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                   *       *       *       *       *


                           THE ART OF MUSIC


                           The Art of Music

                A Comprehensive Library of Information
                    for Music Lovers and Musicians

                            Editor-in-Chief
                         DANIEL GREGORY MASON
                          Columbia University

                           Associate Editors

            EDWARD B. HILL                       LELAND HALL
         Harvard University           Past Professor, Univ. of Wisconsin

                            Managing Editor

                           CÉSAR SAERCHINGER
                   Modern Music Society of New York

                          In Fourteen Volumes
                         Profusely Illustrated

               [Illustration: NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC]


                               NEW YORK
                     THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
                                 1915


           [Illustration: King René and his Musical Court.]

      _From the Breviary of King René, a 15th century manuscript
                  in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal._




                     THE ART OF MUSIC: VOLUME ONE

                     A Narrative History of Music

                          Department Editors:

                              LELAND HALL
                                  AND
                           CÉSAR SAERCHINGER

                            Introduction by
                     C. HUBERT H. PARRY, MUS. DOC.

               Director Royal College of Music, London.
        Formerly Professor of Music, University of Oxford, etc.

                                BOOK I

                        THE PRE-CLASSIC PERIODS

               [Illustration: NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC]


                               NEW YORK
                     THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC

                          Copyright, 1915, by
                  THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc.
                         [All Rights Reserved]


                        CONTENTS OF THE SERIES


    VOLUME I.     NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC--BOOK I: THE
                    PRE-CLASSIC PERIODS.

                  Introduction by Sir C. Hubert H. Parry, Mus. Doc.,
                    Director of the Royal College of Music, London.


    VOLUME II.    NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC--BOOK II: CLASSICISM
                    AND ROMANTICISM.

                  Introduction by Leland Hall, Past Professor of
                    Musical History, University of Wisconsin.


    VOLUME III.   NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC--BOOK III: MODERN
                    MUSIC.

                  Introduction by Edward Burlingame Hill, Instructor
                    in the History of Music, Harvard University.


    VOLUME IV.    MUSIC IN AMERICA.

                  Introduction by Arthur Farwell, Associate Editor,
                    'Musical America.’


    VOLUME V.     THE VOICE AND VOCAL MUSIC.

                  Introduction by David Bispham, LL.D.


    VOLUME VI.    CHORAL AND CHURCH MUSIC.

                  Introduction by Sir Edward Elgar, O.M.


    VOLUME VII.   PIANOFORTE AND CHAMBER MUSIC.

                  Introduction by Claude Debussy.


    VOLUME VIII.  THE ORCHESTRA AND ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.

                  Introduction by Dr. Richard Strauss.


    VOLUME IX.    THE OPERA.

                  Introduction by Alfred Hertz, Conductor, Metropolitan
                    Opera House, New York.

    VOLUME X.     THE DANCE.

                  Introduction by Anna Pavlowa, of the Imperial
                    Russian Ballet.


    VOLUME XI.    DICTIONARY OF MUSICIANS AND GENERAL INDEX.


    VOLUME XII.   DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND GENERAL INDEX.


    VOLUME XIII.  MUSICAL EXAMPLES.


    VOLUME XIV.   MODERN MUSICAL EXAMPLES.




                           THE ART OF MUSIC
                         GENERAL INTRODUCTION


So many and varied are the paths of musical enjoyment and profit opened
out in the following pages, so different and sometimes so conflicting
are the types of art represented there, that the timid or inexperienced
reader may well pause at the threshold, afraid of wholly losing his way
in such a labyrinth. He may hesitate to trust himself in so unfamiliar
a landscape without first seeing some sort of small-scale plan of the
ground, which, omitting the confusing details, shows in bold relief
only the larger and essential divisions--the 'lay of the land.’ Such a
plan it is the object of this introduction to furnish.

Of the two most general types of reader, the professional musician
and the amateur or lover of music, the first is least in need of such
assistance. His keen interest in his specialty will naturally determine
the order of his reading; he will look first for all he can find about
that, and later work out from that centre in various directions, and
meanwhile the plan peculiar to this work of assembling all information
on a given subject contained in any of the volumes under a name or
subject word in the index volume will make this process as systematic
and economical of time as it is fascinating to intellectual curiosity.
Thus the index volume will serve as a sort of central rotunda, so to
speak, making each room in this house of information accessible from
every other, and it will matter little at what point we enter. The
singer may go in by Volume V, the pianist by Volume VII, the organist
by Volume VI: all will eventually penetrate the entire edifice.

It is, then, the music lover unfamiliar with all musical technique,
and quite unspecialized in his interest, who most needs the help that
these preliminary suggestions may offer. The kind of help he will want
will depend, of course, on what it is he chiefly wishes to gain by his
reading. Now we shall probably not go far wrong in saying that such a
reader will desire, first, that general knowledge of the most important
schools and the greatest individuals of music history which is not
only a powerful aid to the enjoyment of music, but is nowadays coming
to be considered an essential part of a liberal education. Secondly,
he will wish to gain sufficient familiarity with music itself, and
sufficient understanding of the instruments by which it is produced and
the ways in which they influence its structure and style, to afford him
the basis for sound discrimination between good, bad, and indifferent
music, to develop, in short, his taste. In the third place, he will
justly consider that, however abstruse and involved the theory of music
may be, its fundamental principles are nevertheless accessible to the
layman, and that familiarity with such principles, especially those of
musical structure, affording as it will an insight into the way music
is put together, is an invaluable aid to that sympathetic understanding
of it which comes only to the alert and attentive listener. In a
word, the music lover will demand of his reading that it instruct him
historically, that it refine his taste by developing his sense of
style, and that it intensify his enjoyment by showing him how to listen.

Glancing now at the table of contents, we shall see that 'The Art of
Music’ naturally divides itself into three portions, each especially
suited to subserve one of these three needs of the reader. The first
four volumes, historical in character, are primarily instructive.
Volumes V to IX, inclusive, deal with the practical side of the
art--what is sometimes called 'applied music’--and in describing the
chief media by which it is produced, such as the voice, the organ, the
piano, the string quartet, the orchestra, provide general notions of
what is appropriate to each. The short essays on harmony and on form
in Volume XII, and many passages of explanation of similar matters
scattered through all the volumes, will acquaint the student with the
fundamental principles of musical theory and the standard types of
musical structure, thus affording him valuable aid to appreciative
listening. The three portions of the work, historical, practical, and
theoretical, are finally correlated and unified by Volumes XI and XII,
the Dictionary and Index, and illustrated by the musical examples in
Volumes XIII and XIV.

Let us examine a little more closely the ground covered by each
of these three general sections, one after another, not yet in
detail--that will come only with the actual reading--but with the idea
rather of getting a bird’s-eye view of the whole field in its salient
masses and divisions.

The history of music is like that of other arts in being divided
into schools or epochs. These are of course to a certain extent
arbitrary and artificial--marked off by critics for convenience of
classification--and a composer may belong to two or more schools, as
Beethoven, for example, is both 'classical’ and 'romantic,’ without
being any more aware of it than we are when our train crosses the line,
say, from New York State into Massachusetts. But they are also in
part natural and real, because any fruitful idea in art--such as the
'impressionistic’ idea of light in painting, for instance--is so much
greater than any one man’s capacity to grasp it that a whole generation
or more of artists is needed to develop its possibilities. Such a
group of artists forms what we call a 'school’ or 'period,’ beginning
usually with pioneers whose work is crude but novel, continuing with
countless workers, most of whom are after a short time completely
forgotten, and culminating with one or two greatly endowed masters
who gather up all the best achievements of the school in their own
work and stands for posterity as its figure-heads, or in some cases
engulf it entirely in their colossal shadows. Pioneers, journeymen,
geniuses--that is the list of characters in the drama we call an
artistic school.

If we try to outline in the roughest way the half dozen or so most
important schools we can find in the entire history of music we shall
get something like the following. After the long groping among the
rudiments that went on through Greek and early Christian times there
emerged during the middle ages a type of ecclesiastical music which,
after a development of several centuries, culminated in the work
of Orlando de Lasso (1520-1594), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
(1524-1594), and others. This music is as primitive, archaic, and
severe to our ears as the early Flemish religious pictures are to
our eyes. It can be described chiefly in negatives. It did not
employ instruments, but only voices in the chorus. It had no regular
time-measure, but wandered on with as little definiteness of rhythm
as the Latin prose to which it was set. It employed no grating
harsh combinations of tones ('dissonances’) such as make our music
so stirring to the emotions, partly because they are difficult for
voices, partly because the science of harmony was in its infancy,
partly because the kind of expression it aimed at was that of religious
peace. Each group of voices had its own melody to carry, and as there
were sometimes as many as sixteen groups an extraordinarily complex
web of voices or 'parts’ was developed, to which is due the name of
polyphonic (many-voiced) applied to this school. Unsuited as it is to
the restless temper of the modern man, it often attained within its own
limits an exquisite beauty.

With the application of this general type of art, the polyphonic,
to instruments, especially the organ, new developments supervened.
Dissonances were perfectly easy, and most effective, on the organ, that
would have been impossible for voices. Definite metre and rhythm were
gradually introduced. Above all, the many melodies of the older style
to some extent gave way to the massive detached chords more suitable
to the organ (because the player could grasp them by handfuls instead
of having to make his fingers play hide and seek among the keys), and
thus was born another great type of style, the 'homophonic’ (one main
melody, accompanied by chords rather than by other melodies). At the
same time the intellectual interest was vastly increased by the use of
more and more definite and recognizable bits of melody, happily called
the 'subjects’ or 'themes’ of the composition, which could be developed
and marshalled just as a writer develops and marshals his thoughts.
The fugue is the arch type of this kind of composition, with its style
partly polyphonic and partly homophonic, its deep thoughtfulness,
its ingenuity, and its surprising variety and depth of emotional
expression. Its supreme master was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

Despite the mixture of styles in the fugue, however, the preponderant
element was still the basket-like texture of winding melodies suitable
especially to voices--hence it was only in the suite, a type which
developed at the same time and of which also Bach was one of the
supreme masters, that the homophonic style suitable to instruments
was freely worked out. Instruments mark the rhythm much more strongly
than voices, so that all sorts of dance movements are particularly
appropriate for them. When the rhythm is so marked, comparatively
short phrases of tune stand out sharply and balance each other like the
verses in a couplet of poetry. Composers soon found out how further to
group these phrases in definite parts or sections, so contrasted that
the whole of the short piece or 'movement’ presented a perfectly clear,
sharp impression, had a definite beginning, middle, and end--a clear
scheme of form. This clearness of impression was enhanced by making
only one line of melody--the 'tune’ or 'air,’ as we say--prominent,
either subordinating all the others or doing away with them entirely
in favor of an accompaniment of detached chords such as we find in a
modern waltz or march. The suite, then, as it is found in its golden
age, the eighteenth century, is a series of short dance tunes of
strongly marked rhythm, precise in phraseology and concise in form,
in the homophonic style. Among its masters may be mentioned, besides
the German Bach, Couperin and Rameau in France, Corelli (violin) and
Scarlatti (harpsichord) in Italy, and Handel in England.

Closely allied with the suite, indeed an offshoot from it, is the
sonata, originally any piece for instruments (from _sonare_, to sound
or play) as distinguished from a cantata for voices (from _cantare_,
to sing). The old sonatas are essentially suites. But the generation
after Bach’s, of which one of his own sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach, was a guiding spirit, hit upon one of those apparently simple
but immensely fruitful ideas out of which whole schools are made. It
was this: Instead of coming to a stop as soon as you have outlined a
single musical idea or 'theme,’ and then merely repeating or slightly
elaborating it, as was done in all the movements of the typical
suite, why not embrace in the span of your thought _two contrasting
ideas_,[1] so characterized and arranged that each should serve as
the effective foil of the other? Once this notion of making a piece
of music out of two contrasting themes was tried out in practice it
proved to have endless potentialities. In the two hundred years that
have elapsed since C. P. E. Bach’s birth in 1714 its possibilities have
not been exhausted; it has shown an elasticity which has enabled it
to serve equally for the embodiment of such different ideas as those
of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Tschaikowsky, Brahms; it
has been applied to all branches of instrumental music, extending its
sway quickly from the 'sonata,’ specifically so called, for one, two
or three instruments, to the quartet, quintet, etc., for a group, to
the concerto for a soloist with orchestral accompaniment, and to the
overture and the symphony for full orchestra.

The purest examples of the application of this scheme to orchestral
music are to be found in the first movements of the symphonies of
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), of W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), and above all
of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1821), the genius in whom the classical
symphony culminated. The method adopted in such movements, of which
the opening allegro of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony may stand as an
unsurpassable model, was, first, to present two strongly individual
and contrasting musical ideas ('themes’), the first usually more
vigorous in character, the second more tender and appealing; second,
to let these thoughts germinate or develop in such a way as to bring
clearly forth what was at first latent in them; and, finally, to draw
together the threads and complete the musical action by a restatement
of the root ideas in something like their original form. The variety,
the power, the subtlety, the unfailing instinct for beauty, with which
Beethoven worked out the almost limitless possibilities of such a
scheme can hardly be realized even dimly save by a loving study of his
masterpieces, phrase by phrase, almost note by note. His symphonies
are like Greek statues of the great period in their infinite variety,
their perfect unity. It may seriously be doubted whether music can ever
a second time attain the harmony of all its elements that it found in
this supreme master--that which one of his critics has happily termed
'the perfect balance of expression and design.’

Certain it is that immediately after him, in large measure as a result
of his own example, it took a pronounced turn toward picturesqueness,
toward highly personal expression, toward all that is conveniently
summed up in the vague word Romanticism. Just what romanticism means
it is easier to suggest by examples than to define in general terms.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828), emphasizing the lyric element in orchestral
music, so that his symphonies have almost the personal expressiveness
of songs, is romantic. Robert Schumann (1810-1856), with his vivid
short piano pieces bearing such suggestive titles as 'Soaring,’
'Whims,’ 'In the Night,’ 'Why,’ and with his musical portraits of
friends, his quotations from his own works, and other ingenious devices
for stimulating our imaginations, literary and pictorial as well as
musical, is romantic. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) is romantic with
his orchestral canvases of the Hebrides islands bathed in sunshine and
clamored over by sea-birds, and of the delicate dances of Shakespeare’s
fairies in the 'Mid-summer Night’s Dream’; and romantic is Frédéric
Chopin (1809-1849), with his nocturnes and preludes. The composers of
the romantic period, in fact, embodied in the types of design they
inherited from Beethoven (but practised, as a rule, with far less
mastery than he) a sort of poetic suggestion of all kinds of things
outside of music. Their art is essentially an art of suggestion; and,
while its purely musical beauty is often great, they wish us not to
rest content with the music for itself, but to regard it as a symbol
of something beyond.

Once composers had begun to label, so to speak, the musical
expressiveness which the classicists preferred to leave free to act
upon each hearer according to his temperament and associations,
certain especially literary minds among them, notably Hector Berlioz
(1803-1869) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886), naturally felt impelled to
carry the process a step further, to amplify and edit the label into
complete 'directions for using.’ Such 'directions for using’ are called
'programs,’ and the school which affects them is named 'programmistic,’
or, by analogy with a similar school in literature, 'realistic.’
Your typical programmist, such as Berlioz, is not satisfied with the
romanticist’s mere suggestion of a subject; he demands in advance
a complete bill of fare of his musical feast. When Beethoven, a
classicist, deals with a human emotion--love, for instance, as in the
Fifth Symphony--he aims merely to stimulate in us the most general
feeling and let each of us interpret for himself; when a romanticist
like Tschaikowsky writes almost equally beautiful love music he gives
a fillip to our imagination by naming it an overture to 'Romeo and
Juliet’; but when Berlioz conceives his _Symphonie Fantastique_ he must
have his lover killed on the guillotine--he must even hear the knife
fall. Such a theory of musical æsthetics is evidently highly dangerous,
since it tends to bind shackles on the free movement of the music, and
also to distract the hearer’s attention from the music to something far
less vital. Nevertheless in the hands of Richard Strauss in our own
day (born 1864), who seems to be the genius in which this school is to
culminate, it has led to remarkable results.

We have now reviewed in highly summary fashion some of the chief
schools, with their most representative masters, that may be noted in
a bird’s-eye view of the history of instrumental music. As for the
other great branch of the art, music associated with literature, and
especially its most important manifestation, the opera, classification
according to artistic principles is both more difficult and less
necessary, since the opera can very well be studied by countries
rather than by schools. The reader will at any rate find in his study
of opera that one or two clear conceptions of the national or racial
character of the three peoples who have done the most important work
in the operatic field, the Italians, the French, and the Germans,
will help him more than æsthetic standards difficult to apply to an
æsthetic hybrid which is neither drama nor music. Thus the Italian
sensuousness has been both the blessing and the curse of opera in
Italy: the blessing by keeping it simple and tuneful, as in so much
of Rossini (1792-1868), Bellini (1802-1835), Donizetti (1798-1848),
the early Verdi (1813-1901), and even such moderns as Mascagni and
Leoncavallo; the curse of opening the door to all sorts of absurdities
on the dramatic side, and to the abuse of the power of the singers
in meaningless virtuosity. Again, the keen dramatic sense of the
French has helped to minimize such absurdities in works produced by
their composers or at their national opera house under their national
influence, as for instance those of Gluck (1714-1787), Cherubini
(1760-1842), Meyerbeer (1791-1864), and others. Finally the warmth of
sentiment of the Germans, their unrivalled faculty for getting at the
emotional essence of a situation and expressing it in music, must be
accorded a large part in the power of the romantic operas of the German
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) and the music dramas of Richard Wagner
(1813-1883). In revenge the Teutonic deficiency of dramatic sense and
tolerance of tedium are to some extent accountable for those long
stagnations of the action in the Wagnerian dramas which the most ardent
admirers of Wagner the musician no longer deny.

In all this historical study of the earlier volumes of 'The Art of
Music’ the reader will be primarily in quest of information, his
interest will be that of the scientist in facts. Even here, however, he
will soon find himself discriminating the good from the bad, or from
the less good, setting up standards of comparison, in a word, mingling
with his purely scientific interest in facts an artistic interest
in values. In all periods he will find the great man distinguished
from the little by nobility, depth, and variety of thought, and by
purity of style. In all ages he will discover hosts of mediocrities
for one genius. He will realize that there were as many routinists in
the polyphonic school, as many dry-as-dusts in the classic, as many
sentimentalists in the romantic, as there are uninspired scene-painters
among the programmists. He will remark what may be called the double
paradox of art: first, that cheap decorativeness, empty display of
merely technical skill, 'splurge’ of all sorts, while often making
music popular in its own day, has always killed it early for posterity,
as for example in the case of the over-ornamented arias of Italian
opera or the equally over-ornamented piano pieces of Thalberg and other
early nineteenth century pianists; second, that simplicity, directness,
sincerity are always at first ignored or misunderstood, and only
gradually take the supreme place which belongs to them, as we see in
studying such otherwise dissimilar artists as Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven,
Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, Franck. Such observations open up the path to
a true, independent, and unconventional estimate of artistic values, to
the development of real taste.

It is especially in amplifying, clarifying, and solidifying this taste
that the second group of volumes, dealing with the media of musical
production, will be useful to the unprofessional reader. A knowledge of
the construction of instruments and of the style appropriate to each,
as determined by its peculiarities and exemplified in its literature,
is a great aid both to the appreciation of excellence and to the
detection of shoddiness. A simple example will make this clear. Every
one who has watched a pianist play a waltz knows how appropriate and
convenient for the piano is that kind of accompaniment which has been
called the 'dum-dum-dum’--where the left hand first sounds the bass
and then strikes twice a chord completing the harmony and at the same
time marking the rhythm. This is an excellent piano device, because
it does these three needful things in the simplest possible way. What
shall we say, however, when laziness or incompetence, writing a waltz
for orchestra, borrows this piano device without change, as it does
constantly in the popular music of the day? Evidently enough, what was
well fitted to the piano is ridiculous for an orchestra: for here it
gives the bass instruments a series of detached notes without coherence
or interest, and condemns the unfortunate players who provide the
middle parts to repeat an endless 'dum-dum, dum-dum’ which outrages all
musical instinct.

Or, again, we sometimes hear piano pieces in which the harmonies
are arranged in solid chords, as in the hymn-tune familiar in the
protestant church. Why the effect should be so singularly vapid we
do not know until we think of the peculiarities of the instruments
involved. Voices, especially in large groups, as in congregational
singing, move slowly, sustain well, and show their quality best when
disposed in broad masses. Hence the appropriateness to them of these
deliberate chords. But the piano, on the contrary, sustains very
poorly, achieves fullness of volume only by means of rapid utterance,
and is in short at its very worst in the hymn-tune style. Piano tone
requires to be split up into many facets, to be carved, so to speak;
but vocal tone is like those substances, such as colored marble,
which show their texture best in the block. Recently there has been
much controversy as to the appropriateness of organ transcriptions of
orchestral works. No doubt the organ can render the notes of a symphony
quite as well as the poor overworked piano, but a rudimentary knowledge
of the mechanism of the organ will show us where lies its special
capacity--in the sustaining and rolling up of great masses of tone, and
not at all in that more intimate expressiveness through swelling and
fading and through accent in which the violin is peerless. The organ is
magnificent in a Bach fugue, unsatisfactory in a Beethoven symphony,
ridiculous in a popular dance. Thus on all sides we see that style
depends on the medium, and that a sensitive taste will no more detach a
musical figure from its appropriate setting than it will transfer the
costume of the logging-camp to the drawing-room, or _vice versa_.

What makes all study of this kind particularly necessary to the
would-be intelligent music-lover of to-day is that our generation seems
to be going through a period of unusual confusion in all matters of
taste. Whether it be that our resources have accumulated faster than
our powers of assimilation could develop, or that popular education,
while increasing the amount of musical enjoyment, has lowered
its quality, or that the ever-present commercialism has betrayed
us--whatever be the causes, it is certain that almost all our standards
have suffered from a false liberalism, that we have lost old lines and
boundaries without getting anything to put in their place, and that
much as we may boast of no longer starving our artistic instincts as
did our puritan forefathers, we do not yet discriminatingly nourish
them, but rather overeat ourselves sick. There is hardly any branch of
music where this tendency to excess may not be discovered. The modern
conception of the piano, for instance, as a rival of the orchestra in
richness, variety, and power of sound has adulterated piano style in
many respects. It has led directly to 'ungrateful’ writing for the
piano by composers, to pounding and other exaggerations by players.
There are few musicians nowadays who show the fine self-control that
made Schumann and Chopin models of how the piano should be treated.
The rare intuition of Debussy in this respect is one of the true
justifications of a vogue not perhaps altogether free from faddism.

In chamber music, notably the string quartet, where delicateness of
sonority is even more vital to the style, since it is the condition of
the clearness of the individual voices, and cannot be departed from
without an immediate coarsening of the texture, there is the same
tendency to imitate the orchestra. One hears many modern quartets in
which all four instruments keep restlessly sawing away, often on two
strings at once, as if they were taking part in a hurdle race or a
debating society, rather than in a work of art. Special effects like
harmonics and the use of the mute, appropriate enough in solos and at
long intervals, are grossly abused. In striving to be something beyond
its frame this most exquisite combination of four musical personalities
loses all its intimateness, all its charm. Even orchestral music
itself does not escape these perversions. There is a distinct cult
at the present day, especially in France, for playing at concerts
music originally written to accompany pantomimes or ballets, and even
for composing pieces intended for concert according to the processes
suitable for such illustrative music--with highly spiced sonorous
effects, schemes of structure based on dramatic action, and little
or no purely musical interest. Indeed, all thoughtful observers must
sometimes ask themselves if this universal tendency to force things out
of their natural fields, to make them do not what they can do best,
but what they are least expected to do, is not a symptom of a grave
disorder of our æsthetic sense, a preference of novelty to beauty,
a debased fondness for the queer, an invasion of art by that low
curiosity which draws a street crowd around any one who will stand on
his head, or wear his clothes wrong side before. The reader genuinely
fond of music will be glad to combat this tendency to the best of his
power, and to that end will inform himself of those peculiarities of
instruments by which appropriateness of style is so largely determined.

What the average reader can get from his study of the theoretical
portions of 'The Art of Music’ will depend largely on his instinctive
sense of the larger bearing of technical facts. Studied with pedantic
insistence of detail harmony is a dry subject; studied with an
imagination eager for the light it throws on general æsthetic questions
it proves unexpectedly illuminating. Harmony describes the material
available to the musician; it is, we might say, the dictionary from
which each composer chooses the words he needs to express his thought;
and to study it is therefore for the lover of music much what it is
for the lover of literature to study the vocabularies of his favorite
authors--the derivations of the words, their ancient associations,
the flavors which cling about them. Just as Sir Thomas Browne has his
special words, noble-sounding, many-syllabled, and his special forms of
sentence that roll grandly off the tongue, and as Keats finds in the
same English a completely different instrument, capable of romantic
utterance and full of elusive suggestion: so the harmony of Bach is not
the harmony of Schumann, although it is made out of the same notes and
even many of the same chords. Indeed, the very same chord is not the
same in effect, in style, when used in the context of two composers,
or even of one composer in two different moods; a chord is a chameleon
that takes the color of its surroundings. How full of sadness, of
infinite resignation, is the first B flat chord in the Adagio of the
Ninth Symphony! How the very same B flat chord pulsates with energy in
the Allegro of the Fourth! The study of the action and reaction of
harmony and style is a fascinating one, in spite of its difficulty--one
on which books might be written, as many have been on the choice of
words in literature.

Easier, however, and much more directly helpful to appreciation, is
the study of the chief principles of musical form or structure, as
they affect, not the composer, but the listener. As one going into a
foreign country provides himself with some guidance as to the main
things he is going to see there, so the music lover to whom symphonic
music remains to some degree a foreign region likes to find out before
he hears it what he is to listen for. That knowledge in detail will
be found in the essay on musical form in Volume XII. Here it is our
business, as before, avoiding detail, to get such a bird’s-eye view as
may be possible of the most general facts of musical form. Especially
agreeable and useful would it be if we could show that, in music as
elsewhere, form and formalism are two essentially different things,
and that while formalism is the conventionalizing and stiffening that
indicate lowered vitality or incipient death in a work of art, form is
the necessary shape it takes because it is alive. The formless is not
yet alive; the formal is dying or dead; only the _formed_ truly lives.
Therefore musical form is quite simple and natural, like the branching
of trees or the crystallizing of salts, and the study of it is based on
observation and common sense, and strives to determine how sounds have
to be ordered to become intelligible.

Essentially there are but three processes concerned in musical
construction--the announcement or exposition of the themes, their
elaboration or development, and their recapitulation. These processes
are the natural outcome of quite simple psychological facts, and are
duplicated in literature and other arts. The announcement of a theme is
the preliminary statement, made as simple and as brief as possible,
of the thought with which the composer proposes to occupy himself.
For the listener, it is the presentation of a bit of melody of a
particular rhythmic profile which he remembers by this profile, this
characteristic combination of long and short, accented and unaccented
notes, just as he remembers a person by the shape of his face. Careful
attention to the main themes of a composition is of vital importance
to appreciation, since the themes are the actors of the musical drama,
and all the action is really only the working out of their latent
characteristics.

This is what we mean by development. In no music worthy of the name
is development an artificial, intellectual process; it is simply the
germination of the theme-seeds. As it results, however, in constantly
increasing complexity, it would quickly confuse the listener were it
not judiciously combined with simple repetitions of the original ideas,
serving both to mark the completion of one cycle of development and
sometimes to initiate a new one. The recapitulations insure the unity
of the impression as a whole made by the work of art; the developments
give it the richness and variety inseparable from all life.

The many special musical forms of which the student will read are
merely so many clearly defined combinations of these three processes.
Thus in the minuet, for example, a comparatively primitive form,
there is one theme, expounded, developed, and recapitulated, and in
the second part called trio, a second theme treated exactly the same
way. In the 'Song form’ so called, used for slow movements of sonatas
and symphonies, there is usually an exposition of a theme, a slight
development, and an ornamented or otherwise varied repetition; then,
without any complete stop, a contrasting theme, treated much the same
way; finally, a return of the main theme, either treated as at first
or somewhat more briefly. Sometimes there is a short coda (concluding
section) with further slight development of one or both themes.

The sonata form, as we have already seen, is distinguished from
both these more rudimentary types by having two themes of almost
equal importance--sometimes three. These contrast with each other in
expression, rhythm, and what is called 'key.’ Their development is
extended and occupies the entire middle part of the piece. They are
regularly recapitulated much as at first, but now both in the same
'key,’ and may be followed by a coda, which with Beethoven assumes
sometimes almost the importance of a second development. In the
rondo there is a constant alternation between a main theme and other
secondary themes or sections of development.

Thus in all the special forms we find but different applications
of the three fundamental processes of exposition, development, and
recapitulation, much as all plants go through the necessary cycle
of seeding, growth, and blossoming. The more the music of the great
symphonic masters is studied the more marvellous will the reader find
the mingling of ingenuity and simplicity with which they know how to
marshal their thoughts. Such study makes listening no longer a passive
or even wearisome process, but the most fascinating reliving of a
spiritual life as many-sided, as infinitely various, as filled with
beauty, as that of Nature herself.

                                                   DANIEL GREGORY MASON.
JUNE, 1914.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] To be exact Emanuel Bach was not responsible for the idea of
contrast, which was a principle developed by the so-called Mannheim
school, whose leader was Johann Stamitz. But with Bach the two separate
sections of the 'Exposition’ first become distinct.




                     A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC

                                BOOK I




                     A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC
                             INTRODUCTION


Musical art is the idealized art of the inner man as distinguished
from the arts of painting and sculpture and their like which are the
idealized expression of what is outside him. It is the result of
the urgent impulses of certain peculiarly constituted human beings
to express things which move them in ways which are favorable to
permanence; which permanence proves attainable only through the
controlling influence of the instinct for order.

The instinct for order and the impulse to gratify it in all directions
seem to be present in all unperverted human beings; which is obviously
the consequence of the fact that it has always ministered to the
preservation of those who possessed it. The primitive savage who kept
his weapons in some kind of orderly fashion, and knew where to lay
his hands on them when wanted, easily survived the disorderly savage
who could not find them soon enough to prevent being exterminated.
The primitive savage who could dispose his means of existence in an
orderly fashion was more likely to survive the savage who had no proper
place for anything; and there were thousands of other ways in which
this instinct favored its possessor; and favored him more and more as
social and anti-social conditions progressed in complexity. Looked at
from another point of view, that of experience, the lack of the sense
of order betokens low mental power; and the possession of it in higher
and higher degrees is a token of higher and higher capacities of mind.

The sense of order is the basis of organization; and out of
organization comes permanence. The more perfect the organization
the more lasting is the thing organized. What is well built is well
organized for its purpose, and stands fast. What is ill built is badly
organized for its purpose, and tumbles down. And so it is with a work
of literature. It cannot be said that a noble thought ill-presented
will soon be forgotten; but its being ill-presented makes it obscure.
And it must be admitted that fascination is added to the utterance
of a great thought by the perfect clearness and nicety with which it
is expressed. The presentation is in that sense admirably organized
and the mind welcomes it, and returns to it frequently with delight;
whereas if it is clumsily expressed it gives the mind unnecessary
trouble to understand what it means, and then there is a feeling of
distaste and annoyance which prejudices the welcome that the great
thought merits.

So it is with a work of art. Clumsiness and incoherence of structure
beget discomfort, however great the intentions. Imperfections which
may not be noticed at first grow more and more oppressive, till they
become unbearable, and at last mankind is impelled to regard the good
intentions as little better than opportunities wasted.

It may be justly argued that such imperfections are inevitable not only
because art represents human efforts but because organization takes
centuries to effect. It is also true that certain types of imperfection
are pathetically attractive and afford a kind of interest in themselves
where they suggest the kind of human condition and effort which is
characteristic of the time and circumstances in which any individual
work of art was produced. But in such case it is necessary that the
motive shall be honorable. After ages will never be able to regard
the deficiencies in modern church and chapel architecture, stained
glass windows, modern tombstones and suburban villa residences with
anything but disgust. Putting such aberrations aside for the present,
it is pleasant to realize that one of the privileges of an instinct for
style is to be able to recognize the stage of organization which has
been reached, both in diction and structure, by the qualities of any
work of art, and to locate the type of organization and balance its
proportionate relation to what is expressed, and, more subtly still,
to discern even the intention. Men who have any artistic instinct
estimate the quality of a work of art by such an adjustment. They feel
its nobility if it has any, even though the standard of organization
is low, by estimating the quality of the thought in connection with
the inevitable limitations of the means of expression. A work of art
may inspire constant delight even though its form be obvious and its
details crude, if the methods employed are sincere efforts to express
with the best means available an inspiring idea. Limitations do not
necessarily imply false construction. There is this to be remembered:
that the progress of thought and the progress of organization
proceed together and that a thought which clearly belongs to several
generations ago will not be as complex or have to cover so much ground
as the thought of later times of equal status; and that the limitation
of the means of organization of the time to which the thought belongs
will therefore be adequate and congenial to that thought, whereas, if a
composer or artist use only the resources of diction and design of two
hundred years ago to express a modern thought, the deficiency of the
organization becomes at once apparent.

It is worth while to observe parenthetically that in primitive stages
of art men did not attempt organization in order to give permanence to
their artistic products. Their attitude was that of the unconscious
child, and they merely sought to gratify their instinct for order,
and arrived at the principle of organization in the process. So the
beginnings of art were the direct result of the inevitable processes of
the universe. Men found out the relation of organization to permanence
long afterward, when they developed the capacity to analyze and
consider what they were doing.

Mankind, like the individual, passes through three stages in his
manner of producing and doing things. The first is unconscious
and spontaneous, the second is self-critical, analytical, and
self-conscious; and the third is the synthesis which comes of the
recovery of spontaneity with all the advantages of the absorption
of right principles of action. In the products of the first stage
people delight in spite of crudity and clumsiness because they are
fervent, genuine, essentially human. The products of the second are
often ineffectual, occasionally suggestive, and for the most part
more historically than humanly interesting. It is in the last phase
that the greatest works of musical art are produced; and it is in
such works of art that the approximation to perfection may be found,
in which there is no part which has not some relation to every other
part; nothing which does not minister to the fullness with which the
inner idea of the artist is expressed; in which every curve of melody,
every progression of harmony, every modulation, every rhythmic group,
every climax and relaxation of stress, every shade of color, and every
part of the inner texture at once ministers to coherent and cogent
expression and at the same time fulfills its function in the general
scheme of design or organization. From mere elementary orderliness
art has progressed in such things to the very highest manifestations
of the subtlest and most perfect organization which the human mind is
capable of achieving. But it must be admitted that such an ideal is
only reached in very rare cases, by masters whose complete absorption
in the work of artistic creation is undisturbed by distracting
influences; who can maintain their concentration through a prolonged
and coherent effort; and who have the gift to apply their faculties
and successfully call upon their minds to provide exactly the right
methods and procedures whenever required, and at the same time to hold
everything balanced by the requirements of proportionate relation which
is indispensable to true artistic organization.

It is to such perfection that all true artists aspire, and it is only
those who are absolutely true to themselves who can even approximate to
it. In days when commercialism is rampant and the favor of such as are
totally ignorant of the most elementary artistic principles is held to
be the criterion of artistic worth, it practically becomes impossible.

There are two phases of organization. The first is the organization of
terms, signs, methods, materials, some of which must be found before
art begins, but most of which are found as it evolves. The second phase
is the organization of the individual works of art. The parallel that
springs to mind at the moment is the organization of units and supplies
of an army, on the one hand, and, on the other, the organization of the
campaign and the engagements for which the forces and their needs were
organized. Upon the former kind of organization it is not necessary to
dwell. It is an obvious necessity of art. But, though part of it, it
does not illustrate or affect the quality of the art products except
in a purely elementary and mechanical sense. Of the latter kind, which
manifests itself inevitably in varying degrees in every musical work
from the cheapest popular song to the highest instrumental symphony,
it must be admitted that it is worth while to have some little
understanding; especially of the relations to one another of the
various branches and factors in the artistic scheme which the study of
such things in detail is apt to miss.

At the outset the curious anomaly may be admitted that expression
and organization appear to be antagonistic. This is only one way
of recognizing that art, like everything else, is achieved by the
accommodation of opposites. The very idea of human feeling being
expressed in preconceived set terms sounds so preposterous as to be
almost repugnant. Yet if it is not expressed in set terms how should
it maintain its hold upon the mind? We know by experience that human
feeling upsets organization (as, for instance, in the confusion of
rhythm into which highly emotional performers and singers are driven),
and that organization stifles human feeling (as, for instance, in the
empty, inadequate words that are stuffed into poetry to make rhymes,
and the ridiculous shams that are stuffed in architecture as in music
to make a pattern complete). But, as a matter of fact, though language
also might be described as antagonistic to feeling, yet feeling cannot
definitely be conveyed to other beings without being formalized into
words, and the words arranged according to the recognized rules of
prosody. And, as a matter of experience, when language has become,
as it does, a spontaneous means of expressing feeling, it very often
intensifies the feelings that it is used to express. Many men are more
excited by their own violent language than by the motives which caused
them to give vent to it. So in art some men only begin to find out
how strong their feelings are when they try to put them into shape.
The mere fact of organizing effective climaxes according to settled
principles causes them to believe in deep-set passion which they would
not otherwise have suspected in themselves. Oratory is never in itself
a proof of greatness or even sincerity of soul.

So it cannot be maintained that the appearance of antagonism is fully
borne out by experience. But what is evident is that the human element
represents instability and the constructive element stability; and the
adjustment of the two keeps art alive. All art that has life in it must
be in unstable equilibrium, for, indeed, all thought whatever induces
instability. Stable equilibrium, if such a thing could be conceivable,
is merely abeyance of activity. As a matter of fact there is no part
of the universe which is in stable equilibrium, art as little as the
rest of it. Art is, in the widest sense, man’s highest expression of
the Spirit of the Universe; that is of the effects which are produced
in his inner man by his personal experiences in it and his cogitations
about it, and art’s life is governed by the same laws. In the universe
all things seem to tend toward stable equilibrium, and yet of necessity
when it seems to be approached some new direction of force disturbs it
and sets up new systems of motions which may last for ages. So in art
there has been a tendency to deal with the claims of feeling and the
claims of form at different times. At certain periods in art’s history
the human element predominated and the claims of organization were
either ignored or overlooked. The result was incoherence, and the need
of more circumspect procedure gave organization an excessive spell of
attention. Convention then took the place of realities and art became
the playground of ingenious dry-as-dusts, till the human element again
asserted its claims and progress swayed in the direction of instability
again; and so the great rhythm was maintained.

But it would be absurd to pretend that the alternation proceeded
regularly without yielding to external influences. The direction which
art took was often influenced by social conditions external to itself.
A chance whiff of fashion or a wave of impulse in favor of intellectual
subtleties would naturally cause a phase of art in which human feeling
would be crowded out by superfluity of organizing ingenuity. A state of
society in which a few people enjoyed the results of their ancestors
having annexed all the material advantages of the world and regarded
the rest of humanity as merely provided by Providence to minister
to their vanities, would be peculiarly favorable to the exuberance
of conventional pattern-making and elegant futilities; while the
successful overthrow of such a poisonous tradition and the general
acceptance of the widest claims of humanity to common justice naturally
brought an overwhelming impulse of human feeling into play. But the
apparent derangement of the ebb and flow was not actually destructive
of the principle, but only affected the length of the periods and the
extent of the one influence on the other.

As a rule the instinctive discernment of humanity was so far just that
it is far more easy to point to periods when human feeling predominated
than to those when the organizing instinct predominated. This was
natural because all artistic beings are, as far as the impulse is
concerned, at the outset bent upon expressing feelings of some sort.
Even those who have more aptitude for technical efficiency than mind
are not actually aiming at producing supernaturally correct grammatical
exercises. They are always much offended if such a thing is suggested.
The unsophisticated lovers of music who have no technical knowledge
to speak of are always concerned with the human side of it, they are
moved by the sound, the color, the rhythm, the character of the melody,
and, as far as they can get at it, by the idea the composer wants to
express. It lies with the unsophisticated to maintain the claims of
that side of art, as Wagner suggested when he said that he made his
works for the not-musicians.

The fully instructed are inevitably inclined to overestimate mere
workmanship. The wonder that is inspired by supremely masterly
organization impels experts to be carried away by their admiration
of it; and, moreover, it is practicable to discuss that aspect of
art fully and clearly, whereas language is not apt to discuss the
meaning and spirit of musical art, for the obvious reason that it is
the business of music to express things that are beyond the reach of
words. And it is pathetic to think how many thousands of people who
have musical insight, and are really moved and inspired by it, are,
through their very conscientious desire to understand it, misled into
supposing that organization and dexterous use of the methods of art are
the things that are of highest importance. This has been the bane of
the greater part of theoretic writing about art and is the thing which
arouses rebellion in ardent and aspiring minds against the stress that
is laid on principles of form and grammatical orthodoxies. To such
dispositions it seems preposterous to devote so much attention to the
organization and to take so little count of the thing organized; and
their antagonism is indeed very serviceable. For, however ridiculous
the results their ardor often produces, they do help to keep art
alive and to prevent its being stifled by conventions. And they do
maintain the necessary protest against the paralyzing theory that has
at times been propounded, that art is merely a special manifestation
of clever mechanical ingenuity. Coherent organization is indeed a
necessary condition of art, but the thing organized is of the foremost
importance. The idea comes first and the organization is secondary.
Yet the one is futile without the other; the idea cannot be conveyed
without the organization, but organization without something to
organize is mere superfluity. The idea without organization is mere
incoherence; mere organization without meaning is empty puzzle making.
Neither by itself has any claim to be distinguished as art.

The ways in which a work of art can be organized are practically
innumerable; but in musical art they all have the simple structural
basis of a departure from a given point to a point or many points of
contrast and back home again. The infinite number of varieties depends
on the manner in which the central point is established, and how the
departure from it is made; how the contrasting middle portion is
organized, and how the return home is established. The evolution of
principles of form consists in the elaboration of the main divisions
into subordinate contrasts, contrasts to contrasts, inner organic
procedures, devices of structure which are linked and superimposed on
one another, in which the steps that lead away from the main centre
are successively distributed in subtle gradations, all of which
are available to make the adaptation to the idea more perfect. The
story of the evolution is perspicuously clear, as the vast amount of
devoted and, latterly, intelligent labor which has been expended upon
collecting folk-songs and specimens of quasi-musical phrases of savages
has completed the story from the first appearance of the desire for
some kind of orderliness up to the portentous elaborations of European
music of the present day.

The way complication has been built upon complication may be
easily grasped by observing the successive stages of art for which
organization had to be provided. At first it had only to serve for
a single melodic line; then, in the period of ecclesiastical choral
music, for two or more combined melodic lines; then composers combined
more and more melodic lines as they found out how it could be done, and
this caused their minds to be almost monopolized by what may be called
linear organization, which is a systematized relation of melodic parts
which are quasi independent, but knit into unity by their subjection
to the rules of melodic scales, which were called modes. The highest
outcome of long and concentrated thought in this direction was the type
of organization known as the fugue, which is a linear principle of
organization vitalized by the systematic distribution of recognizable
melodic phrases. Fugue was the first form in which the musical idea
was the most prominent factor in organization, and in the hands of
genuine composers was developed to a high degree of perfection. But it
left almost unrealized the problem of organization which dawned upon
men’s minds as necessary when they began to feel the harmonies which
were the result of combined melodious parts as entities in themselves.
This problem was dealt with in the period when men devoted themselves
to the classification of harmonies in key systems, which gave every
harmony a definite function in artistic organization; and the capacity
of the human mind was developed till it could recognize one succession
of harmonies as representing one key centre and another succession
of harmonies as representing another key centre, and this made an
orderly succession of key centres the new basis of organization.
Then the human mind grew to be able to discern these principles of
order when composers dispensed with the sounding of the concrete
harmonies and only represented them by ornamental procedures; through
which the trained mind can perceive and infer the groups of harmonic
successions which are implied and recognize the respective keys to
which they belong. Complication yet further expanded the basis of
organization as composers approached what may be called the extreme of
sophistication, which became attainable by a reversion to the linear
system, in which harmony was again suffused by polyphonic methods, and
the individual notes of the ornamental formulas themselves are made to
represent centres of activity and have their own harmonization; which
harmonization subsists in spite of its apparent clashing with the
harmonization of other ornamental notes, which the mind is able to
endure because it intellectually segregates the notes which represent
different systems and allots them to their respective centres and
so keeps them apart from one another. The superimposition of device
upon device is like a perpetual budding from a germ cell, with the
additional analogy to things physical, that each generation is always
consistent in its characteristics and identifiable. The quickness of
the human mind at grasping the especial type of organization which it
has to accept, in order to follow the idea of the composer, is one of
its most extraordinary capacities; as is the development of the art
which enables the adequately equipped composer to be sure that his
most subtle sophistications are sure to meet with understanding from
the auditors who are equally well equipped. When an ignoramus looks
at a full score of any big modern work and sees there the hundreds of
notes that are to be sounded in a few seconds, and sounded also for the
fraction of a second and no more, most of which are not harmony notes
but only suggest them by the way they are grouped, and yet convey to
the qualified auditor a perfect sense of orderliness and coherence, it
will either give him the sense of the amazing development of art and of
human capacity to follow what is offered to it as art, or incredulity,
in accordance with his temperamental bias.

But it has to be remembered that, in order to find any method of
organization serviceable, the auditor must have gone through some
of the steps which enable him to follow the procedure. It is here
that certain perplexing incapacities will find their explanation. It
frequently happens that a person of considerable musical culture is
amazed to find that some passage which he regards as one of the noblest
and most moving in the whole range of art leaves the majority of
average audiences entirely blank and unmoved--and this may happen with
people who are constantly hearing music. It happens most frequently
when a person who cultivates late phases of instrumental music is
brought into contact with the finest choral music of the sixteenth
century. The meaning and purpose of the several motions have not come
under his attention and he has no clue whatever to the scheme of
organization. The contempt with which the complacent classicist of
the sonata period looked down upon the form of the fugue was owing
to musicians having broken altogether for the time with organization
of the fugal type and having become incapable of listening to and
understanding the motions of two or three independent parts at once.
For here it will be as well to observe that every step in the building
up of art by the addition of notes to a scale, of new chords which were
devised, and of methods and devices of all sorts had special functions
when they were invented, just as much as every conceivable feature in
architecture had a function. But mankind always forgot the original
meaning very soon and applied the various features to other purposes,
most of which were quite without meaning and merely served for barren
show. And it is this forgetfulness which makes so many people totally
indifferent to the finest artistic achievements. They are expressed in
a language they do not understand.

It must be obvious that there is a very close connection between
the type and complexity of organization and the standard of mental
development of those for whom it is devised. The study of folk-music
and the music of primitive savages is very enlightening in this
respect; especially in respect of the organization, which is based
in great part on musical phrases. As might be naturally supposed the
earliest sign of awakening intelligence is found in mere reiteration
of some melodic or rhythmic formula. This is essentially the primitive
savage type and is met with in extraordinary persistency under
varied conditions. It is a most remarkable fact that such undisguised
reiteration is a conspicuous feature of the music of relatively
undeveloped races in the present day, who have adopted the advanced
methods of modern music with remarkable success. It is the more
curious as the composers of the more developed races do not resort to
such naïve reiteration except as a basis for presenting a phrase or
passage in different lights by variation. And with the undeveloped
races their reversion to a primitive practice, especially at points
of great excitement, is an unconscious admission of the nearness of
their temperamental average to that of their primitive ancestry.
As a principle mere reiteration is hardly worthy of the name of
organization, it might rather be called a preliminary procedure,
or a means of keeping things going. It does not imply any mental
development, it only implies some kind of definition and capacity of
recognition. The first step toward real organization comes when a
phrase or short passage of melody is alternated with another which
serves as a contrast with it, and returns again to the first phrase
to give the sense of completeness. Yet even such a simple principle
of orderliness needed considerable progress in mental grasp before it
could be attained. It might perhaps be regarded as the significant
feature which distinguishes folk-music from savage music. Folk-music is
indeed a very considerable advance on the music of primitive savages,
and it shows the growth of power to attain to real orderliness, as
the basis of art, by the employment of simple and clear forms of
organization, which are evolved quite irrespective of any collusion
or imitation between the races that resorted to it. As folk-music is
always melodic it did not admit of great variety of elaboration in
the organization of the tunes, yet there was sufficient to illustrate
the average disposition toward intellectuality of the races which
the songs represent. Races which are notable for the quickness of
their intelligence and their delight in the exercise of it show it in
the closeness and interest of the structure of their folk-music, as
is the case with Scotch tunes, and those whom imagination, feeling,
or sentiment are specially liable to dominate are represented by
forms which are vaguer and less elaborately organized. On the side
of character, also, it is parenthetically observable that folk tunes
reflect the temperamental qualities of the races and localities to
which they belong most truthfully--such as the vivacity and love of
orderly design of the French, the pathos and pugnacity of the Irish,
the sober simplicity and deliberation of the English, the sentimental
reflectiveness of Germans, the spasmodic vehemence of Hungarians, and
the love of elaborate ornamentation of Orientals. Slavonic folk-music
is also most characteristic, but it is most difficult to define. It
has in most cases a flavor of the playful unconsciousness of youth,
simplicity of structure and a kind of pathetic gaiety. This close
connection between a race or a geographical attitude of mind and its
folk-music is really a foretaste of the connection which persisted
throughout the whole story of art’s evolution. A people’s music so
accurately represents its temperamental qualities that, if there was
any doubt about a race’s character, the music they favor would solve
it. In folk-music the element of rhythm figures very considerably;
and, as it is a subject about which a great deal of confusion of mind
seems to exist, it is advisable to give a little attention to it. It
is a defining and vitalizing influence of the highest importance; for
it is only through rhythm that the individual factors of organization
become identifiable. It is through the grouping of beats into two,
three, four, five, six, and so on that the nuclei which are the basis
of organization are grouped into coherent and distinguishable factors.
Inasmuch as a note is nothing by itself, and only becomes something
when it has relation to another note, and, as these notes must succeed
one another in time, it is necessary to have some means of defining the
respective lengths of time which are to be relatively allotted to the
respective notes; and rhythm is the process by which the progress of
sounds in time is marked off and organized. Without it there would be
mere vagueness and confusion.

This is the aspect of rhythm from the point of view of organization.
That was not its object in the beginning, but to minister to expression
of feeling. All people who have not attained to an advanced stage
of culture and intelligence delight in rhythm; and the sphere it
occupies in folk-music is enlightening; for its preponderance varies
considerably. In some folk-music it is always conspicuous, as in
Hungarian and French folk-music; in some it is only moderately apparent
and rarely aggressive, except when the words associated with it imply
vigorous action, as in English and German folk-music. There are obvious
implications which are suggested by the fact. The aggressively rhythmic
music shows a predisposition for instrumental music, and the less
rhythmic for vocal music. The former represents the music of action and
the latter the music of inner feeling. The former secular feeling and
the latter serious feeling associated with religion of some sort.

Rhythm suggests bodily activity. Its essential function is to represent
the expression of feelings by motions of the body, arms, legs, or any
part that can move freely. This is verified by the fact that rhythmic
music impels people to join in with hands and feet, and this is also
the underlying basis of dance music; for the object of dance music
is to inspire people to rhythmic activity, and its connection with
expression is verified by the fact that so much dance music, even
in the earliest times, has been mimetic. The position of rhythm in
artistic music is strange, for it is undeniable that the preponderant
impulse of serious composers is to hide it away in sophistications.
Indeed, for many centuries it was, possibly unconsciously, kept at bay.
Pure unsophisticated rhythm belongs to the primitives. It is not the
form of expression congenial to self-respecting and developed races
when they are taking anything serious in hand. This is partly because
it does, as above remarked, represent physical expression, which is not
the type to which intellectual people are prone. Developed minds want
to convince by argument; primitive people by force. Moreover, rhythm is
not progressive. In its direct forms it is probably much as it was with
the cave dwellers. Its limitations are obvious; and its simple forms
are indicative of a primitive state in those that use it.

As a matter of fact, it seems to be the ingrained impulse of composers
whose feeling for their art is highly developed to disguise it, as
though the frank use of it was commonplace and cheap. What appears to
be progress in rhythm is indeed not in rhythm itself, but in that very
sophistication. It is like the sophistication of metre in the blank
verse of Shakespeare or Milton, or even in the lyric poetry of Shelley
and Keats and later poets, which makes English lyrics so difficult for
inefficient and unliterary composers to set. The parallel in poetry
and verse is complete. For the jog-trot of those indifferent poets who
make an appeal to the undeveloped minds of the herd is poetry of a low
order, just as is the rhythmic commonplace of cheap-minded composers.

The higher type of composer deals with rhythm as with everything
else. He uses the simple basis of a definite rhythm to build upon it
something interesting. What would be commonplace and familiar is made
worthy of the name of art by its presentation in relation to other
rhythms, or in combination with an independent grouping of strong
and weak beats which gives it new significance. Such sophistication
of rhythm was very difficult in the times when music was confined to
one melodic part. But it became easy when choral music developed into
contrapuntal treatment of melodic voice parts, and it attained in
later days to the highest pitch of interest when the harmonic style
was reinfused with polyphonic methods, and full opportunities were
afforded for combining different rhythms at once, and ordinary rhythms
in one part could be made quite interesting or amusing through their
association with other parts which are purposely at variance with the
essential rhythm. By such procedure composers succeeded in avoiding
the use of common property and could enjoy the inestimable services
of rhythm as a vitalizer and a definer without condescending from
their high estate. The reticence of the higher type of composer in the
matter of rhythm, and his tendency to refrain from such undisguised
relaxation, is curiously confirmed by the history of sacred music.
It is a very singular fact that, in the long period of over five
centuries, during which church music was developed from the most
primitive conditions till it manifested such wonderful perfection of
spirit and workmanship at the end of the sixteenth century, composers,
guided by instinct rather than conscious reasoning, always endeavored
to suppress or hide the sense of rhythm. As music began to grow from
the doubling of plain-song at the intervals of fifths and fourths
and octaves (which was so convenient to the different calibres of
the voices which had to sing it), by filling in the steps between
one principal note and another with shorter notes, and so developed
primitive counterpoint, composers soon began to aim at giving the
effect of independence to human voices by making them move at different
times and in different directions; by making use of syncopations,
suspensions, dotted notes that overlapped one another, and all
such procedures as obscured the rhythmic element. And even when,
owing to special circumstances, they were driven to make parts move
simultaneously, as in later harmonic procedure, they made the chords
halt and move again, and even occasionally drop the principal accent,
to obviate the sense of rhythmic lilt--as may be observed in some of
the hymn tunes of Orlando Gibbons, which have had to be altered and
made quite commonplace in modern times to suit the mechanical habits of
modern congregations.

This curious persistence may be explained by the fact that devotional
feeling is not demonstrative. Western people in really devotional
frame of mind do not gesticulate or fling their arms and legs about
to express their feelings, but are bowed down in spiritual ecstasy.
The music was the true expression of the spirit; and, till secular
music began to react upon religious music after the beginning of the
seventeenth century, the music of the services of the church might
fairly be described as anti-rhythmic. And it still remains a fact
that whenever rhythm makes its appearance prominently in music which
purports to be devotional it is a proof of its insincerity. But there
are always many things which concur in achieving a big result, and
it must be admitted that conjoined with the instinct which avoided
rhythm in religious music was the fact that all the early religious
music was essentially vocal; and vocal music in its purest simplicity
is comparatively unrhythmic. It learnt definite and consistent rhythm
from instrumental music when that came to be cultivated with vigor
from the beginning of the seventeenth century onward. It is true that
dance music was sung, and that the _Balletti_ of such a delightful
composer as Morley have wonderful rhythmic verve; but such compositions
represent the time when musical expansion was moving strongly in
a secular direction and instruments were beginning to exert their
influence. The greater madrigals of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries still illustrate the inherent peculiarity of
pure choral music and give ample proofs of the composers’ endeavors to
disguise the rhythmic element and represent the underlying principle of
the grouping of strong and weak beats without adopting obvious rhythmic
organization. Instrumental music, on the other hand, inevitably
implies rhythm. In its most primitive phases it was probably nothing
but rhythm, and that rhythm of a perfectly frank and undisguised
description. In its early artistic, phases it was generally full of
rhythmic life without obtruding the rhythm as a special means of
appeal to the audience, as is the case in modern popular music. The
deeply ingrained habits of counterpoint which still persisted in the
eighteenth century made even suites of dance tunes so full of texture
in detail that the rhythm was rather the basis of the definition of
pulses than a factor in the effect. If the story of modern music were
followed up with special reference to rhythm it would be found that
the aim of all composers who took their art seriously has been to
avoid the commonplaces and to sophisticate rhythm in such a way as
to make it serve as an additional source of expression, instead of a
mere mechanical incitement to movement. The increase of orchestral
instruments offered ample opportunities to sophisticate rhythms in a
manner analogous to the charming effects of early choral music, in
which syncopation and cross-rhythms add a genuine interest to the
fundamental rhythm and seem to play with the hearers by making them
feel that one rhythm is superimposed on another. Even in actual modern
dance tunes of the best kind the impulse to add something independent
to the fundamental rhythm is found in such devices as tying over the
last note of a group of three in a valse to the strong beat of the
succeeding rhythmic group, while the essential rhythm is maintained by
the bass or other instruments of the accompaniment, and composers have
even successfully devised such attractive ingenuities as the effect of
three long beats being superimposed on two groups of the three lesser
beats of the established rhythm. The well-known combination in Mozart’s
_Don Giovanni_ of a minuet and a valse each in triple time and a
country dance in 4/4 time is one of the most ingenious illustrations of
such combined rhythms. The essential basis of all such devices is the
sophistication of the obvious, which is the natural impulse of every
true composer.

Such sophistication is, however, ultimately dependent on the
development of harmony into its latest polyphonic phases, which
represent the furthest progress of intellectual perception in the races
which make use of it. The use of harmonies systematized on the basis
of tonalities is the highest development in respect of expression
that has been attained in art and it has become a means of widening
the possibilities of organization which seems to be unlimited. It is
said of a famous English philosopher, whose range of intellectual
power was abnormal, that he wept because he thought that the range
of melodic variety was exhaustible. He was possibly one of the many
whose musical sense is not sufficiently developed to understand
progressions of harmony. For, if he had known that every note of
every melody is capable of being accompanied by an immense number of
different harmonies, probably several dozens apiece, and that each
different harmony is capable of altering altogether the expressive
character of the melodic note in relation to other notes of the melody,
and that the changes in expression not only apply to notes which are
contiguous but to notes that are several steps removed, he need
not have been distressed at the limitations of the musical scale as
developed by European peoples. But this does not by any means exhaust
the possibilities of expressive effect, because the same harmony will
have a different effect if it is in close order or in open order; if
it is in close order in a high part of the scale or a low part of the
scale; and the melodic significance is also variable with the rhythmic
treatment to which it is subjected. The full force of harmonies to
minister to expression was dependent on the systematization of chords
on a tonal basis. This had been in the air for a long time before
composers definitely grappled with the problem, as may be observed
in the splendid use J. S. Bach made of the expressive resources
of harmony. But it was the classical masters of the sonata period
who dealt with the matter effectually. They based their scheme of
organization on the recognition of a complete classification of the
harmonic contents of any key; which implied a recognition of the actual
degrees of importance and of the functions of each individual chord.
This scheme also required as its most essential guaranty a very strict
recognition and observance of each key that became a factor in the
form; and also the apprehension of chords as chords.

But when the true polyphonic spirit invaded the sacred precincts of
the sonata type, and means were supplied to slip from diatonic chord
to chromatic chord, and even for a composer to lead the pleasingly
bewildered hearer into some unimaginable remote key and back, it began
to dawn on people that the achievement of even such an admirable
principle of organization as the sonata form had not landed musicians
in their final haven, but that in reality the sonata period was
merely one of transition--a kind of interim, like that of the aria
form in opera, when men forebore for a time to address themselves
to expression, and projected their minds to the solution of the
essential problems of organization. The wonderful success which the
sonata composers achieved in their devoted self-denial led to the
unfortunate misconception that musical art was a thing which stood by
itself and was self-sufficient and had no reference in its highest
manifestations to anything outside itself. Two things corrected this
strange aberration. One was that a race of composers sprang up who
filled up the easily managed forms of the sonata type with correct and
orthodox passages and deluged the world with utterly barren, empty,
artificial and intolerably conventional rigmarole. This, indeed, the
world could not put up with, and it turned with not unnatural eagerness
to welcome the party who advocated program music. These aspiring people
were quite on the right tack, but the resources of art were not as yet
built up sufficiently for their purposes, and therefore a great part
of their trivial and conventional imitations of scenes and impressions
merely made them ridiculous. The necessary revolution came out of the
heart of the old régime. The greatest masters of the sonata types of
art had always been impelled to infuse their works of the sonata order
with human meaning and to suggest a condition of feeling--mournful,
cheerful, merry, mischievous, and the like; and Beethoven, the greatest
of them all by far, after showing frequent signs of breaking away even
as early as the slow movement of his Sonata in D, opus 10, No. 3,
finally in his latest sonatas, quartets and symphonies produced some of
the most wonderful human documents ever achieved by man, in which he
expressed the workings of his own innermost feelings, the portrayal of
his aspirations, his perplexities in face of the problems of life, his
deep cogitations and moods, and his hopes for the destiny of humanity.
Here, indeed, he had found the true sphere of musical expression. It
was the expression of his innermost being; and his music rose to such
unparalleled heights because he dealt with his own self, which he was
bound to know better than most people know themselves because he was so
shut off from the world by his deafness; and it may be added that the
music is so profoundly interesting also because he was personally such
an extraordinary and intensely interesting character.

Beethoven occupied the unique position of consummating the sonata type
and giving the impulse to the artistic development which reëstablished
the full vigor of human expression and feeling. He reëstablished the
right of ideas to be expressed by music and indicated the manner
in which it was to be done. His ardent nature rebelled against
conventions. He sought to eliminate all dead and inert matter, to
get rid of the formal types of accompaniment which were everybody’s
property, and to make everything subserve to the expression of the
idea. It was probably this which impelled him in his later works to
revert to the fugue--that is, to the real fugue of the type of John
Sebastian Bach, and not to the bastard form in which attempts were made
to amalgamate it with the harmonic scheme of sonata form, which caused
the introduction of the conventional passages of that form which were
totally alien to the real fugue form. In the genuine fugue form, as
illustrated by him and Bach, all the texture of the work is alive and
there are no conventional formulas of accompaniment, and Beethoven’s
point of view enabled him to go right back, as it were, beyond the
historical episode of the sonata and bring the true fugue again to
life and use it as a most concentrated means of expression. There
is a further and very striking aspect of the question which is that
Beethoven, in bringing the fugue form into the field again, anticipated
and gave impulse to the revival of the polyphonic methods which is such
a conspicuous feature of the most recent development in art: and yet
further, his use of the fugue form illustrated that gravitation of
artistic development which was to find such splendid accomplishment in
the later music dramas of Wagner, in which the polyphonic treatment and
the use of the leit-motif form a gigantic expansion of the essential
principles of the supremely elastic form of the fugue.

But even these significant facts do not exhaust the aspects in which
Beethoven anticipated later artistic developments. It is a very
strange fact that after his deafness was quite established his sense
of tone color continued to expand. Even in comparatively early works
he had shown gravitation toward romantically characteristic effects
of instrumentation, as, for instance, in the familiar and supremely
wonderful color scheme of the scherzo of the C minor symphony. But
after he had quite lost his hearing his color sense grew in richness
and depth and variety to a bewildering extent. His mind seemed to be
specially occupied with finding tone colors which intensified the
expression in quite a new way, as, for instance, in the huge slow
movement of the sonata in B flat, opus 106, in the last movement of
the sonata in C minor, opus 111, and in the slow movement of the
Choral Symphony. Prior to his time there had been a great deal of
inert matter in orchestral scoring. The functions of wind instruments
were indeed defined, in so far as they were used either as actual solo
instruments or more often to supply a pleasant continuity of tone in
agreeable colors, while the strings did most of the actual talking. But
the standard of execution of the players, as well as the technique of
orchestration, was not advanced enough to bring the wind instruments
fairly into the operation on an equality with the strings, and they
were made to play what was definitely serviceable to the scheme, but
had in itself no musical definition and purpose. The greater part of
the advance that has since taken place in orchestration consists in
making every member of the orchestra contribute to the complex of
polyphony by playing actual and apt musical passages. It implied the
growth of texture toward vitality in every part of the artistic scheme,
and a development of organization of the very subtlest description.
For it must be kept in mind that the employment of instruments of
diverse tone color in the modern manner does not imply their constant
employment, but their apt employment only; which is so contrived by
the genius of composers who can really think in orchestras that the
tone qualities affect the sensibilities of the hearers to the utmost by
their relations to one another. Even the feeblest intelligence would
be capable of discerning the fact that great effects of color are made
through juxtaposition. A very vivid piece of coloring is not vivid
because the individual colors are vivid, but because various colors
are disposed so as to give particular colors their utmost effect upon
the sensibilities. A glowing red does not glow of itself but because
the sensibilities have been so affected by other colors that they
have become highly susceptible to red. Groups of nerves are affected
in various ways by tone colors, and the secret of art is so to use
the various tone colors that each shall minister in full measure to
the effect of others. And the secret of expression in art in this
particular department is that the composer who has that very highly
organized faculty of perception of relations of colors uses just those
relations in their various degrees which intensify the susceptibility
of the human auditor to the quality of the ideas he wants to express.

In this field there is a very wide and interesting opportunity for
special study, as the average of color tendencies is a very striking
means of gauging the disposition and personality of composers. Thus
the stern, almost ascetic, colors of Brahms, varied by touching gleams
of tenderness and beauty, express his personality most exactly.
Beethoven undoubtedly changed his average of color as he developed
his personality. In his earlier works he was genial and bright, after
the manner of the sonata composers, and made use of the cheerful
coloring that suited a cultured and prosperous aristocracy. In his
middle period he became warmer and more serious; in his latest period
he was sometimes grim and fierce, sometimes deep and solemn, but often
tender with the depth of longing and the earnestness of his aspiration.
But who cannot read the character of a composer through his average
color scheme? The flighty, empty-headed trickster with his sparkling
piccolo and his gas-jet noises on violins, and the bombastic vulgarian
posing as a man of great feeling with his roars of blatant brass;
the oversensitized hedonist with his delicate subtleties, mainly in
transparent pearl-grays; and so on. We are almost inclined to forget
that it is all, or nearly all, a matter of relations; it is only not
a matter of relations when the music is false. When the composer does
try to make his effects by violence and what he supposes to be the
intrinsic power of tone-quality nobody is permanently taken in. That
the basis of color effect is relation is a thing man is learning every
day in the infinite variety of a gorgeous sunset and in the luxuriant
blaze of his own flowerbeds. Indeed, the principle of relativity in art
is nowhere likely to be more readily felt than in the matter of color.

It is more difficult to apprehend in matters of form and organization.
Yet it ought to be easy to perceive that the whole object of
organization is to put things in their right places. It is just as in
the color scheme: the effect of a work of art, as has been said before,
does not depend upon intrinsic interest of individual moments, but on
the relation of every moment to every other moment. If the relations
are false the impression is marred and the idea fails to carry
conviction.

But it follows from this that there had to be a sweeping change in the
generally accepted views of the universal applicability of the sonata
forms. They were no doubt admirable as types of abstract design; they
were examples of approximate perfection in musical organization; but,
when the time came again after the sonata period to make music express
ideas, it became evident, with the assistance of Beethoven’s insight,
that special ideas required types of organization which were specially
adapted to the ideas. Men humbly ventured on compositions which did
not represent the august dignity of the sonata order. They tried in
small ways to represent their feelings and ideas. They found the sonata
forms much too big; the prescriptive rights of so aristocratic an
organization entailing such a lot of formalities; and they had of sheer
necessity to find some forms more apt and compact. The unique genius
of Chopin led the way. Surrounded by an atmosphere of romanticism,
and entirely free, as far as we can see, from the influence of the
sonata spirit, his strange and subtle mind sought types of form which
were quite independent of tradition. Very often the form seems to
grow out of the musical ideas; at any rate it is easy to feel that
form and utterance progressed simultaneously in his processes of
inspiration. This attitude toward original methods of organization is
perceptible in a very large range of his compositions--the ballads,
the impromptus, the mazurkas, but in the finest and subtlest shape
in the best of the preludes. There, indeed, can always be felt the
underlying impulse to express some feeling or idea which is not purely
and only musical, and also the exact aptness of the form in which it
is expressed. Hardly any modern composers have excelled Chopin in this
respect; it is his greatest contribution to the evolution of musical
art. But even classical composers, composers essentially built up on
the great traditions, tacitly admitted the gravitation of art back
to its rightful position; Mendelssohn in his songs without words and
symphonies, Schumann in vast numbers of movements of all calibres
for pianoforte and even in movements of symphonies, such as the slow
movement of the Rhenish and the whole of the D major; Brahms in his
compact and well-considered piano pieces, and movements in his chamber
music; and later on the host of experimentalizing composers in every
branch of art, all bent on expressing something that stirs them, and
all bent on finding special ways of organizing what they have to say.
The most conclusive illustrations are naturally in the branch of
song as cultivated by modern composers. Here the theories of the few
faithful defenders of the old strongholds are obviously void; for it
is impossible to imagine anyone being so preposterously idiotic as to
try and write a song in sonata form. The scheme of organization must
inevitably, in such a form of art, follow absolutely the meaning of the
words and the course of the dramatic development. As a matter of fact,
the same connection with words rules the situation as far as regards
the artistic organization in all directions from anthems and church
music up to the colossal scores of music dramas. The composer has now
not only to provide diction, method, artistic texture, color, but also
new types of form. It may, indeed, be said that the highest aim of the
composer, after the discovery of something worth expressing, is to find
some new scheme--some new distribution of the architectural elements
of his musical work--which will present his ideas in forms which will
attract the attention and keep the interest of the highest class of
minds.

The situation may be said to round off the story of music’s
development so far. For the colossal accumulation of resources
and means of beautifying and vitalizing ideas serves not only for
utterance but also to widen the scope and variety of schemes of
artistic organization--and the individual composer becomes personally
responsible in that respect as well as for the feeling and the artistic
details.

But the indebtedness of latter-day composers to the devotion of
those who went before is not exhausted by these accomplishments. For
there are many features of art to which successive generations of
composers have contributed in the fashioning, and which ought not to be
overlooked, though they cannot be dealt with in detail in a summary.
One of the subtlest and most interesting is the differentiation
of various styles. The instinct which impelled composers in this
connection was always to find the most perfect adjustment of resources
to environment. In other words, to express what they had to say in the
ways which were most convenient and effective for the instruments which
had to play it, and most suitable to the audience to which it was to be
addressed in the place where it had to be performed.

At first composers’ ingenuity was exercised in one style only, that of
choral music, limited also mainly to sacred music. When that was more
or less perfected in the space of some five centuries, instrumental
secular style began to emerge; at first leaning on the methods and
devices which composers had found out in choral music, and then by
degrees, as instrumental music learned to stand alone, making it
more completely apt for performance by instruments; which process
has gone on till the present day and is still going on. Then, soon
after instrumental style began to branch off from the parent stem of
choral music, operatic style began to be laboriously devised, and is
by degrees still being perfected in the sphere of music drama; then
followed the distinct style for various solo instruments, as the style
of organ music, the style for various kinds of orchestral music, for
chamber music, for domestic music, songs, concert-platform music,
various types of modern church music--an ever-increasing variety,
each style being the most perfect adaptation to the conditions of
presentment and the qualities of instruments as time goes on.

Another development of great interest is that of thematic material.
Such things as subjects were hardly thought of at first in artistic
conditions, as choral music was not adapted to clear definition. That
quality began to manifest itself when rhythm began to play its part
in instrumental music. Then melodious passages, which were clearly
recognizable in themselves, began to make their appearance in operatic
arias, but they were for a long time defined more by the conventional
periods indicated by cadences of various degrees of finality than by
their individual character. This peculiarity of defining subjects
persisted almost till the end of the sonata period in the latter
part of Beethoven’s life, when he began to divine the possibility
of subjects being identifiable for themselves without artificial
conventions for marking their boundaries, and gave the impulse to that
practice of concentrating interest in short phrases and figures which
have intrinsic definition by reason of their characteristic intervals
and rhythms, which has become the most universal trait of all later
music, gathering force in the romantic period and being developed
further by the latest representative composers, who use color, chord
positions, even modulation, as well as melodic features, as factors
in making their thematic nuclei stand out from their context, and
serve the purpose of texts to their discourses--the said texts serving
also to suggest as clearly as possible what the composer has in his
mind, which he desires to convey to his audience in the most vivid and
permanent forms.

It is inevitable that all this huge development of artistic resources,
which has taken so many centuries of patient and devoted concentration
of faculties, should bewilder the ardent and eager latter-day composer
who is longing to express himself at once.

In many cases his invention and spontaneity seem to be paralyzed by
the amount there is to learn. On the one hand, it causes academicism
in the more conscientious, and, on the other, it causes rebellion. All
the 'isms’ of contemporary art of all kinds are the result of a kind of
indigestion which is the outcome of the superabundance of resources of
all kinds. The highest manifestations of art can only be produced by
those who have survived the long process of learning to understand the
meaning and purpose of artistic procedures and still have some vitality
left. But the public is by this time quite incapable of distinguishing
between what is built upon genuine foundations and what is pure
recklessness. They like recklessness, and the power to recognize
the mind which builds so difficult an edifice of individuality on
loyalty to his art requires too much education. So many contrive the
appearance of originality by the easy process of merely doing what they
have been advised not to do. They cry out against the soul-subduing
labor of having to learn how to do the things that are worth doing
in the best way. So artistic progress becomes mainly the process of
learning from making mistakes, which brings it into line with all
the ordinary forms of social progress. It becomes a wild hurly-burly
of impetuous adventurousness, in which the ardent explorers do not
even allow themselves time to find out whether the new country they
propose to explore is worth exploring. But without doubt there is a
residue of the real quality when the disposition of the composer is
also of fine quality. The 'new paths’ now entail the motive of the
composer being more identifiable than ever. They betray themselves in
spite of themselves. The pedant cannot escape from his pedantry, the
conventional-minded from his conventions, the sentimentalist from his
sentimentalities, the vain man from his vanities, the sensualist from
his cravings, the insolent from his insolence, or the commercial from
his advertisements. The general repudiation of standards leaves them
all without disguise, and the man who understands music can identify
the individual and his type of society and what it is worth through the
music he puts forward as representing him.

It entails a change in the position of musical art which took place
in the painting art centuries earlier, and shows what a modern thing
music is. Men no longer expect music to be the expression of noble and
exalted thoughts only, but accept it as the expression of all kinds of
moods, emotions, feelings and aspirations, whether they be little and
intimate, satyric and strange, wildly extravagant, genially humorous,
pugnacious, pacific, pastoral, even uproariously domestic. It is a
new kind of differentiation in which there is inevitably a new kind
of waste. But the ideal public, which is infinitely longer than it is
broad, will ultimately apply the judgment based on the experience of
generations, and will sift out the products of the genuinely artistic
beings from the follies of the heedless ones. The purists are in
despair, but those whose optimism is invulnerable can look forward in
the unshaken belief that art will go on expanding healthily, in spite
of the confusion of tongues, through the inextinguishable passion of
true composers to find the most perfect and complete expression of
their own personalities.

                                             C. HUBERT H. PARRY.
October, 1914.




                    CONTRIBUTORS AND COLLABORATORS
                       FOR VOLUMES I, II AND III


    FRANZ BELLINGER, PH.D.              F. B.
    M.-D. CALVOCORESSI                  M.-D. C.
    W. DERMOT DARBY                     W. D. D.
    CECIL FORSYTH                       C. F.
    HENRY F. GILBERT                    H. F. G.
    LELAND HALL                         L. H.
    G. W. HARRIS                        G. W. H.
    EDWARD BURLINGAME HILL              E. B. H.
    A. WALTER KRAMER                    A. W. K.
    EDWARD KILENYI                      E. K.
    BENJAMIN LAMBORD                    B. L.
    FREDERICK H. MARTENS                F. H. M.
    EDUARDO MARZO                       E. M.
    DANIEL GREGORY MASON                D. G. M.
    HIRAM KELLY MODERWELL               H. K. M.
    IVAN NARODNY                        I. N.
    ERNEST NEWMAN                       E. N.
    SIR C. HUBERT H. PARRY              C. H. H. P.
    FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER                F. R.-W.
    CÉSAR SAERCHINGER                   C. S.
    AMELIA VON ENDE                     A. v. E.
    WILLIAM WALLACE                     W. W.
    LESLIE WHITTLESEY                   L. W.




                        CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE


                                                                    PAGE

  GENERAL INTRODUCTION                                               ix

  INTRODUCTION TO THE NARRATIVE HISTORY OF MUSIC
    BY C. HUBERT H. PARRY                                         xxvii


                          PART I. PRELIMINARIES

  CHAPTER

     I. PRIMITIVE MUSIC                                               1

        Music in nature--Theories of the origin of music--Intervals
        and scales; contrast--The aborigines of Carribea,
        Polynesia, Samoa, Africa--The rhythmic element: music and
        the dance; instruments of percussion--Harmonic traces--Wind
        instruments and their scales; the xylophone--Instruments
        of semi-civilized peoples--The North American
        Indian--Influence of modern culture on savage music.

    II. EXOTIC MUSIC                                                 42

        Significance of exotic music--Classification; Aztecs and
        Peruvians--The Orient: China and Hindustan, the
        Mohammedans--Exotic instruments--Music as religious rite;
        music and dancing--Music and customs; Orient and Occident.

   III. THE MOST ANCIENT CIVILIZED NATIONS                           64

        Conjecture and authority--The Assyrians and Babylonians;
        instruments; scales--The Hebrews--The Egyptians;
        social aspects; Plato’s testimony; instruments--Egyptian
        influence on Greek culture and its musical significance.

    IV. THE MUSIC OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS                              88

        Significance of Greek music--Greek conception of music;
        mythical records--Music in social life; folk-song; general
        characteristics of Greek music--Systems and
        scales--Pythagoras’ theories; later theorists: Aristoxenus
        to Ptolemy--Periods of Greek composition; the _nomoi_;
        lyricism; choral dancing and choral lyricism; the
        drama--Greek instruments; notation.

                           PART II. BEGINNINGS

     V. THE AGE OF PLAIN-SONG                                       128

        Music in the Roman empire--Sources of early Christian
        music; the hymns of St. Ambrose--Hebrew
        traditions--Psalmody, responses, antiphons; the liturgy;
        the Gregorian tradition; the antiphonary and the gradual;
        sequences and tropes--Ecclesiastical modes; early notation.

    VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONY                                 160

        The third dimension in music--'Antiphony’ and Polyphony;
        magadizing; organum and diaphony, parallel and
        oblique--Guido d’Arezzo and his reputed inventions;
        solmisation; progress of notation--Johannes Cotto and the
        _Ad organum faciendum_; contrary motion and the beginning
        of true polyphony--Measured music; mensural
        notation--_Faux-bourdon_, _gymel_; forms of mensural
        composition.

   VII. SECULAR MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES                            186

        Popular music; fusion of secular and ecclesiastical
        spirit; Paganism and Christianity; the epic--Folksong;
        early types in France, _complainte_, narrative song,
        dance song; Germany and the North; occupational
        songs--Vagrant musicians; jongleurs, minstrels; the love
        song--Troubadours and Trouvères; Adam de la Halle--The
        Minnesinger; the Meistersinger; influence on Reformation
        and Renaissance.

                     PART III. THE POLYPHONIC PERIOD

  VIII. THE RISE OF THE NETHERLAND SCHOOLS                          226

        The Netherland style; the _Ars Nova_; Maschault and the
        Paris school; the papal ban on figured music--The
        Gallo-Belgian school; early English polyphony; John
        Dunstable; Dufay and Binchois; other
        Gallo-Belgians--Okeghem and his school--Josquin des Prés;
        merits of the Netherland Schools.

    IX. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE                                     258

        Spirit of the Renaissance--_Trovatori_ and _cantori a
        liuto_; The Florentine _Ars Nova_; Landino; _caccia_,
        _ballata_, _madrigal_--The fifteenth century; the Medici;
        Netherland  influence; popular song forms--Adrian Willaert
        and the new madrigal--Orazio Vecchi and the dramatic
        madrigal.


     X. THE GOLDEN AGE OF POLYPHONY                                 284

        Invention of music printing--The Reformation--The
        immediate successors of Josquin; Adrian Willaert and
        the Venetian school; Germany and England--Orlando di
        Lasso--Palestrina; his life--The Palestrina style;
        the culmination of vocal polyphony--Conclusion.


                   PART IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY

    XI. THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA AND ORATORIO                        324

        The forerunners of opera--The Florentine reform of
        1600; the 'expressive’ style; Peri and Caccini; the first
        opera; Cavalieri and the origin of the oratorio--Claudio
        Monteverdi: his life and his works.

   XII. NEW FORMS: VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL                           348

        Résumé of the sixteenth century--Rhythm and form;
        the development of harmony; figured bass--The organ
        style; _canzona da sonar_; _ricercar_; _toccata_; _sonata
        da chiesa_; great organists--The genesis of violin music;
        _canzona_ and _sonata_--The _sonata da camera_; the
        suite--Music for the harpsichord--The opera in the
        seventeenth century; Heinrich Schütz.

  XIII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY                                     388

        The musicians of the century--Henry Purcell and music
        in England--Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli;
        Domenico Scarlatti--The beginnings of French opera: the
        _Ballet-comique de la reine_; Cambert and Perrin--Jean
         Baptiste de Lully--Couperin and Rameau--Music in Germany:
        Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera; precursors of
        Bach.

   XIV. HANDEL AND THE ORATORIO                                     418

        The consequences of the seventeenth century: Bach and
        Handel--Handel’s early life; the opera at Hamburg; the
        German oratorio--The Italian period, _Rodrigo_, _Agrippina_,
        and _Resurrezione_--Music in England; Handel as opera
        composer and impresario--Origins of the Handelian oratorio;
        from 'Esther’ to 'The Messiah’--Handel’s instrumental music;
        conclusion.

    XV. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH                                       448

        Introduction--The life of Bach--Bach’s polyphonic skill
        and the qualities of his genius--Bach’s contribution to the
        art of music and the forms he employed--The revision of
        keyboard technique and equal temperament--Bach’s relation
        to the history of music.

  INDEX. See Volume III.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY. See Volume III.




                      ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME ONE


    King René and his Musical Court (in colors)         _Frontispiece_

                                                            FACING
                                                             PAGE

    Orchestra of Pan’s Pipes (Aboriginal)                     22

    Old Japanese Print: 'Girl of the Old Kingdom playing the
    Harp’                                                     58

    Ancient Egyptian Fresco showing Instruments in Use        82

    Greek Flute and Kithara Players (in colors)               96

    The Contest between Apollo and Marysas                   122

    The Organ in the Middle Ages                             156

    Mediæval French Sculpture showing Trouvères and
    Jongleurs with Instruments                               202

    The Tournament of Song in the Wartburg                   218

    Josquin des Près (photogravure)                          252

    Altar of the Virgin by Bellini (photogravure)            268

    Orlando di Lasso (photogravure)                          308

    Perluigi da Palestrina (photogravure)                    316

    'The Concert’; Painting by Giorgione (in colors)         328

    Claudio Monteverdi (photogravure)                        338

    Henry Purcell (photogravure)                             388

    Arcangelo Corelli (photogravure)                         396

    Jean-Baptiste de Lully (photogravure)                    408

    Jean-Philippe Rameau (photogravure)                      414

    Georg Friedrich Handel (photogravure)                    438

    Johann Sebastian Bach (photogravure)                     468




                               CHAPTER I
                            PRIMITIVE MUSIC

  Music in nature--Theories of the origin of music-Intervals and
  scales; Contrast--The aborigines of Carribea, Polynesia, Samoa,
  Africa--The rhythmic element: music and the dance; instruments of
  percussion--Harmonic traces--Wind instruments and their scales; the
  xylophone--Instruments of semi-civilized peoples--The North American
  Indian--Influence of modern culture on savage music.


Music is coeval with the human race. In all probability it precedes
spoken language. For music is primarily the expression of emotion;
articulate language is the expression of definite thought. And in
the process of evolution emotion precedes thought. The beginnings of
music are to be found in Nature herself. The howling of the winds, the
humming of insects, the cries of animals, the songs of birds must all
be considered as elemental music, inasmuch as they contain the two
fundamental elements thereof: 'rhythm’ and 'tone.’

Rhythm is the more or less regular division of time by beats or
strokes. The heart beats in a regular rhythm; there is the rhythm
of the raindrops; man walks with a rhythmic stride; the waves beat
upon the shore in a solemn and impressive rhythm; the drumming of the
partridge; the chirping of the crickets; the tapping of the woodpecker;
the muttering of distant thunder, etc.--all these are rhythms, more or
less regular divisions of time, marked off by beats or accents.

Now 'tone’ is merely a noise which persists at a certain pitch. When we
cry out in fear we usually produce a noise, but should we be careful
to maintain a steady and equal emission of breath we should produce a
tone. In other words, a 'noise’ is produced by a rapid and irregular
change in the rate of vibration of the sounding body, whereas a 'tone’
is produced by the steady maintenance of a certain rate of vibration
for a long enough time for the ear to appreciate its definiteness. That
this time need not be very long is proved by the ease with which we
grasp as tones certain very short notes used in music; grace notes, for
instance. Many noises, in fact, upon analysis appear to be collections
of heterogeneous tonal fragments which succeed each other with such
rapidity and eccentricity as to preclude the recognition of their tonal
elements, as such.

Such animal cries as the roaring of lions, the baying of wolves, the
screeching of parrots, or the barking of dogs must be classed as mere
noises. While they are frequently of rhythmic interest, they contain
too little of the tonal element to be regarded musically. On the other
hand, the humming of certain insects, which produces a definite tone,
the whistling and singing of many birds, the musical cries of certain
monkeys as related in Darwin, and even on occasion the crying of the
wind, must all be regarded as 'natural music.’

The wind with its fitful and irregular howling usually produces mere
noise, but there are times when it blows with such a steady intensity
through the forest that a definite tone is produced. One reads with
interest and sympathy in the memoirs of a certain naturalist how he,
while listening to the ethereal singing noises produced by myriads of
small insects, imagined that he caught but the lower notes of some
elfin symphony, too refined for mortal ears to hear. The songs of the
singing birds are very notable examples of 'natural music,’ for here
the tones are in many instances quite perfect, while the rhythms of
many bird-songs are sharply defined and easily noted.

But it is savage or primitive man who claims our greatest interest.
Untouched by learning, simple of mind and direct and naïve in his
conduct, he is at the same time a part of nature and the ancestor of
civilized man--a being not only endowed with strong rhythmic sense,
but with vocal powers far superior in possible variety of inflection
to those of any of the animals. His love cries, war songs, and savage
laments are as much natural music as are the songs of birds or the
cries of animals, and contain, even though crudely, the elements from
which civilized music has subsequently been developed. It is with him
that our story really begins.

Thus we see that the fundamental elements of music are to be found in
nature herself. Man, in his upward and wonderful course from barbarism
to civilization, has but cunningly combined these elements, with
ever-increasing intellectuality, until there has come to development
the glorious art of music as we know it to-day; an art which 'hath the
power of making Heaven descend upon earth,’ as it is written in the
Chinese annals.


                                   I

When we contemplate the life of the savage we are to all intents and
purposes observing the lives of our own primitive ancestors. As we see
them to-day they without doubt portray for us a phase through which we
ourselves passed on our way upward to civilization. No tribe of savages
has yet been discovered who have not possessed some elemental fragments
of music. No matter how barbaric the people, how rude their manners,
or how savage their dispositions, music of some sort plays a vital
and significant part in their lives. Most savage tribes have their
war cries, songs, and dances; their playful or ceremonious dances;
their love or marriage songs, their funeral songs; and lastly, their
mysterious and pantheistically religious incantations: prayer songs,
appeals to unseen powers, either diabolical or beneficent; to effect
the deliverance of some person from a dread disease, or to bring rain,
or abundance of game, etc. All these are to be regarded as primitive
music--music which has hardly as yet attained the dignity of an Art.

The collection and study of these fragments has been of great interest
to ethnologists and philosophers and has given rise to numerous
theories regarding the origin of music. Herbert Spencer gives a
physiological explanation of its origin, claiming that intense emotion
acts in a particular manner on the vocal and respiratory organs,
thereby causing the person thus affected to emit sounds; either high or
low, loud or soft, according to the kind of emotion with which he is
filled. Beginning with the proposition that 'All music is originally
vocal,’ he goes on to say: 'All vocal sounds are reproduced by the
agency of certain muscles. These muscles, in common with those of the
body at large, are excited to contraction by pleasurable and painful
feelings.’ And again: 'We have here, then, a principle underlying all
vocal phenomena, including those of vocal music, and by consequence
those of music in general. The muscles that move the chest, larynx,
and vocal cords, contracting like other muscles in proportion to
the intensity of the feelings; every different contraction of these
muscles involving, as it does, a different adjustment of the vocal
organs; every different adjustment of the vocal organs causing a change
in the sound emitted; it follows that variations of voice are the
physiological results of variations of feeling.’

Charles Darwin attempts to explain the existence of primitive music by
considering it as a secondary sexual manifestation. He asserts that
primitive song was used as a method of charming the opposite sex; that
the first songs were love songs, and that from these all others were
developed. In the 'Descent of Man’ he says: 'The male alone of the
tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the season of love. Male
alligators roar or bellow during the same season. Every one knows how
much birds use their vocal organs as a means of courtship; and some
species likewise perform what may be called instrumental music.’ And
later: 'Women are thought to possess sweeter voices than men, and so
far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that they first acquired
musical powers in order to attract the other sex.’

Spencer’s explanation is pure theory, based as it is not upon
observation of particular facts, but upon a knowledge of certain
physiological laws. Darwin’s explanation, on the contrary, is evidently
based on very careful observations of particular instances of the
manifestation of the primitive musical faculty. Nevertheless, however
interestingly Darwin writes concerning the origin of music, Spencer’s
explanation must seem to us the broader, more inclusive and satisfying
of the two, inasmuch as it bases the origin of music in a variety of
emotional experiences rather than in only one (the love emotion).
Darwin, however, says that the emotion of love may give rise to many
other emotions of a quite different character, such as rage, jealousy,
and triumph; and proceeds to indicate the possible development of
various kinds of primitive songs from primitive love songs. It is,
however, difficult for us to conceive of the development of war songs,
incantations, or howls of grief for the dead as having been developed
from primitive love songs.

According to Grosse, music arose from the play instinct. It is one
of the forms in which superabundant energy is spent. Most animals,
including man, are endowed with more than enough energy than is
absolutely necessary to supply their physical needs. This superabundant
energy is expressed in different kinds of play. The leaping and diving
of the porpoise, the gambolling of dogs, the running of races, and the
playing of games among primitive men are examples of the working of
the play instinct. Our modern sports, tennis, football, etc., are also
examples of it. According to this theory, singing and dancing first
arose as means of diversion from the monotony of existence, as a means
of whiling away the time and making life pleasant. This is a most
important theory, and while it probably is not wholly true, it contains
a large percentage of truth. It is upheld by a great number of writers
besides Grosse, and has great significance concerning the origin of all
the Arts, including music.

Another theory of the origin of music is that it arose through the
imitation by primitive man of bird-songs and other sounds in Nature.
It is true that in a collection of the music of many savage tribes
there are numerous songs which are certainly imitations of certain bird
calls and other animal cries. Particularly are these to be noted in
the music of the North American Indians. They have 'Pelican,’ 'Crane,’
'Elk,’ and 'Buffalo’ songs, and even songs imitating the wind in the
pines. Their animal songs are to a large extent but slight developments
of the cry of the animal himself. This cry was probably first used
by the primitive hunter as a decoy, and eventually through frequent
use became a recognized song. Although many primitive songs have
undoubtedly arisen in this way, the theory of imitation considered as
an explanation of the origin of music is somewhat in discredit with
ethnologists and philosophers. It is much too partial and there are too
many cases to which it certainly cannot apply.

In his study _Arbeit und Rhythmus_ Karl Bücher advances the idea that
through regular 'work’ of any kind 'song’ as an accompaniment is
naturally induced. The regularity of the 'work,’ be it walking, driving
a stake, or grinding corn in a hollowed-out stone, supplies one element
of music; i. e., rhythm. One element of a tune being present, what
more natural than an attempt on the part of the worker to supply the
other element and thus lighten the labor? Especially is this likely
to happen if the task require several workers who are obliged to work
together, somewhat in unison. Bücher says 'Song is the offspring of
labor. It is a means employed to discipline individual activities to
the accomplishment of a common task.’

Leaving out of consideration, however, all external stimuli which may
or may not have had a determinative influence in the development of
primitive music, we cannot but think of the remark of Karl Böckel,
which strikes the note of truth: 'Song has its origin in the cry of joy
or sorrow; in the need of expression inborn in all peoples in a state
of nature.’


