first
musical notation of which we have any authentic knowledge was that of
the Greeks already noted in chapter III. Their scale consisted of two
octaves and one note, their so-called "greater perfect system," and
the tones were named by the first fifteen letters of the Greek
alphabet. This, however, was only a beginning of their system, for the
variety of pitches required in their enharmonic and chromatic scales,
and in the various transposition scales was so great that they
required sixty-seven characters for representing them. These
characters were written above the words to which they applied, and
they had additional marks for duration, especially in the later
periods of Greek music. Besides this they had an entirely different
set of characters for the same tones played upon the cithara, so that
a word[Pg 180] to be sung without accompaniment had one mark above it for the
pitch of the note, while if accompanied even by the same tone upon the
instrument, a second character was written for the instrumental part.
The system was wholly without classification, except that the letters
were applied from the lowest notes upward, the same as we now have
them. There was nothing to assist the eye in forming an idea of the
movement of the melody, and as the forms of the letters were very
similar in some cases there is no doubt that mistakes of copyists were
numerous. This, however, is a matter of little concern to us, since no
authentic melodies of the classical period have come down to us. The
example of Greek characters given on p. 69, in connection with the Ode
of Pindar, sufficiently illustrates the nature of this notation,
although the interposition of the staff between the musical notes and
the words deprives the illustration of a part of its value.
The Romans had also a notation consisting of letters written above the words to which they applied; they made use of the first fifteen letters of the alphabet in the same manner as the Greeks, but we do not know whether they employed the same characters for the instruments and the voices, or had different ones. The only example we possess of the Roman notation from classical times, or in close tradition from classical times, is that in "Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy." From the fact of this being the only place where the Roman notation is illustrated, certain writers have concluded that Boethius invented it—a supposition which is utterly improbable. Boethius mentions the Roman notation, and employs it, as also does Hucbald in certain of his examples, but neither one of them explains it or gives[Pg 181] any account of its origin. We have simply to take it for granted that the Romans transferred the letter notation of approximate pitch to their own characters instead of using Greek letters. The following example from Guido's book illustrates the appearance of the Roman notation as he uses it:
Fig. 31.
LETTER NOTATION OF GUIDO OF AREZZO, WITH DECIPHERING.
The most curious notation of which we have a record was that of the neumæ, or neumes, which were employed by the ecclesiastical writers mostly from about the sixth century to the twelfth. This writing, as will be seen from the examples hereafter given, very much resembled the curves and hooks of the modern shorthand. The learned Fétis thinks that the characters were derived from the Coptic notation, and these again from the hieratic notation of the ancient Egyptians. The neumes signified mostly intonations, upward or downward slides of the voice, and not absolute pitch.
Fig. 32.
NEUME NOTATION OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
There are no clefs or other indications of the key, and it is little better than sheer guesswork to attempt to decipher one of them, for want of some one[Pg 182] single base mark to reckon from. Accordingly, the various commentators have rendered the old pieces in a variety of ways. It is probable that the imperfections of this notation were helped out, when it was in current use, by tradition, which appropriated certain keys to each of the principal hymns of the Church; this being understood, the singer found himself able to make something intelligible out of a notation which, without the help of traditions, would have been meaningless. From about the eleventh century the supposed meanings of the various signs of the neumes are easily to be ascertained, because tables are given by a number of writers of that period; but the earlier examples are practically undecipherable. This notation came into use partly through ecclesiastical influence, and partly owing to its being easy to write, while at the same time it occupied little space upon the page. The earlier examples, as already said, were without clefs or any means of ascertaining the key note. After a while we find them with one line representing do or fa, and the signs arranged above, below, or upon the line, at intervals approximately representing the pitch intended. Still later we find a colored line for fa, a thumb nail line traced on the parchment, but not colored, for re, and a different one for la.
Fig. 33.
NEUME NOTATION OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY, DECIPHERED BY MARTINI IN "GREGORIAN" NOTATION.
Still later four lines were used. There were many varieties of forms of the neumes employed by the different copyists and by different nationalities, the heaviest marks of this kind being those of the Lombard-Gothic represented in Fig. 35. These marks were afterward written upon a four-line staff, and the note heads were derived from them.
Fig. 34.
NEUME NOTATION OF GUIDO OF AREZZO.
There were no marks whatever for duration or measure in the neumes notation, and its persistence through so long a time signifies very plainly that it was not in the line of the musical life of the world, but was a special hieratic notation made to answer for ecclesiastical purposes by the help of carefully transmitted traditions.
Fig. 35.
DECIPHERED NEUME NOTATION OF THE LATEST PERIOD.
One of the oldest forms of this notation is that of the lament for the death of Charlemagne, an extract from which is here presented, together with its translation as given by Naumann.[Pg 184]
Incidentally this illustration gives a fair specimen of mediæval melody of the earlier period. It dates from the tenth century.
The earliest suggestion of the staff that we have is that in the work of Hucbald already mentioned, in which he proposed to print the words in the spaces of the staff of eleven lines, placing each syllable according to its pitch (p. 141). The staff, in connection with neumes, as given above in Fig. 34, probably came into use about the same time as that when Hucbald's book was written, but it was not until the days of Guido of Arezzo that the staff was employed in anything like its modern form, nor is it certain that Guido had anything to do with introducing it. In one of the manuscripts of his book letters are written upon the lines and spaces, and in another the neumes are given. The note head was not invented until some little time after his death, probably about fifty years.
Fig. 36.
NOTATION OF THE FRENCH TROUVÈRES.
By the time of Franco of Cologne, the four-lined staff with square notes had come into use, the notes having the value already assigned them in the chapter upon Franco of Cologne. (See p. 145.) The place of fa was marked by a clef, and with some few exceptions all the[Pg 186] musical notation from this time forward is susceptible of approximate translation. The term approximate is used above by reason of the fact that no sharps or flats were written until long after this period, but it is thought that they were occasionally interpolated by the singers quite a long time before it became customary to put them into the notation. In this way, for example, a piece of music beginning and ending on the degree appropriate to fa might be brought within the limits of the key of F by the singer changing B natural to B flat wherever it occurred. Our information in regard to this practice is extremely limited, and, in fact, rests upon two or three detached hints. The signature was not employed until some centuries later.
As already mentioned in chapter XI, there was no measure notation for a long time after Franco's death. The data are uncertain concerning the exact time when the bar began to be used to mark the measure. Its earliest use was that of marking the end of the music belonging to a line of poetry. This is the same use as now made of the double bar in vocal music. In fact, everything points to the progressive development of music in all respects, and the development of what we might call self-consciousness in musicians, whereby each succeeding generation sought to place upon record a greater number of particulars concerning their music, and to leave less and less to accident or tradition. This progress has gone on until the present time, when two particulars of our music are exactly recorded—the pitch and the rhythm. The exact relation of every tone to the key note is ascertainable from our musical notation, and the precise degree of rhythmic importance appertaining to each tone according to its place in measure and in the larger rhythms. We[Pg 187] are still lame in the matter of expression, and in pianoforte music also in regard to the application of the pedals. Here our notation affords only a few detached suggestions. If the master works of the modern school could be noted for expression as completely as for pitch and rhythm, the labor of acquiring musical knowledge would be very greatly diminished.
The four-line staff has remained in use in the Catholic Church until the present time, and with it the square notes. It is generally called Gregorian, and by many is supposed to have been invented by Gregory the Great; but as a matter of fact, about six centuries elapsed after his death before this square-note notation came into use. The five-line staff came into use about 1500. Information is wanting as to the causes which led to its adoption in preference to the four-line notation so long in use. The clef for do (C clef) remained in use until very lately, and is still used by many strict theorists, being written upon the first line for the soprano, the fourth line for the tenor, the third line for the alto. The G clef, also, when first introduced, was often written upon the third or the first line; the F clef, moreover, was not definitely established on the fourth line until toward 1700. In the scores of Palestrina's work, now published in complete form, there are pieces written with the soprano in the G clef upon the first line, the alto in the C clef upon the second line, the tenor in the C clef upon the fourth line, and the bass in the F clef upon the third line. This, while affording the eye two familiar clefs, the treble and the bass, places them in such a way as to practically make it necessary for the modern reader to transpose every note of the composition in all the parts,[Pg 188] and, in fact, to effect a transposition for each part upon principles peculiar to itself.
The progress of classification is distinctly seen in the use of seven letters instead of fifteen, affording a tacit recognition of the most essential underlying facts of harmony—the equivalence of octaves. The staff, however, affords the eye no assistance at this point, since the octaves of notes occupy relatively entirely different positions upon it, the octave of a space being invariably a line, and the octave of a line a space. Moreover, the octave of a bass line is always very differently located when it falls upon the treble staff, and, vice versa, the octave of a treble note falling in the bass is very differently placed. If a notation had to be made anew it would no doubt facilitate matters to make use of a staff so planned as to bring out the equivalence of octaves more perfectly. A recent American designer, Mrs. Wheeler, has proposed a double staff of six lines, divided into two groups of three, for the treble and bass, thus presenting for the piano score four groups of three lines each, separated by smaller or larger intervals. Upon such a staff every tone would fall in the same place upon the three lines in every octave, the octave of the first line of the lower three would be the first line of the second three, and so on.
This, however, is to anticipate. The smaller rhythmic divisions of the measure were very little used in the old music which, if not sung in slow time, was at least written in long notes, and the smaller varieties of notes are the invention of a period perhaps rather later than that at which we have now arrived. They belong to the elaborate rhythmic construction of the music of Händel, Bach, Scarlatti and Haydn.
URING the entire period covered by the division of the story with
which we have been now for some time dealing, the influences operating
upon the tonal sense in the direction of harmonic perception had also
been highly stimulative to the sense of melody. All the devices of
counterpoint, with their two, three and four tones of the moving voice
against one of the cantus fermus, were so many incitations in the
direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further
strengthened by the constant effort of the composer to impart to each
voice as characteristic an individuality of movement as possible.
Hence there is a distinct gain in smoothness of melody, and there are
occasional appearances of truly expressive quality in this part of the
music, even in the most elaborate of the contrapuntal compositions.
Meanwhile the various forms of popular minstrelsy, whose general
course we have already traced, were powerfully appealing to this part
of the musical endowment of the hearers. But the great means of
cultivating an ear for melody, both in players and hearers, was the
violin, which, contemporaneously with[Pg 190] the present point of our story,
had reached its mature form and nearly all of its tonal powers. In
fact, the tonal education of the mediæval musicians had been carried
forward in several directions by the instruments in use. The harp and
its influence upon the development of chord perceptions have already
received attention, but there was another instrument which, during the
period subsequent to about 1400, exerted even a more powerful
influence—I mean the lute. The lute and the violin appear in crude
forms at nearly the same time in Europe. The violin was the instrument
of the north, the lute of the south. Later they move together
geographically, sharing the popular suffrages. By the time of
Palestrina the lute had come to its full powers and most complete
form. Within twenty years after the death of Palestrina orchestral
music started upon the career which has never since stopped, the
violin at the head of the forces, thanks to the insight of the great
musical genius, Monteverde.
The lute belongs to the same class of instruments as the guitar, differing from that, however, in important details of construction. It has a pear-shaped body, composed of narrow pieces of bent wood glued together; the sounding board is flat, and of fir. The neck is longer or shorter, according to the variety of lute. It was strung with from eight to eleven strings, which in the east were of silk, but in Europe were catgut down to the end of the seventeenth century, when spun strings were substituted for the bass. The finger board was marked by frets, indicating the places at which the strings should be stopped. There were four or more of the longest strings which were not upon the finger board, and were never stopped. They were used for basses. Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was gentle and sweet.[Pg 191] Its influence, like that of the guitar of the present time, was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly restricted to the nearest chords of the key. The essential point in which the construction of the lute differed from that of the guitar, was in the back, which in the latter is flat, so that ribs are indispensable for preserving the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings. The lute body is very solid, from the mode of its construction involving an application of the principle of the arch. The standard appearance of the lute was the following:
Fig. 37.
THE LUTE IN ITS STANDARD FORM.
[From Grove's Dictionary.]
The stringing and tuning varied much in different periods. According to Prætorius, the lute had four open[Pg 192] strings tuned according to the scale in a below. Later, a G was added above and below, and the tuning was that at b.
Another authority—Baron—gives a tuning for an "eleven-course" lute, as follows:
The F below the bass staff had ten frets, G eleven, and each of the highest six strings twelve frets. The instrument thus had a compass of three octaves and a half from the C below the bass. All the strings were in pairs, two to each unison, excepting the upper two, which were single. The instrument was a very troublesome one to keep in order. Mattheson, who wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the lute was still cultivated, said that a lutist of eighty years must have spent nearly sixty in tuning his instrument. The pull of the strings broke down the sounding board or belly, which had therefore to be taken off and righted once in every two or three years. The lute was derived from an Arabian or Persian instrument, of which the Arab eoud, Fig. 24 (p. 113), was the latest representative.
The problem of locating the frets accurately upon the finger board was one of the causes which led to close investigation into the mathematical relation of the tones in the scale; and the directions given for placing them by various Arab and other writers afford precise and valuable information concerning their views of[Pg 193] intonation. The lute was made in a great variety of sizes, the largest being what was called the arch lute, which was more than four feet long from bottom to the end of the neck. This was employed by Corelli for the basses of his violin sonatas, and Händel made similar use of it. A diminutive lute has come down to our own days under the name of Mandolin. It is strung with metal strings, however, and played with a plectrum, whereas the mediæval lute was played with the fingers. Monteverde employed still another variety of the lute in his orchestra, called the Chitarrone, whence our word guitar. This was a very large lute, with many strings, which were wire, and played, therefore, with a plectrum. The chitarrone in the collection at South Kensington has twelve strings upon the finger board, and eight bass strings tuned by the pegs at the top of the long neck. It was used mainly for basses. The guitar, of which a figure is omitted on account of the familiarity of the instrument, was the Spanish form of the lute, or the Spanish form which the Moorish lute took in that country.
The essential feature of the violin is the incitation of the vibration by means of the bow. We do not know when or where this art was discovered, but it is supposed to have been in the remote east, at a very early period. The argument of Fétis, that since the Sanskrit has four terms for bow, according to the material of which it was made, therefore the art of the bow must have been known before the Sanskrit ceased to be a spoken language, has little weight. For while it is true that Sanskrit was not a spoken, or, more properly, a living, language in ordinary life after about 1500 B.C., it is true, on the other hand, that it remained in use as a[Pg 194] language of religion and of the learned down to times very recent. In that case there would necessarily be additions made to it from time to time, as new concepts came up for expression, in the same manner as additions were made to Latin during the Middle Ages, and even in modern times. Still, all the nations around Hindostan have the tradition that the art of playing music by means of a bow is very old, the Ceylonese attributing the invention to one of their kings who reigned about 5000 B.C. Their ravanastron is very crude. (See page 72.) A similarly simple instrument is in use to the present day in many parts of the east. The Arab form of it, known as the rebec, is represented on p. 113, Fig. 23. It has two strings of silk, and is played with the point downward, like a 'cello. It is not possible after this lapse of time to determine which was the original form of the violin in Europe. Very early we find the crwth in the hands of the Celtic players, as noticed in chapter VI. The form given in Fig. 22 (p. 107) is rather late, most likely, and somewhat of a degradation, since many of the elements of the violin are wanting in it. The clumsy resonance body is of the same width all the way, preventing the depression of one end of the bow in order to avoid sounding adjacent strings. As the bridge of the crwth was nearly flat, the adjacent strings were octaves, or related in such a way that when sounding together chords were produced. Many have supposed that all the strings were sounded together at each drawing of the bow. This is not impossible, for in one of the sculptures on a capital in the old church at Boscherville in Normandy a stringed instrument is represented in which the tone is produced by a revolving bow, on the principle of the hurdy-gurdy, whereby chords must have been[Pg 195] produced continually. (See p. 208.) The same carving has two stringed instruments of the violin family, one held like a violin (No. 6), the other bass downward, like a 'cello (No. 1). These two figures are fragments of the same carving. They are supposed to date from about the eleventh century. Many similar representations occur, such as the following from old manuscripts.
Fig. 38.
These oval instruments had the same deficiency as the crwth, in respect to indentations at the side of the instrument, for permitting the depression of the bow. The oldest type of this instrument in use appears to have been the form known as the rebec, the Arab form, which came into Europe in the time of the crusades. According to certain authorities this was the primitive type from which our violin was derived. The form is better shown in the cut on page 196, which is from an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.