                                  II

From the foregoing it is easily to be seen that the first music was
vocal. Vocal music has its origin and cause in the elemental urge
of Nature, whereas musical instruments, even of the most primitive
description, are a subsequent development and spring from the inventive
faculty of man. The most elemental cries of primitive peoples consist
of a succession of sounds beginning on a high tone and descending by
means of a gliding or slurring effect, to a low tone. Such are the
cries of the Caribs, and of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia.
Sometimes the gliding of the voice takes an upward turn, as it is said
to do among the Polynesian cannibals when gloating over a victim about
to be sacrificed. Definite musical tones cannot be recognized in these
primitive cries, hence they cannot be accurately written down in the
musical notation of civilization. In such simple and elemental cries
as these, although no definite musical intervals are to be recognized,
it is not long before they appear. In fact, it is easily to be seen
in the most primitive music that the production of definite tones,
and more or less of a definite melodic design, is the object toward
which the savage mind unconsciously gropes. It must not be supposed
that the intervals in use in civilized music are wholly the invention
of man. Many of the intervals, such as thirds, fifths, and octaves,
are found to be quite perfect in certain animal cries and particularly
in bird-song. Consider the two following bird-songs collected by the
writer in Massachusetts:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Civilized man has arranged these tones and intervals in diatonic
sequences called scales. The scales are his invention, but the majority
of the intervals composing them were undoubtedly in frequent use
by primitive man from prehistoric times. As Gilman truly observes,
'Definite successions of tones were in use long before they became
regular systematic scales.’[2] The following cry of grief from the
southeastern coast of Africa illustrates both the falling inflection of
the voice already alluded to as a primitive characteristic and also the
use of definite musical intervals. It was noted by Henri A. Junod:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Ô ma mè-re Ô ma mè-re Tu m’as quit-tée, où es-tu al-lóe


Here is another 'lament’; this one being from New Zealand. The tonal
range is somewhat more extensive but the falling inflexion of the voice
is well illustrated. The usual savage downward howl occurs at the end:

                         [Illustration: Music]

In the 'Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition’ by Captain
Wilkes the following song is noted. It comes from the island of
Arnheim in Polynesia:

                         [Illustration: Music]

The most primitive musical utterances are usually confined to a narrow
range. Seconds and thirds are the intervals most frequently used. The
songs of the Terra del Fuegians, for instance, do not usually exceed
the limits of a third. The song just quoted from Arnheim is, it will
be noted, with the exception of the ornamental quirks, confined to
the range of a second. The most limited songs in regard to range of
intervals, however, appear to be the songs of the Andamanese Islanders.
M. V. Portman in a paper on Andamanese music published in the _Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society_, says: 'The only notes in use in their
songs are the following, and in this order: The leading note 1/4 sharp,
the tonic, the tonic 1/4 sharp. The whole range of notes is therefore
not equal to a superfluous second.’[3]

The savage mind, being incapable, for the most part, of the development
of a musical idea, is satisfied by an incessant repetition of the same
phrase. Here is a song of the Caribs as noted by Théodore de Bry. While
it is comprised within the interval of a small second, it was repeated
sometimes for an hour at a time, with what monotonous effect we can
well imagine:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Another Carib song, comprised within the interval of a fourth, is
here given. A similar song from Polynesia is also given for purposes
of comparison. The two songs are remarkably similar; in fact, almost
identical.

The geographical separation of the Caribs and the Polynesians is so
great as to have made intercommunication almost beyond the bounds of
possibility. How, then, can the similarity be accounted for? Apparently
only by assuming that peoples who live in similar conditions, and whose
minds are in a similar state of development, may express themselves in
a similar manner:

                        [Illustration: CARIBS]

                      [Illustration: POLYNESIAN]

Germs of the principle of contrast may be found in both the above
songs. A second phrase or musical motive has been invented which
is sung alternately with the first, thereby relieving the sense of
monotony. This was certainly a great step in the development of
primitive music. The invention of a second musical phrase, and the
contrasting of it with the first, was the unconscious beginning of
musical form. For contrast is the basic principle of form in music.
The following song from Samoa shows this principle of the contrasting
of musical motives very clearly. The two motives are sung by different
groups of persons:

                         [Illustration: Music]

The above is a tune in which the contrasting phrases are of equal
length, and recur with great regularity, but many tunes are found in
which the contrasting motives, or melodic particles, follow each other
with whimsical irregularity, their relative position and recurrence
following no law but the feeling of the singer at the moment. Such is
this tune of the Macusi Indians of South America:

                         [Illustration: Music]

But in this Eskimo tune, noted by Dr. Kane, one of the earliest Arctic
explorers, while the motives follow each other with regularity and are
of equal length, each motive is given twice before the contrasting
motive occurs:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Two little tunes from Africa may serve as final illustrations of this
contrasting phrase principle. These tunes are also interesting inasmuch
as both contain a germ of 'ragtime.’ The sources of ragtime are to be
found in the songs of the American negro slaves, and it is significant
to find these hints also present in the songs of the parent African
race.

                         [Illustration: DANCE SONG]

                        [Illustration: HUNTING SONG]

Both the above are taken from 'Up the Niger’ by Captain A. F.
Mockler-Ferryman.


                                  III

Music and the dance developed side by side. Music is rhythm plus tone;
the dance, rhythm plus gesture. In savage life they are well-nigh
inseparable. The dance among civilized peoples is merely a diversion;
a form of amusement. Among savages it is much more rarely so. Nearly
all ceremonies, whether of a joyful, sorrowful, or religious character,
were accompanied by appropriate dances. Many of these dances were of
a very elementary character, consisting merely of certain postures,
swaying of the body, or leaping into the air. Some dances were imitated
from the motions of certain animals, even as some of the primitive
songs were imitative of animal cries. Of such nature is the Kangaroo
dance of the aborigines of Australia. The men who indulge in the dance
imitate the postures and leaps of the kangaroo, and also imitate with
their voices the sounds made by that animal. Meanwhile the women sing
the following simple tune over and over again, and furnish a rhythmical
accompaniment by knocking two pieces of wood together:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Similarly, the North American Indians have eagle dances, dog dances,
etc., while the natives of Kamtschatka have a bear dance in which,
says Engel,[4] 'they cleverly imitate not only the attitude and tricks
of the bear, but also its voice.’ There were also war dances, love
dances, funeral dances, and various ceremonial dances. In a sense,
all primitive music may be considered as dance music. All primitive
songs were accompanied by gestures or dances and, naturally, there was
no dance without its accompanying music. The head-hunting Dyaks of
Borneo have a dance in which the gestures indicate the cutting off of
heads. The North American Indians have a scalp dance, celebrating the
victorious exploits of a war party. The Maoris of New Zealand have
a war dance in which all thrust out their tongues at once, a gesture
which may indicate contempt of the enemy.

One of the most curious of primitive dances is the Corroberie Dance of
the natives of Australia. It is thus described by Carl Engel: 'Twenty
or more men paint their naked dark bodies to represent skeletons, which
they accomplish by drawing white lines across the body with pipe-clay
to correspond with the ribs, and broader ones on the arms, legs, and
the head. Thus prepared they perform the Corroberie at night before a
fire. The spectators, placed at some distance from them, see only the
white skeletons, which vanish and reappear whenever the dancers turn
around. The wild and ghastly action of the skeletons is accompanied
by vocal effusions and some rhythmical noise which a number of hidden
bystanders produce by beating their shields in regular time.’ Here is
the melody of one of these Corroberie dances. This melody is from New
South Wales and has been noted with slight variations by Wilkes, Field,
and Freycinet. The version of Field is given:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    A-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang,
    gum-be-ry jah! 'jin gum re-lah’ gum-be-ry jah! 'jin gum re-lah’ a
    bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang, a-bang.


But it is, perhaps, among the American Indians, of all savage peoples,
that the dance assumes its greatest importance. The very term 'dance’
often means a ceremony covering several days; the whole consisting
of many individual dances, recitations, and songs, and forming a
ritual of a quasi-religious or pantheistic character. Their ceremonies
are usually appeals to the gods for rain, abundant crops, luck in
hunting, or good fortune in war. Thus there is the Great Rain Dance
of the Junis; the Sun Dance of the Cheyennes; and the Snake Dance of
the Hopis. The Snake Dance is an elaborate ceremony of several days’
duration, during which live rattlesnakes are on occasion carried in the
hands and even held between the teeth while a dignified and 'stamping’
sort of dance goes forward. It is primarily an invocation to the gods
for rain.

Two melodies used in the Snake Dance are here given, as noted by
Benjamin Ives Gilman:

                         [Illustration: N.º 1.]

                         [Illustration: N.º 2.]

All primitive dances are accompanied by hand clapping, stamping of
the feet, the beating of stones, the knocking of two sticks of wood
together, or something of this nature to keep the time regular and to
accentuate the rhythm. Among the Andamanese Islanders thigh-slapping
alternates with hand-clapping, and among some tribes the snapping of
the fingers is used. From snapping the fingers to rattling a handful
of pebbles was an easy and natural step. This rattling of pebbles in
the hand constituted a kind of rude 'castanets.’ These pebbles were
soon put into a seashell or a gourd and thus the first rattles came
into existence. Rattles were made by putting pebbles into gourds or
other dried, hollow fruits, into tortoise shells, or seashells, and
even into human skulls, as is the case in New Guinea. In the Snake
Dance mentioned above gourd rattles are used, imitating the sound of
the rattlesnake when angry. The rattle is supposed to be the remote
ancestor of the bell. In the place of two sticks, two bones were
frequently beaten one upon the other, or struck together while being
held between the fingers of one hand. Long mussel shells were also
used as clappers. The beating of slabs or plates of stone constituted
a rude gong. Finally it was discovered that by stretching the skin
of an animal tightly over the end of a hollow log and striking it
energetically a sharper and more resonant and penetrating noise could
be produced than in any other way. Thus the first drums were made.

The rudest form of drum on record is evidently that in use among the
Andamanese Islanders. It is called the _Pukuta Yemnga_ and consists of
a 'shield-shaped piece of wood which is placed with the narrow end in
the ground and struck with the foot. The convex side of it follows the
shape of the tree from which it has been cut. When in use the convex
side of the Pukuta is uppermost’ (Portman). It is evidently a kind of
sounding board, or foot-drum.

The drum, roughly speaking, is the oldest musical instrument. It is of
great interest to us inasmuch as it still holds a place of honor in the
modern orchestra. It is the king of the group of percussion instruments
whose object it is, not to produce a tone, but an accent.

No tribe of savages has been discovered but what is possessed of a drum
of some sort. The most usual form of construction of the primitive drum
has been that of a section of tree trunk, hollowed out, and covered
with skin at each end. Certain trees, such as the bread-fruit tree or
the bamboo, render this peculiarly feasible. But drums have been found
made from gourds, cocoanuts, calabashes, and many melon-like fruits.
Primitive drums range in size from very small hand drums, which can be
held in one hand and struck with the other, up to those whose heads
are several feet in diameter and require the use of a good stout club
as a drumstick.

The ancient Mexicans possessed a drum which gave forth two distinct
tones of definite pitch. It is thus described by Carl Engel in his work
on Musical Instruments: 'They [the Mexicans] generally made it of a
single block of very hard wood, somewhat oblong square in shape, which
they hollowed, leaving at each end a solid piece about three or four
inches in thickness, and at its upper side a kind of sound-board about
a quarter of an inch in thickness. In this sound-board, if it may be
called so, they made three incisions, namely, two running parallel some
distance lengthwise of the drum, and a third running across from one
of these to the other just in the centre. By this means they obtained
two vibrating tongues of wood which, when beaten with a stick, produced
sounds as clearly defined as those of our kettledrums.’ In some of
these wooden drums the two tongues on being struck at the same time
produced a third; in others a fifth; in others a sixth, and in some
even an octave. The difference in pitch was obtained by making the
two tongues of a different thickness, and naturally the greater the
difference in thickness the larger was the interval produced.

A curious instance of drums which give forth a sound of a definite
pitch is the bamboo drums, still to be found in some of the islands of
the Pacific. These drums were first described in the account of Captain
James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific ocean. The whole passage is
of exceeding interest, giving as it does a picture of purely primitive
musical development untouched and uninfluenced by any civilized
suggestion. The date, as far as I have been able to ascertain, was May
18, 1777, and the place Hapace (Hapai) in the Tonga Island group. The
account is as follows:

'A chorus of eighteen men seated themselves before us in the centre of
the circle composed of numerous spectators, the area of which was to
be the scene of the exhibitions. Four or five of this band had large
pieces of bamboo, from three to five or six feet long, each managed by
one man, who held it nearly in a vertical position, the upper end open,
but the other end closed by one of the joints. With this closed end the
performers kept constantly striking the ground, though slowly, thus
producing different notes according to the different lengths of the
instruments, but all of them of the hollow or bass sort; to counteract
which a person kept striking quickly, and with two sticks, a piece of
the same substance, split and laid along the ground, and by that means
furnishing a tone as acute as those produced by the others were grave.
The rest of the band, as well as those who performed upon the bamboos,
sang a slow and soft air, which so much tempered the harsher notes of
the above instruments that no bystander, however accustomed to hear
the most perfect and varied modulations of sweet sounds, could avoid
confessing the vast power and pleasing effect of this harmony.’

Captain James King, who was with Captain Cook during his last voyage,
also writes concerning these bamboo drums as follows: 'In their regular
concerts each man had a bamboo which was of a different length and
gave a different tone. These they beat against the ground, and each
performer, assisted by the note given by this instrument, repeated the
same note, accompanying it with words, by which means it was rendered
sometimes short and sometimes long. In this manner they sang in chorus,
and not only produced octaves to each other, according to their species
of voice, but fell on concords such as were not disagreeable to the
ear.’


                                  IV

The latter part of this quotation from Captain King raises the
interesting question of the existence of harmony in primitive music.
This question has been much discussed. Travellers have certainly
brought back wonderful tales of part singing among primitive peoples.
Unfortunately most of these travellers have not possessed any very
accurate musical knowledge, hence their statements cannot for the
most part be regarded as of scientific value. Especially does this
apply to statements concerning harmony or the harmonic intervals.
The appreciation of a melody or 'tune’ is about as much as the man
of average intelligence is capable of. But the determination of the
relation of the notes of this tune to other sounds produced at the same
time requires a more special or technical knowledge.

At a first consideration of the subject one is led, somewhat hastily,
to conclude that when definite harmonic intervals occur in savage
music they are entirely the result of accident, and not of design. In
his description of a dance, native to the bushmen of Australia, Elson
says: 'The music to this odd performance is not in unison; the dancer
sings one air, the spectators another, and the drum gives a species of
“ground bass” to the whole.’ To have arranged these two 'airs’ so that
they, on being sung simultaneously, would have produced a concordant
and musical result would have required a degree of mental development
of which the bushman is not to be suspected. In this, and many similar
instances, we may safely assume that such harmonic intervals as may
have been produced were purely the result of accident. There are,
however, so many instances on record, and of undoubted authenticity,
in which it is seen that certain savages have consciously striven to
produce concords, both in their singing and in their rude instruments,
that these cannot be disregarded in an impartial consideration of the
question.

Of great interest in this connection is the following song, which was
obtained by G. Forster at the Tonga Islands about the year 1775:

                         [Illustration: Music]

It will be seen that this song ends with a chord of three tones; a
triad, in other words. It will also be seen that each of the tones in
the triad (with the exception of e) has been sounded more than once in
the preceding melody. In fact, with the exception of d, all the tones
of the melody are constituent tones of the triad. After singing these
tones in melodic sequence, or one _after_ the other, it was surely a
most natural procedure to sing them _at the same time_, so that they
should sound together. Thus the triad was quite naturally produced.
Drayton, who visited the Tonga Islands some seventy years after
Forster, also mentions the fact of their ending some of their songs
with a well-defined triad. But whereas the triad in the song noted by
Forster is minor, that spoken of by Drayton is a major triad. In either
case the fact is sufficiently remarkable.

In the narrative of the Wilkes exploring expedition we find a
song noted in which use is made of the harmonic intervals in the
accompaniment of a melody. The song was obtained at the Tonga Islands
about 1840. In its use of harmony it is one degree in advance of the
song collected by Forster, although not so interesting melodically:

                         [Illustration: Music]

At first the bass note makes a fifth with the principal melodic note.
Later the third is added, making the complete major triad. It is
also worth noting that these harmonic bass tones are in a slightly
different rhythm from the melody and preserve an independent character
as an accompaniment to the melody. Perhaps the most striking instance,
however, of the conscious use by savages of concordant musical
intervals is afforded by the following little song noted by the
traveller Forster as having been sung by the original inhabitants of
New Zealand:

                         [Illustration: Music]

To have sung this melody in thirds, to have ended it in unison, and
then to have gone back to the thirds again was certainly a most
remarkable feat for the savage mind to accomplish, and decidedly points
to conscious intention rather than mere accident.

While the knowledge and the development of the science of harmony
is one of the fruits of European civilization, and as a science is
well-nigh confined to Europe exclusively, we still must admit that
whereas primitive man had no knowledge of harmony he had a feeling for
it, and that this feeling led him, though somewhat blindly, to the
attainment of certain fundamental harmonic intervals. These intervals
he evidently valued and used consciously. It is certainly of interest
to note that a germ or suggestion of harmony existed in the primitive
mind; that this element, as well as the other elements of music, has a
natural basis.


                                   V

We have seen how naturally the percussion instruments were developed;
how they sprang into being, as it were, in response to an innate
necessity for rhythmic expression, an inevitable accompaniment of the
dance and the dance-song. Almost at the same time wind instruments
of a simple and rude kind were fashioned. Whistles were made from
the bones of animals with the marrow removed. Pipes were made from
hollow reeds, while conch shells and the horns of deer-like animals
furnished the first trumpets. These primitive whistles, pipes, and
deer-horn trumpets[5] when blown were capable of giving forth but one
tone. However, it is highly probable that, as their makers grew more
familiar with the effect of the varying pressure of the lips, certain
partials of the fundamental tone were produced, such as the octave, the
fifth, and even the third. Eventually a series of holes were pierced
in them, thus making it possible by means of stopping and unstopping
these holes with the fingers to produce a rude scale of tones. But the
first whistles were evidently of the one tone variety. An interesting
relic of this description has recently been exhumed by N. Lartet in the
department of Dordogne, France. It consists of a small bone, probably
of the reindeer, about two inches in length. Through this bone near
one end a small hole has been bored, probably by a sharp piece of
hard stone, like flint. By applying the lips to this hole and blowing
strongly a shrill whistling sound is produced. This was no doubt used
in hunting, or as a call. In a cave at Lombrive in the department of
Ariège several dog-teeth with similar holes for whistling have likewise
been discovered.

To construct an instrument of the whistle variety which should produce
more than one tone was the next step. On whistles or pipes of different
lengths tones of different pitches can be produced, low tones from
long pipes, higher tones from shorter pipes. So different lengths
of whistles were rudely bound together, the longest at one end, the
shortest at the other end, and the intermediate ones arranged in a
sequence according to their relative lengths. Thus an instrument was
made from which it was possible to obtain a succession of rising tones,
a primitive scale. As with the drum among percussion instruments, so
this instrument among wind instruments occupies a place of honor.
The invention of the drum sums up for us all previously existing
rhythmic musical impulses, and this collection of whistles gives us
an instrument on which the production of a sequence of different
tones or musical scale is possible. It has been given the poetical
name of 'Pan’s Pipes.’ These 'Pan’s Pipes,’ of more or less primitive
construction, are found quite generally among the savage tribes of the
world. Specimens have been found in South America consisting of but two
flutes or pipes, a kind of double flute, as it were; while specimens
with a variable number of pipes, from six or seven up to fifteen, have
been found among the inhabitants of the various islands of Polynesia.
Stumpf, in _Die Anfänge der Musik_, reproduces a photograph taken
in southwest Africa, showing an orchestra of Pan’s Pipes. There are
eleven performers, each holding a set of pipes. The instruments are of
several sizes; the smallest being about six inches and the largest five
or six feet in length. Archæological discoveries in the ancient tombs
or burial places of barbarous or semi-civilized peoples bring many
curious specimens to light.

              [Illustration: 'Orchestra’ of Pan’s Pipes.]
    _From a photograph reproduced in Stumpf’s 'Anfänge der Musik’._

In the British museum there is a Pan’s pipe consisting of a double row
of reeds bound together exactly opposite each other; a sort of double
Pan’s Pipes. Each series consists of seven reed pipes, and while one
series of pipes remains open, allowing the free passage of air through
them, all the pipes of the second series have been closed at the lower
end. Now, to stop a pipe at the bottom has the effect of raising its
pitch an octave. It was evidently the intention that two of these pipes
should be blown at once and when this is done through the whole
series the following succession of tones is produced:

                         [Illustration: Music]

This is a five-toned or pentatonic scale, the last two tones being
merely duplicates in octave of the first two. The scale of five tones,
arranged in varying sequence, is a primitive form of scale. While not
so primitive as some (scales of three or four tones, for instance), it
is still much more so than the scales on which our modern art of music
is based.

Another specimen of ancient Peruvian 'Pan’s Pipes,’ at present in the
New York Museum of Natural History, gives the following scale:

                         [Illustration: Music]

This is a scale of eight tones and bears some slight relation to the
minor scale in use at the present day.

Among the Tahitians Captain Cook observed that the raising or lowering
of the pitch of a single flute or pipe was accomplished by rolling up
a leaf in tubular form, inserting this improvised tube into the bottom
of the flute and pushing it in or drawing it out until the required
pitch was obtained. Some such device as this quite probably suggested
the obtaining of different tones from the same pipe. The rolled-up leaf
itself was used as a pipe capable of giving forth a true musical tone.

One of the natives of the Sandwich Islands, on being questioned in
regard to their primitive musical instruments, stripped a leaf from the
_ti_ plant and, rolling it up somewhat in the shape of an old-fashioned
lamp-lighter, blew through it, producing a tone of pure reedlike
quality. Emerson says: 'This little rustic pipe, quickly improvised
from the leaf that every Hawaiian garden supplies, would at once
convert any skeptic to a belief in the pipes of the god Pan.’[6]

Among the inhabitants of New Guinea a flute or pipe is in use in which
the tones are varied by means of a slide which is pushed into the tube
or withdrawn in much the same manner as the rolled-up leaf mentioned by
Captain Cook, but evidently on a much more extensive scale. This is in
effect a primitive trombone.

Finally, flutes or pipes which are pierced with holes are found among
many savage tribes, who have discovered that the effect of lengthening
or shortening the tube could be obtained by boring holes in it and
stopping them or unstopping them with the fingers. Simple as this may
appear to us, it was a great discovery for the savage mind to make, and
must have been the culmination of many groping attempts to attain this
end extending through long ages.

On the most primitive instruments of this nature the finger holes were
but two or three in number, but flutes or pipes are now found among
nearly all savages capable of giving scales of from five to eight
tones. Fétis figures and describes an instrument made from the horn of
a stag, which was found in an ancient sepulchre, near Poitiers, France.
This instrument, which is a sort of trumpet or _flute-à-bec_,[7] is
pierced with three holes and gives a series of four diatonic tones.
The lowest with all the holes stopped; the next higher with one finger
raised, and so on. It is described as being made with great care and
precision, the holes having been placed with an exactitude which would
seem to indicate a considerable knowledge and appreciation of certain
facts of acoustics.

In the sepulchre where this instrument was found there were arms and
other implements made of stone. This musical instrument, therefore,
almost surely dates from the later period of the stone age, which age
preceded in point of time the age in which man discovered and made use
of the metals. It is therefore prehistoric and undoubtedly of very
great antiquity. In the New York Museum of Natural History there is a
collection of ancient bone flutes from Peru. These flutes are pierced
with finger holes and give various scales of four, five, and six tones.
The four-toned scale [Illustration: score], sounds entirely rational
and is in accordance with our modern ideas of diatonic succession;
also this five-toned scale [Illustration: score] and this six-toned
scale [Illustration: score]. But certain other scales given by these
flutes appear to be more or less freakish in character and consist of
a somewhat hit-or-miss collection of tones, indicating either a very
crude musical sense among the ancient Peruvians, or very little skill
on the part of the makers of the flutes:

                         [Illustration: Music]

A 'cane’ flute in the collection gives this scale:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Nose flutes are found at the present day among many tribes. These are
made from a section of bamboo or other cane-like wood from which the
pith has been removed. The top end is left closed by the joint and a
hole pierced on the side very near the top. Finger holes from two to
four in number are bored in the tube of the flute. In playing the flute
is pressed firmly against the lips, taking care that the little hole
near the top end is covered by one nostril. Music of an extempore
kind is now produced by breathing into the instrument and covering and
uncovering the finger holes in the usual manner; the length of the
piece of music being determined by the breath of the performer. The
following specimen of nose-flute music was collected by Miss Jennie
Eisner in Hawaii:

                         [Illustration: Music]

The development of these primitive wind instruments is usually
ascribed to a slightly later period than that of the development of
the first percussion instruments. The construction of wind instruments
is considered to represent a slightly higher degree of mental
development in man, and hence they are not regarded by ethnologists
as being so primitive as the percussion instruments. Nevertheless
Wallaschek insists that the first instruments to be developed were wind
instruments, alleging in proof the discovery of some Egyptian flutes
which he asserts antedate any other musical instruments of which we
have any record. It is certainly true that the physical organism of
man contains in itself the prototype of all wind instruments, i. e.,
the voice. But it is equally true that hand clapping and the stamping
of the feet are also native to him, and these are undoubtedly the
prototypes of all percussion instruments. The isolated fact of the
discovery of these flutes is not of sufficient weight, to our mind, to
justify the belief that wind instruments were developed anterior to
percussion instruments.

As the appreciation of the fact of definite musical tones being
obtainable on instruments took root and grew in the human mind, and
especially as these tones began to be arranged in definite series
or scales, another instrument of a remarkable nature was developed.
It was a percussion instrument, but one on which could be produced
not only a tone having a definite pitch, but a whole series or
scale of tones. Hence it was as capable of reproducing a melody as
some of the primitive pipes or flutes. This was the xylophone. This
instrument, having its far distant origin in the two sticks of wood
which were struck together to produce a rhythmical noise by the most
primitive savages, has been brought to its greatest perfection by
the Africans and the Guatemalans. Its principle of construction is
similar to that of the Pan’s Pipes; a series of sticks or bars of
wood arranged according to their relative lengths; the longer giving
forth the lower tones, and the tones growing higher in pitch as the
sticks grow shorter. The series of sounding sticks of wood are in
Africa usually fixed over a gourd, a series of gourds, or a drum-like
instrument which acts as a sounding-board, thus giving the pieces of
wood greater sonority. This instrument, as it is found among many
of the African tribes, has a compass of from one to two octaves and
gives approximately the tones of our usual diatonic scale. It aroused
the admiration of Junod to such an extent that he refers to it as the
'African piano,’ not an inapt name, by the way. The _marimba_ of the
Guatemalans, while not exactly a xylophone, is a percussion instrument
which is capable of giving a scale of definite tones. According to
Wallaschek 'it consists of a number of gourds (as many as sixteen)
covered with a flat piece of wood, beaten with a stick, and produces
different tones according to the size of the gourd.’ The tone is said
to resemble very much that of our modern piano.

The development of drums, such elementary wind instruments as have been
noted, the xylophone, a suggestion of harmony and the rude idea of a
scale, make up the sum of the musical accomplishment of primitive
man. It is true that the precursor of the stringed instruments is to
be found in the hunting bow, and a few cases are found where this is
used as a sort of one-stringed harp, the string being either struck
with a stick or plucked with the fingers. Mention must also be made of
the African _goura_, a sort of a primitive Æolian harp. It has but one
string, and is similar in shape to the child’s small bow for shooting
arrows. It has a quill affixed to one end in such a way that the string
may be vibrated by blowing through the quill. The fingers are then
lightly touched to the string, and a few faint harmonic-like sounds
are produced. But, generally speaking, the development of stringed
instruments is not to be looked for among savage peoples, it coincides
with the rise of man from barbarism to some degree of civilization.


                                  VI

It is impossible to trace the progress of music in unbroken sequence
from its primitive beginnings to its development as an art by civilized
nations. The record is far too fragmentary. There are too many missing
links, too many isolated and well-nigh inexplicable facts. Thus, among
semi-civilized peoples like the Malays, the Bedouins, and the people of
Africa, we find music of a comparatively high order and sophisticated
nature. It is inconceivable that these people should have developed
this music by their own initiative. The only reasonable explanation is
that it has been acquired to a certain extent from educated travellers
and explorers. In this process it has been unconsciously modified so
that it usually reflects both elements--the barbaric and the civilized.
The following melody, which is a song in use by the 'medicine men’ of
southeastern Africa for the exorcising or expelling of an evil spirit
from a person supposed to be possessed by it, is a case in point:

                         [Illustration: Music]

While this melody has an undoubted barbaric character as a whole, it
shows traces of civilized influence. It is quite definitely in the key
of G, even though it contains no F-sharp, and the passages for chorus
sound anything but barbaric. From the same district comes the following
war song. While structurally, especially in regard to the use of the
musical intervals, it exhibits considerable musical sophistication, the
general effect is wild and primitive. This war song was in actual use
in 1895.

                         [Illustration: Music]

Among many of the semi-civilized tribes of Africa harps are found to be
in use, some having as many as sixteen strings. The oboe, an instrument
of a much higher type than the primitive pipe, is also found. It is
conjectured that the Africans derived the harp from ancient Egypt, as
many of those in use at the present day much resemble in form certain
harps which we find represented in ancient Egyptian sculptures and bas
reliefs. As for the oboe, it was almost certainly introduced by Arabian
traders.

Among several tribes, but particularly the Ashantees, is to be found
a rude sort of stringed instrument which in construction is somewhat
midway between a harp and a banjo, and has some of the characteristics
of each. It is called a _sanko_. It has eight strings, the lowest
of which is tuned to middle 'C’ and the highest an octave above. The
intermediary strings fairly represent the tones of the usual diatonic
scale. The origin of the _sanko_ is known to be Arabian, but its
construction has undoubtedly undergone some modification in the hands
of the Africans. It is capable of giving forth incipient harmony,
and its negro players make frequent use of thirds, sixths and even
chords of three tones (triads). Here are two specimens of music played
upon the _sanko_, both collected and transcribed by T. E. Bowdich in
Ashantee:

                         [Illustration: Music]
                                 N.º 1.

                         [Illustration: Music]
                                 N.º 2.

The first of these tunes is claimed by the natives of Ashantee to be
their oldest traditional tune. It certainly seems to possess all the
crudity of true primitive music. The second tune is far more highly and
rationally organized and shows more decidedly the effect of external
influence. Quite free from the possible modification of European
imitation, however, are the following fragments, recently taken down on
the phonograph by Sir Harry Johnston in Uganda. It is to be regretted
that the notation is not more exact.[8]

                 [Illustration: N.º 1. BAGANDA TRIBE.]


                     [Illustration: N.º 2. MASAI.]


                         [Illustration: N.º 3.]


Algernon Rose has described a peculiar kind of xylophone which he saw
in South Africa. It consists of a series of ten or more pieces of
bamboo of different lengths. All are fastened tightly at one end to
a board, leaving the other end free. This other end is plucked with
the thumb or fingers, after the manner of a harp string. The pieces
of bamboo being plucked in this manner, each gives forth a sound, and
as they are of different lengths it is possible to produce a series
of different sounds; a rudimentary musical scale. Rose refers to the
instrument as a 'clicker’ and finds it to be in use among the Kaffirs.
T. E. Bowdich also mentions an instrument which seems to be, from his
description, almost identical with the instrument described above. This
he found to be in use in Ashantee before 1819. He gives the following
air as having been played upon it:

                         [Illustration: Music]

This certainly sounds quite natural to civilized ears. Bowdich also
mentions a one-stringed instrument called the _bentwa_, which seems to
have been played much in the manner of a jew’s-harp. He says:

'The Bentwa is a stick bent in the form of a bow, and across it is
fastened a very thin piece of split cane which is held between the
lips at one end and struck with a small stick, while at the other it
is occasionally stopped, or rather buffed by a thick one; on this they
play only lively airs, and it owes its various sounds to the lips.’ He
also gives this tune as having been played upon this instrument. Its
resemblance to certain Irish jigs in 6/8 time is worthy of remark.

                         [Illustration: Music]

There also exists among one of the lesser known tribes (the Empoongua)
an instrument having five strings, said to be made of the filaments
of the palm tree. Bowdich describes this instrument as being made of
pieces of bamboo, which being bound together form a species of sounding
board over which the strings are stretched lengthwise and held up by
means of bridges at the ends. He gives the following tune as having
been played on this instrument:

                         [Illustration: Music]

While the study of some of the musical instruments of semi-civilized
peoples is of ethnological interest the music itself is questionably
so, inasmuch as it is more or less of a jumble of two elements--the
barbaric and the civilized. Hence it is not of real significance in
tracing the natural rise and evolution of the art. Much of the music of
semi-barbarous peoples does not consist of what they have themselves
developed during their rise from savagery, but consists more frequently
of diluted, distorted and malappropriated bits of melody which have by
devious routes reached them from civilization.


                                  VII

Of especial interest to Americans is the music of the North American
Indians. It is difficult to characterize this music by a few general
remarks, as there are, or rather were, over fifty different tribes,
each of which had its own peculiar music. The whole mass of tunes
presented many interesting varieties, both in structure and rhythm.

Music among the Indians did not occupy the place of an art. Song was
not indulged in for the sake of giving pleasure, and music can hardly
be said to have been developed among them in response to a love of
melody for its own sake. There can be no doubt that among the Africans
and other semi-barbarous peoples music, however rude, gives a genuine
æsthetic pleasure, even though of a primitive sort. But among the
Indians music was too closely bound up with ritual to have much of an
independent existence as music. Song was the inevitable accompaniment
of every important act or ceremony in tribal or individual life.
Each prayer, incantation, tribal or individual ceremony had its
own appropriate song, and it was considered unlawful to sing this
particular song except in accompaniment of this particular prayer or
ceremony. Certain songs having to do with ceremonies which occurred at
certain seasons of the year could only be heard at these seasons. The
song, as a song, had no existence apart from the ceremony. It is true
that gambling songs, and songs of labor, such as corn-grinding songs,
are to be found among many of the tribes, but these are apparently
variations of the general rule, and that they were indulged in for the
sake of æsthetic pleasure is very doubtful. Between certain tribes on
the Pacific coast there were indeed singing contests, but it is learned
on investigation that these contests were largely trials of memory,
their object being to ascertain who could remember accurately the
greatest number of songs.

In general it may be said that the melodies of the northern tribes,
such as the 'Iroquois,’ 'Algonquin,’ or 'Kwakiutl,’ are much ruder and
present more rugged characteristics than those of the southern tribes,
such as the 'Zunis’ or 'Navahoes.’ These southern Indian melodies are
much more graceful. This difference is well shown by the two following
melodies. The first is from Dakota; the second from New Mexico:

                    [Illustration: N.º 1. DACOTAH.]

                     [Illustration: N.º 2. HOPI.]

A peculiarity of the Dakota melody is the downward leap of a fourth to
be seen in the second measure. The use of the interval of the fourth
as a prominent melodic interval is quite a general characteristic of
Indian music, and is noticeable in the music of many different tribes.
The following Scalp Dance from Minnesota illustrates this:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Again, it may be said that the larger number of Indian tunes have a
falling melodic inflection. True to the most primitive characteristic
of savage music, that of beginning on a high tone and descending
gradually to the bottom of the voice, the melodic course of the great
majority of Indian tunes is ever downward. It is not an unusual thing
for an Indian tune to end on a tone an octave and a half lower than
that on which it began. The following dance song, also from Minnesota,
illustrates this:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Among the Indians the drum is naturally the instrument most frequently
in use. There are but few songs or ceremonies in which it does not
play a vital part. It is almost always used to accompany a singer,
apparently to mark the time; but curiously enough the rhythm of
the drum is sometimes at variance with the rhythm of the song. The
rhythmic values of the vocal melody, on the one hand, and the different
rhythm of its drum accompaniment, on the other, are so persistently
independent that the effect is very evidently intentional. Rattles are
sometimes used instead of the drum, as is the case in the Snake Dances
of the Hopis already referred to.

The only other musical instrument deserving the name which is in
widespread use is the so-called flute. This flute, pierced with six
holes and blown through the end (not across the side) is used as a
courting or love-making instrument on which to serenade the loved one.
The fragments of melody which are played upon it are largely extempore
and are understood by the Indian maiden as a declaration of love. The
following is a sample of one of these flute love-calls:

                         [Illustration: Music]

With the exception of the flute and its love-calls, instrumental music
can be said not to exist among the Indians. With them music is almost
entirely song. And, as the most important element of their songs is
not primarily their strictly musical value, this paucity of their
instrumental music is only what might be expected. It is interesting to
note, however, that practically in the only case in which music occurs
divorced from ritual in Indian life, it appears as an expression of the
love emotion. This is significant when considered in connection with
Darwin’s theory of the origin of music cited above.

Even though the music of the Indians is almost entirely a by-product
of ritual it would be wrong to conclude that _as music_ it is lacking
in character. While many of their ritualistic songs are merely a sort
of recitative in which the melody is much distorted and drawn out to
accommodate the words, others are quite perfect in their form and
general melodic organization, and of a truly distinctive and forceful
character; as, for instance, the following 'Song of the Wolf,’ which
was collected by Dr. Boas among the Kwakiutl tribe in the northwest:

                [Illustration: SONG OF THE WOLF.]

Nothing like a scientific study of Indian music was attempted
until 1880. In that year Theodore Baker lived a while on the Seneca
reservation, in the state of New York, and collected and studied such
Indian melodies as he could there obtain. The results of his studies
were embodied in a pamphlet and published under the title, _Über die
Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden_. This little book first drew
the attention of ethnologists and others to the hitherto unsuspected
existence of a large and important native musical culture among the
Indians. Before 1880 investigators of the Indian and his native culture
had entirely ignored his music, considering it to be mere barbaric
noise not worthy of attention. Even Schoolcraft, in his great work
published in 1854, said: 'Indian music is very simple. It consists of
about four notes.’ Since the publication of Baker’s essay, however, the
subject has not lacked investigators. The application by Prof. Fewkes,
of Harvard University, of the phonograph to the accurate recording of
Indian melody has been used with brilliant success by investigators.
Through the efforts of such workers as Alice C. Fletcher, Frederick R.
Burton, Franz Boaz, James Mooney, Natalie Curtis, Frances Densmore, and
others, thousands of Indian songs of many different kinds have been
collected, written down, and published, forming a library of American
primitive music of great completeness and inestimable value to students
of the subject.


                                 VIII

In collecting and studying the music of primitive peoples great
difficulty is experienced in obtaining trustworthy data. Almost all
the savage and semi-barbarous peoples of the world at the present day
have been in contact more or less with civilized man for so long that
they have acquired by imitation many of his manners, customs, and
ideas. Thus the savage’s original development has been overlaid as it
were with a varnish of culture, which is foreign, not native, to him.
The first civilized men to come in contact with a savage tribe have
not as a rule been intent upon observing their manners and customs
nor upon recording their primitive music or folk-lore. These first
men have usually come as discoverers and as conquerors. They have
been followed by missionaries, who in their zeal to perpetuate the
doctrines of Christianity have been ever anxious to divert the minds
of the people from their ancient traditions, by substituting for them
stories from Bible history. Their ancient songs and barbarous-sounding
incantations, however interesting to the ethnologist, have been in most
cases tabooed by the missionaries as impious, who substituted for them
the hymns of the church. This thing has happened in Australia, New
Zealand, Polynesia, Africa, and particularly in America, the Indian
tribes having been so inoculated with musical ideas, hymns, and scraps
of folk song, that it is frequently only with great difficulty that the
character of their own primitive music can be determined.

A collection of the music of the Hopi tribe, who dwell in seven
naturally fortified hill towns in the desert of Arizona, reveals to a
large extent Spanish influence. Many of their melodies have the grace
and movement of Spanish dances. This is quite explicable, however,
when it is remembered that the Spanish held dominion over these towns
from 1580 to 1680. Spanish influence is also apparent in the music
of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, and in the
traditional music of the Mexicans and Peruvians. Brasseur de Bourbourg
has translated into French from the Quinche, the former Mayan tongue,
an ancient manuscript called 'Rabinal-Achi.’ It is an immense dramatic
ballet accompanied by music and danced and acted by hundreds of
performers. But when we come to examine this music it is only to find
that it has an unmistakably Spanish character.

From the fascinating histories of Francis Parkman it is plainly seen
with what zeal the early Jesuit missionaries strove to Christianize the
Canadian tribes of Indians. At the present day it is not an unusual
thing to find turns of melody and even whole tunes which resemble to a
large extent certain hymns of the Catholic Church. Frederick R. Burton,
who has investigated the Ojibways’ music, says that, while on one of
his trips in the vicinity of Lake Huron, he fell in with a particularly
isolated tribe of these Indians. He asked them to sing one of their
_old_ choruses. The Indians complied and--sang a garbled version of
'Old Hundred.’

The innate love of music among the African blacks has been remarked.
Their imitative powers are likewise well known. We are told by
Theophilus Hahn of an instance in which not only the music but the
words of certain Dutch hymns, the latter being entirely unintelligible
to the negroes, were remembered and repeated almost exactly, after
being heard but once by them. Noirot,[9] after calling attention to the
great resemblance existing between certain African airs and English jig
tunes, or French vaudeville songs, says: 'It is necessary, however, to
make an exception of those slow and monotonous phrases which are sung
by the young women to accompany dancing, and of the airs played on the
Bambara flute. In these we again perceive the savage aspect of this
music; the chant inspired by the patriarchal life of the blacks.’ A
specimen of one of these airs is here given:

                         [Illustration: Music]

The first collectors of the music of the various savage tribes
naturally were obliged to write it down in ordinary musical notation.
But savages in their primitive melodies, like certain animals in
their quasi-musical cries, continually use intervals of less than a
semi-tone. In writing down these primitive melodies in our notation it
has been necessary to disregard these small intervals and to treat them
as accidental happenings, a mere out-of-tuneness, as it were. The note
written down has always been assumed to represent the tone which the
primitive singer was trying unsuccessfully to produce. But instances
of these variations from the tones of the orthodox chromatic scale
finally became so numerous as to give rise to the belief that savages
consciously made use of quarter tones in their songs. This belief has
had many learned and eloquent defenders, among whom may be mentioned
James A. Davies[10] and Benjamin Ives Gilman.[11] The truth of this
theory is, however, very doubtful. The conscious use of the quarter
tones or intervals smaller than those in use in European music would
indicate a much more refined perception of tones and their relations,
a much more delicate musical ear, than is possessed by civilized
Europeans. And this is hardly to be reasonably expected of savages.
Moreover, during recent years the writer has examined some hundreds of
Indian songs as recorded by the phonograph. Many repetitions of single
songs have been examined by him. As a general rule the repetitions fail
to agree in length, rhythm, or accuracy of intonation. Frequently they
agree only in general contour. Any single tone is liable to vary up
or down at least a quarter of a tone, and in some cases the variation
is as much as a full tone. Now if the Indians consciously use quarter
tones in their songs, one would expect to find a regular recurrence of
these small intervals at the same place in each subsequent repetition
of the song. But as such is very far from being the case, one is led
to conclude that while these fractional intervals do really occur,
their occurrence is much more the result of accident than of conscious
intention. These conclusions in regard to North American Indian music
apply, we believe, to the music of all savages.

The characteristics of that which is primitive are undoubted strength,
directness of expression, and consequent effectiveness, but this
elemental strength is coupled with crudity, inaccuracy, and an apparent
lawlessness or impatience of restraint. No matter how charming, how
effective, or how interesting many of these strains of primitive music
may seem to us from an ethnological point of view, it is apparent that
the _mind_ of man has not yet grasped and moulded this tonal material.
Primitive music does not show the effect of thought. It is merely the
wild and wayward expression of emotion.

It was when the rudimentary successions of tones known to primitive
man were gathered up and scientifically arranged in definite and
unalterable scales that our modern art of music began. And at this
point our survey of primitive music properly ends.

                                                           H. F. G.


[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF ANDAMANESE MUSIC. Noted by M. V. Portman.]

    D'ót ógar lera loto cháli beo
    D'ót ógar lera loto cháli beo
    D'ót ógar lera loto cháli beo.

    Dó ngól áka teggi leb dáka jad ála ngáka yabng-o
    D'ót ógar lera, loto cháli beo
    D'ót ógar lera loto cháli beo.

    Pukuta Clapping etc.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[2] Benj. Ives Gilman: Hopi Songs, 1908.

[3] A specimen of Andamanese music is to be found on page 41.

[4] Carl Engel: Introduction to the Study of National Music, Vol. I.

[5] Horns made from elephant tusks have been found in central Africa.

[6] Nath. B. Emerson: The Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, 1909.

[7] _Flute-à-bec_ = beak flute; one which is played by blowing through
the end.

[8] We have ventured to change certain notes, such as substituting
D-flat for C-sharp, for instance. While this in no way alters the tune,
the musical intervals are more readily grasped by the reader.

[9] _À travers le Fouta-Diallon et le Bambouc._

[10] See Sir George Gray: Polynesian Mythology.

[11] See 'Hopi Songs.’




                              CHAPTER II
                           EXOTIC MUSIC[12]

  Significance of exotic music--Classification; Aztecs and
  Peruvians--The Orient: China and Hindustan, the Mohammedans--Exotic
  instruments--Music as religious rite; music and dancing--Music and
  customs; Orient and Occident.


No history of music can pretend to completeness that does not give
some account of the various musical systems that have developed before
or outside of the influence of European civilization, though in truth
music, in comparison with the other arts in Europe, has assimilated
astonishingly little from the peoples of the Orient or from ancient
civilization, for European music is based essentially upon harmony,
and harmony, taking the word in its accepted meaning, was unknown to
ancient nations, and is unknown to-day in countries of the Orient.
We must admit that tricks of rhythm and melody came from the Orient
into Spain at the time of the Moorish Conquest, were even brought back
to Europe by the Crusaders returning from their distant wanderings.
Furthermore the lute and perhaps the violin, both of which have held
an important place in the development of European music, came from
Arabia. But that the technique or structure of our music has been
considerably influenced by the music of other races is quite out
of the question. On the other hand, composers have, from time to
time, enlivened their music by touches of Oriental color. They have
experimented with Oriental melody and rhythm, they have sometimes
used strange instruments foreign to Europe. We may cite, for instance,
Goldmark’s _Sakuntala Overture_; Bizet’s _Les Pêcheurs de Perles_;
Félicien David’s symphonic ode, _Le Désert_; Rimsky-Korsakov’s glowing
Oriental _Scheherezade_; Balakirev’s _Islamey_, etc. These experiments
cannot but call our attention to those elaborate exotic systems of
music which were flourishing in India, in China, in Japan, in Siam
and Java, in Arabia and Persia centuries before the age of Bach and
Handel. While Europe was still slowly emerging from the barbarism of
the Middle Ages music had reached a high state of development in these
countries. Strange instruments of many kinds were in use; there was
an art of composition, frequently some form of notation; there was
a musical profession and 'much discussion of musical acoustics and
æsthetics.’ An authority[13] on musical ethnology says of the Arabs:
'At this day, when the decadence of the Arab civilization has been
entirely consummated it still retains enough traces of its former
splendor to enable us to claim without fear that at the time of its
greatest florescence it was certainly as rich, probably even richer,
than European art at the same epoch.’


                                   I

As a foundation for all understanding and estimation of the so-called
exotic systems of music we must bear in mind that beneath the
differences from our own music in scale structure often as a matter
of practice more apparent than real, in lack of harmony and in
predominance of rhythm, lies the fundamental difference that music
has never been cultivated for itself alone in China, in Hindustan,
or among ancient nations to anything like the same extent as in the
Occident. Though in the Mohammedan Orient, at the height of the Saracen
civilization, it was highly esteemed as a social diversion, in general
it figures, not as an independent art, but rather as an auxiliary one.
This, of course, applies to art-music, not to popular or folk song, of
which, just as in other lands, there is a rich literature in the East.
On the rivers of China, in the bazaars of Hindoo cities, under the
Bedouin tent-roof, the people sing their songs. But the art of music
was developed by these peoples only in connection with dancing, sacred
or secular, with ceremonial functions, plays or pantomimes. If this
fact be borne in mind, it is perhaps easier to comprehend an art so
strikingly different from our own.

Exotic music, or, broadly speaking, the music of the semi-civilized
races, may be considered under four heads; that of the Aztecs and
Peruvians (nations whose civilizations, though they have been
destroyed, are of too recent date to be classed with those of the
ancients, yet the scant musical record of which should not be
overlooked); the music of India; the music of the Chinese, Japanese,
and Indo-Chinese peoples, including the Siamese, Javabese, Cambodians,
Annamites; and the music of the Mohammedan Orient.

There is but little known of the music of the Aztecs or Peruvians. The
fact that the Aztec language was sweet and harmonious to the ear and
had no sharp or nasal sounds justified the fondness with which both
lyric and dramatic poetry were cultivated in ancient Mexico. But the
music of the Aztecs seems to have been unworthy of so cultivated a
people. It was the only art that remained in its infancy among them.
Still, the mention of ballads sung by the people, court-odes and the
chants of temple choirs, show that they must have cultivated a form
of vocal music distinctly above that of drums and horns, pipes and
whistles. Moreover, music played an important part in connection with
religious and secular dancing, as it did also in India. It has been
conjectured that the Aztec tonal system resembled that of the Arabs.
Their songs generally began with deep sounds, rising in pitch and
accelerating with the increase of pleasurable emotion on the part of
the singer. De Solis speaks of the funeral processions in which the
bodies of the dead were brought to the temples to be received by the
priests swinging their censers of burning copal 'to the hoarse sound of
dissonant flutes and singing various hymns in a melancholy mode.’

Among the Peruvians the beautiful Quichua dialect, like the melodious
language of the Aztecs, encouraged the _haravecs_ or poets to compose
the verses which were sung at religious festivals and at the table
of the Inca. And, as in Mexico, music was intimately associated with
religious dancing and ceremony. It played its part in the elaborate
ritual of the Incas’ sun worship. However, little information is
available concerning the development of the Inca music or that of the
Aztecs before the Conquest. The Quichua and Aimara Indians of the
present day are still passionately fond of music, singing and dancing
to the accompaniment of the _quena_ (Peruvian flute) and guitar; and
phrases of the traditional minstrelsy of the Inca haravecs may 'have
been borne down the tide of rustic melody to these later generations.’
Their songs are in the ancient five-tone scale known as the pentatonic,
which they have probably inherited from their proud ancestors, together
with a fondness for triple rhythm, sole traces of the music of that
brilliant state which sank before the power of Spain.

Concerning the music of China, of Hindustan, and of the Mohammedan
Orient we have definite information. The people of these countries
have not been, like the Aztecs of Mexico or the Incas of Peru, either
swept from the face of the earth or thrown back into a drowsy
barbarism. Their own civilizations live on beneath a surface decay.
They have ideals of tradition, of permanence, of racial habit, quite
different from those accepted by our standards of progress and original
development, which have fenced in their music from all Occidental
influences. Only a few hardly noticeable variations in instrumentation
and choreography mark the touch of time. Notation, rhythm, and design
have remained for ages immutably the same.

It is supposed in China that Ling-Lenu, minister of the Emperor
Honang-Ty, chosen to fix the laws of musical sound, retired to a
bamboo-grove, near the source of the Yellow River, and there cut
twelve bamboo tubes whose varying lengths yielded the sounds of our
present-day chromatic scale. In reality, however, the pentatonic scale
[Illustration: score] is used. The tones b and e (omitted in this scale
as we have written it), the fourth and seventh tones in our scale,
which are not found in the normal pentatonic scale, are given a special
name, _pien_; and the union of the five tones and the two _pien_
constitute what the Chinese call the 'Seven Principles’ in music.
But the five-tone scale is the one commonly employed in practice and
constitutes the basis of all music in the Indo-Chinese countries.[14]
In Java, Siam, Burmah, and Cambodia, both five-tone and seven-tone
(heptatonic) scales are in use; but the musical system of Japan, which
was originally borrowed from China, is built up wholly on a five-tone
scale, with the important difference from the Chinese that it has a
minor third, and not a major: [Illustration: score]. This difference
gives Japanese music a certain individual character of its own.

The Hindoos have a system of seven-toned scales differentiated from
each other by variable quarter-tone steps. But the theory of music is
developed in India with an over-elaboration of subtleties, as it is
in China, and of almost a thousand varieties of scale theoretically
possible in the Hindoo system no more than twenty are in actual use.
Many of these resemble our own.

What may be called Mohammedan music is a complex type. It has resulted
from the spread of Mohammedanism along the Mediterranean coast and
Northern Africa, and in Central Africa and Southern Asia. It includes
features from many sources--Persian, Byzantine Greek, Mediæval
Christian, and purely local--and is historically a puzzle. Like the
Hindoo scales, the scales which are used in distinctly Mohammedan
countries are heptatonic; but the theoretical division of the octave is
into seventeen steps (each equal to about one-third of a whole step)
instead of the twenty-two _srutis_ of the Hindoos. There are some
eighteen of these seven-tone scales in use, varying from each other in
the location of their shorter steps.

The five and seven-tone scales on which these musical systems are
based are analogous to our own. It is the manner in which they
are employed and modified by other factors that makes their music
strikingly different from ours. The Chinese, in the first place, have
many melodies similar to old Scotch songs, but they are primarily
interested, not in the flow of the melody, but in _timbre_, in the
quality and character of sound. Whereas we, as soon as we have defined
a sound, pass to the consideration of intonation, duration, etc., the
Chinese theoreticians, with rare keenness of perception, have worked
out an elaborate division of the quality of sound, according to the
phenomena governing its production, classifying it according to eight
sound-producing materials provided by Nature--skin, tone, metal, baked
clay, silk, wood, bamboo, and gourd. Harmony means to the Chinese
what it meant to the ancient Greeks, a purely æsthetic combination of
sound and dance. Duple rhythm predominates. Both Chinese melodies and
the melodies of the Indo-Chinese are continuous, admitting neither
interruption nor repetition. The refrain is very rare, and occurs only
in popular songs. Noisy, shrill, and harsh effects abound, disagreeable
to our ears. Berlioz said: 'The Chinese sing like dogs howling, like
a cat screeching when it has swallowed a toad.’ But Berlioz could
not listen with an understanding ear. No more can we. Such wholesale
condemnation must be tempered with respect before the feeling of the
illustrious Chinese musician, Konai, who said, 'When I strike the
sonorous stones, either softly or with force, savage beasts leap up
with joy and concord reigns between high dignitaries.’

In ancient China music was a privileged amusement of the higher
classes, and it has always been under imperial supervision. With the
passing of the centuries it has been largely turned over to the vulgar,
in street and theatre; and the ancient rules governing its production
and performance (there are sixty volumes of classic works alone on the
subject) have fallen into disuse. A letter notation is still employed.

The music of Indo-China hardly differs in essentials from that of
China, and presents much the same peculiarity in comparison with
our own. On the other hand, the music of India is quite distinct,
and presents only a few surface similarities to the Mongolian.
Hindoo music, according to Captain Day,[15] has lost the primitive
purity of Aryan times. The theoretical division of the octave into
twenty-two quarter-tones, recorded in Sanscrit books, finds no
practical application in modern usage. As in Chinese music, harmony
is non-existent; for Hindoo music is purely melodic, and the _Vina_,
the seven-stringed lute used as an accompanying instrument, merely
doubles the voice part. But Hindoo music is built, as we have said,
upon a system of seven-tone or heptatonic scales which offers far
greater opportunity for effect than the pentatonic system of the
Chinese. It has, moreover, infinitely more rhythmic variety and its
rhythms are triple rather than duple, as is the case with the Chinese.
They are capricious and elastic (this due, in part no doubt, to
Mohammedan influences), and are usually strongly marked. One of the
most characteristic features in Hindoo music, which has no counterpart
in Chinese, is the _Raga_,[16] or traditional type-melody to which
texts of varying character are sung. Some of the _ragas_ are especially
consecrated to gods and heroes. In general Hindoo airs are marked
by long melodic passages, often of no definite design. There are
three general divisions: _gana_ (vocal music), _vadya_ (instrumental
music), and _nytria_ (dance music). The Hindoos divide all instruments
into four classes: quite unlike the Chinese classification: stringed
instruments; those with membranes sounded by percussion; those struck
in pairs; and those which sound when blown. A Sanscrit notation
(characters for notes and signs or words for other details) indicates
pitch and duration.

Music in Mohammedan countries has peculiarities which differentiate it
quite distinctly from music in China and in India. In India music has
always been largely associated with religion, especially in connection
with the dance. Mohammedanism has never encouraged religious music. It
is true that the chanting of the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer
from the minarets; but except this the music which accompanies the
dances of the whirling dervishes of Cairo, Bagdad, and Constantinople
offers practically the only example of Mohammedan religious music.[17]
Nevertheless in the brilliant days of the Abbaside caliphs and
the Moorish kings of Spain music was a passion with the Saracens.
Haroun-al-Raschid lavished rewards of gold and lands on his musicians
and the 'Thousand and One Nights’ proves in what esteem music was held
throughout the Mohammedan Orient at the time of the Caliphate. There
was a rich and elaborate musical literature, but the decadence of the
Arab civilization brought with it entire oblivion of the many treatises
and writings of these glorious days. The old science is forgotten,
just as in China the musical wisdom of ancient times has fallen into
neglect. Yet throughout the wide territories in which Mohammedanism
established itself, that peculiar and distinctive type which more than
any other represents Oriental music to us, a type resulting from a
mixture of Persian and Arabian styles, complicated with Christian and
other influences, has been traditionally handed down to the present
day. As in the other systems we have discussed, harmony is practically
non-existent. The scales are seven-toned and there are some eighteen
theoretical modes. Both duple and triple rhythms are employed with
greatest variety. In fact, one of the most striking characteristics
of Mohammedan musical art is the variety and complexity of its
sharp rhythms. The melodies are excessively adorned with every sort
of flourish and ornament, slides, turns, grace-notes, shakes, and
arabesques of every description not pleasing to our ears. Popular
songs and professional musicians are to be found throughout all the
Mohammedan Orient. The love song in particular is held in high esteem
in all Mohammedan countries, and the following example may illustrate
its charm:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Villoteau mentions his regret at not having been able to note down
'the accent of yielding abandonment with which the singers express the
voluptuous melancholy which fills the majority of these songs.’ Some
of the present-day Persian love-songs are said to be sung to poems
of Hafiz. The occupational popular song is also found everywhere. In
general, the standpoint taken by the Arab proverb, 'Who does not hunt,
does not love, is not moved by the sound of music nor raptured by the
fragrance of blossoms is no man,’ is that of the Mohammedan Orient as
regards the art of sound.

Though, strange to say, Arab music at the time of its greatest
florescence possessed no system of notation, an elementary alphabetical
notation has since been invented and is now in use.

In the main, the differences between Oriental music and our own may be
summed up in the words of Saint-Saëns: 'Oriental musical art is another
art. The musical art of antiquity is founded on the combination of
melody and rhythm. To these our art adds a third element--harmony.’
And, however much they differ from our own, it should always be borne
in mind that 'the subtly ingenious mathematical subdivisions of the
Persians and Arabs, the excessive modal elaboration of the Hindoos,
the narrow and constrained stiffness of the Chinese, the ambiguous
elasticity of the Japanese, and the truly marvellous artificiality of
the Javanese and Siamese systems are all the products of human artistic
ingenuity working instinctively for artistic ends.’


                                  II

An account of the uses of such music and the rôle it plays in
customs far different from our own calls for some description of the
instruments employed. Every nation had its own peculiar instruments.
Those of percussion seem to us particularly characteristic. Such
Oriental coloration as has been applied to our modern music has been
usually in the way of rhythm emphasized by strange instruments of
percussion. Drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., do not fail to suggest at
once the spirit of barbarous or outlandish peoples. The Peruvians and
Aztecs had a variety of drums. The Aztecs used the _huehuetl_ and the
_teponastle_; the one, a drum struck by the fingers, a wooden cylinder
three feet high, with a deer-skin head which could be loosened or
tightened at will; the other a hollow closed cylinder of wood, having
two longitudinal parallel slits close together, the strip of wood
between which was struck with two drumsticks whose ends were covered
with rubber. This instrument is still used by the Mexican Indians. It
sounds a melancholy note, and one audible at a great distance. The
Aztecs also used an enormous rattle, the _axacaxtli_, in place of
castanets. It was a gourd pierced with holes and filled with small
stones.

The most characteristic Chinese instrument of percussion is the _king_,
a set of graduated plates, stones, or bells, hung in a frame and
played with a mallet. The tone produced is smooth and sonorous. In
addition, the Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Chinese have a quantity of
metal gongs and cymbals, bells, tambourines, castanets, and drums of
all kinds. In Siam and Burmah there is the _ranat_, a set of wooden or
metal bars played with a mallet, in reality a xylophone; and in Java
the _anklong_, of the same family, the bars of which are of bamboo.
The Hindoos and Mohammedan Orientals also have a great number of
drums, tam-tams, gongs, etc., which is not surprising in view of the
predominant part rhythm was given in their music.

The stringed instruments are not less numerous. They appear to have
been unknown to the Aztecs, and the Peruvians used only the _tinya_, a
guitar with six strings. But the Chinese had a great number of them,
among which the _kin_, a small lute with seven strings, held a peculiar
place. It was long an object of veneration. Sages alone might venture
to touch its strings; ordinary mortals should be content merely to
regard it in silence with the most profound respect. An elaborate
psaltery or zither called _che_, with twenty-five strings, was much in
use, and there were several bowed instruments in the viol family, of
uncertain ancient descent. The Cambodians, too, have instruments of
the viol family, notably the _tro-khmer_, a three-stringed viol held
like the 'cello when played. The Siamese, Coreans, and Annamites all
use instruments of the guitar and mandolin family with a varying number
of strings. In Burmah the favorite instrument is a queer harp with
thirteen strings called the _soung_. In Japan there are the _koto_,
which is a pleasing-toned zither with thirteen strings; the _samisen_,
a small guitar associated with the Geisha girls, the _buva_, a type
of lute, and the _kokin_, a primitive violin. One finds in India the
_sarindas_ or _sarungis_, viols with sympathetic wire strings; the
_vina_, most generally popular of Hindoo stringed instruments, a sort
of lute with two gourd resonators; and the _tambura_, a long slender
guitar with three or more strings. But of all the stringed instruments
of the Orient _el’ud_ of Arabia is most famous. It is no other in name
or fact than the lute, with broad, pear-shaped body, short neck bent
back at the head, and four or more strings. Introduced by the Moors
into Spain about 800 A. D., it became the favorite instrument of all
Europe, was developed and improved with every care, was beautified
with finest art and workmanship. From Arabia, too, may have come to
Europe the first primitive violins. The Arabian _rebab_ and the Persian
_kemangeh_ are almost identical in principle with our violin. The
Arabian _santirs_ and _kanoons_, zithers with many strings, played
with plectra adjusted like thimbles on the finger-tips, have remained
Oriental.

Wind instruments are common to all races. Flutes and fifes were known
both to the Aztecs and Peruvians, and flutes, flageolets, oboes, horns,
bagpipes, and trumpets are in constant use among the others. With the
Aztecs conch-shells took the place of trumpets of metal. Deserving of
special mention are the Chinese _cheng_, a set of small bamboo pipes
with free reeds, precursor of the modern organ; the Hindoo _tubri_, a
popular form of bagpipe used by the snake charmers of India; and the
Arab _zamr_, a particularly shrill variety of oboe.

Thus we find in use among ancient semi-civilized peoples and among the
Oriental races of the past and present the three great families of
musical instruments; instruments of percussion, string instruments,
and wind instruments, from which we have chosen and developed our
orchestra. We are recalled to the remark of Saint-Saëns, already
quoted, that all the musical systems of these peoples were products of
human artistic ingenuity, working instinctively for artistic ends. The
instinct for expression in music works so far in all races alike. But
whereas those races whose music we are discussing were content with the
harsh or dry sounds of the primitive instruments we have mentioned,
the races of Europe have been impelled by the desire for ever richer
and more flexible tone to develop and improve these instruments. Of
the clumsy, hoarse viol they have made the perfect violin; of the
hunting horn the mellow French horn of the orchestra; of the tremulous
clavichord and spinet the powerful pianoforte. Music has become an art
of sound. Those people whom, for the sake of convenience, we group
together in this chapter as exotic never dissociated music from the
dance or from elaborate ceremonies of one sort or another. The art of
music hardly attained independence. Therefore we are almost at a loss
to appreciate it outside the highly ceremonious societies in which it
played its part and a discussion of some of the uses to which it was
put is necessary in our chapter.


                                  III

With the exception of the Mohammedans, the first and foremost use of
music among the exotic races has been in religious rites of one sort or
another. And in this connection it is in most cases an accompaniment
to religious dancing and pantomime. Music is rarely looked upon in
the Orient as a means of social diversion or artistic enjoyment in
itself alone, such as we consider music of the orchestra or the string
quartet. Only in the form of poetic song or of orchestral accompaniment
to the religious or secular ballet is it highly appreciated.

The hymns chanted in a sing-song manner, the monotonous tunes
accompanying the temple services and sacred dances of the ancient
Mexicans would, no doubt, prove intolerably wearisome to our ears, but
the Aztecs took such pleasure in them that they often sang during
entire days. And, quite in the eighteenth century manner, the wealthy
Aztec nobles maintained choirs of singers and bands of professional
musicians. At the great Sun-feast of the ancient Peruvians, 'the long
revelry of the day was closed at night by music and dancing.’ Some sort
of song flourished among this people. There was a class of minstrels.
Aside from the traditional melodies which have already been mentioned,
the music of some of the distinctively Inca (not Spanish) dances, the
_huaino_, the _cachua_, the _cachaspare_, has come down to our own day.

In China music is for the most part confined to sacred ceremonies
and dancing. Père Amiot, a French missionary who spent some time in
China in the second half of the eighteenth century, wrote down the
following celebrated chorus; a hymn in honor of the ancestors, sung in
the emperor’s presence to the accompaniment of sacred dances, and the
typical Chinese orchestra:

                         [Illustration: PART ONE.]

    See hoang sıen Tsou
    Yo lıng yu Tıen.
    Yuen yen tsıng heou.
    Yeou kao tay hıuen.

    Hıuen sun cheou mıng.
    Tchouı yuen kı sıen
    Mıng yu ché tsoung.
    Y-ouan see inen.

                         [Illustration: PART TWO.]

    Touı yué tché tsıng.
    Yen jan jou cheng.
    Kı kı tchao ming.
    Kan ko tsaı ting.

    Jou kıen kı hıng.
    Jou ouen kı cheng.
    Ngaı eulb kıng tché.
    Fa hou tchoung tsıng.

                         [Illustration: PART THREE.]

    Duei tsıen jin koung.
    Tê tchao yng Tıen.
    Lu yuen kı yu.
    Sıao-tsee.

    Yuen cheou sang koue.
    Yu pao kı tê,
    Hao Tıen ouang kı.
    Yu tsin san hıen.
    Duo sin yué y.

At private and ceremonial banquets, also, dancing to orchestral
accompaniment is usual. _Solo_, in the province of Yunnan, the most
southwestern division of China, supplies the musicians and dancers for
the private orchestras and entertainments of mandarins throughout the
Celestial empire. Then, too, the Chinese orchestra finds a place in
theatrical representations. The songs to be heard in every Chinese city
at eventide to the crude accompaniment of mandolins and guitars may
attest a popular fondness for music, but the gongs continually sounding
in the temples and innumerable tinkling bells upon the towers and
pagodas can hardly be said to constitute music.

In Siam, Burmah, Cambodia, and Java the arts of music and dancing
have always been held in high esteem. In Java the native dances are
marked by gravity and harmony of movement. The average ambulant band in
that country consists of six players, while the _gamelags_ of native
sovereigns like the sultan of Djokka or the emperor of Solo usually
comprise a dozen. The Siamese have ballet performances of posturing
and slow, deliberate dancing, most of which are pantomime plays with
orchestral accompaniment, the story chanted by a kind of Greek chorus
behind the scenes. The king of Cambodia maintains a large troupe of
dancers, chosen among the most beautiful women in his realm, who
preserve the tradition of the ancient dances of the land. The following
air is a prelude to one of these Cambodian dances, sung by a female
chorus with orchestral accompaniment:

                   [Illustration: CAMBODIAN DANCE.]

In both these countries, as in Annam and Burmah, it is not the
orchestra that leads the dancers, but the dancers who are followed
by the orchestra. And in nearly all cases these pantomimes are of an
allegorical or mythological character. Similar performances, notably
'devil dances,’ are given in lamaseries of Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia
in which the Buddhist monks, in costume and mask, represent gods,
devils, mythological kings, and other traditional characters.

The airs of the sampan-men of the Hue River in Annam are often
beautiful. In alternation with their wives they sing simple ballads
full of poetry and grace as they float down stream at night. Peculiar
are the orchestras of the blind, made up of poor families, some one
member of which is sightless, who sing love-songs before the village
tea-houses for a pittance.

              [Illustration: THE BUTTERFLY DANCE MUSIC.]

In Japan the 'geishas’ perform their poetic dances, 'The Leaf of Gold,’
'The Butterfly Dance,’ to the sound of a vague, discreetly agreeable
accompaniment. The geishas’ music is that of the plucked string,
and is generally vague in form. The _koto_ and the _samisen_ are the
representative instruments, though sometimes the musicians sing a few
measures. Harmony in our sense of the word is entirely lacking. In the
Buddhist temples the entire service is intoned on one note, but the
priests sing successively at a different pitch, and the chanting is
punctuated by the occasional clang of cymbals and the deep, rich tones
of the great gong, a strange and impressive combination. At the time
of the various Japanese flower festivals, those of the azaleas, of the
flowering plum and cherry, when the country is glad with pink and white
blossoms, roving bands of musicians and dancers in grotesque costume
add to the gaiety of the occasion.


  [Illustration: OLD JAPANESE PRINT: 'GIRL OF THE OLD KINGDOM PLAYING
                              THE HARP’.]

In Hindustan dance music (vocal and instrumental combined) plays an
important part in the religious ceremonies of the temples, both in the
voluptuous dances of the _devadhazis_, or bayadères,[18] and in the
chanting of the _montranis_, scriptural formulas set to a fixed musical
rhythm. The size of a Hindoo orchestra varies, and the dance-music
it plays is not always of a sensuous, erotic type, but often very
animated and vigorous in character, such as accompanies the dancing
at the courts of the rajahs. Music frequently accompanies dramatic
representations as well, and there is a great deal of popular song. The
Hindoos have _dhourpad_ and _kourka_, warlike hymns, _hoti_, canticles
in honor of Krishna, _stouti_, official odes, _bichnoupoud_, evening
songs, _kheal_, love songs, _sohla_, nuptial songs, _thoumries_,
patriotic songs, _palma_, cradle songs, and _darda_, love songs. In
many cases Hindoo music shows signs of Mohammedan influence, especially
in the variety and liveliness of its rhythm. It is curious to note that
the use of certain types accompanying instruments is restricted to
certain social classes, priests, mendicant holy men, dancing girls, and
so forth.

Mohammedan music is associated with a wide variety of voluptuous
secular dances, for the Mohammedan Orient possesses an art of dance
equal to the most delicate inspirations of our poets. There is the
dance of the _Ouled Nail_, the famous dancing girls of Biskra, the
Tunisian 'Dance of the Hair,’[19] the Algerian 'Dance of the Pitchers,’
the dances of the Egyptian Ghaouazi or 'Almees,’ exponents of what is
known to us as the _danse du ventre_, of which one of the dance airs
follows:

                 [Illustration: GHAOUAZI DANCE.]

There are the dances of Syrian, Soudanese and other dancing-girls.
Then there are the special dances, accompanied by choral singing and
instrumental music, that celebrate the nuptial ceremony throughout the
Orient.


                                  IV

The variety of customs, of traditional observances and usages
interwoven with exotic music is endless. Many religious chants,
for instance, are fixed by tradition, and are undoubtedly of high
antiquity. Such is the chanting of the sacred books in the Temple
of the Sacred Tooth in Ceylon, where on each night of the full moon
the whole text of the 'Tripitakas,’ or 'Three Baskets’ of wisdom, is
recited by relays of yellow-robed priests, succeeding each other every
two hours between the dark and the dawn. They are said to chant in deep
resonant voices, as steady and continuous as the roar of the surf,
without break, quaver, or pause. When we consider that Buddhist priests
have repeated these sacred texts in this manner on every night of the
full moon for twenty-eight centuries, the traditional cantillation of
the Koran appears a thing of recent date. The following interesting
'call to prayer’ of the muezzin has been traditionally handed down, and
its chant is supposed to antedate the era of Mohammed:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Al-la-ho ak-bar,
    Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar,
    ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah.
    Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-med
    ra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak-
    bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah.

And the Hindoo _ragas_ and _mantranis_ offer further proof of the
conserving examples of tradition.

A curious custom among the Chinese of immemorial antiquity is that of
attaching whistles weighing only a few grams to the tails of pigeons
soon after they emerge from the shell, by means of fine copper wire.
The whistles are of two kinds; bamboo, with from two to five tubes,
or gourds, with sometimes as many as twenty-five apertures. All the
whistles in a flock are tuned to a different pitch. As they fly about
Pekin and other cities they fill the air with a sort of wind-blown
music. It is interesting as a commentary on the Chinese national love
of sweet sounds.

A custom of the Mohammedan Orient is the use of the flute in services
for the dead. Modern Arab mortuary hymns are sung to the accompaniment
of the flute, and the employment of the instrument in this connection
dates back to ancient times. It is customary in almost every occupation
in the Orient to sing traditional songs while work is going on.
The Arab camel-drivers have a melody of strange intonations and
long-drawn-out sounds which may have come down from the days of Antar;
the boatmen on the Nile, the _fellahin_ toiling on its banks, the
ambulant peddlers of Oriental cities, all have their traditional airs
or cries. Some are very poetic; the water carriers of Mecca sing when
they dispense their wares: 'Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of him
who gave you this water!’ When, in June, Arab boys offer bunches of
fragrant pink jasmine buds, enclosed in fig-leaves, for sale in the
streets of Kairowan, those who buy return to their work chanting in a
quaint minor key: 'We render thanks to Allah for sending rain to make
the flowers bloom.’ The Burmese love to thresh rice to the sound of
music, and the Buddhist nuns in Japan solicit contributions by striking
small metal gongs attached to their belt with little wooden hammers
carried in their hands. The Hindoo palanquin-bearers, the Japanese
rickshaw-men, the Chinese coolies and sampan-men, all have their
characteristic songs, most of them traditional, for the East is slow to
change.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The art of music in the Orient and the art of music in Western Europe
have little in common. It may be that Christian music in the first
few centuries of its existence was vaguely similar to that music we
have been discussing, but after harmony found its place in our music
a comparison between the two arts is far to seek. In Oriental music
the dominant feature is rhythm, insistent and often unvaried. This may
be partly because rhythm is the most exciting element in music and
the most immediate in its appeal, partly because in the Orient music
was and is almost never dissociated from the dance or from some sort
of regular movement such as rowing or reaping. In our music rhythm is
constantly varied and subtly disguised. As for melody, the Orientals
are bound to short phrases repeated again and again, lacking contrast
and only primitively balanced; and most of their melodies are in scales
different from ours. Of harmony they have relatively no idea, whereas
the music of Western Europe has been subjected to the tremendously
powerful influence of harmony in one form or another for nearly a
thousand years. Hence, even though the rhythm and melody in both have
come from the same instinct in the race of man, the Western and the
Eastern arts of music seem almost radically different.

In general the difference between the two is only exaggerated by the
few cases in modern music when composers have made use of Oriental
themes or rhythms or instruments. Such cases by no means show a working
together or an approach of the two systems; for the mere fact that a
certain twist of melody, a certain insistence of rhythm, a beat of the
tam-tam or the gong can give a strong Oriental color to music proves
how foreign Oriental music still sounds to our ears. It may be said
that European music has been influenced by Asiatic music hardly at
all, unless, possibly, the prominent, almost barbaric rhythms of some
Russian music have sprung from a mixture of the Oriental with the Slav.

                                                             F. H. M.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[12] Musical development of civilized races removed from European
influence.

[13] Julien Tiersot: _Notes d’ethnographie musicale_ (première séries),
Paris, 1905.

[14] What we may call modern Chinese music probably reached China
through Bactria, a Greek kingdom, founded by Diodotus 256 B. C. Jesuit
missionaries jumped to the conclusion that the Greeks borrowed the
Pythagorean scale from the Chinese, but the 'Chinese’ scale did not
exist in China until two centuries after its appearance in Greece.
Chinese literature on music goes back no farther than the ninth century
of the Christian era, to which date may be assigned the Chieh Ku Lu,
a treatise on the deer-skin drum, introduced into China from Central
Asia, and evidently of Scythian origin. There are several important
works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which the history
and theory of music are fully discussed.

[15] C. R. Day: 'The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India
and the Deccan,’ London, 1891.

[16] The music of a _raga_, which is very popular in Central India, is
given in Tiersot, _Notes d’ethnographie musicale_, Plate 10.

[17] This finds a curious parallel in the music of the dance of
the _seis_ in the Cathedral of Seville--almost the only example of
religious dancing in Christianity.

[18] In the 'dance of Krishna,’ a three-day religious saturnalia in
honor of the youthful god, and in the obscene rites of Kali, the black
goddess, the _devadhazis_ portray all the phases of physical passion.

[19] 'A number of young girls slowly and gracefully sway and twist
their lithe bodies in rhythm to the music of flageolets playing in
minor mode. Most of the time they dance on their knees, bending and
twisting, their hair sometimes standing out almost straight, then
falling about their heads.’




                              CHAPTER III
                  THE MOST ANCIENT CIVILIZED NATIONS

  Conjecture and authority--The Assyrians and Babylonians; instruments;
  scales--The Hebrews--The Egyptians; social aspects; Plato’s
  testimony; instruments--Egyptian influence on Greek culture and its
  musical significance.


The researches and discoveries of the past fifty years in the valley of
the Nile and among the deeply buried ruins of Babylon and Nineveh have
thrown light on much that was hitherto obscure in the history of the
ancient cultured nations of the East. Yet, even to-day, our knowledge
of that history is at best fragmentary and largely conjectural. Out of
the mass of fragments and conjectures at our command we can pick very
little that will fit into the structure of an authoritative musical
history.

We know definitely that the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and
Hebrews possessed in their heyday an advanced civilization and a large
amount of æsthetic culture. From analogy with other old civilizations
of which we have more accurate knowledge, however, we have no reason
to suppose that their musical culture kept pace with their advance in
other arts. From the plastic to the pictorial and last to the musical
seems to have been the historical order of advance in the evolution
of artistic expression. Music, to quote John Addington Symonds, 'is
the essentially modern art.’ Nevertheless, even in default of any more
specific evidence, we could safely assume that musical culture among
the ancient civilized nations had advanced considerably beyond the
stage reached by primitive peoples.


                                   I

In support of this assumption we have an amount of definite evidence;
which indeed goes very little beyond a corroboration of our beliefs.
In the case of the Assyrians and Egyptians this testimony consists of
bas-reliefs and mural paintings representing musical instruments, and
a few actual instruments which have been discovered in the ruins of
Nineveh and in the tombs of Egyptian kings. These sculptures show a
wide variety of instruments, the general construction of which would
indicate considerable musical knowledge, and they testify clearly that
among the Assyrians and Egyptians music was an indispensable adjunct to
all affairs of ceremony, and consequently, in all likelihood, a subject
for serious cultivation.

The Assyrian bas-reliefs represent chiefly historical events, religious
ceremonies, and royal entertainments. We have no means of knowing
whether the musical instruments shown thereon were the only ones in
use among the Assyrians, or whether there were not other instruments
in widely popular use which the priestly conventions excluded from
all ceremonial observances. The instruments represented, however, are
numerous and interesting. Judged by the frequency of its appearance
on the monuments, the favorite instrument of the Assyrians seems to
have been the _asor_, which consisted of a square or triangular frame
mounted with six to ten strings of silk or catgut and was played with a
plectrum. It was carried in front of the performer by means of a strap
slung over his shoulder, and both hands were used in playing it--the
right with the plectrum and the left either to twang the strings or to
stop any unnecessary vibration. The number of strings on this or on
any other Assyrian instrument can only be conjectured. Apparently the
artist was never at pains to secure fidelity of detail, for sometimes
there are more strings than tuning-pegs and sometimes the reverse.

After the _asor_ the harp seems to have come next in popular
estimation. The Assyrian harp was an imposing instrument, about four
feet high, and was carried in ceremonial processions before the breast
of the performer, much as a side-drum is carried in a military band.
It was furnished with tuning-pegs and with about twenty strings,
probably of silk, but possibly of catgut. The most essential point of
differentiation between the Assyrian harp and the modern instrument was
the lack of a front pillar. This would argue a rather weak and harsh
tone; though if the frame were made of metal or ivory--as in the case
of the later Egyptian harps--it would allow of sufficient tension to
secure a tone not necessarily very inferior to that of our own harp.

Besides the _asor_ and the harp the representations of Assyrian
stringed instruments included the lyre, dulcimer, and tamboura or lute.
The Assyrian lyre strongly resembled the Nubian _kissar_ of to-day.
It carried from four to ten strings tied around the upper bar, which
was raised or lowered to change the pitch, and it was probably played
with a plectrum. The tamboura was an instrument resembling the banjo
or guitar and was the prototype of the instrument which may be found
all over the East at the present day. The dulcimer contained about ten
strings and was played with a plectrum.

Of wind instruments the Assyrians possessed only pipes and trumpets.
Their trumpet was a small instrument, either straight or slightly
curved, and was probably made of horn. Presumably it suffered from
severe limitations musically. The nature of their pipes, however,
indicates that the Assyrians had done some successful experimenting
in musical effects and must have constructed a definite scale system
of some sort. In the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society in London
there is a small Assyrian pipe of baked clay in a very good state of
preservation. It is about three inches long and has two holes equally
distant from the end. The fixed notes on this pipe are a tonic, third,
and fifth. The closing of the left finger-hole produces a note about
a quarter tone lower than the right, and it is possible that this was
intended for a minor third. Of a later development than the single pipe
was the double pipe, which consisted of two pipes, sometimes of equal,
sometimes of unequal length, held one in each hand, with the playing
ends of both in the mouth. Probably one of the pipes gave a sort of
droning accompaniment to the other and the general effect must have
been something like that of the bagpipe. The syrinx, or pipes of Pan,
was doubtless known to the Assyrians as well as to the Hebrews, and may
be the instrument whose invention is ascribed to Jubal in Genesis.

The Assyrians seem to have been well provided with instruments of
percussion, including tambourines and cymbals. Their drums were usually
covered only at one end, but they also had barrel-shaped drums covered
at both ends and beaten at both ends like a tom-tom. All their drums,
apparently, were beaten with the hands. Bells were presumably in high
favor among them, as we learn from the Bible, and there have been
discovered a number of Assyrian bells of various sizes, all open at the
top, like Chinese bells, and indicating that the first use of chimes
antedates by a long time their introduction into India and China.

The habit peculiar to ancient artists of depicting the part for the
whole, or two to mean many, makes it impossible for us to determine
from the reliefs whether the Assyrians used regularly any definite
number of musical instruments in their performances. We know,
however, that they employed various combinations of instruments. On
the Assyrian bas-reliefs in the British Museum (some of which are
fragments) we find such combinations as harp and drum; lyre, harp
and double pipe; two _asors_ and drum; three lyres; two trumpets;
seven harps, one dulcimer; two double pipes, a drum and chorus.
The predominance of strings over instruments of percussion in all
representations of Assyrian concerts prompts the supposition that
the music was of a soft, suave character. Rhythm seems to have been
marked chiefly by the clapping of hands, and musical performances were
probably accompanied usually, if not always, by singing and dancing.
The evidence of the bas-reliefs on this point is supplemented by
the Bible accounts of ceremonial observances among the Hebrews, who
must have been profoundly influenced by Babylonian culture. Dancing
was undoubtedly an integral part of all ceremonial observances and
triumphal processions among the ancient nations of the East, and it
would seem that as a rule it was accompanied by vocal as well as
instrumental music. The Bible is replete with illuminative references
on the subject.

On the Assyrian bas-relief above mentioned, showing the instrumental
band and chorus, the women of the chorus are represented with their
hands to their throats and are evidently performing that peculiar
shrilling which constitutes the Hebrew _Allelujah_, and which may
still be heard in Syria, Arabia, and Persia. This strange style
of singing--if it may be so called--was a feature of triumphal
processions, and was always performed by women. Various references to
this custom may be found in the Bible--for instance, David’s reception
by the women after his victory over the Philistines and Jephthah’s
reception by his daughter and her companions after the battle against
the children of Ammon. We can only guess as to the nature of the choral
singing at Assyrian religious festivals. Probably it was in unison
or octaves, and it may have been antiphonal, as it was among the
Hebrews.[20]

The constant employment of chorus with well-developed musical
instruments of different tone quality would seem to have suggested
to the Assyrians at least some elementary harmonic effects. But that
is entirely a matter of conjecture. As far as we know, they did not
possess any system of musical notation, and, lacking that, they could
not have developed an harmonic system that was anything but very
crude or very haphazard. It is the opinion of Engel[21] that they
'produced together different notes which appeared to them agreeable
in concord,’ but that their instruments were too incomplete for a
systematic combination of a fixed number of different parts. A scale
system of some sort they must have had, but what it was we are at
a loss to determine. Engel, pointing out the analogies between the
various old musical systems of Oriental countries, concludes that the
Assyrians probably used a pentatonic series consisting of the tonic,
second, third, fifth, and sixth. Such a scale is found in China, Japan,
India, Burmah, Siam, and Java, and is supposedly of high antiquity in
those countries. The deduction that it was also used by the Assyrians
is based on the assumption, which Engel supports by much plausible
evidence, that there was a common fountain-head of all Asiatic musical
art. It is also pointed out as a significant fact that the Nubian
_kissar_, which so closely resembles the Assyrian lyre, is tuned in
that scale. On the other hand, from the construction of the Assyrian
instruments, and from comparison with the music of other peoples, even
those in a more primitive state of musical development, it may be
inferred that the Assyrians were acquainted with other effects and may
have used other scales.


                                  II

The decree which forbade the Hebrews the making of graven images,
salutary as it may have been as a theological safeguard, must always
prove a source of regret to the archæologist and historian. Because of
it we cannot now visually reconstruct the life of the chosen people
in Biblical times with the same satisfactory vividness as we can that
of the Assyrians and Egyptians. We are thus deprived of what has been
our chief source of information in considering the state of musical
culture among the other civilized nations of the ancient East. A few
illustrations of what may have been Hebrew musical instruments have,
it is true, come down to us; but they are very doubtful and far from
enlightening. There is an Egyptian painting of the time of Osirtasen II
(about 1800 B. C.), discovered in a tomb at Beni-Hassan, which shows
three men--obviously captives--playing on lyres. The hieroglyphics
refer to these men as 'strangers,’ and it is the opinion of Sir
Gardner Wilkinson that they were Jews. We also possess some coins of
the time of Simon Maccabæus (second century B. C.), on some of which
are pictured lyres of different shapes and sizes, while on others are
shown a couple of small figures which may represent trumpets or drums.
Possibly the musical instruments carved on the Arch of Titus were exact
copies of Hebrew originals, but, for all we know to the contrary, the
sculptor of the arch may never even have seen a Hebrew instrument.
Apart from these scanty and problematical remains, pictorial evidence
of the musical culture of the ancient Hebrews is, as far as we know,
non-existent.

The documentary evidence in our possession is fuller but not at all
definite. It consists chiefly of the Bible and the rabbinical records;
and upon the accuracy of the information obtainable from these sources
we cannot implicitly rely. This statement is made in due reverence
and without any suggested denial of the spiritual truths embodied
in writings which millions of men regard as sacred. The peculiar
figurativeness which lends such charm to the language of the Bible
makes it impossible for us to be quite sure of its literal meaning, and
this obscurity is intensified by the fact that the identification of
many names of things in the original text has been the purest guesswork
on the part of translators. The identification of the names of musical
instruments, especially, has been a stumbling block to scholars. For
instance, it has never been determined which of the many names of
stringed instruments occurring in the Bible refers to the harp--an
instrument which was undoubtedly known to the ancient Hebrews. On the
other hand, the _ugab_, mentioned in Genesis as the invention of Jubal,
has invariably been translated _organ_--an instrument which just as
certainly was not known to them. Nor are the rabbinical records any
more trustworthy. On many points they contradict the Bible--which
raises an indeterminable question of veracity between them--while on
other points their statements are irresistibly provocative of doubt in
the mind of the judicious reader. It must always be remembered that
the Bible and the rabbinical records are, in the main, history written
by unscientific historians concerning the past of their own race, and
the tendency in such cases to drape an attractive garb of fiction over
the bare bones of fact has in all ages been an ineradicable trait of
human psychology. The old historians, while in a preferential position
compared with us in regard to time, suffered obviously either from
lack of knowledge or superfluity of imagination. Josephus, the most
authoritative of them, tells us seriously that there were prepared
for the dedication of the Temple a band and chorus consisting of
200,000 trumpets, 40,000 stringed instruments, and 200,000 Levite
singers--truly a Brobdignagian ensemble!

In spite of the paucity of our information, however, we are able to
form a general idea of the state of musical culture among the ancient
Hebrews. Except for inevitable local differences, Hebrew music must
have resembled closely that of the Assyrians and Egyptians--probably
more the former than the latter, if indeed there was any radical
dissimilarity between them. The Hebrew and Assyro-Babylonian people
sprang from the same Semitic stock. Abraham, we learn, 'came out of
Ur of the Chaldees,’ and up to the time of the exile to Egypt it is
probable that Hebrew and Babylonian culture were almost identical. The
long sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, however, must have had a profound
influence upon them. It is important to remember that they were not
really captives in Egypt; they were not restricted in their activities;
they were not socially ostracised. The daughter of a Pharaoh married
a Hebrew, and it is reasonable to suppose that such intermarriage was
common. At the period of the Exodus, therefore, there must have been
little to distinguish the culture of the Hebrews from that of the
other people of Egypt. Moses, we know, 'was learned in the wisdom of
the Egyptians,’ and in that respect he probably differed little from
his followers. Later we shall advert to the complementary influence
of Hebrew culture on the Egyptians as well as to the probability of
Babylonian influence on the latter. Consequently the culture which
the Jews brought out of Egypt must still have remained Babylonian in
essence. Subsequently we see a renascence of Babylonian influence which
becomes particularly noticeable after the captivity in Babylon. All the
names of musical instruments given in Daniel are Chaldean. Max Müller
observes that several of the apocryphal books were written originally
in Chaldee, not in Hebrew, and points out that Ezra contains fragments
of Chaldee contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius
and Xerxes.

The rabbinical records mention thirty-six musical instruments in use
among the ancient Hebrews, while the Bible contains references to about
half that number. As has been said, the names of these instruments
have never been exactly identified and it is possible that several
different names may refer to the same instrument. The Hebrews almost
certainly possessed the harp, though we do not know what they called
it. The _psanterin_, mentioned in Daniel, was perhaps a dulcimer. The
Arab dulcimer of the present day is called _santir_. We may assume from
the representation of the lyre on the coins of the high-priest Simon
Maccabæus that the Hebrews employed that instrument, and it may have
been the _kinnor_ of King David. The _minnim_, _machalath_, and _nebel_
were perhaps instruments of the guitar or lute type. The _chalil_
and _nekeb_ were names of pipes or flutes, while the _mishrokitha_,
mentioned in Daniel, is supposed to have been a double pipe. It is
likely that the _ugab_, which is translated as 'organ’ in the English
authorized version of the Bible, was the syrinx or Pandean pipes.
Forkel and other historians are of the opinion that the _sumphonia_,
mentioned in Daniel, was a bagpipe, basing their conclusion apparently
on the fact that the Italian peasants call the bagpipe _zampogna_.
The _magrepha_ was probably also a sort of bagpipe. Three kinds of
trumpets were used by the ancient Hebrews--the _keven_, _shophar_,
and _chatzozerah_. The last-named was a straight trumpet, about two
feet long, and was sometimes made of silver; the others were curved
trumpets probably made of horn. The _shophar_ is still found in Jewish
synagogues. Presumably the Hebrews used a number of drums. Of these
we know only the _toph_, which has been translated timbrel or tabret,
and was probably a sort of tambourine. There still exists in the East
a small hand-drum, called by the Arabs _doff_ or _adufe_. According
to Saalschütz and other historians, the _menaaneim_, referred to in
Samuel, and translated cymbals, was the sistrum.[22] The _tzeltzelim_,
_metzilloth_, and _metzilthaim_ may have been cymbals. The _phaamon_
(Exod. xxxviii and xxxix) were little bells on the robe of a priest,
and we still find them in Jewish synagogues attached to the 'rolls of
law’ containing the Pentateuch.

There is abundance of evidence that music played a very important part
in the lives of the ancient Hebrews and that musical performances
were carefully, often elaborately, organized. As with other ancient
nations of the East, the most important function of music was to lend
solemnity and effect to religious ceremonial. King David, who seems
to have filled in the development of Hebrew liturgical music the same
rôle traditionally ascribed to St. Gregory in the history of the
Christian liturgy, employed in the service of the Temple no fewer than
4,000 musicians, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were virtuosi,
and the remainder assistants and pupils (1 Chron. xxiii and xxv). In
the introduction to the _Psautier polyglotte_ of L’Abbé Vigouroux,
the following historical sketch is given of the musical organization
of the ancient Jewish cult:[23] 'When David ascended the throne he
organized sacred music which comprised instrumentalists and singers;
and the institution expressly maintained by Ezekiah and Nehemiah
continued until the ruin of the Temple. In a first group there were
three choir leaders: Hamon, Asaph, and Ethan; in a second, fourteen
Levites distributed in three choirs according to the instruments they
played--the first comprising three chiefs who had cymbals to direct the
singers and instrumentalists, the second composed of eight musicians
who played the _nebel_, and the third composed of musicians who played
the _kinnor_. Later Daniel completed this work. Among the descendants
of Levi four thousand were chosen “to praise God with instruments of
music.” The singers, like the priests, were divided into twenty-four
classes, the chiefs of which were the sons of Asaph (four), Jeduthun
(six), and Hamon (fourteen). These chiefs have under their orders two
hundred and eighty-eight masters charged with instructing the others.
This musical organization, established by David and conserved by
Solomon, was altered more or less under their idolatrous successors;
but the reformer kings, Ezekiah and Josiah, took pains to revive it. In
the fifth century, under Nehemiah, they sang and played 'in the manner
of David.’[24]

Apart from its importance in religious service, music had a deep
significance in the lives of the ancient Hebrews. They attributed
to it peculiar curative and inspirational powers. We know how David
used it to relieve the illness of Saul, and even Elias employed it
to stimulate the spirit of prophecy. It was the accompaniment of all
important occasions, both sad and joyful. There is frequent mention in
the Bible of triumphal songs and of the use of trumpets in war. Bridal
processions were accompanied by music (Jer. vii), and it also seems to
have been commonly employed at funerals (2 Chron. xxxv _et al._). Love
songs were not unknown to the Hebrews (Isaiah v; Psalm xiv), nor were
they lacking in songs of a convivial and lightly popular nature. They
welcomed itinerant musicians as warmly as the courts of Europe in the
chivalric period welcomed the Troubadours. Indeed, from what we know of
them, they seem to have been an intensely music-loving people, and this
fact can but add to our regret that we are unable to determine the
exact nature of their music or what the proportions were to which they
had developed it as an art.


                                  III

Regarding Egyptian music, the evidence at our disposal is fuller and
more suggestive, though the deductions to be drawn from it are hardly
less conjectural. It consists mainly of monumental sculptures, mural
paintings, and fragments and nearly preserved specimens of actual
instruments. There are also many fugitive references to Egyptian music
in the works of Herodotus, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and other
Greek writers. Between the earliest representations of Egyptian musical
instruments and the visits to Egypt of Herodotus and Plato stretches a
period of nearly two thousand years--time enough for such a complete
revolution to have taken place as to render valueless the references of
the Greek writers as throwing light on Egyptian musical culture at the
noontide of Egypt’s greatness. Yet such a revolution almost certainly
did not take place. During two thousand years, as we may see from the
monuments, Egyptian art stood practically still.