The body of the rebec was pear-shaped. It was contemporaneous with many other forms partaking of the shape of the guitar. From this came the family of viols, which were very popular in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[Pg 196]
The viol differed from the violin family proper in having a flat back like a guitar, and rounded corners. The only individual of the viol family which attained to artistic development was the viol da Gamba, or bass viol, which was tuned like a lute, having six strings. This instrument was a favorite with many amateurs until late in the eighteenth century. (See p. 197.)
Fig. 39.
ANGEL PLAYING A REBEC.
[From an Italian painting of the thirteenth century.]
Still more curious was the form of viol known as the barytone, which, in addition to an outfit of six catgut strings upon the finger board, was furnished with twenty-four wire strings, stretched close under the sounding board, where they sounded by sympathetic vibration. This was the instrument which Prince Esterhazy, Haydn's patron, so much admired, and for which Haydn wrote more than 150 compositions. Its form is shown in Fig. 41.
Fig. 40.
VIOL DA GAMBA.
[From Reissman's "History of German Music."]
Fig. 41.
THE BARYTONE.
It is not easy within present limits to apportion the various steps by which the violin reached its present[Pg 197] form. The first eminent master of violins, as distinguished from small viols, was the celebrated Gaspar da Salo, who lived and worked at Brescia during the latter part of the sixteenth century. The model varies, and the sound holes are straight and flat. His violins are small and weak of tone, but his tenors and basses are much sought for. His model was followed some time later by Guarnerius. The real mastership in violin making was attained at Cremona, in Lombardy, where were many religious houses with elaborate services, and a surrounding population of wealth and artistic instinct afforded the mechanic[Pg 198] an appreciative public. It was here early in the sixteenth century that we first find the Amati family in the person of the oldest known violin maker, Andrea, from whom Fétis quotes two instruments dated 1546 and 1551. One of them is a rebec with three strings; the other is a small violin. They are a distinct advance over the violins of the western school, but they stop very far short of the modern instrument. The tone of his instruments is clear and silvery, but not very powerful. The most eminent of the Amatis was Nicolo, 1596-1684, a son of Geronimo and grandson of Andrea. The outline is more graceful, the varnish deeper and richer, and the proportions of his instruments better calculated. His[Pg 199] instruments have greater power and intensity of tone, and his tenors and 'cellos are very famous. But the Cremona school came to a culmination in the works of the pupil of Nicolo Amati—Antonio Stradivari, 1649-1737. This great master of the violin pursued the principles of the Amati construction down to about 1700, having then been making violins for upwards of thirty-three years. After 1700 he changed his principles of construction somewhat, and developed the grand style distinguishing his later works. He marks the culminating point of the art of violin making. It was he who perfected the model of the violin and its fittings. The bridge in its present form, and the sound holes, are cut exactly as he planned them, and no artist has discovered a possibility of improving them. His main improvements consisted (1) in lowering the height of the model—that is, the arch of the belly; (2) in making the four corner blocks more massive, and in giving greater curvature to the middle ribs; (3) in altering the setting of the sound holes, giving them a decided inclination to each other at the top; (4) in making the scroll more massive and permanent. Every violin of Stradivari was a special study, modified in various details according to the nature of the wood which he happened to have, sometimes a trifle smaller, a trifle thicker in this place or the other, or some other slight change accounted for not by pre-established theory, but by adaptation to the peculiarities of the wood in hand. According to Fétis, his wood was always selected with reference to its tone-producing qualities—the fir of the belly always giving a certain note, and the maple of the back a certain other note. These peculiarities are not regarded as fully established. The tone of the Stradivarius violin is full, musical and high-spirited. The[Pg 200] small number now in existence are held at extremely high prices. The usual pattern is that represented in the following figure.
Fig. 42.
THE STRADIVARIUS VIOLIN.
[From Grove.]
Stradivari established his own factory about 1680, and continued to make instruments up to 1730. The violin of 1708 weighs three-quarters of a pound. Besides making violins, this eminent artist also made guitars, lutes, 'cellos and tenors. It is wholly uncertain to what extent the peculiarities of the Stradivari instruments were matters of deduction and how far accidental. But there can be no question that the average excellence of his instruments, judging from the specimens still in existence, was much greater than that of any other violin maker.
Many other eminent artists made good violins in the century and a half from the time of Andrea Amati and[Pg 201] Gaspar da Salo to Stradivari, among the most eminent being Maggini, of Brescia, whose violins are very highly esteemed. Still, inasmuch as the finishing touches were put to the instrument by Stradivarius, we need not linger to discuss the minor makers.
Before 1600 the organ had attained its maturity, and had become furnished with its distinctive characteristics as we have it at the present time. As this instrument, from the nature of its tone qualities and its peculiar limitation to serious music of grave rhythm, is naturally suited to the service of the Church, it has remained till the present day in the province where it had already firmly established itself at the time now under consideration. The origin of the organ is very difficult to ascertain. There are traces of some sort of wind instrument before the Christian era. The so-called hydraulic organ was probably one in which water was used to perfect the air-holding qualities of the wind chest, in the same manner as now in gas holders. One of the earliest mediæval references to organs is to that sent King Pepin, of France, father of Charlemagne, in 742 by Constantine, emperor of Byzantium at that time. This instrument, says the old chronicler, had brass pipes, blown with bellows bags; it was struck with the hands and feet. It was the first of this kind seen in France.
Prætorius says that the organ which Vitellianus set in church 300 years before Pepin, must have been the small instrument of fifteen pipes, for which the wind was collected in twelve bellows bags.
According to Julianus, a Spanish bishop who flourished in 450, the organ was in common use in churches[Pg 202] at that time. In 822 an organ was sent to Charlemagne by the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, made by an Arabian maker. This instrument was placed in a church at Aix-la-Chapelle. There were good organ builders in Venice as early as 822, and before 900 there was an organ in the cathedral at Munich. In the ninth century organs had become common in England, and in the tenth the English prelate, St. Dunstan, erected one in Malmesbury Abbey, of which the pipes were of brass. The instruments of that time were extremely crude.
Fig. 43.
[From Franchinus Gaffurius, "Theorica Musica," Milan, 1492.]
From this time on there are many authentic remains in the way of treatises on organ building and description of organs. The essential elements of this instrument consist of pipes for producing sound, of which a complete set, one pipe for each key of the keyboard, is called a stop; bellows and wind chest for holding the wind, sliders or valves for admitting it to the pipes, and keys for controlling the valves.
In his studies for a history of musical notation, Dr. Hugo Riemann quotes an extract from an anonymous manuscript of the tenth century, in which the author gives directions for a set of organ pipes. "Take first," he says, "ten pipes of a proper dimension and of equal length and size. Divide the first pipe into nine parts; eight of these will be the length of the second. Dividing the length of this again into nine parts, eight of these will be the proper length of the third; dividing the first pipe into four parts, three of them will be the length of the fourth; taking the first pipe as three parts, two of them will be the length of the fifth; eight-ninths of this again will give the proper length of the sixth; eight-ninths of this, the length of the seventh; one-half the first, the length of the eighth, or octave." This gives a major scale, with the Pythagorean third, consisting of two great steps, which was too sharp to be consonant. The semitone between the third and the fourth is too small, as is also that between the seventh and eighth. The modern way of making the pipes of smaller diameter as they become shorter, had evidently not been thought of. Nevertheless, these directions are very important, since they throw positive light upon the tuning of the various intervals, the pipe lengths and[Pg 204] proportions affording accurate determinations of the musical relations intended.
Fig. 44.
PORTABLE ORGAN FROM THE PROCESSION IN HONOR OF MAXIMILIAN I.
[From Prætorius' "Syntagma Musica," about 1500 A.D.]
The early organs were furnished with slides which the organist pulled out when he wished to make a pipe speak, and pushed back to check its utterance. The date of the invention of the valve is uncertain, but it must have been about as soon as the power of the instrument was increased by the addition of the second or third stop. Before this, however, and perhaps for some little time after, there were many organs in use, which were committed to the diaphony of Hucbald, having in place of the diapason three ranks of pipes, speaking an octave and the fifth between. Each of these combined sounds was treated in the same way as simple ones are on other instruments, and if chords were attempted upon them the effect must have been hideous[Pg 205] indeed; but it is probable that at this time the notes were played singly, and not in chords, or at most in octaves. We do not know the date at which this style of organ building ceased, but it is probably before the thirteenth century. There is a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Royal Library at Madrid, stating that the clavier at that epoch comprised as many as thirty-one keys, and that the larger pipes were placed on one side, and small pipes in the center, the same as now. The earliest chromatic keyboards known are those in the organ erected at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This instrument had twenty-two keys, fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the loud one. This result was obtained by means of three keyboards. The keys were very wide, those of the upper and middle keyboards measuring four inches from center to center. The sharps and flats were about two and a half inches above the diatonic keys, and had a fall of about one and a quarter inches. The mechanical features of the organ were very greatly improved during the next century, but it was not until the old organ in the Church of St. Ægidien in Brunswick that the sharps and naturals were combined in one keyboard in the same manner as at present. The keys were still very large, the naturals of the great manual being about one and three-quarters inches in width. It was to the organ at Halberstadt that pedals were added in 1495,[Pg 206] but no pipes were assigned to them. They merely pulled down the lower keys of the manual.
Fig. 45.
BELLOWS BAGS IN THE ORGAN AT HALBERSTADT, AND METHOD OF BLOWING.
[Prætorius.]
Some time before the beginning of the seventeenth century the organ had acquired nearly the entire variety of tone that it has ever had. The mechanism was rude, no doubt, and the voicing perhaps imperfect. The tuning was by the unequal system, throwing the discords into remote keys as much as possible. In Michael Prætorius' "Syntagma Musica," the great source of information upon this part of the history (published at Wolfenbüttel, 1618), he describes a number of large organs. Among them he mentions the organ in the Church of St. Mary at Danzig, built in 1585, having three manuals and pedal; there were fifty-five stops. The balance must have been very bad, since there were[Pg 207] in the great organ three stops of sixteen feet, and only three of eight feet. There was a mixture having twenty-four pipes to each key, besides a "zimbel" in the same manual, having three ranks.
Prætorius also gives many other specifications of large organs of three manuals, some with dates, some without. They belong mostly to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the number indicates unmistakably the interest awakened in this part of the musical furnishing of the large churches. Many points in these organs were imperfect, but the foundation had been laid, and the general character of the subsequent building settled. There was also a beginning of virtuosity upon the organ, but this will come up for consideration at a later point in the narrative.
Fig. 46.
SCULPTURED HEAD OF COLUMN, FOUND IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST.
GEORGE, AT BOSCHERVILLE, IN NORMANDY.
ELEVENTH CENTURY.
(1) Three-stringed viol or rebec. (2) Two persons playing the organistrum, a stringed instrument vibrated by means of a circular bow or wheel, like the hurdy-gurdy. (3) Pandean pipes. (4) Apparently a small harp. (5) Psaltery. (6) Rotta or crwth. (7) Acrobat. (8) Harp. (9), (10) Instruments of percussion, perhaps bells.
N justification of the name "apprentice period" for that part of the
history of music ending with Palestrina as the representative of the
finished art of the Netherlands (helped out, we may well enough admit,
with no small measure of the original insight and genius of his own),
a general view of the condition of music in all European countries at
the beginning of the seventeenth century may well be taken. The
fullness with which the details have already been treated renders it
unnecessary to repeat them here, but it will be enough to recapitulate
the principal features of the art thus far attained, adding thereto a
number of incidents omitted. Upon the side of musical phraseology,
then, we find in the north the attainment of a simple and expressive
form of melody almost or quite up to the standard of modern taste. In
the direction of the musically elaborative element we have the schools
of the Netherlands and of Italy, in which absolutely everything of
this kind was realized which modern art can show, saving perhaps the
fugue, which involved questions of tonality belonging to a grade of
taste and harmonic perception more advanced and refined than that as
yet attained. It took nearly[Pg 212] another century before the
ecclesiastical keys were thoroughly disenchanted in the estimation of
classical musicians. It was Bach who finally made true tonality the
rule rather than the exception.
In the line of instruments the harp had had its day, its never ending tuning having been one of the most operative forces in the development of the ear. Its successor, the lute, equally weak in tenacity of intonation, but with greater artistic resources, had been fully tested in every direction. The organ had attained a very respectable size, even when measured according to modern ideas, and its influence in the direction of harmonic education had been well begun. The keyed instrument, of which our pianoforte is the living representative, had found its keyboard and a practical method of eliciting tones, which, whatever their weakness, were at least better than those of the lute, the chitarrone, the psaltery or harp. Best of all, the violin had found master hands able to shape it into a model graceful to the eye, and sonorous beyond anything else which the art of music can show. True, it was not until about sixty years later that the powers of this instrument in the direction of solos were fully recognized, or, indeed, brought before the public. This was the work of Corelli, whose sonatas were published in the third quarter of the century with which we are now dealing. The viol, the weaker predecessor of the violin, had made great headway, and Monteverde put himself on record in 1607, much to his credit, by placing it at the head of his orchestra.
Moreover, not only were the instruments of music in a condition creditable even in the light of modern ideas, but the popular taste for music was more lively and far-reaching than ever before. Everywhere in the civilized[Pg 213] world the practice of music was the universal attribute of a gentleman. In Italy we shall find a circle composed of some of the best minds of the nation engaged in the regular study of classical learning, and in discussions having for their object the re-discovery of the art of ancient music, which the seekers wrongfully imagined to have been as far superior to the music then in vogue as the sculpture of the ancients had been superior to that of mediæval Italy. In no country was the art of music more highly esteemed, or, we may add, in a more advanced state than in England.
Richard Braithwaite, a writer of the reign of Elizabeth, formulated certain rules for the government of the house of an earl, in which the earl was "to keep five musicians, skillful in that commendable sweet science"; and they were required to teach "the earl's children to sing and to play upon the bass viol, the virginals, the lute, the bandour or cittern." When he gave great feasts, the musicians were "to play whilst the service was going to the table, upon sackbuts, cornets, shawms and such other instruments going with wind, and upon viols, violins or other broken music during repast." In barber shops they had lutes and virginals wherewith the gentlemen might amuse themselves while awaiting their turn. It was the same in reception rooms; musical instruments were provided as the surest method of enabling waiting guests to amuse themselves.
If it be asked why it was that in spite of this high esteem for music so little came out of its cultivation in England that was creditable upon the highest plane, according to the scales in which we are accustomed to weigh the music of Italy and Germany, the answer is not hard to find. It was in consequence of the little[Pg 214] attention paid to musical learning in the highest sense, as compared with the learning and training in musicianship on the continent. English music died out, or grew small, for want of depth of earth. High ideals and thorough training in the technique are two prime conditions of a successful development of an art. Besides, the art of music suffered irreparable damage in England at the hands of the Puritans. The protectorate lasted long enough to put the art under an eclipse from which it did not fully emerge until nearly our own time.
A similar fondness for this form of art pervaded all European countries. In Italy music was the delight of the common people and the favorite pursuit of the great. In Germany the Reformation and the influence of Luther had set the people singing. The organ had attained an advanced state there, and other instruments of every sort were cultivated. It was the same in France. The love for music was universal. Hence the times were ripe for a great advance in art. There was concentrated upon music an attention which it has rarely enjoyed at any other period of its history, and the advances now to be mentioned were correspondingly abundant and striking.
The contrapuntal schools had done more to educate harmonic perception than is commonly supposed. All the devices of counterpoint, as we have them to-day, were invented by the various schools of this period, and brought to a high degree of perfection. But the learning had somewhat overshot its mark. The multiplicity of parts in the compositions of Willaert, and the other masters of the polyphonic schools, served for the cultivation of chord perception just as surely as if they had intentionally written chord successions without troubling[Pg 215] themselves with imitative canon in any degree. For, when there were so many voice parts as ten, fifteen or twenty within the limits of the compass of the human organ, that is to say, mainly within the limits of two octaves and a half, the parts had no recourse but to cross continually, and since there was no aid afforded the ear by differences in tone color between one voice part and another, it necessarily followed that they fell upon the ear with the effect not of voice parts, in which the melody of each could be followed independently of the others, but rather as chord masses, in which here and there a prominent melodic phrase occasionally emerged, only to be lost the next moment by the prominence of a bit of the melody of some other voice. The effect of a composition of this kind was no other than that of a succession of chords, and the ear was as thoroughly educated to chord perception by this class of music as if the composer had intended only to write successions of chords. Still the training of these schools, while incidentally affording education to the ear upon the harmonic side, was thoroughly contrapuntal, and the study of every composer was to make something more elaborate than anything that had been written by his predecessors.
Nevertheless there was an influence in another direction. An art form was invented, which by the end of this period had established itself as the type of a musical form whenever the composer would arrive at something more spontaneous than could conveniently be attained by the way of a motette or conduit. That form was the madrigal. The meaning of the name is unknown. Some have derived it from Mary, and point to the sacred madrigals, many of which were composed by all the contrapuntal writers. Others have assigned a different[Pg 216] origin for it, and it is not possible now to decide which is the true one. Enough if we find this form emerging from obscurity by the middle of the fifteenth century. The first writer of compositions under this title whose name is known to us was Busnois, and in the same collection are compositions of the same class by many other composers of the Netherlandish schools. A madrigal was a secular composition, generally devoted to love, but in polyphonic style, and in one of the ecclesiastical modes. They were always vocal down to the seventeenth century, but from that time forward they were generally marked for voices and instruments. One of the best composers of madrigals was Arkadelt, of the Netherlandish school. The success of the great Orlando Lassus in this school has already been mentioned, together with the name of one of the best known of his compositions in this line (p. 167).
The strange modulations, like that from F to E flat in one of Arkadelt's madrigals, are current incidents of the ecclesiastical mode in which they are written. Many of the secular works of this class are hardly to be distinguished from those intended for the Church, and some are to be met with, having two sets of words, one secular, occasionally almost profane; the other sacred, some hymn or other from the offices of divine service.
In England this school had a great currency, and the madrigals of the British writers of the seventeenth century are every whit as free and melodious as the best of those of the Italian school. The number of writers of this class of works was innumerable, so much so that we might well class it as the ruling art form of the century, just as the dramatic song was in the eighteenth century, the fugue in the last half of it, and the sonata in the[Pg 217] beginning of the nineteenth. Everybody wrote madrigals who ever wrote music at all. According to the dates of collections published, the English followed the Italian composers. The earliest Italian compositions of this class are contained in three collections printed by Ottaviano di Petrucci, the inventor of the process of printing music from movable type. These collections were published in Venice, 1501-1503, and copies are still retained in the library at Bologna and at Vienna. The English cultivation of this form of composition became general toward the last of this century, and in the first part of the next ensuing, and it is but just to say that the English composers finally surpassed the continental in this school, and developed out of it a beautiful art genre of their own, the glee. Toward the latter part of the sixteenth century certain attempts were made in Italy at something resembling our opera, but in place of solo pieces by any of the performers there were madrigals. When Juliet, for example, would soliloquize upon the balcony, she did so in a madrigal, the remaining four parts being carried by chambermaids inside. When Romeo climbed the balcony and breathed his sweet vows to Juliet, one or two of his friends around the corner carried the missing melodies in which he sought to improvise his warm affection. The absurdity of the proceeding was manifest, but it needed yet another point of emphasis. There was a grand wedding in Venice in 1595, at which the music consisted of madrigals, all in slow time and minor key. The contradiction between the doleful music and the festive occasion was too plain to be ignored, and led, presently, to the invention of a totally different style of song of which later there is much to say.[Pg 218]
The seventeenth century was one of the most memorable in the history of music, not so much, however, for what it fully accomplished as for the new ideas brought out and in part developed. The specific part of the general development of music which this century accomplished was the development of free melodic expression. While, as already noticed, the musical productions of the preceding centuries had manifested an increasing melodic force and propriety, the secret of genuine melodic expression had yet to be found. In the madrigal and motette the conditions were wholly unsuited to the development of this part of music. Instead of one prominent voice, in which the main interest of the production centered itself, the composer of that period had a certain number of equally important voice parts, all taking part in the development of the one leading idea of his piece. Melodically speaking, the standpoint was wrong and the situation false. Melody means individuality, individualism; the free representation of a personality in its own self-determined motion. At the point of the year 1600, speaking with sufficient exactness for ordinary purposes, the ruling standpoint of musical production changed, in the effort to rediscover the lost vocal forms of the Greek drama. The new problem was that of finding, for every moment and every speech of the drama, a form of utterance suitable to the sentiment and the occasion. Thus entered into music, through the ministry of self-forgetfulness, the most important principle which has actuated its later progress, the principle namely, of dramatic expression—in other words, the representative principle, the effort to represent in music something which until now had been outside of music. Out of this principle, co-operating with that other idea[Pg 219] of two centuries later, the inherent interest of the individual, has grown the richness and manifold luxuriance of modern romantic music, together with the entire province of opera and oratorio. We have now to trace the steps which led to this great transformation in the art of music; and to illustrate the application of the new principles to the province of instrumental music, which had no beginning of genuine art value before this period. When examined with reference to the matured productions of the century next ensuing, those of the seventeenth appear quite as much like apprentice efforts as those of the latter part of the period covered in the preceding book of our story; but they have in them, however, the seeds of the later development, and stand to us, therefore, in the character of first fruits. To state it still more unmistakably, we have to trace in the operations of the seventeenth century the origin of dramatic song, the beginnings of free instrumental music, the discovery of the art of voice training and the formation of what is called the "old Italian school of singing," and the operation of the representative element in music, together with the new forms created through its entrance into art.
The musical movement of this century in its entirety was a part of the general operation of mind, which was now of great amplitude and spontaneity. The fervor of the Renaissance indeed had passed, having resulted in the creation of masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, painting and poetry during the previous two centuries. Music came to expression last of the forms of art, and when mental movement was less intense. For this reason the Italian mind failed to rule in it after the early beginnings in the new direction had been made.[Pg 220] The representative element entered the art of music in Italy; but the mastery of its application, and the development of new forms fully completing the representation, were carried on by other nationalities where the mental movement still retained the pristine vigor of new impulses and rich vitality.
The city of Florence was the center where the drama and song-like melody found its beginning. Almost immediately, however, Venice became the home of music, and fostered the growth of dramatic song for more than half a century. At this time, as for a century previous, Venice was the most active intellectual center of Europe. Perhaps nothing gives so clear a realization of this supremacy as the statistics of books printed in the leading centers of Europe from 1470 to 1500. The largest centers were Strassburg, with 526; Basle, 320; Leipsic, 351; Nuremburg, 382; Cologne, 530; Paris, 751; Rome, 925; Bologna, 298; Milan, 625, while Venice heads the list with 2,835. Toward the end of the century, the appearance of the genius, Alexander Scarlatti, effected the transference of the musical supremacy of Italy to Naples.
URING the last decade of the sixteenth century a company of
Florentine gentlemen were in the habit of meeting at the house of
Count Bardi for the study of ancient literature. Their attention had
concentrated itself upon the drama of the Greeks, and the one thing
which they sought to discover was the music of ancient tragedy, the
stately and measured intonation to which the great periods of
Æschylus, Euripides and Sophocles had been uttered. The alleged
fragments of Pindar's music since discovered by Athanasius Kircher (p.
69) were not yet known, and they had nothing whatever to guide their
researches beyond the mathematical computations of Ptolemy and the
other Greek writers. At length, one evening, Vincenzo Galilei, father
of the astronomer Galileo, presented himself with a monody. Taking a
scene from Dante's "Purgatorio" (the episode of Ugolini), he sang or
chanted it to music of his own production, with the accompaniment of
the viola played by himself. The assembly was in raptures. "Surely,"
they said, "this must have been the style of the music of the famous
drama of Athens." Thereupon others set themselves to composing
monodies, which, as yet, were[Pg 222] not arias, but something between a
recitative and an aria, having measure and a certain regularity of
tune, but in general the freedom of the chant. Among the number at
Count Bardi's was the poet Rinuccini, who prepared a drama called
"Dafne." The music of this was composed in part by an amateur named
Caccini, and in part by Jacopo Peri, all being members of this
studious circle meeting at the house of Count Bardi. "Dafne" was
performed in 1597 at the house of Count Corsi, with great success, but
the music has been lost, and nothing more definite is known about it.
This beginning of opera, for so it was, was also the beginning of
opera in Germany, as we shall presently see, for about twenty years
later a copy of "Dafne" was carried to Dresden for production there
before the court, but when the libretto had been translated into
German, it was found unsuited to the music of the Italian copy,
whereupon the Dresden director, Heinrich Schütz, wrote new music for
it, and thus became the composer of the first German opera ever
written. In 1600 the marriage of Catherine de Medici with Henry IV of
France was celebrated at Florence with great pomp, and Peri was
commissioned to undertake a new opera, for which Rinuccini composed
the text "Eurydice." The work was given with great éclat, and was
shortly after printed. Only one copy of the first edition is now known
to be in existence, and that, by a curious accident, is in the
Newberry Library at Chicago. The British Museum has a copy of the
second edition of 1608. The opera of "Eurydice" is short, the printed
copy containing only fifty-eight pages, and the music is almost
entirely recitative. There are two or three short choruses; there is
one orchestral interlude for three flutes, extending to about twenty
measures in all, but there is nothing like[Pg 223] a finale or ensemble
piece. Nevertheless, this is the beginning, out of which afterward
grew the entire flower of Italian opera. On page 225 is an extract.
[From the first opera, "Eurydice" (1600). Jacopo Peri.]
The new style thus invented was known to the Italians as il stilo rappresentivo, or the representative style, that is to say, the dramatic style, and there is some dispute as to the real author of the invention. About the same time with the production of "Eurydice," a Florentine musician, Emilio del Cavaliere, wrote the music to a sacred drama, of which the text had been composed for him by Laura Guidiccioni, the title being "La Rappresentazione del Anima e del Corpo." The piece was an allegorical one, very elaborate in its structure, and written throughout in the representative style, of which Cavaliere claimed to be the inventor. This oratorio, which was the first ever written, was produced at the oratory of St. Maria in Vallicella, in the month of February, ten months before the appearance of "Eurydice" at Florence. It is evident, therefore, that if the style had been in any manner derived from the Florentine experiments already noted, it must have been from the earlier opera "Dafne" and not from "Eurydice." The principal characters were "Il Tempo" (time), "La Vita" (life), "Il Mondo" (the world), etc. The orchestra consisted of one lira doppia, one clavicembalo, one chitarrone and two flutes. No part is written for violin. At one part of the performance there was a ballet. The whole was performed in church, as already noticed, as a part of religious service.
Seven years later we enter upon the second period of the opera, when, on the occasion of the marriage of Francesco Gongeaza with Margherita, Infanta of Savoy, Rinuccini prepared the libretti for two operas, entitled "Dafne" and "Arianna," the second of which was set to[Pg 224] music by Claudio Monteverde, the ducal musical director, a man of extraordinary genius. The first of these operas has long since been forgotten, but Monteverde made a prodigious effect with his. The scene where Ariadne bewails the departure of her faithless lover affected the audience to tears. Monteverde was immediately commissioned to write another opera, for which he took the subject of "Orfeo," and, being himself an accomplished violinist, he made an important addition to the orchestral appointments previously attempted in opera. The instruments used were the following:
2 Gravicembani.
2 Contrabassi de viola.
10 Viole da brazzo.
1 Arpa doppio.
2 Violini piccolo alla Francese.
2 Chitaroni.
2 Organi de Legno.
2 Bassa da Gamba.
4 Tromboni.
1 Regale.
2 Cornetti.
1 Flautino alla vigesima secunda.
1 Clarino, con 3 trombi sordine.
A very decided attempt is made in this work at orchestra coloring, each character being furnished with a combination of instruments appropriate to his place in the drama. These works were not given in public, but only in palaces for the great, and it was not for more than twenty years that a public opera house was erected in Venice. In 1624 Monteverde at the instance of Girolamo Mocenigo composed an intermezzo, "Il Combatimento di Tancredi e Clorinda," in which he introduced for the first time two important orchestral effects: The pizzicati (plucking the strings with the fingers) and the tremolo.[Pg 226][Pg 225] These occur in the scene where Clorinda, disguised as a knight, fights a duel with her lover Tancredi, who, not knowing his opponent, gives her a fatal wound. The strokes of the sword are accompanied by the pizzicati of the violins, and the suspense when Clorinda falls is characterized by the tremolo—two devices universal in melodrama to the present day.
Monteverde had already for some time been a resident in Venice as director of the music at St. Mark's, where his salary had originally been established at 300 ducats per annum, and a house in the canon's close. In 1616 his salary was raised to 500 ducats, and he gave himself up entirely to the service of the republic. The first opera house was erected in 1637 and was followed within a few years by two other opera houses in Venice. In these places Monteverde's subsequent works were produced. The greater number of his manuscripts are hopelessly lost. We possess only eight books of madrigals, a volume of canzonettes, the complete edition of "Orpheus," and a quantity of church music.
The new path opened by this great composer was followed assiduously by a multitude of Italian musicians. Among these the more distinguished names are those of Cavalli, who wrote thirty-four operas for Venice alone, Legrenzi and Cesti. The latter wrote six operas, some of which were very successful. By 1699 there were eleven theaters in Venice at which operas were habitually given; at Rome there were three; in Bologna one; and in Naples one. It would take us too far to discuss in detail the successive steps in the history during this century, since in the nature of the case, an individual work like an opera can with difficulty rise above the popular musical phraseology of the day, the object being immediate[Pg 227] success with a public largely uncultivated. Hence, popular operas for the most part are short-lived, rarely retaining their popularity more than thirty years.
The greatest genius in opera in this century after Monteverde was Alessandro Scarlatti, of Naples, the principal of the conservatory there, and, we might say, the inventor of the Italian art of singing—bel canto. For as there had been no monody, so there had been no solo singing, and as the operas of the first three-quarters of this century, in spite of the improvements of Monteverde, consisted mostly of recitative, there was still no singing in the modern acceptation of the term. Scarlatti introduced new forms. To the recitativo secco, or unaccompanied recitative, which until now had been the principal dependence for the movement of the drama, he added the recitativo stromentato, or accompanied recitative, in which the instruments afforded a dramatic coloring for the text of the singer. To these, again, he added a third element, the aria. The first he employed for the ordinary business of the stage; the second for the expression of deep pathos; the third for strongly individualized soliloquy. These three types of vocal delivery remain valid, and are still used by composers in the same way as by Scarlatti. His first opera was produced in Rome at the palace of Christina, ex-queen of Sweden, in 1680. This was followed by 108 others, the most of which were produced in Naples. The most celebrated of these were "Pompei" (Naples, 1684), "La Theodora" (Rome, 1693), "Il Triompho de la Liberta" (Venice, 1707) and, most celebrated of all, "La Principessa Fidele." In addition to this he wrote a large number of cantatas, more or less dramatic in character. Scarlatti not only created the aria, calling for sustained[Pg 228] and impassioned singing, but also invented or discovered methods of training singers to perform these numbers successfully. He was the founder of the Italian school of singing, and the external model upon which it was based undoubtedly was furnished by the violin which, having been perfected by the Amati, as already noted in the previous chapter, and its solo capacities having been brought out by Archangelo Corelli, whose first violin sonatas were published a few years before Scarlatti's first opera, had now established a standard of melodic phrasing and impassioned delivery superior to anything which had previously been known. It was a pupil of Scarlatti, Nicolo Porpora (1686-1766), who carried forward the work begun by his master. Porpora was even a greater teacher of singing than Scarlatti himself, and his pupils became the leading singers in Europe during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The progress of vocal cultivation was remarkably helped by the fact that at this time women were not permitted to appear upon the stage, all the female parts being taken by male sopranos, castrati. These artificial sopranos, having no other career before them than that of operatic singing, devoted themselves vigorously to the technique of their art, and were efficient agents in awakening a taste for florid singing impossible for ordinary or untrained voices. Women did not appear upon the stage in opera until toward the middle of this century. Händel, in London, had male sopranos such as Farinelli, Senesimo, and the earlier of the female sopranos, of whom the vicious Cuzzoni was a shining example. The artistic merits of Porpora have been greatly exaggerated by certain writers, notably by Mme. George Sand in her "Consuelo," where he figures as one of the greatest and most devoted of[Pg 229] artists. Her work, however, has the excellence of affording a very good representation of the artistic end proposed by the Italian masters of singing in their best moments. Porpora spent the early part of his life in Naples, but afterward he resided for some time in Dresden, Vienna, Rome and Venice, being principal of a conservatory in the latter place. In the latter years of his life (1736) he was invited to London to compose operas in competition with Händel, in which calling he but poorly succeeded. Porpora represents the ideal which has ruled Italian opera from his time to the present, the ideal, namely, of the pleasing, the well sounding, and the vocally agreeable. He is responsible for the fanciful roulades, the long arias and the many features of this part of dramatic music which please the unthinking, but mark such a wide departure from the severe and noble, if narrow, ideal of the original inventors of this form of art.