The system of hereditary castes was an impermeable barrier to the
advance of culture. Caste conventions were elevated to the dignity
of sacred laws and innovations were regarded almost as sacrilege.
Herodotus, who lived in Egypt, tells us that the musical profession
was strictly hereditary and had been so for uncounted centuries. No
one, for instance, who was not of a family of professional singers, he
asserts, could adopt the profession of a singer. Considering the rarity
of good voices, even where such restrictions do not exist, one can
easily imagine that vocal performances in Egypt were not stimulating.
Nor could Egyptian music be very rich in inspiration, if we are to
accept the following admiring tribute of Plato, who had lived thirteen
years in Egypt, and who, like other Greek philosophers, was himself a
musical scholar.

'The plan which we have been laying down for the education of youth,’
he says in one of his dialogues,[25] 'was known long ago to the
Egyptians, that nothing but beautiful forms and fine music should be
permitted to enter into the assemblies of young people. Having settled
what those forms and what that music should be, they exhibited them in
their temples; nor was it allowable for painters and other imitative
artists to innovate or invent any forms different from what were
established. Nor is it now lawful, either in painting, statuary, or
any of the branches of music, to make any alteration. Upon examining,
therefore, you will find that the pictures and statues made two
thousand years ago are in no one particular better than what they make
at the present day.’

As further evidence of the unchanging antiquity of Egyptian music
Plato quotes the tradition that 'the music which has been so long
preserved was composed by Isis.’ The fact that, as Strabo says, music,
both vocal and instrumental, was an integral part of the ritual in the
worship of all the gods, except Osiris, tended to conserve still more
strictly that rigidity of system to which Plato so admiringly refers.
The priestly caste in Egypt was the perfect embodiment of petrified
conservatism and its influence was all-pervading and absolute.
Egyptian music must eventually have come to be a lifeless, colorless,
meaningless thing--the dry and chalky skeleton of an art--and we are
not surprised to learn from Diodorus (60 B. C.) that the Egyptians of
his time despised it and looked upon its cultivation as an effeminate
and undesirable occupation.

Comparative studies of Egyptian and Assyrian culture lead George
Rawlinson[26] to the conclusion that the former has been vastly
overrated. While Assyrian art flourished apace, he asserts, art in
Egypt remained a stunted growth. The inference that musical art among
the Egyptians lagged behind that of the Assyrians is not borne out by
the evidence of the monuments and mural paintings. From these we may
see that Egyptian musical instruments were much superior in design
and construction to those pictured on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. This,
of course, may be explained by the superior mechanical talent of the
Egyptians, which is apparent in their architecture, and cannot be taken
as conclusive evidence of a higher æsthetic development. The whole
question of the comparative culture of Egypt and Assyria is a very
doubtful one. Whether Egypt was influenced by Assyrian culture or the
reverse, and to what extent, is a moot point. There are evidences of
similar influences in the art of both countries. The fact seems to be
that Egypt and Assyria interacted on each other closely and borrowed
from each other or from a common source. Their musical instruments show
striking resemblances and seem to have been used in much the same way
and in connection with similar ceremonies.

There are, however, important points of divergence. The _asor_, which
was apparently the favorite instrument of the Assyrians, is not found
represented on any Egyptian monuments that have come down to us. In
its stead the harp obviously held the place of honor. The Egyptian
harp was much superior to the Assyrian instrument, both in design and
construction; indeed, except for the lack of a front pillar, pedals,
and double strings, it must have been little inferior to our own harp,
even in musical quality, while in beauty of design it could hold its
own with the best we are able to show. This is all the more remarkable
in view of the fact that it was brought to perfection at least three
thousand years ago. The two ornate and beautifully modelled harps
found by the English traveller Bruce, painted in fresco on the walls
of the Tomb of the Kings at Thebes, are attributed to the period
of Rameses II (about 1250 B. C.) and, whatever they may have been
musically, they are perfect models of grace and finished workmanship.
Most of the harps on the Egyptian monuments are highly ornamented and
were obviously constructed with an eye to decorative effect. The harp
seems to have been the instrument _de luxe_ in Egypt--the necessary
finishing touch to the furniture of every well-appointed home--the
Egyptian counterpart of our piano. It varied in size to suit the taste,
or perhaps the pocket-book, of its owner. The largest harps were almost
as tall as a man and were equipped with twenty or more strings, the
smallest ones had four strings and were easily carried about. In regard
to the number of strings, however, the fidelity to numerical truth of
the ancient artists cannot unquestionably be assumed. It is the opinion
of Carl Engel that the Egyptian harp was tuned in the same diatonic
series of intervals as the Greeks obtained by two conjunct tetrachords.
He bases his opinion on the apparent number of strings. Probably it was
tuned in a diatonic series of some sort; but opinions on the subject
are the purest guesswork.

A favorite instrument among the Egyptians was the _trigonon_ or
triangular harp--referred to as a Phrygian instrument by Sophocles.
It was small and easily carried, and its tone must have approximated
somewhat that of the lyre. The latter instrument is represented
frequently on Egyptian monuments and apparently varied very much in
size and shape. It seems to have been much more powerful than the Greek
lyre, but was not so symmetrical in design. Several well-preserved
specimens of Egyptian lyres may be seen in the museums of Berlin and
Leyden. One end of the top bar is higher than the other, and the
instrument obviously was tuned by sliding the strings up and down
the bar. On the whole, the Egyptian lyre must have been a somewhat
crude and ungainly instrument. It does not seem to have been nearly
so esteemed as the harp, nor did it apparently hold the same place
in popular regard as the tamboura or _nofre_. The latter is found
represented in various shapes, and it seems likely that it was,
above all others, the instrument of the people. Instruments closely
resembling it are popular in many Oriental countries to the present
day. These usually contain three strings, which are tuned in the tonic,
fifth, and octave. It would be assuming too much to declare that the
Egyptian _nofre_ was similarly tuned. There is in the British Museum
a small Egyptian terra-cotta vase upon which is depicted a tamboura
with frets distinctly marked over the whole neck, and we may reasonably
argue from this that the _nofre_ players used habitually a number
of strictly defined intervals. Besides the long-necked _nofre_ the
Egyptians possessed a short-necked tamboura strongly resembling the
Arabian _oud_. They had also a peculiar instrument with four or five
strings, which was carried on the shoulder; a kind of lyre which was
placed on a stand and played by both hands, and a primitive variety of
harmonicon.

By far the most interesting and instructive relics of Egyptian musical
instruments that have come down to us are a number of pipes and flutes,
many well-preserved specimens of which may be seen in the British and
Leyden museums. They contain from three to five--usually four--holes,
and in many of them pieces of thick straw or other similar material are
found inserted in the playing ends. There does not appear to have been
any restriction as to the number of holes. In the British Museum there
is an Egyptian pipe about twelve inches long, with seven holes burned
in the sides. Two straws of about the same length as the pipe were
found with it. Straw reeds have also been found with Egyptian flutes.
The latter were very long instruments, reaching from the player’s mouth
to beyond the length of his arm. The most interesting and perfectly
preserved specimens of those that have yet come to light are a pair
of reed flutes, eighteen inches long and three-sixteenths of an inch
in diameter, which were discovered by the distinguished Egyptologist
Flinders Petrie in a rock-hewn sepulchre at Kahan--the town inhabited
by workers employed in building the pyramid of Userteen II. On these
flutes were elicited the following notes:

                     [Illustration: THREE HOLES.]

                      [Illustration: FOUR HOLES.]

The testing of facsimiles produced between the flutes the following
scale:

                         [Illustration: Music]

By varying the pressure, a fifth and an octave higher were obtained,
and by the same means was elicited from the three-holed flute the
complete diatonic scale of C. Allowance must, of course, be made for
the possible differences between the facsimiles of these old flutes
and the original instruments, as they were in the time of Userteen
II. There is also to be considered a probably wide divergence in
method between modern European and ancient Egyptian flute players. The
experiments, however, suggest interesting speculations.

The double-pipes are represented frequently on Egyptian monuments;
the trumpet less frequently. Trumpets apparently were not very
popular in Egypt. They seem to have been made of wood--though brass
may have been used. The scarcity of trumpets is peculiar, because
the Egyptians obviously did not affect a soft, suave style of music,
as the Assyrians did. Some of their dances look almost riotous, and
they must have had a strong sense of rhythm. They had a partiality
for drums, of which they possessed a variety. Besides drums, their
instruments of percussion included _sistra_, _crotola_, bells, cymbals,
and tambourines. The _sistrum_ or _seshesh_ was a peculiar instrument,
almost identical with the _sarasel_ used to-day by the priests of
a Christian sect in Abyssinia, and seems to have been employed
exclusively in religious ceremonies. The _crotola_ were two balls or
knobs of wood or metal, with handles, and were used apparently in the
same way and with the same effect as castanets.

The representations of Egyptian musical performances furnish a wide
and fascinating field for speculation; but beyond the testimony that
music played a very important part in the lives of the Egyptians they
supply us with little definite information. The contention of Rawlinson
that the Assyrians were more advanced æsthetically is supported to
some extent by the apparent fondness of the Egyptians for barbaric
rhythmical effects. The same line of reasoning, however, would place
the music of Wagner and Strauss lower in the scale of evolution than
that of Mendelssohn and John Field. Between the Assyrians and the
Egyptians a difference in musical taste is obvious; a difference in
musical development is decidedly questionable. There are always to
be taken into consideration dissimilarities in national character.
It is the opinion of some ethnologists that, about 5000 B. C., there
came into the valley of the Nile a Semitic people from East Africa or
South Arabia who mingled with the aboriginal Hamites and produced the
historic Egyptians. These immigrants, it is contended, had been under
the influence of the culture which had already grown up on the plains
of Babylonia, and introduced into Egypt elements of art which were
unknown to the ruder Hamitic stock. These elements the Egyptians may
have developed to greater perfection in certain technical aspects than
the Babylonians, owing partly to their superior industry and partly to
the fact that, in comparison with the Assyrio-Babylonian people, their
history was peaceful, and favorable to the development of the arts and
crafts.

           [Illustration: PROCESSION OF EGYPTIAN MUSICIANS.]
     _From a temple and a hypogeum at Gourah and Karnak (Thebes)._

This theory would explain the appearance of a common source of the
art of both nations. It is probable, too, that Babylonian culture
exercised a continuous, though perhaps slight, influence throughout
the whole course of Egyptian history. That there was close intercourse
between the two nations at various times is evident from many known
facts in the history of both. Syria, which was saturated with
Babylonian culture, was an Egyptian province; nor can the possibility
be overlooked that the Hebrews, during their long sojourn in Egypt,
brought to Egyptian art some of the influence of a culture that had its
genesis in Babylonia. These speculations are given here because there
is a general tendency to assume readily that Egypt was predominantly
the influential factor in the growth of ancient culture, and because
the representations of Egyptian and Assyrian musical performances show
similarities which indicate that either may have strongly influenced
the other.

Herodotus tells us of an Egyptian musical performance at which women
beat on drums and men played on flutes, while a chorus sang and clapped
their hands at the same time. This performance, it seems, was typical.
The suggested effect is barbaric; but the monuments bear evidence that
the Egyptians enjoyed musical performances of a much more refined
character. We find represented, for example, such combinations as harp,
two tambouras and double-pipe, and lyre, harp, double-pipe and chorus.
In an interesting work on Egyptian antiquities edited by Lepsius[27]
there is an illustration of an extraordinary concert of eight flutes.
The players are divided into two sets. One man, differently dressed
from the others, stands facing the group, and holds his flute as if he
had either just finished playing or was just about to begin. Presumably
he was either the conductor or a solo player. The illustration is
taken from a tomb in the Pyramid of Gizeh and dates from the Fifth
Dynasty, or before 2000 B. C. The Egyptians, obviously, adapted their
music to the occasion, using different combinations of instruments for
religious ceremonies, public celebrations, private entertainments, and
military parades. There has been preserved on an imperfect fragment a
representation of a military band consisting of a trumpet, a drum, some
large instrument which is too much obliterated to be distinguished, and
two _crotola_.

Dancing, an important feature of Egyptian life, formed a part both of
ceremonial observances and private entertainments. The Egyptians seem
to have developed dancing into a much more sophisticated art than the
Assyrians, and, unlike the latter, they showed a partiality for dances
of a lively, spirited nature. These were usually performed by men, who,
to judge from the monuments, were equipped with all the semi-acrobatic
technique of the modern ballet-dancer--even to the pirouette. The
slower dances were rendered by women and were, as a rule, languorous
and erotic in character.

Much has been said of the influence of Egyptian music on the Greeks,
and more than due importance, perhaps, has been attached to the
supposition that Pythagoras (571-497 B. C.) learned music in Egypt. _A
posteriori_ inferences have been drawn as to the nature of Egyptian
music which are hardly warranted by the evidence. Greek literature is
not lacking in references to Egyptian influence. 'The Greeks,’ says
Burney,[28] 'who lost no merit by neglecting to claim it, confess that
most of their ancient musical instruments were of Egyptian invention.’
Greek notions of the origin of their ancient musical instruments,
however, cannot be taken very seriously. The evidence inherent in the
instruments themselves is more valuable and tends rather to contradict
the supposition that they were of Egyptian origin. The beautifully
proportioned and graceful Greek lyre is so markedly different from
the clumsy and crude Egyptian instrument as to suggest an absolutely
independent development. Significant, too, is the absence of the harp
from all except one of the specimens of Greek art that have come down
to us; though the beauty and grace of the Egyptian harp must have
appealed strongly to Greek artists had they been at all familiar
with it. The one exception is the representation of Polyhymnia with
a harp, on a Greek vase in the Berlin Museum, and the harp in this
case resembles more the Assyrian than the Egyptian instrument. It may
be pointed out, however, that this vase belongs to the later period
of Greek art, after the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander
had exposed the classical civilization of Greece to the full force
of Oriental influence. But the case for Asiatic influence does not
depend upon this vase. There is significance in the fact that most of
the famous Greek musicians were from Asia Minor or adjacent islands.
Marsyas was a Phrygian; Terpander, Arion, and Sappho hailed from
Lesbos; Olympus, the supposed inventor of the old enharmonic scale,
was a native of Mysias. Strabo,[29] too, speaks of the derivation
of Greek stringed instruments from Asia. On the other hand, we are
informed by the ubiquitous and omniscient Herodotus that the Dorians
came originally from Egypt. The statements of Herodotus, however,
must be taken with a large amount of reservation. 'The net result of
Oriental research,’ Prof. Sayce warns us, 'in its bearing on Herodotus
is to show that the greater part of what he professes to tell us of
the history of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia is really a collection of
_Märchen_, or popular stories, current among the Greek loungers and
half-caste dragomen on the skirts of the Persian empire.’[30] As a
matter of fact, the statements of all Greek historians, except as to
contemporary events, are totally untrustworthy. Excellent reporters
they undoubtedly were; but they lacked the historical sense and were
but scantily informed. There seems to have been in Greece a peculiar
admiration for things Egyptian and a corresponding contempt for things
Asiatic--the latter bred probably of the constant wars between Hellas
and Persia that began with the conquest of the Lydian kingdom by Cyrus
the Great. In default, therefore, of any more specific evidence the
statements of Greek writers on the origins of Greek music are of little
value; nor does the intrinsic evidence lead us to any more definite
conclusion than the conjecture that Greek music was influenced somewhat
by both Egyptian and Assyrian music, though to what extent and in what
proportions it is impossible to determine.

We are equally ignorant of the nature of the Egyptian musical system.
A well-defined system they had, without doubt--they systematized
everything. The evidence seems to point to the fact that they used a
diatonic scale, and the representations of their musical performances
would indicate that they were acquainted with harmonic effects. A
concert of eight flutes, for instance, in unison, or even in octaves,
without other instruments of any sort to vary the monotony, would
hardly have appealed to a taste as cultivated as theirs must have
been. Fétis is of the opinion that the Egyptians possessed a system of
musical notation, and sees in the resemblance to demotic characters of
the musical notation used by the modern Greek Church evidence of the
fact that it belonged to ancient Egypt.[31] The presence of a system
of musical notation is no proof of the coincidence of an harmonic
system, but it is _prima facie_ evidence of a stage of artistic
development which included a sense of something more than primitive and
haphazard concords. Such a stage of development we may probably credit
with safety to the ancient Egyptians, and, whatever their music may
have been, we can surely conclude that it had acquired at least the
elementary proportions of an art.
                                                         W. D. D.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[20] Antiphonal is here used in the sense that one part of the chorus
answered the other.

[21] Carl Engel: 'Music of the Most Ancient Nations.’

[22] A sort of rattle.

[23] Translated from a summary by Jules Combarieu In his _Histoire de
la musique_, Vol. V, Chap. XIV.

[24] Concerning the influence of the temple and synagogue on the
liturgical music of the early Christian church, see Chapter V, p. 157
ff.

[25] 'Laws,’ Book II.

[26] 'The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World.’ (1862-67.)

[27] _Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Ethiopien._

[28] Chas. Burney: 'History of Music.’

[29] Book X, Chap. 3.

[30] 'Records of the Past.’

[31] F. J. Fétis: _Biographie universelle des musiciens et
bibliographie générale de la musique_.




                              CHAPTER IV
                    THE MUSIC OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS

  Significance of Greek music--Greek conception of music; mythical
  records--Music in social life; folk song; general characteristics
  of Greek music--Systems and scales--Pythagoras’ theories; later
  theorists: Aristoxenus to Ptolemy--Periods of Greek composition: the
  nomoi; lyricism; choral dancing and choral lyricism; the drama--Greek
  instruments; notation.


The importance of the music of the most ancient civilizations and its
relevance to the history of music as an art may be questioned with
some justification. Indeed, some historians, notably Riemann, in his
scholarly _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, have practically foregone all
reference to it. But an account of Greek music has unanimously been
held an essential part of the scheme, for it has had an unquestioned
influence upon the beginnings of our own art, and though misunderstood
for centuries its theoretic system has served as the foundation of
mediæval musical science.

Moreover, the Greeks, in whose civilization antiquity reached its
pinnacle, manifested an attitude toward the art distinctly different
from that of the older nations, an æsthetic and humanistic attitude
more akin to our own, which enabled them to realize something like
the degree of beauty and perfection which they are conceded to have
attained in the other arts. Therefore, though music is destitute of
parallels to our glorious examples of the plastic arts of antiquity, a
presentation of the few facts hinting at the true merits of this lost
art is distinctly pertinent.


                                   I

It is lamentable, indeed, that next to nothing has been preserved to
us of Greek music. The few fragments which assiduous antiquarians
have restored and deciphered are hardly sufficient to suggest its true
quality, and even further restorations could do no more than confirm
the present evidence, for manuscripts are but the skeleton records--the
essence has been lost with the lyres and flutes, it has died with the
voices of Anacreon and Sappho.

While we moderns generally deny to music any direct correspondence with
the realities of life, the Greeks held it to be the most 'imitative’
or representative of arts.[32] Not only states of feeling, but also
ethical qualities and dispositions of mind were reproduced by musical
'imitation,’ and on the close correspondence between the copy and
the original depended the importance of music in the formation of
character. Aristotle in his 'Politics’ says: 'In rhythm and melodies
we have the most realistic imitation of anger and mildness, as well as
of courage, temperance, and all their opposites.’ Here is an important
element in the Greek conception of music, radically different from our
own. Its imputed educational value, its influence upon the character of
the youth, and even its therapeutic powers are no less foreign to our
modern ideas.

Plato in his 'Republic’ sets down the study of music and its regulation
as an essential part of the ideal commonwealth. 'Beginning from early
childhood,’ he says, 'they teach and admonish their sons as long as
they live....’ 'Again the music masters in the same way pay attention
to sobriety of behavior and take care that the boys commit no evil, and
when they have learned to play upon the lyre they teach them all the
compositions of other good poets, lyric poets, setting them to music,
and they compel Modes and Harmony to become familiar to the boys’ souls
in order that they may become more gentle, and, being themselves more
rhythmical and harmonious, they may be serviceable in word and deed;
for the whole life of man requires rhythm and harmony.’ And elsewhere
in the same work: 'But when handsome amusements are appointed them in
their infancy, and when by means of music they embrace that amusement
which is according to law (contrariwise to the others), this music
attends them in everything else and grows with them, and raiseth up in
the city whatever formerly was fallen down.’

As illustrative of the moral import of music Plato says: 'Is it
indeed then according as I say, that we shall never become musicians,
neither we ourselves, nor the guardians we say we are to educate,
before we understand the images of temperance, fortitude, liberality
and magnificence, and the other sister virtues?...’ Hierocles attests
Pythagoras’ belief in the therapeutic powers of music in the following
quotation: 'He look’d on Musick as a great advantage to Health and made
use of it in the diseases of the body as well as of the Soul; for, as
Plato said after him, Perfect Musick is a Compound of Voices and of
Instrumental Harmony. The Voice alone is more perfect than instruments
alone; but it wants one thing to complete its Perfection; and that one
thing is Harmony: and Instruments alone, without a voice, yield only
rambling and extravagant Sounds, which may indeed affect and move the
Soul, but cannot instruct nor form the Manners which ought to be the
chief end of Musick.’[33]

Before considering the probable character and form of ancient Hellenic
compositions we must record that music hardly existed among the Greeks
as an independent art. The word [Greek: mousikê] held a much broader
meaning than our own word music; it included poetry, at least in its
narrower sense, and in a measure dancing and mimetics. Likewise it was
closely allied, through their philosophy, to mathematics and astronomy.
But to say that music was subordinate to poetry is inaccurate,
for, while vocal compositions, both solo and choral, made up the
bulk of Greek music, instrumental music was practised not only in
accompaniment, but independently also, and virtuosity on the _kithara_
and _aulos_ was developed to a considerable degree. The great musicians
of Greece, however, were at the same time its great poets. Homer
and Hesiod may be thought of as musicians, no less than Pindar, the
adored creator of the first dithyramb, and Æschylus, the greatest of
dramatists. It may be interesting at this point to reproduce the table
compiled by Aristides Quintilianus (second century A. D.), one of the
most eminent Greek theoreticians of the Roman era, to show the various
branches of musical science as then understood. This illustrates
clearly the union of poetry and music, the perfect fusion of two arts
in which neither predominated, but was only an inherent part of the
other.


                    │                    │ a) Arithmetic (musical
                    │ A. Natural         │      mathematics)
                    │      Science      <│
                    │                    │ b) Physics (acoustics and
I. Theoretical      │                    │      physiology of hearing)
   Part            <│
                    │                    │ c) Harmonics
                    │                    │
                    │ B. Musical        <│ d) Rhythmics
                    │      Technology    │
                    │                    │ e) Metrical Science (Prosody)


                    │                    │ f) Melodic invention
                    │                    │
                    │ C. Composition    <│ g) Formation of stanzas
II. Practical       │                    │
    Part            │                    │ h) Poetry
                   <│
   (Applied Music)  │                    │ j) Instrumental practice
                    │                    │
                    │ D. Musical        <│ k) Singing
                    │      Practice      │
                    │                    │ l) Mimetics


The earliest references to the art, in the works of Homer and
Hesiod,[34] who themselves may be deemed the first poetic singers of
record, are clothed in mythical terms, and a brief review of these
references may be of interest as reflecting the racial attitude
toward music. In Hesiod we read much about the immortal muses, the
nine daughters of Zeus (all-father) and Mnemosyne (memory), and of
these especially three are of interest to us: _Calliope_, the muse
of epic song; _Euterpe_, the muse of melody and lyric poetry, and
_Terpsichore_, the muse of choral dance. According to Homer these
entertained the gods by singing (Iliad, i, 604), while song itself the
poet considered a direct gift of the gods.

The greatest mythical figure of Greek music is Orpheus, who, like all
the early civilizers of Hellas, was a Thracian, a people afterward
considered barbarous by the Athenians. Orpheus was said to be the son
of the king of Thrace, by the muse Calliope, but another account makes
Apollo his father. He was one of the Argonauts, and indeed it was the
stirring tones of his lyre as he chanted of adventure on the sea that
stirred the good ship _Argo_ to her launching when all the strength of
the heroes had failed in the task. On passing the Island of the Sirens
the Argonauts owed their safety to Orpheus, for, taking his lyre, he
sang so loudly and so sweetly as to overpower the Sirens’ melodies,
whereby all escaped unscathed save Butes, who plunged overboard only to
be snatched up by Aphrodite. Again it was the urging of Orpheus’ lyre
that gave the strength to the Argonautic rowers to speed between the
clashing rocks, the Sympleglades, after the dove had passed through and
the rocks had recoiled. The skill with which he plucked the strings
moved even the trees and rocks, and the wild beasts of the forest
surrounded him in delighted transports as he sang.

The story of Orpheus and his wife, the nymph Eurydice, is perhaps the
best known of all myths connected with music. Eurydice, it is said, was
slain by the bite of a serpent as she was fleeing from the unwelcome
love of Aristæus, son of Apollo. Orpheus determined to descend to the
Underworld, and, using the power of melody to soften the hearts of the
rulers of that abode of Darkness and of Death, to regain possession
of his beloved. Armed with his lyre, he easily obtained admittance
to the realm of Hades, and in course of time made good his entrance
to the palace of Pluto. At the music of his lyre the wheel of Ixion
stopped, Tantalus forgot the thirst which was his eternal torture, for
a moment the vulture ceased his perpetual gnawing at the vitals of
Tityus and Pluto, and Proserpina granted the prayer of the impassioned
melodist, with one condition only: that he should not look back upon
his almost-rescued wife before he had reached with her the confines of
the land of darkness. Impelled by love and eagerness, Orpheus violated
this condition and Eurydice vanished evermore from his sight.

Of the poetical works ascribed to Orpheus, those which remain
appear to have been written chiefly by Onamacritus and Cercops,
and they illustrate some of the earliest forms of hymns with a
musical accompaniment. Orpheus is also credited with the formulation
of an augmentation of the scale, having added two strings to the
seven-stringed lyre which Apollo had given him.

The legend of Amphion also signifies the peculiar veneration in which
music was held by the Greeks. The son of Zeus (or Jupiter) and Antiope,
he became king of the Thebans, and Hermes gave him a lyre of gold.
By its power alone, the story runs, he built the walls of Thebes,
the stones taking their places in obedience to the strains of his
instrument. All of which serves to illustrate the high conception
which the Greeks had of the art, how constantly it occupied their
thoughts, and what extraordinary powers they ascribed to it. This is
further attested by historical evidence showing the place which music
occupied in their social system.


                                  II

There is little doubt that in the classic period at least music was
an essential part of the intellectual equipment of every citizen. It
assumed a public importance and received an official recognition from
the state which no other people has ever accorded to it. Not only
did it form an integral part of religious worship, but it occupied
an important position in the great national festivals at which the
intellectual accomplishments no less than the physical prowess of all
Greece were matched.

The Olympic games, beginning with the year 776 B. C., and taking place
regularly every four years in the plain of Alpheious in Elis (Olympia),
are the oldest as well as the most famous of these festivals, and
as the most comprehensive national celebrations they assumed the
greatest importance. All Hellas and the colonies sent spectators and
participants in the contests. While music no doubt played a great part
in the celebration of the victors, in the sacred sacrifice to Zeus,
and in the pageants and dances, an actual contest in music or poetry
was never incorporated into the Olympic games. But the Pythic games,
which took place at Delphi every nine years, and after 586 B. C. in the
third year of every Olympiad, were primarily poetico-musical contests
in honor of Apollo. The first day was permanently dedicated to the
performance of the famous _Nomos Pythicos_ (of which later). Both the
Isthmian games and the Nemeic games, which took place every two years,
were likewise closely identified with music.

But besides these great national festivals, which in all amounted to
two or three annually, there were a great number of local celebrations,
some of which partook of an almost national character by virtue of the
great influx of foreign visitors. The Eleusinian mysteries, primarily
confined to the initiates, also took on the character of a popular
festival by the institution of public contests and pageants, in which,
of course, music played a great part. The Athenians’ annual Panatheneas
in honor of their patron goddess, their harvest festivals, and their
Dionysos festivals; the Spartans’ numerous celebrations and a host of
others, all of which were dedicated to some phase of culture, will
indicate in some measure the tremendous amount of time and attention
which the Greeks gave to the cultivation of the representative arts.

From Polybius, writing in the second century A. D., and taking as his
authority Ephorus, writing two hundred years earlier, we learn that the
Arcadians ordered their State affairs entirely according to music, in
such manner that not only boys, but young men up to the age of thirty
were obliged to cultivate musical study continually. 'From infancy on
their children are accustomed to sing according to rule the hymns and
pæans with which every country district praises its gods and heroes.
Later they learn the melodies of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and annually
perform their choral dances in the theatre to the accompaniment of
Dionysian flutes--the children their children’s dances, and youths the
dances of men. Throughout their whole life they institute performances
in this way, not engaging foreign musicians, but relying upon their own
talents, and relieving each other in turn in the execution of songs.
And while it is not considered a disgrace to plead ignorance in other
fields of knowledge, they consider it reprehensible to decline to
sing. They also practise processions to the accompaniment of flutes,
and annually perform dances which they study together and produce in
the theatres at the common expense.’

Not only in the public functions, but in their domestic life as well,
did music assume great importance. From earliest times we have records
of folk songs associated with the various occupations of ordinary life.
Of these the songs which have reference to the seasons of the year
and their phenomena, and which express the emotions called forth by
them, are of the greatest antiquity. They were sung by country folk,
by the reapers and vintners. There were two distinct classes of folk
songs, the songs of sorrow and the songs of joy, both of which existed
according to Homer before his time. Karl Bücher in his _Arbeit und
Rhythmus_ shows that in the occupational songs, where the dance did not
form a part of the music, the rhythm of the occupations themselves--the
handling of tools--determined the rhythm of the songs. Among such are
the song of the miller while grinding, the song of the spinners, the
binders of sheaves, and many others. There is no doubt that these
songs, expressing in simple terms the sorrows and joys of the ordinary
man, had a refreshing influence upon the more sophisticated artistic
creations of Greek musicians, just as our folk songs have had upon
the works of our greatest composers. The private practice of the more
artistic forms was also common among the Greeks. We read in their
literature how the lyre was passed round at the banquet, and each guest
was expected to add to the merriment of the occasion; of the bridal
songs, and many other forms of choral music executed upon special
occasions.

          [Illustration: GREEK FLUTE AND _KITHARA_ PLAYERS.]
                _Reproduced from a Volcentian vessel._

The actual character of this music we must gather from the writings
about it, rather than the few fragments at hand for analysis. Just
as music, because of its moral significance, became the subject
of philosophic speculation, so did its scientific side appeal to the
analytic mind of the Greeks, and their mathematicians and scientists
in general expatiated at length upon its theory. From their writings
we adduce first of all the fact that Greek music lacked at least one
of the important elements of modern music, namely, polyphony--or
harmony--the quality which of all, from a modern point of view, appeals
most directly to our emotions, to our susceptibility, which is most
closely associated with color and 'mood.’ Investigators, such as
Westphal, Gevaert, etc., have untiringly striven to establish evidence
of something more than simple homophony in the music of antiquity, but
beyond a slight deviation in the instrumental accompaniments, partaking
of the nature of grace notes, they have discovered traces of nothing
but melody at the unison--or at the distance of an octave, when men and
boys (or women) sang together, or when the voice was accompanied by
an instrument of higher or lower pitch. Such and nothing more is the
import of the testimony of Aristotle, when he says: 'Why is symphonous
or antiphonal singing more pleasing than harmony? Is it not because it
is the consonance of the octave? For antiphony is born of the voices
of young boys and men, whose tones are equal in distance from each
other as is the highest note of an octave from the lowest’ (Problems
xix, 29). Curious as it may seem that it should never have occurred
to a people intellectually so advanced to venture experiments in the
field of polyphony; that it should never have entered their minds to
strike two strings of the lyre or kithara simultaneously, or that
an occasional false note struck along with the right one should not
have suggested the possibilities of the 'third dimension’ in music,
it remains a fact that in all the mass of theoretical and technical
writings upon the art sufficient to reconstruct the entire 'system’ of
Greek music, no mention is made of harmony or polyphony.[35] We can
only conclude then that combinations other than the perfect consonance
of the octave, all mixtures of sounds or a confusion of lines, were
hostile to the Greek ideal of purity, to the underlying principle of
classic simplicity.

Thus the Greeks, reduced to the resources of rhythm and melody as
means of musical expression, developed these to a very high degree, in
the fineness of its distinctions advanced even beyond the point which
we have as yet found it necessary to reach in modern music. Their
rhythm, while no doubt it had a distinct and independent existence,
was primarily determined by the accent of the spoken word, the metres
of poetry. Even if conceived as a musical entity, it must at all times
be thought of as pertaining to the text rather than the melody. The
earliest rhythm of which we have knowledge is the hexameter of the
Homeric epics, and it is doubtful whether any variety in rhythmic
structure was introduced until the introduction of the short iambic
measures at a later period. Melody, on the other hand, while subjected
to certain laws, and at first perhaps nothing more than a monotonous
chant or declamation at slightly varying pitch, finally attained a
variety of line and freedom of movement which rendered it capable of
the most subtle shades of expression. This, we are informed, was due to
a complex system of modes or scales, of _genera_ and _chroai_, which,
if we understand them correctly, would credit the Greek ear with much
finer distinctions of pitch than we are capable of to-day.

A full discussion of this system is beyond our present purpose, and
the numerous controversies concerning it, which in many respects are
still unsettled, place the matter outside the pale of true history;
but a brief statement of its development (in historical sequence) is
necessary for the comprehension of the terms which must recur in the
course of our sketch.


                                  III

We have seen that the Greeks recognized the consonance of the octave.
Similarly they recognized at an early period the close relationship
of the interval of the perfect fifth, and its inversion, the perfect
fourth. The latter became the basis of the Greek system of scales. They
divided the interval into unequal smaller intervals according to three
methods, or _genera_, in each case placing the larger steps at the top
and the smaller at the bottom. (An equal division of the interval has,
as far as we know, never been attempted and is entirely foreign to
natural impulses.) The results obtained were as follows:

                   [Illustration: THE THREE GENERA.]

Of these three tetrachords (from [Greek: tetra] = four and [Greek:
chordon] = string) only the first was generally accepted, the chromatic
was rarely used and the enharmonic probably only by _virtuosi_, for we
have the testimony of Aristoxenus that the ear accustomed itself only
with difficulty to the distinction of quarter tones.

By joining two diatonic tetrachords together we obtain a series
of notes corresponding to the Dorian scale or mode ([Greek:
harmonia])--more properly 'octave species’--which was accounted the
oldest of all the modes:

                        [Illustration: DORIAN.]

Associated with this we soon find the Phrygian mode, supposed to be of
Asiatic origin and introduced into Greece by Terpander of Lesbos, one
of the earliest known composers of antiquity:

                       [Illustration: PHRYGIAN.]

and also the Lydian, the name of which indicates its origin:

                        [Illustration: LYDIAN.]

Around these three may be grouped all the modes in use in classic
times. These scales or octave species may be compared rather to our
present major and minor modes than to our modern transposition scales,
in that their identity is determined _not_ by their absolute pitch, but
by the intrinsic character of each mode, _based upon the distribution
of the large and small steps or intervals within the octave_. But
here the analogy ends, for the Greek modes cannot really be thought
of in the same way as either modern scales or modes, which by long
association with our harmonic system have become inseparably identified
with it, so that every step of the scale has a harmonic significance
as well as a melodic. Hence, there is associated with our scales the
idea of _tonality_, which in its modern sense is entirely foreign to
Greek music. Nevertheless a distinct character or _ethos_ was ascribed
to their scales by the Greeks (just as our major and minor have their
individual character). The Lydian, for instance, was thought of as
plaintive and adaptable to songs of sorrow; the Dorian as manly and
strong, hence to be employed in warlike strains; and so on.[36]

It will be seen that the above three scales correspond to the three
series of notes comprised within the octaves from e to e´, d to d´,
and c to c´, produced by the white keys of the piano. (While this does
not indicate their absolute pitch, it represents the relative pitch
at which they appear as part of the entire system, or 'foundation
scale,’ of the Greeks, illustrated on page 103.) By a transposition of
the tetrachord divisions of each of these scales, the Greeks obtained
two additional scales out of each of the above three. These derived
scales were denoted by the prefixes _hypo_ and _hyper_ (low and high),
respectively:


   Hypodorian (Like Hyperphrygian)             Hyperdorian
/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\  /━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\
         A B c d e f g a                  b c´ d´ e´ f´ g´ a´ b´
      ╲▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁╱
                                Dorian


  Hypophrygian (Like Hyperlydian)        Hyperphrygian (Like Hypodorian)
/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\  /━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\
         G A B c d e f g                   a b c´ d´ e´ f´ g´ a´
      ╲▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁╱
                               Phrygian


           Hypolydian                    Hyperlydian (Like Hypophrygian)
/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\  /━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\
         F G A B c d e f                   a b c´ d´ e´ f´ g´
       ╲▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁╱
                                Lydian


(It is evident from this table that the Hypodorian corresponds to the
Hyperphrygian, and the Hypophrygian to the Hyperlydian; hence there are
only seven _different_ modes.)

A common relationship was thus clearly recognized between the three
scales of each group, which may be thought of as having one common
tonic. It may be noted, however, that the Hypodorian probably had an
independent existence before being associated with the Dorian, as
is indicated by its own ethnological name of 'Æolian,’ and as such
was supposed to be of great antiquity. The Hyperdorian enjoyed an
independent existence as 'Mixolydian.’ Its invention has been variously
ascribed to Sappho, Damon and Pythocleides.

We have seen how, by joining two tetrachords, the Greeks constructed
their Dorian scale (octachord). By joining _additional_ tetrachords to
this scale at either end they obtained their double octave scale or
'Perfect Immutable System’:

                         [Illustration: Music]

It should be noted, however, that the new tetrachords are added
_conjunctively_, i. e., so that one of their notes (e) coincides with
the terminal notes of the original octave, while the two tetrachords
making up that octave were placed in juxtaposition with a whole
tone step between them. This was called the tone of disjunction
(_diezeuxis_). For purposes of modulation (_metabole_) they now laid
across the middle of this system an additional diatonic tetrachord
(from d to a) in such a way that one of its tones (b♭) came half way
between the two notes of the _diezeuxis_.[37] The low A was added to
round out the octave. (It is a curious fact that what we call _low_ the
Greeks called _high_ and _vice versa_.) The two tetrachords _Meson_ and
_Hypaton_, together with the conjunctive (_Synemmenon_), were also
considered as an independent system called the Lesser Perfect System.
The relation of these systems as well as the names of the individual
notes are set forth on the accompanying table.


           DOUBLE OCTAVE SCALE, or PERFECT IMMUTABLE SYSTEM

         ╱             ╱Nete hyperbolaion     a
        {             {                     Tone
        {             {Paranete               g
        {             {hyperbolaion
        {Tetrachordon {                     Tone
        {Hyperbolaion {Trite hyperbolaion     f
        {             {                    Semitone
        {              ╲Nete Diezeugmenon     e
        {                                    / \
        {              ╱               Tone /   \  Diezeuxis       ╲
        {             {Paranete            d     d Nete            }             ╲
        {             {Diezeugmenon                Synemmenon      }             }
        {Tetrachordon {                  Tone   Tone               } Tetrachordon}
        {Diezeugmenon {Trite               c     c  Paranete       } Synemmenon  }
        {             {Diezeugmenon                 Synemmenon     }             }
        {             {              Semitone    Tone              }             }
        {              ╲Paramese           b   b♭Trite Synemmenon }             }
        {                        Diezeuxis  \ /   Semitone         ╱             }
The     {                      ╱             a    Mese             ╲             }The
Greater {                     {             Tone                   }             }Lesser
Perfect {      Tetrachordon   {               G  Lichanos Meson    }Tetrachordon }Perfect
System  {       Meson         {             Tone                   }Meson        }System
        {                     {               F Parhypate Meson    }             }
        {                     {           Semitone                 }             }
        {                      ╲              E  Hypate Meson      ╱             }
        {                      ╱            Tone                   ╲             }
        {                     {               D  Lichanos Hypaton  }Tetrachordon }
        {   Tetrachordon      {             Tone                   }Hypaton      }
        {     Hypaton         {               C  Parhypate Hypaton }             }
        {                     {           Semitone                 }             }
        {                     {               B   Hypate Hypaton   ╱             ╱
        {                      ╲
         ╲                                    A   Proslambanomenos

By carving out of the Greater Perfect System (which we may call simply
the Complete System) overlapping octave sections, each beginning on
a different note, the Greek theorists found these to correspond in
their intervals to each of the seven different modes, as follows: Thus
all scales came to be thought of theoretically as transpositions of
the corresponding octave sections in the Complete System (Foundation
Scale). Indeed, the entire _system_ was considered as transposed and
the individual tones retained their names regardless of pitch, i. e.,
in the Dorian mode the _mese_ would always be the fourth note from the
bottom, in the Phrygian the fifth, etc.

                         [Illustration: Music]

As an example, let us transpose the Foundation Scale one tone above its
natural pitch:

                         [Illustration: Music]

The middle octave will now be seen to be Phrygian (corresponding to
No. 3 above) instead of Dorian as before. Now in their system of
transposition scales (in reality transposed Complete Systems) the
Greeks gave to every scale the name corresponding to the mode of its
middle octave. Before the time of Aristoxenus only seven of these
transposition scales, or keys ([Greek: tonoi]) were in use. That
theoretician eventually rounded out the scheme to eighteen (of which
six appear in modern notation as duplicates or octave transpositions).
He did this systematically by taking the interval of the perfect fifth
as a basis and building on each semi-tone degree a group of three
scales (natural, hypo, and hyper). As there were not enough of the
original modes to supply names for all of the new scales, it was,
of course, necessary to invent arbitrary names for the superfluous
ones. By this achievement it was possible to transpose a melody into
any one of the eighteen (or really twelve) keys without changing its
modal character. We may therefore assume with some justification that
Aristoxenus’ system in a way did for the Greeks what our own equal
temperament has done for modern music.

We end our brief sketch of Greek theory at this point, which may
be assumed as the highest development of the system. Later systems
were either based on Aristoxenus or were of reactionary nature. We
must, however, for a moment retrace our steps to explain briefly
the achievements of an earlier theoretician, the great philosopher
Pythagoras, in the field of musical acoustics.


                                  IV

Like many of the ancient philosophers, Pythagoras (_ca._ 600 B.
C.) is known only by his disciples and by their quotations from or
commentaries on his teaching. Of these the most important are Archytas
(400-365 B. C.) and the great mathematician Euclid (_ca._ 300 B. C),
though there is some reason to suppose the part of Euclid’s work
dealing with music to have been written by Cleonides (_ca._ 200 B. C.)
and by the later Pythagorean Nichomachus (_ca._ 150 A. D.).

In Hierocles’ Commentaries on the 'Symbols’ and 'Golden Verses’ of
Pythagoras, M. Dacier, the translator, amplifies the prefatory Life
of Pythagoras found in Hierocles, and he recounts, as Gaudentius,
Nichomachus, Macrobius, Boëtius, and others have recounted, the
incident which drew the attention of the ancient founder of the great
system of secret numbers to the numerical relations of Sound in Music.
The quaint old story is as follows: 'Pythagoras is honored with the
Invention of Harmonical Measures; and ’tis related how it happened.
They write, that one Day, after he had been meditating a long while
on the Means of assisting the Hearing, as he had already found means
of assisting the Sight, by the Rule, Compass, Astrolabe and other
Instruments, and the Feeling, by the Balance and the Measures, he
chanced to go by a Smith’s Shop, and heard several Hammers of different
Sizes, beating Iron upon the Anvil. He was moved with the Justness of
the Harmony, and going into the Shop, he examined the Hammers and their
sound in regard to their Sizes; and, being returned home, he made an
Instrument on the Wall of his Chamber, with Stakes that served for
pegs and with strings of equal length, at the end of which he tied the
different Weights, and by striking several of these strings at once
he produced different Tones, and thereby learnt the Reasons of this
different Harmony, and of the intervals that caused it.’

In general it may be pointed out that the Pythagorean system of
harmonics was only incidental to philosophy. Thus Laloy, speaking of
the musical system of Pythagoras, says: 'One finds, amid their confused
accounts and contradictory assertions, a body of rules and precepts
which present a “Pythagoric life,” as there was an “Orphic life,” in
which justice, order, friendship, abstinence, geometry, and music are
an integral part ... even metempsychosis itself being merely the truth
inherent in a number.’

The monochord, a single string stretched over a sliding bridge, was
the basis of the acoustical experiments of Pythagoras. By shifting
the position of the bridge he varied the pitch of this string. His
great discovery, that which has rightly caused him to be regarded as
the founder of a branch of acoustics, was that between the respective
lengths of stretched strings which gave the three consonances of
octave, fifth and fourth, there existed certain essentially simple
relations, as follows: the octave was in the relation of a string
of one half the length or double the length; in other words, the
relation of 2/1; the fifth was in the relation of 3/2; and the fourth
in the relation of 4/3. These intervals, apparently on account of
the simplicity of their mathematical relationship, were henceforth
regarded as consonant. All other intervals were dissonant, at any rate
in theory. The essential difference between the mathematical theory of
sound ratios as held by the Pythagoreans and that held in modern times
lies in the conception of the Third. To the Greeks such an interval was
entirely dissonant, not necessarily because it was displeasing to the
ear, but because they either did not recognize its ratio as 4/5 or did
not deem this ratio to fit in with the highly abstruse theology they
had built up on other numerical ratios. The step of the Fifth was to
the Pythagoreans not merely the fundamental, but also the only, basis
for the determination of tone ratios, whereas to-day the Third and
sometimes even the Seventh are taken into account.

As to the value that Pythagoras attached to these fundamentals, we may
quote Hierocles: 'Pythagoras,’ he says, 'has a very particular Opinion
concerning Musick, which nevertheless the Masters of that Science,
after they have duly weigh’d it, will find Just and Reasonable. He
condemned and rejected all judgment that was made of Musick by the ear:
because he found the Sense of Hearing to be already so weaken’d and
decay’d, that it was no longer able to judge aright. He would have Men
therefore judge of it by the Understanding, and by the analogical and
proportionable Harmony. This in my opinion was to show that the Beauty
of Musick is independent of the Tune that strikes the Ear, and consists
only in the Reason, in the confirmity and in the Proportion, of which
the Understanding is the only Judge.’ And he adds this remark: 'As to
what he said, that the Sense of Hearing was become weak and impotent,
it agrees with this other Assertion of his, that the reason why Men did
not hear the Musick of the Universe was the weakness and imbecility of
their Nature, which they had corrupted and suffered to degenerate.’

The error of the Pythagoreans, it may be pointed out, did not lie in
the misuse of experimental data, but in the philosophical deductions
therefrom. To the followers of Pythagoras a harmonic consonance was
not a perception, it was a thing the existence of which could be
conceived independently, a thing as real as the string which had given
it birth. Sound was to them, therefore, a distinct identity, possessing
attributes pertaining only to itself, yet susceptible of impression
from without; it was a number realized and concrete, a number simple
and all-inclusive, but, above all, a series of numbers possessing a
personality, the veiling power of which both illumined and obscured
a myriad symbolisms. Strict Harmonic Consonance was the utmost of
numerical potency, it was a divine thought, not embodied Being. How
deeply this was felt to be a truth by the Pythagoreans is evidenced by
the story told of the death of Pythagoras, when the great philosopher,
turning to his disciples, gave as his last instruction “Always the
monochord!”

As for the value of the Pythagorean school as a whole, it is manifest
that it must be considered as a group of mystical speculators,
professing to be students of music and claiming Pythagoras as their
master, but, in actual verity, doing little more than reducing sounds
to air vibrations and ascertaining the numerical relations of pitch.
Lovers of music they were not, they were mathematical precisians,
perceiving no beauty and hearing no inspiration in melodic sounds
except in such wise as these fitted into an ordered sequence of
arithmetical form.

The development of the Pythagorean school was rendered all the more
self-centred by the vitality and strength of the Empiricists. This
flourishing school of musical art was concerned with arbitrary
regulations as to the most acceptable forms of composition. The
Empiricists determined what melodies were suitable to certain
instruments. They debarred the flute from certain festivals and
admitted it to others, they decided upon the forms of construction of
musical instruments, and, above all, they insisted upon the performance
of certain compositions in the traditional style. While not avowedly
hostile to the Pythagoreans, the Empirical school paid little heed
to the mathematical speculations of the learned, and song and dance
continued because music was an art. Great as was the symbolic majesty
of the Monochord, the surging strain of the lyre meant infinitely more
to the life of Ancient Greece.

The second great development of Greek musical philosophy is that of
Aristoxenus (b. 354 B. C.), whose systemization of the transposition
scales has already been mentioned. If Pythagoras established some of
the fundamental rules of acoustics, Aristoxenus may be given the credit
of establishing Musical Science; the former was a branch of a science,
the second was the science of an art.

To put the essential principles of Aristoxenus in the simplest possible
form it may be said that he established two principal rules: (1) that
music accepts Sound as sounds heard by the ear, and that the science
of music must be built upon the foundation of sounds that are heard;
(2) that sound-functions exist, possessing properties of sonance not
directly reducible to any simple or elemental numerical ratio. The
work of Aristoxenus was a revolution in musical philosophy based upon
the principle of music as an organic whole of sounds bearing a dynamic
relation each to the other. Aristotle had not been able to break away
from the old Pythagorean conception, but Aristoxenus brushed away the
misty speculations of morality, the mathematical entanglements and the
musty formalism that surround the music of his time and set himself to
answer the one vital question: Why does Music employ certain sounds and
reject certain others?

The third stage of development of Greek music may be represented by
Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the second century of the _Christian_
era. He may, with considerable authority, be deemed the inventor of
the first interpreter of the equal tempered scale. R. C. Phillips
has thrown considerable light upon the disputed questions involved
in this matter, and to his monograph on the 'Harmonic Tetrachords of
Claudius Ptolemy’ (1904) we may refer the reader desirous of detailed
information. Leaving the question of theory, we now proceed to pick up
the thread of mythical story and trace what we can of the history of
Greek composition.


                                   V

All legendary references to the prehistoric era of Greek music point
to its importation into Hellas by various artists, partly from the
North (Thessaly and Thrace) and partly from the East (Asia Minor). In
this we see probably nothing more than a racial recollection of the
Dorian migration, which, as we know, took place about the year 1104
B. C. Orpheus, of whom we have already spoken, must be counted among
the Northerners, the Thracians, for his native place was Pieria at the
foot of Mt. Olympus. His pupil, Musaios, was supposed to have lived in
Athens, and his son Eumolpos was the progenitor of the famous family
of priests and singers which were entrusted perpetually with the rites
of the Eleusinian mysteries, sacred to Demeter. Amphion, another of
the Northern artists (the miraculous builder of the walls of Thebes),
is described by Pausanias (Græco-Roman historian, 2d Cent., A. D.) as
a relative of Tantalos of Lydia, and to have brought from there the
Lydian mode. He is also credited with having increased the lyre from
four to seven strings. Heraclides Ponticus calls him the founder of
the _kitharœdic_ school of poetry, which was governed by a method and
laws distinct from the _auletic_ school, associated with the aulos,
the Grecian flute, from which it took its name. The regulation of the
cult of Apollo at Delphi is ascribed to Philammon, whose son Thamyris,
a native of the more uncultured regions of Thrace, was said to have
challenged the muses to contest, and to have been punished for this
offense with blindness.

Thus the North was, as we have seen, the home of the kitharœdic muse;
Phrygia, on the other hand, must be considered as the cradle of the
auletic school, of which the most prominent early names are Hyagnis,
Marsyas, and Olympus, the three oldest players upon the flute. The
first of these was said to be the inventor of that art. Marsyas was
his son and first disciple, while Olympus introduced the art into
Greece and became the first Hellenic master of artistic instrumental
music.[38]

The first distinct period of musical composition is that of the _nomoi_
(_sing._ _nomos_; Gr. [Greek: nomos] = law), a certain type of melodies
constructed according to fixed rules, which were sung as solos to
verses whose subject was usually the praise of some god. (The singers
performing them were known as _aœds_ and later as rhapsodists.) The
earliest _nomoi_ were melodies of very simple structure, but from the
first there is a distinction between the kitharœdic and auletic types,
the first of which is supposed to have followed the Homeric hexameter
(iambic metre), and the latter to have been based on the elegiac
measures, offering, however, a considerable variety of rhythm.

The pioneer representatives of these two opposing schools were,
respectively, Olympus, already familiar to us, and Terpander, both
of whom belong to the seventh century B. C. Concerning Olympus’ art
a startling assertion is found in Plutarch. He was regarded by Greek
musicians as the originator of the enharmonic genus. Upon clearer
examination, it has been found that this use of the word 'enharmonic’
does not coincide with the sense in which it is used above, where we
explained the three _genera_ of tetrachords. The quarter-tone division
is, indeed, a much later product and does not seem ever to have
attained to great popularity. The enharmonic scale of Olympus simply
consisted of the diatonic _with a step omitted_, so as to avoid all
semi-tone intervals in the melodies. This elided tone was probably the
Lichanos of the Phrygian scale ([Greek: harmonia]), or f, if we take
the octave from d to d´ on the white keys of the piano. The Phrygian
was naturally the scale used by Olympus, whose home was Phrygia, but
he is also said to have introduced this 'enharmonic’ type of melody
into the Dorian mode. When the full octachord came into consideration
(originally the scale was limited to seven notes) the omission of the
upper tone of the higher semi-tone interval (from b to c) followed as
a matter of course. Thus Terpander’s 'enharmonic’ scale is seen to be
simply a sort of pentatonic system, the antiquity of which is already
evident from our examination of primitive music.

Little is known of Olympus’ life. What part of Greece he inhabited we
are not told. It seems certain that he practised his art in the service
of Apollo. About one hundred years before the beginning of the Pythic
games at Delphi he composed a song describing the fight of Apollo with
the dragon, which afterward became known as the _Nomos Pythicos_, and
which, as we have seen, was regularly performed upon the first day of
the Pythic festivals.[39]

Of Terpander, however, the first of the _kitharœdic_ nome writers, we
have many isolated details, both of legend and fact. There is a story
that the lyre of Orpheus was carried on the waves of the sea from
the Thracian coast to Antissa on Lesbos, where Terpander was born.
Orpheus is, indeed, the singer whom Terpander was said to emulate,
while Olympus was supposed to follow the models of Homer. Terpander
was the first victor in the Spartan _Carneata_ (festival in honor of
Apollo), which began during the twenty-sixth Olympiad. This indicates
his settling in Sparta, which is further confirmed by Plutarch, who
in his _De musica_ calls him the chief representative of the first
period in which Sparta flourished musically. Plutarch also records the
legend that he successfully subdued a revolt of the Lacedemonians by
the power of his music. To us the most important item of Terpander’s
achievements is the addition of the eighth string to the lyre
(_kithara_), thus completing the octave.

The next musician of extraordinary importance was Archilochos of
Paraos, whose period has been fixed as 675-630. His popularity seems
to have surpassed that of any other except Homer, with whom he was
equal in the estimation of the ancients. His literary merit consists
of the introduction into artistic poetry of the iambic and trochaic
trimeter and tetrameter and the origination of the strophic form, by
the alternation of shorter verses of different rhythm with longer
ones. Similarly, his great _musical_ achievement is the introduction
of rhythmical change and the use of faster time. In using shorter
measures he endowed his compositions with a certain folk-quality which,
combined with the element of satire and fable, quickly brought them
into popular favor. Archilochos was a pugnacious, combative character;
he had taken part in the wars on Eubœa and found his death in a warlike
exploit on Nasos. His invective and satirical poems were a totally
new departure in Greek poetry. A peculiar practice, which in a sense
survives in the method of our musical comedians, was introduced by
Archilochos for humoristic effect, i. e., the interrupting of the song
proper by the spoken word, followed by a return to the melody after a
brief instrumental interlude. This was known as _paracataloge_. Its
use was later transferred to the serious ode and even the tragedy.
A reference in Plutarch to Archilochos’ accompaniments 'under the
vocal part, whereas the old ones sang everything in unison’ has
aroused considerable controversy. We shall dismiss it with the
well-supported conclusion of Riemann, that it does not point to any
form of heterophony, but to certain methods of interluding, rhythmical
ornamentation and playing in the upper octave (flageolet).

The strophic forms of Archilochos constituted the preliminary steps
toward the development of lyric poetry, which, founded in the seventh
century, 'raised its graceful structure in the sixth.’ Alkman and
Stesichoros furnish the transition to this subjective school, whose
disciples are essentially the celebrants of love and wine. According to
dialects it falls into three divisions--the Ionian, Dorian, and Æolian.
The last, rooted in the kitharœdic school of Terpander, finds in its
Lesbian home its first exponents--Alkaios and Sappho.

Alkaios (625-575 B. C.), son of a noble family of Mitylene, composed
no less than ten books of sacred hymns and drinking, love, and war
songs, in which the predominating note is the hate of tyranny and
the joys of the banquet. His contemporary, Sappho, whose verses are
likewise full of passion and pathos, takes flaming love as her theme,
and a number of other Greek women poets of the sixth century follow
her example. 'The poems of Alkaios and Sappho are the most melodious
of Greek creations.... Their fluent strophes, so easily subjected to
musical treatment, have not only in antiquity but throughout a series
of centuries been regarded as a fixed form’ (cf. the Odes of Horace).
Ibykos and Anakreon, both living in the second half of the sixth
century, belong to the same category. Both were wandering singers. The
former is known to us through Schiller’s poem perpetuating the legend
of the cranes; the latter is still a byword for the joy of life and the
praise of love, wine, and song.

A group of auletic musicians living in the seventh century, to which
belonged Xenokritos, Polymnestos, and Thaletas, is credited with
new developments in the musical practice of Sparta, which were soon
transferred to the other Hellenic states as well. This great and
far-reaching innovation was the introduction of the choral dances.

The cradle of the dance was said to be the island of Crete. Thence
came Thaletas, the most important of the group of composers just
mentioned. His fame reached the Spartans, who summoned him to organize
a _Pæan_ in honor of Apollo, in order to allay the pest,[40] and this
inaugurated his extended activity in Sparta, where he introduced
also the _pyrrhic_ ([Greek: pyrrhíchê]), a rapidly moving dance, and
the _gymnopædia_ ([Greek: gymnopaidia]) festival dances performed
annually in honor of those who fell at Thyrea. In the regular order
of gymnastic dance education the last named were first, then came
the _pyrrhics_, and finally the 'stage dances,’ including the famous
_hyporchemas_--pantomimic dances--which doubtless were a development in
the direction of the drama.

According to a description of Athenæus the _gymnopædias_ resembled
the regular wrestling of the palæstra, for all the young boys danced
naked and executed rhythmic body motions and responsive movements of
the hands. The _pyrrhic_, which, according to Aristoxenus, was not an
importation but of native Spartan origin, was a sort of war dance,
which later, however, took on a bacchic character, rods and torches
displacing the spears. It is recorded that marching songs, accompanied
by rhythmic motions, were popular in Sparta from early times, and in
the second Messenian war (685 B. C.) inspired the warriors to victory.
The word _hyporchema_, defined as a pantomimic dance, 'in its narrowest
sense signifies the pantomimic representation of the action described
by the words’ (Athenæus, i. 15). The same authority says that 'while
the chorus danced, it sang’ and that 'some of the hymns were danced
and some were not, just as the Pæans were sung either with or without
dancing.’ Among the hyporchemas are also included a great number of
individual actions which made up the ceremonial of the great religious
festivals and games, such as the gathering of the laurels for the
victor, the garnering of the grapes, the bringing in of the tripod. To
them belong also the so-called 'Prosodies,’ sung to the accompaniment
of the aulos during the processional into the temple or the approach to
and withdrawal from the altar. All choral dancing was of course closely
associated with music. And, while the monodic forms of composition
continued to flourish, choral music came to stand highest in the public
favor. The charm of variety afforded by a combination of the two was,
moreover, quickly recognized.

The development of this choral music was the particular mission of a
school of lyricists no less celebrated than the Æolian--namely, the
Dorian. It was considered the highest form of lyricism. Larger periods
and great variety, instead of short and regular strophes, distinguish
its form, while its spiritual import is correspondingly broader.
The _hymnæ_ (bridal choruses); the _scolia_ (praising a celebrated
personality), out of which grew the encomium (song of praise), and
the _epinikion_, sung in praise of the victors at the great festival
games, are said to have introduced the softer, subjective, essentially
lyrical element into the chorus. The dithyramb, originally a Bacchic
festival song in honor of the god of wine (Dionysos), represents the
highest of lyric choral forms. It originated in Phrygia, was developed
artistically by Arion, living at the court of Periander in Corinth
(628-585 B. C.), but was cultivated principally at Athens, first
through Lasos of Hermione. Arion was the first to assemble a large
chorus--50 men and boys--forming a circle around the altar of Dionysos,
with a flute player in the centre. Before him Tyrtæus (685 B. C.)
was said to have originated the division of the chorus into three
parts--'children, men, and old men’--but earlier than that we learn
from Pollux of the partition of the chorus into two semi-choirs, which
sang in responsive or antiphonary manner.

Simonides of Keos and Pindar are the chief figures of choral lyricism.
The former, born on the isle of Keos (Ionia), lived first at the
court of Hipparch in Athens, after whose assassination he went to
Thessaly. After the battle of Marathon (490) he reappeared at Athens
with an elegy upon the fallen warriors, which left him victor over
Æschylus, the founder of the drama. He also won the dithyrambic
contest in 471, and he died at the court of Hierons of Syracuse.
The reproach of commercialism, made against Simonides because of
his acceptance of favors and pay at the hand of rulers, reminds one
of present-day criticism. In contrast to him, Pindar (522-448), the
illustrious master, revered not less than Homer himself, was a retiring
personality, 'living for himself rather than others.’ He was born at
Thebes. His life story has been embellished with legend and fiction,
indicating the nation’s affection for him. He participated frequently
in the national festivals and, it is related, found his death on the
stage of the theatre at Argos. His works combine no less than seventeen
books containing hymns, pæans, dithyrambs, _parthenias_, _hyporchemas_,
encomiums, _thernoi epinikia_, and other forms, all intended for choral
performance. His first Pythic ode is among the six fragments of Greek
music preserved to us.

We must now consider what is perhaps the greatest and the most original
creation of the Greek mind--the drama. Its forms we have seen in lyric
poetry and in pantomimic dances of the chorus, furnishing the elements
of dialogue and representative action. These forms are to be found
independently among other nations of antiquity, but their combination
is peculiar to the Greeks, to whom the entire world is indebted for
the art of the theatre. Like the dithyrambic chorus, whose close
connection with the worship of Dionysos we have observed, the drama
was perpetually associated with these Bacchic festivals. The very name
tragedy (from [Greek: tragos] = goat) indicates its root form--the
satyr play, executed by men disguised with fur skin and the cloven hoof
to represent the votaries of the God. Here is added another element
of the drama--impersonation--though earlier cases of it are seen, for
instance, in the disguise of the poet Chrysothemis as the god Apollo,
when performing his compositions. Allegory and symbolism were things to
which the Greek mind naturally inclined. Mythological conceptions were
often visualized, such as the favorite fight of Apollo and the dragon,
the myth of Demeter and Persephone represented in the Eleusinian
mysteries, etc. The word [Greek: dran] is the general expression for
secret action in the Pagan cult, hence in the antique drama, no less
than our own opera, we may recognize a sacred origin (cf. Chap. XI,
p. 325). The dithyrambic chorus, whose members themselves are thought
to have been disguised as satyrs, furnished the last preparatory step
leading to the tragedy, which, it should be noted, gradually developed
out of the non-choral sections, the solo speeches of the leaders.[41]
Similarly, the Comedy had its beginning in the rather coarse witticisms
of the choral leaders in the Bacchic processions of the Dionysos
festival (cf. Aristotle, 'Poetics,’ 4).

The first real dramatist was Thespis, who, in 536 B. C., was summoned
to Athens by the Pisistratides to produce a tragedy in which for the
first time there appeared an actor outside of the chorus. It developed
rapidly from then on--we need only mention the introduction of
the comedy by Epicharmos (540-450) and its official sanctioning in
Athens in 487. Phrynichos, the greatest dramatist before Æschylus,
is remembered by the performance of the 'Fall of Milet’ for which,
because it reminded the Athenians of their defeat, he was punished,
and the political tragedy henceforth forbidden. The names of the three
greatest tragic poets, Æschylus (525-456), Sophocles (496-406), and
Euripides (450-395), are too well known to require comment. Our present
task is simply to point out the important part which music played in
their works. The parallel frequently drawn between the modern opera or
music drama on the one hand, and the classic tragedy on the other, we
may dismiss with the statement of Riemann, that 'the classic tragedy
was a drama in which music as such coöperated, while in the modern
(music drama) music occupies an eminently dominating place.’ We might
add that, whereas we speak, for instance, of Wagner as being his own
librettist, we might say of Euripides that he supplied his own music
for his drama.

The three elements of modern opera--soloists, chorus, and
orchestra--were, indeed, represented in the classic drama. The soloists
were the actors (who _sang_ most of their speeches) and the chorus
leader with his assistants, who were sometimes drafted to the stage
proper, to take part in the action. The chorus consisted of fifteen
members in the tragedy, twenty-four in the comedy. It was placed on a
lower eminence than the principals (on the 'orchestra’) and represented
at first (with Æschylus and Sophocles) the 'moral consciousness of
the people.’ Later, with Euripides, its contemplative function was
superseded by its actual participation in the action as a mob. It sang
together--or _tutti_, as we would say--the _parados_ and _aphodos_,
the processional and recessional choruses--for which the chorus
was sometimes divided into sections, appearing one after the other,
as, for instance, in the 'Seven against Thebes,’ and the _stasima_,
interspersed through the action. The choral dance of the tragedy,
festive and stately, was called _emmeleia_; that of the satyr play,
grotesque and rapid, the _sikinnis_, and the lampooning, lascivious
dance of the comedy, _cordax_. The 'orchestra’ consisted of one simple
flute player, who used the double _aulos_. This was traditionally
the characteristic 'orgiastic’ instrument. The kithara, despite its
popularity in other uses, was never admitted to the tragedy. The chief
function of the flute may have been to keep the chorus 'in tune,’
but it is certain that it played interludes, etc., and at times solo
numbers, for we know that aulos playing had become a highly developed
technical practice, and that aulos virtuosi achieved great reputations
and were highly esteemed.

This leads us to the question of instrumental practice in general, the
brief consideration of which is our next task.


                                  VI

One of the most ancient musical controversies was that regarding the
respective merits of wind and string instruments. How it resulted in
a most important victory for the latter is revealed in the partly
mythical story of Marsyas, a Phrygian satyr. According to this legend
Marsyas found upon the banks of a stream a flute, probably the double
flute, which Athena had thrown away because she feared that blowing
upon it would injure her beauty. Being a satyr, and therefore not
so sensitive upon the point of personal attractions as the goddess,
Marsyas set himself to learn the use of the instrument, and, in course
of time, grew so proficient that he challenged Apollo to a contest,
the god to use the lyre, the satyr the pipe. Apollo played a simple
melody, but Marsyas, following, executed a number of variations upon
this tune which compelled the judge to admit that in the first test
victory belonged to the satyr. Apollo then played again, accompanying
himself with the voice, and this Marsyas could not surpass; he
objected, however, on the ground that the voice and the lyre were two
instruments, while he was using only one. Apollo retorted that Marsyas
used both mouth and fingers for his pipe, hence he had the right to use
his mouth as well. The judges agreed with Apollo and the second test
was awarded to the god. But when the third test came Apollo scorned to
use the voice, and burst out in such a strain of melody as even Mount
Olympus had never heard before, the music of the immortals which no
satyr could hope to compass. Marsyas was flayed alive by Apollo as a
sufficient declaration of his defeat.

Thus the myth. It has its reflection in fact. For the ancient national
music of the lyre prevailed in Greece over the foreign Phrygian double
flute and the latter was regarded as a barbarian instrument, finding
its place only in vintage festivals, bacchanalian orgies, and, finally,
into the chorus of the tragic drama.

The lyre and the aulos, then, are the arch-types of the two great
classes of instruments--string and wind--which the Greeks used.
That there were a great number of varieties we gather from their
representation on monuments, vases, etc., and from the writings of
classic authors. Taking the string instruments as the oldest--for
mythical references to these go farthest back into antiquity--we find
first the lyre, and then its more graceful sister, the _kithara_ (or
_phorminx_), which were in common use in the north, on the islands and
the coast of Asia Minor. The lyre, originally made of the shell of a
tortoise, had an arched soundbox, while the kithara’s was flat; the
latter’s body was larger and more angular in shape. Both had originally
four, subsequently seven, strings, which were added to in later periods
till eleven was reached. These were fastened in a base at the lower
end of the instrument and ran across a 'bridge’ to the cross-piece
connecting the two arms, which acted also as tuning peg. The sounding
board had in the centre a resonance opening.

        [Illustration: THE CONTEST BETWEEN APOLLO AND MARYSAS.]
               _Ancient Greek frieze after Baumeister._

The Asiatic form of kithara became popular throughout Greece as
a consequence of the work of Terpander’s school and attained the
leading rank as the Greek concert instrument, employed by professional
players exclusively, while the primitive lyre was relegated to the
use of amateurs and domestic purposes. With its full complement
of strings music in all the modes could be played upon it without
especially tuning the individual strings. The relative pitch of the
string was based on the Dorian mode in the middle octave (e to e´),
but for greater brilliancy of effect virtuosi preferred the higher
transpositions, so that finally the instrument was accordingly tuned as
follows:

                         [Illustration: Music]

By special technical practice the higher octave (flageolet) could also
be produced. The manner of playing was probably as follows: The left
arm held the instrument close to the body by means of a sling, while
the right, by means of a plectrum with arrow-shaped ends, plucked the
strings from the outside. This left the fingers of the left hand free
to touch the strings from the body side. It is thought that this was
done as accompaniment (in unison) to the voice, while the right played
the solo selections, interludes, etc.

Most prominent among other forms of string instruments was the
_magadis_, a larger harp-like instrument with twenty strings, which was
played without plectrum, and, if we read ancient writers correctly, in
octaves.[42] Likewise the _barbiton_ (similar to the _kithara_), the
harp-like _pectis_, _simikion_, and _epigoneion_, and the lute-like
_pandura_ and _nabla_ (of archaic origin), were played without
plectrum, as indeed the lyre and kithara were also played in earliest
times. The harp, though known to the Greeks, was not used by them.
There only remains to mention the monochord, an instrument of one
string stretched over a soundbox, which could be arbitrarily divided by
a movable 'bridge.’ It was used purely for experimental purposes, as
we have already seen. Later it was constructed with several strings in
order to demonstrate the consonance of intervals; in modern times it
became the basis from which the clavichord, and finally the piano, was
evolved.

The chief Greek _wind_ instrument, as already indicated, was the
_aulos_, or flute--not, however, a flute in the modern sense, but a
reed instrument resembling an oboe, and having a double reed. It was
often used in pairs, of equal intonation, but of different size, the
larger instrument playing the soli, the smaller the accompaniment. The
aulos had as many as fifteen or sixteen holes, but not sufficient to
produce all the chromatic degrees of the scale, which, as well as the
different _genera_, were produced by half stops and similar technical
manipulations. There were also rings attached near the holes, by the
turning of which the pitch could be altered. Overblowing was also
practised, by means of a small hole (syrinx) near the mouthpiece. There
was a whole family of _auloi_ corresponding to the varying ranges of
the human voice. The entire compass from the lowest note of the bass
aulos to the highest of the soprano was three octaves. It is recorded
that _auloi_ were tuned differently according to the various modes,
and that players were usually equipped with an entire set of seven.


Other wind instruments used by the Greeks were the Libyan flute
(played sideways), the _elymos_, and the _syrinx_--the familiar
'pipes of Pan’--consisting of a number of rush reeds of different
lengths fastened together with wax. Trumpets, straight (_sapinx_) and
crooked horn-like (_keras_), were also common as instruments of war
and priestly ceremony. The former variety even attained the rank of a
contest (agonistic) instrument. A female exponent of Sapinx playing is
recorded in the person of Aglais, the daughter of Megalocles.

                   *       *       *       *       *

A few words will suffice to indicate the nature of Greek musical
notation. Instrumental notation differed from vocal and was of earlier
origin. Characters of archaic form (Phœnician) were used to indicate
the notes, though not in a definite alphabetic order. They are also
used in inverted or distorted forms to indicate minute variations, i.
e., the three notes of a Pyknon (the short step of the tetrachord) were
indicated by a certain sign in different positions, thus: [music sign],
[music sign], and [music sign]. In vocal notation the regular Greek
alphabet was employed from Α to Ω to represent the notes of the middle
octave (including every step necessary to the production of the various
modes and _genera_.) The higher octave was indicated by an '_octava_
sign.’

Rhythm was usually not noted, being determined by the metre of the
verse, but a code which determined the proportion of sound duration
was sometimes used. The norm or unit in that system was denoted by the
absence of any sign, its double by [music sign], its triple by [music
sign], quadruple by [music sign], and quintuple by [music sign]. Rests
were indicated thus: [music sign]. All of these signs were, like our
modern notes, set _over the text_. While the system was thoroughly
worked out in its technical details, its cumbersomeness would suggest
that in practice it was of less use than in theoretical exposition. No
wonder, then, that few compositions were, as far as we know, actually
written down, and of those only six are preserved to us. These are as
follows:

  1. The beginning of the first Pythic ode of Pindar.

  2. Three hymns of Mesomedes ('To the Muse,’ 'To Helios,’ and 'To
  Nemesis’) discovered by Vincenzo Galilei (see Chap. IX).

  3. Some small instrumental exercises, analyzed by Bellermann (1841).

  4. The Epitaph of Seikilos (discovered 1883).

  5. Two complete Apollo Hymns of the second century B. C., found
  chiselled in stone in the Athenian treasury at Delphi.

  6. A Fragment of the first _Stasimon_ from Euripides’ 'Orestes’
  (found 1892).

  The Hymn to the Muse by Mesomedes (No. 2) is reproduced at the end of
  this article.

This necessarily brief sketch will have acquainted the reader with
the most salient facts concerning Greek music--lost as an art, but
perpetuated as a science. Many volumes have been written upon the
subject, but much more than these facts cannot possibly be adduced
except by long and arduous study. For our present purpose may it
suffice to convey to the reader that here for the first time music has
attained the dignity of an art, with all its æsthetic, emotional and
moral significance, with its complicated theory, its sophisticated
technique, consciously employed to give pleasure and to uplift the
mind of man. Mechanical limitations and peculiar conditions prevented
the development of this art in the modern sense, but its theory has
without doubt given a definite direction to modern music. Not only the
musical teaching of the early church fathers, but the speculations of
theorists down to comparatively modern times, and the principles of
the Renaissance masters were based on those of the Greeks, however much
misunderstood. Perhaps it is not out of place to recall, in conclusion,
how modern composers have been inspired by the stories of classic
antiquity and beguiled by the music of Greek poetry. Modern music,
disconnected from all that may have been the music of the older nations
of antiquity, is a lineal descendant of the music of the Greeks.

            [Illustration: HYMN TO THE MUSE by MESOMEDES.]

    Άειδε Μούσά μοι φίλη,
    μολπής δ’ εμής κατάρχου,
    αύρη δε σων απ’ άλσεων
    εμάς φρένας δονείτω.
    Καλλιόπεια σοφά,
    Μουσών προκαθαγέτι τερπνών,
    και σοφέ Μυστοδότα,
    Λατούς γόνε, Δήλιε, Παιάν,
    ευμενείς πάρεστέ μοι.

                                                          C. S.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[32] Imitation ([Greek: monsikhê]) is a term commonly applied to the
fine arts.

[33] Harmony here does not mean polyphony or heterophony, as will be
seen hereafter.

[34] These poet-singers, indeed, _chanted_ their verses--perhaps not
to fixed melodies, but according to a recognized style of cantilation
which varied according to the different species of poetry, and was
emulated by the readers or singers other than the bards themselves.

[35] The word harmony ([Greek: harmonia]) was used by the Greeks in
the sense of melody and was the name given to the so-called octave
species or modes of which we shall speak hereafter. (Cf. Aristotle’s
'Harmonics.’)

[36] The statement of Aristotle, that certain low-pitched modes suited
the failing voices of old men, is misleading, as it assumes a fixed
pitch for the modes, which at least in classic times they had not, and
which was not their essential quality. It may be that in Aristotle’s
time the ethical conception of modes had been lost and that they had
all become practically transposition scales. But the theory advanced
by H. S. Macran in 'Grove’s Dictionary,’ which gives each mode an
'intrinsic’ pitch character according to the high or low position of
its _mese_, or tonic, is interesting. According to the laws of Greek
music, this 'tonic’ must be the predominating or constantly recurring
note in every melody.

[37] The b♭ is known to have been the first chromatic string added
to the kithara, or lyre, thus enabling players to use several modes
without tuning the instrument especially for them.

[38] The distinction of an older and younger Olympus which was made by
Pratinas, the Greek poet and historian, is no longer credited. At any
rate, the older (whom Pratinas places before the Trojan War) is the
one to whom the chief merits accrue, and therefore the only one to be
considered here.

[39] During the first auletic contest in connection with these
festivals, which took place in 586 B. C., a certain Sakadas was awarded
the victor’s wreath for the performance of another _Nomos Pythicos_,
composed by himself, which, from all accounts, may be looked upon as a
sort of program music, describing the event in realistic manner.

[40] The word Pæan (Gr. [Greek: paian]) originally signified physician.
It was the name given to a choral address, usually of thanksgiving, to
Apollo or Diana.

[41] Dithyrambic composition continued, of course, to flourish beside
the drama, as did also the writing of nomes, but both were corrupted by
the introduction of solo interpolations (in the case of the former) and
choral numbers (in the latter), so that they finally approached each
other in a sort of cantata form.

[42] Hence the expression 'magadizing’ for singing in octaves.




                               CHAPTER V
                         THE AGE OF PLAIN-SONG

  Music in the Roman empire--Sources of early Christian music; the
  hymns of St. Ambrose--Hebrew traditions--Psalmody, responses,
  antiphons; the liturgy; the Gregorian tradition; the antiphonary
  and the gradual; sequences and tropes--Ecclesiastical modes; early
  notation.


                                   I

From the point of view of the musical historian the dominant note of
civilization at the opening of the Christian era was the all-pervading
influence of Hellenistic culture. It is well to remember, however,
that this influence was more in form than in content. Greek art was
no longer the pure, bright flame that lighted the world so gloriously
in the age of Pericles. Its blaze had become dull and lifeless;
elements foreign to the fuel that had fed it in the classic age had
been brought to it by the softly sensuous fingers of the Orient and
the rough, unsympathetic hands of Rome. Hellenic art at the opening
of the Christian era resembled that of Periclean Athens as little as
the pseudo-classic architecture of the Italian Renaissance resembled
the crowning glories of the Acropolis. The serene, clear, intellectual
æstheticism of Greece had degenerated into the coarse sensuality of
the pagan Latins and the sterile dilettantism of the theistic peoples
of the Orient. Neither Latins nor Orientals were at all capable of
understanding or assimilating it. Its joyous, essentially Aryan
paganism was as foreign to the Semitic temperament as its lucid
intellectuality was impossible to the turgid Roman mind.

We have then at the beginning of the Christian era a veneer of Greek
culture covering a gross materialism in the West and a decadent, mystic
symbolism in the East. Into this situation was born the new cult with
its utter negation of everything the ancient world, pagan or theistic,
held precious. Christianity from the beginning was at war with its
environment--Greek, Roman, and Hebraic. Though its roots lay in Jewish
philosophy, its pessimistic attitude toward the world, its view of life
as an evil, poisoned condition, was directly opposed to the spirit
of a people with whom, as Renan says, 'the evils of life were never
chronic complaints’ ('_pour qui les maux de la vie ne deviennent pas
des maladies chroniques_’). Its opposition to all the teachings and
practices of paganism was, of course, absolute and uncompromising.

Nevertheless, Christianity absorbed from its environment the material
of its ritual as inevitably as the tree draws nurture from the soil
and atmosphere that underlies and surrounds it. That it absorbed those
elements unconsciously, even unwillingly, goes a long way to explain
our ignorance of the manner in which the liturgical music of the
Church developed. It seems practically certain that among the most
devout early Christians music was looked upon with suspicion, and its
use, especially in connection with the worship of God, was probably
discouraged as far as possible. Even as late as the fourth century we
find a Syrian monk warning one of his brethren that we should approach
God with sighs and tears, with reverence and humility, and not with
song. When, through the inevitable pressure of environment, music had
become an integral part of the Christian ritual, the Church fathers,
with characteristic _naïveté_, completely ignored the source from which
it was drawn, and, in what is obviously simple faith, attributed to
it a divine origin. 'Our singing,’ says St. John Chrysostom, 'is only
an echo, an imitation of that of the angels. Music was invented in
heaven. Around and above us sing the angels. If man is musical it is by
a revelation of the Holy Ghost; the singer is inspired from on high.’
St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, Justin Martyr, St. Basil, St. Benedict,
and other early fathers talk in the same strain. John de Muris, more
historical and less mystical, can find no more definite origin for
liturgical music than a vague tradition.[43]

With those who were practically eye-witnesses to the growth of early
Church music so serenely blind to the influences that determined its
course, the task of the modern historian in reconstructing those
influences becomes practically impossible. If, however, we understand
clearly the conditions under which liturgical music took shape we can
formulate a theoretical sketch of its history, which is probably not
far from the truth. In this connection it will help us considerably if
we remember that during the early centuries of the Christian era the
Roman church was far from being the dominant and unifying factor which
it later became, and that the great institution to which we are wont
to refer simply as 'the church’ resulted from the confluence of many
independent streams, and not from the expansion of any single one.
These streams were divided, so to speak, between two main watersheds,
one of which was Asia Minor and the other Italy. In Asia Minor the
church was surrounded by a Semitic civilization shot through with
Hellenic elements; in Italy it grew up in an environment of Græco-Roman
culture.

It might be well to take a glance here at the state of music in
Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. Roman music previous
to the conquest of Greece (146 B. C.) had borrowed its forms from
the Etruscans and the Greeks. Etruscan influences were probably
predominant in the early centuries of the Republic.[44] The nature of
these influences is not known to us. It would seem that the Etruscans
were originally a Greek race, and the fountain-head of their musical
art was consequently Hellenic. But they were, as their vases show, a
race dowered with artistic ideals and genuine creative impulses, and
they must have modelled their musical inheritance into something new,
characteristic, and beautiful. But, if we are to believe Dionysius,
Strabo, and other Roman writers who have touched on the subject,
we must conclude that the Romans merely imitated such music of the
Etruscans as was useful for religious and military purposes, choosing,
presumably, the cruder forms of the art. We may accept this conclusion
all the more readily since we know that the Romans, even down to
Imperial times, remained obtuse and obtrusive Philistines.

It does not seem that the Romans borrowed much directly from Greece
until after Greece became a Roman province. They were not, in fact,
interested at all in art. But, after repeated conquests had made them
rich and luxurious, they began to cultivate--or rather patronize--art
as a sort of fashionable and expensive luxury. The result was a gradual
growth, among the leisure classes in Rome, of a very real literary
and æsthetic taste. By the time of Augustus Rome was able to produce
such excellent imitators of Greek models as Virgil, Horace, Ovid,
and Catullus. In music, however, the imperial people never rose so
high. Hellenic music had already degenerated when Rome fell under
its influence. 'Besides pantomime with chorus,’ says Gevaert, 'Greek
musicians brought to Rome only the instrumental solo and the song with
kithara or lyre accompaniment.’[45] This branch of the art flourished
apace in Rome, where, however, like Italian opera in later centuries,
it became distorted into a craze for meaningless virtuosity. We know
less about the music itself than we know about the famous kithara
players who were the favorites of emperors and were accorded the honors
and dignity of princes. History speaks to us about Tigellius, the
friend of Augustus, and Mesomedes, of Crete, the intimate of Hadrian.
Nero gained a humorous immortality by his pretensions as a singer
and kithara player. The story of his journey through Greece, where
he won the kithara prize at the Olympic games and defeated in public
competition the most famous performers in every city he visited, is
surely one of the most ludicrous narratives in all history.

Until the third century A. D. the kitharœdic chant was purely Hellenic,
as we might surmise from the names of its most famous exponents, such
as Terpnos, Menecrates, Diodorus, Chrysogones, Pollion, Echion, and
Glaphyros. In the second century Ptolemy, writing his 'Harmonics,’
founded his system of tones and modes on the practice of the kithara
and lyre players.[46] Practically all of the pieces which have come
down to us from the Græco-Roman period, and which we have noted in the
last chapter, belong to the literature of the kithara. The kitharœdic
chants were narratives in the style of Timotheus, or lyrics, chiefly
hymns to some divinity. These compositions were not in strophic form.
The melody was divided into sections of unequal length (_commata_)
and varied more or less from one end of the poem to the other. Until
the beginning of the fourth century the texts were usually in Greek.
The Latin kitharœdic songs, such as those of Horace and Catullus,
were scarcely heard except at banquets and private reunions. Greek
was, indeed, the prevailing musical language, as we may learn from
Vitruvius, who prefaces to the chapter on music in his work on
Architecture a warning that musical theory is practically a sealed book
to those who do not know Greek.[47] After the removal of the seat of
empire to Byzantium in 330 A. D., the use of Greek disappeared, and
with it the use of musical notation by means of Greek letters. The
transmission of music then became oral and the art of the kithara song
and its accompaniments gradually vanished.[48]

                                  II

Now the founders of Christianity were Jews, and Oriental influences
were never absent from the church, even in Rome. Furthermore the
apostles of Christianity in Rome were humble, untutored men, and
the majority of their converts were drawn from the same class--the
class which in all ages has naturally taken refuge in any creed which
contradicts the views and practices of its masters and oppressors.
Christ’s message of hope to the humble in spirit came home first to
the humble in material possessions. '_Deposuit potentes de sede et
exaltavit humiles._’ For three centuries the Christians in Italy
were subjected to constant oppression and often to fiercely violent
persecution. Their rites were performed in dark and secret places
and, presumably, without any noise that could be avoided. Under the
circumstances one is tempted to conclude that music was severely
ignored by the first Christians in Rome. They had every reason to
avoid it. It was likely to attract undesirable attention; it was
associated primarily in their minds with the sensual orgies of their
pagan oppressors, and, finally, the first Christians themselves were
not of the class likely to possess much musical culture. Nevertheless,
it is practically certain that they intoned some of their services
in a simple, discreet way. They must have chanted their psalms, at
least, probably as the Hebrews did. This chant, it would perhaps be
safe to assume, was responsorial and consisted of a low, more or less
monotonous, recitative.

By the time the Edict of Milan (313 A. D.) struck off the fetters
that bound Christianity the Church had already gathered to her bosom
many of the most influential and cultured Roman citizens. Their
advent must have changed gradually the whole complexion of the Roman
church. With their cultivated taste for art they probably furnished
the prime impulse toward the æstheticism which gradually came to be
a distinguishing feature of the church ritual. After the Edict of
Milan the church jumped almost at a bound to a position of social and
political influence which soon became one of social and political
predominance. The most influential of its members no longer came
from the lowly and oppressed, but from the rich and powerful. Every
reason that had operated against the use of music in the primitive
church had disappeared, and with it had disappeared for a time the
Oriental tendencies which the founders of the church had consciously or
unconsciously incorporated with it. There is little doubt that during
the third and fourth centuries Græco-Roman culture penetrated to the
innermost shrine of Western Christianity and remained an active agent
in the formulation of liturgical music long after the Orient had again
become a predominant influence through the removal of the seat of
empire to Byzantium.

It is unfortunately not within our power to indicate the point at
which the Græco-Roman kitharœdic chant began to influence Christian
religious music, nor do the relative proportions of a general history
permit us to study the question here. However, it is sufficient for
us to know that the kitharœdic chant was the direct ancestor of the
Christian hymnody in the West. 'Among various kinds of pieces of which
the Roman antiphonary is composed,’ says Gevaert, 'none is known by
literary documents to be so old as the strophic hymnody; from the
musical point of view it marks the transition from the vocal melopæia
of antiquity to the liturgical chant properly so called.’ We find this
transition fully accomplished in the hymns of St. Ambrose (d. 397), who
is unquestionably the most striking and influential figure in early
liturgical music. Gevaert aptly calls him the 'Terpander of Western
Christianity.’ His works are full of reference to music, many of which
are naïvely charming. For example, he writes: 'The angels praise the
Lord, the powers of heaven sing psalms unto him, and even before the
very beginning of the world the cherubim and seraphim sang with sweet
voice Holy, Holy, Holy!’ He mentions the music of the spheres and
recalls that it has been said the axle of heaven itself turned with a
perpetual sweet sound that might be heard in the uttermost parts of
the earth where there are certain secrets of Nature; that the wild
beasts and birds might be soothed with the delight of voices blending.
Even more practical, he points out that those things we wish well to
remember we are accustomed to sing, for that which is sung stays the
better in our memories. His hymns produced a great effect upon St.
Augustine, who wrote of them in his 'Confessions’ in terms almost
extravagant; and a whole century later Cassiodorus constantly cites St.
Ambrose and bears witness to the wide and everlasting nature of his
influence on Christian hymnody.

Six hymns which have come down to us are attributed with certainty to
this gifted saint. They are the _Deus creator omnium_, _Jam surgit
hora tertia_, _Æterne rerum conditor_, _Veni redemptor gentium_,
_Illuxit orbi_ _jam dies_, and _Bis ternas horas explicans_. Probably
also he was the author of _O lux beata Trinitas_, _Hic est dies verus
Dei_, _Splendor paternæ gloriæ_, and _Æterna Christi munera_. The
melodic forms of these hymns are borrowed directly from the Greeks and
Romans. Stripped of their melismas their primitive contours are easily
recognizable, and their structure is thoroughly in accord with the
modal theory of the classic Greeks. All of these hymns which seem to be
the most ancient belong to one of the principal kitharœdic modes--the
Dorian, Iastian, or Æolian. The Ambrosian hymns in the Dorian mode have
the same melodic texture as the hymn to Helios and the main part of the
song to the Muse (see pp. 126-127 above). Hymns after the manner of
Ambrose in the Iastian and Æolian modes are frequent in the Catholic
hymnody.[49]

The Græco-Roman complexion of the Ambrosian hymns is still further
evident in their metrical form. 'The old ecclesiastical hymns composed
in iambic dimeters and ascribed to Bishop Ambrose,’ says Riemann,
'are still firmly founded upon the antique art, as they respect
absolutely the quantity of the syllables and introduce long syllables
and short ones only where it is in accordance with the laws of classic
poetry.’[50] The eight syllable iambi of the Ambrosian verse became
extremely popular in ecclesiastical hymnody, and the Breviary, as
it is to-day, contains many hymns in that measure. But this was not
the only metrical form of classic Rome that became incorporated in
the liturgy of the Church. Vanantius Fortunatus in the sixth century
introduced the trochaic tetrameter, which was a favorite popular verse
among the ancient Romans, and still survives in the rhythm of the Roman
_saltarello_ and the Neapolitan _tarantella_. The elegant Sapphic
strophe, so dear to Latin lyricists, made its appearance subsequent
to the Carlovingian epoch. As long as Latin prosody remained dominant
the ecclesiastical hymns were more or less metrical, but as literary
Latin passed into desuetude these chants lost their isochronous rhythm.
At the beginning of the eighth century the vogue of metrical verse had
already passed. With it passed, too, the classic melopæia which had
gradually become enriched by accessory inflexions.[51]

There was quite a large school of hymn writers in the Ambrosian style,
among whom may be mentioned especially St. Augustine (350-430), St.
Paulinus of Nola (_ca._ 431), the Spanish poet Prudentius (fourth
century),[52] Sedulius (fifth century), Ennodius and Venantius
Fortunatus (sixth century). The style spread rapidly from Milan into
the different western provinces of the Roman empire. A text of the
time of Sidonius Apollinaris (second half of the fifth century) tells
us that at the feast of Christmas all the churches of Gaul and Italy
resounded to the hymn _Veni creator gentium_, and Rhabanus Maurus,
bishop of Mayence in the middle of the ninth century, tells us that the
Ambrosian hymns were then in use in all the churches of the West.[53]
Further proof of their wide prevalence is furnished by the rules of
St. Benedict and Aurelian of Arles (first half of sixth century). For
many centuries, however, they were frowned upon by Rome. The Council
of Braga (563) expressly excluded from the divine office all chants
in verse and all texts not taken from the sacred scriptures. Three
centuries later the deacon Amalarius, charged by Louis the Pious
with regulating the chants of the office for all the churches of the
Frankish empire, leaves hymns completely aside in conformity with the
usage of Rome at that time. In fact, the local rite of Rome had not yet
welcomed hymns as late as the beginning of the twelfth century.


                                  III

Priority is given to the Ambrosian hymns in this discussion, not
because they are the most ancient forms of liturgical chant, but
because they form the most easily demarcable point of transition
from Græco-Roman music to Christian ecclesiastical music. The most
ancient forms of the liturgy undoubtedly had their genesis in the
Orient. There, of course, the influence of Greek music was also
active, though to what extent it affected the Hebrew traditions we
cannot even surmise. We find, too, the vogue of the kitharœdic chant
even greater among the Roman citizens of the Orient than among the
inhabitants of Italy. The former carried their passion for this form
of expression to the extent of engraving the songs with their melodies
on funeral monuments. It may again be remarked, however, that the
first Christians were not of the class likely to be influenced easily
by extraneous culture. Acquainted with foreign music they undoubtedly
were. The apostles, for instance, speak of the Greek 'zither’ as a
familiar instrument.[54] But this acquaintance was in all probability
superficial. Humble and uneducated for the most part, those pioneers of
a new cult were of the sort with whom custom and tradition die hard.
They were reared in the atmosphere of the synagogue; and it must be
remembered that they were not iconoclasts of the Hebrew faith, but
rather professed reformers and purifiers of it. The Temple of Solomon,
the Ark of the Covenant, the patriarchs and prophets were subjects
as sacred to them as they were to older generations of the children
of Israel. Their quarrel was not with the Jews, but with such Jews
as refused to recognize their new king. While, therefore, they had
every reason for avoiding the music of the Pagan Greeks and Romans,
they had no reason whatever for abandoning that which had been handed
down to them from David. They certainly took over the texts of the Old
Testament psalmody, and it is a natural assumption that with them they
adopted the music to which these texts were sung. We may conjecture
with some plausibility that the psalmodic solo, responsorial chant, and
antiphonal chant--all ancient Hebrew liturgical forms--passed directly
from the Temple and Synagogue into the first Christian communities,
with such minor changes as may have been necessitated by the new ritual
and attendant upon the transference of its conduct from trained cantors
to untrained laymen.