It is to be regretted that the limits of the present work do not permit the introduction of selections of music sufficiently extended for illustrating the finer modifications of style effected by the successive masters named in the text. The brief extracts following are taken from the excellent lectures of the late John Hullah upon "Transitional Periods in Musical History." The same valuable and suggestive work contains a number of more extended selections from these and other little known masters of the period, for which reason the book forms a useful addition to the library of teachers, schools, etc. Other illustrations will be found in Gevaert's "Les Gloires d'Italie" ("The Glories of Italy"). There are sixty arias in this collection, all well edited, and chosen for their effectiveness for public performance at the present day.[Pg 230]
ARIA PARLANTE.—"LASCIATE MI MORIR."
[From the opera "Ariadne," 1607. Monteverde.]
EXTRACT FROM SONG, "VAGHE STELLE."
[From the opera "Erismena," 1655. Francesco Cavalli.]
[From a cantata. Alessandro Scarlatti.]
ROM Florence the art of dramatic song spread to all other parts of
the world, yet not so rapidly as would have been supposed. For it was
not until nearly half of the century had already elapsed that opera
made a beginning in France, the country where ruled the unfortunate
princess for whose nuptials the first opera had been written. French
opera grew out of the ballet. This term, which at present is
restricted to entertainments in which dancing is the principal
feature, and the story is entirely told in pantomime, had formerly a
more extended signification. It was equivalent to the English term
"Mask," a play in which dancing, songs and even dialogue found place.
This light and sprightly form of drama has been favored in France from
a remote period. As early as the first quarter of the seventeenth
century Antoine Boesset (1585-1643) composed ballets for the
entertainments of the king, Louis XIII. His son succeeded him at the
court of Louis XIV. Some of the ballets of the elder Boesset were
produced in 1635, and in these we must find the beginnings of French
opera, if indeed we do not go back still farther, and find it in the[Pg 236]
play of "Robin and Marian," written by Adam de la Halle. In fact,
dramatic entertainment has been indigenous in France from an early
date, and it is by no means easy to say that at any particular moment
the line was crossed where modern opera begins. The ballets of Boesset
were, no doubt, slight upon the dramatic side, having even less of
serious intention in the music than the lightest of comic opera of the
present day.
The impulse to grand opera came from a different quarter. A sagacious cleric, the Abbé Perrin, heard, either at Florence or in Paris, from the company of Italian singers brought over in 1645, Peri's "Eurydice," which made a great impression upon him, and he suggested to a musician of his acquaintance, Robert Cambert, the production of another work in similar style. Several things in this account appear strange, but strangest of all, the total ignorance that prevailed in Paris of the vast development that had been made in Italian opera by Monteverde and the other Italians, during the forty years since Peri's experiment had been first composed. With the leisurely movement of the times, the new work of the French composers was produced in 1659. This was "La Pastorale," performed with the greatest applause at the chateau of Issy. This was followed by several other works in similar style, "Ariane," "Adonis" and the like, and in 1669 Perrin secured a patent giving him a monopoly of operatic performances in France for a period of years.
Meanwhile a certain ambitious and unscrupulous youngster was feeling his way to a position where he might make himself recognized. It was the youthful violinist, Jean Baptiste Lulli, the illegitimate son of a Florentine gentleman, his dates being about 1633-1687.[Pg 237] Lulli had been taught the rudiments of knowledge, including that of the violin, by a kind-hearted priest of his native city, and, when yet a mere lad, made his way to Paris in the suite of the duke of Guise. Once in Paris his way was open. Gifted with a quick wit, a total absence of principle or honor, but of insatiable ambition, he made his way from one position to another, and at length had been so prominent as a composer of dance music, and leader of the king's violins, as to have opportunity to distinguish himself by composing the music for the ballet of "Alcidiane," and others, in which Louis XIV himself danced. Lulli's ambition was still farther stimulated and his style influenced by the study of the music of Cavalli, for several of whose operas he composed ballets, upon the occasion of their production in France.
Within thirteen years he produced no less than thirty ballets. In these he himself took part with considerable success as dancer and comic actor. The success of Cambert and Perrin's operas of "Pomone" and "The Pains and Pleasures of Love" (1671) awakened in him the desire of supplanting them in the regard of the king. After intrigues creditable neither to himself nor to the powers influenced by them, he succeeded in this same year in having the patent of Perrin set aside, and a new one issued, giving him the sole right of producing operas in France for a period of years. Then ensued a career of operatic productivity most creditable and influential from every point of view. In the space of fourteen years Lulli produced twenty operas, or divertissements, of which the best, perhaps, were "Alceste," 1674, "Thesée," 1675, "Amadis de Gaule," 1684, and "Roland," 1685. Lulli made certain improvements upon the Italian[Pg 238] models, which he originally followed, making the recitative more stately, and employing the accompanying orchestra for purposes of dramatic coloration. He was a great master of the stage, and introduced his effects with consummate judgment. His declamation of the text was most excellent, and in this respect his operas have served as models in the traditions of the French stage from that time until now. As a musician, however, he was clever rather than deep, and the music is often monotonous and rather stilted. Nevertheless, his operas held the stage for many years after the death of their author, and occasional revivals have taken place at intervals, even after the advance in taste and musical knowledge had effectually quenched their ability to please a popular audience. His "Roland" was performed as an incident in the regular season at Paris as late as 1778, when Gluck's "Orpheus" had already been heard. The example of Lulli's music given on pages 240 and 241 is from this work. The melody is vigorous and appropriate.
The most commendable feature of this beginning of opera in France was the attention given to the musical treatment of the vernacular of the country. The principle once recognized, that opera not in the vernacular of the country can never have more than an incidental and adventitious importance, has always been maintained in France. The Académie de Musique, for which the patent was granted to Perrin, and transferred to Lulli, has been maintained with few interruptions ever since, and has been the home of a native French opera, constantly increasing in vigor, originality and interest. Italian opera has been fashionable in Paris for brief periods, and as the amusement of the fashionable world, but the native opera has nearly always held the place of honor in the[Pg 239] affections of the people, and the foreign works produced there have been translated into the French language.
SONG.—"ROLAND, COUREZ AUX ARMES."
[From the opera "Roland," 1685. J.B. Lulli.]
In Germany the contrary was the case for more than a century later. The first operatic performance, indeed, was given in the German language. A copy of Peri's "Dafne" was sent to Dresden and as a preparation for performance the text was translated, but it was found impossible to adapt the German words to the Italian recitative, owing to the different structure of the German sentences, bringing the emphasis in totally different places. In this stress the local master, Heinrich Schütz, was called upon to compose new music, which he did, and the work was given in 1627. This beginning of German opera, however, was totally accidental. All that was intended was the repetition of the famous Italian work. Nor did the persons concerned appear to recognize the importance and high significance of the act in which they had co-operated, for no other German operas were given there or elsewhere until much later. Schütz, moreover, did not pursue the career of an operatic composer, but turned his attention mainly to church music and oratorio, in which department he highly distinguished himself, as we will presently have occasion to examine farther.
It was not until the beginning of the century next ensuing, that German opera began to take root and grow. The beginning was made in the free city of Hamburg, which was at that time the richest and most independent city of Germany, and, being remote from the centers of political disturbance, it suffered less from the thirty years' war than most other parts of the country. The prime mover here was Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739), born at[Pg 242] Weissenfels, near Leipsic, and educated at the Thomas School. His attention had been directed to dramatic music early, and at the age of nineteen he was commissioned to write a pastoral, "Ismene," for the court of Brunswick. The success of this gained him another libretto, "Basilius," also composed with success. He removed to Hamburg in 1694, and for forty years remained a favorite with the public, composing for that theater no less than 116 operas, of which the first, "Irene," was produced in 1697. In 1700 he opened a series of popular concerts, the prototypes of the star combinations of the present day. In these entertainments the greatest virtuosi were heard, the most popular and best singers, and the newest and best music. His direction of the opera did not begin until 1703; here also he proved himself a master. The place of this composer in the history of art is mainly an adventitious one, depending upon the chronological circumstance of his preceding others in the same field, rather than upon the more important reason of his having set a style, or established an ideal, for later masters. His operas subsided into farce, the serious element being almost wholly lacking, and, according to Riemann, the last of them shows no improvement over the first. Their only merit is that they are not imitations of the Italian nor upon mythological subjects, but from common life. In his later life he devoted himself to the composition of church music, in which department he accomplished notable, if somewhat conventional, success. The Hamburg theater furnished a field for another somewhat famous figure in musical history, that of Johann Mattheson, a singularly versatile and gifted man, a native of that city (1681-1764). After a liberal education, in which his musical taste and[Pg 243] talent became distinguished at an early age, he appeared on the stage as singer, and in one of his own operas, after singing his rôle upon the stage, came back into the orchestra in order to conduct from the harpsichord the performance, until his rôle required him again upon the stage. Indeed, it was this eccentricity which occasioned a quarrel between him and Händel, who resented the implication that he himself was incapable of carrying on the performance. Mattheson composed a large number of works, including many church cantatas of the style made more celebrated in the works of Sebastian Bach, later, the intention of these works having been to render the church services more interesting by affording the congregation a practical place in the exercises. Mattheson is best known at the present time by his "Complete Orchestral Director," a compilation of musical knowledge and notions, intended for the instruction of those intending to act in this capacity.
S already noticed in the previous chapter, the oratorio had its
origin at the same time as opera, both being phases of the stilo
rappresentativo, or the effort to afford musical utterance to
dramatic poetry—at first merely a solemn and impressive utterance,
later, as the possibilities of the new phase of art unfolded
themselves, a descriptive utterance, in which the music colored and
emphasized the moods of the text and the situation. The idea of
oratorio was not new. All through the Middle Ages they seem to have
had miracle plays in the Church, as accessories of the less solemn
services, and as means of instruction in biblical history. The
mediæval plays had very plain music, which followed entirely the
cadences of the plain song, and made no attempt at representing the
dramatic situation or the feelings growing out of it. All that the
music sought to do was to afford a decorous utterance, having in it,
from association with the cadence of the music of the Church,
something impressive, yet not in any manner growing out of the drama
to which it was set. The Florentine music drama was something entirely
different from this, or soon became so, and in oratorio this was just
as apparent as in opera, although the opportunities of vocal display
were not made so much of.[Pg 245]
The modern oratorio exists in two types: The dramatic cantata, of which the form and general idea were established by Carissimi; and the church cantata, which differed from the Italian type chiefly in being of a more exclusively religious character, and of having occasional opportunities for the congregation to join in a chorale. The former of these types was established by Giacomo Carissimi (1604-1674), who was born near Rome, and held his first musical position as director at Assisi, but presently obtained the directorship at the Church of St. Apollinaris in Rome, where he served all the remainder of his long and active life. Without having been a genius of the first order, it was Carissimi's good fortune to exercise an important influence upon the course of musical progress, particularly in the direction of oratorio, in which all the more attractive elements came from his innovations. Carissimi was a prolific composer, having constant occasion for new and pleasing attractions for the musical service of the rich and important Jesuit church, where he held his appointment. These compositions are of every sort, but cantatas form the larger portion, consisting of passages of Scripture set in consecutive form, with due alternation of solo and chorus, in a style at once pleasing and dramatically appropriate. The majority of his compositions have been lost, many of them going to the waste paper baskets when the Jesuits were suppressed. Enough remain, however, to indicate the interest and importance of his work. Moreover, there, is another curious commentary upon the value of his music, in the fact that Händel took twelve measures well nigh bodily out of one of the choruses in Carissimi's "Jephthah," and incorporated them in "Hear Jacob's God" in his own "Samson." Mr. Hullah gives an[Pg 246] excellent aria from this work, but it is too long for insertion here. The more important of Carissimi's innovations were in the direction of pleasing qualities in the accompaniments, and agreeable rhythms. He was teacher of several of the most important Italian musicians of the following generation, among them being Bassani, Cesti, Buononcini and Alessandro Scarlatti.
Fig. 47.
HEINRICH SCHÜTZ.
The other type of oratorio received important assistance toward full realization in Germany, at the hands of Mattheson, as already noticed, and from those of Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), who, after preliminary studies in[Pg 247] Italy, where he acquired the Italian representative style from Gabrieli in Venice, in 1609, three years later returned to Germany, and in 1615 was appointed chapel master to the elector of Saxony, a position which he held with slight interruptions until his death, at the advanced age already indicated. Notice has already been taken in a former chapter of his appearance in the field of opera composition, in setting new music to Rinuccini's "Dafne," on account of the German words being incapable of adaptation to the music of Peri. But before this he had demonstrated his versatility and talent in the production of certain settings of the psalms of David, in the form of motettes for eight and more voices. In his second work, an oratorio upon the "Resurrection," he shows the same striving after a freer dramatic expression. His great work "Symphoniæ Sacræ," consists of cantatas for voices, with instrumental accompaniments, in which the instrumental part shows serious effort after dramatic coloration. The first of his works in this style was the "Last Seven Words" (1645), which contained the distinguishing marks of all the later Passion music. It consisted of a narrative, reflections, chorales, and the words of the Lord Himself. Many years later he produced his great Passions (1665-1666), and in these he accomplishes as much of the dramatic expression as possible by means of choruses, which are highly dramatic in style and very spirited. The voluminous works of this master have now been reprinted, and some of them possess a degree of interest warranting their occasional presentation. Schütz occupies an intermediate position between the masters of the old school, with whom the traditions of ecclesiastical modes governed everything, and those who have passed entirely beyond them and[Pg 248] polyphony, into modern monody. The music of Schütz is always polyphonic, but there is much of dramatic feeling in it, nevertheless. He was one of those clear-headed, practical masters, who, without being geniuses in the intuitive sense, nevertheless contrive to impress themselves upon the subsequent activity in their province, chiefly through their sagacity in seizing new forms and bringing them into practicable perfection. Into the forms of the Passion, as Schütz created it, Bach poured the wealth of his devotion and his inspiration; so later Beethoven put into the symphony form, created to his hand by the somewhat mechanical Haydn, the amplitude of his musical imagination, which, but for this preparatory work of the lesser master, would have been driven to the creation of entirely new forms for his thoughts, not only hampering the composer, but—which would have been equally unfavorable to his success—depriving him of an audience prepared to appreciate the greatness of the new genius through their previous training in the same general style.
HE beginning of instrumental music, apart from vocal, is to be found
in the latter part of the sixteenth century, but the main advances
toward freedom of style and spontaneous expression were made during
the seventeenth, and, as we might expect, originally in Italy, where
the art of music was more prosperous, and incitations to advance were
more numerous and diversified. Upon all accounts the honor of the
first place in the account of this part of the development of modern
music is to be given to Andreas Gabrieli (1510-1586), who from a
singing boy in the choir of St. Mark's, under the direction of Adrian
Willaert, succeeded in 1566 to the position of second organist, where
his fame attracted many pupils. Among the numberless compositions
emanating from his pen were masses, madrigals, and a considerable
variety of pieces for organ alone, bearing the names of "Canzone,"
"Ricerari," "Concerte," and five-voiced Sonatas, the latter
printed in 1586, being perhaps the earliest application of this now
celebrated name to instrumental compositions. The pieces of Gabrieli
were mostly imitations of compositions for the voice, fugal in style,
and with never among them a melody fully carried out. Among the pupils
of Andreas Gabrieli were Hans[Pg 250] Leo Hassler, the celebrated Dresden
composer, and Swelinck, the equally celebrated Netherlandish organist,
of whom there is more to be said.
The beginning of organ composition, and the higher art of organ playing, made by Andreas Gabrieli, was carried much farther by his nephew and pupil, Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612), who, born and trained at Venice, early entered the service of its great cathedral, and in 1585 succeeded Claudio Merulo as first organist of the same. As a composer Giovanni Gabrieli continued the double-chorus effects which had been such a feature of the St. Mark's liturgy since the time of Willaert, but especially he distinguished himself in improving the style of organ playing, and in giving it a freedom and almost secular character somewhat surprising for the times. A large number of his compositions of all sorts are in print, very many "for voices or instruments." The alternative affords a good idea of the subordinate position still occupied by instrumental music, but a beginning had been made, which later was to lead to great things.
Fig. 48.
JEAN PIETERS SWELINCK.
The art of organ playing found its next great exponents in Holland and Germany, all of them having been pupils of the Venetian master. The most celebrated of these, considered purely as an organist, was Jean Pieters Swelinck (1560-1621), who was born at Deventer in Holland, and died at Amsterdam. He was more celebrated as a performer and improviser than for the instrumental pieces he published. Among his pupils was the celebrated Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), organist at Halle, who is memorable as the first who made artistic use of the chorale. Scheidt is also famous as the author of a book upon organ tabulature, or the notation for organ, which in Germany at this period was different from that[Pg 251] of the piano, and in fact much resembled the tabulature for the lute, from which it was derived. It consists of a combination of lines and signs, by the aid of which the organist was supposed to be capable of deciphering the intentions of the composer. No especial importance appears to have been attached to the difference of notation for instruments and voices in this period. And in fact, until our own times certain instruments, the viola, for example, have had their own notation, different from the voices, and different from that of other instruments. Another celebrated German organist of this period was Johann Hermann Schein, who, with Scheidt and Swelinck, constituted the three great German musical S's of the sixteenth century. Schein (1586-1630) was appointed cantor of the Leipsic St. Thomas school in 1615, and worked[Pg 252] there as above. His numberless compositions are more free in style than the average of the century, and a number of them are distinctly secular. Nevertheless, in the development of instrumental music he had but small part, not being one of the highly gifted original geniuses who impress themselves upon following generations. The great German master of this period was Schütz, chapel master at Dresden, whose career forms part of the story of the oratorio, a form of music which he had so large a share in shaping into its present form.
Fig. 49.
SAMUEL SCHEIDT.
In order to come once more into the path of musical empire, we must return again to Italy, where there was an organist at St. Peter's, who had in him the elements of greatness and originality. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1587-1640) was organist of St. Peter's at Rome from[Pg 253] 1615. His education had been in part acquired in Italy, and in part in the Netherlands. As a virtuoso he attained an extraordinary success, and one of his recitals is reputed to have been attended by as many as 30,000 people. He distinguished himself as composer no less than as organist, and particularly by his compositions in free style. His Ricerari, Concertos and Canzones were all protests against the bondage of instrumental music to the fetters of vocal forms. It was the compositions of this master, together with those of Froberger, that Sebastian Bach desired to have, and which, in fact, he stole out of his brother's book case, and copied in the moonlight nights.
It would take us too far were we to enumerate all the composers who distinguished themselves in this century, no one of them succeeding in composing anything satisfactory to this later generation, but all contributing something toward the liberation of instrumental music, and all adding something to its too limited resources. Among these names were those of Johann Kasper Kerl, organist at St. Stephen's church in Vienna, who, after having served with distinction at Munich, returned later and died at Vienna in 1690. Another of these German masters, also one of those whose compositions Bach wished to study, was Johann Pachelbel, of Nuremberg (1635-1706). In 1674 he was assistant organist at Vienna, in 1677 organist at Eisenach, and soon back to Nuremberg a few years later. His multifarious works for organ, among which we find a variety of forms, were perhaps the chief model upon which Sebastian Bach formed his style. He especially excelled in improvising choral variations, and in fanciful and musicianly treatment of themes proposed by the hearer. Yet another name of[Pg 254] this epoch, that of George Muffat, is now almost forgotten. He studied in France, and formed his style upon that of the French. A later master, also very influential in the style of Sebastian Bach, was Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707). For nearly forty years he was organist at the Church of St. Mary at Lübeck, where he was so celebrated that the young Sebastian Bach made a journey on foot there in order to hear and master the principles of his art. Buxtehude wrote a great number of pieces in free style for the organ, and, while his works have little value to modern ears, there is no doubt that this master was an important influence upon the enfranchisement of instrumental music. Among all these Netherlandish organists few are better known by name at the present day than Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722), who was born at Deventer, Holland, and after the proper[Pg 255] elementary and finishing studies, succeeded his master, Scheidemann, as organist at Hamburg. Here his fame was so great that the young Bach made two journeys there on foot, in order to hear him. He was a virtuoso of a high order, and his style exercised considerable influence over that of Bach.
Fig. 50.
JOHANN ADAM REINKEN.
Return we now to Italy, where the violin led also to an important development of instrumental music, having in it the promise of the best that we have had since. In Fusignano, near Imola, was born in 1653 Archangelo Corelli, who became the first of violin virtuosi, and the first of composers for the instrument, and for violins in combination with other members of the same family, and so of our string quartette. He died in 1713 at Rome. Of his boyhood there is little known. About 1680 he appears in high favor at the court of Munich. In 1681 he was again in Rome, where he appears to have found a friend in Cardinal Ottoboni, in whose palace he died. His period of creative activity extended from 1683, when he began the publication of his forty-eight three-voiced sonatas, for two violins, in four numbers of twelve sonatas each. He also composed many other sonatas for the violin, for violin and piano, and for other instruments. These epoch-marking works are held in high esteem at the present time, and are in constant use for purposes of instruction.
Meanwhile the orchestra had been steadily enriched through the competition of successive operatic composers, each exerting himself to produce more effect than the preceding. In this way new combinations of tone color were contrived, and now and then introduced in a[Pg 256] fortunate manner, and effects of greater sonority were attained through the greater number of instruments, and the more expert use of those they had. In the present state of knowledge it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace the successive steps of this progress, and to give proper credit to each composer for his own contribution to the general stock. At best, the orchestra at the end of this century was somewhat meager. The violin and the other members of its family had taken their places somewhat as we now have them, but the number of basses and tenors was much less than at present, their place being filled by the archlute and the harpsichord. The trumpet was occasionally employed, the flute, the oboe, and very rarely the trombone. The conductor at the harpsichord, playing from a figured bass, filled in chords according to his own judgment of the effect required. Nothing approaching the smoothness and discreet coloration of the orchestra of the present day, or even of the Haydn orchestra, existed at this time. The violin players were very cautious about using the second and third "positions," but played continually with their hands in the first position. This part of the music, therefore, wholly lacked the freedom which it now has, and the whole progress of this century was purely apprentice work in instrumental music, its value lying in its establishing the principle, first, that instrumental music might exist independently of vocal, and, second, that it might enhance the expressiveness of vocal music when associated with it. The groundwork of the two great forms of the period next ensuing, the fugue and the sonata, had been laid, and a certain amount of precedent established in favor of free composition in dance and fantasia form. Meanwhile the pianoforte of the day, the[Pg 257] clavicembalo, as the Italians called it, had been considerably improved. The present scale of music had been demonstrated by Zarlino, and the ground prepared for the great geniuses whose coming made the eighteenth century forever memorable as the blossoming time of musical art.
Upon the whole, perhaps the most important part of the actual accomplishment of this century was in musical theory. While musicians for centuries had been employing the major and minor thirds, and the triads as we now have them, the fact had remained unacknowledged in musical theory, and the supposed authority of the Greeks still remained binding upon all. Zarlino, however, made a new departure. He not only assigned the true intervals of the major scale, according to perfect intonation, but argued strongly for equal temperament, and demonstrated the impossibility of chromatic music upon any other basis. Purists may still continue to doubt whether this was an absolute advantage to the art of music, since it carries with it the necessity of having all harmonic relations something short of perfection; but the immediate benefit to musical progress was unquestionable, and according to all appearance the art of music is irrevocably committed to the tempered scale of twelve tones in the octave.
T is not easy to characterize simply and clearly the nature of the
musical development which took place during the eighteenth century.
The blossoming of music was so manifold, so diversified, so
irrepressible in every direction, that there was not one single
province of it, wherein new and masterly creations were not brought
out. The central figures of this period were those of the two Colossi,
Bach and Händel; after them Haydn, the master of genial proportion and
taste; Mozart, the melodist of ineffable sweetness, and finally at the
end of the century, the great master, Beethoven. In opera we have the
entire work of that great reformer, the Chevalier Gluck, and a
succession of Italian composers who enlarged the boundaries of the
Italian music-drama in every direction, but especially in the
direction of the impassioned and sensational. Add to these influences,
already sufficiently diversified, that of a succession of brilliant
virtuosi upon the leading instruments, whereby the resources of all
the effective musical apparatuses were more fully explored and
illustrated, with the final result of affording the poetic composer
additional means of bringing his ideas to a more effective
expression[Pg 262]—and we have the general features of a period in music so
luxuriant that in it we might easily lose ourselves; nor can we easily
form a clear idea of the entire movement as the expression of a single
underlying spiritual impulse. Yet such in its inner apprehension it
most assuredly was.
Upon the whole, all the improvements of the time arrange themselves into two categories, namely: The better proportion, contrast, and more agreeable succession of moments in art works; and, second, the more ample means for intense expression. In the department of form, indeed, there was a very important transition made between the first half of the century and the last. The typical form of the first part of this division was the fugue, which came to a perfection under the hands of Bach and Händel, far beyond anything to be found in the form previously. The fugue was the creation of this epoch, and while based upon the general idea of canonic imitation, after the Netherlandish ideal, it differed from their productions in several highly significant respects. While all of a fugue is contained within the original subject, and the counter-subject, which accompanies it at every repetition, it has an element of tonality in it which places it upon an immensely higher plane of musical art than any form known, or possible, before the obsolescence of the ecclesiastical modes. Moreover, the fugue has opportunities for episode, which enable it to acquire variety to a degree impossible for any form developed earlier; and which, when these opportunities were fresh, afforded composers a field for the display of fancy which was practically free. This, one may still realize by comparing the different fugues in Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier" with each other, and with[Pg 263] those of any other collection. It is impossible to detect anywhere the point where the inspiration of the composer felt itself bound by the restrictions of this form. It was for Bach and Händel practically a free form. And the few other contemporaneous geniuses of a high order either experienced the same freedom in it, or found ways of evading its strictness by the production of various styles of fancy pieces, which, while conforming to the fugue form in their main features, were nevertheless free enough to be received by the musical public of that day with substantially the same satisfaction as a fantasia would have been received a century later. Roughly speaking, Bach and Händel exhausted the fugue. While Bach displayed his mental activity in almost every province of music, and like some one since, of whom it has been much less truthfully said, "touched nothing which he did not adorn," he was all his life a writer of fugues. His preludes are not fugues, and their number almost equals that of the fugues; but the operative principles were not essentially different—merely the applications of thematic development were different. Yet strange as it may seem, within thirty years from his death it became impossible to write fugues, and at the same time be free. Why was this?
A new element came into music, incompatible with fugue, requiring a different form of expression, and incapable of combination with fugue. That element was the people's song, with its symmetrical cadences and its universal intelligibility. Let the reader take any one of the Mozart sonatas, and play the first melody he finds—he will immediately see that here is something for which no place could have been found in a fugue, nor yet in its complement, the prelude of Bach's days. The same is[Pg 264] true of many similar passages in the sonatas of Haydn. Music had now found the missing half of its dual nature. For we must know that in the same manner as the thematic or fugal element in music represents the play of musical fantasy, turning over musical ideas intellectually or seriously; so there is a spontaneous melody, into which no thought of developing an idea enters. The melody flows or soars like the song of a bird, because it is the free expression, not of musical fantasy, as such (the unconscious play of tonal fancy), but the flow of melody, song, the soaring of spirit in some one particular direction, floating upon buoyant pinions, and in directions well conceived and sure. The symmetry of the people's song follows as a natural part of the progress. The spontaneous element of the music of the northern harpers now found its way into the musical productions of the highest geniuses. Henceforth the fugue subsides from its pre-eminence, and remains possible only as a highly specialized department of the general art of musical composition, useful and necessary at times, but nevermore the expression of the unfettered fancy of the musical mind.
The discovery of the secret of musical contrast, in the types of development, the thematic and the lyric, led to the creation of a new form, in which they mutually contrast with and help each other. That form was the Sonata, which having been begun earlier, was developed further by the sons of Bach, but which received its characteristic touches from the hands of Haydn and Mozart. This was the crowning glory of the eighteenth century—the sonata. A form had been created, into which the greatest of masters was even then beginning to breathe his mighty soul, producing thereby a succession of master works, which stand without parallel in the realm of music.
LL things considered, the most remarkable figure of this period was
that of the great John Sebastian Bach, who was born at Eisenach, in
Prussia, in 1685, and died at Leipsic in 1750. It is scarcely too much
to say that this great man has exercised more influence upon the
development of music than any other composer who has ever lived. In
his own day he led a quiet, uneventful life, at first as student, then
as court musician at Weimar, where he played the violin; later as
organist at Arnstadt, a small village near Weimar, and still later as
director of music in the St. Thomas church and school at Leipsic. In
the sixty-five years of his life, Bach produced an enormous number of
compositions, of which about half were in fugue form, a form which was
at its prime at the beginning of this century and which Bach carried
to the farthest point in the direction of freedom and spontaneity
which it ever reached.
Fig. 51.
JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.
It is the remarkable glory of Bach to have rendered his compositions indispensable to thorough mastery in three different provinces of musical effort. The modern art of violin playing rests upon two works, the six sonatas of Bach for violin solo, and the Caprices of Paganini. The former contain everything that belongs[Pg 266] to the classical, the latter everything that belongs to the sensational. In organ playing the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered Clavier," of Bach; the "Gradus ad Parnassum," of Clementi; the "Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third of this preparation. Nor has the influence of[Pg 267] Bach been confined to the province of technical instruction alone. On the contrary, all composers since his time have felt the stimulus of his great tone poems, and Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Wagner found him the most productive of great masters.
The life of Bach need not long detain us. A musician of the tenth generation, member of a family which occupies a liberal space in German encyclopedias of music, art and literature, Sebastian Bach led the life of a teacher, productive artist and virtuoso, mainly within the limits of the comparatively unimportant provincial city of Leipsic. His three wives in succession and his twenty-one children were the domestic incidents which bound him to his home. Here he trained his choir, taught his pupils, composed those master works which modern musicians try in vain to equal, and the even tenor of his life was broken in upon by very few incidents of a sensational kind. We do not understand that Bach was a virtuoso upon the violin, although no other master has required more of that greatest of musical instruments. Upon the piano and organ the case is different. Bach's piano was the clavier, upon which he was the greatest virtuoso of his time. His touch was clear and liquid, his technique unbounded, and his musical fantasy absolutely without limit. Hence in improvisation or in the performance of previously arranged numbers he never failed to delight his audience. It was the same upon the organ. The art of obligato pedal playing he brought to a point which it had never before reached and scarcely afterward surpassed. He comprehended the full extent of organ technique, and with the exception of a few tricks of quasi-orchestral imitation, made possible in modern organs, he covered the entire[Pg 268] ground of organ playing in a manner at once solid and brilliant. Many stories are told of his capacity in this direction, but the general characterization already given is sufficient. He was a master of the first order. The common impression that he played habitually upon the full organ is undoubtedly erroneous. He made ample use of registration to the fullest extent practicable on the organs of his day.