The psalmodic solo has no special significance in the development of
the Christian liturgy. Of more importance is the responsorial chant,
which consists of a solo interrupted periodically by the voice of the
people.[55] It is very probable that this form of psalmody was in use
among the first Christians, though we have no direct evidence on the
point. We learn, however, from church historians that psalms were sung
in this fashion at Alexandria in the time of Bishop Athanasius in the
early part of the fourth century. The antiphonal chant, which is the
most interesting and important of liturgical forms, is of extreme
antiquity. David, we know, divided the singers of the Temple into two
choirs. Whether this form passed directly and without interruption
from the Temple and Synagogue into the religious services of the first
Christians we have no means of knowing. It was, however, adopted at
a very early date by Christian communities in the Orient. Eusebius,
bishop of Cesarea (third century) reproduces a text of Philo in which
occurs the following description: 'Suddenly all rose on both sides ...
and formed two choirs, men and women. Each choir chose its coryphee
and soloist ... then they sang to God hymns of different melodies
and metres, sometimes together and sometimes answering each other in
suitable manner.’ As showing the early expansion of this style of
singing throughout the Christian world we may quote from a letter of
St. Basil (fourth century) to the inhabitants of Nova Cesarea. 'The
people rise in the night,’ he writes, 'and go to the house of prayer;
when they have prayed they pass to the psalms. Sometimes they divide
into two alternate parts, sometimes a soloist sings and all answer;
and having thus passed the night in divers psalms they intone all
together, as one voice and one heart, the penitential psalm.... If
it is for this reason [the organization of the psalmody] you wish to
separate from me you must also separate from the Egyptians and Lybians,
from the inhabitants of Thebes, Palestine, Arabia, Phœnicia, Syria,
and the banks of the Euphrates--in a word, from all those who hold
in honor vigils and psalms performed in common.’ It may be remarked
that the antiphon originally was merely the alternate singing of two
choirs. Later it came to mean the solo refrain intoned by the high
priest before the biblical psalm or canticle and repeated by the choir
when the psalm or canticle is finished. According to the rules of St.
Benedict this solo refrain was intended to give (_imponere_) the melody
to the singers. Musically, says Gevaert, it forms the introduction
and finale of the psalmodic chant to which it is bound by a community
of mode. It probably took the place of an earlier instrumental
introduction and finale, as, for some reason or reasons upon which it
is idle to speculate, instruments were excluded from the services of
the primitive church.

It was in the monasteries of the East, of Syria and Egypt, that the
forms of the liturgy first began to take shape, and in Antioch and
Alexandria there developed schools of singing which were to the Greek
churches of the East what the _schola cantorum_ was to the Latin
churches of the seventh and eighth centuries. In the fourth century,
as we may gather from the canons of the council of Laodicea, they had
already trained singers in the churches of Syria, and St. Augustine
speaks of the singing of St. Athanasius as if the latter must have had
a careful schooling in the art. Silvia, the Gallic pilgrim, mentions
the singing of antiphons and psalms in the church at Alexandria
(385-88). In the fifth century, as we learn from a letter of Sidonius
Apollinaris, Syrian cantors were used in Italian churches.

The prejudice against Pagan music, which must have excluded all Greek
or Græco-Roman influences from the Christian services of apostolic
times, proved hard to kill. We find it cropping out even in Clement of
Alexandria, who admits only 'modest and decent harmonies’ and excludes
harmonies that are 'chromatic and light, such as are used in the
lascivious orgies of courtesans.’ By that time, however, the prejudice
apparently had become discriminating. The extraordinary popularity of
the kitharœdic songs was bound to have its influence. The heresiarchs
were not slow to recognize the hold of profane melodies on the people,
and composed dogmatic chants to the melodies of popular songs, much
in the manner of the Salvation Army of our day. Arius, for instance,
the great heresiarch who was condemned by the council of Nicea (325),
reproduced in his _Thalia_ the lascivious musical forms of the Ionian
Sotades--to the great scandal of Athanasius. St. Ephraem (320-79),
adopting the same idea, turned the Syrians from the songs of Harmonius
by writing hymns in the Syrian language on the same melodies, and
Gregory of Nazianza (328-89) composed canticles to take the place of
the heterodox psalms of the Apollinarists.

While probably there was never any break in the communication between
the churches of the East and those of the West, it is likely that they
developed their liturgical forms more or less independently until about
the middle of the fourth century. Then the floodgates of Oriental
influence seem to have been opened by St. Hilarius and St. Ambrose. The
former, who was bishop of Poitiers, is said to have introduced into
his church the antiphonal and other forms of psalmody then practised
in the churches of Asia, where he had lived in exile for four years
(356-60). He is supposed to have introduced the Syrian hymnody into
the Western Church. '_Hymnorum carmine floruit primus_,’ Isidor of
Seville said of him. He is credited with having been the pioneer of the
metrical style of hymn known as Ambrosian, though the three hymns from
his pen which have been preserved hardly bear out this contention. They
are crude in rhythm and not likely to have served as models for the
cultured Ambrose. From all available evidence one is impelled to award
to St. Ambrose the honor of having first introduced antiphonal psalmody
to the West.[56] Indeed there is little doubt that he was the real
founder of the Latin chant in general. Ecclesiastical songs, as we have
already seen, had already developed, both in the East and in the West,
to something like a formal art; but Ambrose seems to have been the
first to gather together the various elements composing it and lay the
foundations of a strictly ordered liturgy. From Milan the antiphonal
psalmody spread through all the churches of the West. Even Rome,
which until the twelfth century excluded the Ambrosian hymns, adopted
antiphonal psalmody in the time of Pope Celestine I (422-32).[57]
It is to Rome that one must look for the subsequent development
of liturgical song; though until the time of the great schism the
formative influences were more Byzantine than Latin. St. Leo the Great
(440-61) established in the immediate vicinity of the Basilica of St.
Peter a monastic community especially entrusted with the service of the
canonical hours, under the patronage of Saints John and Paul, and this
was followed in the second half of the seventh century by the community
of St. Martin and, under Gregory III (731-41), by that of St. Stephen.


                                  IV

The complete collection of liturgical chants upon which Rome finally
set her approval has been called for ages the _Antiphonarium Romanum_;
and this, as Rome became the head of the organization of the church,
was adopted by all other branches in Western Europe as the Bible, so to
speak, of ecclesiastical song. It was compiled from four collections
of which the Ambrosian was one, the others being the Gregorian, the
Gallican, and the Mozarabian or Spanish. The principal manuscripts in
these collections have been reproduced in facsimile by the Benedictine
monks of Solesmes in their invaluable _Paléographie musicale_ (1889
_et seq._). To quote from the introduction to this magnificent series:
'The Gregorian, Ambrosian, Mozarabian, and the little which remains
to us of the Gallican _dialects_, seem in fact to have one common
source, to have been derived from the same musical language: the chant
of the Latin church in its cradle. That is at least the opinion to
which we have been brought by the examination of the manuscripts in
the libraries of our own monasteries and of those which we have been
able to consult elsewhere. Concerning the similarities we can say
modes and rhythms are the same in the four varieties of chant. The
melodic forms present the same general character.... Moreover, in these
diverse musical dialects certain melodic types or airs constantly recur
which are always perfectly recognizable, in spite of the differences
resulting from the peculiarities of style or character proper to each
of them. Among the Ambrosian and Gregorian these mutual borrowings,
these common heritages are especially frequent.’

The history of these collections is extremely obscure. No manuscripts
are extant of earlier date than the twelfth century. As to who actually
compiled the _Antiphonarium Romanum_, a long-standing and generally
accepted tradition ascribed it to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604),
but the validity of the tradition has been attacked by a number of
reputable and authoritative modern historians, conspicuous among
whom is Gevaert. Without entering into the merits of the controversy
we shall briefly indicate the earliest sources of information on
liturgical collections, following Gevaert on the Gregorian tradition,
not in _parti pris_, but because the tradition has been so long and
so strongly intrenched that it is more in need of examination than of
support.

The first mention of a collection of chants occurs about the year 760
when Pope Paul I sent to King Pepin an Antiphonal and a Responsal.[58]
In the time of Charlemagne there existed a missal and breviary called
Gregorian, as we gather from a letter addressed to the emperor by
Pope Hadrian. This is the earliest mention we find of the Gregorian
tradition, and it is not very enlightening. The first writer to give
us much information about the liturgy is Amalarius, who was deacon of
Metz under Louis the Pious. Aurelian of Réomé (_ca._ 859) classes the
melodies according to the order of the eight ecclesiastical modes,
and Regino, Abbé of Prum, toward the end of the same century gives
us in his _Tonarius_ an extended catalogue of anthems and responses,
accompanied by a neumatic notation. We find again a hazy reference to
Gregory by Walafrid Strabo under Louis the Debonair, and it is only
when we come to the life of St. Gregory, written by John the Deacon
about 882, that we find an explicit and unequivocal ascription of the
existing collection of liturgical chants to that pope.[59]

The scarcity of references to the Gregorian tradition among writers
prior to John the Deacon is curious. Isidor of Seville and the
Venerable Bede, both of whom occupied themselves much with the liturgy,
are silent on the point; so is the _Liber Pontificalis_. Gregory’s
own writings are singularly lacking in references to music. His only
utterance on the subject that has been preserved to us is the decree
of the Synod of 595 in which he condemns the tendency of the priests
to be more preoccupied with the effect of their voices than with the
import of what they sing, and orders that they confine themselves
thenceforth by reciting the Gospel in the celebration of the mass and
leave the singing to sub-deacons and clerics of inferior grade. This
would not of itself imply any great devotion on Gregory’s part to
liturgical music, though the necessity of training clerics of inferior
grade to sing the services might have suggested the founding of the
_Schola Cantorum_ which is traditionally ascribed to him. It is pointed
out by Gevaert that the _Antiphonarius Gregorianus_ does not fit the
ecclesiastical calendar of the time of St. Gregory, but belongs to
the liturgical usage of Rome about the year 750.[60] Duchesne credits
the editing of the Gregorian missal to Pope Hadrian during the first
years of Charlemagne’s reign. The name Gregorian may have reference
to Gregory II (715-31) or, more probably, to Gregory III. It is a
fact that until the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth
century the churches did not open on Friday, and it was not allowed to
celebrate mass on that day, because it coincided with the Pagan feast
of Jupiter (_Jovis Dies_). Even as late as the end of the sixth century
the celebration of this festival was so common that it was solemnly
condemned by the Council of Narbonne (589). By the eighth century,
however, the last remains of Paganism had so completely disappeared
that the prohibition of Friday services was removed by Pope Gregory
II, who ordained the celebration of the sacred rites on the Fridays of
Lent. Now the Gregorian Antiphonary contains a mass for each Friday
in Lent, while there is none in the Gelasian Missal of the seventh
century. If the mass is not a later interpolation, then the Gregorian
Antiphonary certainly could not have been compiled before the time of
Gregory II.

Many historical considerations lead Gevaert to credit the completion
and final formulation of liturgical chant to the Hellenic popes of the
seventh and eighth centuries. Following the end of the Gothic kingdom
and with the dominance of the Byzantine emperors begins the second
period of church music in the West, a period which shows every sign
of the Oriental influence so powerful at Rome under the rule of the
exarchs of Ravenna. This influence is apparent not only in the more
ornate form of the music, but in the frequent use of the Greek language
and in the importation of feasts foreign to the Roman rite. In the
seventh century four of the most ancient feasts of the Virgin--the
Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, and Nativity--were brought
from the Orient, and from the same epoch dates the adoption at Rome
of the feast called the Exaltation of the Cross, which originated in
the Oriental church. 'By the seventh century,’ says Gevaert, 'we are
in the presence of an advanced art, conscious of its principles, with
rules and formulas for each class of composition.’ Skilled interpreters
had been developed by the _Schola Cantorum_, and these, together with
the Syrian monks who fled to Italy after the Mussulman conquest, were
the real authors of the responses of the nocturnal office and the true
chants of the mass. The popes of the seventh century, most of whom
were themselves versed in the _cantilena romana_, were particularly
solicitous about the beauty and order of the liturgy. To the eleven
popes of Hellenic origin who held the chair of St. Peter between
678 and 752 is probably due the final development and perfection of
liturgical forms. Chief among them was Agathon (678-681), who seems
to have regulated or fixed definitely the texts of what in the eighth
century was called the Responsal, or actual Antiphonary, containing
the complete repertory of the office of the hours for the entire year.
The Venerable Bede says that Agathon sent the leader of the Basilica
singers to England to organize that part of the ecclesiastical service
according to the usage of Rome. Leo II, we learn from the papal
chronicles, was very learned in the sacred chant, as was also Sergius
II. The latter, our authority thinks, inspired the last work on the
Roman Gradual, and was the first to initiate the Roman singers in the
doctrine of the four double ecclesiastical modes, which later writers,
following the lead of Boethius, identified with the eight tonal steps
of Aristoxenus, falsely attributed to Ptolemy. The editing of that
part of the _Liber Antiphonarius_ which has become our Gradual was
probably due to the Syrian pope, Gregory III, who was very active in
the promotion of liturgical music.

The _Antiphonarium Romanum_, or complete collection of liturgical
chants of the church--consisting of several hundred pieces--is
divided into two distinct parts--the _Antiphonarium_ proper and the
_Gradual_. The former contains the offices of the canonical hours
(_cursus ecclesiasticus_), consisting of the responses, anthems, and
hymns reiterated day and night by religious communities. The custom
of reciting the office began among the monastic orders of the Orient
about the fourth century. Apparently it had its genesis in Antioch,
about 350, and soon spread to the other Greek churches. The pilgrim in
Silvia speaks of hearing the Vigils and other hours in the church of
Jerusalem (386), and Bishop Cassian of Autun found the hour of Prime
introduced at Bethlehem in 390. From Alexandria and Constantinople
the office passed to Milan and Rome. In the sixth century it was
organized somewhat as it is to-day. Cassiodorus (_ca._ 540) names seven
_synaxes_, or daily reunions, and a similar number is mentioned in the
rules of St. Benedict about the same time.

The _Gradual_ consists of the services of the mass, and contains the
anthems, responses, and hymns proper to these services. There are a few
fixed pieces, such as the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, _Sanctus_, _Agnus Dei_,
and _Credo_, constituting what is known as the Ordinary of the mass,
and besides these there are a large number which vary according to the
day and the name of the saint whose feast is celebrated. The chants
belonging to the Introit and Communion are antiphonal, while those
of the Gradual, Alleluja, Tractus, and Offertory are responsorial.
The _Gloria in excelsis_ is a sort of hymn. Besides the hymns of the
Ambrosian cycle, already spoken of, the Latin church adopted many
Oriental hymns of the seventh and eighth centuries. Fourteen hymns of
great age are still included in the Gradual, among them the _Pange
lingua_, attributed to Fortunatus, the _Vexilla regis_, and the _Veni
creator spiritus_, attributed to Charlemagne.

The hymns, anthems, and responses in the general repertory of church
songs appear under two distinct forms--simple melodies and ornate
melodies. The former, which are more or less syllabic, are used for all
the anthems in the _cursus ecclesiasticus_ and the responses belonging
to that part of it which forms the office of the day. The ornate style
is used for the anthems and responses of the mass and for the office
of the night. The responses of the Gradual, Tractus, and Alleluja are
musically the most interesting of the liturgical chants. They are not
so much an integral part of the sacrifice of the mass as they are a
sort of vocal intermezzo for solo and chorus, allowing the display of
considerable art, both in technique and expression.

A peculiar form of composition which first appears in the liturgy
after the ninth century is the _sequence_ or _prosa_. Apparently this
originated in the East and grew out of the custom of writing words as
mnemonics under the syllables of the word Alleluja.[61] Gradually it
became of such importance that it was detached from the Alleluja and
made an independent form. The first examples of the sequence which
appear in the Latin church are furnished by Notker Balbulus (830-912),
who was responsible for developing it to the proportions of an
independent form. Indeed he has been called its inventor. An ancient
Irish authority, quoted in the Book of Lismore, says, 'Notker, Abbot
of St. Gall’s, invented sequences, and Alleluja after them in the form
in which they are.’[62] Among the most famous followers of Notker in
the composition of sequences may be mentioned Tutilo or Tuathal (d.
915), an Irish monk of St. Gall’s, Wipo, and Adam de Saint-Victor. The
council of Trent suppressed all sequences except five, which are still
used by the church. These are the _Victimæ pascali laudes_ of Wipo; the
_Lauda Sion Salvatorem_ of St. Thomas Aquinas; the _Dies Iræ_ of Thomas
de Celano; the _Stabat Mater_ of Jacques de Benedictis, and the _Veni
Sancte Spiritus_.

Another peculiar form, practically the antithesis of the sequence in
its origin, is the trope, which consists of the dilation of the musical
or the literary text by the interjection of complementary phrases.
This--at least at first--was probably done to avoid monotony. For
instance, instead of singing _Kyrie eleison_ nine times in succession,
it was sung as follows:

    '_Kyrie_ cuncti potens genitor Deus, omni creator _eleison_--fons
       et origo boni pie luxque perennis, _eleison_.
    _Kyrie_ salvicet pietas tua nos, bone rector, _eleison_,’ etc.

                                    (Tutilo, _Cod. S. Gall_, 484.)

All parts of the mass, from the Introit to the Communion, have been
decorated with tropes. There has been compiled a list of seventy-eight
tropes for the _Kyrie_ alone. Like the sequence the trope developed
from an accessory function to an independent form which at one time was
practised with much assiduity.


V

Whether the musical theory of the ecclesiastical chants prior to the
fifth century--apart from the Ambrosian hymns--was influenced more by
Roman or Oriental traditions is a moot point. The question, however,
is not vital, as the real founder of the church system of modes, the
Pythagorean philosopher Boethius (fifth century), was professedly an
imitator of the Greek theorists. Boethius speaks of the ancients with
something like veneration, and takes pride in writing like a Greek,
after the fashion of Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Nichomachus,
Philolaus, and Ptolemy. He is a mathematician rather than a musician.
He congratulates Ptolemy on having ignored the testimony of the ear and
condemns the practice of music as interfering with the just and logical
consideration of theory. Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville speak in
somewhat the same fashion. Boethius is the authority for a long line of
church musicians, including Hucbald, Guido, Englebert, Jean de Muris,
Adam de Fulda, and Alcuin. The mathematical view of music fathered
by him gained such prevalence that in the curriculum of mediæval
universities music was placed among the mathematical sciences.

We cannot do more here than briefly indicate the tone system used in
the church after the liturgy had been definitely formulated, without
going into the question of its earlier evolution. The system of modes
was professedly founded on the tetrachordal species of the Greeks (see
Chap. IV, p. 112), but with an obvious misunderstanding of the Greek
system. At first only four forms were recognized, namely, the so-called
authentic (from [Greek: ], to govern) modes of St. Ambrose. According
to tradition St. Gregory added to these four 'plagal’ (from [Greek:
plagios], oblique). At any rate before the eleventh century there were
eight accepted church modes, four 'authentic’ modes, and four 'plagal’
or derived modes. Later theorists taught the existence of fourteen
different scales. Two of these were rejected as 'impure’; the other
twelve remained in use for centuries, and were known by the names of
their Greek prototypes, but these names, too, were misapplied, as will
be seen from the following table, where the octave D-d corresponding to
the Phrygian species of the Greeks is named Dorian, and vice versa the
octave F-f (Greek mixolydian) has become the Lydian, and so forth. The
difference between authentic and plagal modes was chiefly one of range
and emphasis. For example, in every mode two tones were considered,
and were, as a matter of fact, of predominant importance; the _final_
or note on which the piece ended, somewhat analogous to our tonic or
key-note, and the _dominant_, the note most frequently touched in the
course of the melody, the centre of gravity, so to speak, about which
the melody moved. In the authentic modes the melody never sank below
the final except in cadence, where it might take the note immediately
below the final and rise by one step to the close; and the dominant
was, like our dominant, in the middle of the scale. In the plagal
modes, on the other hand, the melody wandered freely as low as a fourth
below the final, which thus was near the middle of the melodic range;
and the dominant was a third below the dominant of the corresponding
authentic mode. Whenever the dominant fell on B, C was substituted
(indicated by _N.B._ in the table) and in the rejected Locrian G was
substituted for F.

Each authentic mode had its related plagal. The final of the
ecclesiastical Dorian mode was D.[63] The range of a melody written
in this mode was limited to notes which may be represented on the
pianoforte by the white keys between D and d, including the two D’s
and, for the cadence, the C below the lower. The melody would centre
about A and come to end on D. The related plagal mode, called the
Hypodorian, had the same final, D, but the range of a melody in this
mode was from the A below to the A above the final, centering about the
dominant, F. The so-called relaxed modes which are frequently met with
varied likewise from the authentic modes in range which in such modes
might be extended to a third below the final. The dominant remained
the same and the slight extension of range hardly altered the _ethos_
or character of the authentic mode from which it thus technically
varied.

                   [Illustration: AUTHENTIC MODES.]

                     [Illustration: PLAGAL MODES.]

The modes were in as far as possible strictly adhered to, but the
occurrence of certain intervals difficult to sing and not wholly
pleasant to the ear (notably the augmented fourth, or tritone,[64]
from F to B), led to modifications or, as we should say, chromatic
alterations. B-flat, for instance, was substituted for B whenever the
interval from F to B occurred; and later, in the development of part
singing, many other alterations were found necessary. Marks indicating
such alterations were seldom written in the score, and singers were
specially trained to alter intervals at sight, according to the
elaborate rules of the practice called _musica ficta_, or 'false music.’

We have already adverted to the gradual decline in the use of the Greek
language at Rome and the incidental passing from the minds and the
memories of men of the alphabetical system of notation which had been
inherited from the Greeks. It is not quite clear, however, how the
Oriental church, which used Greek until a comparatively late period and
even introduced that language into the liturgy of the Latin church,
could have absolutely ignored the Greek system of notation. Yet such
appears to be the case. As far as we can discover, the early chants
of the church, both in the East and in the West, were handed down
_viva voce_, and not until about the eighth century do we find traces
of any attempt to devise a system of graphic aids to musical memory.
This system, as we first find it, was of a most elementary sort and
consisted merely of a few strokes and dashes placed above the text
of the song and serving apparently no other purpose than to indicate
in a general way the rising and falling inflections of the melody.
These signs are known as _neumes_, and from them gradually developed
our modern system of notation. The origin of the _neumes_ is quite
obscure. It would appear that at first they consisted merely of the
acute and grave accents borrowed from the Byzantine grammarians and
designed to indicate the occurrence of a rising and falling inflection
respectively. To them were gradually added dashes, strokes, curves, and
hooks in various combinations which in time became a fairly complete
and precise system of musical writing. Their evolution into the square
and diamond-shaped Gothic notation of the middle ages can be followed
with sufficient clearness.

            [Illustration: SPECIMEN OF NOTATION IN NEUMES,
                     TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURY.]

These signs, though representing definite turns and embellishments
in the melody, gave no exact indication of pitch. The first sign of
anything approaching a staff occurs in the tenth century, when one or
two lines were drawn across the page to mark the place of certain tones
or pitches. The first line was used for the tone F and the second for
the tone C. Other lines were later added for the other tones, and each
line was marked with the letter of the tone to which it was assigned.
Though all the letters of the scale were used in this fashion, F,
C, and G were the ones most commonly employed and from the Gothic
characters for these were developed our modern clef signs, as may be
seen from the following illustration:

         [Illustration: GENESIS OF CLEFS FROM GOTHIC LETTERS.]

A system of letter notation seems to have grown up contemporaneously
with the neumatic system. Its invention has been ascribed to Gregory
the Great and to Boethius, without much authority in either case. The
first instances of its practical use are found in the writings of
Notker Balbulus and Hucbald. Originally fifteen letters were used to
designate the tones of two octaves; this number was afterward reduced
to seven, repeated in successive octaves. The letters ran from A to
G, but none of them had a definite tone meaning, as they have with
us. A was merely the tone taken as a starting point and the series
was always counted upward from it. In the system as it was finally
completed the lowest G was added and called _gamma_ to distinguish it
from the G in the regular series. It is of interest to note here that
the introduction of B flat necessitated the use of two differently
shaped B’s. The B _durum_ was angular [music sign] and the B _molle_
was rounded [music sign]. From the former was derived our natural
sign (♮) and from the latter our flat sign (♭). Our sharp is merely a
variation of the natural. The system of letter notation was originally
devised chiefly for instruments, particularly the organ, though its use
gradually became universal. It belongs, however, more properly to a
period later than the one we have been discussing.

One other item may justly find a place in this chapter, namely, the
early history of the organ. The instrument has virtually since the
beginning of our era been associated with the church, and was already a
factor in the service during the plain-song period. We shall presently
see how one of the earliest forms of polyphony--of music that was not
merely plain chant--received its name from the instrument. The organ is
of ancient origin; according to Riemann, its ancestors are the bagpipe
and the Pan’s pipe. Already in the second century B. C. there existed
a true organ, in which air pressure was generated by pumps (bellows)
and compressed by means of water pressure and the manipulation of
a keyboard. The invention of this so-called water-organ (_organum
hydraulicum_, hydraulic organ) was ascribed to Ktesibios (170 B. C.)
by his pupil Heron of Alexandria, whose writings have come down to us.
Water was, it seems, not a necessary accessory to this instrument and
organs were soon after constructed without the hydraulic principle, in
Greece and Italy.


             [Illustration: The Organ in the Middle Ages.]

    1. Pneumatic organ, 4th century.
    2. The famous Winchester organ, 951, A. D.
    3. German organ, 11th century.

The instrument was known in the occident long before King Pepin
received one as a present from Emperor Constantine Copronymos in 757
A. D. A Greek description of an organ belonging to Julian the Apostate
(fourth century) and others mentioned by Cassiodorus and St. Augustine
furnish valuable details. These instruments usually consisted of from
eight to fifteen pipes (one to two octaves of the diatonic scale) which
were constructed in the same manner as the flue pipes of modern organs.
Throughout the ninth century organs were assiduously manufactured by
monks, especially in France and Germany, and their compass was made to
coincide with the middle range of the human voice (c to c´) so as to be
used in connection with vocal instruction. The names of the tones were
inscribed on the 'keys,’ which were small wooden plates in _vertical_
position. The player was obliged to pull this shutter away to allow the
wind to enter the pipes, which would sound continuously till shut. By
980 there existed organs of considerable size, such as the famous one
at Winchester, consisting of 400 pipes and two keyboards, requiring two
players. A special form of notation, known as tablature, grew up for
organ playing which coincides in general with our modern staff notation.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The above will, we believe, suffice to give a clear account of the
musical activities of the period which we have called the Age of
Plain-song. Among music-loving people in general there is a lack of
interest in plain-song, due partly to religious reasons, but chiefly
born of a tendency to regard it as a dry and spiritless formula, an
insipid sort of recitative designed to lend solemnity to devotional
exercises. Complete lack of sympathy and imagination could alone
excuse such an impression in the minds of those who have ever had the
opportunity of hearing it sung in a sincere and reverent spirit. Unlike
the pedantic, mathematical art that music came to be in the middle
ages, plain-song was preëminently a form of emotional expression.
Further, it was the expression of emotions most poignant and profound.
It came from the hearts of men who were conscious actors in a gigantic
drama. The inexpressible tortures of eternal fire, the ecstatic wonders
of a golden heaven, the ineffable mystery of the Godhead, the awful
panoply of the Judgment, the wrath and agony of a wronged and insulted
Deity who yet offered Himself as a bloody holocaust for the sins of
men--all the esoteric spiritual symbols of Christianity had for these
early believers a real and literal significance. To them was vouchsafed
the simple faith, the naïve wonder of childhood. Their souls were
possessed with a great awe, with an intense longing, with profound
humility and passionate remorse, with fiery zeal and ardent love, with
the joyous ecstasy of anticipated salvation and the nameless horror of
ever-threatening damnation. All this wealth of deep and keen emotion
is conveyed to us in the songs of the early church with the direct
simplicity of Greek drama. No one, listening to the mournful strains of
the _Dies Iræ_, could escape the vague awe, the blood-congealing sense
of that tremendous drama set for 'the day of wrath, that awful day when
heaven and earth shall pass away’; nor could any one hear the serene
melody of the _Veni sancte spiritus_ without feeling some suggestion of
the ineffable peace that follows the descent of the Spirit Paraclete.
Understanding and sympathy--difficult perhaps for a scientific and
rationalistic age--are essential to the appreciation of these poets
of the ecstatic vision; but for any one who can bring imagination and
sensibility to the study of plain-song the results of the task will
prove well worth the labor.
                                                             W. D. D.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[43] 'Auctoritatem ... in Ecclesia cantandi causa devotionis
traxit a canta religiosorum antiquorum tam in novo quam in vetere
testamento.’--John de Muris, _Sum. Mas._

[44] Cf. Strabo, _De Bello Punico_, Livy, Bk. xxxix.

[45] Fr. Aug. Gevaert: _La Mélopée antique dans le chant de l’église
latine_.

[46] See Bellermann and Vincent: _Anonymi scriptio de musica_, Berlin,
1841.

[47] Book v, Chap. 4.

[48] For a fuller discussion of Græco-Roman music see Fr. Aug. Gevaert,
_La mélopée antique dans le chant de l’église latine_ (Ghent, 1895);
Combarieu, _Histoire de la musique_, Vol. I, Chap. XIII (Paris, 1913);
Charles Burney, 'History of Music,’ Vol. I.

[49] _See_ Gevaert: _Op. cit._

[50] Hugo Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, I².

[51] For a detailed discussion of the metrical forms of ecclesiastical
hymnody see Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, I².

[52] Prudentius was the author of two collections of hymns, the
_Kathemerinon_ and the _Peristephanon_, which were first adopted by the
Spanish church and later introduced to Rome.

[53] _De init. cler._, in Migne, _Patr. Lat._, cvii, 362.

[54] See Paul I; Cor. xiv. 7; John Apocal., v. 8, xiv. 2, xv. 2.

[55] A typical example is the recurrence of the phrase 'Quoniam in
æternum misericordia ejus’ in the 135th psalm.

[56] Gerbert says of him: 'Illud sacrorum hymnorum in Ecclesia genus,
quod antiquissimus in Ecclesiæ temporibus in usu fuit, in Oriente
præsertim a S. Ephrem, inter Latinos a S. Ambrosio excultum, unde
et Ambrosiani dicti sunt hymni ... non cantum alternum, vel populi
concentum primu(s) indux(it) in ecclesiam Mediolanensem S. Ambrosinus,
sed cantum modulatum antea insuetum in ecclesia occidentali.’--_De
Cantu et Musica Sacra_, I, p. 199. The writings of the Fathers are
full of fugitive, grateful references to the musical achievements of
Ambrose. Nor is his fame based on tradition, as in the case of St.
Gregory. Some of his most devoted admirers are near contemporaries.
The references to his work are not usually inspired by a clear
understanding of just what he did for church music, but all together
they create a vivid impression that St. Ambrose is the biggest single
figure in the history of liturgical song.

[57] According to some musical historians, Celestine introduced the
antiphonal psalmody from Poitiers.

[58] _Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, Jeffe, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1881.

[59] _Vita S. Gregorii Magni_, in Mabillon, _Acta sanctorum ordinis
benedicti_, Paris, 1668.

[60] _Les origines du chant liturgique de l’église latine._

[61] The _Alleluja_ is not really a word but a sort of shrilling effect
of great antiquity among the Hebrews and other people of the Orient. It
was produced by choruses of women in triumphal processions and other
joyous celebrations, and seems to have been about half way between a
song and a cheer. The early Christians used it in songs of joy and
praise, and perhaps sang it to take the place of the instrumental
prelude of the psalms. 'Laudes, hoc est alleluia canere, canticum est
Hebræorum,’ says Isidore of Seville. (_De off._, I, 13.)

[62] See 'History of Irish Music,’ W. H. Grattan Flood, Dublin, 1906.
Notker was the author of the famous _Antiphona de Morte_, beginning
_Media vita in morte sumus_ (In the midst of life we are in death),
which was quickly adopted as a funeral anthem throughout Europe.
Miraculous effects were attributed to it, and its use was so much
abused that the council of Cologne (1316) forbade anybody to sing it
who was not specially authorized by a bishop.

[63] Here should be noted one of the ways in which the Christian
theorists misapplied the system of the Greeks. In Chapter IV we have
seen that the Greeks did not consider pitch as in any way related to
the character or ethos of the modes. This _ethos_ was determined solely
by the arrangement of the steps in the scale. The Christian theorists,
on the other hand, though they still recognized the variety of
character obtained by varying the distribution of steps in the scale,
evidently allotted to the different modes a different final or pitch,
and thus pitch came to influence the character of the modes. The modes
might, however, still be transposed and sung at any pitch.

[64] This dreaded interval was called by churchmen _diabolus in
musica_, and as such studiously avoided.




                              CHAPTER VI
                      THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONY

  The third dimension in music--'Antiphony’ and Polyphony; magadizing;
  organum and diaphony, parallel, oblique--Guido d’Arezzo and his
  reputed inventions; solmisation; progress of notation--Johannes Cotto
  and the _Ad organum faciendum_; contrary motion and the beginning of
  true polyphony--Measured music; mensural notation--_Faux-bourdon_,
  _gymel_; forms of mensural composition.


In the preceding chapter we have tried to trace the perfecting of a
form of melody called plain-song. We have seen how the mass of the
Catholic Church was set to solo music. Apart from the highly expressive
quality which the music inevitably acquired because of the reality and
life of the new emotional religion, the plain-song of the mass did not
differ from the artistic music of the Greeks and the Romans, that is
to say, it brought forward no new means of effect or of expression. We
may say it was the adaptation of old and tried methods to new ends. We
can hardly suppose that the technique of composition had been advanced
by the early Christian composers beyond the point to which the Greeks
had brought it, nor that the art of music had been expanded during the
first centuries of the Christian era to greater proportions than the
Greeks had developed it. The theorists of the first nine centuries
made blunders in trying to systematize Christian song according to the
remnants of Greek theory which had been preserved; yet the Greek scales
were still in use, though misnamed by the theorists, and composers for
the church still conformed to them. But about the beginning of the
ninth century a new element appeared in music for the church which
the Greeks had left practically untouched and which was probably the
contribution of the barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe,
either the Germans or the Celts, namely, part-singing. To the single
plain-song melodies of the ritual composers added another accompanying
melody or part. The resultant progression of concords and discords
was incipient harmony, the practice of so weaving two and later three
and four melodies together was the beginning of the science or art of
polyphony.


                                   I

Polyphony was practically foreign to the music of the Greeks. They
had observed, it is true, that a chorus of men and boys produced a
different quality of sound from that of a chorus made up of all men
or all boys, and they had analyzed the difference and found the cause
of it to be that boys’ voices were an octave higher than men’s; and
that boys and men singing together did not sing the same notes. This
effect, which they also imitated with voices and certain instruments
they called _Antiphony_, and they considered it more pleasing than
the effect of voices or instruments in the same pitch which they
called _Homophony_. The practice of making music in octaves was
called _magadizing_, from the name of a large harp-like instrument,
the magadis, upon which it was possible. But magadizing cannot be
considered the forerunner of polyphony, for, though melodies an octave
apart may be considered not strictly the same, still they pursue the
same course and are in no way independent of each other; and the effect
of a melody sung in octaves differs from the effect of one sung in
unison only in quality, not at all in kind.

The allegiance of theorists to Greek culture all through the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance has tended to conceal the actual origin
of polyphony, but as early as 1767 J. J. Rousseau wrote in his
_Dictionnaire de musique_, 'It is hard not to suspect that all our
harmony is an invention of the Goths or the Barbarians.’ And later: 'It
was reserved to the people of the North to make this great discovery
and to bequeath it as the foundation of all the rules of the art of
music.’

The kernel from which the complicated science of polyphony sprang
is simple to understand. One voice sang a melody, another voice or
an instrument, starting with it, wove a counter-melody about it,
elaborated by the flourishes and melismas which are still dear to the
people of the Orient. Some such sort of primitive improvisation seems
to have been practised by the people of northern Europe, and to have
been taken over by the church singers. The later art of _déchant sur le
livre_ or improvised descant was essentially no different and seems to
have been of very ancient origin. The early theorists naturally took
it upon themselves to regulate and systematize the popular practice,
and thereupon polyphony first comes to our notice through their works
in a very stiff and ugly form of music called _organum_, which in its
strictest form is hardly more to be considered polyphony than the
magadizing of the Greeks.

The works of many of the ninth century theorists such as Aurelian of
Réomé, and Remy of Auxerre, suggest that some form of part-singing
was practised in their day, though they leave us in confusion owing
to the ambiguity of their language. The famous scholar Scotus Erigena
(880) mentions organum, but in a passage that is difficult and obscure.
Regino, abbot of Prum in 892, is the first to define consonance and
dissonance in such a way as to leave no doubt that he considers them
from the point of view of polyphony, that is to say, as sounds that are
the result of two different notes sung simultaneously. In the works of
Hucbald of St. Amand in Flanders, quite at the end of the century, if
not well into the tenth (Hucbald died in 930 or 932, over ninety years
of age), there is at last a definite and clear description of organum.
The word organum is an adaptation of the name of the instrument on
which the art could be imitated, or, perhaps, from which it partly
originated, the organ; just as the Greeks coined a word from magadis.

Of Hucbald’s life little is known save that he was born about 840,
that he was a monk, a poet, and a musician, a disciple of St. Remy
of Auxerre and a friend of St. Odo of Cluny. Up to within recent
years several important works on music were attributed to him, of
which only one seems now to be actually his--the tract, _De Harmonica
Institutione_, of which several copies are in existence. This and
the _Musica Enchiriadis_ of his friend St. Odo are responsible for
the widespread belief that polyphony actually sprang from a hideous
progression of empty fourths and fifths. Both theorists, in their
efforts to confine the current form of extemporized descant in the
strict bounds of theory, reduced it thus: to a given melody taken
from the plain-song of the church the descanter or organizer added
another at the interval of a fifth or fourth below, which followed
the first melody or _cantus firmus_ note by note in strictly parallel
movement. The fourth seems to have been regarded as the pleasanter
of the intervals, though, as we shall see, it led composers into
difficulties, to overcome which Hucbald himself proposed a relaxation
of the stiff parallel movement between the parts. In the strict organum
or _diaphony_ the movement was thus:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Either or both of the parts might be doubled at the octave, in which
case the diaphony was called composite.

Just why the intervals of the fifth and fourth should have been chosen
for this parallel music, which is excruciating to our modern ears, is
not positively known. The simple obvious answer to the riddle is that
Hucbald and his contemporaries based their theories on the theories of
the Greeks, who regarded the fifth and fourth as consonances nearest
the perfect consonance of the octave and unison. But in that case
we have to ask ourselves why Hucbald and his followers regarded the
diaphony of the fourth as pleasanter than that of the fifth which they
none the less acknowledged was more nearly perfect. Dr. Hugo Riemann
has suggested a solution to this difficulty which is in substance
that organum was an attempt to assimilate elements of an ancient art
of singing practised by the Welsh and other Celtic singers. The Welsh
scale is a _pentatonic_ scale, that is, a scale of five steps in which
half steps are skipped. In terms of the keyboard, it can be represented
by a scale starting upon E-flat and proceeding to the E-flat above
or below only by way of the black keys between or by a similar
progression between any other two black keys an octave apart. In such
a scale parallel fourths are impossible, as indeed they are in the
Greek scales of eight notes upon which the church music was based; but
whereas the progression of the fourths in the Greek scales is broken
by the imperfect and very unpleasant interval of the tritone, in the
pentatonic scale it is interrupted by the pleasing major third. Such
a progression of fourths and thirds seems to spring almost naturally
from the pentatonic scales and was very likely much practised by the
ancient Welsh singers.[65] A comparison of two examples will make the
difference obvious.

                         [Illustration: Music]

The presence in the octatonic scale of the disagreeable tritone, marked
with a star in the example, forced even Hucbald and Odo to make some
provision for avoiding it. This consisted in limiting the movement
of the 'organizing’ voice. It was not allowed to descend below a
certain point in the scale. In those cases, therefore, in which the
_cantus firmus_ began in such a way that the organizing voice could
not accompany it at the start without sinking below its prescribed
limit the organizing voice must start with the same note as the _cantus
firmus_ and hold that note until the _cantus firmus_ had risen so that
it was possible for the organizing voice to follow it at the interval
of the fourth. In the same way the parts were forced to close at the
unison if the movement of the _cantus firmus_ did not permit the
organizing voice to follow it at the interval of a fourth without going
below its limit. The following example will make this clear:

                         [Illustration: Music]

In this case it will be noted that the movement of the parts is no
longer continuously parallel, but that there are passages in which
it is oblique. Indeed it is hardly conceivable that strict parallel
movement was ever adhered to in anything but theory. It is interesting
to observe how even in theory it had to give way, and how by the
presence of the tritone in the scale the theorists were practically
forced into a genuine polyphonic style. The strict style, as we have
already remarked, was hardly more polyphonic than the magadizing of
the Greeks; for, though the voice parts are actually different, still
each is closely bound to the other and has no independent movement
of its own; but in the freer style there is a difference if not an
independence of movement.

In connection with this example it is also well to note that through
the oblique movement the parts are made to sound other intervals than
the fourth or fifth or unison, which with the octave were regarded
for centuries as the only consonances. At the first star they are
singing the harsh interval of a second; immediately after they sing
a major third. By the earliest theorists these dissonances were
disregarded or accepted as necessary evils, the unavoidable results
of the restrictions under which the organizing voice was laid. But
if the free diaphony was practised at all it was to lead musicians
inevitably to a recognition of these intervals, and of the effect of
contrasting one kind with another. In the works of Hucbald and Odo and
their contemporaries, however, the ideal is theoretically the parallel
progression of the only consonances they would admit, the fourth,
fifth, and octave. Oblique movement was first of all a way to escape
the tritone, and the unnamed dissonances were haphazard. Thus we find
only the mere germ of the science of polyphony. The dry stiffness of
the music and the inadequacy of the cumbersome rules must lead one to
believe that learned men, true to their time, were doing what they
could to define a popular free practice within the limits of theory.
The sudden untraceable advent of a new free style some hundred years or
more later goes to prove that the free descant of a genuinely musical
people was never actually suppressed or discontinued by the influence
of the theorists.


                                  II

However, before considering the new diaphony, we have still to trace
the further progress of the organum of Hucbald and Odo. The next
theorist of importance was Guido of Arezzo. To Guido have been
attributed at various times most of the important inventions and
reforms of early polyphonic music, among them descant, organum and
diaphony, the hexachordal system, the staff for notation, and even the
spinet; but the wealth of tradition which clothed him so gloriously
has, as in the case of many others, been gradually stripped from him,
till we find him disclosed as a brilliantly learned monk and a famous
teacher, author of but few of the works which possibly his teaching
inspired. He has recently been identified with a French monk of the
Benedictine monastery of St. Maur des Fosses.[66] He was born at or
near Arezzo about 990, and in due time became a Benedictine monk. He
must have had remarkable talent for music, for about 1022 Pope Benedict
VIII, hearing that he had invented a new method for teaching singing,
invited him to Rome to question him about it. He visited Rome again a
few years later on the express invitation of Pope John XIX, and this
time brought with him a copy of the _Antiphonarium_, written according
to his own method of notation. The story goes that the pope was so
impressed by the new method that he refused to allow Guido to leave the
audience chamber until he had himself learned to sing from it. After
this he tried to persuade Guido to remain in Rome, but Guido, on the
plea of ill-health, left Rome, promising to return the following year.
However, he accepted an invitation from the abbot of a monastery near
Ferrara to go there and teach singing to the monks and choir-boys; and
he stayed there several years, during which he wrote one of the most
important of his works, the _Micrologus_, dedicated to the bishop of
Arezzo. Later he became abbot of the Monastery of Santa Croce near
Arezzo, and he died there about the year 1050. During the time of his
second visit to Rome he wrote the famous letter to Michael, a monk
at Pomposa, which has led historians to believe that he was actually
the inventor of a new division of the scales into groups of six notes,
called _hexachorda_, and a new system of teaching based on this
division.

The case of Guido is typical of the period in which he lived. Very
evidently an unusually gifted teacher, as Hucbald was a hundred years
before him, his influence was strong over the communities with which
he came into contact, and spread abroad after his death, so that
many innovations which were probably the results of slow growth were
attributed to his inventiveness. The _Micrologus_ contains many rules
for the construction of organum below a _cantus firmus_, which are not
very much advanced beyond those of Hucbald and Odo. The old strict
diaphony is still held by him in respect, though the free is much
preferred. To those intervals which result from the 'free’ treatment
of the organizing voice, however, he gives names, and he is conscious
of their effect; so that, where Hucbald and Odo confined themselves to
giving rules for the movement of the organizing voice in such a way
as to avoid the harsh tritone even at the cost of other dissonances,
Guido gives rules to direct singers in the use of these dissonances
for themselves, which, as we have seen, in the earlier treatises
were considered accidental. This marks a real advance. But there is
in Guido’s works the same attempt merely to make rules, to harness
music to logical theory, that we found in Hucbald’s and Odo’s; and it
is again hard to believe that his method of organizing was in common
practice, or that it represents the style of church singing of his
day. From the accounts of the early Christians, from the elaborate
ornamentation of the plain-song in mediæval manuscripts in which it is
first found written down, and from later accounts of the 'descanters’
we are influenced to believe that music was sung in the church with
a warmth of feeling, sometimes exalted, sometimes hysterical even to
the point of stamping with the feet and gesticulating, from which the
standardized bald ornamentation of Guido is far removed. Furthermore,
the next important treatises after Guido’s, one by Johannes Cotto, and
an anonymous one called _Ad Organum Faciendum_, deal with the subject
of organum in a wholly new way and show an advance which can hardly be
explained unless we admit that a freer kind of organum was much in use
in Guido’s day than that which he describes and for which he makes his
rules.

But before proceeding with the development of the early polyphony after
the time of Guido, we have to consider two inventions in music which
have been for centuries placed to his credit. In the first place he is
supposed to have divided the scale, which, it will be remembered, had
always been considered as consisting of groups of four notes called
tetrachords placed one above the other, into overlapping groups of
six notes called hexachords. The first began on G, the second on C,
the third on F, and the others were reduplications of these at the
octave. The superiority of this system over the system of tetrachords,
inherited from the Greeks, was that in each hexachord the halftone
occupies the same position, that is, between the third and fourth
steps.[67] It is not certain whether Guido was the first so to divide
the scale, but he evidently did much to perfect the new system.

There has long been a tradition that he was the first to give those
names to the notes of the hexachord which are in use even at the
present day. Having noticed that the successive lines of a hymn to St.
John the Baptist began on successive notes of the scale, the first on
G, the second on A, the third on B, etc., up to the sixth note, namely,
E, he is supposed to have associated the first syllable of each line
with the note to which it was sung. The hymn reads as follows:

    _Ut_ queant laxis
    _Re_sonari fibris
    _Mi_ra gestorum
    _Fa_muli tuorum
    _Sol_ve polluti
    _La_bii reatum
    Sancte Joannes.

Hence G was called _ut_; A, _re_; B, _mi_; C, _fa_; D, _sol_; and E,
_la_. These are the notes of the first hexachord, and these names
are given to the notes of every hexachord. The half-step therefore
was always _mi_-_fa_. Since the hexachords overlapped, several tones
acquired two or even three names. For instance, the second hexachord
began on C, which was also the fourth note of the first hexachord, and
in the complete system this C was C-_fa_-_ut_. The fourth hexachord
began on G an octave above the first. This G was not only the lowest
note of the fourth hexachord but the second of the third and the fourth
of the second. Therefore, its complete name was G-_sol_-_re_-_ut_. The
lowest G, which Guido is said to have added to perfect the system, was
called gamma. It was always _gamma_-_ut_, from which our word gamut.
The process of giving each note its proper series of names was called
solmisation.

The system seems to us clumsy and inadequate. We cannot but ask
ourselves why Guido did not choose the natural limit of the octave for
his groups instead of the sixth. However, it was a great improvement
over the yet clumsier system of the tetrachords, and was of great
service to musicians down to comparatively recent times. One may find
no end of examples of its use in the works of the great polyphonic
writers. As a help to students in learning it, the system of the
Guidonian Hand was invented, whereby the various tones and syllables
of the hexachords were assigned to the joints of the hand and could be
counted off on the hand much as children are taught in kindergarten to
count on their fingers. That Guido himself invented this elementary
system is doubtful, though his name has become associated with it.

                  [Illustration: THE GUIDONIAN HAND.]

Guido must also be credited with valuable improvements in the art
of notation. In his day two systems were in use. One employed the
letters of the alphabet, capitals for the lowest octave, small letters
for the next and double letters for the highest. This was exact,
though difficult and clumsy. The other employed neumes (see Chap. V)
superimposed over the words (of the text to be sung) at distances
varying according to the pitch of the sound. This, though essentially
graphic, was inaccurate. Composers were already accustomed to draw
_two_ lines over the text, each of which stood for a definite pitch,
one for F, colored red, and one for C, a fifth above, colored yellow,
but the pitch of notes between or below or above these lines was,
of course, still only indefinitely indicated by the distance of the
neumes from them. Guido therefore added another line between these two,
representing A, and one above representing E, both colored black. Thus
the four-line staff was perfected. It has remained the orthodox staff
for plain-song down to the present day. This improvement of notation,
in addition to the hexachordal system and the invention of solmisation,
have all had a lasting influence upon music, and through his close
connection with them Guido of Arezzo stands out as one of the most
brilliant figures in the early history of music.


                                  III

Hardly a trace has survived of the development of music during the
fifty years after the death of Guido, about 1050. The next works which
cast light upon music were written about 1100. One is the _Musica_
of Johannes Cotto, the other the anonymous _Ad organum faciendum_
mentioned above. In both works a wholly new style of organum makes its
appearance. In the first place, the organizing voice now sings normally
above the _cantus firmus_, though the whole style is so relatively
free that the parts frequently cross each other, sometimes coming to
end with the organizing voice below. In the second place, contrary
movement in the voice parts is preferred to parallel or oblique
movement; that is, if the melody ascends, the accompanying voice, if
possible, descends, and _vice versa_. Thus the two melodies have each
an individual free movement and the science of polyphony is really
under way. Moreover, they proceed now through a series of consonances.
There are no haphazard dissonances as in the earlier free organum of
both Hucbald and Guido. The organizing voice is no longer directed only
in such a way as is easiest to avoid the hated tritone, but is planned
to sing _always_ in consonance with the _cantus firmus_. The following
example illustrates the movement of the parts in this new system:

                         [Illustration: Music]

Cotto is rather indifferent and, of course, dry about the whole
subject of _organum_. It occupied but a chapter in his rather long
treatise. But the 'Anonymus’ is full of enthusiasm and loud in his
praises of this method of part-singing and bold in his declaration of
its superiority over the unaccompanied plain-song. Such enthusiasm
smacks a little of the layman, and is but another indication of the
real origin of _organum_ in the improvised descant of the people,
quite out of the despotism of theory. The Anonymus gives a great many
rules for the conduct of the organizing or improvising voice. He has
divided the system into two modes, determined by the interval at which
the voices start out. For instance, rules of the first mode state
how the organizing voice must proceed when it starts in unison with
the _cantus firmus_, or at the octave. If it starts at the fourth or
fifth it is controlled by the rules of the second mode. There are
three other modes which are determined by the various progressions
of the parts in the middle of the piece. The division into modes and
the rules are of little importance, for it is obvious that only the
first few notes of a piece are definitely influenced by the position
at which the parts start and that after this influence ceases to make
itself felt the modes dissolve into each other. Thus, though the
enthusiasm of the Anonymus points to the popularity of the current
practice of organizing, whatever it may have been, his rules are but
another example of the inability of theory to cope with it. Still this
theoretical composition continued to claim the respect of teachers and
composers late into the second half of the twelfth century.

A treatise by Guy, Abbot of Chalis, about this time, is concerned with
essentially the same problems and presents no really new point of view.
He is practically the last of the theorizing organizers. Organum gave
way to a new kind of music. In the course of over two hundred years
it had run perfectly within the narrow limits to which it had been
inevitably confined, and the science of it was briefly this: to devise
over any given melody a counter-melody which accompanied it note by
note, moving, as far as possible, in contrary motion, sinking to meet
the melody when it rose, rising away from it when it fell, and, with
few exceptions, in strictest concord of octaves, fifth, fourths, and
unison. Rules had been formulated to cover practically all combinations
which could occur in the narrow scheme. The restricted, cramped art
then crumbled into dust and disappeared. Again and again this process
is repeated in the history of music. The essence of music, and, indeed,
of any art, cannot be caught by rules and theories. The stricter the
rules the more surely will music rebel and seek expression in new and
natural forms. We cannot believe that music in the Middle Ages was not
a means of expression, that it was not warm with life; and therefore we
cannot believe that this dry organum of Hucbald and Odo, of Guido of
Arezzo, of Guy of Chalis, which was still-born of scholastic theory, is
representative of the actual practice of music, either in the church
or among the people. On the other hand, these excellent old monks
were pioneers in the science of polyphonic writing. Inadequate and
confusing as their rules and theories may be, they are none the less
the first rules and theories in the field, the first attempts to give
to polyphony the dignity and regularity of Art.

Meanwhile, long before Guy of Chalis had written what may be taken as
the final word on organum, the new art which was destined to supplant
it was developing both in England and in France. Two little pieces,
one _Ut tuo propitiatus_, the other _Mira lege, miro modo_, have
survived from the first part of the twelfth century. Both are written
in a freely moving style in which the use of concords and discords
appears quite unrestricted. Moreover, the second of them is distinctly
metrical, and in lively rhythm. It is noted with neumes on a staff
and the rhythm is evident only through the words, for the neumes gave
no indication of the length or shortness of the notes which they
represented, but only their pitch. Now in both these little pieces
there are places where the organizing voice sings more than one note to
a note of the _cantus firmus_ or _vice versa_. So long as composers set
only metrical texts to music the rhythm of the verse easily determined
the rhythm in which the shorter notes were to be sung over the longer;
but the text of the mass was in unmetrical prose, and if composers,
in setting this to music in more than one part, wished one part to
sing several notes to the other’s one, they had no means of indicating
the rhythm or measure in which these notes were to be sung. Hence it
became necessary for them to invent a standard metrical measure and a
system of notation whereby it could be indicated. Their efforts in this
direction inaugurated the second period in the history of polyphonic
music, which is known as the period of measured music, and which
extends roughly from the first half of the twelfth century to the first
quarter of the fourteenth, approximately from 1150 to 1325.


                                  IV

Our information regarding the development of the new art of measured
music comes mainly from treatises which appeared in the course of these
two centuries. Among them the most important are the two earliest,
_Discantus positio vulgaris_ and _De musica libellus_, both anonymous
and both belonging to the second half of the twelfth century; the _De
musica mensurabili positio_ of Jean de Garlandia, written about 1245;
and at last the great _Ars cantus mensurabilis_, commonly attributed to
Franco of Cologne, about whose identity there is little certainty, and
the work of Walter Odington, the English mathematician, written about
1280, _De speculatione musices_. As the earlier theorists succeeded
in compressing a certain kind of music within the strict limits of
mathematical theory, so the mensuralists finally bound up music in an
exact arbitrary system from which it was again to break free in the
so-called _Ars nova_. But the field of their efforts was much larger
than that of the organum and the results of their work consequently of
more lasting importance.

The first attempts were toward the perfecting of a system of measuring
music in time, and the outcome was the Perfect System, a thoroughly
arbitrary and unnatural scheme of triple values. That the natural
division of a musical note is into two halves scarcely needs an
explanation. We therefore divide our whole notes into half notes, the
halves into quarters, the quarters into eighths, and so forth. But the
mensuralists divided the whole note into three parts or two unequal
parts, and each of these into three more. The standard note was the
_longa_. It was theoretically held to contain in itself the triple
value of the perfect measure. Hence it was called the _longa perfecta_.
The first subdivision of the _longa_ in the perfect system was into
three _breves_ and of the _breve_ into three _semi-breves_. But in
those cases in which the _longa_ was divided into two unequal parts one
of these parts was still called a _longa_. This _longa_, however, was
considered imperfect, and its imperfection was made up by a _breve_.
So, too, the perfect _breve_ could be divided into an imperfect and a
_semi-breve_.

Let us now consider the signs by which these values were expressed. The
sign for the _longa_, or long, as we shall henceforth call it, was a
modification of one of the old neumes called a _virga_, written thus
[music sign]; that for the _brevis_ or breve came from the _punctum_,
written thus [music sign]. The new signs were long [music sign] and
breve [music sign]. The _semi-breve_ was a lozenge-shaped alteration of
the breve, [music sign]. This seems simple enough until we come across
the distressful circumstances that the same sign represented both the
perfect and imperfect long, and that the perfect and imperfect breve,
too, shared the same figure. The following table illustrates the early
mensural notes and their equivalents in modern notation.

                         [Illustration: Music]

In our age of utilitarian inspiration the imperfections of such a
system of notation in which the two most frequent signs had a twofold
significance would be remedied by the invention of other signs; but the
theorists of that day found it easier and more natural to supplement
the system with numbers of rules whereby the exact values of the notes
could be determined. For example, a long followed by another long was
perfect; a long followed by a breve was imperfect and to be valued as
two beats. But a long followed by two _breves_ was perfect, for the two
_breves_ in themselves made up a second perfect three, since one was
considered as _recta_ and the other as _altera_. A long followed by
three _breves_ was obviously perfect, since the three _breves_ could
not but make up a perfect measure. Similar rules governed the valuation
of the _breve_. Three _breves_ between two longs were not to be
altered, four _breves_ between two longs also remained unaltered, since
one of them counted to make up the imperfection of the preceding long.
But five _breves_ required alteration, the first three counting as one
perfect measure, the last two attaining perfection by the alteration
of the second of them. _Semi-breves_ were also subject to the laws of
perfection and alteration and were governed by much the same laws as
governed the _breves_. One who had mastered all these laws was able
to read music with more or less certainty, though it must have been
necessary for him to look ahead constantly, in order to estimate the
value of the note actually before him.

Later theorists did not fail to associate the mysteries of the perfect
system of triple values with the Trinity, and thus sprang up the belief
that the earlier mensuralists had had the perfection of the Trinity in
mind when they allotted to the perfect _longa_ its measure of three
values. Yet, clumsy as the system of triple values was, it was founded
upon perfectly rational principles. It was the best compromise in
music between several poetic metres, some of which, like the Iambic
and Trochaic, are essentially triple; others, like the Dactylic and
Anapæstic, essentially double. Music, during all the years while the
mensuralists were supreme, was profoundly influenced by poetic metres.
All these had been reduced by means of the triple proportion to six
formulas or modes, and every piece of music was theoretically in one
or another of these modes. Such a definite classification of various
rhythms, besides being eminently gratifying to the learned theorists,
was of considerable assistance to the singer in his way through the
maze of mensural notation, who, knowing the mode in which he was
to sing, had but to fit the notes before him into the persistent,
generally unvarying, rhythm proper to that mode. Composers were well
aware of the monotony of one rhythm long continued. They therefore
interrupted the beats by pauses, and occasionally shifted in the midst
of a piece from one mode to another. The pauses were represented by
vertical lines across the staff, and the length of the pause was
determined by the length of the line--the perfect pause of three
beats being represented by a line drawn up through three spaces, the
imperfect pause of two beats by one crossing two spaces and the others
in proportion. The end was marked by a line drawn across the entire
staff.

So far the complexities of the mensural system of notation are not too
difficult to follow with comparative ease. But the longs, the _breves_
and the _semi-breves_ were employed only in the notation of syllabic
music; that is, of music in which each note corresponds to a syllable
of the text. In those cases where one syllable was extended through
several notes, another form of notation was employed. The several notes
so sung were bound together in one complex sign called a ligature.
The ligatures, like the longs and the breves, were adaptations of
old neumatic signs. In the old plain-song the flourishes or melismas
on single syllables were sung in a free rhythm; but the mensuralists
were determined to reduce every phrase of music to exact rhythmical
proportions, and these easy, graceful, soaring ornaments were crushed
with the rest in the iron grip of their system. Hence the ligatures
were interpreted according to the strictest rules. A few examples
will serve to show the extraordinary complexity of the system. Among
the old neumatic signs which stood for a series of notes two were
of especially frequent occurrence. These were the _podatus_, [music
sign], and the _clivis_, [music sign]. Of these the first represented
an ascending series, the second--which seems to have developed from
the circumflex accent--a descending series. It will be noticed that
the clivis begins with an upward stroke to the first note, which is
represented by the heavy part of the line at the top of the curve.
The _podatus_ has no such stroke. Several other signs were derived
from these two, and those derived from the _clivis_ began always
with this upward stroke, and those from the _podatus_ were without
it. Thus all ascending ornaments were represented by a neume which
had no preliminary stroke, all descending ornaments by one with the
preliminary stroke. This characteristic peculiarity was maintained
by the mensuralists in their ligatures. The _podatus_ became [music
sign], the _clivis_ [music sign]. In so far as the mensural system of notation
was graphic, in that the position of the notes in the scale presented
accurately the direction of the changing pitch of the sounds they
stood for, there was no need of preserving in the ligatures such
peculiarities of the neumatic signs. But, on the other hand, these
peculiarities were needed to represent the mensural value of the notes
in the ligatures, the more so because the mensuralists were determined
to allow no freedom in the rendering of those ornaments in ligature,
but rather to reduce each one to an exact numerical value. Hence we
find two kinds of ligatures: those which preserved the traits inherited
from their neumatic ancestors, and those in which such marks were
lacking. The first were very properly called _cum proprietate_, the
others _sine proprietate_; and the rule was that in every ligature _cum
proprietate_ the first note was a _breve_, while in every ligature
_sine proprietate_ it was a long. If the ligature represented a series
of _breves_ and _semi-breves_, the preliminary stroke was upward from
the note, not to it, thus: [music sign].

Further than this we need not go in our explanation of notation
according to the mensural system. The mensuralists had their way and
reduced all music to a purely arbitrary system of triple proportion,
and their notation, though bewildering and complex, was practically
without flaw. The reaction from it will be treated in the next chapter.
Meanwhile we have to consider what forms of music developed under this
new method.


                                   V

Regarding the relations of the voice parts, one is struck by the new
attitude toward consonance and dissonance of which they give proof. In
the old and in the free organum only four intervals were admitted as
consonant--the unison, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. The third
and the sixth, which add so much color to our harmony, were appreciated
and considered pleasant only just before the final unison or octave.
The mensuralists admitted them as consonant, though they qualified them
as imperfect. For, true to the time in which they lived, they divided
the consonants theoretically into classes--the octave and unison
being defined as perfect, the fourth and the fifth as intermediate,
the third and later the sixth as imperfect. So far did the love of
system carry them that, feeling the need of a balancing theory of
dissonances, these were divided into three classes similarly defined
as perfect, intermediate, and imperfect. We should, indeed, be hard
put to-day to discriminate between a perfect and an imperfect discord.
Of the imperfect consonances the thirds were first to be recognized,
the minor third being preferred, as less imperfect, to the major. The
major sixth came next and the last to be consecrated was the minor
sixth, which, for some years after the major had been admitted among
the tolerably pleasant concords, was held to be intolerably dissonant.
The fact that these concords, now held to be the richest and most
satisfying in music, were then called imperfect is striking proof of
the perseverance of the old classical ideas of concord and discord
inherited from the Greeks. Again, one must suspect that theory and
practice do not walk hand in hand through the history of music in the
Middle Ages.

The admission of thirds and sixths even grudgingly among the consonant
intervals is proof that through some common or popular practice of
singing they had become familiar and pleasant to the ears of men. We
have already mentioned the possible origin of organum in the practice
of improvising counter-melodies which seems to have existed among the
Celts and Germans of Europe at a very early age. There is some reason
to believe that in this practice thirds and sixths played an important
rôle; in fact, that there were two kinds of organizing or descant,
one of which, called _gymel_, consisted wholly of thirds, the other,
called _faux-bourdon_, of thirds and sixths. These kinds of organizing,
it is true, are not mentioned by name until nearly the close of the
fourteenth century, but there is evidence that they were of ancient
origin. Whether or not these were the popular practices which brought
the agreeable nature of thirds and sixths to the attention of the
mensuralists has not yet been definitely determined. The reader is
referred to Dr. Riemann’s _Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX-XIV
Jahrhundert_ (Leipzig, 1898), and the 'Oxford History of Music,’ Vol.
I, by H. E. Wooldridge (Part I, p. 160), for discussions on both sides
of the question. The word gymel was derived from the Latin _gemellus_,
meaning twin, and the _cantus gemellus_, or organizing in thirds, in
fact, consists of twin melodies. _Faux-bourdon_ means false burden,
or bass. The term was applied to the practice of singers who sang the
lowest part of a piece of music an octave higher than it was actually
written. If the chord C-E-G is so sung then it becomes E-G-C, and
whereas in the original chord as written the intervals are the third,
from C to E, and the fifth, from C to G, in the transposed form the
intervals are the third, from E to G, and the sixth, from E to C, of
which intervals _faux-bourdon_ consisted. The origin of this 'false
singing’ offered by Mr. Wooldridge,[68] though properly belonging in a
later period, may be summarized here.

By the first quarter of the fourteenth century the methods of descant
had become thoroughly obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authorities and
the Pope, John XXII, issued a decree in 1322 for the restriction of
descant and for the reëstablishing of plain-song. The old parallel
organum of the fifth and fourth was still allowed. Singers, chafing
under the severe restraint, added a third part between the cantus
firmus and the fifth which on the written page looked innocent enough
to escape detection, and further enriched the effect of their singing
by transposing their plain-song to the octave above, which, as we
have seen, then moved in the pleasant relation of the sixth to the
written middle part. Thus, though the written parts looked in the book
sufficiently like the old parallel organum, the effect of the singing
was totally different. However, this explanation of the origin of the
term _faux-bourdon_ leaves us still unenlightened as to how the sixth
had come to sound so agreeably to the ears of these rebellious singers.

Having perfected a system of notation, and having admitted the
intervals pleasantest to our ears among the consonances to be allowed,
having thus broadly widened their technique and the possibilities of
music, we might well expect pleasing results from the mensuralists.
But their music is, as a matter of fact, for the most part rigid and
harsh. Several new forms of composition had been invented and had been
perfected, notably by the two great organists of Notre Dame in Paris,
Leo or Leonin, and his successor, Perotin. It is customary to group
these compositions under three headings, namely, compositions in which
all parts have the same words, compositions in which not all parts
have words, and compositions in which the parts have different words.
Among the first the _cantilena_ (_chanson_), the _rondel_ and _rota_
are best understood, though the distinction between the cantilena and
the rondel is not evident. The rondel was a piece in which each voice
sang a part of the same melody in turn, all singing together; but,
whereas in the rota one voice began alone and the others entered each
after the other with the same melody at stated intervals, until all
were singing together, in the rondel all voices began together, each
singing its own melody, which was, in turn, exchanged for that of the
others. Among the compositions of the second class (in which not all
parts have words), the _conductus_ and the _organum purum_ were most in
favor. Both are but vaguely understood. The _organum purum_, evidently
the survival of the old free descant, was written for two, three, or
even four voices. The tenor sang the tones of a plain-song melody in
very long notes, while the other voices sang florid melodies above it,
merely to vocalizing syllables. The _conductus_ differed from this
mainly in that such passages of florid descant over extended syllables
of the plain-song were interspersed with passages in which the
plain-song moved naturally in metrical rhythm, and in which the descant
accompanied it note for note. In the _conductus_ composers made use of
all the devices of imitation and sequence which were at their command.
Finally, the third class of compositions named above is represented by
the Motet.

The Motet is by far the most remarkable of all forms invented by
the mensuralists. In the first place, a melody, usually some bit of
plain-song, was written down in a definite rhythmical formula. There
were several of these formulæ, called _ordines_, at the service of the
composers. The tenor part was made up of the repetition of this short
formal phrase. Over this two descanting parts were set, which might be
original with the composer, but which later were almost invariably two
songs, preferably secular songs. These two songs were simply forced
into rhythmical conformity to the tenor. They were slightly modified
so as to come into consonance with each other and with the tenor at
the beginning and end of the lines. Apart from this they were in no
way related, either to each other or to the tenor. So came about the
remarkable series of compositions in which three distinct songs, never
intended to go together, are bound fast to each other by the rules of
measured music, in which the tenor drones a nonsense syllable, while
the descant and the treble may be singing, the one the praises of the
Virgin, the other the praises of good wine in Paris. This is surely
the triumphant _non plus ultra_ of the mensuralists. Here, indeed, the
rules of measured music preside in iron sway. Not only have the old
free ornaments of the early church music been rigorously cramped to a
formula and all the kinds of metre reduced to a stiff rule of triple
perfection, but the quaint old hymns of the church have been crushed
with the gay, mad songs of Paris down hard upon a droning, inexorable
tenor which, like a fettered convict, works its slow way along. A
reaction was inevitable and it was swift to follow.

                                                          L. H.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[65] See Riemann, _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, I², p. 144 ff.

[66] See article by Dom Germain in _Revue de l’art chrétien_, 1888.

[67] Strict 'imitation’ would be extremely difficult in the
tetrachordal system. A subject given in one tetrachord could not be
imitated exactly in another, because the tetrachords varied from each
other by the position of the half-step within them. Compare, for
instance, the modern major and minor modes. The answer given in minor
to a subject announced in major is not a strict imitation. If, on the
other hand, the answer to a subject in a certain hexachord was given in
another hexachord, it would necessarily be a strict imitation, since in
all hexachords the half-step came between the third and fourth tones,
between _mi_ and _fa_.

[68] _Op. cit._, Part II.




                              CHAPTER VII
                   SECULAR MUSIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES

  Popular music; fusion of secular and ecclesiastic spirit; Paganism
  and Christianity; the epic--Folksong; early types in France,
  _complainte_, narrative song, dance song; Germany and the North;
  occupational songs--Vagrant musicians; jongleurs, minstrels; the love
  song--Troubadours and Trouvères; Adam de la Halle--The Minnesinger;
  the Meistersinger; influence on Reformation and Renaissance.


However slim the records of early church music they still suffice to
give some clews to the origin and nature of the first religious songs.
But, when we turn to the question of secular song at the beginning of
our era, we are baffled by an utter lack of tangible material. For the
same monks to whom we are indebted for the early examples of sacred
music were religious fanatics who looked with hostile eyes upon the
profane creations of their lay contemporaries. Yet we may be confident
of the continued and uninterrupted existence not only of some sort of
folk music, but also of the germs at least of an art music, however
crude, throughout that period of confusion incident to, and following,
the crumbling of the Roman empire.

We need but point to our discourse upon the music of primitive
peoples (Chap. I), the traces of musical culture left by the ancients
(Chap. II), and especially the high achievements of the Greeks
(Chap. IV), as evidence that, whatever the stage of a people’s
intellectual development, music is a prime factor of individual
and racial expression. Furthermore, at almost every period there
is recognizable the distinction between folk music proper--the
spontaneous collective expression of racial sentiment--and the more
sophisticated creations which we may designate as art. Thus the music
transmitted by the Greeks to the Romans, if added to ever so slightly,
no doubt was continued with the other forms of Greek culture. The
symposias, scolia, and lyrics of Hellas had their progeny in the odes
of Horace and Catullus; the bards, the _aœds_, and rhapsodists had
their counterpart--degenerate, if you will--in the _histriones_, the
gladiators, and performers in the arena of declining Rome. Turning to
the 'Barbarians’ who caused the empire’s fall, we learn that already
Tacitus recorded the activities of the German _bardit_ who intoned war
songs before their chiefs and inspired them to new victories; while
Athenæus and Diodorus Siculus both tell of the Celtic bards who had an
organization in the earliest Middle Ages and were regularly educated
for their profession.


                                   I

Because of the fact that our earliest musical records are
ecclesiastical, the impression might prevail that modern music had
its origin in the Christian church. But, although almost completely
subjected to it as its guardian mother, and almost wholly occupied in
its service, the beginnings of Christian music antedate the church
itself. Pagan rites had their music no less than Christian. Just as
we find elements of Greek philosophy in the teaching of Christianity,
so the church reconciled Pagan festivals with its own holidays, and
with them adapted elements of Pagan music. Thus our Easter was a
continuation of the Pagan May-day festivals, and in the old Easter hymn
_O filii et filiæ_ we find again the old Celtic may day songs, the
_chansons de quête_ which still survive in France. We here reproduce
one above the other:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    O fi-li-i et fi-li-æ
    Rex cœ-les-tis rex glo-ri-æ.

                         [Illustration: Music]

    En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs,
    En re-ve-nant de-dans les champs.

The midwinter festival, merged into our Christmas, and the midsummer
festival, corresponding to the feast of St. John the Baptist, both
became connected with masses and songs common to both beliefs; the
_Tonus Peregrinus_, sung to the psalm 'When Israel came out of Egypt,’
already an old melody in the ninth century, is almost identical with
old French secular songs, and we have already observed the adoption of
vulgar melodies into 'sequences’ and motets.

It must be remembered that for a considerable period Christianity
and Paganism coexisted as tolerant companions. The former could not
totally blot out the traditions, customs, conventions, ideas, and myths
of classic Paganism which were rooted in the popular consciousness.
'All through the Middle Ages,’ says Symonds, 'uneasy and imperfect
memories of Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great
conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town
on fire; Virgil, the magician; Dame Venus, lingering about the hill of
Hörsel--these phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost,
remained to sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga.’[69]

Associated with these myths were the traditions native to the Celtic
and Germanic peoples. The very bards of whom we spoke are known to have
entered the service of the church in great number, though this did
not prevent their travelling from castle to castle to sing before the
princes ballads in praise of their heroic ancestors. Of these epics,
hero tales, strange stories of conquest and adventure the nations of
central Europe possessed a rich treasure, and we hear that about A.
D. 800 Charlemagne, the sovereign patron of liberal arts, ordered a
collection of them to be made.

Tolerant though he was of the traditions of his people, the profane
songs of love and satire, sometimes indecent, which were sung about
the churches, became subjects of his censure; and no doubt the trouble
they caused was but one indication of the growing antagonism between
Christian and non-Christian, the intolerance of the later Middle Ages.
Already Charles’ son, Ludwig the Pious, looked with disfavor upon the
heathen epics. As time went on and clerical influence broadened, the
personalities of Pagan tradition became associated with the spirit
of evil; Dame Venus had now become the she-devil, the seductress of
pious knights.[70] This again gave rise to new ideas, traditions, and
superstitions; the mystic and the supernatural caught hold of the
people’s fancy and were reflected in their poetry and song.

Among the earliest epics, of which the verses are extant, are fragments
such as the song on the victory of Clothar II over the Saxons in 622 A.
D. Helgaire, a historian of the ninth century, tells us that, 'thanks
to its rustic character, it ran from lip to lip; when it was sung the
women provided the chorus by clapping their hands.’ Its Latin text
is said to be merely a translation of a popular version, which would
antedate the earliest known vernacular song by over two centuries.
Of a more advanced type is the Song of Roland, that famous chronicle
of the death of the Count of Brittany in the Pass of Roncesvalles,
during Charlemagne’s return from the conquest of the Spanish march.
Its musical notation was lost, but it was sung as late as 1356 at the
battle of Poitiers. Though this great epic consists of no less than
four thousand verses, Tiersot points out that its hero had long been
celebrated in innumerable short lyrics, easy to remember, which all
the people sang. Many were the epics describing the valiant deeds of
Charlemagne himself, and posterity deified him as the hero of heroes in
numerous strains that are lost to us. But one of which the music has
been deciphered, though with varying results, is the _Planctus Karoli_,
a _complainte_ on the death of the great emperor (813 A. D.).[71] Then
there is the quaint vernacular song in praise of King Ludwig III,
celebrating his victory over the Normans (832 A. D.):

    '_Einen Kuning weiz ich
    Heisset Herr Ludwig
    Der gerne Gott dienet
    Weil er ihms lohnet_,’ etc.

  ('A king I know, named Lord Ludwig, who serves God gladly, for he
  rewards him,’ etc.)

But with isolated exceptions like this one all the early epics were
written in Latin; even the early songs of the first crusaders (eleventh
century) are still in that language. Their origin may in many instances
have been ecclesiastical; written by some monk secluded within his
monastery walls, they may never have been sung by the people; their
melodies, akin to the plain chant of the church, may never have entered
into the popular consciousness. Yet it is in the popular consciousness
that we must look for the true origin of mediæval secular music. In
folk song itself we must seek the germs of the art which bore such rich
blossoms as the Troubadour and Minnesinger lyrics and which in turn
refreshed by its influence the music of the church itself.


                                  II

As folk songs we are wont to designate those lyrics of simple character
which, handed down from generation to generation, are the common
property of all the people. Every nation, regardless of the degree of
its musical intelligence, possesses a stock of such songs, so natural
in their simple ingenuity as to disarm the criticism of art, whose
rules they follow unconsciously and with perfect concealment of means.
Their origin is often lost in the obscurity of tradition and we accept
them generally and without question as part and parcel of our racial
inheritance. Yet, while in a sense spontaneous, every folk song did
originate in the consciousness of some one person. The fact that we do
not know its author’s name argues simply that the song has outlived
the memory of him who created it. He was a man of the people, more
gifted than his fellows, who saw the world through a poet’s eye, but
who spoke the same language, was reared in the same traditions, and
swayed by the same passions and sentiments as they who were unable
to express such things in memorable form. This fellow, whose natural
language is music, becomes their spokesman; their heartbeats are the
accents of his song. His talent is independent of culture. A natural
facility, an introspective faculty and a certain routine suffice to
give his song the coherence and definiteness of pattern which fasten it
upon the memory. Language is the only requisite for the transmission
of his art. Once language is fixed and has become the common property
of the people, this song, vibrating the heart-strings of its makers’
countrymen, will be repeated by another who perchance will fashion
others like it; his son, if he be gifted like himself, will do likewise
and so the inexhaustible well of popular genius will flow unceasingly
from age to age.

In the sentiments and thoughts common to all, then, we will find the
impulses of the songs which we shall now discuss. Considering the
different shades of our temperament, sadness, contentment, gladness,
and exuberance, we find that each gives rise to a species of song, of
which the second is naturally the least distinctive, the two extremes
calling for the most decisive expression. Now sadness and melancholy
have their concrete causes, and it is in the narration of these
causes that the heart vents its sorrow. Hence the narrative form, the
_complainte_, whose very name would confirm our reasoning, is the
earliest form of folk song in the vulgar tongue. In a warlike people
this would naturally dwell upon warlike heroic themes, and we have
already pointed out the early origin of the epic. The musical form
of epic was perhaps the simplest of all, taking for its sole rhythm
the accent of the words, one or two short phrases, chanted much in
the manner of the plain-song, sufficing for innumerable verses. It is
notable, too, that the church, adroitly seizing upon popular music as a
power of influence, adopted this form to another genus, the _légende_,
which, though developed by clericals, struck as deep a root in the
people’s imagination. Thus we see in the ninth century the 'Chant of
St. Eulalia,’ and in the tenth the 'Life of St. Leger,’ which already
shows great advance in form, being composed in couplets of two, four,
and six verses, alternating. Possessed of better means of perpetuation
this religious epic flourished better and survived longer than the
heroic _complainte_.

Still another genus was what we might call the _popular complaintes_,
the _chansons narratives_, which dealt with the people’s own
characters, with the common causes of woe; the common soldier and the
peasant; the death of a husband or a son. Such a one is the _Chanson
de Renaud_, which is considered the classic type of popular song. It
is sung in every part of France, and its traces are found in Spain,
Italy, Sweden, and Norway. It is unquestionably of great age, though
its date cannot be fixed.

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Quand Jean Re-naud de guer-re r’vint,
    Te-nait ses tri-pes dans ses mains.
    Sa mère à la fe-nêtre en haut:
    “Voi-ci ve-nir mon fils Re-naud.”

This strain is sung through thirteen stanzas, recounting Renaud’s
return from the wars to his home, where mother and wife await him, only
to die upon the stroke of midnight. The mother artfully conceals the
fact from his young spouse till finally she hears the news from the
boys in the street and sees the catafalque in the church. Her grief is
expressed in two final stanzas upon this melody:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Re-naud, Re-naud, mon ré-con-fort,
    Te voi-là donc en rang des morts!
    Di-vin Re-naud mon ré-con-fort,
    Te voi-là donc en rang des--morts!--

the last stanza very naïvely telling of her own death:

    'She had said for him three verses; at the first she confessed,
    At the second she took sacrament; at the third she expired.’

The music is notable not only for its perfect symmetry and the fidelity
with which it expresses the sentiment, but also its discriminating
use of the natural and flatted B to produce a plaintive effect. (To
both the employment of 'modern’ tonality and the chromatic element in
popular song we shall have occasion to return.) The 6/8 rhythm is no
less remarkable, giving the piece a crispness and definiteness never
attained by mediæval church music.

Parallel to the narrative song there developed a lighter genre, as old
as the _complainte_ itself, which corresponds to comedy as the latter
does to tragedy. Its personages are the same, but stripped of all their
sombre aspect; its story has a happy conclusion; its subject is not
infrequently comic and satirical. Tiersot quotes, in contrast to the
_Chanson de Renaud_, an example which is still heard in the provinces
of France.[72] Like the song already quoted, it narrates the return of
soldiers from the war, but, where the first has the mark of death upon
him, the other returns with a 'rose between his lips.’ It is perhaps
not so old as the _Chanson de Renaud_, but equally characteristic and
particularly 'Gallic’ in flavor:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Trois jeun’ tam-bours
    S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re,
    Trois jeun’ tam-bours
    S’en re-ve-nant de guerre,
    Et ri et ran, ran pe-ta-plan,
    S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re.

Note the crisp rhythm, the decided major tonality, and the
exuberant spirit of the song. Many early melodies show these same
characteristics, which at once remind us of that other elemental form
of folk music--the dance song, in which rhythm is the essential element.

Rhythm is the feature which most of all distinguishes popular song,
and secular music in general, from church music. It is the essentially
emotional quality of music which the Christian church carefully
excluded from its chant. We have seen, however, how people’s primitive
instinct causes them to mark the rhythm of a melody (Chap. I) and
beheld the women clapping their hands to the tune of the _complainte_
of Clothar II. Dependent upon simple formulas which could be easily
grasped and remembered, folk song naturally chose the simplest rhythmic
and melodic types. Hence the dance became one of the principal
root-stocks of secular music. An element which was never admitted into
the narrative form, the refrain, is a distinguishing characteristic of
the dance song, and in it we see the germ of the earliest of our modern
instrumental forms, the _rondeau_, originally the name of a dance. The
dance song was perhaps the most varied in melodies, for the wayfaring
musicians of the Middle Ages carried them from village to village and
from country to country, so that there was a continuous international
exchange.

The rhythmic nature of folk song carries us into another field of
speculation, namely, the influence of the people’s daily occupations,
the close relation between daily life and song in ages when life in
its individual and social manifestations could be reduced to simple
formulæ. Occupational songs have from earliest times (cf. Chap.
IV) been an important factor in folk music, and it is obvious that
early in the Middle Ages such songs were closely associated with the
movements of the human body in various occupations. Dr. Bücher[73]
calls attention to the fact that the blacksmith at his anvil, the navvy
in the street, are striking iambi, trochees, spondees, dactyls, and
anapests. He has collected an enormous amount of folk songs that were
sung by the woodman as he wielded his axe, by the boatman plying his
oars, by the peasant as he plowed his acre, scattered the seed, mowed
the field, and reaped the harvest. This, however, pertains particularly
to Germany, where Bücher’s investigations were chiefly carried on, and
whither we must now direct the reader’s attention.

To trace and formulate distinctions between the folk songs of the
northern and southern nations is a hazardous undertaking, since the
Celtic element which so largely determines the music of Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales is also present in France and Spain, and since the
wars between the various races, as well as the great international
movements of the Crusades, tended to modify national distinctions. All
these meetings and collisions between the different nations have left
traces in the songs of the individual peoples. However, northern folk
song may in general be said to be simpler and more regular in outline
and striving for greater continuity of design or pattern than southern.
Rhythm is simpler, firmer, and less given to eccentricities. The
tonality is usually clearer and minor scales seem to predominate. In
the dance songs the passionate and boisterous element, characteristic
of the dances of the Slavic and Latin races, is lacking.

The folk song of Northern Europe draws largely upon the stock of topics
held in common. Ever since Johann Gottfried Herder, in his _Stimmen
der Völker in Liedern_ ('The Voices of the Peoples in Song’), called
attention to the treasures of folk song, the patient research of
painstaking scholars has brought forth proof upon proof to show how
closely the nations of the North are related, in spite of political
boundary lines and other barriers. The recurrence of the same saga or
story of ancient myth or hero-lore in Scandinavian song and in German,
the resemblance between the German Tannhäuser, the Swedish knight Olaf,
the Scottish Thomas the Rhymer, and the Flemish Heer Daniel or Heer
Halewyn, make the question of priority seem irrelevant. North and south
of the Channel, and even east and west of the Rhine, the contents of
legendary song are curiously alike.

In manner, too, northern folk songs have many features in common;
an instinctive simplicity of language, a freedom from obscurities
and far-fetched allusions, the prevalence of a four-line strophe and
alliteration and assonance which only in time yield to rhyme. The
singing of the same tune to an indefinite number of lines or stanzas
is common to Celtic bards, Norse skalds, and German singers, and
links them to their forerunners in classical antiquity, the Greek
rhapsodists. In following the outline of the poem, the melody is
usually cast in lines, each closing with a cadence or 'fall’; the lines
form groups or couplets, either similar or dissimilar, in the manner of
rhyming verse-lines. The first couple of phrases is repeated to give
the structure stability; the middle portion forms the contrast, either
by being broken up into shorter lengths or founded upon different
notes of the scale. The dominant in the middle cadence is of frequent
occurrence. The rhythm is simple.

Impressionable and receptive by nature, the German people have always
been given to imitation of foreign models and there is no doubt that
the international movements during the Crusades and the visits of
wandering minstrels of foreign birth introduced alien elements and
obliterated some of the original features of German folk song. The
pathetic rise of a tune through the fifth to the minor seventh suggests
Scandinavian influence; the alternation of major and relative minor
may be traced to the same source. Still the German Volkslied has
some traits that distinguish it from the folk song of other northern
nations. It is more firmly knit, more formal, and less emotional.
Unlike English song, which favors a repetition of short phrases, a
single figure which, repeated on different degrees of the scale,
sometimes makes up the whole tune, German folk song repeats short
phrases only to establish balance after contrast or to make the
essential parts of the structure correspond. There is a marked tendency
to make the formal climax coincide with the emotional, but in this
respect the _Volkslied_ does not reach the admirable symmetry of the
Irish folk song. A distinctive form is the '_Jodel_’ or '_Jodler_’
of the mountaineers of Germany, the Tyrol, and Switzerland. Based
upon broken chords or arpeggios, it suggests, as do some other folk
songs built upon a harmonic foundation, that the German people had an
innate sense for diatonic harmony long before harmony as such became
an element of musical composition.[74] With the exception of the
_Jodler_, which is unique for its exuberance of spirit, the _Volkslied_
is rather reserved and contained in manner. It reflects the serious,
contemplative character and the healthy, well-poised temperament of a
physically and spiritually strong race.

Song and dance entered largely into the life of mediæval German
villages and towns. When village communities depended upon their own
resources for work and play, every village had its own musicians. The
peasant boys usually played the fiddle, the shepherds the _Schalmey_,
while the flute was hardly less popular. In the towns there were
several functionaries identified with certain forms of song. The
watchman on the town wall (_Türmer_) was blowing a tune on his horn;
the 'wait’ or _Nachtwächter_ admonished the people to observe the
curfew hour and repair for the night; and, when the _Postillon_ or
courier came through the gates with clatter of hoofs and cracking of
whips, the rousing notes of his horn brought young and old into the
street to greet the bringer of news. The smallest community had its
'town piper.’ There was no festivity without song or dance, and the
instrumentalist playing for the dance was accompanied by a precentor
for the singing and a leader for the steps. The great variety of
occupations and pastimes accompanied by song and dance made for a
great variety of folk tunes. From this folk song of mediæval Germany,
dealing with the realities of life in their manifold manifestations,
one could almost reconstruct the whole life of the race, its history,
beliefs, superstitions, activities, social and domestic customs, its
intimate domestic relations and its important public functions. The
_Tage_, _Leichen_, _Tanz_, _Spruch_, _Zauber_, and _Wünschelieder_, the
harvest, spinning, soldiers’, and other trade and labor songs are a
musical commentary as illuminating to the historian as any other relics
of the past.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Many beautiful melodies still heard by the traveller in Brittany,
Normandy, Provence, or the rural sections of Germany, date from the
Middle Ages. Their charm and their vitality are such that they have
survived the onslaught of advancing civilization for eight centuries
or more. They take us back to the time when agriculture was the one
great pursuit of man, when in solitude song lightened his labor and
in company song cheered his rest; when every custom, ceremonial,
occupation, had its songs; when music was a solace to all alike; when
that terrible distinction between the lettered and unlettered did not
exist. 'For neither in Greece nor in the Middle Ages did it exist;
the same poetry pleased all, the prince and the burgher, the knight
and peasant.’ 'In certain Breton provinces,’ says Tiersot, 'following
an old feudal law, established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
certain revenues were paid in song. In one place the prior exacted the
tax of “nuptial song” from the newly married on the Sunday after the
wedding; in another, every new bride was obliged to perform a song
and dance, whereupon the lord would decorate the bride with a flower
bonnet, while all the women married during the year danced and sang a
song--eloquent testimony indeed of the love of music among our early
forefathers.
                                                             C. S.

                                  III

We have had occasion to mention the vagrant musicians, that singular
adjunct to Middle-Age society, which appeared in every country of
Central Europe, in Germany as _Fahrender_, in France as _fableor_ or
_contraire_ and later as _jongleur_ or _ménétrier_, in England as
minstrel. Gustav Freytag has speculatively traced their origin back
to the Roman gladiators, actors, and performers mentioned above, a
despised race, who were, like their supposed posterity, beyond the pale
of the law. When the Germanic hordes swept away the degenerate opulence
of Rome, this class may well be supposed to have scattered among the
barbarian conquerors. As once in the arena, they now stood before the
huts of Frankish chieftains, performing their tricks and piping strange
tunes. To the populace of the Middle Ages they were welcome guests,
for they provided the one means of artistic entertainment outside the
church.

In Germany the _fahrende Sänger_ or _Spielmann_, whether a native
who had travelled in many lands or a singer of foreign birth, was
sure to find his way into the remotest huts of the countryside. He
brought with him new tunes and took with him those that he heard at
the fireside that had given him hospitality. In this way the stock of
tunes handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter was in
every generation enlarged by acquisitions from without. The minstrel
was the medium of musical exchange between the town and the country,
between the several provinces and between different nations. He was
the middleman and the teacher, through whom echoes of the songs of
Norse skalds, Welsh and Irish bards, and French and Provençal singers
reached the German people and _vice versa_. He was especially popular
in England, where numerous instances are quoted of minstrels appearing
at royal weddings and other great functions, not only individually
but in large numbers, and being so richly rewarded for their services
that the church complained because they were better paid than priests.
Individual German sovereigns also seem to have appreciated their skill
and distinguished them by marks of favor. In 1355 Emperor Charles IV
appointed one Johann der Fiedler '_rex omnium histriorum_’ for the
archbishopric of Mayence, and thirty years later another minstrel, the
piper Brachte, bore the official title _Künig der farenden Lüte_ (King
of the wayfarers).

In France, too, the vagrant appears as the original type of popular
singer. He ran from one end of the land to the other. Received and even
invited by the great lords he went from castle to castle, his head
filled with songs, or his pockets with parchments--if, indeed, he could
read. Perchance he would stop in the common of some village, play a few
stray _arpeggios_ on his viol, and, having collected an enthusiastic
audience, sing a _complainte_, the adventures of a favorite hero, or
perhaps recount the story of a celebrated crime, embellished with
horrifying details. Again he might sing a love romance, or even a
scriptural _légende_--the 'Prodigal Son’ or some other parable, the
life of a saint, or the Passion of our Lord.

With the growth of the cities and the development of the middle class
the wandering minstrel lost popularity in Germany, even among the
people. His itinerant life bred a disregard of social customs and
conventions which caused no little concern among the respectable
burghers of larger communities, and both the _Sachsenspiegel_ and the
_Schwabenspiegel_, chronicles of the thirteenth century, record the
fact that minstrels were outside the social pale and even excluded
from membership in the church. Yet these same outcasts of the
church, excluded from its sacraments, would gather the faithful in
the cathedral square and, exciting the people’s fancy with sacred
legends and miracles, would, as it were, become the self-appointed
allies of the clergy. But at last, in uncompromising opposition to
them, the resident musicians of the towns associated themselves in the
manner of guilds and monopolized the privilege of furnishing music for
public functions, being employed and paid by the city councils. The
earliest musicians’ guild of this kind was the _Nikolaibrüderschaft_
(Brotherhood of St. Nicholas), organized in Vienna in 1288. Its
management was entrusted to a high official, the _Musikantenvogt_,
later _Oberspielgraf_, who represented the highest tribunal in matters
of music. The policy of these musicians’ guilds was similar to that
of musicians’ unions of the present day. In a district covered by the
guilds only persons enrolled as paying members were allowed to play or
sing for money.

It was different in France. Here the _jongleur_, by virtue of special
circumstances, became a privileged character and enjoyed the continued
patronage of the aristocracy, for he was an all-important factor in the
musicianship of chivalry, which we shall presently discuss.

We have left out of our consideration of folk music so far
that all-important element of modern song, the mainspring of
lyricism--romantic love. In an age when man’s entire spiritual life was
dictated by religious dogma, his natural instincts, branded as profane
and unworthy, were naturally excluded from the objects of his poetic
expression. 'But the church could not completely triumph over Nature.
The fundamental human sentiments--above all, profane love--after
having for more than ten centuries been excluded from the expression
which musical science might have vouchsafed to them, now seemed to
take their revenge, to free themselves from long subjection, to let
voices hitherto condemned to silence be heard at last. By the side
of the altars where psalms were sung, where the things of the world
were condemned, the free and subtle stories of exalted love arose,
like irresistible protests of the human heart. The cult of the ideal
woman, the mother of the Saviour, the Virgin immaculate, continued; but
beside it was heard the praise of the woman of France [of Germany, of
Italy]; the subject of another sort of devotion, as exalted and often
as pure. The chivalrous qualities of the race, disciplined and refined
by Christian dogma, but rebelling against asceticism, reappeared and
reclaimed their rights with a new vivacity.’[75] This new spirit
pervaded all classes of society. The nobility, especially, now affected
a finer, more spiritual manner of life. Christian metaphysics, superior
education, and the advanced social position of women were the things
which prepared the way for chivalry, that new moral code propagated
by formal orders of knighthood. The Crusades and contact with Eastern
culture confirmed its establishment.