The most remarkable feature of the career of Bach is his productivity in the line of choral works. As leader of the music in the St. Thomas church, he had under his control two organs, two choirs, the children of the school and an orchestra. For these resources he composed a succession of cantatas, every feast day in the ecclesiastical year being represented by from one to five separate works. The total number of these cantatas reaches more than 230. Some of them are short, ten or fifteen minutes long, but most of them are from thirty to forty minutes, and some of them reach an hour. Their treasures have been but imperfectly explored, although most of them are now in print. In the course of his ministrations at Leipsic he produced five great Passion oratorios for Good Friday in Holy Week. The greatest of these was the Passion of St. Matthew, so named from the source of its text. This work occupies about two hours in performance. It is in two parts, and the sermon was supposed to intervene. It consists of recitative, arias and choruses, some of which are extremely elaborate and highly dramatic. The other Passions are less fortunate. Nevertheless they contain many beautiful and highly dramatic moments. Bach's oratorios belong to the category of church works, as distinguished from those intended for concert purposes. This is seen especially[Pg 269] in the treatment of the chorale, in which he expects the congregation to co-operate. In one direction Bach was subject to serious limitation. His knowledge of the voice, and his consideration for its convenience, were far below the standard of composers of the same time educated in Italy. In his works, while many passages are very impressive, and while the melody and harmony are always appropriate to the matter in hand, the intervals and especially the convenience of the different registers of the voice are very imperfectly considered, for which reason his works have not been performed to anything like the extent to which their musical interest would otherwise have carried them. This is especially true of the greatest of all, the Passion according to St. Matthew. It was first performed on Good Friday, 1729, in the St. Thomas church at Leipsic, and it does not appear to have been given again until 1829, when Mendelssohn brought it out. Since that time it has been given almost every year in Leipsic, and more or less frequently in all the musical centers of the world, but its elaboration is very great and its vocal treatment unsatisfactory to solo voices, for which reason it succeeds only under the inspiration of an artistic and enthusiastic leader. In fact, all the great works of Bach are more or less in the category of classics, which are well spoken of and seldom consulted. While, in Beethoven's time, the whole of the "Well Tempered Clavier" was not thought too much for an ambitious youngster, at the present time there are few pianists who play half a dozen of these pieces. The easier inventions for two parts, some of the suites, several gavottes, modernized from his violin and chamber music, and a very few of his other pieces for the clavier, are habitually played.[Pg 270]
It would be unjust to close the account of this great artist without mentioning what we might call the prophetic element in his works. The great bulk of Bach's compositions are in two forms, the Prelude and the Fugue. The fugue came to perfection in his hands. It was an application of the Netherlandish art of canonic imitation, combined with modern tonality. In a fugue the first voice gives the subject in the tonic, the second voice answers in the dominant, the third voice comes again in the tonic, and the fourth voice, if there be one, again in the dominant. Then ensues a digression into some key upon what theorists call the dominant side, when one or two voices give out the subject and answer it again, always in the tonic and dominant of the new key. Then more or less modulating matter, thematically developed out of some leading motive of the subject, and again the principal material of the theme, with one or more answers. The final close is preceded by a more or less elaborate pedal point upon the dominant of the principal key, after which the subject comes in. With very few exceptions the fugues of Bach are in modern tonality, the major key or the modern minor, with their usual relatives.
The prelude is a less closely organized composition. Sometimes it is purely harmonic in its interest, like the first of the "Well Tempered Clavier." At other times it is highly melodic, like the preludes in C sharp major and minor of the first book of the Clavier, and, as a rule, the prelude either treats its motives in a somewhat lyric manner or dispenses with the melodic material altogether. Thus the prelude and fugue mutually complete each other. But it is a great mistake to regard Bach as a writer of fugues alone. He was also very free[Pg 271] in fantasies, and one of his pianoforte works, concerning the origin of which nothing whatever is known, the "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue," is one of the four or five greatest compositions that exist for this instrument. The remarkable thing about this fantasia is the freedom of its treatment and the facility with which it lends itself to virtuoso handling, as distinguished from the rather limited treatment of the piano usual in Bach's works. The second part of the fantasia is occupied by a succession of recitatives of an extremely graphic and poetic character. Melodically and harmonically these recitatives are thoroughly modern and dramatic, the latter element being very forcibly represented by the succession of diminished sevenths on which the phrases of the recitative end. The fugue following is long, highly diversified and extremely climactic in its interest. In other parts of his work Bach has left fantasies of a more descriptive character. He has, for instance, a hunting scene with various incidents of a realistic character, and in general he shows himself in his piano works a man of wide range of mind and extremely vigorous musical fantasy.
In the department of concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, his works are very rich. There are a large number for piano, quite a number for organ, several for two and three pianos, with orchestra, and various other combinations of instruments, such as two violins and 'cellos, and so on. In these each solo player has an equal chance with the other, and solos and accompaniment work together understandingly for mutual ends. The most noticeable feature of his elaborate works is the rhythm, which is vigorous, highly organized and extremely effective. In the department of harmony, it is believed by almost all close observers[Pg 272] that no combination of tones since made by any writer is without a precedent in the works of Bach; the strange chords of Schumann and Wagner find their prototypes in the works of this great Leipsic master. Melodically considered, Bach was a genius of the highest order. Not only did he make this impression upon his own time and upon the great masters of the next two generations, but many of his airs have attained genuine popularity within the present generation, and are played with more real satisfaction than most other works that we have. This is the more remarkable because from the time of his first residence in Leipsic when he was only twenty-four years old he went out of that city but a few times, and heard very little music but his own. He was three times married, and had twenty-one children, many of whom were musical. Three of his sons became eminent, and the principal episode of his later life was his visit to Potsdam, where his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, was musician to Frederick the Great. Here he was received with the utmost informality by the king and made to play and improvise upon all the pianos and organs in the palace and the adjacent churches. As a reminiscence of this visit he produced a fugue upon a subject given by Frederick himself, written for six real parts. This work was called the "Musical Offering," and was dedicated to Frederick the Great. In his later years Bach became blind from having over-exerted his eyes in childhood and in later life. He died on Good Friday in 1750.
HE companion figure to Bach, in this epoch, was that of George
Frederick Händel, who was born at the little town of Halle in the same
year as Bach, 1685, and died in London in 1759. Händel's father was a
physician, and although the boy showed considerable aptitude for music
his father did not think favorably of his pursuing it as a vocation;
but the fates were too strong for him. When George Frederick was about
eight years old, he managed to go with his father to the court of the
duke of Saxe Weissenfels, some distance away, where an older brother
was in service. Here he obtained access to the organ in the chapel,
and was overheard by the duke, who recognized the boy's talent, and,
with the authority inherent in princely rank, admonished the father
that on no account was he to thwart so gifted an inclination.
Accordingly the youngster had lessons in music upon the clavier, the
organ and the violin, the three standard instruments of the time. The
older Händel died, and before he was nineteen George Frederick made
his way to Hamburg, which was then one of the musical centers of
Germany. Here he obtained an engagement in the theater orchestra as
ripieno violin, a sort of fifth wheel in the orchestral[Pg 274] chariot,
its duty being that of filling in missing parts. The boy was then
rather more than six feet high, heavy and awkward. He was an
indifferent violinist, and the other players were disposed to make a
butt of him, although he was known to be an accomplished
harpsichordist. It happened presently, however, that the leader of the
orchestra, who presided at the harpsichord, fell sick, and Händel,
being at the same time the best harpsichordist and the poorest
violinist of all, was placed at the head.[Pg 275] He carried the rehearsals
and the performances through with such spirit that it resulted in his
being made assistant director, and two works of his were presently
performed—"Almira" and "Nero." The first made a great hit and was
retained in performance for several weeks. The Italian ambassador
immediately recognized the talent of the young man, and offered to
take him to Italy in his suite, but Händel declined, preferring to go
with his own money, which, after the production of "Nero," and its
successful run of several weeks, he was able to do.
Fig. 52.
GEORGE FREDERICK HÄNDEL.
1685-1759.
Accordingly we find him in Italy, in 1710, first at Naples, where he made the acquaintance of the greatest harpsichord player of that time, Domenico Scarlatti. The style of the young German was so charming, and so different from that of the great Italian player, that he immediately became a favorite, and was called Il Caro Sassone ("The dear Saxon"). He produced an opera in Naples with good success. Afterward he produced others at Rome and Venice. In a few years he was back at Hanover, where he was made musical director to the Elector George, who afterward became George I of England. Here, presently, he took a vacation in order to visit London, where he found things so much to his liking that he remained, having good employment under Queen Anne, and a public anxious to hear his Italian operas. Presently Queen Anne died and George the First came over to reign as king. This was altogether a different matter, for Händel had his unsettled account with the elector of Hanover, upon whom he had so cavalierly turned his back. The peace was finally made, however, by a set of compositions very celebrated in England under the name of "The Water Music." When[Pg 276] King George was going from Whitehall to Westminster in his barge, Händel followed with a company of musicians, playing a succession of pieces, which the king knew well enough for a production of his truant capellmeister. Accordingly he received him once more into favor, and Händel went on with his work.
For upwards of twenty years, Händel pursued his course in London as a composer of Italian operas, of which the number reached about forty. During the greater part of his time he had his own theater, and employed the singers from Italy and elsewhere, producing his works in the best manner of his time. His operas were somewhat conventional in their treatment, but every one of them contained good points. Here and there a chorus, occasionally a recitative, now and then an aria—always something to repay a careful hearing, and occasionally a master effect, such as only genius of the first order could produce. His education during this period was exactly opposite to that of Bach. Bach lived in Leipsic all his life, and, being in a position from which only a decided fault of his own could discharge him, he consulted no one's taste but his own, writing his music from within, and adapting it to his forces in hand, or not adapting it, as it pleased him. Händel, on the other hand, had always the public. He commenced as an operatic composer. As an operatic composer he succeeded in Hamburg, and as an operatic composer he succeeded in Italy. The same career held him in London. There was always an audience to be moved, to be affected, to be pleased, and there were always singers of high talents to carry out his conceptions. Hence his whole training was in the direction of smoothness, facility, pleasing quality. Nevertheless, there came an end[Pg 277] to the popularity of Händel. A most shabby pasticcio called the "Beggar's Opera," was the immediate cause of his downfall. This queer compilation was made up of old ballad tunes, with hastily improvised words, and the merest thread of a story, and included some tunes of Händel's own. This being produced at an opposition house, took the town. The result was that Händel was bankrupted for the second time, owing more than £75,000.
Some time before this he had held the position of private musical director to the earl of Chandos, who had a chapel in connection with his palace, a short distance out of London, as it then was. In this place Händel had already produced a number of elaborate anthems and one oratorio—"Esther." In the stress of his present circumstances, after a few weeks, he remembered the oratorio of "Esther," and immediately brought it out in an enlarged form. The effect was enormous. Whatever the English taste might be for opera, for oratorio their recognition was irrepressible. "Esther" brought him a great deal of money, and he presently wrote other oratorios with such good effect that in a very few years he had completely paid up the enormous indebtedness of his operatic ventures. At length, in 1741, he composed his master work—the "Messiah." This epoch-marking composition was improvised in less than a fortnight, a rate of speed calling for about three numbers per day. The work was produced in Dublin for charitable purposes. It had the advantage of a text containing the most beautiful and impressive passages of Scripture relating to the Messiah, a circumstance which no doubt inspired the beauty of the music, and added to the early popularity of the work. In later times it is perhaps not too much[Pg 278] to say that the music has been equally useful to the text, in keeping its place in the consciousness of successive generations of Christians. In this beautiful master work we have the result of the whole of Händel's training. The work is very cleverly arranged in a succession of recitatives, arias and choruses, following each other in a highly dramatic and effective manner. There are certain passages in the "Messiah" which have never been surpassed for tender and poetic expression. Among these are the "Behold and See if There Be Any Sorrow Like His Sorrow," "Come unto Him," and "He was Despised." In the direction of sublimity nothing grander can be found than the "Hallelujah," "Worthy is the Lamb," "Lift up Your Heads," nor anything more dramatically impressive than the splendid burst at the words, "Wonderful," "Counsellor." The work, as a whole, while containing mannerisms in the roulades of such choruses as "He shall Purify," and "For unto Us," marks the highest point reached in the direction of oratorio; for, while Händel himself surpassed its sublimity in "Israel in Egypt," and Bach its dramatic qualities in the thunder and lightning chorus in the St. Matthew Passion; and Mendelssohn its melodiousness in his "Elijah"; for a balance of good qualities, and for even and sustained inspiration throughout, the "Messiah" is justly entitled to the rank which, by common consent, it holds as the most complete master work which oratorio can show.
In the "Israel in Egypt" Händel illustrates a different phase of his talent. This curious work is composed almost entirely of choruses, the most of which are for two choirs, very elaborately treated. Among them all, the two which perhaps stand out pre-eminent are "The[Pg 279] Horse and His Rider" and the "Hailstone," two colossal works, as dramatic as they are imposing. The masterly effect of the Händelian chorus rests upon the combination of good qualities such as no other master has accomplished to the same extent. They are extremely well written for the voice, with an accurate appreciation of the effect of different registers and masses, the melodic ideas are smooth and vigorous, and the harmonic treatment as forcible as possible, without ever controlling the composer further than it suited his artistic purpose to go. Bach very often commences a fugue which he feels obliged to finish, losing thereby the opportunity of a dramatic effect. Händel perfects his fugue only when the dramatic effect will be improved by so doing, and in this respect he makes a distinct gain over his great contemporary at Leipsic. The total list of the Händel works comprises the following: Two Italian oratorios; nineteen English oratorios; five Te Deums; six psalms; twenty anthems; three German operas; one English opera; thirty-nine Italian operas; two Italian serenatas, two English serenatas; one Italian intermezzo, "Terpsichore"; four odes; twenty-four chamber duets; ninety-four cantatas; seven French songs; thirty-three concertos; nineteen English songs; sixteen Italian airs; twenty-four sonatas.
Händel was never married; nor, so far as we know, ever in love. He had among his friends some of the most eminent writers of his day, such as Addison, Pope, Dean Swift and others. His later years were so successful that when he died his fortune of above £50,000 was left for charitable purposes. This was after he had paid all of the indebtedness incurred in his earlier bankruptcy. It would be a mistake to dismiss this[Pg 280] great master without some notice of his harpsichord and organ playing. As a teacher of the princesses of the royal family, he produced many suites and lessons for the harpsichord, in one of which, as an unnoticed incident, occur the air and variations since so universally popular under the name of "The Harmonious Blacksmith." It is not known to whom the composer was indebted for the name generally applied to this extremely broad air, and clever variations. Very likely some music publisher was the unknown poet. As an organist Händel was both great and popular. In the middle of his oratorios he used to play an organ concerto with orchestra. Of these compositions he wrote a very large number. They are always fresh and hearty in style, well written for organ, and with a very flowing pedal part. Händel appears to have played the pedals upon a somewhat different plan from that of Bach. Bach is generally supposed to have used his toes for the most part, employing the heel only for an occasional note where the toes were insufficient. Händel seems to have used toe and heel habitually in almost equal proportion.
It is a curious feature of the later part of Händel's career that he brought out his oratorios in costume. Several of the original bills are extant, in which an oratorio is promised "with new cloathes." "Esther" is said to have been given with complete stage appointment at Chandos, like an opera; but the Lord Chamberlain prohibited future representations of the kind on account of the supposed sacredness of the subject. Afterward the characters were costumed, and the stage set, but there was no action. While Händel was German by birth, his long residence in England and his habitual writing for the last ten or fifteen years of his life[Pg 281] oratorios in the English language, made him, to all intents and purposes, an English composer. For nearly a century he stood to the English school as a model of everything that was good and great, to such an extent that very little of original value was accomplished in that country, and when, by lapse of time and a deeper self-consciousness on the part of English musicians, this influence had begun to wane, a new German composer came in the person of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who, in turn, became a popular idol, and for many years a barrier to original effort.
The influence of Händel upon the later course of music is by no means so marked as that of Bach. Nevertheless, he was one of the great tone poets of all times, and his works form an indispensable part of the literature of music. It was his good fortune to embody certain types of melody and harmony with a clearness and effectiveness that no other composer has equaled. The oratorio, in particular, not only fulfilled itself in Händel, but we might almost say completed itself there, for very little of decided originality has been produced in this department since. The Händelian operas have been mostly forgotten for many years, but they contain gems of melody in the solo and chorus parts which have still a future. His first opera, "Almira," was revived at Hamburg a few years ago with remarkable effect, and it is not at all unlikely that extracts from many of the other works will eventually find their way into the current repertory of the singer, as many of the arias already have.
ONE of the sons of Bach inherited the commanding genius of their
father, although four of them showed talent above the average of
musicians of their day, and one of them distinguished himself and
exercised an important influence upon the subsequent course of
pianoforte music. The most gifted of Bach's sons was Wilhelm
Friedmann, the eldest (1710-1784), who was especially educated by his
father for a musician. He turned out badly, however, his enormous
talents not being able to save him from the natural consequences of a
dissolute life. He died in Berlin in the greatest degradation and
want. This Bach wrote comparatively few compositions, owing to his
invincible repugnance to the labor of putting them upon paper; he was
famous as an improviser, and certain pieces of his in the Berlin
library are considered to manifest musical gifts of a high order.
Johann Christian (1735-1782), the eleventh son, known as the Milanese
or London Bach, devoted himself to the lighter forms of music, and
after having served some years as organist of the cathedral at Milan,
and having distinguished himself by certain operas successfully
produced in Italy, he removed to London, where he led an easy and
enjoyable life. He was an elegant and fluent[Pg 283] writer for the
pianoforte. The one son of Bach who is commonly regarded as having
left a mark upon the later course of music was Carl Philip Emanuel
(1714-1788), the third son, commonly known as the Berlin or Hamburg
Bach. His father intended him for a philosopher, and had him educated
accordingly in the Leipsic and Frankfort universities, but his love
for music and the thorough grounding in it he had at home eventually
determined him in this direction. While in the Frankfort University he
conducted a singing society, which naturally led to his exercising
himself in composition. Presently he gave up law for music, and going
to Berlin he obtained an appointment as "Kammer-musiker" to Frederick
the Great, his especial business being that of accompanying the king
in his flute concertos. The seven years' war having put an end to
these duties, he migrated to Hamburg, where he held honorable
appointments as organist and conductor until his death. He wrote in a
tasteful and free, but somewhat superficial, style; and while his
compositions bear favorable comparison with those of other musicians
of his time, they are by no means of a commanding nature like those of
his father. There were, however, two reasons for this, wholly aside
from the question of less ability in the younger composer. One of
these is to be found in the free form which Emanuel Bach began to
develop. Sebastian Bach had the advantage of writing his greatest
works in a form which had been prepared for him, without having been
exhausted. The technique of fugue had been created before his time,
but its possibilities in the direction of freedom and spontaneity had
never been illustrated. Bach proceeded to do this for the fugue form,
and, it may be added, did it with such amplitude that no composer has[Pg 284]
been able to write a free and original fugue since. The son
recognizing both that the fugue had been exhausted as a free art-form,
and feeling no doubt that something more intuitively intelligible than
fugue was possible, addressed himself to composition in the free
style, in which the means of producing effects had not yet been
mastered. The thematic use of material had been acquired, or was
easily inferable from the fugue, but the proper manner of contrasting
that material with other, calculated to relieve the attention and at
the same time intensify the interest, remained for later explorers.
The missing contrast was the lyric element, but it was not until the
next generation of composers that it came into pianoforte music in
satisfactory form. Accordingly the sonatas of Emanuel Bach sound dry
and superficial, and while they are interesting as the remote models
upon which Beethoven occasionally built, they do not repay study for
the purposes of public performance. There is little heart in them. As
a literary musician Bach deserves to be remembered for his work upon
"The True Art of Playing the Piano." This was the first systematic
instruction book for the instrument of which we have a record, and it
still is the main dependence for information concerning the method of
Bach's playing, and the way in which he intended the embellishments in
his works to be performed.
In the little village of Rohrau, in Austria, was born to a master wheelwright's wife, in 1732, a little son, dark-skinned, not large of frame, nor handsome, but gifted with that most imperishable of endowments, a genius for melody and tonal symmetry. The baby was named Francis Joseph, and he grew to the age of about six in[Pg 285] the family of his parents, in a little house which although twice somewhat rebuilt, still stands in its original form. Hither people come from many lands in order to see the birthplace of the great composer Haydn, the indefatigable and simple-hearted tone poet of many symphonies, sonatas, and the two favorite cantatas or oratorios, the "Creation" and the "Seasons." In his earliest childhood the boy showed a talent for music, which, as his parents both sang and played a little, he had often an opportunity of hearing. Before he was quite six years old he was able to stand up in the choir of the village church and lead in solos, with his sweet and true, if not strong, voice. This was his delight. At length George Reutter, the director of the music in the cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna, heard him, and offered the boy a place in his choir. Now indeed his fortune seemed made, and he embraced the offer with gratitude. As a choir boy he ought to have been taught music in a thorough manner, but as Reutter was rather a careless man this did not happen in Haydn's case, but the boy grew up in his own devices. He composed constantly, without having had the slightest regular training. One day Reutter saw one of his pieces, a mass movement for twelve parts. He offered the passing advice, that the composer would have done better to have taken two voices, and that the best exercise for him would be to write "divisions" (variations) upon the airs he sang in the service—but no instruction. At length the boy's voice began to break, and at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he was turned out to shift for himself. He found an asylum in the house of a wig maker, Keller, with whom he lived for several years, earning small sums by lessons, playing the organ at one of the churches, the violin at another, singing at another and[Pg 286] so on, in all managing to place himself upon the road to fortune—that of industry and sobriety. This part of his career lasted from 1748, when he left the choir of the cathedral, to 1752, when he became accompanist to the Italian master, Porpora, who was then living in Vienna in the house of an Italian lady, whose daughter's education he was superintending. With Porpora he learned the art of singing, and the proper manner of accompanying the voice. He also got many hints in regard to the correct manner of composing. He had already produced a number of works in various styles. In 1759 he was appointed conductor of the music at the palace of Count Morzin, where he had a small number of musicians under his direction, only sixteen in all. Here he began his life work. Two years later he was invited to assume the assistant directorship of the private orchestra and choir of Prince Esterhazy, who lived in magnificent style, and for many years had maintained a private musical chapel.[Pg 287] Very soon the old prince died, and his son reigned in his place. The new master was the one named "The Magnificent," and greatly enlarged the musical appointment of his predecessor. He built a great palace at Esterhaz, where there was a theater, in which opera was given, and a smaller one where there was a marionette company, the machinery of which had been brought to great perfection. There were frequent concerts. The prince was a great amateur of the peculiar viol called the barytone, and it was one of Haydn's duties to provide new compositions for this instrument. Here for thirty years he continued in service, with few interruptions, and always on the very best of terms with his prince, and with the men under him. The players called Haydn "Papa."
Fig. 53.
Owing to its situation, remote from town, and to the prince's constantly increasing aversion to living in Vienna, Haydn scarcely left the vicinity for years together. Here, wholly from within his own resources, he evolved a succession of works in every style, and for almost every possible combination of instruments, from operas for the large theater, to marionette music for the small place, orchestral compositions, among which the 175 symphonies form a not inconsiderable portion; there are also concertos for many kinds of instruments, and songs, masses, divertissements and the like. In short, there is scarcely any form of music which Haydn did not have to make at some time or other in his long service in the Esterhazy establishment. Being his own orchestral director, he had the opportunity of trying and experimenting and of realizing what would be effective and what would not. The motive mainly operative in his work, necessarily, was that of pleasing and amusing. Nobler intentions were not wanting, but the pleasing element had to be considered[Pg 288] in most that he did. Thus he developed a style of his own, original, becoming, with a certain taste and symmetry, and with a melodious element which never loses its charm. Withal he became very clever in his treatment of themes. It was a saying of his that the "idea" did not matter at all; "treatment is everything." From this standpoint it is impossible to deny Haydn the credit of having accomplished his ideal.
He commenced his musical career as a violinist and a singer. His orchestral symphonies were for violins (for strings), with occasional seasoning from the brass and wood wind. The constant study of the violin led to modifications in his style, and evolved first, the string quartette in the form which has always remained standard. The symphonies are only larger string quartettes, for, in the order of the themes, the general manner of treating them and the principles of contrast or relief which actuated them, the quartettes are sonatas, as also are the symphonies. Haydn gave the sonata form its present shape. The insertion of a second theme in the first movement, and the principle of contrasting this second theme with the first in such a way that the second theme is generally lyric in style, or at least tending in that direction, was Haydn's. He also developed the middle part of the sonata into what is known as the "elaboration," "Durchführungssatz". The cantabile slow movement, modeled somewhat after the Italian cantilena, was his. Mozart and Beethoven did wonders with it later, but the suggestion was Haydn's. The endless productivity, the constant succession of new pieces demanded, led to a somewhat systematic proceeding in their production, and so the form and the method of the sonata became stereotyped. All the instrumental movements of this time,[Pg 289] whenever there was any serious intention, assumed the form of sonatas; i.e., of the instrumental sonatas—the symphony and the quartette.
At length Haydn's master died, and he accepted an invitation from Salamon, the publisher, to London, where he produced several new symphonies, conducted many concerts and returned to Vienna richer by about $6,000 than when he had left his home a few months before. He had become a great master, known all over the world, without himself knowing it. If any man ever woke up and found himself famous, Haydn was that man, although he had been in the way of having his compositions played and sung before most of the important personages in Europe for years, Prince Esterhazy being a royal entertainer. It was for Madrid that Haydn composed his first Passion oratorio, "The Last Seven Words." This work, by a curious chance, he made over into an instrumental piece for his London concerts, the prejudice against "popery" preventing its being given there in its original form. In 1794 he was again in London. Upon the first visit to London he took the journey down the Rhine, and at Bonn, in going or coming, the young Beethoven showed him a new cantata. In 1794 he was again in London, where the same success attended him as before. He produced many new works, and was royally entertained. Again he went home richer by many thousands of dollars than when he set out. With his savings he purchased a house in the suburbs of Vienna, where he lived the remainder of his life, dying in 1809. It was during these last years that he wrote his two oratorios already mentioned. That by which he is best known is the "Creation," which is a master work indeed, if only we do not look in it for too much of the distinctly religious or[Pg 290] sublime. It belongs to the pleasing in art, and certain of its numbers are worthy of Italian opera, so sweetly melodious are they, yet ever refined and beautiful. Of this kind are the solo arias, "On Mighty Pens," the famous "With Verdure Clad," the lovely trio, "Most Beautiful Appear." Several choruses in this work are really splendid. At the head of the list I would place the two choruses, "Achieved Is the Glorious Work," with the beautiful trio between, "On Thee Each Living Soul Awaits." The development of the fugue in the second chorus is masterly and effective indeed. Everybody knows "The Heavens are Telling," which, however, has rather more reputation than it deserves. The English have made much of Haydn's descriptive music in the accompanied recitatives. This part of his work, however, was but clever when first written, and now, through the enormous development which this part of musical composition has since reached, is little more than childish. Withal, the "Creation" is not difficult. It can be rendered effectively with moderate resources. This fact, added to its many charming and engaging qualities, has insured its popularity in all parts of the musical world. It bids fair to remain for amateur societies for many years yet.
As a tone poet Haydn belonged by no means to the first rank—at least in so far as the inherent weight and range of his ideas is concerned. His one claim to musical fame rests upon his graceful manner of treating a musical idea, and upon the readiness of his invention in contrasting his themes, to which may be added the sweet and genial flavor of his music, which in every line shows a pure and childlike spirit, simple, unaffected, yet deep and true. It was his good fortune to stand to Mozart and Beethoven in the rôle of master. Both were in many[Pg 291] ways his superiors, yet both revered him, the one until his own life went out in the freshness of his youth; the other until when an old man, having stood upon the very Pisgah tops of the tone world, full of honors, he spoke of the old master, Haydn, with affection, in his very last days. Higher testimony than this it would be impossible to quote. For, in the nature of the case, the composer, Haydn, can never be judged again by musicians and poets who know so well his aims and the value of what he accomplished as the two Vienna masters, Mozart and Beethoven, who were younger than he, yet not too young to understand the condition of the musical world into which Haydn had been born, and the musical world as it had become from his living in it.
NE of the most engaging personalities, and at the same time one of
the most highly gifted, versatile and richly endowed geniuses who ever
adorned the art of music, was that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791). He was a son of the violin player and musician, Leopold
Mozart, living at Salzburg. At an extremely early age he showed his
love for music by listening to the lessons of his sister. By the time
he was four, his father commenced to give him lessons, and when he was
less than five years old he was discovered one day making marks upon
music paper, which he stoutly maintained belonged to a concerto. The
statement was received with incredulity, but upon carefully examining
the manuscript it was found correctly written, and sensible; but so
difficult as to be impossible to play. Upon the boy's attention being
called to this, he replied, "I call it a concerto because it is so
difficult; they should practice it until they can play it." In
childhood, and indeed all through life, his ear was very sensitive. He
could not bear to hear the sound of a trumpet, and upon his father
seeking to overcome his nervousness by having a trumpet blown in the
room, it threw him into convulsions. The boy was of a most active
mind, interested in[Pg 293] everything that went on about him, and eager to
learn in every direction. Nothing came amiss, arithmetic, grammar and
language—he was immediately at home in any subject which he took up.
Music was intuitive to him. So remarkable was his progress, that when
he was yet but six years old his father began to travel with him.
Their first journey was to Munich, where the elector received them
kindly. The programmes consisted of improvisations[Pg 294] by the youthful
Mozart upon themes assigned by the audience; pieces for violin and
piano, the father taking the violin part, and the sister in turn
played piano pieces. The father was a good violinist and the author of
an excellent school for that instrument. He also composed many
ambitious works, which rise above the capellmeister average. Highly
gratified with their reception at Munich, they went on to Vienna,
where again they were cordially received, the emperor especially being
highly delighted with the "little magician," as he called the
promising boy. Even at this early age Mozart had a distinct idea of
his own authority in music, although no one could be freer than he
from the charge of self-conceit. In Vienna, he asked expressly for
Wagenseil, the court composer, that he might be sure of having a real
connoisseur among his hearers. "I am playing a concerto of yours," he
said, "you must turn over for me." The ladies of the aristocracy went
wild over the fascinating young fellow, but presently he had an attack
of scarlet fever, which brought the tour to an end. After the return
to Salzburg, the practice went on every day, and regular lessons in
books, as they had during the journey; and, when he was still less
than nine years of age, the family undertook a longer tour to Paris,
playing at all the important towns on the way. In several of the
cities, Wolfgang played the violin, and also the organ in the
churches. At Paris they had a remarkable success, playing before the
court at Versailles, and in many of the houses of the nobility. Here
the father had four of the boy's sonatas for piano and violin engraved
and published. The stay at Paris lasted five months, until November
10, 1764, when they departed for London. Here they met a favorable
reception at court, the king, George III,[Pg 295] taking a great interest in
the wonderful young master. He put before him pieces of Bach,
Wagenseil and Händel, which he played at sight. On the fifth of June
they gave a concert in Spring Gardens, where their receipts were as
much as 100 guineas. His next appearance was as an organist for the
benefit of a charity. The father having taken cold, was ill for some
time, during which time, as the boy was unable to play on the piano,
he wrote his first symphony, and the year following three others.
Before leaving London they visited the British Museum, and in memory
of his visit Wolfgang composed a four-part quartette, and presented
the autograph to the museum.
Fig. 54.
CONCERT BY THE MOZART FAMILY. THE LITTLE WOLFGANG AT THE PIANO.
[From a painting by Carmontil, 1763.]
Without pausing to trace the concert career of the young virtuoso it must suffice to say, that by the time he was twelve years old, he had become favorably known in every court of southern Europe. His talent had been illustrated in many different ways, and tested by the most severe masters. One of the most celebrated cases of this kind happened at Bologna, where the Philharmonic Academy received him as a member, after his passing the usual severe test, over which the famous master, Padre Martini, presided. The conditions of membership required the candidate to write an elaborate motette in six parts, founded upon a melody assigned from the Roman Antiphonarium, the work to conform to the strictest rules, with double counterpoint and fugue. In consequence of the nervous feeling due to the limit of time allowed, candidates very often failed. Mozart, however, took his paper in the cheerful frame of mind which everywhere distinguished him, and was duly locked up. In less than three-quarters of an hour he rapped at his door and asked to be let out. The authorities sent him[Pg 296] word not to be discouraged, but to keep on trying, as he had yet three hours, and might accomplish it. They were greatly astonished on finding that he had already finished, having produced a complete master work, abundantly up to all requirements, the whole written in his peculiarly neat and accurate manner.
His compositions had already reached the number of eighty, including a number of symphonies. It was now late in the year 1771, and at Milan Wolfgang set seriously to work upon his opera, which was produced December 26 and repeated to full houses twenty times, the author himself conducting it. This was "Mitridate, Re di Ponto." The year following he composed two other operas for Italy, and several symphonies, so that when his new opera of "Lucio Silla" was performed in Milan October 24, 1772, the number of his works had reached 135. From 1773 to 1777 Mozart remained at Salzburg, with occasional journeys to Vienna and other cities, always pursuing a life of unflagging industry. The number of his works had increased by the end of this period to upwards of 250, including an immense variety of pieces of chamber music, symphonies, two or three operas, a number of masses, and the like. He was now twenty-one years old, and since the age of fourteen he had been assistant conductor at Salzburg in the service of the prince archbishop, who was a small-souled man, wholly unworthy the service which Mozart rendered him. There is at least a small satisfaction in remembering that the archbishop himself had a distinct impression of the dis-esteem in which he was held by his talented young musical conductor.