    [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL FRENCH SCULPTURE SHOWING TROUVÈRES AND
                     JONGLEURS WITH INSTRUMENTS.]

With this first renaissance of the modern spirit came also the
awakening of a new appreciation of the beauties of Nature. Man began
to notice the first flowers, the song of birds, the signs of spring’s
awakening. This gave rise to a species of popular song known as the
pastoral--_pastourelle_--which was afterward adopted and cultivated
by the Troubadours, who subjected it to certain rules, respecting
the sequence of different lengths of verses, etc. Besides the
_pastourelle_, numerous other forms of love songs (we need only mention
the serenades peculiar to the south--the Basque country and Corsica
especially) are of truly popular origin.

It may not be out of place here to quote the charming love romance
in narrative form entitled _Aucassin et Nicolette_, dating from the
beginning of the thirteenth century, which had an undoubted influence
upon the music of chivalry both in France and in Germany. It comprises
twenty-one vocal pieces interspersed with twenty prose sections, which
are to be read, not sung, as the superscription _Or se dient et content
et flabloient_ indicates, in distinction from the _Or se cante_ of the
verse sections. The verse also forms part of the narrative, with the
exception of Aucassin’s song to the evening star, which is purely lyric
but of the same musical treatment as the epic songs of the piece:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    1. E-stoi-le-te je te voi

                         [Illustration: Music]

    2. Que la lu-ne trait a soi
    (_and twelve more verses_)

                         [Illustration: Music]

    15. Suer douce a-mi-e.

The second musical line here serves for thirteen successive text lines
with continuous rhyme--another example of this most ancient method of
cantilation.

We must now pass on to the development of the love song, which
seems to have been the special task of a gifted and celebrated race
of knighthood, the glorious post-musicians called Troubadours and
_Trouvères_ in France, and _Minnesinger_ in Germany.


                                  IV

The Troubadours and _Trouvères_ (so called from _trobar_ or
_trouver_--to find) were, in sharp contrast to the vagrant professional
musicians, noble knights, who practised the graceful arts as gifted
amateurs, primarily in the impassioned praise of woman and for the sole
prize of her favor, with such zeal and superior intelligence that they
soon outstripped in skill their meaner colleagues, who now became their
servants. France was, it will be recalled, at this time, linguistically
divided into two sections. The _langue d’Oc_ was spoken in the south
and the _langue d’Oïl_ in the north. In the south, in Provence and
Languedoc, the so-called Troubadour movement had its inception. 'That
glorious land, endowed with all the charms of sunny skies, which
surpassed all other European provinces in culture, prosperity, and
spiritual contentment, was the cradle of this chivalry, with which are
associated supreme sensual enjoyment, a passion for splendor, and the
worship of women, thus uniting all the conditions of poetic art.’[76]
Chivalry spread rapidly beyond the limits of these provinces, however,
and across the Pyrenees, where lay the three Christian kingdoms of
Castille-León, Navarre, and Aragón. Counts, dukes, and kings extended
their patronage to this knightly poet-band and vied with each in
attaching to their courts a brilliant assemblage of singers. The counts
of Provence especially, Raimon Berengar III and his successors, the
counts of Toulouse, Anjou, and Poitou, the kings of Aragón, Castille,
and León, the margraves of Montferrat and Este, the French royal court
where Eleonore of Poitou was queen, and the court of England under
Henry II, the second husband of Queen Eleonore, provided rallying
centres. Even the sovereigns themselves were ambitious for the favor
of the Muses. The earliest Troubadour of prominence was Guillaume,
count of Poitiers (1087-1127). Contemporary with him was Robert, duke
of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, who, after returning
from the Crusade (1106), was till his death a prisoner of his brother
Henry I of England in the Castle of Cardiff, where he is said to have
attained the rank of a Welsh bard.

This remarkable and sudden flowering of lyric poetry among the
knighthood of the eleventh century, continuing for two centuries and
more the record of which stands brightly emblazoned upon the shield
of musical history, has never been satisfactorily explained. Riemann
thinks that the education of the young nobility in the monasteries
certainly had a refining influence. The familiarity with old Breton and
British literature, the legend of King Arthur’s Round Table, the old
Celtic narrative poems and romances, especially the legend of Tristan
and Yseult, which were known through old French adaptations, likewise
had an influence.

By their own testimony, however, the Provençal poets found their
immediate suggestions in folk song itself, as interpreted by the
_jongleurs_. The latter’s entire repertoire of classic and mediæval
chronicles was adopted by the Troubadours, whose own experiences in the
Crusades later caused them to substitute recent chivalric deeds for
antique subjects. The forms of the _jongleurs’_ art we find again in
the Troubadour creations, but refined in style, governed by definite
laws of poetry, more exalted in sentiment, so that, without sacrifice
of spontaneity, they have gained distinction and variety and have
become conscious works of art. As we are concerned here only with
their musical significance, which, indeed, has been generally ignored
by literary historians and underestimated by musicians, we shall have
little to say about these forms; for, great as is the variety of
their content, we fail to find parallel distinctions in their musical
settings. It should not be overlooked, however, that certain poetic
devices and ingenuities gave rise to more advanced musical forms, i.
e., the repetition of a phrase on two rhyming verses at the beginning
of a song, followed by a variant, which is the elementary form of the
_Lied_.

The so-called _vers_ gives a starting point for Troubadour lyrics.
This was the name given to a strictly normal composition in a
measure of eight syllables, with probably an amplification of the
more sporadic, uneven verse forms of the _jongleurs_. The _chanson_
is a more sophisticated form, consisting of alternating verses of
different lengths. _Girant de Borneil_ (1175-1220) is known as its
first exponent. Then we find again the familiar narrative form in the
guise of _chansons de geste_--epics recounting deeds of valor--the
_sirventes_, employed in a lover’s address to his mistress as well
as in satire (which is an early prototype of the famous _terza rima_
later adopted by Dante and Petrarch), and the _tenson_, a controversial
song in which the same subject is treated by rival poets, real and
fictitious, in alternating verses. The Breton narrative or _lai_, of
melancholy character, as represented in the 'Tristan’ legend, was also
adopted by the Troubadours; other lyrics are variously designated
as _canson_, _canzona_, _soula_ (a merry song), _romance_ (more
characteristic of the _Trouvères_), _alba_ (aubade), a morning song,
_serena_ (serenade), an evening song, and _pastourelle_, the favorite
form already mentioned, which is the richest in popular elements--dance
rhythms, refrains, etc.

The _pastourelle_ is characterized by extreme simplicity of theme. Its
characters are shepherds and shepherdesses, and it usually begins in
the narrative form, the narrator fixing the time of his adventure--the
early morn--and the scene, invariably a field, where he meets a
shepherdess 'in the shade of a bush,’ or 'at the edge of a spring.’ The
amorous dialogue which follows has a happy conclusion if the lover be a
shepherd, an unhappy one if he be a knight. The sentiments expressed in
the Troubadour pastoral are, of course, rather those of knight and lady
in the disguise of shepherds than those of real shepherds. Robin and
Marion, the usual hero and heroine of pastoral songs, are the central
personalities of a whole cycle, the origin of which is exceedingly
ancient, far behind the day of Adam de la Halle, who is perhaps the
most famous composer of pastorals. Most of the mediæval pastorals
preserved to us belong to this cycle. The famous _Robin m’aime_ is
still sung, we are told, by the peasants of northern France. It runs as
follows:

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Robins m’ai-me,--Robins m’a;
    Robins m’ a-- de-man-dé-e si m’a - ra.

The pastoral song survived the Middle Ages and was a favorite down to
the Revolution, long before which it had, however, found its way into
the aristocracy and polite society of cities and so lost the little
natural flavor which still clung to it in the days of the Troubadours.
Robin and Marion made way for Tircis and Aminta, Phyllis and Lycidas,
beribboned and bespangled counterfeits of the original article. To
illustrate how hackneyed this type of song and the plays later made
out of them had become in the time of Molière, we may quote Monsieur
Jourdain: 'Why all these shepherds? I see nothing else.’ To which the
dancing-master replies peremptorily: 'When characters speak in music
it is necessary, for the sake of realism, to make them shepherds. Song
was ever affected by shepherds; it is hardly natural that princes and
princesses should vent their passions in musical dialogue!’

Among Troubadour dance forms there should also be mentioned the _carol_
or _rondet de carol_, _retroensa_, _estampida_, and the _espringerie_
(jumping dance). Particularly notable is the _Estampida_ of Rambaut
de Vacqueiras (1180-1270), a Troubadour at the court of Montferrat,
the lover of the beautiful princess Beatrice. The story connected with
it aptly illustrates the influence of the _jongleurs_. When one day
a band of these, native of France, came to the court, they awakened
general merriment with a new _Estampida_ played on their viols. Only
Rambaut could not be roused from his melancholy, and Beatrice asked
him therefore to sing a song himself, and so regain a happier mood.
Whereupon he composed the charming dance song _Kalenda maya_ in the
manner of the _jongleurs’ estampida_:

          [Illustration: ESTAMPIDA BY RAMBAUT DE VACQUEIRAS.]

    Kal-len-da ma-ya
    Ni fuelhs de fa-ya
    Ni chans d’auzell ni flors de glaia
    Non es quem pla-ya
    Pros dom-na gua-ya
    Tro qu’un ys-nelh mes-sat-gier a-ya
    Del vos-tre bel cors quem re-tra-ya
    Pla-zer no-yelh qu’ Amors m’a-tra-ya
    E ja-ya
    Em-tra-ya
    Vas vos don-na ve- ra-ya
    E cha-ya
    De pla-ya
    L’ge-los ans quem n’e-stra-ya.

    (_5 Stanzas_)

It should be noted here that in the transcriptions of Troubadour
songs--and most of the small manuscript treasure preserved to us
still wants unfolding--there has until recently prevailed the error
to interpret them as measured music. Measured music came into use, we
have seen, with Franco of Cologne, about A. D. 1200, but, nevertheless,
many writers did not adopt it for centuries thereafter. The Troubadours
persistently followed the metre of the verse instead of fitting their
melodies into a set rhythmic scheme (and most naturally so, when we
consider that they were primarily poets); hence the square notes in
which they note their melodies are really nothing but _neumes_ on a
staff. This use has given rise to the error common to most historians,
who, in forcing the beautiful, spontaneous tunes into a straitjacket
of modern measurement, deprived them of their rhythmic and melodic
grace in a manner which did violence to the verses as well. In
considering their musical quality we must call attention to the fact
that, while devoid of the rich beauties of modern harmony, these songs,
availing themselves both of the antique modes and modern tonalities,
are able to convey nobility of sentiment, passion, and varied shades
of emotion. Breathing the 'tender grace of a day that is dead,’ they
are, in some instances, still able to charm in our noisy age, and the
influence which they have had upon the course of the art can hardly be
over-appreciated.

It has been mentioned that the Jongleurs came largely into the
service of the Troubadours. It is they who accompanied the knights in
their travels from castle to castle, providing the lighter kinds of
amusement, and the instrumental accompaniment, such as it was, on their
viols or rottas--sometimes, indeed, singing their master’s songs, with
the dissemination of which they were frequently entrusted. That they
often undertook to 'improve’ these compositions on their own account
we gather from the words of Peire d’Auvergne and others, entreating
jongleurs not to meddle with their verses and melodies. Sometimes,
no doubt, they were more gifted than the Troubadour and provided the
melody for his verses as well. In some instances, indeed, a Jongleur
became a Troubadour or Trouvère, and sometimes a Troubadour became a
Jongleur, as in the case of Gaucelm Faidit, who lost money at dice
and was forced to earn a livelihood by his art. For that was the real
distinction between the two; one sang for glory, the other for gain. As
long as they did not make a trade of their art, lowly-born and bastards
took equal rank with princes and nobles, in the earlier periods at
least.

While at first the Troubadour disdained to accompany his own singing,
he soon learned the art from the Jongleur and in many cases became his
own accompanist. His favorite instruments were the viol, the rotta (a
form of fiddle), and the organistrum.[77] The quality of the melodies
or chords he wrested from them can hardly be conjectured, for we must
not forget that of polyphony, still in its incipient stages among the
learned musicians of the church, he had no knowledge--not, at least,
until about the time of Adam de la Halle (1240-1287), who forms the
bridge, as it were, from the Trouvères to the scientific musicians of
the Netherland school.

We must now briefly enumerate a few of the illustrious Provençal
Troubadours. There were about four hundred poets of fame. The list
is headed by Guillaume, count of Poitiers. Soon after him comes the
fiery and poetic Bernard de Ventadour (1140-1195), patronized by
Queen Eleanor; and Macabrun, the foundling, who wrote--between 1150
and 1195--in a most involved style and generally a satirical vein.
Then comes Jaufre Rudel, prince of Blaya (1140-1170), famous for his
languishing love-songs; Peire d’Auvergne (1152-1215) the 'master of
the Troubadours,’ renowned for artistic finish; Guillem de Cabestanh
(1181-1196), whose poetic adulation of his lady cost him his life at
the hand of her jealous husband, while the object of his affection
was forced to eat his heart; Peire Vidal (1175-1215), perhaps the
most celebrated of all the Troubadours; Bertrand de Born (1180-1195),
famous for his war songs; Folquet de Marseilles (1180-1231), Bishop of
Toulouse; Rambaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207), the cynical and caustic
'Monk of Montaudon’ (1180-1200); Arnault Daniel (1180-1200), a
nobleman of Perigord, celebrated by Petrarch and Dante; Gaucelm Faidit
(1190-1240); Savarie de Mauleon (1200-1230), who fought with Raymond
of Toulouse against Simon de Montfort; Peire Cardinal (1210-1230); and
Guirant Riquier (1250-1294), the last true Troubadour.

Among the women-of whom seventeen achieved great reputation--the
foremost was Beatrice, countess of Die and wife of Guillaume de
Poitiers.

The crushing out of the Troubadours is ascribed to the Albigensian
crusade, which lasted from 1207 to 1244. The Albigenses’ home was
in the very heart of the Troubadour country and the legate of Pope
Innocent III, sent as inquisitor, was murdered there during his attempt
to extirpate the heresy. The crusade of revenge which followed was
particularly directed against Count Raymond of Toulouse, staunch patron
of the Troubadours, who flocked to his standard and raised their voices
in songs of war and religious controversy. Their _odes_, _pasquinades_,
and _sirventes_ were sung by their Jongleurs in market places and at
fairs, while they themselves girt on their swords and fought. During a
fierce war of twenty years waves of soldiers and clergy swept through
the lonely vineyards and gardens, leaving only blackened ruin in
their wake. The bright days of the Troubadour were ended; the society
that supported him was crushed, and the blow that fell in Provence
reverberated through all the land. The race was not extinct, however;
its representatives found a welcome at the courts of Castille, of
Aragón, and of Sicily, where Frederick II was king. From this last
centre they unquestionably exerted an important influence upon the
Italian Renaissance, to which we shall recur in a later chapter. In
this connection we may mention the interesting fact that the poet Dante
early in the fourteenth century visited the Troubadours in their home
and drew inspiration from their art.

The Trouvères’ ascendancy dates from about 1137, when Eleonore of
Aquitaine became queen of France. At her court the knights who spoke
the _langue d’Oïl_ came in contact with those of the south, and from
them received their poetic impulse. Besides this linguistic difference,
the only other distinction is the somewhat more earnest character of
Trouvère songs. Among their illustrious representatives we must name,
first, King Richard I (1169-1199) of England (_Cœur-de-Lion_) and his
_ménéstrel_ Blondel de Nesle. Then there are Marie de France, at the
court of Henry II of England; Thibaut IV, count of Champagne, afterward
king of Navarre (1208-1253); Raoul de Coucy (end of the twelfth
century); Perrin d’Angecourt; Audefroi le Bastard; Guyot de Dijon;
Jehan de Bretal; and Adam de la Halle (or _de la Hâle_)[78] surnamed
_le bossu d’Arras_ (the hunchback of Arras), whose works are preserved
to us and are published by Coussemaker in modern notation.[79] That he
was a genuinely inspired poet and composer is eloquently attested by
his _chansons_, _rondeaux_, and motets, in which he also displays a
complete mastery of the musical science of his day. The most important
of his works is the pastoral comedy, _Le geu de Robin et de Marion_,
which he arranged at the command of the king of Naples, about the
year 1285. Very little of the music was his own, most of it was taken
from the stock of popular song. As a wanderer over Europe, a man of
free, wild life who yet had undergone strict musical training in the
monasteries of northern France, he is interesting as showing the
contrast of theoretical and of actual music and the first efforts to
combine the one with the other.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It is difficult, if not impossible, to say just how much the
Troubadours and the Trouvères influenced the development of music. The
Troubadours found a footing in Sicily and southern Italy and influenced
the growth of the so-called _Ars Nova_, which will be treated in the
next chapter. Melodies of the Trouvères were adopted by the Netherland
composers as the foundations of their masses. These are definite points
at which secular and religious music certainly touched. If, beyond
this, the relations between them are vague and hard to trace, the
movements of which the Troubadours and the Trouvères are manifestations
are none the less of vital significance in the history of music.
Through them the undercurrent of real free music, which we may be sure
never ceased to flow even when the crushing weight of scholasticism
was heaviest, welled to the surface. They represent spontaneous joy
and human delight in ages fettered with theology and logic. They
represent the real source of music. Those who would believe that the
great Italian Renaissance was not primarily a return to classicism but
an all-powerful and general awakening of man to the beauty and delight
of earth will find in the music of the Troubadours and Trouvères this
natural delight expressed. If, as it happened, music was the last to
rise up in the freedom of the Renaissance, it was because music got
no help in her need of expression from a study of the music of the
ancients; music had to build slowly her own means, unaided by precedent
and past accomplishment, fed and encouraged only by the natural love of
man’s heart to sing, a love which is here attested in the dark ages and
to which she finally turned.


                                  VI

We must again give our attention to Germany, where a musical
development parallel to that of the Provençal and French chivalry
had been going forward since the twelfth century. Art music as such
had so far been confined in Germany to the church; the composers and
scholars devoted to its practice were to be found largely in the
monasteries. But about the beginning of the twelfth century an attempt
was made by poet-singers of noble birth to found a school of secular
song expressing their ideals of life and appealing to people of their
rank. This conscious effort of aristocratic singers shared with the
unconscious achievement of folk song a certain range of topics, notably
historical and sacred, and a certain naïveté of attitude. In other
respects it differed from it radically, both in content and in manner,
for it was founded upon the ideal of chivalry and was full of the
spirit of gallantry. But, while the southern poet-singers made profane
love their one great theme, German chivalric poetry in a curious way
blended the mediæval adoration of the Virgin Mary with the worship of
women in general. From this devotion to _Fru Minne_ (Dame Love) it was
called _Minnegesang_ and its singers _Minnesinger_. The beauties of
Nature, ever present in German poetry, also formed an important subject
in _Minnegesang_.

Though simple enough in itself, this first art song of the Germans
never equalled the ingenuousness of the _Volkslied_, for a burden of
knowledge hampered the flight of the poets’ imaginations and chilled
the ardor of their sentiments, and, in the attempt to escape from base
realities, they frequently lost themselves in elusive abstractions.
The allegorical element, almost absent in the _Volkslied_, was largely
represented in _Minnegesang_, which is full of poetic allusions to
the heavenly virtues that lead to salvation, and to the deadly sins
that pave the road to perdition. _Minnegesang_ was more personal and
direct than the _Volkslied_, which tends to socialize or generalize an
individual experience until it applies and appeals to all. A product
of the castles, _Minnegesang_ was frequently a matter of ambition,
encouraged by the hope of finding favor with a princely patron or
winning the love of a high-born lady. The _Volkslied_, a product of the
people, made no such appeal and was its own reward. The tournaments
of song were therefore limited to the _Minnesinger_ and represented a
counterpart of those other contests which in the period of chivalry
brought out physical prowess and skill.

There is an element of partisan controversy in the writings of even
recent historians concerning the respective merits of the Troubadours
and Minnesinger, some maintaining the superiority and originality of
the latter, while others, like Combarieu, call them simply 'imitators’
of the Troubadours. The fact that they appeared somewhat later is
not sufficient evidence for such a statement, however, and may be
explained by the fact that in Germany chivalry flourished later. The
German knights, it will be remembered, did not participate in the first
Crusade. Doubtless the same influences making for exalted expression
were at work in both countries and the early epics of which we have
spoken were in a sense the common property of both. Moreover, the epic
poems of the Celtic people (the Breton _lais_, etc.) preceded the
Provençal lyrics and probably reached Germany by direct road.

A fundamental difference between the two schools, which strongly argues
a separate origin, is the fact that in form _Minnegesang_ approached
the heavier epic style of the Northern bards, rather than the lighter
lyric vein of the Southern singers. Inasmuch as German poetry
contained a great variety of verse-forms with a varying number of
syllables, _Minnegesang_ developed a great variety of rhythms. Unlike
Romance lyricism, German composition never forsook the principle of
_accentuation_ for the sake of mere syllabic proportion (enumeration).
In other words, the Germans considered only the accented syllables,
subordinating the unaccented so that they might be either eliminated
or increased in number without disturbing the rhythmic contour; which
means a very different relation between text and melody. Melody
corresponding with verbal accent makes for correct emphasis and a
natural and logical declamation.

The stereotyped contour of the Troubadour songs which their composers
sought to overcome by excessive melodic ornament is not found to the
same extent in _Minnegesang_, where the change of hypermetres and
catalectics provides in itself a considerable variety of rhythm even
where the same melody is retained for a succession of stanzas. This
sort of adaptation must have required considerable skill in execution;
it has, moreover, given no end of trouble to modern transcribers in
the determination of phrase limits. In the example here given we
follow the interpretation of Riemann. It is an excerpt from the Jena
manuscript, being the only example dating from the twelfth century. Its
author is 'old _Spervogel_,’ and its serious contemplative character
will illustrate the difference between the works of Troubadours and
Minnesinger. We give only the first line of the melody in four of the
thirteen forms which it assumes over the various texts of succeeding
verses.

                         [Illustration: Music]
    1. Swa ein vriund dem an-dern vriun de bi-ge-stat--
                         [Illustration: Music]
    2. Swer si-nen gůt-en vriund be-hal-ten--wil--
                         [Illustration: Music]
    3. Mich nympt wun-der daz--eyn rey-ne by-der-be man--
                         [Illustration: Music]
    4. Eyn e-de-le kun-ne sti-get of--by ey-nem man--

A form especially cultivated by the Minnesinger was the aubade
(_Tagelied_) which originated with the Provençal Troubadours. In its
German form it usually represents a lover, lingering near his beloved,
whom the watchman’s trumpet call announcing the dawn’s approach speeds
on his homeward way. In the earliest known _Tagelied_, by Diet von Eist
(1180), the song of a bird is heard instead of the watchman’s call, but
in later examples the horn-call assumes greater prominence and is even
represented by a melody without text at the beginning or in the middle
of a verse. In one by Wizlaw such a sequence of apparently superfluous
notes at the end of the first verse puzzled transcribers until
recently, when its significance was discovered. In subsequent verses of
this example words are supplied for the notes of the call.

                         [Illustration: Music]

    List du in der min-ne dro,
    ichse den lech-ten mor-ghen fro.
    De vo-ghe-l’n sin-ghen den tac,
    her ist ho.

The 'instrumental’ portions may perhaps have been hummed in imitation
of the horn, but the principle is the same. Still later we find
examples, such as the _Nachthorn_ and _Taghorn_ of the Monk of
Salzburg, which are marked _Auch gut zu blasen_ ('Also good for
blowing’).

                   *       *       *       *       *

        [Illustration: THE TOURNAMENT OF SONG IN THE WARTBURG.]

One of the early names of Minnesingers is that of Tannhauser, or
Tannhäuser, who was born between 1210 and 1220. To him is credited a
Busslied (song of penitence), but it was probably in existence long
before customary among penitents, and only later ascribed to him.
The participation of Tannhäuser in the song tournament of the Wartburg
as represented in the Wagner opera, is obviously a dramatic license of
the composer, as the event took place before his birth, in 1208. One of
the most striking figures is Nithart von Riuwenthal, who endeavored to
infuse new life into the courtly formalism of _Minnegesang_ by drawing
upon the folk song and folk dance.[80] He called the new genre which
he created, and which was a mild parody upon the peasant tunes then
popular in rural Austria and Bavaria, _dörperliche singen_ (village
singing), in contrast to the _höfische singen_ (courtly singing) of
this class. His dance songs differ from other Minnesinger’s lyrics in
their syllabic structure, as of necessity their pronounced rhythm did
not admit superfluous syllables. The melodic correspondence between
rhyming verses already noted in Troubadour _chansons_ is a prominent
feature with Nithart, but more remarkable than this is the fine
imitation of melodic elements corresponding to short rhyming lines
within simple verses (_Stollen_ or _Abgesang_).

                         [Illustration: Music]

    Wis wil-kom-men mei-nen schin!
    Wer möcht uns er-gez-zen din?
    Wan du kannst ver-swen-den pin.
    Daz sagt uns di-siu diet.

    Der win-der ist so lang hie g’leg’n.
    Uf dem veld und in den weg’n:
    Wil-li-klich gab er den seg’n.
    Da er von hin-nen----schiet.

    Nu wil du di hel-de a-ber ern.
    Und wil klei-nin vo-ge-lin die sue-ze stim-me lern.
    Daz sie bald in dem
    Wald ir sue-zen sank ge-mern.

Wizlaw von Rügen, another Minnesinger who tried to leave the beaten
path, showed a marked tendency toward a more direct and faithful
reflection of the emotional contents of his song. His _senende claghe_
(longing complaint), in which he emulates what he refers to as the
_senende wise_ (melody) of the untutored man, is an evidence of the
attempt of Minnesinger at 'characterization,’ and we frequently meet
with such specific names of _Töne_ or _Weisen_, which indicate the
intention to convey an individual sentiment in melody. The apparent
sameness in many of the tunes seems less insistent when we consider the
question of _tempo_ which must have differentiated their performance,
but which was never indicated in the manuscripts.

Hermann der Damen and Heinrich von Meissen, surnamed _Frauenlob_
for his songs in praise of women, were famous for their _Leiche_,
allegorical sacred songs on the order of the 'sequences,’ with melodies
strictly adapted to a text, consisting of irregular stanzas with little
repetition. Of the songs of the two greatest Minnesinger, Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide, only the poems exist: the
melodies passing for theirs are of doubtful origin.

The greatest patrons of _Minnegesang_ among the sovereigns of Germany
were the Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), who died in 1190; Conradin,
the last of the Hohenstauffen, who died 1268; and Wenceslaus of
Bohemia, a contemporary of Conradin. Minnegesang was not to the same
extent as Troubadour poetry a courtly art, yet the castles of these
sovereigns naturally became centres of development, as did also the
courts of the Austrian dukes, when Heinrich von Melk, der Küremberger,
Dietmar von Eist and Nithart (Neidhart) held forth; the courts of
the margraves of Bavaria and Swabia, where we find the margrave of
Rietenburg, Meinloh von Seveningen, Spervogel, and Reinmer von Zweter;
and finally the castle of the landgrave of Thuringia, which boasted of
such bright ornaments as Tannhäuser, Heinrich von Veldecke, Walter von
der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, of whom the last two have
attained the rank of national poets. The formal, stately character of
Minnesong prevented its becoming as popular as the Troubadour song in
France. Another reason for this is the fact that the more pronounced
caste feeling of the Germans forbade them to enlist the assistance of
musicians of inferior station. Whatever accompaniment there may have
been was provided by the poet-singers themselves.


                                  VII

With the decline of feudalism and chivalry and the development of the
industries the middle class acquired a social prominence which roused
dormant ambitions and developed latent abilities. The craftsmen had
formed societies with strictly graded membership, a most elaborate
set of statutes and rigid ceremonial of initiation. They were as much
a social as an intellectual manifestation being developed to mutual
improvement and recreation, and music entered largely into their
program. Association with Minnesingers who were not of noble rank
and who, instead of bearing the title _Ritter_ (knight), were called
_Meister_ (masters), gradually awakened the desire of the good burghers
to emulate the example of the aristocracy and cultivate song in the
manner of _Minnegesang_. The story that Emperor Otto I was founder of
_Meistergesang_ (master song), and gave to twelve masters, among them
Heinrich Frauenlob, Barthel Regenbogen, and Klingsohr, something like
a charter, has long been proved a myth, since the emperor and these
personages were not even contemporaries. But the fact that Frauenlob,
who was one of the last Minnesingers, is claimed as one of the
founders of _Meistergesang_, shows how closely the latter followed
upon the former. There is little doubt, however, that the master-song
was first cultivated in a _Meistersingschule_ (school of master song)
in Mayence, whence it spread to other cities, foremost among them
Nuremburg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Ulm, and Munich.

The _Meistersingschulen_ recruited their members from the
singing-schools of the artisan guilds. Candidates were subjected
to a rigorous examination and had to account not only for their
previous life, their family connections, moral standing, and religious
convictions, but had to pledge themselves to hold the ideal of their
art, to live a pure and worthy life, and to be loyal and helpful to the
fellow-members of the school. There were 'school-friends,’ 'scholars,’
'poets,’ and 'singers.’ Above them in rank were four _Merker_--markers
or judges; one of whom had to compare the text of the song with the
scriptural passage upon which it was founded, while the second judged
the syllabic accent, the third the rhyme, and the fourth the tune.
The highest grade was that of _Meister_, a title conferred upon him
who was capable of fixing the standard of both text and music. Prize
contests were a feature of the public performances and carried on the
tradition of the song tournament of chivalry. The meetings were held in
church. The prize consisted of a string of ornamental coins, a bunch
of artificial flowers, or the permission at the end of the meeting to
stand at the church door and receive from the parting audience a fee
in current coin. The spirit of mediæval artisan life and of scholastic
formalism was paramount in the organization and all its activities. It
is admirably reflected in Richard Wagner’s _Meistersinger von Nürnberg_
where, embodied in the figure of Beckmesser, the _Merker_ becomes the
type of the pedant who rates the letter higher than the spirit.

As religion was foremost in men’s minds at that period,
_Meistergesang_ dealt at first mainly with religious topics and
turned out prosy biblical paraphrases with numerous historical and
allegorical allusions. The versification followed closely the models
of the _Minnegesang_, the structure of the masters’ strophes being
almost identical with that of their aristocratic compatriots. Even
the terms _Weise_ and _Ton_ used by the later Minnesingers to denote
metre and melody, were adopted by the master singers. The song itself
was in the form of a so-called _Bar_; its parts were _Gesätze_; each
_Gesatz_ consisted of two _Stollen_ (strophe and anti-strophe) sung
to the same melody; then followed a Stollen in the tune of the last
Gesatz. The rules governing the composition of these songs were called
_Tabulatur_. The verse-form or _Ton_ was given special names, such
as the _lange Ton_ or _graue Ton_, or suggesting the contents, were
called _Beerweis_, _Brunnenweis_, _Blutton_, _Lindenschmidtton_, or
named after the authors, as _Regenbogenton_, _Schilherton_, etc.
Frauenlob was held in such esteem by the greatest of the mastersingers,
that Hans Sachs himself wrote some twenty-five songs or more in the
_Frauenlobton_. Although the structure of these songs was hidebound in
formal restrictions, the spirit reflected a sturdy sincerity which was
in keeping with the racial temperament of the singers and not without
charm.

Few manuscripts of the Meistersingers contain the music of the songs,
and their notation is not always reliable. They employed neumes,
like the Minnesingers before them, but they limited themselves
almost exclusively to semi-breves, reserving the minims only for the
ornamental figures. These figures, called _Blumen_[81] (flowers,
_fiorituri_) when inserted as an interlude or at the final cadence made
a pleasing effect, in contrast to the even movement of the melody
which, without any perceptible rhythmic division, was likely to be
monotonous. Recent musical authorities, among them Riemann, incline to
the opinion that the mastersingers’ melodies were far better than the
reputation they enjoy. While some writers claim that they accompanied
their songs on the harp, the violin, lute, or zither, others make no
mention whatever of instrumental accompaniment, and Genée, in his book
on Hans Sachs and his time, distinctly states that they were sung
without accompaniment.[82]

Among the most famous Meistersingers were Heinrich Frauenlob (mentioned
above), Hans Foltz, Hans Rosenplüt, Konrad Nachtigall, Konrad Murner,
Michel Behaim, Jörg Schilher, Bartel Regenbogen, Heinrich von Ueglin,
and Muskatblüt. But far above his colleagues towers Hans Sachs, the
shoemaker poet of Nuremberg. His achievements as poet, dramatist,
and musician are uneven in quality; his farces assure him of a more
prominent place in German literature than the rank accorded to him in
musical history for his setting of the psalms. But taken as a whole
his personality typifies what was best in the art of his class at
that period--an art practised under conditions which did not favor
the free and bold flight of creative genius. It was Hans Sach who
first of all the mastersingers openly espoused the cause of the new
church by greeting the appearance of Luther in his famous song, _Die
Wittenbergisch Nachtigall_. In his naïve, sincere devotion to the new
creed he undertook also to 'revise’ some of the older master songs
to make them conform to the new spirit, and his contributions to
Protestant church music were highly esteemed by his contemporaries.

Individual impulse, both emotional and musical, being curbed by rigid
rules, _Meistergesang_ was a less direct expression of personality
than _Minnegesang_, and a less frank reflection of sentiment than
the _Volkslied_. Lacking spontaneity and wider human appeal, it
fostered a spirit of severe formalism which could not have much
influence upon the development of music in general. On the other
hand, this formalistic severity imparted a technical and spiritual
discipline which was not to be undervalued, and the stress laid upon
a serious and dignified attitude toward the art of music may have
done no little toward counterbalancing the frivolous tendencies which
sprang up here and there during the religious, social, and political
unrest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nor was the relation
between _Meistergesang_ and the Reformation without influence upon the
development of Protestant church music. For in the slow and measured
movement of the songs, dealing with sacred themes and sung _unisono_ by
the members of the _Singschule_ at the opening of their meetings, one
can recognize an essential feature of the Protestant Chorale.

Thus we may conclude with the statement that the real value to
posterity of the art movements we have discussed lies in their
influence upon the two great social movements that signalize the dawn
of the modern era, namely, the Renaissance in Italy and the Reformation
in Germany, both of which are again reflected in the music of a later
day. The new spirit is echoed in the sublime words of Hans Sachs:

    'Awake! Draws nigh the break of day,
    I hear upon the hawthorn spray
        A bonny little nightingale.
        Her song resounds through hill and dale.
    The night descends the Western sky,
    And from the East the dawn draws nigh.
        With red ardor the flush of day
        Breaks through the cloud banks, dull and gray.’[83]

                                                           A. v. E.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[69] 'Renaissance in Italy,’ Vol. II.

[70] The legend of Tannhäuser, perpetuated in Wagner’s opera, is an
example of this superstition.

[71] _Complainte_ was the generic name for the narrative form of song;
the later _chansons de geste_, the legend of the Passion and of the
Saints, early romances and the _ballades_ of the peasants all belonged
to this genus.

[72] Julien Tiersot: _L’histoire de la chanson populaire en France_.

[73] Karl Bücher: _Arbeit und Rhythmus_.

[74] The 'cow-horn tune’ of Salzburg (fourteenth century) suggests that
the arpeggio manner may have been derived from the horn itself, which
was the most common instrument in the pastoral regions of the Tyrol and
Switzerland.

[75] Jules Combarieu: _Histoire de la musique_.

[76] Fr. Diez: _Die Poesie der Troubadours_.

[77] The Middle-Age hurdy-gurdy.

[78] B. at Arras, _ca._ 1230; d. in Naples in 1287. His father was
a well-to-do burgher, who destined him for holy orders and sent him
to the Abbey of Vauxcelles. But his falling in love with a certain
_demoiselle_ Marie changed the course of his career. However, he
separated from her in 1263, and retired again as a clerical to Douai.
In 1282 he entered the service of Duke Robert II of Artois and
accompanied him in his expedition to Sicily, where he wrote some of his
most important works for the entertainment of the French court. _Le geu
de Robin et Marion_ was preceded by other pieces, including _Le geu de
la feuillée_ (1262), but they were of a frivolous and even licentious
character.

[79] Ed. de Coussemaker: _Œuvres complètes du Trouvères Adam de la
Hâle_.

[80] The terms _Tanzwise_ and _Tanzliet_ are attached to not a few
songs of Minnesingers, notably to those of Ulrich von Lichtenstein and
Reinmar der Fiedler.

[81] The _Blume_ was sometimes applied to the first syllable of a song
when it was probably intended to prepare the mood, but produced a
rather ludicrous effect. Even Hans Sachs begins his song _Drey frummer
König Juda_ with a _Blume_ of ten notes, all on the word _drey_.

[82] R. Genée: _Hans Sachs und seine Zeit_.

[83] From the English translation of _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_,
by Frederick Corder.


                             CHAPTER VIII
                  THE RISE OF THE NETHERLAND SCHOOLS

  The Netherland style; the Ars Nova; Machault and the Paris school;
  the papal ban on figured music--The Gallo-Belgian school; early
  English polyphony; John Dunstable; Dufay and Binchois; other
  Gallo-Belgians--Okeghem and his school--Josquin des Près; merits of
  the Netherland schools.


                                   I

We have already discussed the origins of polyphony and the condition of
secular popular music in the dim periods of the Middle Ages. We shall
confine ourselves in this chapter for the most part to the development
of polyphony, the art of music within the church, not because it was
only within the church that polyphony was perfected, but because the
art can be most easily and consistently traced in church music. None
of the great composers whose importance we shall discuss restricted
himself only to religious music, but all gave the greater part of
their energy thereto, and most of the available knowledge of music
from 1300 to 1600 is related to the church. It must not be forgotten,
on the other hand, that secular music exerted a vigorous influence
upon ecclesiastical music, an influence constantly combatted by the
church authorities, yet constantly triumphant. The two styles acted and
reacted upon each other in a manner which may be observed at various
periods of musical history.

The study of the development of music from 1300 to 1600 is largely the
study of the art or science of polyphony. Polyphony, or counterpoint,
is primarily the art of combining two or more voice parts so that they
shall maintain their independent character and individual interest,
and still harmonize with each other. Early musical notes were written
as dots, or points, one voice under or _against_ another, whereby the
term _contra punctum_, meaning simply note against note, originated.
As has been previously explained, the first or more important melody,
called subject, theme, or _cantus firmus_, was generally placed in the
tenor, so called from _tenere_ (to hold), on account of its holding
the melody: and the addition of one or more melodies to the cantus
firmus, or theme, under strict rules and regulations, is the art of
counterpoint.[84]

One of the most important devices for enhancing interest in the
principal melody is known as 'imitation’; that is, the repetition of
a theme or phrase, or parts thereof, either at a different pitch from
the original, or in a different voice part, with or without rhythmic
or other modifications, which, however, must not be so great as to
destroy the resemblance. Combining, as it does, variety with unity of
impression, and offering the composer opportunity for the display of
great ingenuity, the art of imitation grew rapidly in importance, and
became one of the chief and most characteristic beauties of polyphonic
writing.[85] To trace the growth of that style of writing, which has
been called the Netherland style, is our present purpose.

In Chapter VI we traced the beginnings of polyphony in the stiff
organum, and the growth of the so-called mensural system by which all
music was reduced to triple rhythm and bound by mathematical laws,
indifferent to beauty, relentlessly rigid and monotonous. During this
period the musical centre of Europe was Paris, where the organists
of Notre Dame were the most influential composers. Here the reaction
against the system found voice in theoretical discussion, though this
again was probably only the reflection of what had been going on in
actual practice, both in France and elsewhere. Indeed, it is claimed
by some writers (notably Riemann) that certain composers of Florence,
under the direct influence of Troubadour song, were the first to
throw off the fetters of musical dogma; England, too, has a serious
claim for priority in the new movement,[86] which was influenced
everywhere by the spontaneous florescence of secular song. But the name
_ars nova_, by which the reform was designated by its protagonists
in contradistinction to the _ars antiqua_ of their Franconian
predecessors, has led historians to connect it with the probable author
of the treatise entitled 'The Ars Nova.’ Philippe de Vitry, bishop
of Meaux (1290-1361), is said to be the author of this treatise, as
well as of several others dealing with measured music, 'proportions’
and the relative value of the symbols of notation. In it he advocates
counterpoint for several voices, rhythmic variety of a free use of
chromatic alterations. None of his own compositions has been preserved
to us, however. Another writer, known by the name of Jean de Muris,
left several works of similarly radical character. He is not to be
confused, however, with a theorist of the same name designated as 'the
Norman,’ who taught at the Sorbonne from 1321 on, and whose teaching
was so conservative as really to constitute a reaction against the new
method--the ars nova. This effort toward freedom was characterized,
first by the reintroduction of duple time into church music, in
which triple time, on account of its symbolistic connection with the
Trinity, had long held the field; secondly, by the emancipation of
individual voices by means of a greater variety of rhythm; thirdly,
by the prohibition of parallel octaves and fifths;[87] and lastly,
by the differentiation between half and full cadences,[88] which, in
homophonic music--in plain-chant and in secular song--had long been
recognized.

The introduction of the natural duple rhythm into music written for the
church demanded the addition of new signs to the mensural system of
notation (cf. Chap. VI, pp. 177 ff.), for it was necessary that singers
should be informed whether they were to sing according to the triple
or double scheme. Thus there appear about this period new time signs.
Of these a semi-breve, still called, by the way, _tempus perfectum_
circle, [music sign], signified the division of the breve into three
or perfect time. A half-circle, [music sign], signified
the division of the breve into two semi-breves, and this was imperfect
time. A dot within the circle or the half-circle, [music sign] [music
sign], indicated that the semi-breve was to be divided into three
minims, but without the dot the semi-breve equalled only two minims.
The three-part division of the semi-breve constituted major prolation,
the two-part, minor prolation. Perfect or imperfect time was sung
twice as fast if the time sign was cut by a line, [music sign] [music
sign]. The second of these cut signs still survives in the modern
sign, [music sign], signifying _alla breve_ time. It appears likely
that De Vitry himself was the first to think of using colored notes to
signify still another genus of rhythmical subdivision called _proportio
hemiolia_; and that he was the first to use the term _contrapunctus_,
or counterpoint, instead of descant.

Through lack of actual examples of the period we are unable to tell
how thoroughly and readily church composers adopted the methods
of the _ars nova_, but eventually their advocacy was of momentous
importance. It is true that secular music was the first to benefit by
the advance, for it preserved naturally all the elements which the new
law purposed to regulate. Hence the first form--that which constitutes
the first ground of interaction, the transition to the polyphonic
form of church music--was the popular _chanson_, an elementary form
of song, evidently developed from the _canson_ and the ballad of
the Troubadours, etc., which, as we know, were composed for a solo
voice with an improvised instrumental accompaniment. According to
Riemann this development of the chanson first went forward in Italy,
in connection with the movement known as the Florentine ars nova,
a detailed account of which we have chosen to reserve for our next
chapter. The Italian ars nova, which is held by modern historians
to have influenced the French ars nova in various ways, and to have
transmitted to it a style of composition in which the upper voice
was freely invented and harmonically interpreted--though in a rude
manner--by the accompanying voice or voices, a style which by 1400 was
fully developed. These chansons were, it should be noted, like their
prototype, chiefly for one solo voice with instrumental accompaniment
and varied by instrumental preludes, interludes, and postludes. Purely
vocal polyphony in chansons was rare before 1500, though examples
of an elementary kind of part-songs have also been preserved, and,
as the polyphonic style advanced, these eventually superseded the
instrumentally accompanied solo (monodic song).

Meantime, however, the church had fallen heir to these primarily
_secular_ inspirations and developed under the rules of the ars nova
a freer contrapuntal style, whose chief vehicles were the Mass and
the Motet, forms whose general characteristics have been explained
in previous chapters. Characteristic of this new polyphony is the
so-called _imitative_ style, whose real origin has never been
discovered and which is the distinguishing feature of the schools
about to be discussed. The first indications of this imitative, or
Netherland, style are found in the works of Jehannot Lescurel and
Guillaume de Machault (d. _ca._ 1372).

Machault is the composer of the first known four-part mass, which was
performed at the coronation of Charles V, in 1360. It must be admitted
that this is not a very good specimen, even of early polyphony. The
parallel octaves and fifths already prohibited by musical authorities
had no terrors for Machault, and his discords amount to nothing less
than cacophony. It is a historical landmark, however, and serves as
a starting point from which to trace the development of contrapuntal
methods. In justice to Machault it should perhaps be said that he was
a much better poet than composer, and his verses deserve a higher rank
than this music, which includes, besides the mass, two and three-part
chansons rondeaux and motets.

For some years longer Paris continued to be, as it had been for more
than two hundred years, the musical centre of Europe. The prestige
it had held so long was lost, ultimately, not only through an actual
decline of original power, but through an abuse of the power they
possessed. The standards of the old organ masters of Notre Dame, if
somewhat dry, were at least scholarly; but we begin to see, in the
early fourteenth century, a deterioration, and a tendency among singers
to make a display of their ability in improvisation. Canons and rounds
of that time, and even long after, were written in a kind of shorthand,
understood, presumably, by every trained singer, but nevertheless
giving some freedom of judgment to the performer, which was easily
abused. The first phrase of the cantus firmus was usually written
out; after this a few signs in Latin, meaning nothing to the modern
musician unskilled in the mysteries of this art, would indicate the
time of entrance and relative pitch for the other voices. Imitation was
almost continuously in use; the 'accidentals’ of modern notation were
but rarely indicated, even as late as the time of Palestrina, and the
'key signature’ of the present day was unknown. However, the training
of the chapel singers was such as to give a thorough knowledge of the
use of accidentals and of the musical symbols of the time. Intricate
rules for their guidance were laid down; but, carried away by the flood
of new ideas, and unrestrained by scholarly fastidiousness, many of
them indulged in liberties which loaded down the pure melody of the
venerable plain-chant with inappropriate ornamentations, and often
rendered it hopelessly unrecognizable.

In protest against these unwarranted melismas and tasteless innovations
of singers, especially of the cathedral choirs and of the papal chapel,
the famous bull of 1322 was issued by Pope John XXII. It was not a
protest, primarily, either against the popular faux-bourdon, which was
generally in use until after the return of the papacy to Rome (1377),
or the contrapuntal school, _per se_. It was certainly not against
the methods of the ars nova, as is proved by the use of certain
technical terms peculiar to the _ars antiqua_. It is against the
abuses of the latter school, the obscuring of the plain-song melodies
and the violation of the spirit of church music by frivolous rhythmic
variations, ornamentation, and juggling with counter melodies, often of
profane character. Many other protests of a like nature came from the
papal chair during the next two hundred and fifty years; and we shall
have occasion to see, in a later chapter, the result of the struggle
between religious decorum, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
vagaries of the artistic mind in the throes of development.

Yet it must be granted that the masters of the old French school
deserve no small credit for their scientific and practical labors.
During the time of their ascendancy the resources of notation were
increased, double counterpoint was cultivated, a greater freedom in
metre and rhythm was introduced, the several voices became more nearly
independent, and an extraordinary degree of attention was paid to the
problems involved in mensuration. They failed, however, in reaching a
point at which true artistic composition, in the larger sense, begins.
'Of symmetrical arrangement, based upon the lines of a preconceived
design, they had no idea. Their highest aspirations extended no farther
than the enrichment of a given melody with such harmonies as they were
able to improvise at a moment’s notice: whereas composition, properly
so called, depends, for its existence, upon the invention--or, at
least, upon the selection--of a definite musical idea, which the genius
of the composer presents, now in one form, and now in another, until
the exhaustive discussion of its various aspects produces a work of
art, as consistent, in its integrity, as the conduct of a scholastic
thesis, or a dramatic poem.’[89]

It was this very quality of design which distinguished the work of the
Flemish composers, who, about the middle of the fourteenth century,
gained the dominating position among European musicians.

                                  II

With the decline of the old French school the musical leadership of
Europe passed into the hands of the Early Netherlanders, called by some
historians the Gallo-Belgian School, which flourished, roughly, from
the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century.

It will be remembered that the fourteenth century was an epoch of
great prosperity in the Netherlands. The ancient nobility had lost
power, while the towns, with their astute and far-seeing traders,
had acquired extraordinary strength. Earlier many serfs had been
enfranchised, and thus a large body of sturdy workers was liberated
into the independent trades and soon became wealthier and more powerful
than the nobles. The trade guilds and burghers were uncompromising in
resisting the encroachments both of the feudal lords and of the Church,
and were, therefore, enabled to turn their energies toward commerce
and agriculture, unchecked by the influences of a corrupt government.
Great factories flourished, vessels of Dutch merchants plied their
trade in nearly every sea, population, wealth, and intelligence
increased. The ancient towns, Bruges, Louvain, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres,
still bear testimony to these days of prosperity in their magnificent
examples, not of ecclesiastical architecture, as in Italy, but of
splendid structures for municipal and domestic use. It was among these
prosperous and music-loving people that the art of contrapuntal writing
was nourished. They did not invent or create polyphony, as has long
been believed; but they found pleasure in the fact that the principles
of music could be reduced to laws and rules, and the more intricate the
rules, the more the true Netherlanders delighted in them. In fact, it
was this very tendency that smothered polyphony itself, in course of
time; but not before a vast amount of systematized knowledge had been
preserved for their successors.

The service of the Pope’s chapel up to the time of its return to Rome
from Avignon in 1377 was sung in faux-bourdon, or in the still older
method of extemporaneous descant. Ecclesiastical records show that,
after the return to Rome, several Belgian musicians were among the
singers in the papal choir. These brought with them, along with other
music, the first masses written in counterpoint that had ever been seen
there. Among the Belgians in Rome, in the early fifteenth century,
was a tenor singer named William Dufay, born probably in Chimay, in
Hainault, about 1400. There has been much misapprehension concerning
Dufay, owing to the fact that Baini, an Italian historian (1775-1844),
gave, erroneously, the probable date of his death as 1432. Recent
researches, however, especially those of Sir John Stainer, have thrown
much light on the life and work of Dufay, and enabled historians to
understand facts which hitherto had seemed irreconcilable.

According to this recent authority, Dufay received his musical
education as chorister in the cathedral at Cambrai, which in the
fifteenth century belonged to the Netherlands. It is famous as the seat
of the archbishopric of Fénelon and of Dubois, and for its ancient
cathedral. According to contemporary evidence, the music of the Cambrai
cathedral was considered 'the most beautiful in Europe.’[90]

It was but natural, then, that the papal choir at Rome should draw what
singers it could from Cambrai. It appears that Dufay entered it as the
youngest member in 1428 and remained five years. After a break he was
again appointed in the following decade, when he remained but a short
period. It was at the time a frequent custom for the church to reward
whom it would by ecclesiastical appointments, allowing the holder
of office to reside elsewhere. According to this custom, Dufay was
appointed to the canonries of Cambrai and Mons, both of which offices
he held till his death, though he removed to Savoy about 1437 and
travelled somewhat in the interests of his art. He died at a great age
in 1474. His will is still preserved in the archives of Cambrai, and in
it, among other items, he bequeaths money to the Cambrai altar boys.
He is buried in the chapel of St. Etienne, beneath a stone he himself
caused to be made, which, though mutilated, is still in existence. One
of his last desires was that a certain motet of his own composition be
sung at his deathbed.

The chief source of our knowledge of Dufay’s early works is the 'MS.
_Canonici misc._ 213’ in the Bodleian library at Oxford, compiled not
later than 1436, a portion of which has recently been explained and
given to the public by Sir John Stainer.[91] The MS. represents the
period of transition from Machault to Dufay, including the early works
of the latter. They are mostly in the old mensural (black) notation,
and show an unusual proportion of secular pieces. Transcriptions
and solutions of sixty of them, belonging to the period 1400-1441,
are given by Stainer. Most of the pieces are dry in melody and show
occasional harsh discords; but they also exhibit examples of fugal form
and some crude attempts at expression. They are quite lacking in a
certain sweetness of harmony characteristic of his later works, which
has been traced to the influence of his famous English contemporary,
John Dunstable. It appears advisable, therefore, to consider here the
condition of music in England which is thus to make itself felt upon
the course of music in general.

Though the twelfth and thirteenth centuries do not, in England, show
well-defined groups of musicians working toward a common end, such as
constitute a 'school’ in the accepted sense, there can be no doubt that
the English were ahead of their time in the early days of polyphony
and that English music strongly influenced composers on the continent.
Indeed a very considerable case for the actual origin of polyphony in
England has been made out by recent historians of great authority,
and the case is supported by the famous old English canon, 'Sumer is
i-cumen in’--one of the earliest extant examples of polyphonic music.
The date of this interesting composition is given by Rockstro[92]
as not later than 1250. It is a charming melody, composed to a gay,
naïve poem, in the form of a round, or canon, for six voices, and is
supposed to have been written by John Fornsete, a monk of Reading.
In some measures the parallel fifths and octaves show the influence
of diaphony, while in others there is excellent counterpoint which
might have been written at least a hundred and fifty years later. The
imitation is not confined to short phrases, but is consistently carried
through in the four upper voices to the close, over two independent
basses. The harmony is rather limited, the F major chord being in
great preponderance: but, on the whole, the canon shows a high degree
of skill in polyphonic writing. It is, in short, a remarkable example
of the working out of an inspired folk song with two systems of part
writing, which, so far as we know, were not contemporaneous.

One explanation of this apparent anomaly is that the composition,
originally the work of a song writer of great natural genius, was
later edited or corrected by a learned musician. Parallel octaves and
fifths were not considered offensive in the thirteenth century, and
such a learned scholar might easily have let them pass, while lifting
other parts of the music to an artistic form considerably in advance
of popular taste. It has been supposed, on the other hand, that the
composition is really the single accidentally preserved specimen
of a whole musical literature, which has otherwise been lost. In
support of this latter theory it is urged that the art of imitation,
as illustrated in the canon, must have reached a point of excellence
beyond anything existing in France or Belgium at the time, and could
only have been the product of a well-defined school. However the case
may be, the song remains, an isolated but for its time brilliant
example testifying to the freshness, vitality, and beauty of early
English music.

It should be added that, under the auspices of the 'Plain-song and
Mediæval Music Society’ of England, researches have been carried on,
resulting in the publication of two volumes,[93] the first containing
photographic reproductions of sixty of the most notable examples of
English harmonized music prior to the fifteenth century, the second
transcriptions thereof into modern musical notation, with explanatory
notes. The majority of the examples are written for two voices, and
some for three: none of these, however, can compare, in regard to
workmanship, with the 'Sumer’ canon, which is also included in the
collection.

Not until the beginning of the fifteenth century do we find actual
evidence of a school, and it is interesting to note the points
of resemblance between it and the first Netherland school. Both
are characterized by a reliance on the plain-chant melody, by a
conventional opening, a lack of sensitiveness to discords, an avoidance
of the third in the closing chord, and an absence of harmonic effects.
Compared with the old French school, however, they show a genuine
progress in the abolition of the harsher discords, the use of the third
in cadences not final, and in the more frequent employment of imitation.

Representatives of the early English school, it is important to note,
were divided into two distinct branches, one remaining for the most
part on English soil, while the other identified itself almost wholly
with continental schools, and, in respect to style, seems to belong
to them. In this latter group was John Dunstable, born about 1390, in
Dunstable, England. He died in 1453, and is buried in St. Stephen’s,
Walbrock, where an epitaph was said to be inscribed on 'two faire
plated stones in the Chancell, each by other.’ Another, written by the
Abbot of St. Albans, is headed:

    'Upon John Dunstable, an astrologian,
    A mathematician, a musitian, and what not,’

and the six lines of elegiac Latin which follow bestow upon him
heartfelt praise.

Dunstable was a writer of songs both sacred and secular. One of
the latter, _O Rosa bella_, was discovered in the Vatican in 1847,
and is one of the most beautiful specimens of the age. Of the two
compositions in the possession of the British Museum, one is a sort of
musical enigma, a form of composition quite in vogue among the later
Netherlanders. The other is a work in three parts of some length,
without words, and is found in a splendid volume of MS. music formerly
belonging to Henry VIII. Four sacred compositions, two songs, and two
motets are in the archives of the Liceo Filarmonico of Bologna.

Even with these few examples of his work, Dunstable’s reputation as a
great musician seems to rest on solid ground. More than half a dozen
interesting references to him are made in contemporaneous European
writings, among them being one by Tinctoris, a Belgian theorist
and composer (1445-1511), and another by a French verse-writer, who
compares Dufay, Binchois, and Dunstable as song writers, to the
advantage of the Englishman. The passage from Tinctoris refers to
England as the _fons et origo_ of counterpoint, and cites Dunstable as
her chief composer.

Absurd mistakes have crept into the commentaries upon Dunstable. One
early writer, Sebald Heyden (1540), claimed that he was the inventor of
counterpoint, and another identified him with St. Dunstan. These and
other errors were handed down by subsequent writers, until Ambros, in
his _Musikgeschichte_, set most of them right. Of course counterpoint
was not, and in the nature of things could not be, the invention of any
one man. It was built up gradually, one school contributing a little
here, another there, until a comprehensive system was formed.

In England Dunstable’s name was either little known or else it was soon
forgotten; for it fails to appear in an important work, _Scriptores
Britanniæ_, published in 1550, scarcely a century after his death. From
the fact that all but two of his extant compositions are in continental
libraries, and that his reputation, during his lifetime, was evidently
far greater in Europe than in England, it is supposed that most of his
life was spent abroad. Since none of Dunstable’s compositions appear in
the 'MS. Canonici,’ it is evident that his fame was not established in
Europe when the collection was made (not later than 1436). Contemporary
references to him, however, begin to appear about that time, or shortly
after; and it is a remarkable fact that the compositions of Dufay,
which are known to have been written after this date, show a marked
advance both in contrapuntal skill and in style over those contained
in the 'MS Canonici.’ In face of the facts that Dunstable was not only
an older contemporary of Dufay and Binchois, but that he was also an
excellent master of counterpoint and style, it is, therefore, not
unreasonable to assume that he was one of the important sources upon
which these Gallo-Belgians drew for their instruction and inspiration.

Like the Netherland composers, Dunstable shows a lack of variety and
a failure to adapt his music to the sentiments of the words: but he
far surpasses them in sweetness and beauty. His works are among the
earliest to exhibit a design founded upon resources other than the
plain-chant melodies of the Church. He was capable of writing learned
musical puzzles, thus foreshadowing the frequent practice of the
Netherlanders of the next century; but he also wrote in lighter vein
with charm and purity, and definitely renounced the harsh discords
employed by Machault and others. It is with good reason, therefore,
that scholars have predicated, from these facts, the influence of
Dunstable upon the early Netherlanders, even though, in his native
land, we find no trace of his teachings until they were imported later
from the Low Countries.

Through Dunstable, therefore, we are led back to Dufay and his
contemporaries, and the real significance of this first Netherland
school. The writers belonging to it were for centuries buried under the
fame of the later Flemish composers, Okeghem and his pupils. As will
be seen, however, Dufay is to be reckoned, not only as an important
pioneer in the strikingly brilliant achievements of the Netherlanders,
but also as the actual founder of a school. Learned and well versed
in the musical science of his day, he possessed furthermore that
indefinable touch of genius which enables a man to build a little
higher than his forerunners, and leave art enriched by his labors. A
large number of his compositions have been recovered, among them being
fifty-nine secular songs, thirty-six sacred songs, eight whole masses,
and about twenty sections, or movements, of masses. One hundred and
fifty compositions were discovered by Haberl alone, hidden in the
archives of Bologna, Rome, and Trieste. Masses and portions of masses
are in the Brussels Library, others at Cambrai, still others in the
Paris library, and in Munich a motet for three voices.

The oldest datable work is a chanson, _Resveillies vous et faites
chiere lye_, written in honor of the marriage of Charles Malatesta,
Lord of Pesaro, and Vittoria Colonna, in 1415. Dufay was one of the
first composers to use the unfilled white notes, and it is believed
that he introduced other changes in notation. He deserves great credit
for discarding, in his later works, the empty fourths and fifths,
as well as the parallel fifths, which still disfigured the music of
some of the ablest composers of the early fifteenth century. We find,
furthermore, in Dufay a more developed, though not very extended,
canonic treatment of voices; and, again, there is occasionally
noticeable a strong tendency toward expression, as, for example, in the
mass, _Ecce Ancilla_, which is even more interesting on account of its
harmonic character. Moreover, after he settled at Cambrai in 1436--that
is, after Dunstable’s European fame was established--a new conception,
similar to that found in the English composer’s works, seems to animate
his compositions. His dry methods change, the different voices become
more melodious, the harsher discords disappear, and the use of canon
grows more frequent.

The feature of Dufay’s epoch, however, which had a most far-reaching
effect, and one which, incidentally, brought the wrath of fifteenth
century critics upon his head, was the practice of using in the mass
secular melodies in place of the Gregorian cantus firmus. For example,
the folk songs, _Tant je me déduis_, _Se la face ay pale_, and _L’omme
armé_, were incorporated as 'subjects’ in a number of masses, which
were named after the tunes. The absolute invention of new subjects was
foreign to composers of that day, and such familiar tunes, repeated
in the various parts of the mass, supplied a familiar nucleus, while
the composer’s ingenuity found ample play in weaving about it manifold
figures and phrases. This was decidedly a new departure, and one that
could not be agreeable to the Church. But the new fashion was no sooner
set than other composers eagerly took it up. Dufay’s pupils adopted
it and passed it on to the later Netherlanders, who in turn handed it
down to the Romans. _L’omme armé_ became such a favorite for the mass
that the younger Gallo-Belgians, Faugues and Caron, the Netherlanders
Josquin and Lasso, and even the Roman Palestrina, in his early work,
made use of it. In appropriating these secular melodies usually only
the beginning was employed, and around this were woven contrapuntal
devices. In this manner the new melody acquired almost the importance
of a theme. Imitation of one part by another, at a greater or less
interval of time, is, at present, so inevitably a characteristic
feature of every musical composition of a higher order that it is
difficult to imagine a time when it was far from being an obvious or
necessary element. The invention of this art was for long attributed to
Okeghem and his school; though it is now apparent that it was not only
practised fifty years earlier by Dufay, but that it was already used
as early as 1250, as is seen in the now famous canon 'Sumer is i-cumen
in,’ which has been mentioned above.

This epoch of the activity of the Gallo-Belgians resulted in the firm
establishment of what might be called the Netherland style. Technical
ingenuity was exalted over beauty of sound; the use of martial tunes
and love songs, some of them accompanied by most indiscreet words,
prevailed in the mass as long as the old polyphony lasted; and the art
of canon, although as yet limited and crude, took its place among the
indispensable adjuncts of all musical composition.

Of the three composers of this period who are frequently mentioned
together by the old writers, two have already been briefly discussed.
The third, Giles Binchois, born about 1400, died in 1460, seven years
after Dunstable and fourteen years before Dufay. First a soldier,
then a priest, Binchois became _chaplain-chantre_ to Duke Philip of
Burgundy in 1452. Like Dufay, he was appointed non-resident canon
of the cathedral at Mons. Twenty-eight of his compositions are in
the 'MS. Canonici,’ of which all but one are secular. Six songs and
two motets in the Munich library have also been recently discovered
and transcribed by Dr. Hugo Riemann. Among Binchois’ extant works
are also about a dozen sacred songs and six parts of masses. Like
his contemporaries of the same school, Binchois was somewhat more
interested in technical performance than in expression. Tinctoris
mentions him with great praise as a composer whose fame would endure
forever. It is evident, also, from the testimony of contemporary
writers, that both Dufay and Binchois were widely celebrated as masters
and teachers of counterpoint.

Another Gallo-Belgian, Eloy, born about 1400, produced a mass for five
voices, a rarity for that time. This work, called _Dixerunt discipuli_,
is in the Vatican library. Many of the pupils of Dufay and Binchois,
among whom were Busnois, Caron, Faugues, Basiron, and Obrecht, became
more or less celebrated in their time, and constituted a kind of second
generation or transitional school between the first, or Gallo-Belgian,
and the later Netherland schools. Growing more familiar with the
resources of the contrapuntal method, they improved upon the work of
their masters, while adhering, in essentials, to their precepts. Dufay
and Binchois, for instance, usually imitated the pattern either in
unison or the octave; their followers used also the canon in the fifth,
and carried it out with more skill. They discovered the construction of
chords, though they still had no idea of rational chord progressions.
Busnois, especially, was a more skillful harmonist than Dufay. His fame
spread to Italy, and Petrucci[94] included a number of his songs in
one of his earliest publications, about 1503. Among these pieces is a
four-part chanson, _Dieu quel mariage_, which, according to Naumann,
is remarkable, not only for the refinement of its harmony, but also on
account of its masterly treatment of the melody. This is placed partly
in the tenor and partly in the alto--a novel feature for the time--with
no disturbance of the free motion and canonic flow of the other two
parts. Busnois had also more skill in design than Dufay, actually
employing the beginning of the melody as a theme, and building upon it
the whole canonic structure of the voices.

The spirit of change was upon the art of music, as it had been in turn
upon architecture, poetry, and painting. Dry outlines were giving
place to greater fullness of detail, to greater richness of coloring,
harmony, and expression; but, even as music was the last of the arts to
be affected by the renascent vitality of the late Middle Ages, so it
was slow in travelling the tortuous course of technical difficulties
which had to be conquered before true beauty of expression could
be reached. Nevertheless, even at this time, music was a real art,
possessing laws, modes of diction, and even traditions. Though it
revealed its youthfulness in its limitations and crudeness it was by
no means chaotic. The music of the mass already showed definite signs
of form. There was a shadowy idea of key distribution, and efforts to
arrive at a satisfactory method of modulation are evident on every
hand. The compositions of the time begin to show a love of variety and
contrast, together with extreme regularity in the matter of rhythm.
During this time also it is clear that in some forms of secular music,
at least, instrumental accompaniments were used. Sometimes songs, and
even motets, were played and not sung; again, instruments were counted
upon to assist the voices through difficult passages. The major seventh
was not considered unvocal, but the compass of both instruments and
voices was exceedingly limited. On every hand efforts were made to
break through the bonds of old tradition. In these and other matters it
is plain that our first Netherlander had left the Troubadour Machault
far behind.


                                  III

The next important advance in the art of polyphony is associated with
the name of Johannes Okeghem,[95] to whom the leadership in the art of
music passed at the death of Dufay, in 1474. Like many other musicians
of the time, Okeghem was trained as a choir boy, being one of the
fifty-three choristers in the cathedral at Antwerp just before the
middle of the century. About twenty years later we find him in Paris
as royal chapel master, in great favor with King Louis the Eleventh.
He travelled to Spain at the King’s expense, and later, about 1484,
revisited his native country, where he was received at Bruges with
great ceremony. It is evident, therefore, that his fame was already
well established during the lifetime of the older master, Dufay, to
whose mantle he fell heir at about the age of forty-five. It is thought
that during the latter period of his life he resided at Tours, where
he died in 1495. It is most likely that he was a pupil of Binchois,
rather than of Dufay.

The extant compositions of this master are seventeen masses, seven
motets, nineteen chansons, and a number of canons. One mass is in
the possession of the papal chapel, and five of the chansons were
published by Petrucci early in the sixteenth century, not long after
Okeghem’s death. The _Missa cujusvis toni_ was used for many years
in the cathedral at Munich, where the MS., with corrections made by
the singers themselves, still exists. Another mass, _Deo gratia_, has
become one of the curiosities of musical history, from the fact that it
is written for thirty-six parts, with a nine-fold canon.

It may be said at once that Okeghem’s celebrity, and his important
place in the history of polyphony, rest upon two things: his remarkable
influence as a teacher, and the fact that under him and his pupils
the canonic style, in extremely ingenious combinations, reached the
apogee of its development. Preceding composers had studied and written
much about the proper manner of treating two or more melodies in
combination, about intervals, progressions, dissonances, mensural
problems, and the art of imitation, diminution, inversion, and the
like. Some of them had expended their genius in systematizing and
classifying the complex rules for contrapuntal writing, and they
delighted in setting themselves difficult tasks to be performed
within these rigid rules. This was all very well; it resulted in
the establishment of a perfected technique and a body of knowledge,
the value of which was recognized by every musician with scholarly
aims. Okeghem appeared on the scene at a time when the struggle
with technical difficulties seemed to be an end in itself, and his
genius--of the mathematical sort--enabled him to master and play with
them. It is a mistake to suppose that he devoted himself wholly, or
even largely, to the composition of more 'riddle canons,’ as they
are called; but it is probably a fact that he is most frequently
remembered and characterized by them.

        [Illustration: RIDDLE CANON by PIERRE DE LA RUE.]

A hint as to the nature of these curious compositions will be
sufficient, perhaps, to mystify the uninitiated reader. The mass,
_Ad omnem tonum_, shows, instead of the clefs, question marks as
signatures; and it may be sung, by using the corresponding accidentals,
in any church mode. The thirty-six part mass, with canon for nine
parts, already mentioned, is not a 'riddle,’ but has all the
difficulties of one. In Okeghem’s school is found the so-called 'crab
canon,’ _canon cancrizans_, which is first sung through in the usual
way from beginning to end, then repeated backward. There is also a
canon which, like the _canon cancrizans_, is to be sung through twice,
but from the beginning to the end both times. In the second singing,
however, each progression of the original melody _down_ is answered by
a corresponding interval _up_, or _vice versa_. This is known as the
'inverted canon.’ One of Okeghem’s followers, Hobrecht, furnishes us
even with a canon which has both the retrograde and the inverted motion.

In fact, canonic forms of all varieties and complications were treated
by Okeghem and his school to the point of exhaustion. It must not be
forgotten that the range given to a single voice was much more limited
than at present; that these compositions must conform to the strictest
rules, not only when sung in the normal manner, but when repeated in
retrograde or inverted motion; and that the very essence of the work
was the perfection attained in adhering to contrapuntal laws, rather
than the expression of individual feeling. Okeghem himself made these
puzzles but rarely, and, as it were, in the manner of providing an
intellectual treat for the educated musicians of his day, especially
those who formed the church choirs. These difficult works were a
test of their ability and thorough acquaintance with Church modes;
they afforded exercise in transposition from one mode to another and
offered the charm of variety which the special characteristics of each
individual mode imparted. Furthermore, they tended to develop the
highest artistry the vocalist was capable of, and were an illustration
of the variety of combinations possible with the already existing parts.

It has often been claimed that Okeghem was only a musical pundit; that
his works are merely curiosities, depending for their interest on their
mathematical ingenuity, and not on their artistic worth. But such a
judgment does the master less than justice. Even from the point of
view of later and more beautiful achievements, it must be acknowledged
that at least some of his compositions have a certain artistic merit.
Moreover, the service of Okeghem and his school was one of the
necessary preliminaries to the full perfection of the art of polyphony.
Technical difficulties were solved once for all, and a vast system of
theoretical knowledge was prepared by their devoted labors for the use
of the greater masters who should follow. So keen a critic and judge as
R. G. Kiesewetter (1841) says of Okeghem and his followers: '... they
have greater facility in counterpoint and fertility in invention; their
compositions, moreover, being no longer mere premeditated submissions
to contrapuntal operation, are for the most part indicative of thought
and sketched with manifest design; being also full of ingenious
contrivances of an obligato counterpoint, at that time just discovered.’

Besides, the work of Okeghem is interesting as illustrating a certain
phase of character peculiar to the Middle Ages. There was, at the
time, a love of secrecy and mystery, which led artists and expert
craftsmen to embody the signs of their craft in a private and esoteric
system, which no one but the initiated could understand. In accordance
with this trend, the writing down of a canon of Okeghem, as has
been pointed out, often took the form of a special musical design,
consisting only of a few notes and a short Latin inscription. The
reading of such a canon was not always easy, even to the initiated:
but to the novice it had all the mystery of a Delphic oracle. It
was not possible, of course, even for the most cultivated musician,
upon hearing such a work performed, to recognize and follow all its
complexities. Okeghem was the master who aroused and nourished the
taste for these complex achievements in music, though he was by no
means their inventor. Such devices, though to a less degree, were
already known to Dufay, as is shown in his canon, _L’omme armé_. But
Okeghem brought the art to the point of virtuosity; and it is for this
reason he stands at the head of the Netherland school. Judged by the
standard of pure art, he is at his best as a composer of chansons. Even
these, however, have long outlived their day, just as his contrapuntal
riddles have long ceased to tease the intelligence or curiosity of
lovers of music.

It is by virtue of another quality, his gift for teaching, that
Okeghem lives to-day. As the founder of the Netherland school merely,
his influence must almost have ceased when the traditions of that
school were superseded by the vital enthusiasm of another; but, as the
teacher of the leaders of succeeding schools, he has achieved a kind of
immortality sometimes missed by greater artists. In the whole history
of music Okeghem as a teacher stands alone. Only Porpora, possibly,
the great singing master of the eighteenth century, can be compared to
him. Kiesewetter says, 'Through his pupils the art was transplanted
into all countries, and he must be regarded (for it can be proved by
genealogy) as the founder of all schools from his own to the present
age.’

Only a few of his most distinguished pupils can be mentioned here:
Jean de Roi, Basiron, Jacques Barbireau, Pierre de la Rue, Compère,
Agricola, Caron, Verbonnet, Brumel, and, greatest of all, Josquin des
Prés. Some of them, such as Agricola, unfortunately conceived the
writing of contrapuntal intricacies to be their chief duty; while
others used their acquired knowledge to better purpose. The Belgian,
Hobrecht (1450-1505), chapel master of Notre Dame at Antwerp, was
probably not a personal pupil of Okeghem, though a zealous follower
and admirer. While assimilating and adopting the master’s ingenuity,
he also was able to weave into his masses and motets a personal,
subjective quality which marks them with the composer’s individuality.
So highly esteemed was Hobrecht in his day that in 1494 the whole choir
of the principal church in Bruges, for which he had written a mass,
travelled to Antwerp in order to express thanks and do him honor.

During Okeghem’s supremacy--a matter of forty years or so--some of
the more interesting forms, which had been cultivated in the time
of Dufay, disappeared. We look in vain for the mediæval rondo, the
ballad, the accompanied secular art song, and the paraphrased church
song, with instrumental accompaniment. The contribution of Okeghem
and his followers was the development of technical resources and a
greater freedom, both in range and style, in vocal composition. His
unremitting, thoughtful search for fundamental rules established the
art of polyphony on a firm basis, and provided a safe starting point
for the utterance of truth and passion. It is the fate, however, of
work depending on a passing taste to grow old quickly, and Okeghem
himself probably outlived his popularity. But his pupils spread over
Europe and perpetuated his learning, and some of them, at least,
enriched the art by a fresher genius. Unlike the old French and
Gallo-Belgian masters, who stayed at home, these writers overflowed
into Italy and Germany, established schools of instruction, and founded
choruses for the production of vocal works. Among them, moreover, was
one genius who exercised the strongest influence on the art of music,
and deserves to rank as one of its greatest masters. That genius was
Josquin des Prés.


                                  III

Josquin des Prés is almost the last in the long list of Netherland
composers, and overtops them all, with the exception of Lassus. The
year of his birth is uncertain, but has been placed at about 1450,
since he was a singer in the papal chapel under Pope Sixtus IV
(1471-84). He has been claimed as a countryman by Italian writers,
because his name was modified into _del Prato_; by German, because,
ethnologically and geographically, the Low Countries are a part of
Germany; by the French, because the Netherlands became a political
dependency of France about two hundred years after Josquin’s death;
and naturally the Belgians claim some share in the fame of the man who
represents the glory of Belgian music. The towns of Condé, Tours, and
Cambrai, the home of Dufay, and of others, have all been candidates
for the honor of his birth; but scholars are now agreed that he was
born at least in the province of Hainault, which belonged, during the
middle and later fifteenth century, to the dominions of Philip the Good
of Burgundy. Josquin had been chapel singer at Milan before entering
the papal choir (1484), and afterward he is found in the service of
Louis XII of France, with whom he was a great favorite. Like some of
his predecessors, he received an appointment to a canonry, but seems
not to have kept the office very long. In the year 1515 the Netherlands
became German, and, according to Konrad Peutinger, Josquin left France
for a position in the Netherland chapel of Maximilian I. It seems
probable, therefore, that he spent the latter part of his life at
Condé, in his native country, where he died in 1521.

                   [Illustration: JOSQUIN DES PRÉS.]

Okeghem was still alive, and Dufay less than a score of years dead,
when Josquin’s fame sprang to the sky. So great a stir did his gifts
create in Rome that beside him the fame of all other composers paled.
The Duke Hercules d’Este of Ferrara, for whom Josquin composed a
mass entitled _Hercules dux Ferrariæ_, called him the Prince of
Music; and the Abbate Baini, director of the pontifical chapel in
the early nineteenth century, says of him: 'In a short time, by his
new productions, he becomes the idol of Europe. There is no longer
tolerance for any one but Josquin. Josquin alone is sung in every
chapel in Christendom. Nobody but Josquin in Italy, nobody but Josquin
in France, nobody but Josquin in Germany, in Flanders, in Hungary, in
Spain--Josquin and Josquin alone.’[96]

Fables grew up about his name, as about that of Homer or Wilhelm Tell.
It is said that the French monarch, under whom Josquin served, had a
bad voice and a still worse ear. Nevertheless, he was fond of music
and desired his brilliant retainer to compose something in which he
could take part. Josquin was equal to the occasion. He constructed a
quartette somewhat different from the usual sort, there being two upper
parts in a canon, and a free bass. To these he added a fourth part,
the _vox regis_, as he flippantly called it, consisting of a single
note which it was the king’s office to repeat, almost incessantly,
throughout the piece!

The emoluments even of a royal musician were evidently not always
prompt or large, and Josquin is reported more than once to have given
the cue to the king by compositions whose opening Biblical words
contained a punning comment on the royal dilatoriness in paying
salaries, or whose sacred meaning could be amusingly applied to his own
indigence. When finally the king good-naturedly took the hint, Josquin
poured out his gratitude in a motet, 'Lord, thou hast dealt graciously
with thy servant.’ One biographer of Josquin cynically declares that
the thank-offering was not at all up to the mark of the petitions.

Gaiety and humor were often in evidence in his music, as one would
expect from so witty, lively a character. His work generally shows
a careful finish and attention to details. Naumann points out that
he takes greater care in declamation, groups his voices for better
color effects, and achieves results, especially in the masses,
which foreshadow the grandeur and simplicity of the great period of
ecclesiastical music under Palestrina. The Passion motets and _Stabat
Mater_ for five voices are among the most famous of his works. Severe
contrapuntal art is shown in the two _L’omme armé_ masses, as well as
in _Pange lingua_ and _Fortuna desperata_. The contrapuntal ingenuity,
however, is lost sight of in a genial, naïve quality combined with
nobility and ceremonial dignity.

His fame as a writer of chansons equalled his reputation in sacred
music. In these also he stands far ahead of his contemporaries, paying
more attention to syllabic values, and entering into the mood of
the text. His manner is unforced and gay, and here, too, his great
contrapuntal ingenuity is veiled by poetical, nicely calculated effects.

Concerning his work as a whole in comparison with his predecessors, it
is generally considered that he is more concise, easier to comprehend,
less laden with artifice, and able at last to put soul into the
elaborate framework of the polyphonic art. He is the first important
musician whose work has come down to us in such quantities as to
enable critics to judge adequately of his powers. He was in the prime
of life when the art of printing music by means of movable types was
invented, and for a century or more his compositions were included
in almost every collection that was made. Among his extant works are
thirty-two masses, fragments of masses, motets, some of them for five
parts, and chansons. Portions of his work have been given to the public
successively by Petrucci (early sixteenth century), in Junta’s edition,
Rome, 1521, in the _Missa XII_ of Graphæus, 1539; and no less than
seven special editions of portions of his works were made during the
sixteenth century. Masses in manuscript are to be found in the archives
of the papal chapel, as well as in the libraries of Munich and Cambrai.
Besides these, numerous examples have been preserved in the works of
Glarean, Sebald Heyden, Forkel, Burney, Hawkins, Kiesewetter, Ambros,
and others. The number and importance of his commentators and editors
are glowing tributes to the importance of the man himself. With the
exception of Lassus, no other Netherland master enjoyed such fame,
either during life or after death. He is called 'Jodocus’ in affection,
and described as 'at once learned and pleasing, everywhere graceful,
the universal favorite of the age, welcomed everywhere, ruling without
a rival.’ Luther mentions the 'Jodocus’ as one of his favorite
composers, saying that others were mastered by notes, while Josquin did
what he pleased with them.

And with all this popularity, even glorification, what living singer
has ever sung, or what living amateur has ever heard, a note of his
music? Specimens of it are not current, it is true; but neither are
they inaccessible. Three hundred and fifty years are as nothing in the
lifetime of a book, a building, a statue--even of a picture, so much
more perishable.... Dante had need of a commentator before Josquin
could have learned to read: the frescoes of Giotto were beginning to
decay ere he visited Italy, and the beautiful cathedral of St. Quentin
had entered its third century ere he first raised his voice in it.’[97]

The eclipse of Josquin’s fame, however, appears not to be quite so
complete and thorough to-day as when the above words were written
(1862). A number of German societies now regularly include his
compositions in their programs, and some of his works have been
given in New York during the current year (1914). But no matter how
neglected, he occupies a great and honored place in the history of
music. Hitherto, as we have seen, musicians had been almost entirely
absorbed in the study and application of technical details. Their art
was, first and foremost, an intellectual exercise, and its appeal,
naturally, almost entirely limited to the intellect. To the modern
amateur, good music is that which touches him. He wishes to be
conscious of that indefinable spirit which is at once both simpler
and deeper than intellect. The greater part of the contrapuntal
subtleties of Okeghem must have left the listener cold, remaining in
history only as amazing _tours de force_, whose artificial perfection
could only be a stage in the development toward something higher.
It was this higher quality, achieved by Josquin, which placed him
at the head of composers of his time, and gives him importance in
history. He, too, possessed the technical skill and learning necessary
to the construction of contrapuntal riddles; he, too, was sometimes
artificial, and occasionally surpassed even Okeghem in his quaint and
grotesque combinations. But such intellectual gymnastic feats were not
an important matter with him. He used, and has the distinction of being
the first to use, learning as a means of expression, as the vehicle
of personal, subjective, and sympathetic utterance. His style became
simpler and more transparent, his conception of the text more poetic,
and, by reason of these qualities, truth and beauty of expression are
his chief merits.

The labor of the Netherlanders, from Dufay to the death of Josquin,
offers a spectacle of almost unparalleled activity and painstaking
research. It was, for the art of polyphony, the period of youth and
adolescence, with its enormous energy, its too great reliance upon
intellect, and its comparative lack of mellowness and heart. Dufay was
a singer in the papal chapel exactly one hundred years before Josquin
held the same position. He, with other Gallo-Belgians and the English
Dunstable, added to the body of technical knowledge, established the
principles of design in composition, and brought sacred music into
closer touch with folk-song. Okeghem and his immediate followers were
intoxicated, not with the wine of poetry or passion, but with a desire
for intellectual artifice and refinement. They expended their genius
on technique as an end, and produced compositions beside which even
the most intricate contrapuntal efforts of later days seem almost like
child’s play. Such work carries within itself, however, the seeds of
its own destruction, and, so far as it rested upon puzzling subtleties,
it was doomed to die. Nevertheless, the schools of Dufay and Okeghem
prepared the way and the materials for the third and greatest of the
indigenous Netherland schools, that of Josquin. To him the resources of
counterpoint were merely the means to obtain beauty of expression. It
is for this reason that we regard him as the first great composer.

                                                              F. B.

                              FOOTNOTES:

[84] Strict or plain counterpoint is divided into several species: (1)
note against note, there being one note in the accompanying melody or
melodies to one note of the cantus firmus; (2) two notes against one;
(3) three, four, or more notes against one; (4) syncopated; (5) florid
or figured, in which the added parts are free. Counterpoint is single,
or simple, when the added part is uniformly above or below the cantus;
_double_ when the added part is so constructed as to be usable either
above or below the cantus by a uniform transposition of an octave, a
tenth, or some other interval; and _triple_, or _quadruple_, when three
or four melodies are so fitted as to be mutually interchangeable with
one another by transposition.

[85] Imitation is _strict_ when the succession of intervals is
identical in both antecedent and consequent; _free_ when some
modification of the one appears in the other. Imitation is called
_augmented_ when the rhythmic value of the several tones is
systematically increased, as, for example, when quarter-notes are
represented by half-notes; _diminished_ when the rhythmic value of the
several notes is lessened; _inverted_ (or imitation in contrary motion)
when every upward interval in the antecedent is represented in the
answer by an equivalent downward interval, or vice versa; _retrograde_
(or reversed imitation) when the intervals of the antecedent are taken
in the reverse order in the consequent. A _canon_ is a composition in
which imitation is carried out at some length. Imitation is also the
basis of the _fugue_.

[86] It is in Walter Odington’s treatise that the first mention of
duple metre is made.

[87] Similar intervals occurring between two voices that pass from one
chord to another in parallel motion.

[88] A sequence of chords at the end of a phrase or period, involving,
in modern music, a clear enunciation of the tonality or key in which
the piece is written. Full, perfect, complete or authentic cadence is
the dominant harmony in root position followed by that of the tonic in
root position. This kind of cadence is comparable to a period. A half
cadence is a less definite closing, used for phrases not final.

[89] W. S. Rockstro, in Grove’s Dictionary, III, 259.

[90] Quoted from an extant letter of Philip of Luxembourg to the
Chapter at Cambrai.

[91] 'Dufay and His Contemporaries.’

[92] Grove: 'Dict. of Music and Musicians.’

[93] 'Early English Harmony’; Vol. I edited by H. E. Wooldridge, 1897;
Vol. II edited by Rev. H. V. Hughes, 1913.

[94] See Chapter X.

[95] The form Ockenheim was introduced by Glarean, apparently without
sufficient reason. It is supposed that Okeghem was born about 1430.


[96] 'Life of Palestrina,’ Rome, 1828.

[97] Hullah: 'Lectures on the History of Modern Music,’ p. 53.




                              CHAPTER IX
                        THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

  Spirit of the Renaissance--_Trovatori_ and _cantori a liuto_; The
  Florentine _Ars nova_; Landino; _caccia_, _ballata_, madrigal--The
  fifteenth century; the Medici; Netherland influence; popular song
  forms--Adrian Willaert and the new madrigal--Orazio Vecchi and the
  dramatic madrigal.


We have learned in the previous chapters how music, an incipient
art fastened in the bondage of religious mysticism, groped through
the blackness of the mediæval night; how, bound by dogmatic rule,
it became the object of intellectual lucubration, the scholastic
medium of pedants, who reared their stupendous structure of Gothic
intricacy beyond the reach of ordinary man, 'that tower of Babel, in
the building of which tongues were confounded, till no one understood
what he sang nor what he heard.’ And we have seen how this edifice,
in adapting itself to the use of the denizens, softened its lines
and its angles, broadened its spaces and became a thing of beauty--a
process in which we see reflected the dawn of a new era, when humanity
breathes a freer air; that glorious spiritual awakening which found its
religious expression in the Reformation, its æsthetic revelation in the
Renaissance. We shall presently consider the influence of the former
upon the course of music in Germany; our immediate purpose is to follow
the path of the parallel process accomplished through the Renaissance
in Italy.

In the words of J. Addington Symonds, the history of the Renaissance
is 'the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the
human spirit manifested in the European races.’ In politics it meant
the breaking down of the reactionary forces vested in the church
and the empire, in science it meant the substitution of knowledge
for superstition, the fearless exploring of new continents and the
demonstration of the infinity of the universe; in art it meant the
firing of man’s imagination, the stimulation of his creative faculties
by the Revival of Learning, 'that rediscovery of the classic past which
restored the confidence in their own faculties to men striving after
a spiritual freedom, ... which held up for emulation master works of
literature, philosophy and art, provoked inquiry, shattered the narrow
mental barrier imposed by mediæval orthodoxy.’

Just as the artist 'humanized the altar pieces and the cloister
frescoes upon which he worked’ and so 'silently substituted the love
of beauty and the interest of actual life for the principles of the
church,’ so the musician 'humanized’ the service of the church, brought
beauty, expression and emotion into his masses and motets, imbuing them
with the dramatic spirit, the spirit of passion, which had never been
absent from the _secular_ music of the people, the music that is always
indigenous to the soil. It is in this music that we must first seek the
embodiment of the Renaissance spirit, which means the direct expression
of human emotions in terms of oral beauty. That spirit has been
associated in the history of music with two things: the 'invention’
of monody[98] and the rise of opera, both of which are placed about
the end of the sixteenth century. But recent research has shown these
apparently sudden events to be the outcome of a development extending
back nearly three hundred years, so that they become the objective
rather than the starting point of our account, which will aim to trace
the steps by which this momentous reform was accomplished.


                                   I

Our story has a direct connection with Chapter VII, where we spoke
of the art of the Provençal troubadours. Though their influence was
not felt in Italy till late in the twelfth century it bore a fruit as
rich as it had in France. In the middle of the thirteenth a number
of troubadours and jongleurs visited Frederick II at Milan, in the
train of Raymon Berengar, Count of Provence. The Emperor extended
his patronage to them, as did also Charles d’Anjou, the king of
Naples. They became known among the people as _uomini di corti_,
and _ciarlatanti_ (because their chief theme was the exploits of
Charlemagne), and the natives taught by them were called _trovatori_
and _giocolini_. These soon cultivated native poetry in the Italian
vernacular, the _volgar poesia_, which spread its influence to northern
Italy as well and found representatives especially in Florence and
Bologna. The thirteenth century records the names of Quittona d’Arezzo,
Guido Guincelli and Jacopone da Todi, and upon the threshold of the
fourteenth stands Dante (1265-1321), one of the greatest poets of all
times, who with Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375) finally
demonstrates the power of the Italian language as an artistic medium.
In these three, Symonds says, 'Italy recovered the consciousness of
intellectual liberty.’ What is more to our purpose, they so clarified
and amplified the Italian tongue that it became the vehicle for a
national literature, in which were produced not only epics after the
classic models, but also lyric gems in new and spontaneous forms, which
would inspire the creation of melody.

Among these poetic forms we frequently meet with _canzone_ and
_madrigals_ (then called _mandriale_, from Ital. _mandra_ = hearth),
which were evidently written to be sung. Their melodies, however,
were no longer composed by the poets themselves but by a class of
musicians characteristic of Italy during the Renaissance, the _cantori
a liuto_, lutenists, who were essentially composers and singers, as
distinguished from the _trovatori_, who were poets primarily. One of
these _cantori a liuto_ was Dante’s friend, Casella, whose name he has
perpetuated in the _Purgatorio_.[99] The importance of the lutenists in
this and succeeding periods of music calls for a brief explanation of
their instrument. The lute was a plucked string instrument, somewhat
resembling the guitar. Its origin was oriental. The favorite instrument
of the Arabs, it reached Italy by way of Spain, and thence spread all
over Europe. In the fifteenth to the seventeenth century it came to
hold a place relatively as prominent as our pianoforte to-day--it was
the household instrument _par excellence_ and an important member of
early orchestras. In shape the lute resembles the mandolin rather than
the guitar, but it was made in various sizes, varieties, and ranges
(chitarrone, theorbo, etc.). The number of strings was variable. Five
pairs running across the fingerboard and an additional single one for
the melody were fretted; the rest running _outside_ were used only as
open strings. The tunings varied at different periods, and, as in the
case of the organ, a special kind of notation, or tablature, was used
(_cf._ Vol. VIII, Chap. II).

It must not be supposed, however, that these lutenists were learned
musicians in the sense of the contrapuntists who, at this same period,
flourished in the Netherlands, and who had already begun to invade
Italy. They were not familiar with the complicated musical science of
the time. The ecclesiastical modes, mensural science, notation and its
ramifications, ligatures, prolation and proportions, the theory of
consonance and dissonance, the laws of voice progression, etc., all
combined to form a science so formidable as to baffle all but those
devoting their lives to its study. A boy put to school in childhood
could achieve only in manhood the knowledge of a 'cantor.’ As for
composing, he would first have to be, as Kiesewetter says, a 'doctor
of counterpoint.’ The lutenists were none such; they were essentially
_dilettanti_ and hence their art, which was transmitted from ear to
ear, has not been preserved to us. To gain a knowledge of the nature of
their music we must turn to the more learned native musicians, who, we
know, cultivated the same forms in the fourteenth century.

Here we meet with the most remarkable revelations. We will recall how
music in its course of development under the guidance of the church
'chose a path which led directly away from the solo style of the folk
song or the song of the troubadours and into the realm of polyphonic
imitation.’ It has been supposed, therefore, that the vocal solo had
no place in the system and never appeared in the art music of the
time. But recent investigators have unlocked for us a treasure of
song by a school of Italian musicians of the early fourteenth century
who perpetuated not only the solo style, but the solo song with
instrumental accompaniment, which is the supposed 'invention’ of the
Florentine monodists of 1600! Fétis was the first to make known to the
world the existence of the precious manuscript of the Bibliothèque
Nationale in Paris, dated 1375, which contains the specimens of these
early Renaissance masters, among whom we should mention Jacopo da
Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia (1329-1351), Francesco Landino (1325-1397)
and Ghiradellus de Padua. Their worth was appreciated not only by
Fétis who, in speaking of Giovanni da Cascia, says that 'Guillaume
de Machault, who was the most celebrated French musician of the
same epoch, does not show greater ability,’[100] but also by other
historians. Ambros says, 'If their (the Italians’) works take an
inferior position to that of the Netherlanders the reason is not lack
of talent, but the fact that because of a disposition deeply rooted in
the Italian nature and character, which later bore the richest fruits,
the Italians were to develop certain sides of the art, before it had
to be subjected to the indispensable school of contrapuntalism.’ But
none of the historians were aware of the full significance of this
music until Johannes Wolf’s[101] study of mensural notation appeared
and until Hugo Riemann’s deductions[102] for the first time placed it
in its true light. It is this school, which he characterizes as the
Italian _Ars nova_, whose influence upon the French _Ars nova_ and its
chanson literature we have already emphasized.

The centre of this art is Florence, which Fétis calls 'the cradle of
modern music.’ Its principal representative is Francesco Landino,
mentioned above. The facts of his life are brief. He was born in
Florence about 1325, the son of a painter of some reputation. Having
lost his sight in his youth, he sought consolation in the study of
music. He learned to play all the instruments then in vogue and, it is
said, even invented others. But it was his ability on the organ that
made him famous. In this he surpassed his contemporaries to such an
extent that he was aptly styled _Francesco degli organi_. The chief
musicians of his time united to bestow upon him a laurel wreath, with
which the king of Cyprus crowned him in Venice. He died in his native
city in 1390.

What is true of his music applies in a great measure to that of
his contemporaries--those named above and a number of others. The
three principal forms into which their compositions are cast are the
_caccia_, the _ballata_ and the madrigal. The _caccia_ is the one
indigenous form of the three, being of truly Tuscan origin. It is a
canon for two voices, with or without a third as bass foundation, which
does not participate in the canon (like the drone bass of 'Sumer is
i-cumen in’). As its name implies (_caccia_ = chase) it is a hunting
song, though later it is applied to the humorous description of a
market scene. The _ballata_ is clearly derived from the dance songs of
the troubadours. Its form as cultivated by the Florentines shows at
the beginning a phrase whose text and melody serve as a chorus refrain
(_ripresa_). This is followed by a middle section which is repeated
(_piedi_) over a different text; then the opening section is again
taken up with fresh text as a _volta_, after which it is repeated as
refrain. Often there are a number of strophes (_copla_) which are alike
except for the texts of the _piedi_.

The madrigal, too, originated in Provence, being derived from the
_pastourelle_. While the latter, however, recounts amorous adventures
with rural belles, the madrigal poems of Dante and his successors have
for their subject the contemplation of the beauties of nature, with a
whimsical, philosophical or sentimental conclusion. Its musical form is
similar to the ballad and _rondeau_; it is divided into two parts with
repeats and its melodic phrases are usually not of greater length than
would be required for about five text lines. We shall see later a new
development of the madrigal in the polyphonic _a capella_ style, which
became significant for the development of opera; the present form is,
however, entirely monodic and accompanied.

Herein indeed lies the most remarkable feature of these early forms
of secular music; in that they present a definitely thought-out
combination of vocal and instrumental music, whose existence at this
period was until recently unsuspected. But the latest research has
definitely shown that the doubtful melismatic figures without words
which precede and follow the individual phrases are nothing but
instrumental preludes, interludes and postludes. Riemann[103] calls
attention to the surprisingly definite _harmonic_ basis of these
songs; which seems far in advance of diaphony, _faux-bourdon_ and
all the primitive forms of polyphony. There is a remarkably varied
combination of intervals--octaves, sixths, fifths, thirds, also
sevenths and ninths used in the nature of passing notes or over a
pedal--foreshadowing the manner of a much later day. Consecutive fifths
and octaves occur rarely, and when they do are used in a way which is
not very objectionable even to modern ears. A strictly modal character
is avoided by the frequent use of chromatics. 'Indeed this Florentine
“ars nova” of the fourteenth century has no connection with the
laborious attempts of the Paris school. This is evident from the fact
that it does not build “motets” upon a tuneless tenor, or construct
_rondeaux_ and “conducts” in the clumsy manner of the organum, but
that it appears with entirely new fundamental forms, and with such a
certainty and natural freshness, that a theoretical process of creation
seems absolutely out of the question. No, this Florentine New Art is a
genuine, indigenous flower of Italian genius. If we nevertheless insist
upon tracing its roots beyond the rich soil of Tuscan literature, we
can only find it in the troubadour poetry of Provence.’[104]

According to our authority, there took place in the second half of
the fourteenth century an active exchange of the achievements between
the Florentines and the Paris school, in which France took from
Italy a greater rhythmic variety, while Italy gained from France the
manner of writing over a _faux-bourdon_ foundation, the result being
a decided detriment to the Florentine school, which lost much of its
freedom in the invention of independent voices, though it gained in
harmonic purity, while of course the consecutive octaves and fifths
naturally disappear entirely. Examples of madrigals, _cacci_, etc., of
the Florentine school may be examined in Johannes Wolf’s _Geschichte
der Mensuralnotation_. A notable specimen by Giovanni da Cascia is
'The White Peacock,’ quoted by Riemann (I²). The _cantori a liuto_,
who flourished probably throughout the fifteenth century, performed,
no doubt, the compositions of these masters, no less than their own
inventions and the popular songs of the day, the _frottole_, the
_canzone_, _villanesche_ and _villanelle_, which resounded through the
streets and the _campagna_ of Renaissance Italy.


                                  II

The fifteenth century saw Italy well advanced toward the state in which
it has been compared to ancient Greece. The work begun by Petrarch had
made mighty strides, the recovery of ancient learning and ancient art
had become the great passion of the age, and the worship of beauty
was the second, if not the first, creed of a people but recently
emerged from the broils of civil war and settled down to a prosperous
period, under a benevolent tyranny of which the rule of the Medici at
Florence was the arch-type. Learning and culture had become a badge of
nobility and the patronage of the arts an instrument of power. That
music shared in the boon which came to art is unquestionable; a musical
education was once again, as in ancient Greece, an essential part of
a gentleman’s equipment; poets and musicians shared the patronage of
princes, who themselves had no greater ambition than to be accounted
men of genius--in truth, Florence had become the Athens of the modern
world.

Cosimo de Medici returned from his Venetian exile in 1434 and, once
installed in power, we see him surrounded by such men as Donatello,
Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Luca della Robbia. Gemistos Plethos, the
Byzantine Greek, fires his passion for Plato’s philosophy and Marsilio
Ficino is trained under his patronage to translate the works of the
sage. Vespasiano assures us of his versatility as follows: 'When
giving audience to a scholar, he discoursed concerning letters; in the
company of theologians he showed his acquaintance with theology, ...
astrologers found him well versed in their science, ... musicians in
like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he much delighted.’

Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), far surpassed
his grandsire in talent and culture. He was a writer of prose and
poetry, gave the impulse to the revival of a national literature, and
may be said to have raised popular poetry to the dignity of an art,
in writing new verses for the _canzone a ballo_ which the young men
and girls sang and danced upon the squares of Florence to celebrate
the return of May, and the _canti carnascialeschi_, the songs that
the Florentine populace sang, masked, at carnival times. He organized
for these occasions great pageants in which he himself took part,
engaging the best artists for the embellishment of chariots and the
designing of costumes, while he himself wrote songs appropriate to
the characters represented on the cars, causing new musical settings
to be made by eminent composers. 'Every festivity,’ says Symonds, 'May
morning tournaments, summer evening dances on the squares of Florence,
weddings, carnival processions, and vintage banquets at the villa, had
their own lyrics with music and the _Carola_.’

Lorenzo’s famous academy constituted perhaps the greatest intellectual
galaxy of the age, for at his table sat Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo
Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista
Alberti, Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Luigi Pulci. Surrounded by these
companions we behold him in the streets of Florence, not disdaining
to perform his own songs, in the midst of an approving populace, or,
perchance, 'when Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno and the large
Italian stars come forth above,’ accompanied by a few kindred spirits,
lute in hand, singing the verses of a Dante or a Petrarch to the
accompaniment of soft Italian zephyrs; or, again, in his villa 'on the
steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient
Fiesole,’ with Michael Angelo, 'seated between Ficino and Politian,
with the voices of prophets vibrating in his memory and with the music
of Plato sounding in his ears ... till Pulci breaks the silence with
a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to tune his
mandoline to Messer Angelo’s last-made _ballata_.’[105]

To such gatherings of boon companions and to the small domestic
circle the _cantori a liuto_ were finally relegated, for, as we shall
see, their usefulness had been outlived. Such men as these were
the perpetuators of their art and the last, perhaps, to cultivate
the spontaneous monodies of their Florentine forbears, for it is
unthinkable that these worshippers of beauty, these æsthetic
sentimentalists should have escaped the charm of that school and have
forgone it in favor of that which followed. For meantime the musicians
of the Netherland school continued to spread their propaganda in Italy,
and so successfully, that their contrapuntal works began to supersede
the native monodic style.

                 [Illustration: ALTAR OF THE VIRGIN.]
           _After the painting by Bellini (Venice Academy)._

Their method had, indeed, undergone great improvement: Josquin des
Près and his more expressive style had achieved tremendous popularity
throughout Europe.[106] Toward the end of the fifteenth century these
masters cultivated the secular forms more and more, always, of course,
in their wonted contrapuntal method. They would frequently take the
melody of a favorite folk-song, use it as their tenor (the middle
part) around which they wove an artful counterpoint. In Germany the
'harmonization’ of popular melodies, or melodies in the popular vein,
had been going forward for some time, and it is a noteworthy fact that
Heinrich Isaac, one of those most prominently engaged in this work,
was organist in Florence from 1484 to 1494 and again after 1514. The
style of writing adopted in these popular settings was a simple 'note
against note,’ which emphasized chord progressions rather than melodic
integrity.

Definite ideas of harmony were beginning to take root about this time.
Ramis de Pareja, the Spanish theoretician, in 1482 had, by his new
mathematical definitions of the ratio of intervals, established the
consonant nature of the triad; Franchino Gafori and Ludovico Fogliano
(d. 1539) had insisted upon the same principle. In 1558 Gioseffo
Zarlino[107] gave to the world his _Institutioni harmoniche_, which,
following the Ptolomean determination of intervals, established
the natural relations of the tones of the major triad (_divisione
armonica_) and in the course of the century his ideas of harmony became
the common property of musicians. With harmony as the predominating
principle of music, with 'vertical’ hearing rather than 'horizontal’
as the prevailing habit, and the constantly freer use of chromatics,
the doom of ecclesiastical modes was sounded, even if not fully
accomplished till later, and the real advent of modern music had been
reached.

The Italians, from early times as to-day primarily and essentially
melodists, never found great appeal in the barbarous descant and
counterpoint of the Netherlanders. 'But they could not but perceive
the charm of harmony, once it had been cleansed of its dross, when
composers no longer worked for the eye of their expert colleagues
alone, but for the ears of the people as well.’ Hence polyphonic music
was gradually accepted in the place of the native monodies which had
now lost caste, and it became fashionable to perform motets for the
entertainment of one’s guests. However, the number of native singers
able to perform this 'learned’ music was insufficient to supply even
the churches outside of Rome, much less the palaces of the aristocracy,
until the increased influx of Netherlanders as singers and teachers
spread their art among the musicians of Italy. During the sixteenth
century the simplification of notation made the art of reading music
accessible to the _dilettanti_, who now formed musical coteries for
the performance of polyphonic songs. Native composers busied themselves
to supply the demand and their products were spread broadcast by
enterprising publishers, for meantime, in 1476, the art of printing
had been introduced in Rome.[108] The first of these publishers was
Ottaviano dei Petrucci, who, though not its inventor, so advanced the
art of music printing as to render it a practical medium. His office
in Venice produced in 1501 a collection of ninety-six songs written by
various composers. Thus he brought polyphonic music to the people and
so caused the old monodies of the lutenists and earlier masters to pass
still farther into oblivion.

Among the native products of Petrucci’s press we see a number of
four-part songs of lighter genre called _frottole_. This was a
simple popular form akin to the _ballata_ and usually supposed to be
of humorous content. The _frottola_ was essentially a street song,
originally sung to an improvised accompaniment, and did not really
belong to the _a capella_ species. But in Petrucci’s collection
(between 1504 and 1509 he published nine books of _frottole_) they
appear as polyphonic pieces in a manner of the time.[109] In this guise
they were stepping stones to a nobler form which was to achieve immense
popularity and, practised by the more educated circles of amateurs,
became the 'chamber music’ of the period. This was the madrigal or, to
be precise, the _new_ madrigal, for though the old verses of Dante,
Petrarch, etc., served as bases, its musical structure had little to do
with the earlier form (see above, p. 264).

This, in fact, was the only excuse for adopting the name madrigal
for this new type of composition. Composers were weary of the short
forms with their endless repetition of phrases and, recognizing the
superiority of the old classic poems both in sentiment and structure,
proceeded to apply to them their polyphonic skill. Like in the motet
the setting was continuous (_durchkomponiert_), with or without
reiteration of musical ideas, but, unlike that stereotyped form, the
madrigal was the child of free invention throughout, not a contrapuntal
exercise upon a given _cantus firmus_. The tenor was not more prominent
than the other voices; neither, on the other hand, was the treble a
real 'melody’ in the modern sense, being the result of simultaneous
calculation. The madrigal was the _a capella_ composition _par
excellence_ and, as the secular counterpart of the motet, became the
standard form in which the pure vocal style was developed.


                                  III

Adrian Willaert (1480-1562), the founder of the so-called Venetian
school, whose activities as a church composer we shall recount in the
next chapter, is generally considered the father of the new madrigal.
Though others went before him, it was he who endowed it with the
freshness and vitality which made its extraordinary vogue possible.
Master Adrian, says Ambros, 'found in the smaller _frottole_ of a
Marco Caro and others many noble, serious expressions of sentiment.
This _colorit_, this peculiar tone, he retained, together with the
manner of treating Italian verse; but in place of the timid, poor and
often clumsy technique of the Italians he applied to them the entire
Netherland mastery of accomplished counterpoint--and the madrigal was
ready.... The madrigal was to express only the pure and the profound.
The _cor gentile_ was the center of this poetry and music--the heart
moved by noble love, with its joys and pains, its love, hope, longing,
suffering and anger. The 'tone’ of the madrigal is ever one of tender
emotion, never of vehement passion.... It should never burst out in
unbeautiful, violent expressions.’ Analyzing one of his madrigals,
Riemann say that 'on the whole there is so much originality, so much
individual endeavor, that the lack of flowering fancy and warm blood
is willingly overlooked. We feel as one does in the case of moderns,
for instance Berlioz, that we are in the presence of a distinguished
personality.... Willaert is great by virtue of the various impulses
that he gave, as teacher, as eminent artist, but not really because of
his compositions. If we compare him to the passionate Verdelot, the
daring Arcadelt, the solemn Festa, the supple Gero, or the genial Rore,
commanding all the nuances of expression, any one of these will be
found more telling, but ... in all of the works of these, his pupils,
we find the traces of his genius.’ Riemann has here named the greatest
of the madrigalists, some of whom we must now consider further. They
were all not only learned contrapuntists, but consummate masters of
style, as is shown by the restraint with which they applied their
skill, and they have left us works 'which for purity of style and
graceful flow of melody can scarcely be exceeded.’

Philippe Verdelot’s madrigals appeared even before those of Willaert
(1538), but few have been preserved with all parts complete. He
probably lived in Italy during 1525-1565 (Florence and Venice). His
second book of five-part madrigals appeared in 1536 and in the same
year Willaert published lute arrangements of Verdelot’s madrigals.
Besides nine books of madrigals (four to six parts) he left motets for
up to eight parts and a large mass, _Philomena_.

But the success of his madrigals was even surpassed by those of Jacques
Arcadelt. A native of the Netherlands (b. 1514), the latter died in
Paris after 1557. He appears as singer at the court of Florence from
1540 to 1549, when he became one of the papal singers of the Sistine
Chapel in Rome and singing master to the boys at St. Peter’s. Besides
compositions which appeared in miscellaneous collections, he published
independently five books of four-part madrigals (1537-1544), another
for three parts, all of which went rapidly through many editions,
besides three masses and a book of motets. One of his madrigals, _Il
bianco et dolce cigno_, a notable example of the style, is reprinted by
Burney.[110] The well-known _Ave Maria_, which has been edited by Sir
Henry Bishop and transcribed by Liszt, is now thought to be of doubtful
authorship.

Constanzo Festa, of Rome (where he was papal chapel singer from
1517 till his death in 1545), the first Italian representative of
the imitative vocal style in church composition, is with Willaert
and Verdelot the originator of the new madrigal; his _Amor che mi
consigli_, published in 1531, even points to him as the first in
the field. His works are distinguished by rhythm, grace, elegance,
simplicity and purity of harmony. Burney further assures us that 'the
subjects of imitation in it are as modern, and that the parts sing
as well as if they were a production of the eighteenth century.’ His
madrigal _Quando ritrovo la mia pastorella_ ('Down in a Flow’ry Vale’)
was for a long time the most popular piece of its kind in England. He
was less happy in his motets, in which he followed the absurd custom of
setting the voice to different texts. A celebrated _Te Deum_ by him is
still sung by the pontifical choir upon the election of a new pope.
Festa attained the dignity of _maestro_ at the Vatican, being at that
time the only Italian to hold such a position.

The most distinguished pupil of Willaert was Cipriano di Rore (b. _ca._
1516 at Mechlin or Antwerp). After leaving Willaert’s tutelage in
Venice he went to the court of Hercules II at Ferrara in 1542, where,
in the same year, his first book of madrigals was brought out. After
sundry travels in his native country, he was made _maestro di capella_
to Duke Ottavio Farnese at Parma, returning to Venice as Willaert’s
successor upon the latter’s death. He enjoyed great distinction as a
composer of originality--of his ecclesiastical works we shall speak
in Chapter X. As a composer of madrigals and _ricercari_ (see Chap.
XI, p. 356) he followed in his master’s footsteps. Eight books of four
to five-part madrigals, published from 1542 to 1565, of which the
four-part ones were issued in score form in 1577 as an aid to the study
of counterpoint, constitute the bulk of his secular works. It will be
well to mention here that Monteverdi, a half century later, acclaimed
'the divine Cipriano di Rore’ as the founder of the new art, because of
his endeavors in establishing the supremacy of melody.[111]

Luca Marenzio (b. near Brescia, 1550-1560) was probably the most
distinguished of all the madrigalists, though he by no means limited
himself to this field. His contemporaries called him _il piu dolce
cigna_ (the sweetest swan), _divino compositore_, etc., and he enjoyed
the highest musical eminence. About 1584 he was _maestro_ to Cardinal
d’Este, later at the court of Sigismund III of Poland received the
unusual salary of 1,000 _scudi_, and was organist of the papal
chapel in Rome from 1585 till his death in 1594, caused, it was said,
by a broken heart because of his love for a relative of Cardinal
Aldobrandini whom he could not marry. His printed compositions comprise
no less than eighteen books of madrigals (4 to 6 voices) and many
ecclesiastical works.

Of further names we need only mention Constanzo Porta, of Padua
(1530-1601); Giovanni Croce, of Venice (1557-1609); Andrea and
Giovanni Gabrieli (of whom we shall speak in a later chapter); Claudio
Merulo, of Correggio (1553-1604), and Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of
Venosa (1560-1614), 'the most daring and most genial harmonist of the
sixteenth century,’, and finally the princely Lassus and the great
Palestrina himself, as a few of the endless host of madrigal writers.
Not thousands, but tens of thousands of madrigals were composed in this
period; it was the accepted medium for the expression of every poetic
idea, every pretty sentiment. People sang madrigals at home and abroad,
in society and for private pastime; in short, its popularity has not
been surpassed even by the modern song.


                                  IV

A distinct departure from the madrigal of Willaert, and one in which
historians are wont to see a direct step toward the opera, is seen in
the descriptive, or dramatic, madrigals of Allessandro Striggio (b.
Mantua, 1535) and Orazio Vecchi. The descriptive element had indeed
invaded song composition much earlier. The French 'program _chansons_,’
notably those of Clement Jannequin, who attempted to reproduce in
vocal music the song of birds and the noise of battle, were, perhaps,
the most remarkable phenomena of this kind. Though not an Italian,
Jannequin deserves notice here because of his influence in this
direction. He was a pupil of Josquin and, besides a varied lot of
sacred works, issued a great number of _chansons_ which became popular
as bravura pieces in instrumental form, being printed in Italy without
texts in 1577 (_partite in caselle per sonar_). His great chansons
(_inventions_), which stamp him _the_ programmistic composer of the
sixteenth century, include _La bataille_ (on the battle of Marignano
[1515]), _La guerre_, _Le caquet des femmes_ (women’s gossip), _La
jalousie_, _La chasse au lièvre_ (rabbit hunt), etc., etc. A curious
example is the excerpt reprinted in our supplement. In it the cuckoo’s
call, the nightingale’s song, the notes of the thrush and other sounds
of nature’s music are introduced simultaneously.[112]

Verdelot’s realistic description of the chase, Eckhard’s tumult of
the people at St. Mark’s and Striggio’s dispute of the washerwomen at
the brook are additional instances in which vocal music appropriated
the dramatic elements of action, movement--the passing shapes and
the play of colors. In the hands of these composers, the madrigal
became a vehicle for humorous or whimsical moods no less than for
the expression of tender sentiments, or 'a charming, picturesque and
dramatic symphony,’ for which Romain Rolland finds an analogy in the
'Romeo and Juliet’ symphony of Berlioz. Such are Orazio Vecchi’s
_La selva di varia ricreatone_ (1590), 'Musical Banquet’ (1597) and
_Amfiparnasso_. They are in reality series of madrigals which follow
out a continuous idea as in dramatic action, their text comprising
the dramatic forms of monologue and dialogue, but, curious as it may
seem, never set to music in the way that seems natural to us--as solos,
duets, etc.--but always in madrigalesque polyphony. Thus, instead of
having the singers represent the different characters of the piece,
the actual practice was to have the monologue sections sung by all
of them, while the dialogue would be carried on between sets of two
or three singers each. For example, if Isabella (in _Amfiparnasso_)
speaks to her lover Lucio, a group of three voices represents each of
them; Isabella is characterized by a soprano and supported by an alto
and a 'quinto,’ Lucio represented by a tenor sustained by a quinto and
a bass. Never did it occur to the composer, even when the text was
marked _Lucio solo_, actually to write for a solo voice! By this we may
understand what a revolution was necessary in men’s minds to accomplish
the essential step to dramatic fidelity.

The following is Romain Rolland’s pen picture of the most interesting
exponent of the dramatic madrigal: 'Orazio Vecchi (b. Modena 1550;
d. there 1605) was a man of the Renaissance. He possessed its
superabundance of vigor, the desire for action, and a robust good
humor. Chapel master at Modena, we find him on the highways and by-ways
of Italy, indoors only to take part in brawls and _coltellate_.
Commissioned as archdeacon of Correggio to correct the Gradual of the
Roman Catholic church; he is occupied in 1591 with directing private
and public masquerades in Modena. A writer of celebrated masses, he
becomes at the same time the creator of _opera buffa_. Three times the
Bishop of Reggio dismissed him from his function, but his reputation
was enormous--the house of Este and the great Italian lords extended
their favor to him, while his name spread to Austria, to Denmark and
to Poland. At his death in 1605 he was regarded not only as one of the
foremost musicians of the century and the inventor of musical comedy,
but as one of the greatest geniuses of the age.’ Comedy is, indeed,
his sphere; rarely does he ascend to the height of pathos or passion,
though he amply proves himself capable of portraying earnest sentiment
and sometimes pathos; but the question whether he merits the reputation
of having created comic opera or not we shall leave to the judgment of
the reader.

First we shall let him speak for himself. 'I know well,’ he says, 'that
peradventure some will consider my “caprices” as unworthy and light,
but they should learn that as much grace, art and fidelity is required
to trace a comic part as in representing an old reasoning sage.’ And
elsewhere, 'Music is poetry by the same right as poetry itself.’
That the conscious purpose of his music was the expression of ideas
is evident from these directions which preface his _Amfiparnasso_:
'Everything here has a precise purpose; it is necessary to find
this, and only by expressing it well and intelligently will you give
life to the performance.... The moral import [of the piece] is of
less consequence than the simple comedy; since music appeals to the
emotions rather than the intellect, I have been obliged to compress
the development of the action into the smallest space, for speech is
more rapid than song. Hence it is necessary to condense, contract,
suppress detail and only to take the capital situations, the moments
characteristic to the subject. The imagination must supply the rest.’

Vecchi’s disciple, Banchieri, gives a clear account of the manner of
performing these madrigals in the preface to _La comedia di prudenza
giovenile_: 'Before the music one of the singers will read in a
loud voice the name of the scene, the names of the characters and
the argument. The place of performance is a room of medium size, as
closed-in as possible (for the sake of acoustics); in one corner of
the room two large carpets are laid on the floor and an agreeable
decoration is used for the background. Two seats are placed at the
right and left respectively. Behind the “back-drop” are benches for
the singers, who must turn toward the audience and be seated at a
hand’s breadth from each other. Behind them is an orchestra of lutes,
_clavicembali_, etc., attuned to the voices. Above is a large sheet
which hides both singers and musicians. The singers (invisible) follow
the music of their parts; there should be three (or better six) at a
time. They must give animation to the cheerful words, pathos to the sad
ones, and enunciate loudly and intelligibly. The reciting actors (alone
on the scene) must prepare their rôles, know them well by heart and
follow the music closely. It would not be amiss to have a prompter aid
the singers, instrumentalists and reciters.’

These 'actors’ do not, as may be supposed, perform pantomime; they
simply pronounce the prologue and announce the scenes. At the end
they would, perhaps, dance a few ballet steps in order to leave
the spectator in a happy frame of mind. By way of example we shall
briefly recount the plot of Vecchi’s _chef-d’œuvre_, that _commedia
armonica_ of the strangely inexplicable title _Amfiparnasso_. The
story centers around the love intrigue of Lucio and Isabella, the
daughter of Pantalone, who has determined to marry her to the pedantic
Gratiano. Lucio attempts to commit suicide but is saved. Isabella,
about to follow him into death, declares her love. They are married
and in the last scene receive the forced consent and the presents of
all concerned. Meantime, Pantalone serenades and is rejected by the
courtesan Hortensia, Lelio pursues another adventure with the beautiful
Nisa, and the captain, Cardone, believing himself loved by Isabella,
makes advances and is promptly rebuked. Doctor Gratiano sings absurd
serenades while Francatrippa, the valet of Pantalone, goes to borrow
money at the Jews’ house, who reject him under pretext of the Sabbath.
The book for this amazing comedy, as indeed for all the others, was
written by Vecchi himself. He makes all his characters speak in their
various dialects and the 'score’ is full of humorous descriptions
and characterizations. The piece had great success and, while there
were many adverse criticisms, the number of his imitators attests the
continued popularity of the form which he developed.

Adriano Banchieri of Bologna (1567-1634) was Vecchi’s chief disciple
and one of his great admirers. He frankly imitated him in his _Studio
dilettevole_ for three voices (1603), while in his _Saviezza giovenile_
he yields to the influence of the Florentine reform (of which later)
and endeavors to present a compromise between the 'representative’ and
the polyphonic styles. He was, moreover, a musician of great merit,
composed, like Vecchi, numerous organ pieces and was the author of
a number of theoretic works and polemics. The vogue of the dramatic
madrigal continued throughout the north of Italy for twenty years after
Vecchi’s death; in Bologna it survived to the end of the seventeenth
century. Whatever its importance in the development of the opera,
however far removed from realistic action, the dramatic principle is
there--we have, in fact, a musical drama, or, at least, a dramatic
symphony, especially if we regard the voices which accompany the
characters in the nature of instruments.

And here it behooves us to record another peculiar fact: These minor
voice parts were often actually played on instruments, not only in the
dramatic madrigal, but in the other vocal forms as well; sometimes
because of the lack of singers and sometimes for the sake of variety.
The first recorded instance of this kind of solo singing was supposed
to have occurred in 1539 when Sileno sang in an _intermedio_ the upper
part of a madrigal by Francesco Corteccia (d. 1571), accompanying
himself on the violone, while the other parts, representing satyrs,
were taken by wind instruments. Caccini, the reputed inventor of
'monody,’ in an intermezzo by Pietro Strozzi performed at the marriage
of Duke Francesco and Bianca Capello (1579), himself sang the rôle of
Night with an accompaniment of viols. These instances are, however, not
isolated. The experiment proved popular and became common practice.
A number of the _frottole_, _villanelle_, madrigals, etc., which
came from Petrucci’s press, appeared, indeed, in the guise of lute
arrangements.[113]

But all this was as far from true 'monody,’ or solo melody, as the
dramatic madrigal was removed from opera, for the mere emphasizing
of an upper part, which was developed out of, or as counterpart to,
another, could not make it express the sentiment intended by the
text or follow the accents and natural inflections of the spoken
word. Monody was as much a lost art as the Greek tragedy, which the
'inventors’ of opera thought they were reviving from a slumber of
well-nigh two thousand years. Its reinstatement was the result of a
deliberate reform, a revolt against the prevailing polyphonic method,
accomplished by a limited number of individuals. Even if the analytical
historian must reject the possibility of the sudden invention of an
artistic form, we cannot deny the merit of the most definite step
toward the creation of opera to the Florentine _camerata_, an account
of whose activities we shall reserve for a later chapter. Our object in
this discussion has been to emphasize the fact that monody, the most
natural form of musical expression, was _not_ an arbitrary invention
such as the contrapuntal style evidently was; that it lay, indeed, at
the very foundation of that style, but was so effectually displaced by
it that only the faintest memories of it survived. It was from these
memories that the new art of the seventeenth century, with its new
dramatic significance, sprang--just as the _Ars nova_, the new art of
the fifteenth century, had sprung from their source. The intervening
space of two centuries was a period of prodigious development both
in secular and church music, and of the most active exchange between
the two. But in this exchange the church unquestionably remained
the debtor, for it acquired from the secular art most of its really
vital elements, even dramatic force. Only thus could it become the
ideal expression of that new religious spirit with which both the
Catholic and Protestant faiths were to be imbued. The development of
this religious art, which forms the parallel to the movements just
described, is our next subject.

                                                      C. S.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[98] The word monody may be applied to the purely melodic,
unaccompanied music of ancient times and the plain-song era, which,
however, is better described as homophony, in contradistinction to
monody in the present sense, namely, solo melody with instrumental
accompaniment. In monodic music the upper voice predominates throughout
and determines the harmonic structure. In vocal polyphony, or
counterpoint, the principal voice (_cantus firmus_) was usually in the
tenor, and had no such determining significance.

[99] Dante’s _ballate_ were everywhere known and sung, according to
Saccheti’s novels, and when Dante overheard a blacksmith singing his
song he scolded him for having altered it. Dante himself was, according
to an anonymous writer of the thirteenth century, _dilettore nel canto
e ogni suono_.

[100] F. J. Fétis: _Hist. Gén. de la Musique_, V. 308.

[101] Joh. Wolf: _Geschichte der Mensuralnotation von 1260-1450_ (2
vols., 1904).

[102] _Cf._ H. Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_ I², pp. 305 ff.


[103] H. Riemann: _Op. cit._, I², pp. 305 ff.

[104] H. Riemann: _Op. cit._, I², pp. 305 ff.

[105] J. A. Symonds: 'Renaissance in Italy,’ Vol. II.

[106] During 1471 to 1488 Josquin was at the papal chapel in Rome. His
popularity there is illustrated by the following episode. When a motet
was performed in a distinguished social circle it passed almost without
notice until the hearers became aware that Josquin was its composer,
when all hands promptly proceeded to express their admiration of it.

[107] B. Chioggia (Venice), 1517; d. Venice, 1590; was a pupil of
Willaert. In 1565 succeeded Cipriano de Rore as _maestro_ at St Mark’s.
Most of his compositions have been lost. His theoretical works were of
the greatest importance. Like M. Hauptmann later, he already recognized
but one kind of third, the major, and distinguishes the thirds of the
major and minor triad not by size but by position, upon which principle
he based the entire theory of harmony. Only the introduction of the
thorough bass soon after, which reckoned all intervals from the bass
up, prevented a development of this rational theory. (Cf. Riemann:
_Gesch. der Musiktheorie_, pp. 369 ff.)

[108] _Cf._ Chap. X, pp. 284 ff.

[109] The frottola 'stood midway between the strict and complicated
madrigal and the _villotta_ or _villanella_, which was a mere
harmonization of a tune; and in fact as the use of counterpoint
increased it disappeared, its better element went into the madrigal,
its lower into the _villanella_.--Grove’s 'Dictionary.’

'If we consider the frottole as contrapuntal exercises they appear
very meagre. If, however, we consider them as attempts to free the
_cantabile_ melody, the declamatory rhythm which is analogous to
the verse metre, from the imitative web, and as an attempt to endow
musical pieces with architectural symmetry in the construction of
its consecutive (not simultaneous) elements they are significant
phenomena.’--Ambros.

[110] 'History of Music,’ III, 303.

[111] The inscription _Cromatici, a note nere_ on the title page of
some of di Rore’s madrigals, which has been thought to indicate the
chromatic nature of these compositions, refers, as Riemann clearly
shows (_Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_ II¹. 411), simply to the color of
the notes, _croma_ being a current name for the eighth note since early
times.

[112] _Musikgeschichte in Beispielen._ Excerpt, etc., in _Handbuch der
Musikgeschichte_, II¹. 407 ff.

[113] That these vocal compositions were often performed entirely by
instruments is indicated by the direction which we meet frequently
on sixteenth century title pages: 'practical for all instruments.’
The kind of instruments was not indicated and the choice was left
to the direction of the performer. Not till the end of the century
did musicians begin to discriminate and to recognize the value of
instrumental timbre. In the _intermezzi_ arrangements of madrigals,
etc., were often performed by many instruments, as for instance in
those produced in 1565 by Striggio and Fr. Corteccia (d. 1571), who
assembled an orchestra of 2 clavicembali, 4 violini, 1 liuto mezzano,
1 cornetto muto, 4 tromboni, 1 flauti diritti, 4 traverse, 1 liuto
grosso, 1 sotto basso di viola, 1 soprano di viola, 4 liuti, 1 viola
d’arco, 1 lirone, 1 traverso contralto, 1 flauto grande tenore, 1
trombone basso, 5 storte, 1 stortina, 2 cornetti ordinarii, 1 cornetto
grosso, 1 dolzaina, 1 lira, 1 ribecchino, 2 tamburi.




                               CHAPTER X
                      THE GOLDEN AGE OF POLYPHONY

  Invention of music printing--The Reformation--The immediate
  successors of Josquin; Adrian Willaert and the Venetian school;
  Germany and England--Orlando di Lasso--Palestrina; his life--The
  Palestrina style; the culmination of vocal polyphony--Conclusion.


                                   I

The deep vital forces which had for two hundred years been urging
Italy to magnificent achievement broke through into music during the
course of the sixteenth century. Music was, as she has always been,
the last to respond to a general movement; but the response, when it
came, entailed an entire reconstruction of the art. All through the
century the process of reconstruction was active. It was, however,
gradual in its working. Only toward the very end of the century a few
bold explorers and experimenters turned their backs upon the past, cut
loose from the old art of music and started in to build with new stone
and new tools a new art. We have to do in this chapter with the old
art; on the one hand, with influences which boldly altered it, and with
new developments which were set free through these alterations; on the
other, with its ultimate perfection and consequent end.

The invention of music-printing just before the beginning of the
century had a powerful influence upon the development of music. The
beautiful manuscripts in which early music has been preserved to us
were the work for the most part of monks, and are another evidence of
the restriction of music to the church. With the invention of printing
came a liberation from this restraint. Music circulated through the
lay society--all kinds of music, both secular and sacred--it stepped
from the dim vast cathedrals and went among the people and entered into
their homes and into their lives. The world of men and women welcomed
it and changed it, formed it to the expression of their joys and
sorrows. The superhuman intricacies of counterpoint and canon little by
little withered and fell by the way.

Ulrich Han, of Ingolstadt, in 1476 solved the problem of printing music
by means of movable types, but his invention seems to have languished
until other enterprising men took it up. In Italy this was done by
Ottaviano dei Petrucci, born in 1466 at Fossombrone, near Ancona.
Petrucci, one of the first monopolists in the business of printing
music, was, like Aldus Manutius, a man of good birth and fortune. Some
time before 1498 he had established himself at Venice, and obtained
from the municipal council the sole privilege, for twenty years, of
printing figured music (_canto figurato_), and music in the tablature
of the organ and lute. This meant that, so far as Venice was concerned,
all the published lamentations, frottole, motets, and masses were to
issue from Petrucci’s press.

His first publication in 1501 was a collection of ninety-six pieces,
most of them written for three or four voices, by Okeghem, Hobrecht,
Josquin, Isaak, and others. The printing was done by a double process:
first the staff, then the notes, in a small quarto, with fine black
ink. The parts stood opposite one another on the open page, thus:

                    soprano  │  tenor
                    alto     │  bass

The registry or 'fit’ of the notes was perfect, and the effect of the
whole was admirable.

This expensive double process, however, was superseded about five years
later by another, simpler one, involving only one impression. In 1511
Petrucci left his plant at Venice in the hands of others and returned
to Fossombrone. Two years later he obtained a patent from Pope Leo X
for all the printing in the papal states for a period of fifteen years.
Petrucci’s last publication, a collection of eighty-three motets, is
dated 1523. His works are rare and highly valued as antique specimens
of printing, and the man himself is also remembered for the standards
of neatness and precision which he established.

Pierre Attaignant is said to be the first to introduce music printing
by means of movable types into France. In the nine years from 1527 to
1533 Attaignant printed nineteen books of motets of various French
and foreign masters. These prints are also very rare and historically
important. His work was still going on in 1543, but it seems that
the famous Ballards were soon to take it up. The names not only of
printers, but of the engravers and founders of these first music types
are justly preserved. Pierre Hautin was engraver for Attaignant,
and Etienne Briard a founder at Avignon. Briard furnished the first
known specimens of round notes, in place of the usual quadrangular
shapes, and these were used for the first time in printing the works
of Carpentras in 1532. This, however, was an exception, as the round
notes were not generally introduced into print until about the year
1700. Le Bé was another well-known type founder. His types were of the
sort which printed notes and lines simultaneously. Each individual type
contained a note and a portion of the staff; but later Le Bé adopted
Petrucci’s method of double impressions.

Adrian Leroy, a lute player, singer, and composer, appears as the next
printer of renown in Paris after Attaignant. Leroy presently joined
forces with another follower of the craft named Ballard--incidentally
marrying the daughter of the house--and in 1552 the firm obtained a
patent as sole printers of music for King Henry II of France. This
patent, frequently renewed, remained in the Ballard family until it
was abolished by the French Revolution, more than two hundred years
later; and the types of Le Bé, printing both notes and lines at once,
purchased by Pierre Ballard in 1540 for fifty thousand livres, were
still in use in 1750. One cannot help suspecting that these types,
excellent as they must have been, grew old-fashioned long before they
were laid aside. But monopoly has its uses. There was no one to compete
on equal terms with the distinguished and influential Ballards; so
there was no use to them in making expensive changes in type.

For more than two centuries, then, the Ballard family held an important
place as printers of music in France. The famous Orlando di Lasso
visited them; Lully’s operas were printed by them, first from movable
types, later from copper plates. In the early days of the firm Leroy
himself wrote an instruction book for the lute, which was translated
into English in two different versions--one by a writer named F. K.
Gentleman. Leroy also wrote an instruction book for the 'guiterne’
(guitar) and a book of _airs de cour_ for the lute, in the dedication
of which he said that such airs were formerly known as _voix de ville_.
In England Thomas Tallis and his pupil, William Byrd, obtained in 1575
a monopoly for twenty years of all music printing done in the realm.


                                  II

The invention of printing meant, as we have said, that music was no
longer centralized about the church. Yet it has to be granted that
one of the greatest impulses music has ever received came to it in
the early sixteenth century from a new religion; an impulse which,
destined to be checked for a while, though not killed, by the horrors
of religious warfare in the next century, was to gain thereafter ever
more and more strength and lead at last to truly magnificent heights in
the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The new religious movement to which
we refer was the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin
Luther.

We have said consciously that music received thereby a new impulse.
To hold that music was entirely reconstructed by Luther, that he
discarded all the forms and technique of music that had been up to that
time developed in the art, is quite as mistaken as to hold that he
wholly discarded the Roman ritual and built up a new and independent
service. The change which the Reformation brought to music was like the
change it brought to the service, far more one of spirit than one of
form. Luther’s reform was essentially to abolish the mediation of the
priesthood, to clear from the service in so far as possible all that
might stand between the worshipper and his God, to give freedom to the
intimate personal communion between God and man which the northerner
naturally feels and practises. In this respect Luther’s reform would
theoretically restore all music in the service to the congregation.
But Luther was dearly fond of music, of, so to speak, the best music.
His favorite composers were Josquin des Prés and Ludwig Senfl, both
contrapuntists of enormous skill. Their music was a worthy adornment
of the service. 'I am not of the opinion,’ he said, 'that on account
of the Gospel all the arts should be crushed out of existence as some
over-religious people pretend; but I would willingly see all the arts,
especially music, in the service of him who has created and given
them.’ Congregational singing is anything but an art; often, indeed,
is hardly music. Luther had no intention to dismiss trained choirs
from the churches and give over all the music of the service to the
untrained mass of worshippers. The trained choir therefore was retained
in all the Lutheran churches, which could afford to pay for one, and
music for these choirs--that is, artistic music, often music written by
Catholic composers in complicated contrapuntal style--held an honored
place in the Lutheran ritual.

The personal intimate spirit from which the reform drew life, however,
found an expression in music. To the congregation was allotted a
greater or less portion of song. It will be remembered that the early
Christians sang together and that not until the seventh century was the
privilege taken from them and restricted only to a trained choir. The
German people, as a matter of fact, seem never to have quite given up
their share in the musical part of the service. At some of the great
festival services they joined in the _Kyrie_ and in the _Alleluia_, and
very early it became the custom to insert German verses in the liturgy
at these places. Thus there developed a literature of German hymns,
sometimes partly German and partly Latin, as the following old Easter
hymn, obviously interpolated in the _Kyrie_:

    'Christ ist erstanden
    Von der Marter alle.
    Des sollen wir alle froh sein,
    Christ soll unser Trost sein,
    Kyrioleis.

    Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
    Des sollen wir alle froh sein,
    Christ soll unser Trost sein,
    Kyrioleis.’

In connection with the mystery plays other hymns were written, such as
the following cradle-song, part German, part Latin and part nonsense:

    'In dulci jubilo
    Nun singet und sei froh.
    Unser’s Herzens Wonne
    Liegt in præsipio,
    Und leuchtet als die Sonne.
    Matris in gremio.
    Alpha et O. Alpha et O.’

About these hymns there was woven a sort of religious folk music.
By the time of the Reformation there was a whole literature to draw
from and Luther needed only to organize and standardize many of the
hymns which had been familiar to the people for generations. To these
he added others of his own writing. The music was drawn from all
sources, practically none was especially composed. Luther had to aid
him in compiling his hymn-book two famous musicians, Konrad Rupff and
Johann Walther. In 1524 these two men were his guests for a period of
three weeks. Köstlin[114] writes: 'While Walther and Rupff sat at the
table bending over the music sheets with pen in hand, Father Luther
walked up and down the room, trying on his fife to ally the melodies
that flowed from his memory and his imagination with the poems he had
discovered, until he had made the verse melody a rhythmically finished,
well-rounded, strong, and compact whole.’ Here we have a picture of
the German hymn-tune, later called the _chorale_, in the process of
crystallization.

'The Devil does not need all the good tunes for himself,’ Luther wisely
remarked, and he drew from all sources, secular and sacred, for his
melodies. The same breadth of choice was likewise exercised by his
followers throughout the century: a song sung by the footsoldiers at
the battle of Pavia became the _Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt_;
the chorale melody _Von Gott will ich nicht lassen_, can be traced to
an old love song, _Einmal tät ich Spazieren_; a love song, _Mein G’müt
ist mir verwirret von einer Jungfrau zart_, by Hans Leo Hassler, became
the choral melody to the funeral-hymn _Herzlich thut mich verlangen_,
and later the same melody was set to Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, _O Haupt
voll Blut und Wunden_, and in that form holds a leading part in Bach’s
St. Matthew Passion. Nor were the chorale tunes taken from Germany
alone. Favorite part-songs of Italy and France were appropriated and
set to German words.

The hymn-book compiled by Luther with the help of Rupff and Walther
was published in Wittenburg in 1524. It was intended for church use,
and that the compilers had the choir, not the congregation, in mind is
proved by the fact that all the tunes are contrapuntally set, with the
melody as _cantus firmus_ in the tenor, that is to say, in the middle
of the music, not soaring triumphantly aloft majestically to guide the
congregation. We have, therefore, in these chorales of Luther not a new
form but a new spirit. How great a part the congregation ever actually
took in them is open to discussion. Doubtless in those churches where
there was no skilled choir, congregational singing played an important
rôle; but it seems likely that in those churches where there was such
a choir, congregational singing was kept as much in the background as
possible. In 1586 Lukas Osiander published a set of fifty chorales,
'set contrapuntally in such a way that the whole Christian congregation
can always join in them.’ This was obviously a kind attempt to bring
the more or less neglected congregation into the musical part of the
service. In Osiander’s arrangements the melody is in the soprano. But
the setting is still too intricate for general use and the same rather
condescending, yet still lofty, attitude toward the congregation is
characteristic of all composers down to the time of Bach.

The question of just how the congregation sang those chorales allotted
to them is also in doubt. It is hardly possible that in the first half
of the sixteenth century the organ accompanied them. The organ was
still far too imperfect to attempt polyphonic playing such as would
afford a harmonic support to the singers, who, we may presume, sang
only in unison. It is more likely that the organ and the congregation
alternated, or that the choir and the congregation sang in turn. Toward
the end of the century attempts were made to have the choir lead the
congregation, and then later, in the course of time, the organ was
perfected and was used for accompaniment, coming soon to drown out
the choir, which had little chance to maintain a leadership over the
mass of singers on the one hand and the organ on the other. Thus the
organ finally took the leadership. In its new position it no longer
alternated with the congregation, and the skill which organists had had
an opportunity to show in the solo passages, alternating, in the old
days, with the congregation, was now concentrated upon the prelude. In
this way the foundation for a characteristically German art-form in
organ music, the _chorale-prelude_, was laid.

Though Luther was too much of a musician to be willing to give over
the music of the service to be mishandled by a crowd of untrained
singers, he none the less intended his chorale melodies to enter into
the lives of the German Protestants. Thus, while, on the one hand, we
have Luther’s own book and subsequent books in the same contrapuntal
style, on the other, we have hymn-books in which only the melody was
written and which carried the noble old tunes to every hearth and home
throughout Protestant Germany. The first 'house’ hymn-book appeared a
short while before Luther’s church book. It was compiled by Luther’s
friend, Justus Jonas, and was called the _Erfurt Enchiridion_. Among
the hymns contained in it were two old Latin hymns, already mentioned
in Chapter V, the _Veni redemptor gentium_, by St. Ambrose, and the
_Media in vita_, by Notker Balbulus, both, of course, done into German.
An interesting collection was published in Frankfurt in 1571 with the
preface: 'Street songs, cavalier songs, and mountain songs transformed
into Christian and moral songs, for the abolishing, in the course of
time, of the bad and vexatious practice of singing idle and shameful
songs in the streets, in fields, and at home, by substituting for them
good sacred and honest words.’ The chorale melodies, indeed, became
the property of the Germans. They were colored with the sentiment of
a whole race; they took on a nobility and a dignity, they seemed to
germinate new life, and, finally, they became the glory of a lofty art,
based on the skill of the Netherlanders, modified and adorned according
to a new style soon to be perfected by the Italians, and infused with
rich, warm life flowing from the very hearts of the German people.

The Protestant Reformation did not, then, at once alter the form
of church music in Germany. Other influences, sprung from Catholic
Italy, were to be far more powerful in that respect. Even the tendency
toward harmonic writing, toward emphasizing the progression of chords
rather than the interweaving of melodies, which the chorale melodies
undoubtedly furthered, was a tendency very evident in Italian church
music of the time, notably at Venice, was indeed a mark of the time.
The true significance of the Lutheran reform in the history of music is
that it laid music open to a flood of genuine strong feeling, personal,
intimate, intensely human feeling, which little by little during the
next two centuries, in spite of the horror and agony of persecution and
warfare, permeated every vein and artery of music, and filled them with
vital warmth and glowing color. During the Thirty Years’ War only the
hymn and the chorale melody escaped destruction in Germany, and these
survived because they were actually a part of the people and could
cease to exist only when the race had been stamped out.

In France and in England the Protestant movement had far less influence
upon music than in Germany. In France this seems to be explained by
the fact that the French had not, like the Germans, a literature of
native hymns, but had to construct their hymn-book from the Psalter,
and that they had a more slender stock of genuine folk-song to draw
upon. Zwingli, the leader of the Swiss Reformation, which was to win
the support of the Frenchman Calvin, was not in favor of music, and his
followers were ruthless in their destruction of organs and collections
of music. Calvin, on the other hand, had in regard to music more the
point of view of Luther. He drew freely from the Lutheran hymn-books
both melodies and words, but especially in favor of metrical versions
of the Psalms. These were set to music often excellent and finely
harmonized. Among the Calvinistic psalm writers Clement Marot is
most famous. It was he who, as court poet to Francis I, made several
versions of the Psalms into the style of ballads, which won great
popularity by their novelty and were set to gay tunes and sung by the
people at court. Subsequently, in forced exile at Geneva, he added
nineteen more to the collection of thirty he had already written, and
these were later supplemented and arranged in final form by Theodore de
Beza. Most conspicuous among the musicians connected with the movement
in France were Loys Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel. The latter may
have been a Netherlander and a pupil of Josquin. He was killed in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew in Lyons (1572). Bourgeois composed many
melodies himself to the Calvinistic hymns and set them more or less
simply in four parts. Goudimel, on the other hand, composed elaborate
settings in the style of motets with the melody, seldom his own, in the
tenor.

The English, like the French, relied upon metrical versions of the
Psalms for their hymn-books. Furthermore, the beginning of the
Reformation in England was complicated with political motives and
the movement was, for a long time, simply a break from the Church of
Rome rather than an outburst of religious convictions. Yet after the
suppression of monasteries between 1536 and 1540 there was something
of the same destruction of organs and music which had wrought such
havoc in Switzerland, and a general condemnation of elaborate church
service. The first attempt at hymn tunes was the _Goostlie Psalmes_
of Coverdale, drawn largely from Lutheran sources. Under Edward VI
(1547-1553) began the organization of the Anglican Church and the
drafting of liturgies in English. The movement was checked by the reign
of Mary, but under Elizabeth resulted in a standard ritual which called
forth the best musical genius of the country. An elaborate setting of
the canticles, etc., used in morning and evening prayer was encouraged
and a new art-form, the musical flower of the English Reformation, the
anthem, resulted from the setting of the variable portions of these
services.


                                  III

The great spirit of the Italian Renaissance, which was essentially a
spirit of freedom and joy in individuality, thus took shape in Germany,
England, and France, and laid a hand upon music as it had already done
in Italy. On every hand it scatters its seeds, which will take root and
later flower. Elements of form and design, rich chromatic alterations
of harmony, splendid dramatic effects of answering double choirs
are woven into the intricate web of Netherland polyphonic music,
touching it with color and fire, making it fertile with new and vast
developments. But all is gradual; the art grows slowly and only slowly
changes. Amid the turbulent restlessness, the experiment and daring,
the old ideal, the ideal of the monasteries and the great cathedrals,
still awaits perfection--the touch of Lassus and of Palestrina.

We have seen that Petrucci’s first publication of 1501 contained
ninety-six pieces, most of which were by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin,
Isaak, and others, such as Ghiselin, La Rue, Alex. Agricola, Brumel,
Craen, by far the most part Netherlanders. This was in Venice. We
need no further evidence of the popularity of the Netherland art in
Italy. The Netherland style had become by this time the standard style
of Europe; and during the first quarter of the sixteenth century
Netherlanders still held sway over the development of music. There were
pupils of Josquin in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, in Italy,
and in Germany. His music flowed over the face of Europe and his art
penetrated to all the courts and into all the cathedrals. And upon
all his pupils the spirit of the Renaissance was at work. Thousands
of madrigals, of love songs, drinking songs, and hunting songs came
crowding from their pens and jostled masses and motets in confusion.
Program music was in the air, songs of battle, songs of gossiping
women, of birds, of shepherds and of shepherdesses. It is hardly
surprising that music for the church began to take on colors more and
more brilliant. It is more surprising that the old ideal of exalted
polyphony still endured and still called men to its standard.

Some of the pupils of Josquin are worthy of separate mention.
Perhaps the most distinguished of them was Nicolas Gombert. He was a
Netherlander by birth. We find him in the service of the sovereign of
the Netherlands, later in the royal chapel at Brussels. In 1530 he
was master of the boys at the imperial chapel in Madrid, and afterward
probably first master in the same chapel. In 1556 he was back in his
own country again, where, a few years after, he died. A large number of
his works, from special editions of the sixteenth century, have come
down to us, and some of his manuscripts, like so many other treasures
of this period, are in the Munich library. His work for the church is
characterized by a gentle, harmonious beauty, and Fétis called him the
predecessor of Palestrina, especially on account of a beautiful _Pater
noster_, which is marked by a lofty religious sentiment. He was very
successful as a composer of motets, and, in his secular works, showed
a tendency toward tone-color effects--program music--especially in his
chansons, _Le berger et la bergère_, and _Le chant des oiseaux_.

Benedictus Ducis, another Netherlander and pupil of Josquin, born at
Bruges in 1480, was distinguished by the musical brotherhood of Antwerp
by being elected Prince of the Guild--the highest honor an artist could
achieve at that time in the Netherlands. Leaving Antwerp in 1515 he
appears to have visited Henry the Eighth of England, and later to have
been in Germany. There is some difficulty in distinguishing the works
of Ducis from those of Benedictus Appenzelder, owing to the peculiar
custom of the time of signing manuscripts only with the Christian
name. It is generally conceded, however, that Ducis composed a funeral
ode on the death of his master Josquin, also a motet for eight parts,
_Peccantem me quotidie_, passion music and settings of the Psalms, the
earnestness and nobility of which justify his fame.

Jean Mouton, another pupil, was born probably near Metz, in Lorraine,
became chapel singer to Louis XII and Francis I of France, then canon
of Thérouanne and afterward of St. Quentin. His works show him to be a
master of counterpoint and a worthy pupil of Josquin. Petrucci printed
five of his masses in 1508, and later more than twenty of his motets;
and Attaignant included his compositions in the third book of a famous
collection of masses published in 1532, and also in a collection of
motets which appeared somewhat earlier. A few masses in manuscript
are in the Munich library. A large number of his motets have been
preserved, justly valued for their artistic and effective qualities,
which in some instances closely resemble those of his master. His
pupil, Adrian Willaert, was one of the most gifted and one of the most
influential composers of the next generation. He may be regarded as
the founder of the Venetian school of composers, who played such a
brilliant part in the history of music during the sixteenth century,
who were experimenters and innovators, whose energy opened many a new
channel to the course of music. The influence of Josquin thus passed to
Venice.

Adrian Willaert, born probably in 1490 at Roulers, in Belgium, first
studied law in Paris. Afterward he adopted music as his profession and
became a pupil of Jean Mouton. In 1516 we find him travelling in Italy,
visiting Rome, Venice, and Ferrara. There is a story to the effect that
in Rome he heard a motet of his, the _Verbum dulce et suave_, sung by
the papal choir, whose members believed it to have been written by
Josquin; and that they refused to sing it again when they discovered
it to be by an unknown composer. If this story be true, it may be
added here that Willaert lived to see the day when his compositions
were considered entirely worthy of attention, even from the most
distinguished body of singers in Christendom.

That time was not yet come, however. Willaert left Italy, taking
service as chapel master to King Ludwig II, ruler of Hungary and
Bavaria; but in 1526 he was back again in Venice, where, in the
following year, he received the appointment as first chapel master of
the Basilica of St. Mark, at a salary of seventy ducats, about one
hundred and sixty dollars. This was later increased to two hundred
ducats, about four hundred and sixty dollars, which was considered a
princely income. For thirty-five years the master kept at his post,
although twice during that time, once in 1542 and again in 1556, a
longing for his native country drew him back to Belgium. It was his
hope, indeed, to spend his last years in Bruges; but he had taken root
too firmly in Italy. Friends, admirers, and patrons urged him to remain
in Venice, and it was there, in 1562, that he died.

The Basilica of St. Mark was already ancient when Willaert came to
Venice. Founded in 830 to receive the relics of the second Evangelist
brought from Alexandria, rebuilt a hundred and fifty years later,
it had received its permanent form about the middle of the eleventh
century. Five hundred years had but increased its beauty and added
mellowness and historic interest to its charm. Externally, its domes
and pinnacles, its encrusted marbles and pillars, its bronze horses
and many-colored arches constitute a unique and splendid monument of
history. Within its walls, statues, columns crowned with capitals
from Greece and Byzantium, and rich mosaics blend in a beauty at once
impressive and magnificent. The interior is not large, two hundred and
five by one hundred and sixty-four feet; but it is particularly well
adapted to the use of the two organs, which are placed opposite each
other.

This circumstance suggested to Willaert the device of dividing his
choir so as to contrast the mass effect of the united voices with
antiphonal singing. With this device, happily carried into effect,
there developed in time, under Willaert’s hands, a new style of
composition for two choirs. It was this style which continued in
vogue for more than a century and formed the standard and became the
peculiar characteristic of the Venetian school.

In his early experiments with the divided choir Willaert made use of
the Psalms, whose poetical form, with the parallel half-verses and
refrains, seemed especially adapted to antiphonal rendering. Following
these, he composed hymns and masses, not after the manner of the eight
or ten-part compositions known in the Netherlands, but works specially
adapted to the double choir, each part complete in itself, each
combining with or opposing the other, and yet creating an impression of
unity and centralization. This was actually a new artistic creation,
and by reason of it Willaert became almost the idol of the Venetians.
They called his lovely music 'liquid gold,’ adapted his name to 'Messer
Adriano,’ honored him with verses and public addresses, and, in his old
age, besought him to leave his ashes to the city in which his artistic
triumphs had been achieved.

Willaert’s experiments with double choir effects had a profound and
lasting influence upon the development of music. In the first place,
owing to this, devices of imitation and canonic progression which had
so long been the most prominent feature of ecclesiastical and secular
music, became secondary in importance to chord progressions. The
reason is obvious. To get the best effect with two answering choirs
the sections which each sings must not be long and complicated, but
relatively short and clear cut, otherwise the effect of balance or
of echo is lost; and in these relatively short sections there is
hardly time to accomplish elaborate polyphonic development. Even if
there were, the polyphonic effects are far too subtle to be easily
recognized in echo or answer. The tendency in writing music for two
choirs was therefore toward a simple style, clearly balanced, with
certain definite harmonic relationships which could not fail to be
recognized when repeated. The composers of the Venetian school were
almost within reach of the harmonic idea of music, which rose clearly
to supremacy only late in the next century. They were actually breaking
away from the ecclesiastical modes, not only by thus trying to write in
a simple harmonic style, which was founded nearly on our ideas of tonic
and dominant, but also by enriching their harmonies with chromatic
variations. Willaert thus stands out as one of the founders of what
has been called the coloristic or chromatic school of the sixteenth
century. In his music, and even more in the music of his followers,
the old modes are constantly altered and with them the practice of
_musica ficta_, already mentioned, reaches its height.[115] It meant
the crumbling of the model system. It must not, however, be supposed
that Willaert abandoned entirely the traditions of the Netherlanders
and that he gave up writing in the complicated style altogether. He,
indeed, employed imitation and canon, but more casually; often only
at the entrance of short alternating sections. His voice parts then
proceeded in 'solid chord pillars,’ as Naumann has happily said, in a
style markedly in advance of the old contrapuntal conceptions. In him
therefore we have a brilliant example of the old style worked upon by
new impulses, by the spirit of the Renaissance, the desire for rich
color and varied, beautiful form.

Willaert was an industrious composer, and his works go far toward
making the period from 1450 to 1550 'the golden century of the
Netherlands.’ Masses, motets, psalms and hymns, madrigals and _canzone_
are all well-represented. One unusual composition, for five voices,
in the form of a narrative based on the Bible story Susannah, seems
like an early prophecy of the sacred cantata, although the treatment
is severely hymnlike and not dramatic. As a writer of madrigals and of
_frottole_ Willaert’s position is discussed in another chapter; though
it may be said in passing that in these, as in his sacred music, his
individuality is marked, and his knowledge and musical skill evident.

Though a northerner by birth, Willaert became the founder of a school
characteristically Italian, and his work seemed, to his contemporaries,
to embody the very spirit of Venetian life, in its richness and
variety. He brought to the Italians the inheritance of the Netherland
art, turned it into new and interesting channels, and revealed to later
masters what possibilities of color lay hidden under the strictness of
its laws.

Upon the death of Willaert, his pupil, Cipriano di Rore,[116] was
appointed to the high office at St. Mark’s. Works of di Rore, including
madrigals, motets, masses, psalms, and a Passion according to St. John,
were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, especially in Munich,
where they were frequently performed under the direction of Lassus.
Duke Albert of Bavaria caused a handsome copy of a collection of his
church compositions, graced by a portrait of the composer, to be placed
in the Munich library, where it still remains.

Following di Rore at St. Mark’s came Gioseffo Zarlino,[117] a member
of the order of Franciscan monks, also a pupil of Willaert, and a
theorist of great importance. Few of his compositions have survived,
but his theoretical writing, _Instituzioni harmoniche_, _Dimostrazioni
harmoniche_, and _Sopplimenti musicali_, remain in an edition of
Zarlino’s collected works published in four volumes in 1589. There
are also in manuscript French, German, and Dutch translations of the
_Instituzioni_, which contain, besides an important discussion of the
third, and the major and minor consonant triad, a clear explanation of
double counterpoint in the octave, twelfth, and in contrary motion;
of canon and double canon in the unison, octave, and upper and under
fifth, with numerous examples based upon the same _cantus firmus_.
Baldasarro Donati and Giovanni della Croce, both distinguished
musicians, in turn succeeded Zarlino as _maestro di capella_ at St.
Mark’s.

Elsewhere in Italy important composers appear, native Italians
who bring to the Netherland art the Italian gift of melody and
sweetness. Constanzo Festa,[118] a Florentine, occupies an especially
important place. Riemann says of him, 'He can be looked upon as the
predecessor of Palestrina, with whose style his own has many points
of similarity. He was the first Italian contrapuntist of importance,
and gives a foretaste of the beauties which were to spring from the
union of Netherland art with Italian feeling for euphony and melody.’
Constanzo Porta, a pupil of Willaert, was successively _maestro_ of
the Franciscan monastery at Padua, and of churches at Ravenna, Osimo,
and Loreto. Gafori (or Gafurius, 1451-1522), cantor and master of
the boys at Milan cathedral, left many theoretical writings of great
value. Arcadelt, already mentioned as a writer of madrigals, composed
a volume of masses, published both in Venice and by Ballard and Leroy
in Paris in 1557. Jacob Clemens, better known by the name of Clemens
non Papa, to distinguish him from the pope--a fact which attests, in a
jocular way, his popularity--was a Netherlander, and one of the most
famous composers of the epoch between Josquin and Palestrina, leaving
to posterity a large number of masses, motets, and chansons, besides
four books of hymns and psalms, the melodies of which were taken from
Netherland folk song.

Meantime in Germany we find also musicians of distinction, though as
yet none of the very first rank. One of the oldest of these was Adam
von Fulda, a learned monk, known both as a composer and theorist,
and the author of at least one highly esteemed motet, _O vera lux et
gloria_. Heinrich Finck, Thomas Stolzer, Ludwig Senfl, and Heinrich
Isaak all deserve an honorable place in the history of German music of
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isaak, though for
some time considered a German, was born in the Netherlands, probably
about 1450, and was one of the most learned of the contemporaries of
Josquin. He lived for a time in Ferrara, afterward becoming organist at
the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From this post he went to Rome,
and finally entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Vienna.
Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1506, and included many of
his other compositions in collections published early in the century.
Manuscript works are in the Munich, Brussels, and Vienna libraries. His
part songs were considered models of their kind, and are not lacking
in interest even to-day. It is to Isaak we are indebted for the lovely
_Inspruck, ich muss dich lassen_, used as a hymn by the followers of
Luther, and by Sebastian Bach in the St. Matthew Passion.

Ludwig Senfl (born 1492, died about 1555), a pupil and the successor
of Isaak at the court chapel of Maximilian I at Vienna, was later
chapel-master at Munich. According to Riemann, Senfl was one of
the most distinguished, if not the most important, of the German
contrapuntists of the sixteenth century. He is further remembered
as a friend of Luther. A great number of his compositions are
preserved, among them being masses, motets, odes, songs, and hymns for
congregational singing.

The work of the brilliant Clement Jannequin in Paris was largely
secular and will be treated in another chapter. It may be remarked in
passing that types of composition perfected by him were to have great
influence upon instrumental music before the end of the century. In
England John Merbecke (d. 1585), Christopher Tye (d. 1572), Thomas
Tallis (d. 1585), and William Byrd (d. 1623) match the Netherlands in
skill and bring to their music not only the spirit of the new age,
but the peculiar melodiousness which has always characterized English
music. The works of Tallis became great favorites and in the famous
English collections of music for the virginals toward the end of the
century several of his vocal works appeared as transcriptions. Byrd
must be ranked as one of the most daring composers of the time. Though
he conformed to the new religion he remained at heart a Catholic, and
his great works are akin to those of the greatest Catholic composers
on the continent. He has, indeed, been called the Lassus of England.
Here, too, must be mentioned, though belonging almost more to the next
century, Thomas Morley (d. 1602), John Dowland (d. 1626), and perhaps
the greatest of all English composers except Henry Purcell, Orlando
Gibbons (d. 1625). All these men were composing at the end of the
century, especially madrigals and other secular forms famous not only
for their great technical skill, but for their remarkable sweetness
and expressiveness. They were all, moreover, skillful instrumentalists
and brought music for the harpsichord to a state far advanced beyond
anything on the continent. John Bull (d. 1628) was not only a master of
the art of counterpoint but a virtuoso on both organ and harpsichord,
whose match could be found only in Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli in
Venice.

Everywhere the Renaissance spirit was at work, but prosperous Venice
stands out clearly as the centre of the new movement which so colored
and remodelled music. Effects of double choirs, chromatic harmonies,
tendencies toward definiteness of form, and even the combination of
voices and instruments within the church itself, all marks of the
changes which were affecting the development of music, all signs of
the liberation of music from the sway of the church and of its closer
relationship with passionate active life, are first found in the works
of the composers who were connected with St. Mark’s cathedral. But
these men were really pioneers and the results of their innovations,
though radical and far-reaching, were hardly foreseen. They sowed
seeds, so to speak, which were to grow and flower long after their
death. We have now to consider how the art of the Netherlanders grew
to a present perfection in the works of two men--Orlando di Lasso and
Pierluigi da Palestrina--both of whom, but particularly the latter,
pursued an ideal untouched by the modern forces playing upon music
about them; an ideal which, moreover, they attained and by attaining
brought to an end the first great period in the history of European
music.


                                  IV

Orlando di Lasso[119] was born in the town of Mons, in Hainault,
probably in 1530. The Flemish form of the name, Roland de Lattre, seems
to have been abandoned early in favor of the Italian. The fate of the
musically gifted boy, both during and long after the Middle Ages,
was a choir school; and accordingly Orlando was entered as chorister
in the local church of St. Nicholas. A writer named Van Quickelberg,
giving an account of Lasso in 1565, says that he quickly came to a good
understanding of music, and that the beauty of his voice caused him
to be twice stolen from the school in which he lived with the other
choristers. Twice also his 'good parents’ rescued him; but, finally
(at the age of twelve), he became attached to the suite of Ferdinand
of Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, with whom he travelled to Italy.
Orlando stayed for some time in Naples, Rome, and Milan, continuing
his studies, and then seems to have undertaken a long journey through
France and England. By the year 1555 he was settled in Antwerp and
rather widely known as a composer. Two years later Albert V, duke
of Bavaria, called him to serve as chamber musician at his court in
Munich. Duke Albert was a liberal man, a connoisseur of art, and, oddly
enough, a man of some fame both in the athletic and in the religious
world. He founded the famous royal library of Munich, to which we have
had frequent occasion to refer, and enriched it during his lifetime
with many valuable manuscripts and objects of art.

At first Lasso, being unfamiliar with the German language, filled
rather a subordinate position among the duke’s musicians; but in 1562
he was appointed master of the chapel, which included both the choir
and an orchestra. From this year on, up to the time when the illness
attacked him which resulted in his death, his career was one of
ever-increasing success and prosperity. He was called the 'Prince of
Musicians.’ In 1570 he was ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian II, and
in the year following Pope Gregory XIII decorated him with the Order
of the Golden Spur. On visiting Paris he was received with great favor
by King Charles IX; while at home Duke Albert assured him his salary
for life and appointed three of his sons to honorable positions in the
chapel. The successor of Albert, Duke Wilhelm II, not only confirmed
Lasso in his position, but presented him, in appreciation of his
services, with a house and garden, and also made suitable provision for
his wife. Neither the favor of royalty nor the admiration of princes,
however, could render him immune to ill fortune. His last few years
were clouded by mental trouble and melancholia. In June, 1594, he died,
and was buried in the cemetery of the Franciscans. The monastery has
been destroyed, but the monument to Lasso was preserved and now stands
in the garden of the Academy of Fine Art in Munich.

Although the name of Lasso is not so well known to the world to-day
as that of Palestrina, his career was a remarkable one. In the
oft-mentioned Munich library, among other works of the master, is a
manuscript copy of his most famous work, the 'Penitential Psalms,’
written between 1562 and 1565, but not published until some time later.
At the performance of these psalms Duke Albert was so impressed and
affected that he caused a manuscript copy to be made and placed
in his library. It was richly ornamented by the court painter, Hans
Mielich, and other artists, and magnificently bound in leather.[120]
Duke Albert was perhaps an exceptional patron; but, granting that to be
the case, Lasso’s career shows how honorable was the position held by a
great musician in his century.

                   [Illustration: ORLANDO di LASSO.]

In the duke’s chapel were upward of ninety singers and players, several
of them composers of merit, all of them musicians of ability. The
choir singing was well balanced, and correct in pitch, even through
the longest compositions. The general order of the ducal service was
for the wind and brass instruments of the orchestra to accompany the
mass on Sundays, and festival days, and, on the occasion of a banquet,
to play during the earlier courses of the dinner. The strings, under
Morari as conductor, then enlivened the remainder of the feast until
the dessert, when Lasso and his choir of picked voices would finish
the entertainment with quartets, trios, or pieces for the full choir.
For chamber music, all the instruments would combine. The duke and
his family were keenly interested in Lasso’s work, passionately
fond of music in itself and proud of the celebrity of their chapel
master. It is one of the instances where reverence and appreciation
came to the artist during his lifetime; and it is not to be doubted
that these fortunate circumstances had a tremendous influence on the
master’s work. His industry and fertility were prodigious. Compositions
amounting to two thousand or more are accredited to him--masses,
motets, magnificats, passion music, frottole, chansons and psalms.
There are two hundred and thirty madrigals alone. Following the lead
of Willaert, he sometimes used the divided choir and composed for it,
and also showed himself not indifferent to the growing taste for psalm
singing.

The Seven Penitential Psalms, composed at the duke’s request, are
for five voices, some numbers with two separate movements for each
verse, the final movement, _Sic erat_, for six voices. Each psalm
is a composition of some length, though modern ideas as to their
tempi, and therefore as to the time required for their performance,
show considerable variation. 'It is not true that Lasso composed the
Penitential Psalms to soothe the remorse of Charles IX, after the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it is more than probable that they
were sung before that unhappy monarch, and his musical sense must
indeed have been dull, if he found no consolation and hope expressed
in them. This is no everyday music, which may charm at all seasons, or
in all moods; but there are times when we find ourselves forgetting
the antique forms of expression, passing the strange combinations
of sounds, almost losing ourselves in a new-found grave delight,
till the last few moments of the psalm--always of a more vigorous
character--gradually recall us as from a beautiful dream which “waking
we can scarce remember”.... So unobtrusive is its character that we
can fancy the worshippers hearing it by the hour, passive rather than
active listeners, with no thought of the human mind that fashioned its
form. Yet the art is there, for there is no monotony in the sequence of
the movements. Every variety that can be naturally obtained by changes
of key, contrasted effects of repose and activity, or distribution
of voices, are here; but these changes are so quietly and naturally
introduced, and the startling contrasts now called “dramatic” so
entirely avoided, that the composer’s part seems only to have been
to deliver faithfully a divine message, without attracting notice to
himself.’[121]

De Lasso’s secular compositions are placed by critics almost
unanimously even above his ecclesiastical work. The madrigals and
chansons reveal force and variety of treatment, bold experiments with
chromatics, a freer modulation and a keen sympathy for the popular
elements of music. 'Lasso shed lustre on, and at the same time closed,
the great epoch of the Belgian ascendancy, which, during the space
of two hundred years, had given to the world nearly three hundred
musicians of marvellous science.’[122] The decline and fall of the
Netherland school, which began with the death of its last great master,
Lasso, are ascribed by Fétis to the political disturbances and wars
of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries. But it seems more probable
that the intricacies of the contrapuntal art created a desire for
simpler methods. The genius of Italy and Germany, upon whose soil the
last Netherland masters flourished, supplied the very qualities which
brought the art to perfection.


                                   V

It has already been related how, even as early as 1322, the liberties
which careless, ignorant, or sacrilegious singers took with the Roman
service had called forth denunciations from the papal chair. The
genius of the Netherland schools, dominating church music as it did
for a space of two hundred years, was, like Janus, two-faced. On the
one hand, it developed a musical technique so complete and perfect in
form that any further progress without an entire change of principle
seemed impossible; and, on the other, it fostered a dry, mathematical
correctness that led, at its worst, to an utter disregard of expression
and feeling. Only the genius of a Josquin or a Lasso rendered learning
subservient to beauty of expression and carried out the true mission of
art.

In Rome, however, no master had yet appeared who was great enough to
force into the background all the unsanctioned innovations by which
unscrupulous musicians sought to reach the popular taste. From the
time of the return of the popes from Avignon (1377) Roman church
music had been a continual source of dissatisfaction to the Curia. As
has been pointed out, the plain-chant became more and more overladen
with contrapuntal embellishments; the mass sometimes exhibited a
labored canon worked over a long, slow _cantus firmus_, the different
voices singing different sets of words entirely unconnected with each
other. Sometimes, again, the ritual was enlivened by texts beginning
with the words _Baisez moy; Adieu, mes amours_; or the much tortured
_Omme armé_, of which the tunes were as worldly as the text. If
these objections were lacking, another was likely to be present in
the absurdly elaborate style, which rendered the words of so little
importance that they might as well not have existed at all. The mass,
'bristling with inept and distracting artifices,’ had lost all relation
to the service it was supposed to illustrate. 'It was usual for the
most solemn phrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, or Agnus Dei to blend
along the aisles of the basilica with the unedifying refrains of the
lewd chansons of Flanders and Provence.’[123] In this manner the
beautiful ritual was either degraded by pedants into a mere learned
conundrum, or by idlers into a sacrilegious and profane exercise; and
the reproofs of popes and councils had, so far, not availed to keep out
these signs of deterioration, much less to lift church music to the
level of the sister arts.

In this situation the Council of Trent was forced to recognize the
degradation of music and to take up the question of a thorough and
complete reform. In 1564 Pope Pius IV authorized a commission of eight
cardinals to carry out the resolution of the council, whose complaints
were mainly upon the two points indicated above--first, the melodies
of the _canti firmi_ were not only secular, but sung to secular words,
while the other parts often sang something else; secondly, the style
had become so excessively florid as to obscure the words, even when
suitable, and render them of no account. Some of the members of the
council, it is claimed, declared that it was better to forbid polyphony
altogether than to suffer the existing abuses to continue. In the
passionate desire for the purification of the ritual even Josquin’s
works had been abandoned, not because of any lack of admiration for
them, but because he shared necessarily in the general condemnation of
all music not Gregorian. A modest and devoted composer, however, had
already attracted the attention of two of the members of the pope’s
commission, Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, and it was to him they
now turned in their need.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born in 1526[124] of humble
parentage in Praeneste, or Palestrina, a town in the campagna four
hours from Rome. Early in life he came to the Imperial city, studied
with one of the excellent masters resident there, and then returned to
his native town to become organist in the cathedral. In 1547 he married
the daughter of a tradesman, by whom he had several children. In 1551
Pope Julius III called him to Rome as choirmaster of the St. Giulia
Chapel at St. Peter’s, where he succeeded Arcadelt. Three years later,
after the publication of a volume of masses, dedicated to the pope,
Palestrina received an appointment as singer in the papal choir. He had
a poor voice, he was a layman, and married. Each one of these reasons
was sufficient, according to the constitution of the Roman College,
to forbid his appointment, and Palestrina hesitated in his acceptance
of the post. Not wishing, however, to offend his powerful patron, and
naturally desirous of obtaining a permanent position, he resigned his
office at the St. Giulia chapel and entered the pontifical choir. This
appointment was supposed to be for life, and the young singer may well
have felt discouraged when, after four years, a reforming pope, Paul
IV, dismissed him with two other married men. In place of his salary
as singer the pope awarded him a pension of six scudi (less than six
dollars) a month. With a wife and family such a reduction of income
seemed nothing less than ruin to Palestrina, and, stricken with nervous
fever, he took to his bed. A little more courage, however, might have
served him better; for his dismissal did not spell ruin. In two months
he was invited to fill the post of choir master at the Lateran, and his
fortunes again brightened. He was able to keep his pension, together
with the salary accorded him in his new position. After six years
he was transferred to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he
remained for ten years, his monthly salary being about sixteen dollars.
In 1571 he was reappointed to his old office of chapel master at the
Vatican.

Palestrina was chapel master at the Santa Maria Maggiore at the time
of the appointment of the commission for the reform of church music.
The Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, both active members, recommended
that one more trial be made to harmonize religious requirements with
the better taste of the people. A story has prevailed for centuries
that Palestrina was requested to write a mass which should serve as a
model of what the music of the sacred office should be, and that he
submitted three works, which were first performed with great care at
the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, before a group of clergy and singers.
There was an immediate and enthusiastic verdict in favor of the
compositions. The first two were good, and were sufficiently praised;
but the third, the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, as it was afterward called in
honor of an earlier pope, was felt to be the epitome of all that was
noble and dignified in ecclesiastical music, the crown and glory of
the service itself. It was first sung in the papal chapel in 1565. In
appreciation of the noble work, Palestrina was made official composer
to the pontifical choir--a post created especially for him--and
succeeding popes confirmed him in his office as long as he lived.

The story of the commission of cardinals and the musical reforms
instituted by the Council of Trent has been so emphasized by some
historians as to represent Palestrina as the 'savior’ without whose
services church music would virtually have ceased to exist. Such
a view, however, requires some modification. Church music was not
'saved’ by Palestrina in any such sense, though its debt to him is,
nevertheless, almost inestimable. There was never any intention on
the part of the cardinals to abolish it altogether from the church;
but they had long been seeking a form and a style which should be
intelligible, acceptable both to the devotee and the layman of
cultivated musical taste, and suitable to the office which it holds in
the sacred service. Ambros goes so far as to deny that there was any
cause for such wholesale purification; but, in view of the facts cited,
this is evidently an error. That the evil was widespread is proved by
the action that provincial synods took, in following the example of the
Council of Trent, Milan and Cambrai in 1565, Constance and Augsburg in
1567, Namur and Mechlin in 1570.

From the time of Josquin attempts had been made by one and another
of the masters mentioned in this chapter to make a more suitable
connection between text and melody, to simplify the contrapuntal
writing, and to put expression into their art. To some extent, as has
been seen, they accomplished their purpose. Josquin, Festa, Gombert,
Morales, Rore, and especially Willaert and Lasso, have all left
evidences of their noble endeavor in this direction. It was left to
Palestrina, however, to achieve a high level of style, the excellence
of which was reached by the other masters only in isolated instances;
and to prove to the cardinals that the music of the church could be
lifted to its true dignity. He differs, not in form, but in æsthetic
principle, from his contemporaries; but it is precisely that difference
which raised Palestrina to the pinnacle of fame.

The outward facts of his later life offer little that need detain the
reader. Among his patrons were popes and princes, but they did not,
on the whole, distinguish themselves by kindness or generosity to the
musician. Jealousy among members of the choir with which he was so long
connected was a constant source of unpleasantness, and his faithful
work was meagrely rewarded. His largest regular earnings amounted to
something like thirty dollars a month, and he apparently never dreamed
of any revenue from the sale of his works. Indeed, it is unlikely that
any very substantial reward ever came to him with his added honors as
a composer. Neither could he have added much to his gains by teaching,
for in the whole course of his life he taught but seven private pupils,
three of whom were his own sons. Continuous poverty was accompanied by
domestic griefs of the deepest kind. Three sons, all giving promise of
inheriting the father’s intellect and genius, died one after another;
the wife with whom he was especially happy died in 1580; and the one
remaining son became a profligate and worthless spendthrift. It may
be added that not long after the death of his first wife he married a
wealthy widow and so was well provided for till the end of his life.

               [Illustration: PIERLUIGI da PALESTRINA.]

One event in the master’s life stands out in contrast to the general
sadness. In 1575, the year of Jubilee, fifteen hundred singers,
belonging to two confraternities of his native town, made a pilgrimage
to Rome, and utilized the occasion to do him honor. Dividing themselves
into three choruses, with priests, laymen, boys, and women among their
number, and with Palestrina himself at their head, they entered Rome in
a solemn and ceremonial procession, singing the music of their great
townsman. This was perhaps the only public honor Palestrina received
during his lifetime.

Among the friends of his later life were S. Filippo Neri, his
confessor, a favorite pupil named Guidetti, Ippolito d’Este, and
Giacomo Buoncompagni, a nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. The activity of
his early years continued almost to the very end. The record of the
second half of his life is but a long catalogue of his publications.
Whole collections of magnificent works were dedicated to popes,
cardinals, or princes, some of whom returned the honor with scant
courtesy. The last of these was a collection of thirty _madrigali
spirituali_ for five voices, in honor of the Virgin, dedicated to the
grand-duchess of Tuscany, wife of Ferdinand de’ Medici. Baini and Dr.
Burney are full of praises for these last productions. While he was
eagerly at work on another volume--seven masses to be dedicated to Pope
Clement VII--he was taken ill and died, February 2, 1594, comforted and
cared for to the end, not by his mean and worthless son, but by his
saintly friend, Filippo Neri. By order of the Curia he was buried with
all the honor of a cardinal or prince in the Basilica of the Vatican,
while the citizens of Rome, high and low, followed him in sorrow to his
grave.


                                  VI

The immense number of Palestrina’s works is astonishing even in
that age of prodigious workers. The list appended to a prospectus
of a proposed 'selected’ edition of his works mentions ninety-three
masses, one hundred and nineteen motets, forty-five hymns, sixty-eight
offertories, three volumes of Lamentations; of litanies three books,
of Magnificats two books, of madrigals four books--all of which are
but a portion of his labors. The mass for Holy Thursday, _Fratres ego
enim accepi_, the mass for the assumption of the Virgin, _Assumpta est
Maria in coelum_, the motet, _Surge illuminare Jerusalem_, and the
_Stabat Mater_ for two choirs, are still in use in the papal chapel.
The _Improperia_, (reproaches of the Lord to an ungrateful people),
performed for the first time in 1560, immediately obtained a great
renown, and were added at once by Pope Pius IV to the collection of
the apostolic chapel. This work also has been repeated in the Sistine
chapel yearly on Good Friday up to the present time. Its performance
made a profound impression upon both Goethe and Mendelssohn. The
latter thus describes the singing of the pontifical choristers in the
rendition of this work: 'They understood how to bring out and place
each delicate trait in the most favorable light, without giving it
undue prominence; one chord gently melted into another. The ceremony,
at the same time, is solemn and imposing; deep silence prevails in
the chapel, only broken by the reëchoing “Holy,” sung with unvarying
sweetness and expression.’

The _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, which proved so important an instrument
in the history of church music, is written for six voices, soprano,
alto, two tenors, and two basses. Immediately upon its production
its popularity became very great. Cardinals quoted poetry in its
praise; the pope commanded that a special performance be given in
the apostolic chapel, and that it be transcribed into the chapel
collection in unusually large characters. Baini compares its grandeur
to that of Thirty-third Canto of the Inferno. Curious legends as to
its origin sprang up, and unauthorized 'arrangements’ went through
several editions. A poor adaptation for four voices was made by Anerio,
and others for eight and twelve voices by other followers of the
Roman school. It is perhaps the best known example of the celebrated
Palestrina style.

In a classification of Palestrina’s work the German writer Hauptmann
distinguishes three styles, corresponding generally to the master’s
very early, adolescent, and mature years. The first shows markedly the
influence of his Netherland predecessors and teachers. The melodies
move along independently without 'melting into chords,’ and the
predominating character is fugal and canonic. In this phase of his work
he was still influenced by the 'evil fashion’ of the period, which for
the most part subordinated the true meaning of the music to the display
of contrapuntal science. This quality is shown occasionally, also, in
later compositions, as, for example, in the mass with the well-worn
_L’omme armé_ theme, wherein he boldly met the Flemish composers on
their own ground and proved that he could write as learned counterpoint
as they. In these examples he seems intentionally to have adopted the
florid style of his predecessors, overlaying the theme with erudite
contrapuntal figures, and rendering it elaborate and difficult.

The mass _Assumpta est Maria_ may be said to illustrate the second
style, which is in marked contrast to his preceding work. The music
is much less elaborate, the voices proceeding, for the most part,
simultaneously in smoothly flowing phrases. The third, that known as
the Palestrina style, illustrated so famously by the Pope Marcellus
mass, is a combination of all that was best in the Netherland and
Italian schools. It is a vocal style in simple counterpoint, mostly
note against note, with only a moderate use of imitation, and an
avoidance of chromatics, violent contrasts, and everything approaching
the dramatic. At first he followed the custom of using secular tunes
for sacred works; but in his best period he almost invariably employed
the ancient plain-song melodies in connection with the proper sacred
text. Many of his _canti firmi_ are placed in the soprano instead of
in the tenor voice. Strict attention is shown to syllabic declamation,
and to a simple, singable arrangement of the voice parts, which is
frequently based upon a succession of pure triads. The harmony is
gentle and serene, and the devices for obtaining contrasts and tone
color are conspicuous by their absence; while the whole is imbued with
sincerity, devotion, and a great sense of beauty. Thibaut, a Frenchman,
says of him, 'He is so completely master of the ancient ecclesiastical
modes, and of the treatment of the simple triad, that repose and
enjoyment are to be found in his works in a greater degree than in
those of any other master.’

Contrasts and similarities between the lives of di Lasso and Palestrina
suggest themselves at once. The one a northerner, aristocratic, famous,
successful, rich, welcomed in the most courtly and cultured circles of
Europe, encouraged and richly rewarded in all his endeavors: the other
a southerner, poor, burdened with sorrows and difficulties throughout
his life, pursuing his calling without regard to favor or disfavor.
Yet they were alike in their prodigious activity, in their lovable and
gentle natures, and in their devotion to the Catholic Mother Church.
Both were rich in genius--the northerner more emotional, more sensuous
in harmony, more dramatic, the southerner more calm and serene in the
beauty of his work. Palestrina seems to have stood apart, untouched
both by the swarming intellectual novelties of the time, and by the
revolutionary spirit within the church. Great of intellect indeed he
must have been, for he conquered a vast field of learning, and reached
a point where his art was objective, universal, and perfect according
to its type.

With the death of Palestrina the first great period of what we may
call modern music, in distinction from the music of the ancients,
which was purely melodic, came practically to perfection which was
an end. A few distinguished composers carried on for a while the
traditions of the vocal polyphonic style, now perfect, chief among
whom were Giovanni Nanino (d. 1607), Thomas Luis de Vittoria (d. _ca._
1613), Felice Anerio (d. 1614), and Giovanni Anerio (d. _ca._ 1620),
possibly the brother of Felice; but new and powerful influences were
at work to turn men’s minds from this perfection and rapidly so to
modify the style itself that the characteristics and the spirit of it
vanished. It had grown up within the church, it was apt only to the
expression of exalted religious rapture, and even before the century
which brought about its flawless perfection the more passionate spirit
of man was seeking to express itself. Such a spirit brought color and
fire and dramatic vigor to music, even to music of the church such
as we have seen in Venice; and such emotional force the exquisitely
adjusted mechanism of polyphony was in no way suited to express.
We must remember that it was essentially religious music and that
pronounced rhythm and sharp dissonances were consciously avoided;
furthermore, that at its best it was to be sung without accompaniment
and that a conjunct, smooth movement of the voice parts was necessary
since singers in choir without accompaniment cannot be sure to sing
wide or unnatural intervals exactly. Since rhythm, dissonance, and
sudden leaps or turns in melody are the chief means whereby music
can express emotional agitation, the Palestrina style was not even
remotely suitable to the new and active spirit spread abroad through
the influence of the Italian Renaissance, which had discovered new
worlds, new arts, new sciences, new life. The delicate and infinitely
complicated structure could not but be rent and distorted. Luther with
his chorales, the English with their new service and the coming of the
Elizabethan age, even Willaert in catholic, rich Venice with his two
organs and his double choirs had forecast the end of the Palestrina
style.

Several features of this marvellous style were destined to disappear
simply with the natural growth of music. In the first place the
polyphonic ideal, in its highest, strictest sense--the submersion of
many melodies in a river of sound in which no melody is evident, the
complete suppression of individual personal utterance--was a mediæval
and essentially intellectual ideal. It could not long maintain its hold
against the inborn natural desire of the individual to sing out his own
personal feelings. For it meant the suppression of melody, an unnatural
restraint. In the second place, from the time when two melodies were
first joined the knowledge and appreciation of harmony were bound
to grow--that is, the knowledge of the effect of dissonances and
consonances following each other, and it needed but a matter of time
for men to come to plan music with the end of producing such effects
in a definite sequence. Now in polyphony the consideration of the
progression of chords was entirely secondary to the ideal of writing
several independent voice parts. Of course the influence of the church
modes was strong in delaying the development of the harmonic bases
of music, they were iron bands about harmony and they quite fettered
modulation, for it was forbidden to pass in the course of a piece from
one mode to another. But here again the Palestrina style is related to
the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical modes were
in general closely connected with the philosophy of æsthetics, on the
one hand, and with mathematics, on the other; and all the popular music
which has been preserved from the Middle Ages shows an unmistakable and
deeply significant choice of those modes only which resemble our own
major and minor.

In the suppression of individual emotion, in the banishment of rhythm
and other active startling elements of music in order to produce
the effect of vagueness and mystery, in the limitation of music to
ecclesiastical modes, the Palestrina style is the flower of the spirit
of the Middle Ages, of a spirit that in the lifetime of Palestrina
himself was already dissipating in thin air. He stands looking backward
upon the centuries which had given him birth, while on every hand the
activities of man were urging impetuously forward. To the new aims,
therefore, we must now turn our attention.

                                                     F. B.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[114] _Luther als Vater des evangelischen Kirchenliedes._

[115] _Musica ficta_ is music in which the ecclesiastical modes,
theoretically never to be altered, are freely varied by chromatics,
that is to say, in which the diatonic or natural notes of the modes are
raised and lowered by sharps and flats, either to enrich the harmony
or to facilitate the _leading_ of the voice parts. The instinct so to
alter notes that they may glide or lead, so to speak, into certain
chords is almost fundamental. The same instinct was equally powerful
in another direction in forming scales even among semi-civilized
races, only in scales, which are _melodic_ formulæ, the instinct is
to glide downward to a final note, as, for instance, in the Dorian
tetrachord of the Greeks, whereas in harmonic music the instinct is to
glide upward. The so-called _leading tone_ in our scale is the result
of harmonic instinct, and its final establishment in the scale is
certainly heralded in _musica ficta_. A comparison of the so-called
natural and harmonic minor scales in our own system will, perhaps, make
the matter clear to the reader lacking technical knowledge. The natural
A-minor scale comprises on the keyboard the white notes from A to a.
In the harmonic minor, that is to say, in the minor scale so altered
as to be suitable for the purposes of harmony, the G is raised a half
tone by a sharp and therefore _leads_ irresistibly to the A above it.
This sharping of the G augments the natural interval from F to G, and,
since this augmented interval is hard to sing, the F, too, is sometimes
sharped, and the scale then becomes what we call the melodic minor.
Nothing could be more indicative than this 'melodic’ compromise of the
power harmony has exercised over the development of music, for rather
than do without the _leading_ tone, which is itself an alteration of
the natural scale, we alter the scale still further. Our melodic minor
scale is therefore constructed to square with the harmonic need, a
queer paradox. Before harmony came to influence composers the true
melodic alteration of this scale of white notes between A and a would
have been the flatting or lowering of the B, so that the melody might
attain its most natural end on the lowest note of the scale by a
gliding half-step. It should be noted that relatively few indications
of chromatic alterations in _musica ficta_ were written in the score.
Singers were given a special training to enable them to recognize
when such alterations were necessary, and to alter correctly. Thus in
connection with _musica ficta_ elaborate rules were formulated which
are not distantly removed from our own rules of harmony.

[116] _Cf._ Chap. IX, p. 275.

[117] Born 1517 at Chioggia, in Venetia; died 1590 at Venice.

[118] _Cf._ Chap. IX, p. 274.

[119] Also called Orlandus de Lassus.

[120] This work contains the portrait which we reproduce herewith, and
which, taken in connection with its setting and the history of the man,
is of uncommon interest.

[121] J. R. Sterndale-Bennett, in Grove’s Dictionary.

[122] Kiesewetter: _Musikgeschichte_.

[123] Grove: Article on 'Palestrina.’

[124] Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, II¹.




                              CHAPTER XI
                 THE BEGINNINGS OF OPERA AND ORATORIO

  The forerunners of opera--The Florentine reform of 1600; the
  'expressive’ style; Peri and Caccini; the first opera; Cavalieri and
  the origin of oratorio--Claudio Monteverdi: his life and his works.


                                   I

In tracing the genesis of the connection of music with dramatic
action we shall rely upon the delightful and exhaustive study of M.
Rolland entitled _L’Opéra avant l’opéra_,[125] in which he shows
our most popular species of musical art to have descended from the
pastoral play and the 'antique’ drama with music, this in turn to have
come out of the _sacre rappresentazione_ (sacred representations)
and the _maggi_, the May festivals, which still exist in Italy. The
sacred representations again were a union of the fourteenth century
_divozione_ or liturgical plays (dramatizations of the religious
offices), and the national festival of Florence, held in honor of
its patron saint, John. These remarkable festivals date back to the
thirteenth century and were staged so sumptuously and elaborately as to
require months of preparation.