With the attainment of his majority the second period in the life of this great genius began. Unable to obtain permission from the shabby prelate for father and son to[Pg 297] go together upon an artistic tour, the father at length decided to send the young man out with his mother, and in September, 1777, the two started for Paris, traveling in their own carriage with post horses. Their plan was to give a concert at every promising town, taking whatever time might be necessary for working it up in due form. In this way their journey was considerably prolonged by delays at Munich, Mannheim and Augsburg. At Mannheim, especially, the incidents of the tour were varied by Mozart's falling in love with the charming daughter of the theatrical prompter and copyist, a promising singer, who afterward married happily in quite a different quarter. At Paris things did not turn out quite so favorably as the father had anticipated. Most afflicting of all, the mother fell sick there, and died, so that the son left Paris in September for home with a far heavier heart than when he entered it. During the most of 1779 and 1780 he remained at Salzburg, fulfilling his duties as assistant conductor. Then came his first opera in Germany, "Idomeneo, Re di Creta," produced at Munich January 29, 1781. The success of this work was so decided that it determined Mozart's career as an operatic composer. A few months later he quarreled with the archbishop, and the unpleasant connection came to an end. His second opera, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" ("The Elopement from the Seraglio"), was produced at Vienna July 16, 1782. This was his first opera in German. In August of this year he was married to Constance Weber, younger sister of her who had first enchanted him. The marriage was congenial in many ways, but as the wife was incapable in money matters and administration, and Mozart himself careless as a business man, and in receipt of a small and irregular income, they soon found themselves in a sea of little[Pg 298] troubles, from which the struggling artist was nevermore free. Only at the last moment, when indeed his life was all but extinct, did the clouds disappear, and a prospect open before him, which if he had lived to enjoy it, would have placed his remaining days in easy circumstances. In 1785 the father visited his son in Vienna, and upon one of the first days of his stay, there was a little dinner party at Mozart's house, with Haydn and the two Barons Todi. In his letter home, Leopold Mozart says that Haydn said to him: "I declare to you, before God, as a man of honor, that your son is the greatest composer that I know, either personally or by reputation; he has taste, and beyond that the most consummate knowledge of composition." In return for this compliment Mozart dedicated to Haydn six string quartettes, with a laudatory preface, in which he says that it was "but his due, for from Haydn I first learned to compose a quartette." Mozart was an enthusiastic Freemason, and through his influence his father, who had always previously opposed the order, became a member, during this visit at Vienna. Soon afterward the father died. For the lodge Mozart wrote much music, both of a liturgical character and for concerts, and special entertainments, and in the "Magic Flute" there are many reminiscences of the order.
A year later he made the acquaintance of the celebrated librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, who proposed to adapt Beaumarchais' comedy, "The Marriage of Figaro," which after some difficulty in obtaining the consent of the emperor, on account of the objectionable character of the story, was done, and the work produced at Vienna, May 1, 1786. The theater was crowded, and many airs were repeated, until at later performances the[Pg 299] emperor prohibited encores. A pleasing scene took place at the last dress rehearsal. Kelly, who took the parts of Don Basilio and of Don Curzio, writes: "Never was anything more complete than the triumph of Mozart and his 'Marriage of Figaro,' to which numerous overflowing audiences bore witness. Even at the first full band rehearsal, all present were roused to enthusiasm, and when Benucci came to the fine passage 'Cherubino Alla Vittoria, Alla Gloria Militar,' which he gave with stentorian lungs, the effect was electric, for the whole of the performers on the stage, and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated 'Bravo, Bravo, Maestro. Viva, Viva, grande Mozart.' Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against their music desks. And Mozart, I never shall forget his little animated countenance. When lighted up with the glowing rays of genius, it is as impossible to describe it as it would be to paint sunbeams." Yet the success did not improve his position in money affairs. Soon afterward, however, he was invited to Prague, to see the success his beautiful work was making there. He was entertained handsomely, and found the town wild with delight, at the novelty, the spontaneity and charming quality of his music. He also gave two concerts there, which were brilliantly successful, and having been many times recalled he sat down at the piano and improvised for half an hour, the audience resisting every effort he made to stop. After returning to Vienna he obtained another libretto from Da Ponte, that of "Don Giovanni," which was produced at Prague, October 29, 1787. It is told, as a characteristic incident of Mozart's method of working, that the overture of this opera had not[Pg 300] been written until the night before the performance. At every suggestion Mozart answered, tapping his forehead, "I have it all here." But not a line had been written. Late at night he set about writing it. His wife made him some punch, of which he was very fond, and sat with him telling him fairy stories, in order to keep him awake. Early in the morning the overture was finished, and after being copied it was played prima vista at night, with grand success. In response to repeated appeals for court recognition, Mozart was made chamber composer, with a salary of about $400, which he pronounced, "Too much for what I produce; too little for what I might produce." "Don Giovanni" was not given in Vienna until May, 1788.
Fig. 55.
MOZART, AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-THREE.
[From a drawing by Dora Stock, a friend of Schiller, 1789. (Grove.)]
His pecuniary circumstances continued desperate[Pg 301] but there were certain incidents of an artistic kind which afforded the struggling genius a meager consolation. One Van Swieten, director of the royal library, who was a great amateur of classical chamber music, held meetings every Sunday for the rehearsal of works of this class. Mozart sat at the piano. For these occasions he arranged several of the fugues of Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier," for string quartette. The year following the practices took on larger proportions, a subscription having been made to provide for giving oratorios with chorus and orchestra. Mozart conducted, and Weigl took the pianoforte. It was for performances of this club, that Mozart added the wind parts to certain works of Händel. They gave "Acis and Galatea" (November, 1778), the "Messiah" (March, 1779), "Ode to St. Cæcilia's Day" and "Alexander's Feast" (July, 1790). Space forbids our following his later career beyond mentioning the chief incidents in a life where sadness had larger and larger place, when nevertheless the great master was pouring out his most noble and beautiful strains of melody and tonal delight. A visit to Berlin resulted in receptions at court, at Potsdam, where the truthful composer replied to the king's question, how he liked his band, that: "It contains great virtuosi, but if the gentlemen would play together they would make a better effect"—a remark which has been appropriate to many later orchestras. The king apparently laid the remark to heart, and offered Mozart the post of director, with a salary of 3,000 thalers, almost equal to the same number of our dollars. It would have been well for Mozart if he had accepted this liberal offer; but his answer was, "How can I abandon my good emperor?"—certainly an affection most misplaced.[Pg 302]
Fig. 56.
MOZART.
[From the Lange painting.]
The list of the Mozart operas was closed with the "Magic Flute," produced September 30, 1783, which at first was not so successful as most of his previous works, but which continued to improve upon hearing, until at length it reached the estimation which it has ever since held, as one of the most characteristic and interesting of all his works. He had already begun upon his "Requiem," which had been mysteriously ordered of him by a messenger, who declined to state the object for which the work was intended. It is now ascertained that the unknown patron was a Count Walsegg, an amateur desirous of being thought a great composer. It was his intention to have performed the work as his own. Mozart was now in low spirits, worn out with work, late hours and financial worry. The mystery of the "Requiem" preyed on[Pg 303] his imagination none the less that he felt that in it he was writing some of his noblest and best thoughts. He said: "I am sure that this will be my own requiem." Nothing could dissuade him from the idea. It returned again and again. At length he fell ill, poisoned, as he thought, by some envious rival. No one knows whether there was anything in the notion that actual poison had been administered, although there were rivals who had been heard to wish that he were out of the way. Without having quite finished the "Requiem" he breathed his last December 5, 1791. His premonition proved correct. The "Requiem" was given at his own funeral.
This account of the life of Mozart has hardly the merit of an outline, for within the short thirty-five years of his earthly existence this great master produced a variety of works in every province of music, greater than that produced by any other of the great masters, scarcely excepting the indefatigable and long-lived Händel.
It is extremely difficult to assign Mozart a definite place in the musical Pantheon without praising him too highly on the one hand, or going to the other extreme and belittling his genius by pointing out the evident fact that noble, beautiful, sprightly, sweet and charming as were his compositions, he has not left so large an influence upon the later course of music as quite a number of artists apparently his inferiors. His influence in music was largely temporary, but none the less indispensable to musical progress. To the neat and symmetrical periods of the Haydn symphony and sonata, with their fresh, thematic treatment, Mozart added a tender grace and sweetness like the conceptions of a Raphael in painting. He was the apostle of melody. If he had never written, the art of music would have remained something quite[Pg 304] different from what we know it. And wherever there are lovers of refined, noble melody, there will the music of Mozart be loved. Moreover, in his best symphonies, such as the one in G minor, and the "Jupiter" in C, there is a boldness and freedom of flight which Beethoven scarcely surpassed. He was at his best as a composer of operas. He was one of the fathers of the artistic song, with music for every stanza differing according to the sentiment of the words; and while the dramatic coloration is not forgotten in his operas, they are a constant flow of charming, inexhaustible melody, which sings most divinely. In short, taking his works through and through, Mozart was what, in the words of Mr. Matthew Arnold, we might call the composer of "sweetness and light." His music glows with the radiance of immortal beauty.
HE labors of Haydn and Mozart in the rich field of instrumental music
were followed immediately by those of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was
born at the little town of Bonn, on the Rhine, about twenty miles
above Cologne, in 1770. He died at Vienna, 1827. The years between
these dates were filled with labor and inspiration, beyond those of
any other master. Beethoven's place in music is at the head. Whether
he or Bach ought to be reckoned the very greatest of all the great
geniuses who have appeared in music, is a question which might be
discussed eternally without ever being settled. Considered merely as
an artist capable of transforming musical material in an endless
variety of ways, he would perhaps be placed somewhat lower than Bach;
but considered as a tone poet gifted with the faculty of making
hearers feel as he felt, and see as he saw (with the inner eyes of
tonal sense), no master ought to be placed above him. This is the
general opinion now, of all the world. Taine, the French critic, in
his work on art, names four great souls belonging to the highest order
of genius—Dante, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo and Beethoven. The
company is a good one, and Beethoven rightfully belongs in it. His
early life was wholly different from that of the gifted Mozart. He was
the son of a dissipated[Pg 306] tenor singer, and his mother was rather an
incapable person. When the boy was about eleven years old he began to
play the viola in the orchestra. He was already a good pianist, and it
was said of him that he was able to play nearly the whole of the "Well
Tempered Clavier" by heart, and at the age of eleven and a half he was
left in charge during Neefe's absence, as deputy organist. His
improvisations had already attracted attention, and when he was a
little past twelve he was made assistant musical conductor
(cembalist), having to prepare the operas, adapt them to the orchestra
and the players of the theater, and sometimes to train the whole
company for several months together, while Neefe, the director, was
away. All this without salary. In this practical school of adversity
the boy grew up, arranging continually, training the orchestra,
adapting music and composing—for he began this very soon; in fact, we
have certain sonatinas of his, composed while he was but ten years
old.
He was direct in his speech, almost to rudeness, not, like Mozart, attractive in his personal appearance, and rather awkward in society, where he was continually breaking things, upsetting the water, the ink, or whatever liquid was in his way. Nevertheless, there must have been something attractive about this young man of independent manners, for very early in life, and all the way through it, he made friends with the aristocracy. Count Waldstein, a few years his senior, to whom he afterward dedicated the so-called "Waldstein" sonata, Opus 53, in C, early became interested in him, hired a piano for him and sent it to his room, that he might have opportunity to practice. There was a family of Von Breunings in Bonn, consisting of the mother, three boys and a daughter, where the young Beethoven often stayed[Pg 307] for several days together. This was one of the most refined families in town, and it was here that the unfortunate young Beethoven got his first glimpses of a true home life, and his first realization of the refining influence of woman's society. He learned English in order that he might be able to read Shakespeare in the original. He also learned a little Italian and French. In short, the boy appears at good advantage from every point of view, except from that of mere appearance. This life of labor and responsibility was broken in upon when he was about seventeen (in 1787). He was sent to Vienna, and there is a tradition that he played there before Mozart, who is reported to have prophesied favorably concerning him. There is very little left us concerning his first visit to the great Austrian capital, then, as ever since, the home of music. He was soon back again in Bonn, and there for yet another year and a half he went on with his work. His mother dying, he had no longer any responsibility to retain him there, so when he was about twenty-one he set out again for Vienna, where all the remainder of his life was spent. At Vienna he immediately began to give concerts, in which his piano playing was the main feature, and his improvising upon themes presented by the audience. This art always remained one of his great distinctions—the surest proof of genius, the possession of musical fantasy, in which every thought immediately suggests something else. He devoted himself to serious study of counterpoint and composition under the instruction of Haydn at first, but later with Albrechtsberger. His two great elements of power at this period were his playing and his improvising. Czerny says: "His improvisation was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how[Pg 308] to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs; for there was something wonderful about his expression, in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas, and his spirited manner of rendering them."
The limits of the present work do not admit of following the career of this great master in the detail which would otherwise be desirable. It must suffice to mention the more salient features. Contrary to the precedent established by Mozart, Beethoven was in no hurry to appear as a composer of ambitious pieces. After the early practical experiences above described, and the further advantage of studies in Vienna under the best teachers at that time living, it was not until 1795 that he appeared as composer of his first concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, a Mozart-like work, but with an Adagio of true Beethovenish flavor. A year later he published his first three sonatas for pianoforte, dedicated to Haydn. These three works are in styles totally unlike each other, and there is little or no doubt that each one of them was modeled after some existing work, which at that time was highly esteemed in Vienna. The first in F minor, is plainly after one by Emanuel Bach in the same key. The Adagio of this is especially interesting, not only because it shows a freedom and a pure lyric quality totally foreign to Emanuel Bach, and beyond Mozart even, but because it was taken out of a quartette which he had written when he was fifteen years old. This shows that even at that early age Beethoven had arrived at the conception of his peculiar style of slow movements, which differed from those of Mozart in having a more song-like quality, and a deeper and more[Pg 309] serious expression. The impression of a deep soul is very marked in the Largo of the first concerto, and there are few of his later works which carry it more plainly. In all, some sixty works precede this Opus 2, which is the modest mark affixed to these three sonatas. The third, in C, is still different from the other two, and was fashioned apparently after some composition of Clementi or Dussek. The Adagio takes a direction which must have been regarded as not entirely successful, for nowhere else does the composer follow it out. Then followed a succession of pieces of every sort, not rapidly, like Mozart's compositions, as if they represented the overflowing of an inexhaustible spring, but deliberately, as if the world were not ready for them too rapidly, one after another, each in succession carrying the treatment of the pianoforte to a finer point, and each different from its predecessor, whether of contemporaneous publication or of a former year, until by the end of the century he had reached the "Sonata Pathetique," a work which marked a prodigious advance in expression and boldness over anything that can be shown from any other master of the period. Mention having been made of the slow movements in these works, in which point they were perhaps more strikingly differentiated from those of the composers previous—the Largo of the sonata in D major, Opus 10, may be mentioned as an example of a peculiarly broad and dramatic, almost speaking rhapsody, or reverie, for piano, which not only calls for true feeling in the interpreter, but also for technical qualities of touch and breadth of tone, such as must have been distinctly in advance of the instruments of the day. Meanwhile a variety of chamber pieces had been composed, many of them of decided merit. This was a great period of activity[Pg 310] with the young composer. He had found his voice. Within two years from the "Sonata Pathetique," he had composed all the sonatas up to the two numbered Opus 27, in which the so-called "Moonlight" stands second, and between these a variety of variations, and several important chamber pieces, not forgetting the oratorio, "Christ on the Mount of Olives"—a work which although not fully successful, nevertheless contained many beautiful ideas, and one chorus which must be ranked among the best which the repertory of oratorio can show—"Hallelujah to the Father." The year 1800 also saw the first performance of the beautiful and romantic third concerto for pianoforte and orchestra. The first symphony had been performed in 1800, and by 1804 we have the great heroic symphony, the "Kreutzer Sonata," and the "Appassionata" with all that lie between. Never did tone poet give out great inspirations like these so freely. Each is an advance upon the previous, distancing all works of similar composers, and each one surpassing his own previous efforts. This activity continued with little or no interruption until 1812, after which there is quite a break, Beethoven occupying himself with pot-boilers for the English market, in the way of arrangements of songs for instrumental accompaniment. Of these there are many, Scotch and other, besides masses, canons for voices and the like. In 1814 we have the lovely sonata in E minor for piano, Opus 90, and in 1818 the great sonata for
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