Research has shown that the words of the sacred plays were at first
entirely sung, and by analogy with the traditional May festivals we
are even informed as to the nature of the melodies used. There were
traditional _cantilena_ forms for every part of the action: prologues,
epilogues, prayers, etc., and we meet already the familiar variety
of solo, duet, trio and semi-choir, even though all the voices sing
in unison. Popular songs and dance music were interpolated as well as
_Te Deums_ and _Laudi_, and the intermezzi, later so popular, were
already in evidence. The costuming and personation of characters
were consistently carried out and the properties and mechanical
devices (_ingegni teatrali_) were the creations of the genius of
such men as Brunelleschi in Florence and Leonardo da Vinci in Milan.
Parallel phenomena are the _Marienklagen_ existing in Germany from the
fourteenth century on, the music of which was similar to the liturgical
chant of the church.[126]

We have mentioned the interest which Lorenzo de Medici took in
the carnival celebrations. The sacred representations engaged his
attention no less: following the spirit of the age, he secularized
them to some extent, substituting classic myth for Christian allegory.
The fifteenth century saw the spread of Humanism in the wake of the
Revival of Learning, and the sixteenth beheld its ultimate triumph.
The theatre felt the effect of the movement no less than architecture
and sculpture. The love of show, of rich display, which obsessed the
princely despots of the period, coupled with their ardor for the
beauties of antiquity, found its expression in the classic tragedies,
the comedies and pastoral plays which now taxed the talents of
poets, of painters and of musicians. Far from being exclusive, these
spectacles became the popular amusements in such centres as Rome,
Urbino, Mantua, Venice and Ferrara. On festival occasions they assumed
phenomenal proportions, as for instance at the marriage of Lucrezia
Borgia to the son of Hercules d’Este, when five comedies by Plautus
were played in one week in a theatre holding five thousand spectators.
Music always played an essential part in the performance, though mostly
in the form of _intermedii_, which, as they assumed a more independent
dramatic character and developed their dancing features, became in
themselves the forerunners of the ballet-opera.[127]

Notable exceptions, in which the purpose of music was something more
than mere relief, were the great poet Poliziano’s _Orfeo_ given in 1474
with music by one Germi, and also a _Dafne_ produced with music by Gian
Pietro della Viola, in 1486, both at Mantua, 'that same Mantua in which
there were to be played one hundred and forty years later the _Orfeo_
of Monteverdi and the _Dafne_ of Gagliano.’ The coincidence is indeed
striking as is also the fact that the Florentine 'inventors’ of opera
in 1600 chose as their first themes the same two classic tales. It
would be interesting to compare the 1474 version of the perennial--and
ideal--operatic subject, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, with that
of the mighty Gluck; but, alas, the music has not been preserved to
us. Mr. W. J. Henderson, who has endeavored to prove this _Orfeo_ to
be the first opera of record, concludes that the _frottola_, in its
solo arrangement, formed the basis of the music; that the dialogue was
probably sung throughout; that there were choruses and ballets--all the
accessories of modern opera in fact.[128] It was nevertheless nothing
more than an 'antique’ drama with music, with the only difference that
in this case the subject was a musical one, that the leading character
represented a singer, and was in fact impersonated in the original
performance by one of the most famous Italian vocalists of the period,
Baccio Ugolino, who sang to the accompaniment of his own lyre (_lira
da braccia_). The scenery of this performance at the Palazzo Gonzaga
was simple, only one setting being required. The stage was divided, one
side representing the Thracian countryside, and the other the realm of
Pluto. But Poliziano later revised the work, dividing it into five acts
and elaborating it along the line of the _sacre rappresentazione_.

Not only at Florence and Mantua, but in Venice, in Ferrara at the court
of Hercules I, in Rome under papal auspices, in fact wherever there
was a fastidious aristocracy, these 'antique’ _comedie_ flourished.
Among artists, Leonardo da Vinci at Milan, Raphael at Rome, Andrea del
Sarto at Florence, Dosso Dossi at Ferrara, and numerous other immortal
names of the Renaissance are associated with their production, and
among musicians Alphonso della Viola, Antonio dal Cornetto, Claudio
Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli, and many more. As Humanism succumbs to the
Catholic reaction, with the pillaging of Rome by Charles V (1527)
and the taking of Florence soon after, as liberty of thought is
crushed by the Inquisition, as petty tyrants supersede broad-spirited
despots, the harmless pastoral play succeeds the _comedia_. Sumptuous
settings and meaningless music now outweigh dramatic significance.
Poets such as Ariosto and Tasso are the authors of these spectacles,
and another generation of great artists, John of Bologna, Salviati,
Bernardo Bumlalente and perhaps Michael Angelo, lavish their skill
upon them. Indeed both painters and poets in this age are musicians.
Music had at this epoch obsessed the entire thought of Italy. Painters,
writers, the _élite_, especially in the north of Italy, madly abandoned
themselves to it. Nearly all great Venetian painters of the sixteenth
century: Giorgione, Bassano, Tintoretto, Giovanni d’Udine, Sebastiano
del Piombo, were musicians. Let us recall the numerous paintings of
'concerts,’ either sacred (Bellini) or profane (Giorgione, Bonifazio,
Veronese); remember how in the 'Marriage at Canaan’ of the Louvre,
Titian holds the bass viol and Bassano the flute. Sebastiano del Piombo
was celebrated as lute player and singer, while Vasari recognized more
willing Tintoretto’s talent as a musician than as a painter. At the
court of Leo X music superseded all the other arts. The pope decreed
for two _virtuosi_, charged with the superintendence of St. Peter’s,
a stipend equal to Raphael’s. A Jewish lutenist, Giammaria, received
the title of count and a palace. A singer, Gabriel Merino, became
archbishop of Bari. Finally, it will be remembered that, when Leonardo
da Vinci presented himself at the court of Ludovico il Moro at Milan,
it was, according to Vasari, not in the capacity of painter, but as
musician. Girolamo Parabasco said, 'I am a musician, not a poet’ and
the great Tasso, 'Music is, so to speak, the soul of poetry.’

Beccari’s _Sacrificio_, produced in 1554 with music by Alfonso della
Viola (which is preserved), before Hercules II of Ferrara, the
_Aretusa_ of Alberto Lollio (1563), the _Sfortunato_ of Agostino
Argenti, and the famous _Aminta_ of Torquato Tasso,[129] given
with music at the court of the grand duke of Tuscany in 1590, are
examples of pastoral plays. Tasso’s collaborators and advisers in
this production were none other than Emilio de’ Cavalieri and Laura
Guidicioni (perhaps also Ottavio Rinuccini, at any rate a spectator)
who, we shall presently see, are to become instrumental in the
creation of true opera. In the same year these two produced privately
their pastoral plays with music, _Il Satiro_ and _Disperazione di
fileno_, the first known examples of opera, for they were set to music
throughout, and probably even in 'representative’ style, as it was
called. Five years later (1595) followed _Il Gioco della cieca_, played
before the Archduke Ferdinand, but the music of none of these works has
been preserved.

                    [Illustration: 'THE CONCERT’.]
          _After the painting by Giorgione  (Pitti Palace)._


                                  II

The opera, then, had arrived. But, unaware of the fact, its so-called
inventors, caught in the spell of antiquarian research, their
imaginations transported by the glories of the classic past, turned
their vision back to ancient Greece--to Athens, that prototype of
their own city of Florence--where Æschylus unfolds before the eyes of
his countrymen a spectacle worthy of the gods. They see no analogy in
their madrigals and the dithyrambic chorus of the ancients, no parallel
in their _sacre rappresentazione_ to the Eleusynian mysteries and
Bacchic festivals, but, rejecting all that has gone before, attempt to
resurrect the magic power of music as an organic part of human speech,
and the revival of the greatest product of classic genius--the Greek
tragedy. Such was the purpose of the _camerata_, that genial circle
of amateurs, _literati_ and musicians which gathered at the house of
Giovanni Bardi, count of Vernio, in Florence, one of those famous
'academies’ which were the centres of the intellectual life of Italy in
the sixteenth century.

Jacopo Peri, an erudite musician and a favorite singer; his younger
colleague Giulio Caccini of Rome; the already familiar Emilio de’
Cavalieri, inspector-general of the artists in Florence; Luca Marenzio,
the most eminent musician of the city, and Christoforo Malvezzi, all
of whom had collaborated on the _intermezzi_ to Bardi’s _L’Amico fido_
in 1589, were, together with Jacopo Corsi, a wealthy and intelligent
patron of music, and Vincenzo Galilei, father of the great astronomer,
the chief members of the circle, besides the host. These men, liberal
thinkers, modernists, literati rather than professional musicians,
were out of sympathy with the pedants of the contrapuntal school,
the 'Goths’ against whom Galilei[130] had already published his
diatribe in 1551. The Latin translations of Aristoxenus’, Ptolemy’s
and Aristotle’s treatises on music, published in 1562, aroused their
keenest interest and discussion, and their admiration of the plastic
arts which had signalized the Renaissance in the preceding centuries
now found an echo in their attempt to reconstruct a lost ideal. In
1585 the great Andrea Gabrieli had written choruses for the solemn
performance of _Œdipus Rex_ at Vincenza, and in 1589 Luca Marenzio
wrote a 'Combat of Apollo and the Dragon,’ drawing his inspiration
from the descriptions of the _Nomos Pythikos_ of the Greeks (see Chap.
IV, p. 127). Convinced, despite the lack of examples, of the greater
expressive power of Greek music with the employment of simpler means,
Galilei, after long research with the aid of Bardi, now composed for a
solo voice and instrumental accompaniment Dante’s 'Lament of Ugolino,’
in the so-called _stile rappresentativo_, the representative style.
His experiment proved suggestive if not altogether successful, and
the task was next taken up by Caccini,[131] who, with probably more
natural talent than Galilei, set himself to the composition of several
_canzone_ in the new style, a simple cantilena over a figured bass
(see Chap. XI, p. 355) which provided a harmonious support to be
executed by instruments (lute or theorbo). Endowed with a beautiful
and well-cultivated voice, he achieved a genuine success among his
sympathetic circle. To make sure of himself, however, he proceeded
to Rome, where his new songs were applauded by an assemblage of
connoisseurs. Thus encouraged, he appealed to his literary friends for
verses in all metres, which he promptly set to music. Some years later
(1601) these were published under the title _La nuove musiche_ ('The
New Music’) with a remarkable preface, in which their author claims
the merit for having originated the _stile rappresentativo_, and which
contains so much technical information for singers that it may well be
considered the first vocal method. Caccini’s _arie_ were disseminated
largely through his vocal pupils, for they adapted themselves admirably
to the beautiful Italian style of singing of which he was one of the
first masters. We may mention incidentally that his daughter, Septimia,
became one of the famous singers of the period and aroused the
admiration of Monteverdi. Her sister, Francesca, achieved distinction
both as singer and composer.

Caccini, though he was probably the first to use and secure public
acceptance of the _arioso_ style, was--despite his own claims--not the
originator of the true recitative. That distinction belongs to Jacopo
Peri, a more learned musician though a less genial personality, who
meantime had begun the application of the representative style to the
drama.[132] Corsi, the successor of Bardi (now become papal chamberlain
in Rome), as host and patron, was a close friend of the poet Ottavio
Rinuccini (d. 1623). Both were familiar with the experiments of
Cavalieri in the realm of dramatic music. After joint deliberation,
the two appealed to Peri 'to give a simple proof of the power of
modern music’ by setting Rinuccini’s dramatic poem _Dafne_, a scene of
which had already been experimented with by Bardi. 'Remembering that
it was a question of dramatic poetry and that the melody must at all
times be modelled after the words,’ Peri concluded 'that the ancients
employed musical forms which, more elevated than ordinary speech yet
less regularly designed than common song melodies, were half-way
between the two.’ In an effort to forget every known style, he at
first attempted to rediscover the _diastematica_ of the Greeks, the
quarter-tone interval, in the inflections of ordinary speech. According
to his own testimony, he closely observed persons speaking, so that he
might reproduce as naturally as possible their expressions, whether
moderate or passionate. Thus he decided to have quiet expressions sung
in half-spoken tones over a resting instrumental bass. In emotional
moments, however, the voices proceeded in a more animated tempo and
by larger intervals instead of strictly conjunct motion, while the
accompaniment indulged in more frequently changing, and sometimes
dissonant, harmonies. In other words, he used what we know to-day as
recitative.

The importance of the principle thus introduced--the preference of
expressive quality to purely musical effect--cannot be plain-song germ
of romanticism itself lies in this departure, the elements of Gluck’s
reform, of Wagner’s creed, repose in the assertion of Caccini that 'one
is always beautiful when one is expressive.’

Peri’s _Dafne_, after charming the circle of intimates, was performed
at the house of Corsi one evening during the carnival of 1597, the
composer singing the rôle of Apollo, in the presence of the Grand
Duke Ferdinando de Medici, the cardinals dal Monte and Montalto,
the poets Piero Strozzi and Francesco Cini and 'a great number of
gentlemen.’ 'The pleasure and the stupor which seized the audience is
inexpressible,’ said Gagliano later in the preface to his own _Dafne_.
Every person there felt that he was in the presence of a new art.
Spurred on by this victory, Rinuccini composed his _Euridice_ for the
festivities occasioned by the marriage of Maria de Medici to Henri
IV, king of France, in 1600. Peri again wrote the music, though at
the performance, which took place on October 6 at the Pitti palace,
some of the numbers of Caccini’s version (composed after Peri’s) were
substituted because of Caccini’s influence with the singers. The title
rôle was sung by the famous Vittoria Archilei, 'the Euterpe of Italy,’
while Peri himself impersonated Orpheus. The event not only aroused the
greatest enthusiasm among the distinguished assemblage, but its echoes
resounded through all the courts of Europe and tremendously stimulated
interest in the new art.

The score of _Euridice_ has been reprinted in Florence in 1863 and may
be examined by the student. It consists of 48 small octavo pages of
simple recitative dialogue written over a figured bass, interspersed
with five-part choruses in predominatingly diatonic harmony. The
preface indicates that the figured bass was executed by a clavier,
a _chitarrone_, a _lira grande_ and a large flute (in one place a
_triflauto_--triple flute--is added), but it is not clear how the
musicians managed to produce effective harmony without written-out
parts. The impoverished quality of the music indicates a distinct
retrogression from the contrapuntal compositions of the day, and
vastly so when we consider the _a capella_ style of Palestrina. Its
striking novelty alone accounts for the extraordinary effect it had
upon the hearers. Its value was not in its intrinsic quality but in
the direction which it indicated, the path which was to lead to untold
riches of sound.

Following closely upon the heels of Peri’s work came the setting of
the same poem by Caccini, who had already produced _Il rapimento di
Caffalo_ (1597, performed 1600); Marco da Gagaliano (1575-1642) was
already at work along similar lines and in 1608 produced his _Dafne_ at
Mantua--one year after Monteverdi’s 'Orfeo’ which, however, marked so
great an advance that it might have been written a generation later.
Before discussing that master, it will be necessary to consider the
utilization of the representative style in another field--that of the
sacred drama or oratorio--by Emilio de’ Cavalieri,[133] whose dramatic
essays in connection with Laura Guidicioni have already been mentioned.

The origin of the oratorio is twofold: the prose _oratorio latino_
and the Italian _oratorio volgare_. The former is derived from the
mediæval liturgical plays already spoken of, and the 'mysteries’ and
'moralities’ of the fifteenth century are clearly forerunners of it.
The _oratorio volgare_, a didactic poem independent of scripture text,
had its point of departure in the _esercizii spirituali_ (scriptural
lessons), instituted by the priest Filippo Neri (afterward canonized)
at Rome. He became the founder of the congregation of Oratorians,
which regularly met for Bible study under his leadership. On certain
evenings of the week his sermons were preceded and followed either
by a selection of popular hymns or by the dramatic rendering of a
biblical scene. From the place in which these were first enacted, the
oratory of the church of S. Maria in Vallicella, they received their
name--Oratorio.

Just as the dramatic madrigal was built upon the style of the secular
madrigal, so these sacred dramas probably modelled themselves after
the 'spiritual’ madrigal. While Peri and Caccini were still engaged in
their experiments, Cavalieri, in 1600, staged in Neri’s oratory his
most important creation _La Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo_,
slightly antedating Peri’s _Euridice_. Like that work, it was written
in 'expressive’ style, of which Cavalieri may indeed have been the
real originator. Cavalieri’s work belongs to the province of sacred
opera, being the first of this important branch of the music drama,
which is further represented by such works as Landis’ _S. Alessio_
(1637) and Marazolli’s allegorical opera _La Vita humana_ (1658). It is
distinguished from the true non-scenic oratorio, which is associated
with the artistic personality Carissimi. To show the distinction
between his work and that of Florentines, however, we quote the
criticism of his _Il Satiro_, by Giovanni Battista Doni, the historian
of the Florentine monodists: 'It must, however, be well understood,’
he says, 'that these melodies are very different from those of to-day
(seventeenth century) which are written in the _stile recitativo_; the
others (of Cavalieri, etc.) are nothing but ariettas with all sorts
of artifices and repetitions, echoes and other similar things, having
nothing to do with the good and true dramatic music....’

On the other hand, Cavalieri’s own instructions show his wonderful
practical knowledge in the performance of opera, and give us an
exact idea of the first operatic theatre: 'The hall should not hold
more than a thousand spectators comfortably seated, in the greatest
silence. Larger halls have bad acoustics: they make the singer force
his voice and they kill expression. Moreover, when the words are not
understood the music becomes tiresome. The number of instruments
must be proportioned to the place of performance. The orchestra is
invisible, hidden behind the drop. The instrumentation should change
according to the emotion expressed. An overture, an instrumental and
vocal introduction, are of good effect before the curtain rises. The
_ritornelle_ and _sinfonie_ should be played by many instruments. A
ballet, or better a singing ballet, should close the performance. The
actor must seek to acquire absolute perfection in his voice, physique,
gestures, bearing, and even his walk. He should sing with emotion--as
it is written--not one passage like the other; and he must be careful
to pronounce his words distinctly, so that he may be heard _che siano
intese_. The chorus should not think they are excused from acting when
they do not have to sing. They must feign to listen to what is going
on; they must occasionally change their places, rise, sit down, make
gestures. The performance should not exceed two hours.... Three acts
suffice and one must be careful to infuse variety, not only into the
music but also the poem, and even the costumes....’

'Gluck and Wagner,’ says Romain Rolland, 'have added little to these
rules!’


                                  III

The _favolo in musica_ (it was not called opera as yet) had taken
root; its first tender shoots, delectable morsels for a fastidious
intellectual aristocracy, nurtured in the soil of princely patronage,
had given evidence of hardihood. But it was an exotic, a hot-house
plant, limited by its very nature to the homes of aristocracy: in
order to flourish and grow to noble proportions it had to bathe in
the sunlight of popular favor; it required the care of a master, a
genius who substituted imagination for synthetic reason, intuition
for experiment. That master was Monteverdi. If the works of Peri and
Caccini smelt of the midnight oil, there coursed in _his_ creations the
red blood of humanity. If their music was 'representative’ of the exact
meaning of the word, attuned to the niceties of accent and inflection,
_his_ portrayed the gamut of human passions, the soul itself, even
at times violating literary fidelity to reach that greater purpose.
While they had 'thrust upon them’ the honor of creating a new method
of expression, he, the musical genius of a century, could deliberately
choose between the old and the new--and he chose the new. 'With him the
new evolution began and the new edifice, hardly risen above the ground,
became a magnificent monument. Well did he see what was lacking in the
conception of the Florentines: he understood that to fight successfully
against the resources of counterpoint new riches had to be brought,
different but equally valuable. His prodigious inventive genius
discovered them: he found them in harmony, in the expressive accent of
the monodic chant and in the variety of instrumentation.’

Claudio Monteverdi (in old prints spelled Monteverde, though by himself
as here) first saw the light of the world at Cremona, in May, 1567.
His father was probably a physician, at any rate a man of culture, who
provided for his children an education far above the average. Claudio
gave early evidence of musical talent and was placed under the tutelage
of Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri, the choirmaster of the cathedral and
musical arbiter in Cremona, with whom he studied viola playing, singing
and composition. Ingegneri was a composer of genius; his _Responsoria_,
published anonymously, were for a long time ascribed to Palestrina,
and, while worthy to be ranked with that composer’s, they contain
harmonies and modulations foreign to his style.

Here, in the master’s originality we seem to find the explanation of
his leniency toward his pupils’ vagaries, for Monteverdi from the first
showed a most persistent tendency to break the rules of counterpoint.
He first appears as composer at the age of sixteen, publishing in
1583 his _Madrigali spirituali_ for four voices and in the following
year his _Canzonette a tre voci_, which were full of irregularities
and forbidden progressions. His first book of five-part madrigals was
brought out in 1587 and it was evident that he was already reaching
out for realms unknown, though perhaps not yet equal to the leap. An
extraordinary addiction to dissonances, frequent use of the seventh in
suspensions, and a number of unpleasant progressions characterize these
otherwise beautiful madrigals, as well as the additional collections,
printed in 1590, 1592 and 1603; but they nevertheless became popular,
the last two going eventually through eight editions.

Meantime Monteverdi had become an able violist and aroused attention
to his playing in high quarters. His virtuosity opened him the doors
to the service of Duke Vincenzo di Gonzaga at Mantua, whither he went
in 1590 as violist and singer. His modernist tendencies aroused the
opposition of local musicians, which, already evident when he became
_maestro di capella_ in 1602, broke out openly as the madrigals of
his fifth book, including the beautiful _Cruda Amarilli_, made their
appearance. These drew the fire of Giovanni Maria Artusi, theoretician,
and _canonicus regulatis_ of S. Salvatore, who attacked him in a
polemic, 'On the Imperfections of Modern Music’ (1600), not mentioning
his name, but quoting his newest compositions (still in MS.) as
examples. The attack is so amusing, and its adherence to the perennial
arguments of contemporary criticism so striking that we cannot refrain
from quoting it in part.

                  [Illustration: CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI.]
         _After a contemporaneous portrait (artist unknown)._

'Though I am glad to hear of a new manner of composition it would be
more edifying to find in these madrigals reasonable _passagi_, but this
kind of air-castles and chimeras deserves the severest reproof.’ Like
all critics he cites the example of the masters: Palestrina, Porta,
Merulo, Gabrieli, Gastode, Lasso, etc., whose works these 'moderns’
should emulate, but instead 'are content to concoct as great a noise
as possible--a confused mixture of unrhyming things, and mountains
of imperfections.’ 'Behold, for instance,’ he cries, 'the rough and
uncouth passage in the third example (by Monteverdi). After a rest
the bass attacks on a diminished fifth against the upper voice.’ Not
after a consonance, mind you, as the masters have done, but after a
rest--and, as for sevenths unprepared--preposterous!

Monteverdi had had the temerity not only to use the dominant seventh
without 'preparation’ according to the established rules, but to use
other dissonances, diminished and secondary sevenths, ninths and
elevenths in connection; he had introduced a freedom in the movement of
voices and a sequence of chords the audacity of which still startles
us to-day. 'Modern! Certainly he is modern by these tokens,’ says
Tiersot, after hearing the Paris revival of _Orfeo_. 'But truly and
spontaneously has he made his discoveries, they were so little searched
for, that neither his contemporaries, nor his successors, perhaps
not even himself, have understood their value; and it has taken us
centuries to arrive at a true appreciation of their merit.’

Monteverdi replied to his critics (for the cry had been taken up
by others and the argument developed into an open war) with the
publication of his fifth book of madrigals, containing all the
criticized compositions with not a note changed. He even travelled
to Venice to supervise the printing so as to insure accuracy. In
his preface he said that, having endeavored to express emotions
hitherto unexpressed in music, it was necessary to invent new tone
combinations. New harmonies, moreover, required new modulations. He
insisted that more than one point of view is worthy of consideration
and advised the _cognoscenti_ to study further and learn 'that the
modern composer builds upon a foundation of truth.’ These madrigals
reached eventually nine editions, were reprinted in Antwerp and
Copenhagen and spread their composer’s fame throughout Europe.

Moreover, Monteverdi stood in high favor with his patron, a man of
understanding who shared his ancestors’ leaning to lavish patronage
of the arts. He accompanied Duke Vincenzo on his war expedition to
Hungary, when in 1595 he supported Rudolph II against the Turks, and
in 1599 went with him to Flanders, whence he brought a new style of
composition, the _canto alla francese_, which he afterwards adopted in
his _Scherzi musicale a tre voci_.

His domestic circumstances, however, were none too favorable. He
had married in 1595 Claudia Cattaneo, the daughter of a violist and
herself a singer at the ducal court, where her salary even exceeded
Monteverdi’s meagre pay. She had borne him two sons and existence
became more and more difficult. In 1607 she was taken seriously ill,
and continued hardship and solicitude for his family spurred Monteverdi
to complaint, but without result. His duties were most onerous, for
besides directing the music at court he was obliged to participate in
the church service and the many special performances which the duke’s
love of festivities occasioned.

One of these occasions was the carnival of 1607, when Vincenzo,
familiar with the successes of Peri and Caccini at Florence, determined
to surpass them at Mantua, and intrusted the preparation of the work
to Monteverdi. The result was the _Favola di Orfeo_, the text for
which had been written by Alessandro Striggio, son of the famous
madrigalist. It was performed, first in the _Academia degl’Invaghite_,
and again, on February 24th, and March 1st, in the ducal theatre. Its
success was enormous; the music aroused the most profound admiration,
as did also the book, which, by order of the duke, was printed, so
that the audience might follow it during the performance. As _Orfeo_
is the only opera of Monteverdi preserved to us in its entirety, we
may examine the score in Robert Eitner’s edition with modern notation
and the figured bass harmonized, and so realize the tremendous advance
it shows, over Caccini’s 'Euridice,’ for instance (reprinted in the
same publication).[134] The style of the recitative is similar,
though it shows much greater fluency, the harmonies are beyond all
comparison richer and more varied; dissonances, especially the
diminished seventh, being used with great dramatic effect; suspensions
and anticipations are particularly frequent and there are many daring
chromatic modulations, such as from G# minor to G and from E♭ major
to E, reminding of Wagner’s use of these same progressions. Instead
of a simple figured bass we have in the instrumental numbers at least
a completely worked-out harmonic structure, and for the first time
instruments are used in definite combinations with respect to their
various _timbres_. There is an agreeably varied sequence of _toccata_
(overture), recitative, _arioso_, _ritornelle_, chorus and _sinfonie_
(at ends of acts); in fact, we find in _Orfeo_ all the elements of
the later opera, from the instrumental introduction to the final
movement, even though in small proportions and of modest pretentions.
The ternary form, later so important, opens its way here and there,
i. e. in the first movement of the second act. The great bravura aria
is also represented and offers opportunity to the skillful singer to
exhibit his technique. (Sometimes the vocal part appears in two ways;
first in the simple unadorned form, and directly under it in elaborate
coloratura arrangement, evidently leaving the choice to the singer.)
The orchestra instruments play together only in the instrumental
numbers; in the choruses they simply double the voice parts; but in
accompanying the solo voices the composer has made use of a curious
device of associating the tone quality of a certain instrument or
group of instruments with each character. This is indicated in the
table of characters, which at the same time shows the composition of
Monteverdi’s orchestra:

         CHARACTERS                          INSTRUMENTS

Music, prologue                  Two _gravicembani_ (similar to spinets)
Orfeo                            Two bass viols
Euridice                         Ten violas
Chorus of nymphs and shepherds   One double harp
Speranza                         Two small French violins
Caronte (Charon)                 Two _chitaroni_ (zithers)
Chorus of infernal spirits       Two _organi di legno_ (small pipe organs)
Proserpina                       Three _bassi da gamba_ (large viols)
Pluto                            Four trombones
Apollo                           One _regale_ (reed organ)
Chorus of shepherds who dance    Two cornets, a flute _alla vigesima
  the _Moresca_ at the end         seconda_; a_clarino_ (small trumpet)
                                   and three muted trumpets

This recognition of a psychological correspondence between characters
or situations and the timbre of instruments is interesting because it
points the way to the dramatic utilization of orchestra color.

Directly after _Orfeo_, Monteverdi produced his _Ballo delle Ingrate_,
a ballet scene in the manner of the usual _intermezzi_. The arduous
labor and nervous strain incident to these performances forced upon him
the necessity of a rest, which he spent in a visit to his father’s
house at Cremona. There his wife, again stricken, died, and, plunged
into grief, he himself succumbed to illness. His income reduced to
his own earnings, he sent through his father an earnest appeal to the
duke for greater emolument, and, that denied, a request to be released
from further duty. But instead he was speedily summoned to return,
in order to prepare a musical spectacle for the coming nuptials of
the heir apparent, Don Francesco, and Margherita, infanta of Savoy.
His financial condition was now slightly improved and, spurred by the
prospect of greater fame, he plunged into the task of setting the music
of a new opera, _Arianna_, for which Rinuccini had been commissioned
to write the book. The work was to be staged on a scale far beyond
anything attempted till then, the best singers available were engaged,
and the rehearsals occupied five months. It is interesting to note
that another opera, _Tiede_, by Cini and Peri, competed for the honor
of the performance at these festivities, but was rejected in favor of
_Arianna_. Peri was, however, commissioned to write the recitatives for
_Arianna_.

The performance took place May 28th, 1608. The theatre, we are told by
the official historian, Follino, was not large enough to accommodate
all the nobles visiting in the train of foreign princes and the
natives had to be denied admittance. While the play itself made a
deep impression, in the music Monteverdi had surpassed himself. 'The
orchestra behind the scenes,’ continues Follino, 'accompanied the
beautiful voices throughout, following the character of the singing
most faithfully. The lament of Arianna, abandoned by Theseus, was
performed with great feeling and pictured so touchingly that all
the auditors were profoundly stirred and not a lady’s eye remained
tearless.’ This 'Lament’ afterwards became one of the most popular
pieces in Italy. After Cosimo II (de Medici) in 1613 obtained the
score of _Arianna_ from the duke and performed it in Florence it
was said that the favorite selection was heard in every house that
contained a clavicembalo or a lute.

The sumptuous ballet _Idropica_, for which Monteverdi composed the
prologue, was produced during the same festivities. The succeeding
period saw no diminution in the output of this indefatigable composer.
In 1610 we see him in Rome suing for the favor of Clement VIII, to
whom he presents his ecclesiastical compositions, which were, however,
inferior to his secular works. In 1612 Duke Vincenzo died, and
Monteverdi resigned his post to accept the most coveted musical office
in Italy--that of choirmaster at St. Mark’s, Venice. His position there
became the source of the greatest satisfaction to him, for, aside from
the fact that he received three hundred ducats yearly, and after 1616
four hundred, while finally his total income increased to six hundred
and fifty, he was honored and esteemed better even than his illustrious
predecessors, Willaert, de Rore, Zarlino, etc. He enjoyed the title of
_maestro di capella_ to the republic, brought the music of St. Mark’s,
where he had a choir of thirty singers and twenty instruments, to a
high degree of perfection, superintended the chamber music of the city
as well and earned the most general popular appreciation.

In 1621 he composed the music for a requiem in memory of Duke Cosimo
II of Tuscany, and from Strozzi’s enthusiastic description it was
a most gorgeous tone creation, better fitted for a theatre than a
church. Similarly in 1631 he was called upon to provide the music for
a great thanksgiving in St. Mark’s after the terrible plague raging
through Italy, and responded with a mass, in the _Gloria_ and _Credo_
of which he introduced a trombone accompaniment. His creative power in
the dramatic field remained unabated. _Il Combattimento di Tancredi
e Clorinda_ (half dramatic, half epic, with narrative _testo_,
connecting the speeches), composed in 1624, was followed in 1627 by _La
finta pazza Licori_ (by Strozzi and Striggio) and five intermezzi for
the marriage of Odoardo Farnese at Parma, and in 1630 by _Proserpina
rapita_. The first public opera house in Venice, the Teatro di San
Paolo, and soon after the Teatro S. Giovanni e Paolo, for which
Monteverdi furnished _L’Adone_ (1639), _Le nozze di Enea con Lavinia_
(1641) and _Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria_, which last is preserved.
Thus, even in his last two years he was occupied on a series of operas,
of which _L’Incoronazione di Poppea_ (1642) was his last great effort.
It might be added that his seventh book of madrigals had appeared in
1619 and his eighth, the famous _Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi_, in
1638.

In his _Combattimento_ Monteverdi introduced a new effect, now
familiar as the orchestral _tremolo_, which so startled the musicians
that at first they refused to play it. His own explanation for its
use is curious: 'I have recognized,’ he says, 'that our passions or
emotions are expressed in three grades: anger (violence), temperate
moderation, and humility or petition.... These three grades are clearly
reflected in music, namely, in that of excited, tender, or moderate
character (_concitato, molle e temperato_).’ Finding only the two last
represented in the older music, he studied the question of spondeic and
phyrric verse metre which the Greeks had transferred to music. Taking
the _semi-breve_ (whole note) for the unit of the former, he proposed
to break it up into sixteen _semicromes_ (sixteenths), which are to be
played in succession upon one note to obtain the faster measure, which
he calls _concitato_ (tremolo).

This is but one instance of how Monteverdi constantly sought
instructions from the ancients. In his letters of 1633 and 1634 he
tells of his labors to rediscover human melody and the music of the
passions. He had no one to guide him, and no books but Plato. The
information which Galilei conveyed interested him, but he was careful
not to be misled by the phantom of a lost art. He believed that in
following his own principles he would be more true to classic thought
than by trying to apply its formulas. He claimed that modern art has
profited more from a study of Greek thought than from old-fashioned
harmonic exercise. Thus the ancients had rendered to music the same
service which the century before they had rendered to sculpture. They
had taken it out of the studied formulas and had led artists back to
the sole observation of nature. 'Indeed, a real Renaissance opens
at the beginning of the seventeenth century with Monteverdi--the
Renaissance of the heart in the language of music.’

Monteverdi’s artistic creed and theories are to some extent perpetuated
in his _Selva morale e spirituale_, dedicated to the Empress Eleonora
Gonzaga, and published in 1640. Monteverdi died in Venice November 29,
1643, and was buried with great honors at the _Chiesa dei Frari_. With
his death we see opera finally established in that place in the heart
of the Italian people which it has held to this day. Others had already
taken up the work, notably his pupil, Pietro Francesco Cavalli, whose
genius burst upon the world in 1639 with his _Nozze di Teti_.

With the next generation the Florentine school divides into the new
Venetian school founded by Giovanni Legrenzi (1635-1672), of which
Antonio Lotti was to become the leader, and the Neapolitan, which found
its guiding genius in Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the most conspicuous
musical figures of the seventeenth century. From him and his teacher
Francesco Provenzale (_ca._ 1669) there issued a long chain of masters
and pupils--Francesco Durante (1684-1755); Leonardo Leo (1694-1744);
Francesco Feo (1685-1740); Gaetano Greco (b. 1680), etc.--who developed
the Italian opera in its narrowest sense--an opera that was purely
vocal, whose chief aim was the production of beautiful melody and which
paid a minimum of attention to orchestration and dramatic pathos. It
was a purely musical school, and even more than that of Venice removed
from the ideal of the Florentines. Against this school were ultimately
to be directed the reforms of Gluck, whose theories are solidly founded
upon the creed of Florence. Florence, then, is the true cradle of
opera, also in its more modern sense, for the precepts there laid down
have remained valid even to Wagner and the music drama of to-day.

                                                             C. S.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[125] In _Musiciens d’autrefois_ (3me ed., 1912), p. 19.

[126] An example of a _Marienklage_, dating from the sixteenth century,
is reprinted by Eitner in the _Publikation älterer praktischer und
theoretischer Musikwerke_, Vol. X.

[127] A description of a highly developed example of this species, the
_Ballet-Comique de la royne_, will be found in Chap. XIII, p. 401.

[128] _Cf._ W. J. Henderson: 'Some Forerunners of Italian Opera.’
(1913.)

[129] Tasso’s fervent love for music is well known and reflected in his
writings. The particular musician of his choice was Don Carlo Gesualdo,
prince of Venosa, who set the music for a number of Tasso’s madrigals.

[130] B. Florence, _ca._ 1533, d. there, 1600, was a pupil of Zarlino,
an excellent musician and an able lutenist and violinist. He published
two books of madrigals and made the first known experiments in the
“representative” style of melody. He was a deep student of Greek music,
discovered the hymns of Mesomedes (transcribed successfully only 200
years later) and published 'Dialogue on Antique and Modern Music’
(1581), a diatribe against Zarlino and his methods. His son, Galileo
Galilei, the great astronomer, is said to have constructed his first
telescope from an organ pipe belonging to his father.

[131] Giulio Caccini (surnamed Romano), b. Rome _ca._ 1550; d. 1618 in
Florence, where he had lived since 1564 and was employed at court as
a singer. During the winter of 1604-1605 he sojourned in Paris at the
request of Queen Maria (de Medici). Besides the works mentioned in our
text, he wrote _Fuggilotio musicale_ (madrigals, etc.) and a sequel to
his _Nuove musiche_.

[132] Jacopo Peri (b. Florence, Aug. 20, 1561, d. there Aug. 12, 1633)
was a pupil of Christoforo Malvezzi. He became chief director of music
at the court of Florence under Francesco, Ferdinand I and Cosimo
II de Medici. Besides his _Dafne_ and _Euridice_, he published _Le
varie musiche del Sig. Jacopo Peri, etc._ (1609), the recitatives for
Monteverdi’s _Arianna_, a war-play (_barriera_), _La precedenza delle
dame_, and a part of Gagliano’s opera, _La Flora_.

[133] Emilio de’ Cavalieri (or del Cavaliere), b. _ca._ 1550; d.
March 11th, 1662, in Rome, was, before his appointment at Florence,
organist of the _Oratorio del S. Cruciffisso_ in S. Marcello (Rome).
His earliest works are madrigals, as we know from a reference to the
“eighty-sixth, in six parts,” in his preface to the _Rappresentazione_.

[134] _Publikation älterer praktischer und theoretischer Musikwerke_,
Vol. X.




                              CHAPTER XII
                   NEW FORMS: VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL

  Résumé of the sixteenth century--Rhythm and form; the development of
  harmony; figured bass--The organ style; canzona da sonar; ricercar;
  toccata; sonata da chiesa; great organists--The genesis of violin
  music; canzona and sonata--The sonata da camera; the suite--Music
  for the harpsichord--The opera in the seventeenth century; Heinrich
  Schütz.


During the sixteenth century a style of music attained perfection, and,
as we have seen, two composers, Palestrina and Orlando Lassus, put upon
it the final stamp of great personal genius. This style is known as the
vocal polyphonic style. The music was written for choruses and for the
most part was intended to be sung without accompaniment. Centuries of
endeavor had gone to its development, during which composers bore in
mind first and always a great ideal--the combination of many melodies
in one euphonious whole. The result was a texture of music so nicely
woven that in the mass of smooth flowing sound no one melody was
evident to the ear, though many melodies moved simultaneously forward
with seeming independence, each crossing and recrossing the others,
each free to sustain a note while the others moved above and below
it, all coming at certain points to dwell together in rich chords.
Intended only for service in the church, it was a music perfectly
expressive of a rapt and exalted state of religious devotion, from
which had been expelled all the elements that might disturb and excite,
all harsh intervals, all suddenness, all lively rhythm. It was woven
about the Latin text of the mass and of other rites and ceremonies
of the church; but except for this connection with words it was
without form and unconfined. Without rhythm and without symmetrical
form--the very foundations upon which most music rests--it seems like
an edifice floating in mid-air, without foundation, ethereal, mystical,
and perfect. Such a music could indeed be brought no further after
Palestrina and Lassus; but it left to the world a model of polyphonic
technique which was to aid in the development and enrichment of
subsequent music, and which has had an indirect influence upon every
great composer since that time.

The last years of the sixteenth century gave evidence of a rebellion
from the laws of polyphonic technique; yet the musicians are at first
not so much actuated by a feeling of rebellion against this established
form as by an enthusiasm for other kinds of music, which, during the
centuries when all musicians gave their most serious thought to the
development of polyphony, had been more or less neglected--kinds of
music in which solo melody and rhythm play a part. Peri, Caccini,
Cavalieri, and the other brilliant young men who, just before the
turn of the century, composed music in a so-called new style, are not
inventors of anything new, but experimenters with the simple kind
of music which must have endured among the people through all the
civilized ages of man. They sought to raise simple song into an art,
and their experiments turned the attention of all men to those branches
of music which had for centuries been considered beneath the dignity of
serious effort. At the start, spurred on by the desire to restore the
combination of music and poetry which had been practised by the Greeks,
they became intoxicated by the sheer beauty of the human voice in
single melody, and by the ever further discovery of the power of music
to express live, poignant, human emotions beyond the ascetic rapture
of religious devotion. Indeed, the desire to express new emotions
in melody and harmony and the sensuous delight in sound are the main
causes of the remarkable developments of the seventeenth century which
not only produced a new form of vocal music completely secular and
independent of the church, though still bound to words, but also firmly
established instrumental music untrammelled by words or adherence to
text, beautiful and noble in itself alone.

Inasmuch as the marvellously perfect technique of writing polyphonic
choruses for voices was suited only to the expression of the vague
ecstasy which had formed it, composers were forced to invent a new
technique and a new style of writing. The ways by which they arrived
at this new style form the subject of this chapter. It will be seen
that certain ones built directly upon the polyphonic style, that others
developed solo melody and the solo adorned and elaborated by many
devices; and that it was by a union of the two ways that at last the
new style was made worthy and sufficient.


                                   I

At the beginning of the century music was, so to speak, taken out of
the church and set, free and weak, into the open world. At once social
fashion seized upon it. Opera, for instance, became almost at once
the fashion of the day. From the opening of the first public opera
house in Venice in 1637 opera composers had to write their music with
regard to popular success, in other words, with regard to what the
public wanted; and since the public came soon to worship the human
voice even more than the music, the composer and his works were often
at the mercy of the reigning favorite singer. Moreover, in the course
of the century, a race of virtuosi sprang into prominence, men who
thrilled and electrified by display of technical skill, and won the
public by amazement. Music which is written only with the aim of giving
the performer a chance to exhibit technical skill cannot be adjudged
great music, nor even good music; yet the influences of attempts at
virtuosity were of inestimable value to the growth of music in the
seventeenth century, and indeed have been so at all times, though they
often appear a fruitless, hollow sham. For the virtuoso discovers the
utmost capabilities of his instrument and thereby widens the field of
composition. In the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth as well,
the composer and the virtuoso were one.

As we have already seen, in the church music of Palestrina and Lassus
there was no active rhythm. The recurrence of regular beats was as
far as possible disguised to avoid the excitement which a persistent,
marked rhythm must convey upon an audience, and which is out of place
in the mystical rites of the church. But in the seventeenth century
composers of vocal music made more and more use of marked rhythm as a
means of conveying emotional excitement; and instrumental composers,
finding out little by little how lifeless music for instruments was
when not animated by rhythm, made rhythm more and more persistent and
obvious in their work. Along with the recognition of the life-giving
power of rhythm came the appreciation of clearly balanced structural
form, which is only a broader kind of rhythm.

Melody, rhythm, and symmetrical form seem to us the very essentials
of music. It must be ever a source of wonder that for centuries
musicians gave themselves to the development of a style of music which
deliberately suppressed them. Yet those very musicians whose long
labors are summed up and glorified in the works of Palestrina and
Lassus laid the foundation upon which the art of modern music has been
built. The polyphonic style, animated by rhythm and molded to melody,
became counterpoint, which, though in a sense the 'mathematics’ of
music and in the hands of an uninspired composer as dry as dust, is
none the less the very essence of the art; and in the hands of a master
the power and glory of man’s mind in music. We shall see it prepared in
the course of the century for the hands of perhaps the greatest of all
composers, John Sebastian Bach.

Spreading gradually through all the music of the century came the
new warm force of harmony. In the works of Palestrina and Lassus the
appreciation of chords is often evident; but the attention of both was
mainly centred upon the interweaving of many melodies, and for the
most part the chords which resulted from the simultaneous sounding
of many voice parts were not regarded in relation to each other, nor
planned beforehand in a definite progression. The flow of the various
parts was theoretically never directed nor influenced by an harmonic
plan. Moreover, the vocal polyphony was written in the various types
of scales known as the ecclesiastical modes, types which owed their
peculiar characteristics to the position of the semi-tone steps
within the octave. A change in the course of a piece from one mode
to another--a modulation as we should say to-day--was most rarely
ventured. In other words, there was no change of key. The practice of
raising or lowering notes in the scales by sharps and flats in order
to avoid harsh dissonances, or to let parts glide by the interval of
a semi-tone into the chords of cadences, which practice was called
_musica ficta_, had by the middle of the sixteenth century softened
the rigor of the modes; yet during the first half of the seventeenth
century the modes were still held to differ from each other in æsthetic
qualities, and composers were still under the sway of the laws which
governed them. The modes broke down gradually, it is true, and traces
of their influence are found late in the seventeenth century; but by
the end of the century they had practically given way to the major and
minor keys upon which our greatest music has been based. The subtleties
of the modes were artificial. The popular music of the Middle Ages
shows an instinctive choice of modes nearest our present-day major and
minor scales.

The enthusiasm for melody in the seventeenth century at first allowed
to an accompaniment only simple chords, to be played by lute or spinet,
which very soon came to be regarded as harmonic progressions. These
chords were not the result of the interweaving of various melodies, but
were entities in themselves, and came to be appreciated as such. Freed
from the laws of counterpoint and calculated to aid in the expression
of keen emotion, sudden unprepared dissonances found their place in
music. Chords were contrasted, their beauty and power were perceived,
and they were studied and used for themselves. Moreover, it became
the custom to play a few chords as prelude to an instrumental piece,
and out of this custom there grew up in the course of the century a
type of instrumental music called a Prelude, which was hardly more
than an elaborate series of chords broken up in arpeggios, of which
no finer example can be mentioned than the first prelude in Bach’s
'Well-tempered Clavichord.’ Thus the rich beauty of harmony came into
music, the most subtle, the most colored, and the most profound of her
expressions.

Perhaps the most characteristic mark of the new school of composition,
and one which points suggestively to the way in which harmony
developed, is the employment of what is known as a Figured Bass. The
voice parts of the great polyphonic masterpieces were often printed
separately, rarely together in one score; but the first operas were
printed in score on two staffs, on the upper of which the melody was
recorded, and on the lower a single bass part, with figures and sharps
and flats written under the notes to indicate the chords of which these
notes were the foundation and which constituted the accompaniment. The
origin of this Figured Bass is doubtful. It is possibly the result
of the endeavors of Italian organists in the sixteenth century to
free themselves from the task of playing those pieces written in the
old style from a number of separately printed parts. Whatever its
origin, it was perfectly suited to the monodists and to those who
during the century wrote in the new style. It is indicative of the
way composers centred all their interest in the melody, leaving the
details of the accompaniment to the discretion and the taste of the
accompanist, thought of in this case as a single player, using lute,
harpsichord, organ, or any instrument upon which chords could be
played. Evidently only a most simple accompaniment was expected, one
which merely supported the melody with chords and attempted little or
no contrapuntal intricacies. In cases where the accompaniment was given
to a number of instruments the Figured Bass still served only for the
instrument which could play chords, though the single notes of it might
be reinforced by an instrument of low range such as the viol. For the
other instruments which were to enrich the harmonies and add touches
of orchestral color special parts were written. So the harpsichord
became the centre of the group of accompanying instruments, and later
the centre of the orchestra, apart from opera, supplying the harmonic
basis of the music in solid chords. It continued to hold its central
place until at the end of the next century Gluck took a definite stand
against it.

The bass part itself was at first considered only as the foundation
of the harmonies of the accompaniment. It was not, therefore, an
independent melody, and was not planned in any contrapuntal relation
with the melody above it. But before the end of the first decade of
the century composers began to give it movement and a character of its
own, sometimes treating it in definite contrapuntal relation with the
melody. Thus early did the composers of the new school turn to the
science of counterpoint for aid in the construction of their music;
thus early began the new and the old to work together.

The Figured Bass is significant, not only of the way composers came
to an appreciation of the value of an harmonic foundation in music,
and of how counterpoint came to the aid of the new music when it was
leaden and uninteresting; it points also to the slow development of
the orchestra, of the skill to write for groups of instruments in such
a way that they could stand independently without the bolstering of
the harpsichord or the organ. The orchestral style proper is the most
complex style in music and was the slowest to develop. The employment
of the Figured Bass is evidence of the inability of composers to master
it during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.


                                  II

Yet though the composers of the seventeenth century were unable to
master the problem of the orchestra, their accomplishments in the
development of instrumental music, especially of music for small groups
of string instruments, were most important. The achievements of the
organists may be considered first, because in them the tradition of the
polyphonic style most evidently perseveres, and because they were the
first to develop a suitable instrumental style. The organ had been used
in the churches from very early times and had been little by little
improved until by the middle of the sixteenth century it was capable of
great power of tone and of some beauty and delicacy as well. During
the sixteenth century music for the organ had been cultivated by three
great Venetian organists, Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586), Claudio Merulo
(1533-1604), and Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612), nephew and pupil of
Andrea. All three were world famous in their day, and men came from
Germany, France, and England to hear them play and to study with them.
The organs in St. Mark’s cathedral were among the finest in Europe.
Venice was brilliantly to the fore in music, and these three great
organists were in the very front ranks of innovators. If their music
sounds to us antiquated now it is because it was hardly in the power
of three men in the span of half a century to develop a style of
music for the organ which would be suited to its special qualities.
It must not be forgotten that serious musicians had given relatively
little thought to instrumental music, and had spent their lives in the
perfecting of a style in vocal music. These three pioneers in organ
music, therefore, had first to discover what sort of music sounded
well on the organ. The problems were difficult, for not only was there
the question of instrumental style, but likewise the question of form,
since instrumental music, deprived of the continuity of a text to hold
it in some measure together, must be wrought into definite form or else
remain an inartistic chaos of sound. It can hardly be said that these
early organists invented any clear self-sufficient forms. In fact, all
form had to wait until the harmonic idea was clear in men’s minds,
until the middle of the next century. In the collections of their works
are to be found _ricercari_, _canzone da sonar_ and _toccatas_; but
none of these has definite form. The ricercar was a piece in polyphonic
imitative style, of serious character, ancestor of the instrumental
fugue but very strongly bound to the vocal style of the day. It
differed from the fugue in that it presented no clear so-called second
subject as foil or play-fellow to the main subject; and, moreover,
in that there was even no consistent main subject throughout the
piece, but a rambling from one to another suggested by it, and so on.
Rhythm was indeterminate and frequently changing and there was little
suggestion of a definite metrical structure of formal significance.

The canzona was originally no more than an arrangement for the
organ of a secular song in polyphonic style, of the kind made
popular in France in the period of the ars nova. (See Chap. IX.) The
characteristic feature of these songs or _chansons_ was a division of
the music, following the stanzas of the poem, into several sections
or strophes, some of which were in polyphonic style, others in simple
'note for note’ harmony; and in working them over for the organ
composers maintained the division. We shall see how composers for
other instruments worked upon the same plan, and how in this plan
lies the germ from which was to spring one of the so-called cyclic
forms of music--a piece in several distinct movements, called _sonata
da chiesa_, which was one of the direct ancestors of the symphony.
However, in the early canzona there was no actual splitting up into
movements, but only a series of rather distinct sections within the one
movement differing from each other in style and rhythm. The organists
used the canzona with rather more lightness than they ever displayed
in the treatment of the ricercar, and in an attempt to animate and
vary the simple song parts they hit upon not a few of those devices
of ornamentation which came to play a great part in instrumental
music of the eighteenth century. Andrea Gabrieli’s canzona, _Un gai
berger_, is an excellent example of the type, while the connection with
its prototype is still distinct. Though there is a canzona for organ
by Bach, the form never developed in organ music to any very great
importance. It was assimilated on the one hand by the ricercar and on
the other by the more brilliant toccata.

The toccata was from the first a piece for display, and more than any
other called the suitable organ style into being. The early toccatas
might be called ventures in virtuosity. In them composers broke free
little by little from the slow moving vocal style. They discovered how
much more rapidly their fingers could move than voices could sing, and
they learned to leap and run, so to speak, and gave over once for all
the slow pace of the vocal style, which, admirably suited to voices,
is intolerably heavy and dull upon instruments. The first attempts
amounted to little more than rapid running of scales over a foundation
of uninteresting chords; but by the end of the sixteenth century the
chords had become more interesting and other runs than simple scales
had been developed.

Two men especially are important in the history of organ music of the
first half of the seventeenth century, Peter Sweelinck in Amsterdam
and Girolamo Frescobaldi in Rome, the one commonly accepted as the
first of the school of great organists of northern Europe, the other
strongly influential in forming the style of the organists of southern
Germany. The best of the northern and southern schools came to be
united in John Sebastian Bach, the greatest of all organists, for whose
music, therefore, Sweelinck and Frescobaldi may be said to have laid
foundations. Both were daring, brilliant performers and equally bold
and venturesome composers. Sweelinck was organist at the old church
in Amsterdam from about 1581 to the year of his death, 1621; and
Frescobaldi, considerably younger, organist at St. Peter’s in Rome from
1608 to 1628, and again later in life. In both cities crowds flocked to
the churches whenever these great men played.

Of Sweelinck’s music that has been preserved a great part shows
strongly the influence of the early Venetian organists, but as might
be expected he goes beyond them in instrumental effects; and in serious
works, not calculated merely to display the skill of the virtuoso,
he really creates a definite fugue form, independent of vocal style,
animated and impressive. As a performer he was excited to experiment
in effects which often led him into meaningless passage work, striking
perhaps in his day, but to our ears childish and quite lacking in
musical worth. But his influence was long felt and was the incentive to
ever bolder and bolder efforts to expand the range of organ technique.

The younger Italian was no less daring, but seems to have been gifted
with more sensitive instinct. He never offends by empty display; his
style is consistently higher than that of any other organist of his
day. His advance over his predecessors is most marked in his use of
animated rhythmical subjects which he developed more often in genuine
fugal style with answering counter subject and logical balanced form
than in the aimless style of the older ricercar. Moreover, the passage
work in his toccatas is built upon chord progressions which are very
nearly free of the old modal restrictions and which are impressive in
themselves and of genuine musical worth. Among works published in his
lifetime are a set of fantasias (1608), all but three of which are in
ricercar style, a set of toccatas (1614), a set of ricercari (1615),
which show a marked improvement in construction over earlier works, a
second book of toccatas in 1627, and in 1635 the most famous of all his
works, the _Fiori musicali_, which contained pieces in all styles known
at that time.

Among his pupils was the brilliant Saxon wanderer, John Jacob
Froberger, who was for many years organist at the court of Vienna,
for four years in Rome, two in Paris, later in London under romantic
circumstances of which he has himself left an account, and still again
in the Netherlands, in Halle, in Vienna, and in France, where he died
in 1657. In the work of such a man many influences are of course
evident, but in his organ compositions that of Frescobaldi is most
consistent, and thus the style of the Italian passes over into German
usage.

After the death of Frescobaldi the importance of organ music in
Italy steadily declined, but in Germany, both north and south, it
grew steadily greater. It was built up on the foundations laid by
the Italians themselves and by Sweelinck, who was strongly under
the influence of the Italians; but there entered into it an element
of purely German nature, the Protestant Chorale. These noble,
expressive old melodies, though of varied origin--some sprung from
the old plain-song melodies of the Roman ritual, others from the
folk songs of the people--had become the religious folk song of the
German Protestant. Upon them organists constructed a singularly lofty
and expressive form of music known as the Chorale Prelude, which
combined with the polyphonic skill--the remodelled heritage of the
old masters--the genuine serious feeling of the chorale. As the name
implies, the chorale prelude was played by the organist before the
congregation sang the chorale, and might be regarded as the organist’s
prologue inspired by a musical text. Two kinds of the prelude were
developed to a high state of musical excellence at the end of the
seventeenth century. In one the chorale melody was treated in flowing
contrapuntal style, appearing now in long notes, now in short, woven
into a smooth texture of sound; in the other the melody was often
brilliantly adorned with trills and turns and was made to stand boldly
forth over an accompaniment which often presented a vigorous counter
subject and which was filled with the most striking and daring devices
of the virtuoso. The former was more in keeping with the spirit of
the south German organists; one of whom, Johann Pachelbel,[135]
a Nuremberger, developed it richly. The other was fostered by the
vigorous daring organists of the north, among whom the Dane, Dietrich
Buxtehude,[136] stands out most conspicuously. We shall see later how
much Sebastian Bach was influenced by these two great organists.

At the end of the seventeenth century organ music was independent
of vocal style. Free of the old church modes, built solidly upon an
impressive, harmonic foundation, animated by strong rhythm and varied
by a thousand devices of virtuosity which had their being in the
nature of the instrument itself, it makes evident the great changes
which had come into music during the century. On the other hand, the
general employment of a polyphonic style, for which the organ is of all
instruments the best suited, and which moreover is in keeping with the
dignity and noble solemnity of the instrument, shows the perseverance
of those high principles of musical composition which had been first
established and glorified in the vocal works of Palestrina and Lassus.
And in the forms of Prelude, Toccata, Fugue, and Choral Prelude
composers had found suitable forms in which their musical ideas could
stand, apart from a text and self-sufficient as absolute music.


                                  III

Inasmuch as the organ was the instrument for which the most suitable
style was clearly to be found in a modification of the old vocal
polyphony, organist-composers were spared much of the difficulty
which hindered composers who strove to write for other instruments,
or for combinations of instruments. We have seen that organ music,
set upon its way by the Italians, was dropped by them before the
middle of the century. All their interest in instrumental music came
very early in the century to be centred upon music for the violin and
instruments of that family. This is due to the fact that during that
century there arose in northern Italy families of violin makers who,
selecting generally the least clumsy of the types of bowed instruments,
and particularly the violin, with marvellous workmanship and natural
endowment of instinctive skill, developed them into instruments of a
sweetness, flexibility, and power of expression which can be rivalled
only by the human voice. The names of these violin makers have long
been famous in the world, and neither their skill nor their success
has ever since been matched. The first of them was Gasparo da Salo of
Brescia, who worked in the last half of the sixteenth century and a
little way into the seventeenth. Working a little later in Brescia was
Paolo Maggini. The centre of the industry soon shifted to the town of
Cremona, and it is in the list of the Cremonese makers that we find
the names of the Amati family, of whom the last and most famous was
Nicolo (d. 1648); the Guarneri family, of whom the last and greatest
was Joseph, who lived far into the eighteenth century; and the great
name of Antonio Stradivari, who, born about 1644, lived until 1737. The
violin itself was in use early in the century, mostly as soprano in a
group of viols. The rapid and remarkable perfection of it, however,
soon attracted almost the exclusive attention of composers; and it was
thus raised from a minor rôle in a group of instruments to be the head
of all instruments.

The earliest attempts of Italian composers to write violin music
were singularly childish and unsuccessful, and in most cases they
seem stupidly against the simplest principles of instrumental music.
But one must not forget that the only art of composition which had
been developed to a technical excellence was the art of vocal
polyphony, and that the only skill the first instrumental composers
had to bring to writing music for their instruments was the skill
which they had acquired in the study of polyphonic choruses. We have
seen that the early organ composers worked upon the same plan, but
whereas a polyphonic style is essentially suitable to the organ, and
the modifications of the vocal style necessary to convert it into a
style for the organ suggested themselves naturally and obviously, the
instrumental composers were face to face with a far more illusive
problem. They progressed by much the same steps as the organists, but
noticeably more slowly.

The form in which most of the earlier attempts were cast was the
canzona. This, as we have already seen in organ music, was modelled
upon the form of the French chanson of the sixteenth century, and its
characteristic feature was a division into several short sections not
actually cut off from each other, yet differing quite distinctly both
in rhythm and in treatment; some being in the polyphonic style, others
in a style of simple chords. The number of instruments might vary from
four to sixteen, but the majority of early canzonas were written for
four instruments, usually of the viol type. In a collection of canzonas
published in Venice in 1608 there is one, however, written for eight
trombones, and another for sixteen. The number of little sections in
the canzona also varied. The tendency at first was toward a great many,
ten or twelve; but with the general development of instrumental style
came the lengthening of the sections and a consequent reduction of
their number.

A typical canzona of this period is one for four instruments by
Giovanni Battista Grillo.[137] It is made up of ten sections. The
first, in common time, is but seven measures long, and is in the style
of the ricercar, i. e. built upon an imitation of short motives. The
second section is in triple time, in the general style of a galliard,
a dance form of the time, and is eleven measures long. The third
section is again in common time and in the style of a ricercar, and is
twenty measures long. The fourth has ten measures, in the slow common
time of the pavan; the fifth, eight measures in the triple time of
the galliard; the sixth, six measures in the style of the pavan; the
seventh, thirteen measures in galliard style. The eighth and ninth are
repetitions of the first and second, and the whole series is brought to
a close by a short coda of five measures. Those sections which are in
polyphonic style are more or less closely related to each thematically.
It will be observed that, of the ten sections, seven are made up of an
irregular number of measures and cannot give to our ears an impression
of rhythmical structure. One should notice, too, the return of the
first two sections at the end, which gives some primitive balance to
the little piece as a whole.

The obvious weakness in such a form of movement lies in the division
into so many little sections, no one of which is long enough to claim
the serious attention of a listener. True enough, the early works of
the instrumental composers show very few rhythmically animated themes
which could suggest any considerable treatment and development; but in
the few cases where such themes do appear there is not space enough in
a section for the composer to do anything with them, and they drop out
of the piece almost as soon as they have awakened in the listener the
desire to hear more of them.

The natural development was toward the extension of the section,
therefore, until each made the impression of a definite and
well-balanced whole; and from that it was but a step to cutting off
the sections one from the other by pauses. That is what happened.
The canzona grew from a movement in many little sections to the ripe
form of a piece in four distinct movements to which by the middle of
the century was given the name _sonata da chiesa_. Among the first
to write sonatas of this type was Giovanni Legrenzi, who published
a set of them in 1655. Legrenzi is one of the most gifted composers
of the time, not only of operas, in connection with which his name
is most often heard, but of instrumental music as well, of which the
sonatas just mentioned are excellent examples. The last of them is well
planned and interesting throughout. The first movement is an excellent
well-knit fugue, built upon a definite rhythmical subject against
which two interesting and varied counter subjects are set. All these
subjects have vigor and distinct individuality, and they are treated
with a skill which is proof of Legrenzi’s instinct for the instrumental
style. The second movement is in the dignified rhythm of the sarabande,
a dance form of the day; the third is a short adagio, leading to
the last, which is lively and rapid, but rather loose in structure,
recalling the old-style ricercar.

However, the sonatas of Legrenzi are often in more than four movements,
and the credit of giving the _sonata da chiesa_ its definite and
lasting form belongs to Giovanni Battista Vitali, in whose collection
of them, published in 1667, there is at last a regularity of plan in
the number and arrangement of movements. The scheme is practically
tripartite. There are two fast movements in common time and in fugal
style, one at the beginning and one at the end; and between them a
movement generally in simple harmonic style and in triple time. There
are also a few very slow measures either before or after the middle
movement or at the beginning of the sonata as introduction to the
first fast movement. The two fast movements are frequently in thematic
relation to each other. Here we have the form made ready for the later
masters, of which we shall see them make use. Compared with the canzona
of the first half of the century, Vitali’s work shows a striking,
sudden advance, not only in clearness of form, but in instrumental
style. Not much is known of his life, but his works show that he was
a player of brilliant skill, one of the first of the virtuoso violin
composers.

Though the _sonata da chiesa_ was descended directly from the old
_canzona da sonar_ and is therefore connected with the old music, it
was greatly affected on the way by influences not remotely connected
with the old polyphonic style. In the preceding pages it has been shown
how the cultivation of the monodic style led to the cultivation of the
technique of the human voice. Already in the works of Caccini, himself
a great singer, there appear passages for the solo voice intended to
show off its flexibility and technique. The influence of the monodic
style made itself felt at once in violin music, and prompted the
cultivation of a form of solo music which had little or nothing to do
with the polyphonic canzona. No pieces have come down to us from the
first ten years of the century which were written for the violin alone
with accompaniment of Figured Bass for lute or harpsichord; but there
are many written for two violins, which, in that they play seldom
together but pursue a sort of dialogue in music, may be said to belong
to the monodic style. The early pieces in this manner are under the
influence of the new vocal style. Passages of any lively movement are
written after the manner of Caccini’s newly discovered vocal agilities.

But very soon the suitable violin style began to make its appearance,
and we come across passages which could not have been sung, but which
were suggested by the nature of the instrument for which they were
intended. The early efforts were called sonatas. Like the canzona,
they were given special names, for example, Salvatore Rossi’s sonata on
the air of the Romanesca, and another on the air of Ruggiero, both of
which are no more than a series of variations over two melodies both
well known in their day. The practice of composing variations over a
bass part which remained unchanged or was only very slightly adorned
in a few cases and was called a ground bass or _basso ostinato_, was
most common throughout the entire seventeenth century. No manner of
securing an effect of form and symmetry could have been simpler, and
no other form could have spurred composers more effectively toward the
discovery of trills, turns, runs, and other ornaments within the power
of instruments as a very means of saving themselves from the deadly
monotony of a few phrases reiterated inexorably again and again in the
bass. That the practice even of extemporizing variations--or divisions,
as they were called--on a ground bass was much in vogue, as the
improvisation of descant over the _cantus firmus_ was in the early days
of church polyphony, is witnessed by the famous work of the English
musician, Christopher Sympson, entitled, the 'Division Violist,’ which
appeared in 1659, and which was intended to teach the art. Sympson
says, 'A Ground, subject, or bass, call it what you please, is pricked
down in two several papers, one for him who is to play the Ground upon
an organ, harpsichord, or what other instrument may be apt for that
purpose, the other for him that plays upon the viol, who, having the
said Ground before his eyes as his theme or subject, plays such variety
of descant or division in concordance thereto as his skill and present
invention do then suggest unto him.’

The true instrumental monody makes its first appearance in 1617 in the
works of Biagio Marini, the first famous violinist. In the first of his
publications--a set of pieces called _Affetti musicali_, printed in
1617 in Venice, where Marini was then playing in the orchestra of St.
Mark’s--there are two pieces called _Sinfonie_ for violin (or cornet)
with Figured Bass, which may be said to represent the point where two
distinct styles of instrumental music begin to diverge; one proceeding
directly from these to pieces of widely developed solo music, the
other developing through the canzona and works of that kind to modern
orchestral music. This first work of Marini presents many innovations,
the bowing is suggested by slurs, use is made of the tremolo (seven
years before Monteverdi’s _Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda_, in
which it was long held to have appeared first);[138] and there are many
passages of double stopping.

Another composer of the early times is Francesco Turini, writing
trio-sonatas in the style of Salvatore Rossi, for two violins and a
Figured Bass; and the works of Giovanni Battista Fontana (1641) show
ever further development, not only in violin technique, but in the
construction of music as well. Treading so carefully over new ground,
the early composers seldom let themselves go in melodies of any long
sweep but restrained themselves to short phrases, just as in writing
canzonas for groups of instruments they held fast by short sections;
but, in the works of Fontana, long, smooth phrases of well-balanced
melody give proof of the rapidity with which the art was progressing
and the confidence that was coming in the treatment of music for the
violin. In the works of a contemporary, Tarquinio Merula, there is
often even a lively humorous free swing. So the first half of the
seventeenth century brought an understanding of the character of the
violin as a solo instrument, and of its special treatment and of some
of the possibilities of virtuosity that lay within it; and through the
cultivation of the solo sonata--direct offspring of the early monodic
style--there grew up an art of composing long, smooth, expressive
melodies for the violin which, exerting an influence upon the canzona
of polyphonic birth, was to aid in freeing it from its restriction to
short motives and in setting it upon its way toward the _sonata da
chiesa_ of Corelli and the symphonies of Beethoven.


                                  IV

The importance of rhythm in instrumental music has already been pointed
out. We have mentioned the part it played in the transformation of the
heavy canzona into the _sonata da chiesa_, giving life and character to
the themes, and structural regularity to the sections. We have now to
consider the development of another cyclic form of music, the Suite,
called in Italy the _sonata da camera_, which had its very being in
rhythm. The orthodox suite at the end of the seventeenth century was
a series of four short pieces, all of which were in the same key,
each having the name of a dance, and differing from the others in its
rhythm. The origin of the suite, therefore, is to be sought in the
cultivation of dance music, which is essentially rhythmical music, and
in the combination of several short dances in a sequence.

The remarkable English collections of music for the harpsichord or
virginal already alluded to contain many dance tunes. In the treatment
of them, however, as we have said, composers showed the influence of
the polyphonic style to such an extent that they frequently disguised
or even suppressed the characteristic rhythms as far as possible
by cross accents and polyphonic intricacies. Yet that the English
composers of that time, great men like William Byrd, John Bull, and
Thomas Morley, were conscious of the contrasting characters of various
dance rhythms, and of the pleasant effect of playing a dance in one
time after a dance in another, is shown by a passage in Morley’s famous
book, 'Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music’ (1597), which
describes the effect to be got by alternating a pavan and a galliard,
'the first of which was a kind of staid musick ordained for grave
dancing, and the other a lighter and more stirring kind of dancing.’

But the practice of stringing dance tunes together antedates Morley’s
book by nearly a century, if not more. Among the first pieces of
music ever printed were sets of dance tunes for the lute, which were
printed by Petrucci in Venice in 1508. Some of these sets consisted
of a pavan followed by other dances--_saltarello_ and _piva_--which
were thematically related to it; and throughout the sixteenth century
many such embryo suites made their appearance. In the early lute music
of the time the rhythmical element was quite obvious, clearly because
the polyphonic style could not be reproduced upon the lute. Indeed
music for the lute is the first instrumental music which presents a
definite special instrumental style, and this because by its nature the
instrument was quite unfitted for polyphony. The separate pieces in
the early suites were often thematically related; they were, in fact,
variation suites, built up upon the same theme presented in various
rhythms. Toward the end of the century it became customary to print
together many pieces of the same kind, so that one encounters sets of
pavans, of galliards, of _passamezzi_, of _courantes_, etc. Thereby the
stringing together of dances of different types in the order of a suite
disappears from printed music, though doubtless players of the lute and
of the harpsichord chose single dances from the various collections and
put and played them together according to their own taste.

In Italy the interest, newly aroused early in the seventeenth century,
in toccatas and ricercari for the organ, and in the canzona and solo
sonata for other instruments, banished for a time interest in the
combination of dance tunes; but German and English composers accepted
the canzona very slowly, and all through the century gave themselves
conspicuously to the combination and development of dance tunes, at
first for an _ensemble_ of instruments, and later for the harpsichord.
They early broke away from the restrictions of church modes and built
up their pieces over a clear harmonic foundation generally richer and
more varied than the harmonies of the Italians. But in these early
suites, too, there is the same rhythmical hesitation which has been
found characteristic of all early instrumental music, and the metrical
structure of the various dances is often irregular and unbalanced,
so strong were the old polyphonic traditions and the mistrust of
liveliness.

Of the old dance tunes two are almost invariably present in the suite
up to the middle of the century, the pavan and the galliard. The pavan
was a broad, stately kind of music in common time, and was generally
divided into three sections, of which the first was in simple harmonic
style, and the second and third more contrapuntal. The galliard, on the
other hand, was in triple time, and was always set in simple harmonic
style. Here is the same principle of construction as that upon which
the instrumental canzonas were built--pieces of polyphonic style
contrasted with those of a simpler kind.

At what time the pavan and the galliard gave way to the _allemande_ and
_courante_, which are the nucleus of the orthodox suite, has yet to
be determined, but at the end of the century the suites of the great
German and English writers present uniformly four standard movements,
of which the arrangement is allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue.
The origin of the allemande is unknown. It was always in common time
and was of stately though not slow movement. Of the courantes there
were two distinct types, one called French and the other Italian, both
in triple time and both rapid, but the former complex and full of cross
accents and the latter simple and gay. The sarabande was of Spanish
or Moorish origin and was in slow triple time with the rhythmical
peculiarity of a dwelling or accent upon the second beat of the
measure. It differed from the other movements in that it was invariably
in harmonic style; and its rich though simple chords and the quiet
dignity of its movements have expressed many of the deepest and most
emotional thoughts of the great masters, Purcell, Handel, and Bach.
The gigue was lively and usually in six-eight time. It was the only
dance of British origin to find a central place in the suite, which is
remarkable in view of the fact that the English masters were among the
first to work with the suite form. Between the sarabande and the gigue
it was customary to insert one or more extra dances, of which those
most frequently met with are the _minuet_, _gavotte_, _bourrée_, etc.
At the beginning of the suite was often a prelude in the form of the
early canzona, and called 'sonata’ or 'symphony.’

Each movement was divided into two nearly equal parts, and each
of these parts was repeated. The first began in the tonic key and
modulated to the dominant; the second began in the dominant and
modulated back to the tonic. Thus there was an harmonic basis which
in these movements, as in the movements of the perfected _sonata da
chiesa_ of the Italians, was an essential element of the design. The
division of the definite movements, which was from the beginning one of
the features of the suite, probably had some influence upon the Italian
composers and led them to the step of cutting the canzona, too, into
definite movements.

All through the century composers in England and in Germany were
experimenting with these combinations of dance tunes for groups of
instruments. Among the English experimenters should be mentioned
Matthew Locke with his collection of suites for strings called 'The
Little Consort of Three Parts’ (1656), each of which contains a pavan,
an ayre, a 'corant,’ and a sarabande; and Benjamin Rogers, one of the
most famous composers of his day. Among the Germans, Johann Jacob
Löwen with his _Sinfonien_ (1658), which are sets of dance tunes,
and Dietrich Becker with 'Musical Spring Fruit’ (1658), among which
is a suite made up in the conventional order of allemande, courante,
sarabande, and gigue. One cannot but be astonished to find how closely
the suite of the northern masters and the canzona of the Italians kept
pace with one another. As proof one has only to note that Becker’s work
with its orthodox suite is but a year later than Vitali’s first _sonata
da chiesa_.

Thus by the beginning of the last quarter of the century musicians had
developed an instrument style for groups of string instruments and for
the organ; they had devised fitting forms independent of words for
their musical ideas, they had studied melody and acquired the art of
handling it, and they had admitted the stir of rhythm into their most
serious work, thereby giving it an animation which would have been
summarily condemned a century before. There still lacked men of the
highest order of genius to take up the work thus prepared for them.


                                   V

One style of instrumental music is still to be discussed, namely, that
for the harpsichord. This instrument had been brought to a high state
of perfection by the family of Ruckers in Antwerp about the turn of
the sixteenth century. It was known by various names--clavecin in
France, harpsichord in England, clavicembalo in Italy, and was made in
various forms and sizes. Though a keyboard instrument, it can hardly be
considered an ancestor of the piano, for the tones of it were caused by
the plucking of the strings, by jacks attached to levers operated by
the keys and not by the pressing or striking of them. Such variety of
tone shading as could be got from it was chiefly through the working of
stops, which brought a new series of strings into play, or of pedals,
which dampened the strings; and the larger harpsichords were furnished
with two or more manuals which operated upon separate sets of strings.

The extraordinary output of music for the virginals in England just
before the beginning and during the first few years of the century gave
way to interest in 'Fancies,’ and later in suites for strings, and the
Germans were absorbed in music for the organ or for an ensemble of
strings. The Italians were given almost wholly to the cultivation of
music for the violin. To the French must be given the credit of having
developed the art of the harpsichord to a high state of excellence
and beauty during the course of the first half of the century. The
Germans were content to publish some pieces for the 'harpsichord _or_
organ,’ the Italians likewise; the French were the first to realize the
fundamental differences between the two instruments. A great deal is
due to the influence of the famous French lutenists of the mid-century,
among whom Denys Gaultier deserves first mention. His collection of
pieces called _La rhétorique des dieux_ is one of the most charming
records of music in Europe during the seventeenth century. While
composers for organ, for groups of string instruments, and even for
the voice, were still struggling with problems of style and form,
these little pieces made their appearance, in which there is no trace
of experiment nor hesitation, but complete mastery of a style both
delicate and in every way suitable. The lute still held its place as
the most generally used of all instruments during the greater part of
the century, not only as accompaniment to voices and as foundation for
groups of instruments, but as a solo instrument. Even works by Corelli
at the very end of the century are written over a Figured Bass, which
may be played either by harpsichord or lute. That it at last gave way
to the harpsichord is probably owing to the great difficulty of playing
it. After the time of Gaultier, special cultivation of it rapidly
waned, but Gaultier had lasting influence upon subsequent composers for
the harpsichord, both in France and Germany. _La rhétorique des dieux_
contains many sets of little pieces, most of which conform to the style
of dance pieces then cultivated, all bearing fanciful names such as
_Phæton foudroyé_, _Diana_, _Ulysses_, _Mars superbe_, _Juno, ou La
jalouse_, _La coquette virtuose_, etc. They are light and graceful and
quite free of the heaviness of the polyphonic style.

The first of the great French composers for the harpsichord was Jacques
Champion Chambonnières, brilliant son of a family of musicians. His two
books of pieces published in 1670 contain several sets of dances which
are arranged in the order already established as orthodox; allemande,
courante, sarabande, and gigue. The place of the allemande is sometimes
taken by two pavans, several of the courantes are followed by doubles,
and sometimes a minuet or a galliard takes the place of the gigue.
The style is obviously influenced by Gaultier’s music for the lute,
and is marked by perfect ease and an elegant clearness and grace. And
like Gaultier’s pieces, many of them have dainty, fanciful names, such
as _Iris la toute belle_, _L’entretien des dieux_, _Jeunes zéphirs_,
etc. Already in the preface to these sets of pieces we come across
directions for playing those little ornaments which were to become one
of the most characteristic features of music for the harpsichord in the
next century, and the subject of many a treatise.

In Germany harpsichord music was set free from organ music by
Froberger, whose works for the organ we have already mentioned. Though
his harpsichord pieces first appeared in print in 1693 and 1696,
several manuscripts bear the date of 1649; and one upon the death of
Ferdinand IV must belong near 1654. Froberger must have seen something
of Gaultier and Chambonnières while he was in Paris, but the fact that
none of his pieces bore names after the fashion of the French composers
shows that he did not wish to be considered an imitator of them, and
indeed his style is still rather heavy and compact and more akin to the
early English style than to the light transparent style of the French.


                                  VI

The history of opera during the seventeenth century is brilliantly
fascinating because it reflects so much the social life of those times;
yet the contribution of opera composers to the art of music is not
great. We have seen in a previous chapter what Monteverdi accomplished
for opera; that he had a grasp and comprehension of those principles of
opera upon which Gluck and Wagner later based their music dramas; that
his music, though often rashly experimental and crude, on the other
hand was often genuinely dramatic and strong in emotional feeling.
But even before his death composers of opera had turned their backs
upon the road toward which Monteverdi had pointed, and were well
started on their way toward an opera in which all dramatic power, all
genuine feeling was to be stifled in a mass of formal vocalism and
scenic display. Upon opera more than upon any other form of music the
influence of fashion and public taste made itself felt. The rush of
opera into a state of utter falseness was indeed headlong. Let us
quote from Dr. Burney’s history. After stating that during the years
between 1662 and 1680 there were nearly a hundred different operas
performed in Venice alone, and giving the names of many composers now
quite forgotten, he says: 'During this period it seldom happens indeed
that the names of poets, composers, or singers are recorded in printed
copies of these dramas, though that of the machinist is never omitted;
and much greater care seems to have been taken to amuse the eye than
the ears or the intellect of those who attended these spectacles.’
He gives a list of the paraphernalia used in the performance of an
opera on the subject of _Berenice_ at Padua in 1680. The list includes
choruses of one hundred virgins, one hundred soldiers, one hundred
horsemen in iron armor, forty cornets of horse, six trumpeters on
horse-back, six drummers, six ensigns, six trombones, six flutes, six
minstrels playing on Turkish instruments, six others on octave flutes,
six pages, three sergeants, six cymballists, twelve huntsmen, twelve
grooms, six coachmen for the triumph, six others for the procession,
two lions led by two Turks, two elephants by two others, Berenice’s
triumphal car drawn by four horses, six other cars with prisoners and
spoils drawn by twelve horses, and six coaches for the procession.
Among the scenes in the first act was a vast plain with two triumphal
arches, another with pavilions and tents, a square prepared for the
entrance of triumph; in act two, Berenice’s royal apartments; in act
three, a royal dressing-room, completely furnished, stables with one
hundred live horses, and besides representations of every species of
chase, as of wild boar, stag, deer, and bears. Obviously in such a
spectacle true dramatic art and true musicianship found little place.
Yet some of the opera composers of the century should not pass
unnoticed even in a general history of music. Their operas, it is true,
are now no longer heard, are indeed practically forgotten, but their
efforts invented new vocal forms which have held a prominent place in
the art of music, not only in opera.

Opera may be said to have originated in Florence, but it was soon
transplanted from the city of its birth, and after the year 1600 the
historian finds little of importance in Florentine opera to claim his
attention. In 1608 Marco da Gagliano made another musical setting of
Rinuccini’s _Dafne_, which had been set by Peri into the first opera.
It may be remarked that Peri generously placed Gagliano above himself.
Gagliano wrote a preface to his _Dafne_ in which he gave as his
definition of opera, 'a true entertainment for princes, more pleasing
than any other, for it unites in itself all the finest pleasures,
invention, the arrangement of a subject, ideas, style, sweetness of
rhyme, the art of music, concord of voices and instruments, refinement
and delicacy of song, graceful dances and movements; and it may be
said that painting also plays a great part in the perspective and the
costumes; so much so that not only the intelligence but all the noblest
feelings are charmed by the most pleasing arts which have been invented
by the genius of man.’ This is a high ideal of opera, not unworthy to
stand beside Wagner’s; but the spirit of the age cared little enough
about charming the intelligence, and the next opera of importance in
Florence, _Ruggiero_, written by Francesca Caccini, daughter of Giulio
Caccini, is little more than a spectacle. Gagliano’s _Flora_ (1624)
closes the Florentine period.

In Rome the opera was for many years influenced by the oratorio,
that is to say, the texts chosen were oftenest either spiritual or
allegorical, following the style of Cavalieri’s _Rappresentazione_,
which has already been treated in the previous chapter. Opera and
oratorio were hardly different in form. The influence of the church
was strong and decidedly conservative. The most important opera
composers in Rome, Stefano Landi and Agazzari, were both in the
service of the church, and were, as a matter of fact, primarily church
composers. Moreover, there was no public opera in Rome until after the
middle of the century. Performances were given under the patronage and
at the palaces of cardinals, among them Corsini, Colonna, Rospigliosi,
and Barberini. Landi’s two operas, _Orfeo_ (1619), and _San Alessio_
(1634), are both made up of comic and tragic elements. In _Orfeo_ there
is a Lethe drinking song for Charon, one of the first comedy scenes
in opera, and in _San Alessio_, which deals with a story of Christ,
there are buffoons. These comedy scenes seem to show a reaction against
the ecclesiastical influence. Among the musicians in the service of
Cardinal Barberini was Luigi Rossi, one of the most admired and best
beloved musicians of his day. He was summoned to Paris by Mazarin in
1646 with twenty singers, among them eight male soprani, and in Paris
wrote his most famous opera, 'The Marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice.’
Upon his return to Rome he wrote another opera, _Il palagio d’Atlante_,
and an oratorio, 'Joseph.’ In general it may be said that the influence
of the church was too strong for opera at Rome, and the so-called Roman
school of the seventeenth century has its place only in the development
of the _cantata_ and the oratorio.

Venice was the centre of operatic music during the greater part of
the century. Thither, as we have seen, Monteverdi had been called in
1613 as choirmaster at St. Mark’s, and there he wrote _Tancredi_, 'The
Return of Ulysses,’ and _L’incoronazione di Poppea_, all of which, by
the color of their orchestration, their genuine dramatic feeling, and
their remarkable strength of harmony, left a standard for opera which
was nowhere equalled throughout the century. The first opera house
in Europe was built in Venice in 1637. Others quickly followed in the
same city. Thus here the opera ceased to be a private amusement for
the rich nobility and became a public diversion; and composers were
consequently forced to take at once into consideration the desires
and the taste of the public. No longer free under a rich patronage
to experiment, they were obliged to write works for which a popular
success might be expected. Furthermore, the financial managers of the
opera were by no means willing to pay high salaries and secure the
services of the best musicians for the orchestra. Composers could count
upon but little skill in the playing of their accompaniments, and,
had they been inclined to write elaborately for the orchestra, would
have been deterred from so doing by the knowledge that their music
would have been mishandled. Thereupon it is hardly surprising that
composers quickly lost interest in a detailed workmanship which would
have passed unnoticed by the careless ears of the age, that they strove
for breadth of effect, at the sacrifice of artistic perfection, that
they neglected their accompaniments and the resources of the orchestra
and centred their attention wholly upon the voice parts, upon melody
for which alone the public had interest. The standards of Monteverdi
were forgotten or ignored even before his death. His greatest pupil and
his successor, Francesco Cabetti-Bruni, called Cavalli (1599-1676),
never lost entirely what he learned from his master. In his operas,
of which 'Jason’ (1649), 'Serse’ (1660), and _Ercole amante_ (1662)
are most often cited, and were in his own day the most famous, the
dramatic element never wholly disappears. But, whereas Monteverdi
intensified the plays which he set to music by sudden, often harsh,
effects, Cavalli tended always toward smoothness. Monteverdi’s style is
pointed and concentrated, full of fire, Cavalli’s flowing and diluted.
It was to his interest to make the most of dramatic scenes, to expand
them to proportions which could not fail to claim the attention of his
audiences. Therefore it happens that the recitative, which was the
usual medium of musical expression in the early operas, was at places
in his opera broadened into more or less sustained melody. The dramatic
value of a situation was no longer tersely emphasized by a sharp
interval in the voice part or a few harsh chords in the accompaniment,
but was extended throughout a long passage tending to become more
and more lyrical. In this fashion the _aria_ was prefigured in the
operas of Cavalli, and so it grew and was perfected and became the
characteristic mark of the Italian opera.

The form became stereotyped. There was usually an orchestral
introduction, anticipating the melody. This was followed by the first
section of the aria, usually broad, flowing melody within the limits of
the tonic key. After this came an orchestral _ritornel_, and then the
second section of the aria, usually in a more broken and sometimes more
agitated style, and in a contrasting key. This section was followed
by another orchestral ritornel and the return of the first section
complete. It became the custom to write the words _da capo_ at the end
of the second section, directing the singer to return to the beginning
and start over again, singing to a sign placed at the end of the first
section. The form is, of course, stiff, but it is not by any means
essentially ugly. The recapitulation of the first section gives a sense
of balance and proportion to the song as a whole, which is necessary in
any work of art. This very balance, however, is in direct opposition
to dramatic effect. The action of a drama must move forward. To return
in scenes of great feeling to a point already passed and repeat what
has already once been sung checks all action and brings the play to a
standstill. Yet in the course of the century arias came to occupy the
predominant part in opera. Before the end of the century they were
classified into various kinds, and a composer was not only forced to
incorporate a certain number of each kind into his opera, but to allot
to each singer his or her proper share of them. The old _dramma per
musica_ became a thing of the past, the new opera merely a series of
songs arbitrarily joined by a few measures of indifferent accompanied
or unaccompanied recitative.

As we have said, signs of this development are already apparent in
the operas of Cavalli, pupil of Monteverdi. Cavalli achieved immense
popular success. His fame spread over Europe. He was summoned to France
in 1660 and again in 1662 and required to furnish operas for the court
of Louis XIV. Lully, whose work we shall consider in the next chapter,
was already in control of music at the court, and was commissioned to
add ballet music to the operas of Cavalli to season them to the French
taste; and in this way had the chance to study Cavalli’s music and to
appropriate from it all that was worth continuing. Through Cavalli the
influence of Monteverdi therefore passed into France.

It is not in melody alone that Cavalli’s works reflect the spirit
of his time. The orchestral parts are carelessly treated. There are
instrumental passages for which no special instruments are even
designated. There is the same love of show and spectacle which was
already evident in the works of England and the ballets of France
and in the late Florentine opera. Elaborate scenes and complicated
stage machines are constantly employed. There are pompous allegorical
prologues and final ballets, and scenes of buffoonery mingled with the
classic theme.

All this is far more striking in the works of a later famous composer
of the Venetian school, Marc’ Antonio Cesti (1620-1669). Cesti’s most
famous operas were _La Dori_ (1663) and _Il pomo d’oro_ (1667). The
latter was written after Cesti had gone to Vienna for the marriage
of Leopold I and Margareta of Spain. It was produced with the most
extravagant splendor. The prologue was sung by characters representing
Spain, Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, and even America. There were five acts
and sixty-seven scenes. The voice parts are smooth and melodious, but
the orchestra is carelessly handled. Giovanni Legrenzi (1625-1690)
alone stands conspicuous among the Venetian composers for any attention
to orchestral effects. Most of his operas were written between 1675 and
1684 while he was at the head of one of the Venetian conservatories and
second choirmaster at St. Mark’s, and nearly all of them were produced
in Venice. He seems to have presided over a sort of academy which met
at his house. Among his pupils the most famous in the next generation
were Lotti, Caldara, and Galuppi.

The list of composers who wrote for the opera houses in Venice is
long. Their fertility was enormous. The public demanded novelty and
only a few operas won a permanent place in its favor. The opera season
was carnival time, during the weeks between Epiphany and Lent, though
there were often short seasons in the fall and in the late spring. All
operas must end happily, and the comic element was never absent. For
the greater part of the century the Venetian opera was the favorite of
all Europe. After 1670, however, opera began to flourish in Naples, and
by the beginning of the next century the Neapolitan opera was supreme.
Here in Naples the victory of the singers was complete. Composers were
at their mercy and the public fawned upon them. Bearing in mind that
the opera began with the attempts of a few brilliant young Florentines
to restore the Greek drama, in which, so far as we know, recitative
and chorus were the chief musical adjuncts, we cannot but be amazed to
note the state to which it had come by the end of the century. The
chorus had been abandoned except for massed effects at the end of the
acts, recitative had been cut down as much as possible, and the aria
was supreme. Even the arias were distorted or inflated with technical
devices to show off the skill of the singers. Of dramatic feeling
there was none and of genuine music scarcely a note that has survived
the test of time. Practically all of the more than seven hundred
operas written between 1607 and 1700 have sunk into oblivion. Many
have even perished utterly. As Burney says, often enough the name of
the composer of an opera was unmentioned. A century of endeavor might
well be reckoned as futilely spent, but that it left a model of smooth
recitative, of eminently suitable vocal style and the standard of the
perfected aria.

But such an opera as this was what the public wanted, not only in
Italy, but in Germany, France, and England as well. Except for the
opera in Hamburg there was no attempt at a national opera in Germany
during the century. For the most part composers, librettists, and
singers were Italian. Heinrich Schütz has the fame of having written
the first German opera. The music was burned in 1760. The text was the
oft-set _Dafne_ of Rinuccini, translated into German. Remembering that
Schütz had received his education in Venice between 1609 and 1612, at a
time when the new style was in the air, we may surmise that his music
was in the Italian style of the first period of opera, full of dramatic
feeling. _Daphne_ was performed in 1627 at the castle of Hartenfels
near Torgau in Saxony for the marriage of Princess Sophie of Saxony and
George II of Hesse-Darmstadt. Opera was introduced in Munich in 1657 by
Kaspar Kerll, writing to Italian texts. In Dresden opera was from the
start (1662) Italian. There was no opera in Berlin before 1700.

The French received the Italians coldly at first, but their opera,
or rather the ballet from which their opera developed, depended for
effect largely upon display. In England the theatres were closed by
the Puritans between 1642 and 1660, and there was no opera before
Purcell’s 'Dido and Æneas’ (1688-1690). But both before and after the
commonwealth a form of dramatic entertainment called the 'masque’ was
in great favor and attracted the attention of a number of composers.
The masque resembled the French ballet, which seems to have come from
the same source; but it far excelled its French counterpart in literary
workmanship and skill. Like the French ballet, however, it was wholly a
private amusement. People of rank and fashion took part in it, usually
disguised. It was generally based on a mythological story and was
made up of dialogue, songs, and dancing, and was always extravagantly
staged. Among the composers who set music to various masques throughout
the century should be mentioned Thomas Campion (d. 1620), Nicholas
Lanier (d. 1666), who is said to have introduced recitative into
England; the brothers William and Henry Lawes, the latter of whom set
Milton’s 'Comus’ to music in 1634; Matthew Locke (d. 1677); and Pelham
Humphrey (d. 1674). The masque can hardly be said to have developed
into opera. The one very great composer England produced during the
century, Henry Purcell, was influenced by it, but his one opera 'Dido
and Æneas’ is almost the only English opera, and immediately after his
death Italian opera flooded London to the exclusion of any other that
might have grown out of the masque.

Meanwhile the oratorio, which sprang into life together with the opera,
had been generally neglected. The first real oratorio, Cavalieri’s
_Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo_, given in Rome in 1600, did not
differ, except in subject matter, from an opera. The personages in the
allegory were all acted; there were scenery and costumes. The same is
true of the oratorio of Steffano Landi and Luigi Rossi. The form began
to differ from the form of the opera only with the works of Giacomo
Carissimi, one of the most famous composers of the century. He was
born near Rome about 1604, was probably trained in Rome, and held the
post of choirmaster at S. Apollinari in Rome from 1628 until his death
in 1674. Trained in Rome and living most of his life there, Carissimi
was under the conservative influence of the church and all his music
shows a musicianship far above that of any of his contemporaries, and
more allied to the lofty perfection of the old polyphonic style. On the
other hand, he did not fail to avail himself of the results of the new
movement. Though in his masses he is a master of smooth part writing,
not unworthy to stand beside Palestrina, in the choruses of his
oratorios, when there is agitated or dramatic feeling to be expressed,
he uses with equal ease a style broken and pointed with rhythm, which
is wholly in keeping with the dramatic ideals of Monteverdi and none
the less careful and artistic. In this certain 'high seriousness’ of
his work Carissimi is in sharp contrast with most of the composers of
his age, who, carried high on the wave of the reactionary movement,
often refused to subject themselves to the discipline of any genuine
musical training and composed merely in a sketchy, unfinished way.
All Carissimi’s work is marked by great finish. He was one of the
few composers of the century who worked seriously to improve the new
recitative style and his influence in this regard was far-reaching.
Then, too, his treatment of orchestral accompaniments was anything but
vague and indefinite. He was the first to differentiate the oratorio
from the opera. In all his oratorios, of which 'Jephtha’ and 'Jonah’
are the most famous, the story is sung in recitative by a 'Narrator.’
There is no action, nor scenery nor costumes, and the chorus is given a
far more important part in the scheme than it ever found in opera. It
was upon the foundation laid by Carissimi that Handel, nearly a century
later, built up his own great oratorio.

Carissimi was, moreover, the first to perfect a form of music known as
the _cantata_, consisting of recitative and arias for solo voice with
figured bass accompaniment, a sort of vocal chamber music which was
also suitable for use in the church. The form was further developed by
Alessandro Scarlatti, and later by Handel.

In Germany the growths of both the oratorio and the cantata were
greatly influenced by the more serious religious temper of the people
and by the intimate personal religious sentiment which was the outcome
of the Reformation. Naturally, the church music of the German composers
was affected by the Italian schools, notably that of Venice, and by
the general movement toward solo and concert style and the opera.
But the chorales which, we have already seen, led to a form of organ
music distinctively German colored all German Protestant religious
music with a spirit that was completely wanting in Italian music of
the same age. The chorale was incorporated into oratorios and into
cantatas. The congregation was given a voice, shared in the musical
expression of most profound and yet most intimate devotional feeling.
By far the greatest of German composers of this time was Heinrich
Schütz (1585-1672), whose _Dafne_ has already been mentioned. Most of
his works were sacred. In the oratorio style belong the 'Resurrection’
(1623), the 'Seven Words’ (1645) and four settings of the story of
the Passion, settings of the Psalms (1619) and the _Symphoniæ sacræ_
(1629-1650). All these works, though full of dramatic feeling, are
intensely religious, and foreshadow the great cantatas and the Passion
of Johann Sebastian Bach, both in their richness of harmony and in
their genuineness of feeling.

                                                            L. H.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[135] B., Nürnberg, 1653; d. there, 1706. See Vol. XI.

[136] B., Helsingör, 1637; d. 1707. See Vol. XI.

[137] See Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, II², p. 127.

[138] See Riemann: _Op. cit._, II², 100 Cf. Chap. IX, p. 245.




                             CHAPTER XIII
                        THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

  The musicians of the century--Henry Purcell and music in
  England--Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli; Domenico
  Scarlatti--The beginnings of French opera: the _Ballet-comique de
  la reine_; Cambert and Perrin--Jean Baptiste Lully--Couperin and
  Rameau--Music in Germany: Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera;
  precursors of Bach.


Three-quarters of the seventeenth century produced hardly more than
experimental music. The enthusiasm of the Italians found on every hand
new ways for the development of music and they were in every branch
the innovators and the bold discoverers. In every country of Europe
their influence was felt, their guidance followed. They were the models
for the time. And, at the end of the century, what they had sown bore
fruit, both in their own country and in England, Holland, Germany, and
France. At the end of the century lasting achievement takes the place
of experiment, there are a dozen composers in every branch of music who
no longer speak with hesitation but with certainty, whose music is well
built and clear and free in style. Their activities pass well into the
next century, but they are firmly rooted in the seventeenth, and their
work should be regarded as the harvest of that time of sowing. Growing
among them were the greatest of all composers, John Sebastian Bach, and
his great compeer Georg Friedrich Handel.


                                   I

England alone produced a truly great composer whose lifetime fell
within the century, Henry Purcell.

                    [Illustration: HENRY PURCELL.]
                       _After an old engraving._

The date of his birth has not been exactly determined. He died on
the 21st of November, 1695, at the age of only thirty-seven years. As
a boy he sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal, and when his voice
broke he was still retained as a supernumerary. In 1680 he succeeded
Dr. John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and held the post until
his death. He began to compose when very young and in his brief life
set his stamp upon almost every form of music then known, though he
found the first expression of his remarkable genius in music for the
stage and incidental music for plays. In this branch his opera 'Dido
and Æneas’ (1689-1691) maintains the highest excellence. What is
most striking in it, and, indeed, is most striking in all Purcell’s
music, is the genuineness of feeling. He gave his music lasting life.
There is little trace of empty formalism or of arid conventionalism
which stifled the music of so many opera composers of his day. Its
freshness is in no way stale to-day. His use of harmony as a means of
emotional expression is far ahead of any of his contemporaries, and
he had a gift of spontaneous melody which has never been excelled by
any other save perhaps Schubert. The death song of Dido in the opera
just mentioned is nearly as startling in relation to the time in which
it was written as Monteverdi’s 'Lament of Ariadne.’ A few measures of
most expressive recitative lead to the song, which, characteristically
English, is indeed a song and not the stiff aria of the day. It is a
striking example of Purcell’s skill in working over a ground bass, in
this case a descending chromatic phrase full of melancholy and pathos.
'Dido and Æneas’ is the only English opera in the strict sense of the
word. Unhappily the rich promise of a national school of English opera
which it contains was never fulfilled. Almost immediately after the
death of Purcell Italian opera invaded London and in 1711 was firmly
established there by Handel.

Purcell wrote a great deal of music for the theatre, but for the most
part in the form of songs and instrumental dances. Among the plays for
which he wrote music should be mentioned Dryden’s 'King Arthur’ and
'The Indian Queen’; 'Diocletian,’ 'The Fairy Queen,’ and the 'Tempest.’
His most important instrumental works are a set of twelve sonatas for
two violins, bass and figured bass for harpsichord, published in 1683,
and another similar set of ten published after his death by his widow,
and eight suites for harpsichord. All these are in keeping with the
general style of the time. The sonatas, the first set of which appeared
in the same year as Corelli’s opus 1, are marked by seriousness which
tends toward heaviness in comparison with Corelli’s work. They are
less spontaneous than his vocal music, but they are of high artistic
merit. The works for harpsichord are touched by the charm of English
tunefulness and are no less dainty for being conspicuously simple in
comparison with the more elaborate work of the French writers. The
greatest part of Purcell’s work must remain an isolated monument of
great genius, for it had little influence upon the general course of
music in his day. However, his anthems and semi-sacred odes hold an
important historical position, inasmuch as they contain magnificent
choruses, from a study of which Handel obviously and greatly profited.
Purcell was second to none of his contemporaries in technical skill. He
stood above them in musical power, in the fullness and virility of his
ideas, in genuineness and simplicity, in those qualities which elevate
genius above technical mastery and agreeable ease. His music rings
clear and true.


                                  II

In Italy itself, three men stand out most prominently, Alessandro
Scarlatti, his son Domenico, and Arcangelo Corelli. Alessandro
Scarlatti is one of the most brilliant figures of the period. Unhappily
it is but another proof of the futility of opera music of that time
that so little of his work has survived. His productiveness is nothing
short of prodigious. He wrote at least 114 operas and, besides these,
500 cantatas, both for solo voice and for two voices, church music
and oratorios. Born in Sicily and living at two periods in his life
at Naples for several years, he was long held to have added a new
flavor to Italian opera and to have founded a school of opera in Naples
distinct in character from other Italian opera. But, except for the
unusual charm of his personal genius and a higher artistic instinct
than that with which most of his contemporaries were endowed, his music
hardly differs from theirs. Certainly he is one of the most important
figures in the history of music, in that he rounded Italian opera into
smooth, polished shape and left it clearly defined as a model for all
opera composers during the course of the next century. He was born in
Sicily in 1659; the exact place is not known, but his family was of
Tuscan origin. His youth was spent in Rome, where serious traditions of
music still lingered; and there, under what teachers no one knows, he
acquired a thoroughly solid foundation and that light, sure grasp of
technique which shows in his music in striking contrast to the careless
work of many a contemporary then famous. From 1684 to 1702 he was in
Naples, occupied principally in composing operas for production at
the royal palace or at the theatre of San Bartolomeo. The Neapolitan
taste was frivolous and, there can be little doubt, was harmful to the
composer, by nature inclined rather to comply with it than to defy
it. Yet by 1702 Scarlatti could stand it no longer, and for nine years
lived in various of the big Italian cities, always writing operas,
successful and highly honored. He returned to Naples in 1713. A few
years later the Neapolitans lost interest in his music and he went
again to Rome. In 1723 he was back again in Naples, quite out of favor
with the public, apparently forgotten by his own generation; and here
he died on the 24th of October, 1725. During the last year of his life
Johann Adolf Hasse, destined to universal popularity as a composer of
operas in the Italian style, was his pupil.

The great number of _da capo_ arias in Scarlatti’s works gave rise to
a belief prevalent for many years that he was the inventor of this
form, which is mainly responsible for the degeneration of Italian opera
into the state of meaningless vapidity in which it is found during the
following century; but the growth of the form and its use can be traced
in the works of his predecessors. He gave to the form, however, its
perfect outline, and, though none of his arias can be said to touch
any emotional depth, they are models of a perfect vocal style never
since excelled, and even to-day are pleasing by the faultlessness of
their structure and the elegant smoothness of their flow. Scarlatti
established this conventional form to the exclusion of all others.
How strongly it prevents dramatic action has already been shown in
a previous chapter; but Scarlatti in establishing it so firmly in
Italian opera was but complying with the demands of audiences of
his time, and should be less blamed for his acquiescence to popular
taste than praised for the beauty with which he was able to clothe
it. He bequeaths to his followers thereby one of the few valuable
accomplishments of Italian opera composers of the seventeenth century,
a form of music wonderfully adapted to show off the beauties of the
human voice.

Moreover, he may be said to have invented the accompanied recitative.
At any rate his opera _Olimpia vendicata_ (1686) gives us the earliest
known examples of it, and, though he used it seldom, that he thought
to use it at all is indicative of his genius, which, not bold enough
to explore the realm of effects in the face of a frivolous public,
might, under more favorable circumstances, have broken free of the
conventions closing tighter and tighter about Italian opera. With his
operas appear the first approximately definite models of the Italian
overture. These overtures when played with the operas to which they
were preludes were called _sinfonie_, but when played in concert apart
from the operas were called overtures. They consisted of three distinct
parts or movements--the first a solid allegro, the second a slow
expressive movement, and the last light and lively. How much the form
had influence upon the development of the symphony is shown by the fact
that several of Haydn’s early symphonies were published under the name
of overtures.

Other works even nearer general oblivion than Scarlatti’s operas are
his secular cantatas. These are less influenced by the demands of the
public, and are in general representative of his ideals. Not only
are the recitative and the arias in smooth, flawless style, but the
accompaniments, frequently enriched by instrumental parts added to
the figured bass, are full of expressive harmony. That they are less
remembered than the operas is due to the fact that the form ceased to
be cultivated after his death. Handel’s cantatas, like his operas, show
the influence of Scarlatti; but Handel’s cantatas, too, are forgotten.

In that he left in his operas a model of perfect form for that style
of opera which was popular and successful during the next century,
his influence was strongly felt, and he was imitated by countless
composers who, unhappily, fell far short of his musicianship. Hasse
was actually his pupil, Handel his follower; they alone were worthy
of their predecessor. His figure is a striking one in the history of
music, both by itself and in relation to the time which cramped and
confined it.

His friend Arcangelo Corelli won a lasting fame as the first great
violinist and composer of music for the violin. He was born at
Fusignano in Italy in February, 1653. During his early life, about
which little is known, he appears to have travelled in Germany and
France, but before 1685 he had settled in Rome, where, save for a few
journeys, he remained till the end of his life in January, 1713. In his
lifetime he lacked neither friends nor appreciation. His works achieved
immediate popularity in all the countries of Europe. Only in Naples,
whither he went in 1708, did he fail to win success. Stories of his
meetings with Scarlatti and with Handel show him to have been a man
of gentle, kindly nature, unspoiled by the homage done him by royalty
and by the first people in Italy. His position in the history of music
is of twofold importance; for not only was he a great player who laid
a firm foundation for the future development of violin technique, but
a composer who summed up in his works what had been done in music for
an ensemble of string instruments, and left models of genuine musical
worth which were to serve composers of instrumental music until the
full development of the symphony.

His works were published in six sets or _opera_, still justly famous.
Sets one and three consist of twelve _sonate da chiesa_; two and four,
of twelve _sonate da camera_. The fifth contains twelve solo sonatas
for violin with bass and figured bass; and the sixth is made up of
_concerti grossi_ for three solo instruments, called the _concertino_,
and an accompaniment for two violins, viola, violoncello, and figured
bass, called the _tutti_. The _sonate da chiesa_ and the _sonate da
camera_ differ from each other more in name than in content. The
_sonate da chiesa_ or church sonatas are, as might be expected,
of rather serious character, the chamber sonatas are more frankly
rhythmical; and, whereas the movements of the former are without titles
and stand as absolute music, those of the latter frequently bear the
names of the dance forms from which we have seen the _sonata da camera_
developed. But the two kinds are closely related. The form in which all
are cast is fundamentally tripartite, with an introductory movement.
The introduction is in a slow, solid style, after the manner of the
old pavan. The first movement proper is in the dignified contrapuntal
style of the allemande, the second in the style of the sarabande--slow
and expressive--and the last is lively and usually in the rhythm of the
gigue. They are all written for three instruments, with figured bass
for organ, harpsichord or lute. What is most striking about them, apart
from their excellent fitness for the instruments for which they were
written, is the compactness of form, the neat balance and proportion
toward which composers had been toiling during the century. Here at
last is mature instrumental music, music that can stand alone, that is
firm and articulate. In the church sonatas, it is true, he sometimes
chokes the life of the music in the contrapuntal web which was still in
his day the high serious ideal of musicians, but the chamber sonatas
are astonishingly free from it. Even more striking is the fine mastery
of form and style shown in the twelve solo sonatas. These, too, are of
the two kinds, church sonatas and chamber sonatas. In them there is no
trace of uncertainty nor of insecure experiment. Master of the violin
as he was, his treatment of the solo passages and his ornamentation
have lost none of their beauty to our ears more than two hundred
years after he wrote them. There is no trace of the slow-moving vocal
style which had so long hampered his predecessors; all is purely
instrumental. In him a great victory was won and a branch of music
established for all time. It is noteworthy, too, that he was guided
by a good taste which restrained him from writing passages merely for
technical display. The feverish desire to astonish audiences, evident
in the works of his famous contemporary, Vivaldi, is nowhere evident in
his own; and, though they may seem to lack fire on this account, they
are the more musical for being the less brilliant. His works still have
their place in the repertories of great violinists. What must strike
the listener is the just proportion between form and content, giving
them a serene dignity; for, as the form is simple, so is the emotion
equable and cool, and there is no empty pretentiousness, on the one
hand, nor inadequacy of means, on the other.

The _concerti grossi_ present a relatively new form. The first eight
are built upon the same plan as the _sonate da chiesa_; the last four
contain dance movements in the style of the _sonate da camera_. In the
eighth is the famous 'Pastorale.’ The term is used as early as 1698
(Lorenzo Gregori: _Concerti grossi_, op. 2) to signify a composition
for two or three solo instruments with more or less elaborate
orchestral accompaniment or background. The solo instruments repeat
what the orchestra plays, with some elaboration and fine shading.
Out of the _concerti grossi_ Torelli and Vivaldi developed the solo
concerto, limiting the concertino to one single violin. In this new
form the solo passages present new material independent of what the
_tutti_ has announced, and are distinct episodes filled with brilliant
pyrotechnics.

                  [Illustration: ARCANGELO CORELLI.]

Corelli and Scarlatti must both be given an important place in the
history of music. Of the two men, Scarlatti had the greater genius,
but he turned it to use in a form of music which could not develop
beyond where he left it, which was radically false and destined to
oblivion. Corelli, on the other hand, composing far less, gave violin
music the secure foundation upon which all later musicians have built,
and left examples of simple instrumental music which still hold their
place by force of their calm, genuine feeling. It is strange to think
of Corelli on tour in Naples some two hundred years ago, sitting
nervous and confused at the head of Scarlatti’s orchestra, stupidly
making mistakes; and of Scarlatti, then at the pinnacle of fame, polite
and kind.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s son, Domenico, was born in Naples in 1685,
during the second year of his father’s stay there. With whom he studied
is unknown, but in his youth he was both in Naples and Rome. His first
work was in Naples. In 1705 his father sent him to Venice with the
great singer Nicolino, and gave him a letter to Ferdinand de Medici in
Florence in which he wrote: 'This son of mine is an eagle whose wings
are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to
hinder his flight.... Under the sole escort of his own artistic ability
he sets forth to meet whatever opportunities may present themselves for
making himself known--opportunities for which it is hopeless to wait in
Rome nowadays.’

In 1708 Handel came to Venice and the two men seem to have gone to Rome
together for a competition on harpsichord and organ before Cardinal
Ottoboni, the generous patron of Corelli. At any rate, the competition
took place and Handel was judged the better organist, while the victory
for harpsichord was undecided. After this the two young men, of the
same age, became warm friends. Handel shortly after established himself
in London, but Scarlatti’s life was always a wandering one. He was
at various times in the service of the Queen of Poland in Rome, as
composer for her private theatre; _maestro da capella_ of St. Peter’s,
where he composed sacred music; in London, producing his operas; in
Lisbon; and, finally, at the court of Spain, where he was appointed
music-master to the princess of the Asturias. After fifteen years in
Spain he returned to Naples, and died there in 1757. He left no money,
but his family was provided for by the great singer Farinelli, who,
likewise, had been many years at the court of Spain in highest favor.

Domenico Scarlatti’s operas and masses are now forgotten, but his
fame as a composer for the harpsichord is immortal. What Chopin and
Liszt did for the pianoforte music of their day Scarlatti did for
music for the harpsichord in his. It has been often said that he was
the founder of the pianoforte style. This is true, unless the French
composer François Couperin shares the honor with him. Of the brilliant
virtuoso style he is unquestionably the founder. His instinct for style
and form made no false step, and his music is astonishingly sparkling
and fresh when played by modern virtuosi on the modern pianoforte.
The works of his French contemporaries, Couperin and Rameau, are
unmatched in delicacy and grace and a most refined sentiment; still
it may be said that their charm to modern ears consists not a little
in an exquisite old-fashioned spirit which breathes from a court life
long since ruthlessly stamped under foot, whereas Scarlatti’s music
compels attention and admiration even to-day by its vigor, flash, and
daring. Moreover, it is free as air from all heaviness of rhythm or
of contrapuntal intricacies and yet is none the less clear-cut and
perfect in form. It is, first of all, virtuoso music. Most of the
pieces demand the utmost speed and lightness of touch. Among the most
difficult devices he frequently employed is the crossing of hands,
by which he obtained instrumental effects hardly less brilliant than
those of Liszt. And yet his music is not all empty display. There
is an epigrammatic clearness about it which has the sparkle of all
genuine wit, irrespective of the time which gave it birth, and at times
there is a masculine touch of poetry, enriched by various expressive
harmonies, notably in one, the most famous of his sonatas, that in D
minor, which is familiar to all concert-goers in the elaborated form
and higher key into which Tausig has transcribed it. Unlike other
composers in his day, he did not set four or five pieces together in a
suite, but kept his pieces separate, and called each one a sonata or
an exercise. Nor did he label any of them with the dainty suggestive
names that became the fashion in France and Germany. They are all short
and all in the same form. Each is made up of two sections, one of which
begins in the tonic and modulates to the dominant, or, if the key is
minor, to the relative major; the other from this key back to end in
the tonic, frequently by way of contrasting remote keys. Both sections
are repeated in their turn. The effect is one of precise balance and
clearness. There are generally two quite distinct figures or even
themes which are employed in such a way as to suggest the sonata form
of later development, the first given at the start in the tonic key,
the second in the second part of the first section in the dominant or
relative major; and the sparkling liveliness of the pieces depends not
a little on the contrast and play of these two distinct figures, their
neat and regular arrangement, and the satisfying return of them in
the second section of the piece. Such an aptness, such a clear-headed
wit is hardly met with anywhere else in music. If the glitter of
Scarlatti’s harpsichord music is sometimes hard, it is never false. It
is the glitter of a diamond, not of tinsel. It has never tarnished.
It flashes brilliantly from an age when much was false--clean-cut,
polished, impervious, and, in its pointed way, defiant.

Thus in Italy three men sum up the seventeenth century and inaugurate
the eighteenth. They were not alone in their day, but their
contemporaries, once equally famous, have for the most part sunk into
an oblivion from which only the enthusiastic historian recovers them.
And even the most gifted of these three, Alessandro Scarlatti, becomes
daily less a substance and more a shade, though what there was of
intrinsic worth in the Italian opera of that time was developed and
adorned by him to stand as a model for Handel, for Haydn and Mozart,
and for Rossini and Verdi. Corelli, his friend, and Domenico Scarlatti,
his son, built with less perishable stuff and on the foundations which
they laid for the branches of music in which they were adept great
monuments have been reared. Their genius and their musicianship were
less great than those of the elder Scarlatti, but their compositions
were of a piece with reality, not, like his, the adornment of a false
and meaningless convention. Hence their music still speaks for itself
to-day, a language sometimes thin, but in the main clear and strong,
whereas others must speak for Scarlatti. In the oratorios of Handel
and in the vocal works of Bach the best of what the Italian opera
composers of the seventeenth century accomplished was perpetuated, and
Scarlatti was unquestionably the greatest of these composers. The seeds
of his genius were thus transplanted from the sterile soil in which
circumstances had forced him to sow them and they bore fruit in strange
forms and alien lands.

So ended the supremacy of the Italians in the history of music. After
the death of Scarlatti the Neapolitan opera became wholly trivial. The
list of composers is long. Some are distinguished by a certain elegance
of style, such as Feo, Vinci, and Cafaro, others by a cleverness in
handling the orchestra, such as Durante, and still others, notably
Porpora and Leo, were very great teachers of singing; but for the most
part they were all as like as eggs and none added anything of lasting
value to music. The comic opera alone had any real life. This, the last
creation of the Italians, was powerful in directing the course of music
and will be treated in another chapter.


                                  III

What Alessandro Scarlatti did for opera in Italy, Lully had done for
opera in France. The French opera, like the English opera, of which
we have the one splendid example in Purcell’s 'Dido and Æneas,’
was of quite distinct origin from the Italian. Whereas the Italian
opera sprang from attempts to restore the method of combining music
and dramatic declamation, practised by the Greeks, the French opera
developed from a form of entertainment that had long flourished in
France and was dear to the hearts of the French people--the ballet.

The famous _Ballet-comique de la royne_ given in Paris at the Petit
Bourbon on the 15th of October, 1581, in honor of the marriage of the
Duc de Joyeuse and Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, sister of King Henry
III, is in a sense the first attempt in France toward what we now
call opera. It was a magnificent spectacle in which songs, choruses,
and dancing played a part. The plan of it was made by Baltasar de
Beaujoyeaulx, whose real name was Baltasarini, groom of the chamber
to the king and the queen mother (Catharine de Medici). The music was
by the Sieur de Beaulieu, whose true name was probably Lambert, and
another composer named Salmon, and the verses were by one named La
Chesnaye. A few excerpts from a contemporary account of the performance
will best illustrate what the ballet was. It was given before the king
and his mother and an assemblage of the highest nobles in France. As
for the overture the writer of the account says: 'After some measure
of silence had been established there came from behind the walls the
sound of oboes, cornets, sackbuts (trombones), and other sweet-toned
instruments.’ After this the Sieur de la Roche, escaping from a garden
at the back of the hall, came and delivered an address before the king.
He was followed by the sorceress Circe, from whom he had evidently
escaped and who was bent on having him back again. But he eluded her
and she returned to her garden. Then three sirens and a triton appeared
and sang a chorus, which was echoed by singers concealed in a golden
arch at the back of the hall. They disappeared and an immense fountain
was drawn upon the stage by two sea-horses; and about the fountain
twelve naiads were grouped, among whom were ladies of highest rank,
covered with gold and jewels. The fountain was drawn round the room,
spouting 'real water,’ surrounded by eight tritons playing lutes,
harps, etc., and by a dozen pages or more bearing lighted torches, all
singing. After this chorus, Glaucus and Thetis took their place in
chairs at the foot of the fountain and sang a little dialogue to which
the tritons answered in chorus. The fountain was then drawn off behind
Circe’s garden, and ten violinists came forward, dressed in white satin
hung with gold, and played for the first dance which was taken by the
twelve pages and the twelve naiads who had returned. Circe appeared,
furious, from her garden and laid all the dancers under her spell so
that they stood motionless, and then she retired to her garden swollen
with victory. Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and Mercury
appeared, descending in a cloud from which he sang. He then stepped
from his cloud and freed the dancers from Circe’s spell, whereupon they
at once took up the dance again. Mercury went back to his cloud and
Circe came again upon the scene and bewitched not only the dancers, but
Mercury himself, whose cloud would not conceal him, so that they all
followed her two by two into her fatal garden. And here the garden was
brilliantly lit, and the spectators saw walking therein a stag, a dog,
an elephant, a lion, a tiger, and various other beasts who were once
men, who now had undergone Circe’s spell. The first act ended here.

The second act opened with a five-part song for satyrs to which the
golden vault replied in echo. A forest advanced across the floor of
the hall, a forest with a rock in the middle and oak trees hung with
garlands of gold, and four dryads to whom the satyrs sang a song of
welcome. The forest went before the king and from its leafy depths
a young dryad delivered a speech to him; then the forest turned to
the left and proceeded to Pan’s grotto. Here Pan welcomed the dryads
with a tune on his flute and they complained to him of Circe who had
imprisoned not only their playmates the naiads, but Mercury himself as
well. Thereupon Pan promised his aid and the wood went away. Entered
then the four virtues, two of whom played upon the lute while the other
two sang a little duet. The golden vault responded with an instrumental
piece in five parts, and then Minerva approached in a car drawn by a
huge serpent, Minerva bringing the head of Medusa. She delivered yet
another address to the king and invoked Jupiter, who, after a few
claps of thunder, descended in a cloud. He stood on his cloud and sang
a song, after which the cloud deposited him upon the floor and he
went off with Minerva to Pan’s grotto. Poor Pan was soundly scolded
by Minerva for having let Circe steal away the naiads and Mercury.
Pan, though replying that the power to overcome Circe belonged alone
to Minerva, none the less started off for Circe’s garden followed by
eight satyrs armed with knobbed and thorny clubs. Minerva went along,
too, to the assault, but Jupiter was left alone on the stage. Once
before Circe’s stronghold, that wily lady harangued her assailants
and made fun of Minerva and of Jupiter. To Jupiter she said: 'If any
one is destined to triumph over me, it is the king of France, to whom
you, even as I, must yield the realm you possess.’ Minerva and her
heroes broke down the door of Circe’s garden and Jupiter struck the
lady herself with a thunderbolt, who thereupon fell senseless to the
floor. Minerva got possession of the magic wand, released those who had
been chained by Circe’s spell, and at last restored Circe herself, who
joined with her to lead a procession of all who had taken part in the
play around the hall. Then followed a grand ballet before the king.

This performance of the _Ballet-comique de la royne_ lasted five hours
and a half and the cost of producing it was more than three million six
hundred thousand francs. This was approximately a century before the
performance of 'Berenice’ in Padua, of which mention has been made in
a previous chapter; but whereas the Italian opera degenerated into a
scenic display, the French opera resulted from a cutting down of lavish
extravagance and uniting the various scenes and choruses with musical
declamation.

The ballet remained the favorite diversion of the French court down
to the middle of the seventeenth century, though the splendor of this
_Ballet-comique_ was never reproduced. Though it approached what we now
call opera, it remained differentiated from opera in a few fundamental
points. Parts were taken by members of the court society, the whole
entertainment was planned to flatter the king so that the lines spoken
by the players were often directed to the monarch in the manner of
Circe’s lesson to Jupiter which we have just quoted, and there were
long addresses without music and without relation to the plot of the
ballet.

In 1645 and 1646 Cardinal Mazarin invited Italian singers to give an
exhibition of their opera in Paris. They were coldly received. In
Perrin’s famous letter to his protector, the Cardinal de la Rovera,
April 30, 1659, the Italian music was likened to plain-song and airs
from the cloister. Yet it was with the aim of making an opera for the
French on the plan of the Italian opera that Perrin wrote his Pastoral
in 1659, for which Cambert composed the music. This pastoral in music,
called sometimes _L’opéra d’Issy_, was performed at Issy near Paris
with great success. There was present such a crowd of princes, dukes,
peers, and marshals of France that the whole way from Paris to Issy
was thronged with their coaches. There was not room in the hall for
all who came. Those who could find no place were patient, promenading
through the gardens or holding court on the lawns. By express order
of his majesty Louis XIV, the Pastoral was repeated at the palace of
Vincennes. So French opera was inaugurated.

Of Cambert, who wrote the music, little is known. He had lessons on
the harpsichord from Chambonnières, the Nestor of French clavecinists,
he was organist at the Church of St. Honoré, and following the success
of the Pastoral he was appointed superintendent of music to Anne
of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. For more than ten years after the
Pastoral Perrin and Cambert kept relatively silent. There are a few
drinking songs by Cambert which belong to this time, but the two men
rest in obscurity until the first performance of their opera _Pomone_
on the 19th of March, 1671, at the Tennis Court near the Rue Guénégaud.
In 1669 Perrin had obtained from Louis XIV the permit 'to establish
throughout the kingdom academies of opera, or representations with
music in the French language after the manner of those in Italy.’
Perrin secured Cambert to write music for these representations, and
_Pomone_, their joint product, is the first opera publicly performed in
Paris. A great part of their singers had been recruited from churches
in the country, but the success of this first performance was enormous.
Only the music of one act has been preserved. It is childish, but at
moments may stand favorably by that of Lully. What makes it so heavy to
our ears are the long passages of dull, unrhythmical recitative which,
from the point of view of music, are vague and ill-formed.

To Cambert and Perrin must be given the honor of having established
French opera. To them was awarded the first royal warrant to give
opera throughout the kingdom. _Pomone_ was an auspicious beginning;
but within a year trouble had come between the two men, and Cambert’s
next opera was set to words by another poet, Gilbert, well known in his
day. And then, apparently as sequence to the split between Cambert and
Perrin, Cambert was himself deprived of his royal rights, the opera was
given into the hands of one sole man, who had long been plotting to
acquire it, and Cambert departed to England.


                                  IV

This one man, Jean Baptiste Lully (or Lulli), was born in Florence
or near there in 1633. He had come to Paris when a boy of twelve or
thirteen in the suite of the Duc de Guise, knowing little of music,
save the guitar. He had been a kitchen boy in the service of Mlle.
de Montpensier, and now, in 1672, was given sole control over opera
throughout the kingdom of France. The way in which he won favor with
the king shows him to have been an intriguer, and the king to have had
little genuine appreciation of music apart from the tunes to which
he danced in the court ballets. Lully was at first admitted into the
king’s band of violins, and later was made head of a special band.
Not only was he a ready composer of dances to the king’s taste; he was
himself a dancer and a mimic. In Molière’s comedy-ballets to which he
was commissioned to compose music he often acted with much-admired
skill. As to his treatment of Molière the less said perhaps the better.
He was a skillful manager, he was always ready with some amusement for
the court. From the start he played for the royal favor, and he won it.
Not only was he given the sole authority to produce operas in France;
Cambert was even denied the right to produce his as well.

Lully had no systematic training as a musician, but he learned from all
he came in contact with; from Cambert, who had written music for the
ballets; from Cavalli, who came to Paris with his _Xerxes_ in 1660;
and again with _Ercole amante_ in 1662, to both of which Lully was
commissioned to set ballets that they might meet with the requirements
of French courtly taste. From 1672, when he gained control of the
opera, to his death, in 1687, he wrote an opera, a _tragédie lyrique_,
every year. His manner of composing, according to Lecerf de la Viéville
(1705) was as follows: 'He read the libretto until he knew it nearly by
heart; he would then sit down at his harpsichord, sing over the words
again and again, pounding the harpsichord; his snuff-box at one end of
it, the keys dirty and covered with tobacco (for he was very slovenly).
When he had finished singing and had got his songs well in his head,
his secretaries, Lalouette or Collasse, came, and to them he dictated.
The next day he could hardly remember what he had dictated.’

Lully was a clever, exceedingly intelligent man, a good actor, a good
clown, a good dancer, an unscrupulous plotter, an iron disciplinarian.
Not only did he write the music to his operas, he superintended and
often remodelled the libretti furnished him by Quinault, the poet of
his own choosing. He was indefatigably painstaking. He coached the
singers even to the way they should enter and leave the stage, and he
drilled the orchestra so that it had a precision, the traditions of
which endured for more than a century. He was not a great musician.
One may believe that he left the filling out of his harmonies to his
secretaries, Lalouette and Collasse. His airs and his choruses are in
the ballet style of the century. Only in recitative did he accomplish
anything new. He wrote his operas at the same time Racine was producing
many of his most famous tragedies--Racine, who was a master of verse
and of declamation; and he modelled his recitative according to
Racine’s art of declamation. The great law of it is that it shall be
syllabic, one syllable to one musical tone. Music is here in strict
bondage to words. Lecerf says that the recitative as developed by
Lully is a just mean between tragic declamation and the art of music.
According to L. de la Laurencie[139] a comparison of Lully’s recitative
with the recitative of Carissimi or of Provenzale shows that Lully
proceeded to a clearing of the Italian technique, cutting from it all
the absurd weeds which the taste for _bel canto_ and even musical taste
in the strict sense had let grow in the garden of melody. We have in
the recitative of Lully, then, something that is not music, but a mean
between declamation and music. Often stiff and monotonous, it is only
rarely impassioned and effective. Always the words, the rhyme and the
verse are of paramount importance. In this regard it was so much to
the taste of the French audiences, of the _précieux_, that Lully’s
operas came to be valued far more for their recitative than for their
airs. The recitative became not an artificial bond between airs and
choruses, but the main burden of the opera, as indeed it should be; and
in this respect he is a great reformer and akin to Monteverdi on the
one hand and Gluck on the other. He is the founder of the admirable
French style of declamation. Thus the opera of Lully and the opera
of Scarlatti are strikingly different. Both were bound to a strict
public convention, but Scarlatti wrote for the _bel canto_, Lully for
declamation; the Italians craved the sensuous beauty of the voice in
song and let the drama go; the French demanded intelligent declamation,
and sacrificed music. Of the two the French opera was essentially more
rational and nearer artistic truth, though even in Lully’s lifetime it
became wholly stereotyped; and neither form as it left the hands of its
finisher was capable of further development until infused with new life
by a great reformer such as Gluck.

                [Illustration: JEAN-BAPTISTE de LULLY.]

To Lully as a musician belongs the credit of having given definite form
to his overtures. The so-called French overture as he established it
was generally in two parts or movements--the first slow and serious,
the second lively and in vigorous, fugal style. Sometimes a third
movement recalling the first was added. These overtures were much
admired in their day and during the next century, and the form was
adopted by most of the German composers as the first movement of the
orchestral suite, and by Handel for overtures to his oratorios. Lully
seems to have been most successful in instrumental music of a 'noble
and martial kind.’ Marches from his operas were actually played for
soldiers in the field, and 'when the prince of Orange wanted marches
for his troops, he had recourse to Lully, who sent him one.’ All of
Lully’s airs and especially his dance tunes have a simplicity and a
clearness of outline which secured to them a popularity not forgotten
even to-day. It is music easy to remember, vigorous in rhythm and in
sentiment, positive and definite, often poor in harmony and grace and
never subtle, but on the other hand never vague or weak. As far as it
goes it goes unfalteringly and with a sureness that challenges respect
and is at times superb.

After the death of Lully, early in 1687, French opera subsisted
upon what he had left it. There was no man to take over his supreme
dictatorship and until 1723, when Rameau began to write for the stage,
no operas of any influence were written in Paris. Conventional form was
too strong even for a man like Charpentier, whose musical gifts seem to
have been higher than Lully’s. Desmarets, Des Touches and Campra are
hardly more than imitators of Lully. Lully stands alone in the history
of French opera during the seventeenth century as absolute a despot
in the realm of music as his great patron, Louis XIV, over the lands
of Europe. He won his place by intrigue, he kept it by an enormous
strength of will and perseverance and by shrewd observation of the
court taste.

There was no more genuine critical appreciation of music in France
during the gorgeous reign of Louis XIV than there was in Italy, Germany
or England at the same time. According to M. Combarieu,[140] there was
no more real public than there were true critics--a few wits writing
verses and publishing their dislikes or their flatteries, their naïve
admiration for banal prowess in virtuosity. The mark of the king is on
all music; music for the king’s ballets, for the king’s opera, for the
king’s suppers, for the king’s fêtes, and above it all the haughty,
majestic king. Lully and Racine, Lully and Molière!


                                   V

In salon music courtly elegance shines in miniature. After the death
of Lully a young man grew into prominence who was to win from the king
his own appellation, the Great--François Couperin. He was born of a
family of famous musicians in Paris in 1668. From 1693 he was organist
to the king in the chapel at Versailles, and in 1696 he was elected
organist of St. Gervais, a post which had been held for many years by
members of his family; but though he is said to have been an excellent
organist, his fame now rests upon his skill in playing and writing for
the _clavecin_. He was private teacher to princes and princesses, to
the highest ladies of the land, and never by one note did he offend
against the precise and elegant etiquette in the midst of which he
was formed. He was an exquisite dainty stylist in music, a painter of
delicate miniature portraits. Porcelain is not more fragile than his
music, nor crystals of frost clearer cut. There is no suggestion of
feeling too deep for elegance. A touch of courtly tenderness, a mood of
courtly melancholy are the _nadir_ of his emotion. His little works for
the _clavecin_ are masterpieces of form and style. They never suggest
the great power of music to express the fire of man’s heart and the
struggle of his soul.

Lacking the daring brilliance of Scarlatti’s sonatas, they are none
the less perfectly suited to the thin, frosty instrument for which
they were written. For many years they stood as perfect models of
harpsichord style and their influence can be traced in the works of all
his contemporaries, even in those of J. S. Bach. Four sets of them were
printed in 1713, 1717, 1722, and 1730. There are twenty-seven suites
or _ordres_, each containing a varying number of little pieces which
no longer bear dance names nor emphasize dance rhythms, but are given
suggestive, dainty names after the style of Gaultier and Chambonnières.
Many of them are portraits of court ladies of the time. _La douce
et piquante_, _La majestueuse_, _L’enchantresse_, _L’engageante_,
_L’attendrissante_, _L’ingénue_, etc. Others affect the fashionable
pastoral romance, such as _Les bergeries_, _Le barolet flottant_,
_La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette_; others are bits of delicate
realism, _Les petits moulins à vent_, _Le carillon de Cythère_, etc.;
and a few have highly colored names such as _Fureurs bachiques_ and
_Les enjouements bachiques_. Besides these _ordres_ he published
transcriptions of works by Corelli and Lully which were called
_Apothèse de Corelli_, and _Apothèse de l’incomparable Lully_.

In all his work there is an unblemished purity of style, a charm
of melody, a delicate sense of harmony. They are all very highly
ornamented with trills, mordants, turns, etc., which often sound too
heavy on the modern pianoforte, but which were necessary in music
for the harpsichord with its thin tone and lack of all sustaining
power. His 'Art of Playing the Harpsichord,’ published in 1717, had
an enormous influence. A passage of it almost brings Couperin, court
clavecinist, before our eyes. These are his directions for having a
correct appearance when playing: 'One should turn the body a little to
the right while at the harpsichord. Do not keep the knees too close
together; have the feet parallel, but the right foot a little forward.
One can easily correct oneself of the habit of making faces while
playing by putting a mirror on the desk of the harpsichord. It is much
more becoming not to mark time with the head, the body, or the feet.
One must affect an easy appearance before the _clavecin_, without
looking too fixedly at any one object, nor on the other hand looking
vague. Look at the audience, if there is one, as if one were doing
nothing in particular (this for those who play without their notes).’

Undoubtedly here is a refinement of art which has never since been
equalled, a neatness and precision in every detail; but it brought
with it a self-consciousness and a suppression of virile emotion, made
of music an exquisite toy and of the musician a courtier. Couperin’s
music suffers more by being played on the modern pianoforte than
that of his contemporaries, Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach. The greater
sonority of tone clouds the fragile perfect workmanship. There is in it
no depth of emotion nor daring brilliance to meet the strength of the
new instrument. As music they belong to their time; as works of perfect
art they are imperishable.

Couperin died in 1733, just as the last and greatest of the French
composers of this time, Jean Philippe Rameau, was about to bring out
his first opera, _Hippolyte et Aricie_. Rameau was fifty years old. His
life had been hard and varied. He had been organist in a provincial
town; he had published sets of pieces for harpsichord in Paris; he
had published in 1722 a treatise on harmony, the first of his many
important works on that subject; he had been engaged in writing ballets
for the theatre, and made himself a favorite music-master among ladies
of high rank. At the house of La Pouplinière he had met Voltaire and
with him had written an opera, 'Samson,’ which had been forbidden by
the Academy on the eve of its performance. At last, on the 1st of
October, 1733, _Hippolyte et Aricie_ was produced at the Academy. It
brought a storm of abuse upon the composer who had dared to attempt
more than a slavish imitation of Lully. He gradually won some respect
and continued to write operas, among which _Castor et Pollux_ (1737),
commonly considered his masterpiece, achieved a marked and continued
success. However, no success would silence his detractors. Rousseau
made himself the mouthpiece for those who cried him down. And in 1746,
just when he had succeeded in overcoming the violent hostility of the
Lullists, a company of Italian singers at the _Comédie italienne_
won over a half of the Parisian public so that Rameau found himself
engaged in another and yet fiercer struggle as defender and head of
French music against the Italian invaders. The malice and brutality
of this famous _Guerre des bouffons_ are incredible, but the whole
affair points unmistakably to a state of society in which all critical
judgment had given way to unenlightened prejudiced controversy. Rameau
won but a temporary victory. After his death, in 1764, Italian opera
was supreme in Paris until the arrival of Gluck.

Rameau’s operas are æsthetically different from Lully’s. Less skillful
than Lully in recitative, he far excels him in genuineness of feeling
and in harmony. Rameau was a great musician. His studies in harmony
were profound and far-reaching in their effect, and the texture of
his music was softened and warmly colored by a richness of chords
and modulation. His works for the harpsichord are not so polished
as Couperin’s, but are more virile; and the last set (1736) shows
the influence of Scarlatti. What is most striking about him is his
independence of court life and convention. Lully was backed by the
most powerful monarch in Europe, whose protection assured him success.
Rameau had nothing to hope for from the debauched court of Louis XV, in
spite of the official royal recognition. He withstood the most venomous
attacks alone, and by the courage and power of his own will made
himself head and champion of the music of his country.


                                  VI

At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the
eighteenth, Germany was under the influence of the French and of the
Italians. In Hamburg there was the nearest approach to a national
spirit. Hamburg was one of the most brilliant opera towns, but, whereas
in Dresden, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna the Italian opera was supreme
and Italian singers and Italian composers held sway, in Hamburg
operas were with few exceptions given in German and were furnished by
German composers. It must be said, however, that most of the composers
were strongly under the influence of the Italians or of Lully, and
many of the _libretti_ were translations or adaptations of Italian
_libretti_. Chief among the composers stands Reinhard Keiser, a man
of loose principles and luxurious life, but of extraordinary musical
facility. Apart from a great deal of sacred music, he wrote not less
than one hundred and sixteen operas. It was while he was at the height
of his fame that Handel came to Hamburg.

                 [Illustration: JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU.]

At Hamburg also was Johann Mattheson, first of all a singer under
Keiser, then a conductor and composer. But his compositions have
all been forgotten, and he is important now only as the writer
of 'Foundations for a German Roll of Honor’ and 'The Complete
Kapellmeister,’ both of which are the source of much that is known
about German music previous and up to his time. The Roll of Honor is a
series of short biographies of German composers. Living composers were
asked to write an account of themselves for it. Bach seems to have been
invited to do so and to have declined the invitation. Mattheson is also
remembered for his duel with Handel.

The most prolific of all composers in Germany was Telemann, friend of
Mattheson and Handel, but of his works nothing is remembered. Of more
importance is Karl Heinrich Graun, who was head of the Italian opera in
Dresden and Berlin, and whose _Te Deum_, composed after the victory of
Frederick the Great at Prague (1756), and _Tod Jesu_ are still heard.
As precursor of Bach in the St. Thomas school in Leipzig, Kuhnau is
of interest. He was a staunch musician of the old school, a man of
remarkable learning. In the history of German clavier music he is the
most important figure before Bach. His _Sonata aus dem B_ seems to be
the first piece of clavier music in three movements not dance tunes.
They were published in Leipzig in 1695. In the next year appeared his
'Fresh Clavier Fruit or Seven Sonatas’ and after those his 'Biblical
Sonatas,’ which are surely among the most curious records of music in
an age gone by. They are frankly program music. Each sonata consists of
a number of little pieces illustrative of some story from the Bible.
There are the story of David and Goliath, the story of Jacob and Leah,
the story of Saul and David. It was in imitation of them that Bach
wrote his only piece of program music, the Capriccio on the departure
of his brother to the wars.

J. J. Fux was from 1698 to 1741 a court composer in Vienna, greatly
beloved and admired. He is remembered more as a teacher than as a
composer, and his text book in the form of dialogues _Gradus ad
Parnassum_ was for a century one of the standard books on composition.

In Dresden the figure of Hasse, the Saxon, becomes prominent after
1731. He was perhaps the most successful opera composer of his day.
Probably not a little of his success was due to the glorious singing of
his wife Faustina. Hasse, too, was a friend of Handel and of Bach.

Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, Graun, Hasse, Kuhnau, and a host of
others, all prominent in their day, have been forever obscured by the
glory of J. S. Bach and Handel. As we have chosen Purcell, Scarlatti,
Corelli, Lully, Couperin and Rameau to represent what the musical
genius of England, Italy and France was able to build upon the
foundation of Italian experiment in the first half of the seventeenth
century, so we must choose Bach and Handel to represent Germany.
Germany was a little behind the other nations of Europe to present
what the sum of a century was to her. This was partly owing to the
destruction of the Thirty Years War from which she was slow to recover,
partly because she had no central capital like London and Paris to
foster the best of her native genius. Yet all the experiment, all the
enthusiasm, all the labor of the seventeenth century are gathered up
in the work of her two great sons; all other composers of all other
nations are small beside their genius.
                                                              L. H.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[139] _Le goût musical en France_ (1905).

[140] _Histoire de la musique_, Vol. I.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                        HANDEL AND THE ORATORIO

  The consequences of the seventeenth century: Bach and
  Handel--Handel’s early life; the opera at Hamburg; the German
  oratorio--The Italian period, 'Rodrigo,’ 'Agrippina,’ and
  'Resurrezione’--Music in England; Handel as opera composer and
  impresario--Origins of the Handelian oratorio; from 'Esther’ to 'The
  Messiah’--Handel’s instrumental music; conclusion.


In myriad ways the seventeenth century had wrought a mighty task.
Founding their practice upon the technique acquired by previous
generations, its composers had evolved definite styles of composition,
both in the polyphonic and the monodic schools. The demand for greater
sonority had caused them to exploit the harmonic resources of music
more than before; the perfection of instruments and instrumental
technique had stimulated melodic invention and rhythmic variety, and
this increased technique had in turn been applied to vocal music,
which, beginning with Caccini in 1600, had developed a marvellous
virtuosity demanding ever greater means of display. While the old vocal
polyphony had largely yielded its sway to the more individualistic
art of solo singing, its technique and ideals were preserved in
the instrumental forms of chamber music, which, as we have seen,
crystallized during the course of the century, and, as the same
composers were bound to essay both styles, a union of the two had, in a
measure, been effected.

In such a period of transition there was little chance for ultimate
perfection; it was an age of innovators rather than masters. Yet the
century had produced some great men, too: Alessandro Scarlatti and
Arcangelo Corelli in Italy, Lully, Rameau and Couperin in France,
Schütz, Froberger, and Kuhnau were men of no small attainments.
Their work had sufficient power and charm to gain acceptance for
the new styles and to popularize them. But it remained for another
generation to bring forth two men great enough to make them survive
through posterity, to give them lasting life. Those two men were
Georg Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. It is notable that
both came of the same spiritual stock, that of the Thuringian church
organists--that contemplative, sequestered school of artists,--imbued
with a homely philosophy and influenced by the sweet quietude of German
domesticity,--which wrought for the glory of God and the uplift of the
human soul. Handel[141] and Bach were born within one month of each
other, and within a very short distance, for Eisenach is less than an
hour’s run from Halle, where Handel saw the light of day, February 23d,
1685. They were as nearly contemporaries, in the literal sense, as men
can be--Bach died but nine years before his colleague,--but in spirit
they were generations removed from one another. Curious as it is that
they never in their life met, though well acquainted with each other’s
work, we may find a psychological explanation for the fact in that
Handel represented the spirit and apogee of his age, summing up the
achievements of the generations immediately gone before, while Bach,
penetrating into the very essence of the music of past ages, evolved
from it a new art that should inspire the musicians of generations to
come, that should go surging down through the centuries like a mighty
everlasting stream from which the genius of composers could draw
continuous inspiration without the danger of exhaustion, an art so
great that it had to break all the shackles and restrictions of its
time and build for itself a new system, create a new language.


                                   I

Who shall say which of the two men had the greater talent? Their
difference is one of character, not of degree. Bach, exploring
quietly the resources of his own soul, hardly stirred from his narrow
surroundings; Handel, of infinite flexibility and adaptability,
appropriated every style, every trick, every brilliant effect he
heard, imbuing it with new power. Restlessly he roamed to Berlin and
Hamburg, to Italy, and finally to England, everywhere sweeping up in
his mighty grasp the achievements of men gone before him, indefatigably
composing and rousing a wondering world to new enthusiasms. Bach,
unmindful of the public taste, retiring, profound, inexorable; Handel
constantly trimming his sails to the wind of public favor, achieving
success after success, not by new means, but by using those at his
command with the full power of genius. From early youth he felt the
stirrings of that genius; before he was seven, indeed, he had taught
himself to play upon the harpsichord,--surreptitiously, we are told,
for his father, village surgeon at Giebichenstein, near Halle, intent
upon the social advancement of his son, was so fearful of his son’s
developing a 'non-productive’ talent that he even refused to send him
to school, lest he should learn his notes. Well known is the story of
how admiring friends smuggled the harpsichord into the garret, where
young Georg would delight his heart in the still hours of the night.
No less known, also, are the circumstances of his father’s journey to
the court of Saxe-Weissenfels, where a son by a former marriage was
_valet-de-chambre_ to the duke. Young Handel insisted on following the
carriage on foot until his father relented and took him to the court,
where he came in contact with the duke’s musicians and was permitted
to play upon the organ. It was at the duke’s peremptory advice that
the father finally consented to give his boy a musical training. F. W.
Zachau, the organist of the _Liebfrauenkirche_, which raises its tall
spires in the market-place of Halle, where opposite it we now behold
Handel’s monument, became his master. For three years he was made to
compose a sacred motet every week, by way of exercise. When, in 1696,
Handel was sent on a visit to Berlin, he already astounded musicians
like Attilio Ariosti by his powers of improvisation, though the famous
Bononcini, who was later to become his bitter rival, seems already to
have looked upon the boy with suspicion, for he gave him the difficult
test of playing a newly composed fugue at sight, which Handel promptly
fulfilled. The elector of Brandenburg desired to attach him to his
court and send him to Italy for further study, but to forestall this
he was summoned to return home, and again placed in charge of the
competent Zachau. In the next year his father died, and, obliged to
support himself and his mother, he secured, on probation, the post of
organist at the _Dom- und Schlosskirche_, at the same time entering
the university--that university so closely identified with Protestant
theology--as a student.

Handel’s nature was not one to tolerate the comparative seclusion
and retirement of Halle for long. Moreover, it inclined to a style
of music less austere than that of the Lutheran church--so that when
echoes of quite a different school, joined to reports of brilliant
successes, reached his ears, he gave them ready heed. Such reports
came from Hamburg, now the chief stronghold of Italian opera in
Germany. In order to explain its existence we must for a moment turn
the reader’s mind back to the already related importation of opera
into Germany in 1627 and its first exponent there--Heinrich Schütz.
This event had been followed by operatic performances--in Italian--at
Regensburg (_L’inganno d’amore_, by Ferrari, 1653); Vienna (Antonio
Draghi’s _Alcindo_ and _Cloridia_, 1655); and Munich (Giulio Riva’s
_Adelaida Regia Principiosa di Susa_). But no further attempt at opera
in German was made till the appearance at Hamburg of Johann Teile’s
singspiel, _Adam und Eva_, in 1678. By virtue of this composer’s
efforts Hamburg attained the operatic supremacy of Germany. Names now
all but forgotten, Johann Förtsch, Johann Franck, Johann Cousser, were
staunch pioneers in the cause of German art at this northern output,
though their Germanism no doubt suffered a generous admixture of
Italian influence. The same is true of the work of the triumvirate of
the Hamburg opera--Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann--which held sway
there from the early sixties on. The first of these produced no less
than 116, and probably more, operas for Hamburg during 1694-1734. To
him especially the opera house owed its word-wide fame--to his work
as impresario perhaps more than as composer, for, from _Basilius_
(first performed at Wolfenbüttel in 1693 and the next year in Hamburg)
to _Circe_, his swan song of forty years after, all the works that
were able to arouse enthusiasm in his time are but names to us.
Nevertheless Keiser may well count as having placed German opera upon
a firm foundation. The style of his works, rediscovered in 1810, is
more German than that of his colleagues and, though less remarkable for
rhetorical perfection, compares favorably with Lully’s in the matter of
variety of expression and dramatic truth.

Handel had already met Telemann, Keiser’s colleague, who passed through
Halle in 1701, and it was not unlikely that he received from that
exponent of the operatic style an impulse toward greater melodiousness
than he was likely to receive from Zachau. Agostino Steffani, another
melodist, also visited Halle in 1703. In the same year we see Handel
set out for Hamburg, in order to have himself thoroughly 'made over’
under the influence of its famous operatic school. He joined the
orchestra of Keiser’s Opera House as _violino ripieno_, passing
himself off as a novice, but, when Keiser went into hiding from his
creditors, Handel promptly took his place at the harpsichord and
shone forth as conductor so brilliantly that he was retained upon
Keiser’s return. Here he also met Mattheson, the brilliant composer
and theorist, then slightly older than himself. An anecdote of their
early friendship recounts how the two went to Lübeck to apply for an
organist’s position, but speedily returned when they learned that
the new incumbent was obliged to marry his predecessor’s daughter.
This friendship came to a sudden end when, during a performance of
Mattheson’s 'Cleopatra,’ in which the composer was wont to conduct
and also to sing the rôle of Antonio while Handel substituted at the
harpsichord. Upon one occasion the latter stubbornly refused to yield
his place, after the supposed death of Antonio, to the resuscitated
hero, and a quarrel ensued, resulting in a duel in which it is said
Handel’s life was barely saved by the protection afforded by a brass
button.

It was not long before Handel made his own début in opera: both
'Almira’ and 'Nero’ were produced in 1705. Keiser’s influence is felt
in these works. They are distinguished by much of the melodious charm
which has saved the favorite _Lascia ch’io pianga_ from oblivion. This
rare gem was originally composed as a sarabande in one of Handel’s
early chamber works; its use in the opera preludes what was to become a
common practice with Handel in musical economy. That Keiser was already
jealous of his young rival is evidenced by the fact that he himself
reset the libretto of 'Nero’ and performed it at the Hamburg opera in
place of Handel’s.

We may remind the reader at this point that the German opera in
Hamburg, despite its many incongruities, was the only opera at that
time aiming at dramatic fidelity. Public taste had run to vocalization
pure and simple, and singers were the sole arbiters of operatic style.
In the Hamburg opera the recitatives, which fully explained the story,
were sung in German, while the arias, in the prevailing florid Italian
style, were sung in Italian, as the vernacular was not considered a
suitable medium for vocal display. The orchestra was a combination of
instruments aiming at quantitative rather than qualitative sonority,
the string body consisting of two violin parts, and 'cellos and
basses playing in unison, while the wood wind--chiefly oboes and
bassoons--usually doubled the string parts. What the effect must have
been can be imagined when we consider that in one of Handel’s operas
he used twenty-six oboes, while there were but six flutes, generally
used only as an obbligato instrument. The harmonic basis was furnished,
as in the oldest Italian operas, by the Figured Bass played upon the
harpsichord, which formed the centre of the orchestra. Two other Handel
operas were performed at Hamburg during 1705-1706, namely, 'Daphne’ and
'Florinda.’ In the latter year we already see him on his way to Italy.

In the meantime, however, Handel had essayed another form of
composition then popular in Germany--the passion oratorio. The Lutheran
church had adopted from the Catholic the practice of reciting the
history of the passion at vespers during holy week. This had given
an opportunity to composers for a peculiarly profound religious
expression in music. Heinrich Schütz must be named as the chief
representative of passion music before Bach, though nearly sixty works
of similar character have been preserved to us from before his time.
The narrative was divided into three parts representing Christ, the
Evangelist, and the people, which originally had been sung in chorus,
but, with the rise of monody, the first two were chanted by single
voices. Except a few introductory words, the entire text was made up of
scriptural narrative, but later the beautiful chorale tunes sung by the
Lutheran congregation were interspersed by way of reflective comment.
This all became so fast-bound a convention that when Keiser produced
his passion set to the words of Menantes at Hamburg in 1704 the church
censured him severely for omitting the chorale element. Entirely
original music had been used for the passion service, however, as early
as 1672 by Sebastiani.

Handel’s _Ein kleines Passions-Oratorium_, composed in 1704, was
arranged from the Gospel of St. John, into which he introduced
contemplative airs, instead of chorales. The chorus is mostly in five
parts; the part of Pilate is taken by an alto, Christ by a tenor, and
the Evangelist by a bass. He introduces a more elaborate accompaniment
for the dramatically heightened _ecce homo_ passage, while the biblical
speeches are set in aria form. There are also duets, and a fugato
chorus is sung by the soldiers casting lots for the vestment. The
passion poems written by Brockes about this time were set to music
no less than thirty times between 1712 and 1727 and among the most
important of these is one by Handel written in 1716 while in attendance
upon the elector at Hanover, to which we shall recur later. Suffice it
to say that with every new work, such as Keiser’s, the dramatic element
becomes more prominent. The meditative portions are now allotted to a
definite character, such as 'Daughter of Zion,’ or a 'Faithful Soul,’
to be superseded still later by Mary Magdalen, the Disciple, the
Virgin, etc. It may be said, then, to approach more nearly to the form
of the oratorio, which, as we have seen in a previous chapter, had been
cultivated in Italy by Carissimi and his followers. There, however, it
had so nearly developed into the prevailing operatic form that it was
distinguished from it only by the lack of scenery. The chorus, after
being reduced to mere fragments, finally disappeared as it had done
in the opera. These were the materials from which Handel’s genius was
later to evolve virtually a new form of art.


                                  II

It is to Italy that Handel now turns his steps. That country had
flooded Europe with singers that won the public’s heart wherever they
appeared and even the musicians of Germany could not assail their
stronghold, reinforced by popular approval. An offer by Prince Gaston
de Medici in 1705 had been proudly refused by Handel, unwilling to
assume the position of a servant. He now undertook the journey at his
own expense, and, visiting not only Florence, but Rome, Venice, and
Naples in turn, composed constantly both secular and sacred music.
No less than a dozen solo cantatas--those charming little melodic
sketches, miniature operas, in a sense, consisting of simple recitative
and arioso over a figured bass--were produced at Florence, and upon
his return after a short stay in Rome he produced 'Rodrigo,’ his first
Italian opera. Its overture shows the influence of Lully, being in
the form established by that composer (see Chap. XIII, p. 409) and
forthwith adopted by Handel for all his operas and oratorios. In this
case it closed with a suite of dances, including a gigue, a sarabande,
a sailor’s dance, a minuet, two _bourrées_ and a _passecaille_. The
elaborateness of the accompaniments to many of the arias gave evidence
of Handel’s increased appreciation of brilliant orchestral effects.
'Rodrigo’ was an unqualified success, which was as real as it may
have been surprising to Handel. 'Agrippina,’ produced in Venice,
whither he went in 1708, appealed so strongly to the audience that at
every cessation of the music there were loud cries of '_viva il caro
Sassone!_’ (long live the dear Saxon). This enthusiastic reception of
a German composer argues well for the broad judgment of the Italians,
whose domination of the European musical world at that time was
bitterly resented. But it was not an isolated instance, for twenty
years later another German, Johann Adolph Hasse, was similarly honored,
and subsequent instances are frequent down to our present day, when the
Italian enthusiasm for Wagner is hardly surpassed in Germany itself.

On the other hand, there could have been but little that was strange
to the Italian public in Handel’s work. All through his Hamburg
career he had been influenced by the Italian school. That school had
long departed from the ideals of melodic expressiveness and dramatic
verisimilitude and was now given over to prescribed conventions made
for the benefit of the performer. It had become simply a string of
set arias and recitatives alternated in such a way as to provide the
desired variety of the vocal exhibition. These rules as summarized
by Rockstro,[142] exacted that there must always be six principal
characters--three of each sex. The first woman must be a high soprano,
the first man an artificial soprano, though he is the hero of the
piece. The second man and the second woman might be either sopranos
or contraltos; the third man sometimes was a tenor, and a bass would
be included only when four men were in the cast. In each act all
the principal singers had to sing at least one of the arias, all of
which were in the conventional _da capo_ forms. These were the _aria
cantabile_, _aria di portmento_, _aria di mezzo_, _carattere_, _aria
parlante_, and _aria di bravura_. There had to be always a duet for
the leading man and woman and an ensemble (_coro_) of all the leading
singers at the end.

These limitations are sufficient explanation for the hopeless oblivion
into which the operas of this period, including Handel’s, have
descended. Even of the individual arias only a few are such as to
interest or charm the modern listener. A few melodic gems like _Lascia
ch’io pianga_, _Mio cara bene_ and two or three more are the sum total
that is of value in all this tremendous bulk of operatic works which
occupied the greater part of Handel’s life. Posterity’s verdict is just
in these matters, nor need we feel any sense of regret at the loss,
when we consider the astounding rapidity with which these compositions
were ground out--'Agrippina’ had been completed within three weeks--and
that the technique acquired in their writing must have yielded richer
fruit in those works which remain as the master’s monument. Hence we
need pass but rapidly over the list of operas, _serenate_ and oratorios
composed by Handel during this period. All of them lie within the
domain of Italian influence. He never attempted to develop the form
further or reform it in any way. But, as we shall see later, he used
it as the starting point for the new Handelian oratorio, which was the
outstanding creation of his genius.

The one important fact of Handel’s Italian period is the influence
he received from the composers of that country. While there he
met Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Lutti, Marcello, Pasquini,
Corelli, and Steffani, whom he already knew and who befriended him.
In the genial circle of the 'Arcadian’ academy, in the homes of the
music-loving Marquis Ruspoli and the talented Cardinal Ottoboni in
Rome, he absorbed Italian ideals and acquired Italian technique. In
Rome, where the performance of opera was forbidden by ecclesiastical
authority, he composed _Il Trionfo del tempo e del disinganno_, which
he afterward made over into an English oratorio entitled 'The Triumph
of Time and Truth’ and another serenata _Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo_,
really a cantata for three voices with orchestra, was written in
Naples. This work, however, has no connection with the work of a
similar name which belongs to a later period.

'Agrippina,’ the opera mentioned above, did service in furnishing
melodies for an oratorio, _La Resurrezione_, at once an outstanding
instance of Handel’s transition from opera to oratorio and of his
somewhat ruthless practice of using musical material for widely varying
purposes. The use of Agrippina’s air, both words and music, for the
character of Mary Magdalen is little calculated to recommend Handel’s
early works for devotional expression. But it surpassed in dramatic
intensity anything in that form produced so far, for with the Italian
melodic suavity Handel combined from the first the rich harmonic
sonority peculiar to the Germans, so happily fusing the old polyphonic
and new monodic ideals that many of his early works already 'bear,’ as
Riemann says, 'the stamp of classicism.’ It is interesting to note,
however, that in _Resurrezione_ Handel makes such scant use of his
contrapuntal powers that we find but two brief choruses in the entire
work. It is an open question whether this oratorio was originally
intended for presentation in a theatre, or, minus all action, in a
church; nor is it known whether or not it was ever publicly performed.

After a stay of almost five years Handel prepared to return to Germany,
for, through the good offices of Steffani, who held the post of
kapellmeister to the Duke of Hanover, Handel secured that position as
Steffani’s successor in 1710. As he had, however, already had several
invitations to go to London, then the great stronghold of Italian
opera, he accepted his new post only on condition that he might visit
that metropolis. He did so in the same year and was so occupied and
so carried away with success that he remained six months. As this is
practically the beginning of Handel’s English period, we may preface it
by a few remarks upon the state of music in England at that time.


                                  III

Following the death of Henry Purcell (in 1695), who had produced
thirty-nine English operas, or 'half-operas,’ as Chrysander calls
them, since they consisted of drama interspersed with 'musical
scenes’--music in England had for several years been confined to vocal
and instrumental concerts and comic singing and dancing entertainments.
Thus the beautiful seed of Purcell’s genius had fallen upon barren
ground; the promise of an English school of opera which seemed to
lie in his work remained unfulfilled. Taste had degenerated to such
a degree that the time was ripe for the successful introduction of
Italian opera, the 'exotic and irrational entertainment’ which Johnson
made the subject of his caustic censure. Beginning with 1705 the Drury
Lane Theatre and later the Haymarket became the scenes of triumph for
Italian singers displaying their art in the degenerate works of their
countrymen. With the production of 'Thamyris, Queen of Scythia,’ in
which airs of Scarlatti and Bononcini were used in arrangements by
John Pepusch[143] there came into vogue that confusion of tongues
which Addison ridiculed in the _Spectator_. After commenting upon the
rhetorical absurdities of the erstwhile translations, he says: 'The
next step to our refinement was the introducing of Italian actors into
our opera who sung their parts in their own language at the same time
that our countrymen performed theirs in our native tongue. The king or
hero of the play generally spoke in Italian and his slaves answered
him in English. The lover frequently made his court and gained the
heart of his princess in a language which she did not understand. One
would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dialogues after
this manner without an interpreter between the persons that conversed
together, but this was the state of the English stage for about three
years. At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the
opera and, therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue
of thinking, have so ordered it at present that the whole opera is
performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the language
of our own stage, insomuch that I have often been afraid when I have
seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence of action, that
they have been calling us names and abusing us among themselves....’ A
little further on he says, 'At present our notions of music are so very
uncertain that we do not know what it is we like, only, in general,
we are transported with anything that is not English, so it be of a
foreign growth, let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the
same thing. In short, our English music is quite rooted out and nothing
yet planted in its stead.’

This was indeed the state of things when Handel settled in London. No
wonder, then, that 'Rinaldo,’ composed by him in the space of two weeks
to the words of Aaron Hill, the director of the Haymarket Theatre,
was a tremendous success. The popularity of the music was such that
the stirring march occurring in the score was adapted by the Life
Guards as their regimental march to be used for nearly half a century
thereafter. But we are prone to think that the public’s enthusiasm was
at least equally due to the vocal pyrotechnics of Niccolini Grimaldi,
who, as Rinaldo, electrified his hearers in _Cara sposa_ and many other
splendid arias, and the gorgeous staging, which presented, among other
things, a garden filled with live birds. 'Rinaldo’ held the boards
of the Haymarket for fifteen consecutive nights and was afterward
revived in Hamburg and Naples. When Handel returned to Hanover at the
close of the opera season his taste for the duties of kapellmeister
had evidently been spoiled by his English experience, for he soon
applied for and received permission for a second visit, on condition
that he return within a reasonable time. He went there in November,
1712, and produced another opera, _Il pastor fido_, which was not so
successful.[144] He was as much admired in other directions, however,
as, for instance, when he would play the closing voluntaries at St.
Paul’s Cathedral upon the invitation of the organist, Maurice Greene,
who, it is said, even volunteered to blow the organ so that he might
hear Handel play.

Meantime Handel showed no intention to return to Hanover. Upon the
conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, March 31, 1713, he was commanded
to write music for its celebration by Queen Anne, for whom he had
already written a birthday ode in February of the same year. The _Te
Deum_ and _Jubilate_, largely based on Purcell’s composition of that
name, which is still being annually performed at St. Paul’s, was the
result, and he was rewarded by the queen with a life annuity of £200.
He had not yet made up his mind to end his somewhat prolonged leave of
absence when his patron appeared in London as George I of England,
for, in the meantime, Queen Anne had died and the Hanoverian dynasty
was brought in by the Whigs, to whom the Peace of Utrecht and Queen
Anne, both sources of Handel’s favor, were most obnoxious. Naturally
Handel was now in disfavor at court, but, through the good offices of
his friend, the Baron Kielmannsegge, matters were adjusted in this
wise. Handel was persuaded to compose a series of short instrumental
pieces to be played in a barge following the king during a nocturnal
excursion upon the Thames. This 'Water Music’ so pleased the king that
he inquired as to its composer, and, finding that he was none other
than his former kapellmeister, demanded him into his presence to bestow
upon him a pension equal to that which he had received from Queen Anne.
His engagement as music master to the daughter of the prince of Wales
soon brought his income up to £600. In 1716 he accompanied the king on
a visit to Hanover and there composed his famous Brockes’ passion _Der
für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus_.

Further impetus for the composition of sacred music came to Handel
through his appointment as chapel-master to the wealthy duke of
Chandos, who lived in extraordinarily magnificent style at his palace,
Cannons, in Edgeware, where he had built a private chapel after the
Italian manner. With a splendid organ, good singers, and competent
orchestra at his command Handel was in a position to furnish fittingly
magnificent music. Here he composed two _Te Deums_ and the twelve
Chandos Anthems set for chorus and solos after the style developed
since Purcell, in which we may see the root form of the English
oratorio soon to follow. The first of these, indeed, followed soon
after. It was a setting of a text by Humphrey arranged from Racine’s
'Esther.’ Much of the music was taken from his earlier Passion, though
its former use was radically different. After its original performance
at Cannons in August, 1720, when the duke made Handel a present of
£1,000 as a token of his appreciation, 'Esther’ was performed several
times in public. The _serenata_ 'Acis and Galatea’ also belongs to the
Chandos period, which was the stepping-stone to Handel’s final and
greatest mission, the creation of oratorio. First, however, we must
briefly review the remainder of his operatic career.

The Royal Academy of Music, formed for the production of Italian opera,
engaged Handel’s services in 1719, as well as those of the celebrated
Bononcini, who now also took up his residence in London.[145] As
impresario Handel visited Dresden, where Italian opera flourished,[146]
in order to secure a first-class company of singers, among whom were
the famous male sopranos Senesino and Berselli, and Signora Salvai.
'Radamisto’ was the first opera of Handel’s to be performed. It created
a sensation which was without precedent in England. It is difficult
for us to comprehend the success of this work, dead as it is to-day.
Nevertheless, the applause was tremendous, the theatre was packed
to the doors, and persons were finally allowed to sit on the stage.
The critics considered it superior to anything yet seen on an English
stage, and Handel himself considered one of its arias, _Ombra cara_,
the best he had ever composed. Whatever our opinion to-day, there is no
question that many of the forty-odd operas of which 'Radamisto’ was the
first were far superior to those of any of his contemporaries. Indeed,
his star shone so brightly that it dimmed the light of every other upon
the operatic firmament of Europe. Two of the operas, 'Rinaldo’ and
'Radamisto,’ deserve special mention for breadth of conception as well
as intrinsic musical value. In these two Handel has reached at least
a degree of dramatic power. He has treated with consummate skill the
various sources and degrees of human passion and led his audience into
a carefully woven web in which they became partakers in the subtleties
of anxiety, joy, anger, and pathos. The remaining forty or so we may
dismiss with a mere mention. _Floridante_ (1721), _Ottone_ (1723),
_Flavio_ (1723), _Giulio Cesare_, _Tamerlano_ (1724), _Alessandro_
(1726), _Riccardo_, _Primo_, _Re d’Inghilterra_ (1727), all produced at
the Royal Academy, are simply names to us. They have to-day not even a
historical significance.

Of interest because of the story connected with it is _Muzio szevola_,
in which the third act was written by Handel, the other two being
supplied by his rivals, Ariosti and Bononcini. Ariosti, naturally, was
out of the running, but the acts by Bononcini and Handel, both of whom
had hosts of partisans, now became the subjects of a heated and general
controversy which caught the entire English society in its whirl. The
affair reminds of the war of Gluckists and Piccinists which at a later
period set all Paris a-flutter, but, while in that case a general
principle was at stake, the personal merits of the two composers were
the only issue here. The triviality of the discussion is reflected in
the contemporary verse of John Byron, the Lancashire poet:

    'Some say, compar’d to Bononcini,
    That Mynherr Handel’s but a ninny;
    Others aver that he to Handel
    Is merely fit to hold a candle--
    Strange, all this Difference should be
    ’Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.’

The public soon surfeited of this affair, and, indeed, of Italian opera
altogether--the Academy became defunct in 1728. But Handel stubbornly
held out. He formed a partnership with Heidegger, the manager of the
Haymarket, risked his all, and with mad industry continued to supply
an imaginary demand. Late in that year he hurried to Italy, stopping
at Halle to visit his old mother, now stricken with blindness, on the
way, and incidentally came to know the Neapolitan school of opera
at its apogee under Scarlatti. He returned to London with a fresh
personnel for the Academy, and during the following four seasons
produced 'Lotario’ (1729), 'Partenope’ (1730), 'Poro’ and 'Ezio’
(1731), 'Sosarme’ and 'Orlando’ (1732). Here the venture lagged.
Bononcini’s open rivalry in another theatre aggravated the situation,
and various dissatisfactions, squabbles with singers, etc., which need
not occupy us here, resulted in the dissolution of the partnership and
the evacuation of the field in the enemy’s favor.[147] After a second
trip to Italy another attempt was made by Handel alone, in a theatre
in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, and later in Covent Garden, where, besides a
new version of 'Il Pastor Fido,’ 'Terpsichore’ and six more operas, he
produced 'Alexander’s Feast,’ composed to the words of Dryden’s ode.
During 1735 and 1736 Handel was troubled with illness; the following
year saw him bankrupt. Cuzzoni, and Faustina, the wife of Hasse, those
rivals whom Handel had propitiated by diplomatically composing music
for both in one opera that should show their several excellencies
without outshining each other; Senesino, the spoiled child of the
London public, by offending whom Handel had alienated his aristocratic
friends; the wonderful Farinelli, and all the Italian crew left England
in disgust. Handel himself, worn out by renewed efforts as composer
and impresario, was forced to seek recuperation in Aix-la-Chapelle.
After his return he made several more feeble essays at opera, of which
'Imeneo’ (1740) and 'Deidamia’ (1741) were the last. The failure of the
last years was in a measure offset by the success of a benefit concert
given in 1738 at the instance of loyal friends. Moreover, the fact
that Handel’s statue was erected in Vauxhall Gardens at this time--an
unprecedented honor for a living man--betokened the high popular regard
for his genius.


                                  IV

The glories of that genius were in fact yet to be unfolded in their
fullness, and in a field hitherto barely touched. Thoroughly chastened
by his late failures, Handel gradually reached the conclusion that
'sacred music was best for a man in failing years.’ Chrysander
describes how, toward the end of his operatic activity, he began to
comprehend his true mission to be 'the union of the entire musical
art, secular and ecclesiastic, of the preceding centuries in the form
newly created by him (the oratorio).’ Whether we are skeptical about
the sincerity of Handel’s philosophy or not, he certainly had had ample
opportunity to feel the public’s pulse. As early as 1732 Aaron Hill
had written him urging that 'the English language was soft enough for
opera and that it was time the country were delivered from Italian
bondage.’ That which now fastened Handel’s attention upon the oratorio
was more than anything else the changing taste of the English public,
which primarily meant nothing but a demand for opera in English--a
reaction against the incomprehensible Italian warble, and the
falseness, the dramatic absurdity of the prevalent school of opera.[148]

As we have already pointed out, the immediate source of the Handelian
oratorio lay in the Italian opera. 'Though externally the course of
Handel’s career till 1740 was determined by the composition of opera,’
says Riemann,[149] 'in retrospect it appears as a preparation for
oratorio, and all his activities resolved themselves into that.’

His previous essays in Italian and in German oratorio (_La
resurrezione_ and the Brockes’ Passion) would seem to portend a fusion
of the two forms. Another important ingredient, however, was the sacred
music of Purcell, the imitation of which--in Queen Anne’s birthday
ode, the Utrecht Te Deum, etc.--had led Handel to form a style of
choral composition. For the outstanding difference, the distinguishing
characteristic of Handel’s oratorio is the essential employment of
the chorus, which rises to ever greater eminence till at last in the
crowning works of the master, in the 'Messiah’ and in 'Samson,’ we
see a grand choral drama interspersed with occasional solo passages.
Handel had by that time conceived a choral fabric of such stupendous
dimensions as would give the oratorio a place among the grandest art
forms in existence.

                [Illustration: GEORG FREDERICK HANDEL.]
                 _After a painting by Thomas Hudson._

The Chandos Te Deums and anthems were the next step in that direction,
and 'Esther’ represents the foundation upon which the gigantic
structure of the later works was raised. It was 'Esther,’ indeed, which
gave the direct impulse to the most momentous transition in Handel’s
career. That oratorio, originally composed for the chapel of the duke
of Chandos, was revived, with action, scenery, and costume by the
children of the Chapel Royal in Westminster. It was twice repeated
in a tavern in the Strand, and again performed without authority in
April, 1732, 'at the Great Room in Villar’s Street, York Buildings,’
at five shillings a head. Always alive to business advantages, Handel
immediately announced a performance of it at his own opera house for
the second of May, 'by a great number of voices and instruments.’ The
acting of sacred oratorio had been forbidden by the Bishop, hence
the advertisement said that 'there would be no Acting, but the House
will be fitted up in a decent Manner for the audience.’ Handel had
enlarged for this occasion the choruses and the orchestration, which
now consisted of five violins, viola, 'cello, double bass, two oboes,
two flutes, two bassoons, harp, theorbo, harpsichord, and organ--a
combination which appears surprisingly modern in comparison with the
freak proportions of some of the earlier operas.

The unusual success of the experiment was no doubt responsible for
the next effort of this kind, namely 'Deborah,’ performed in 1733, at
double prices, which circumstance militated against large audiences and
fanned the flame of opposition then raging about Handel. In the same
year 'Athalia’ was produced in Oxford, in which Handel came very near
the form of the German chorale cantata. 'Deborah’ and 'Esther’ were
also revived there with success.[150]

In 'Esther’ we divine the spark of Handel’s future greatness. In other
works, too, there are isolated numbers that touch the high-water mark
of beauty, but in the whole of any of these there is little unity; the
single numbers do not hang together, the whole scheme does not suggest
homogeneity of conception or convey the poignant religious feeling, the
purposeful intensity of the later works.

With these qualities we meet for the first time in 'Saul,’ composed
in 1738. This, says the admiring Rockstro, 'surpasses even the finest
scenes presented in either of the three earlier works,’ and he
enthusiastically points to the Song of Triumph in the first act with
its picturesque carillon accompaniment, marking out each successive
step in the procession, while the jealous monarch bursts with envy, the
wailing notes of the oboes and bassoons in the 'Witch’s Incantation,’
the gloomy pomp of the terrible Dead March, and the tender pathos of
David’s own personal sorrow, so clearly distinguished from that felt by
the nation at large as some of its dramatic virtues.

'Israel in Egypt,’ Handel’s next work, is, besides the 'Messiah,’ the
only purely epic oratorio in which the chorus becomes the protagonist
of the drama, and we are inclined to consider these two the greatest
of all. That it was in advance of the public taste of the period is
indicated by the poor reception accorded to 'Israel’ upon its first
performance in 1740. It was considered so heavy that it had to be
performed the second time with interpolated songs to lighten it up.
Despite the fact that it was put together in a total of seventeen days,
that it consists to a large extent of the work of other men (sixteen
of the thirty-nine numbers are plagiarized), and that it represents
another instance of Handel’s peculiar handicraft in reutilizing his own
creations, it exhibits qualities which hardly any other of his works
possesses in so great a measure. Instead of the stereotyped harmonic
structure of dominant-tonic, subdominant-tonic, which stamps so much
of his work as tedious and antiquated, we have here rich chromatic
progressions and colorful modulations; the clear-cut note-for-note
harmony is varied by a seething polyphonic web which eloquently betrays
Handel’s early fugal training, a polyphony as diverse almost as that
of the _a capella_ masters of the past, but resting firmly on a pure
harmonic foundation, euphonious, sonorous, guided by solid laws of
progression, but unrestrained in its freedom of movement. The chorus
'They loathed to drink,’ adapted from one of his own organ fugues, is a
fine example. It is in moments like these that Handel shows his kinship
to his great countryman, Bach. The colossal double choruses in which
every resource of vocal polyphony and harmonic power seems exhausted
are the most noted features of 'Israel in Egypt.’

Handel’s reprehensible practice of appropriating the compositions of
other, and often obscure, composers has been much discussed. To a
modern artistic conscience there is no excuse for such wholesale theft.
How far it was justified by usage we are not able now to determine. At
any rate we are surprised at the absence of protest on the part of the
composers of the pilfered works. It is true that by utilizing their
material Handel often saved such compositions from certain oblivion,
and that in handling it his masterful touch was such as to sanctify
even dross. Moreover, the original parts are usually far superior
to the appropriative ones. The only plausible explanation for the
procedure can be found in the feverish haste with which he produced
piece after piece, which would indicate an extraordinary rapacity
for success--and probably material gain--an unsympathetic trait of
character unfortunately associated with others as repugnant.

In 'Israel’ a Stradella _serenata_ furnished the material for 'He
speaketh the word,’ 'But as for his People,’ and 'Believed the Lord.’
The antiphonal effect desired by Handel was most conveniently provided
by the two orchestras in Stradella’s work, which represent the two
rival parties of musicians serenading the lovers’ mistress. 'The Lord
is a man of war’ represents a most ingenious form of plagiarism, for
the voice parts are taken from a work by Erba, but the accompaniment
figure is from Urio’s _Te Deum_. Such artful utilizations and welding
of foreign materials into a homogeneous and impressively artistic whole
reveal Handel as the master workman of his time. Many other instances
could be cited, but we content ourselves with the pleasant one as
disposing of the matter.

Without question, the pinnacle of Handel’s creative mission was
reached with the next oratorio--'The Messiah’--on which perhaps more
than all the other works taken together rests Handel’s place in the
heart of modern music lovers. That monumental work was produced
between August 22 and September 14, 1741, a period of twenty-four
days! The compiler of the libretto was Charles Jennens, the quality
of whose other literary performances have cast considerable doubt
upon his claim to the origination of the altogether admirable plan.
His comment on Handel’s setting throws light on his conceited nature
as well as upon the firm independence of the composer: 'He has made
a fine entertainment of it,’ says Jennens, 'though not near so good
as he might and ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made
him correct some of the present faults, but he retained the overture
obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel,
but much more unworthy of the Messiah!’ Posterity has decreed otherwise
with respect to the comparative merits of book and music. At any rate,
the former is well-nigh ideal in the unity of thought and intensive
continuity with which the story of the Saviour’s life is unfolded from
the prophecy to the last things.

We have called 'The Messiah’ an _epic_ oratorio. As there is, as
Schering[151] says, but a series of contemplative choruses, arias, and
recitatives on the 'Messiah’ idea, its psychological connection with
the German cantata is much closer than with the Italian oratorio. As
we have observed, Handel had been getting away more and more from the
operatic style. Both because of its form and because scriptural words
only are used in it, we may, with Riemann, consider it as one great
anthem. The work is too well known to require extended comment. Let us
only remind the reader of the exquisite beauty of such lyric passages
as 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ 'How beautiful are the feet,’
and 'Behold and see’ which are among the rarest gems of aria form in
our possession. Powerful and passionate expressions such as occur in
'The people that walked in darkness’ are as rare in the literature of
dramatic music, while the highly dramatic recitatives like 'Thy rebuke
hath broken’ are, without question, one of the completest realizations
of the ideal of Peri and Monteverdi.[152] The glorious choral effects
in the Hallelujah chorus, the stirring polyphony, now simultaneous,
now imitative, reflect a potency and spiritual elevation that will
perhaps never be surpassed. Lastly, let us not forget the beautiful
Pastoral Symphony in which the exquisite Calabrian melody, the song
of the _piferari_ that Handel had heard in the early days at Rome, is
introduced.

'The Messiah’ was first performed on April 13, 1742, in Dublin, whither
Handel had gone upon the invitation of the duke of Devonshire, lord
lieutenant of Ireland. It was given for the benefit of a charitable
society and was well received. When in March of the following year
it was performed in London, the audience, including the king, was so
affected by the Hallelujah chorus that at the words 'For the Lord
God omnipotent reigneth’ it instinctively rose. Thus it has remained
customary in England for audiences to stand during the performance of
that number.

A number of other oratorios followed in regular succession: 'Samson’
in 1741, 'Joseph’ in 1743, 'Semele’ in 1744, and 'Belshazzar’ and
'Hercules’ in 1744. After an eighteen-months’ period of inactivity
following another financial crisis, came the 'Occasional Oratorio,’
thus named, according to Chrysander, 'because its creation and
performances were occasioned by peculiar passing circumstances,’
and 'Judas Maccabæus,’ 'Joshua’ (1747), 'Solomon’ (1748), 'Susanna’
(1748), and 'Theodora’ (1749). By this time the excessive popularity
of oratorio had waned also and 'Theodora’ was so poorly attended
that Handel remarked bitterly that the Jews (who had patronized his
oratorios on Hebraic subjects quite largely) would not come because
the subject was Christian, and the ladies stayed away because it was
virtuous. Considering the notorious state of Harry Walpole’s society we
may better understand this jest.

'The Choice of Hercules,’ a secular oratorio (1750), and 'Jephtha,’
composed in 1751 and performed in the following year, closed the
series. During this time Handel was afflicted with a disease which
eventually robbed him of his sight. Three operations for cataract were
of no avail and he remained blind, or nearly so, for the remainder of
his life. (It is a curious coincidence that Bach at the end of his life
suffered a similar fate.) Nevertheless he labored on. The practice
of playing organ concertos between the parts of his oratorios, which
was a regular custom with him, he continued, probably now they were
purely improvisations, as, indeed, they had been, with few exceptions,
theretofore. Those which he wrote down seem to have answered the
purpose merely of providing material at times when inspiration lagged.


                                   V

Handel’s instrumental music is, like Bach’s, based on the solid German
fugal technique, but, unlike that master’s, it is strongly influenced
by Italian violin music, and especially by that of Corelli. It is
characterized by distinguished simplicity, clearness of outline and
terseness of utterance. By virtue of their broad thematic formation
and the direct force of their expression, his violin sonatas, trio
sonatas, and _concerti grossi_ are superior to those of Corelli. He
wrote also a number of pieces for the harpsichord, and as early as
1720 had published 'Lessons for the Harpsichord,’ which was reprinted
in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Holland. Before 1740 he composed
no less than twelve sonatas for violin or flute with Figured Bass,
thirteen trio sonatas for two violins (oboes or flutes) and bass,
six _concerti grossi_, known as the oboe concerti, and five other
orchestral _concerti_, twenty organ _concerti_, twelve _concerti_
for strings, and many suites, fantasies, and fugues for piano and
organ. But it is not evident that he attached great importance to his
instrumental works. He regarded them rather as great storehouses of
material upon which he drew (as we have seen) at will for his larger
vocal compositions.

The last of Handel’s labors were the production of the English
version of 'The Triumph of Time and Truth’ (originally composed in
1708) at Covent Garden in 1757,[153] and the conducting of the annual
performance of the 'Messiah’ at the Foundling Hospital in London.
This charitable labor, as well as his support of the fund for helpless
musicians and other acts of benevolence, betokens Handel’s generosity.
He attended another performance of his most popular oratorio at Covent
Garden, April 6th, 1759, eight days before his death, which occurred at
his house in Brooks Street on the fourteenth of that month. The master
was buried in Westminster Abbey among the nation’s great. Englishmen
may well claim him as one of their own, notwithstanding his German
birth and parentage, for not only had he become a naturalized British
subject in 1726, but he had entered thoroughly into the spirit of
British society and adapted himself to its habits of mind. Throughout
its later period his career was closely identified with the British
crown. Upon taking the oath of allegiance he became officially composer
to the court. As such, upon the coronation of George II in 1727,
he composed four great anthems for the occasion, and conducted an
exceptionally large orchestra, in which a double bassoon, constructed
under Handel’s supervision, was used for the first time. Again, in
1737, he wrote a deeply affecting mourning anthem for the burial
of Queen Caroline, and, altogether, he came to share in an unusual
degree the patriotic veneration of the English people. Moreover, his
ideals were in a large measure shaped by English public opinion. It is
doubtful, indeed, whether his work would ever have attained its great
lasting value had it not been turned away from the channels of Italian
opera by the sheer force of popular taste. What his genius would have
brought forth had he, like Bach, remained within the local sphere of
his birthplace, is an interesting speculation.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Handel’s fame increased steadily until the time of his death. Though
the opposition against him had lost much of its force, it was a more
or less constant irritation and embarrassment to him till late in his
life. His own character, his irascible temper, and his stubbornness
no doubt were in a measure responsible for this. But men who are
aggressive and successful not uncommonly incur the wrath of jealous
rivals, and few men have been as successful as Handel, notwithstanding
his repeated failures. He was a big man, built on a large scale both
mentally and physically--he rose to heights rarely attained by men of
his profession, and it was inevitable that his pride should sometimes
go to the length of arrogance. Many are the anecdotes testifying to his
tyrannical nature, his ruthless manners, his ponderous pomposity, his
abnormal appetite. Some of all that is reflected in his work. We often
hear the vain, self-sufficient boor through the interminable roulades
and runs, the ponderous chords, the diatonic sonorities of his scores.
On the other hand, the man of the world, the successful courtier, the
shrewd _homme d’affaires_ shines through. As Maitland says, 'Studying
all but a very few exceptionally inspired pages of his works we remain
conscious of the full-bottomed wig, the lace ruffles, and all the
various details of his costume.’[154]

But those two pages are enough to place him among the greatest of
the great. If we can justly say that he sums up the achievement of
his own generation of music, as far as it corresponds to the taste
of the period, it must not be thought that he passed nothing on to
the next. The oratorio, his special gift to the world, will always
remain inseparably connected with his name. Had he left nothing but
his inspired works in that form, to serve as models for posterity, his
claim to immortality would be assured.
                                                                C. S.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[141] We shall hereafter adhere to the English spelling of the name,
without the _Umlaut_.

[142] W. S. Rockstro: 'Life of Handel,’ p. 62.

[143] John Christopher Pepusch (b. Berlin, 1667; d. London, 1752) was
not only an able, practical musician, but an authority in theory and
musical history. He went to England in 1700 and joined the orchestra of
the Drury Lane Theatre, where he became subsequently accompanist and
composer. In that capacity he compiled 'English’ operas from Italian
arias. As founder of the 'Academy of Ancient Music’ he made a serious
effort toward the revival of sixteenth century music (Purcell, etc.).
He was Handel’s predecessor as organist to the Duke of Chandos and as
such composed services, anthems, cantatas, etc. After writing a number
of English operas for the Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields Theatre ('Venus and
Adonis,’ 'Death of Dido,’ etc.), he arranged and produced the famous
'Beggar’s Opera’ (a ballad-opera by Gay), which attained tremendous
popularity and created a serious competition to the Italian operas of
Handel.

[144] It was followed In January by _Teseo_, which, though more
successful, did not warrant many performances. A benefit performance
was later given by the company for Handel, who, up to that time, had
received no remuneration.

[145] Giovanni Battista Bononcini (or Buononcini), son and pupil of
Giov. Maria Bononcini (_maestro di capella_ at the cathedral of Modena,
composer of chamber music, theoretician, etc.), was born about 1660
at Modena, d. about 1750. As first maestro of S. Giovanni in monte,
he wrote masses and oratorios, among which are _Davidde_, _Giosue_,
_La Maddelena a piedi di Christro_. His instrumental works include
_Sinfonie_ a 5-8 (op. 2, 1685), _Sinfonie_ a 3 with Basso continuo (op.
3, 1686), _Sinfonie a piu strumenti_ (op. 5), etc. In 1691 he went to
Vienna, and, beginning 1694, devoted himself largely to the composition
of operas (_Tullo Ostilio_, _La fedo pubblica_, _Proteo sul Reno_,
_Polifemo_, etc.), produced in Rome, Vienna and Berlin, where he became
court composer to Queen Sophie Charlotte (1703). Before his engagement
in London he returned to Vienna and produced a number of new operas,
from _Tomiri_ (1704) to _Muzio Scevola_ (1710). His fame was perhaps
second only to Handel’s, and the direct popular appeal of his pleasing,
simple melodic style fully explains the keen rivalry which ensued
between the two. His London operas include _Astarto_ (1720), _Ciro_,
_Crispo_, _Griselda_ (1722), _Calpurnia_ (1724), and _Astianatte_
(1727). His productivity was no less great in chamber music, of which
he wrote _ayres_, various dance movements, _divertimente da camera_,
and sonatas for strings and for clavecin. He fell into disrepute in
England through the discovery that he had published a madrigal by Lotti
as his own--strange as it may seem that his rival’s offenses in that
direction passed without censure.

[146] _Cf._ Chap. XV.

[147] Nicola Porpora (see Vol. II, Chap. I) was made conductor of the
rival opera, and as the teacher of Farinelli and nearly all the great
singers of the time he was easily able to rally around himself a most
formidable force of artists.

[148] We may remind the reader of the valiant efforts made by Dr.
Pepusch and other Anglo-Germans against the English public’s absolute
surrender to the Italian opera and Italian monody, holding out for
the more serious contrapuntal music of the sixteenth century, and for
the use of the native tongue. The immense success of Gay’s 'Beggar’s
Opera’ in 1728 was another proof of this demand for a native popular
entertainment.

[149] _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, II².

[150] In 'Deborah’ the overture for the first time becomes dramatically
identified with the work itself. In it two of the choruses are utilized.

[151] Arnold Schering: _Geschichte des Oratoriums._

[152] Riemann: _Op. cit._

[153] His introduction of choruses in the new version aptly illustrates
the metamorphosis which the Handel oratorio underwent, and how
indispensable the choral element had by this time become.

[154] Oxford: 'History of Music,’ IV, 3.




                              CHAPTER XV
                         JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

  Introduction--The life of Bach--Bach’s polyphonic skill and the
  qualities of his genius--Bach’s contribution to the art of music and
  the forms he employed--The revision of keyboard technique and equal
  temperament--Bach’s relation to the history of music.


That Bach lived at a time when the musical public was opera mad, when
the Italian singers were dictators, when the grace and ease of Italian
melody were bewitching and relaxing all music, yet that he himself
never wrote for the stage nor ever surrendered in spirit to the force
of the new movement, inevitably obscures and misrepresents his relation
to the past and present of his day. By the peculiar nature of his
genius which has filled his music with a seemingly forever unweakening
power to _stimulate_, because of its perhaps unmatched greatness,
he will always stand a little above and apart from other composers
and will appear unlinked in the slow development of music. Mozart,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, even the greatest
and most original composers of the present age, all have hailed him
as the father of modern music, have drawn inspiration and knowledge
from him as from an inexhaustible source, and this unfailing tribute
and dependence from nearly all subsequent composers has helped to fix
our conception of him as the source and ultimate scope of music. His
gift of expression was indeed all-comprehending, if not infinite.
The freshness of his music has been judged immortal. He partakes of
the superhuman. He seems perfection. Yet one has but to look through
the eyes of devoted historians to see a man human and simple,
straightforward, stubborn, sometimes quarrelsome, quite independent,
even defiant, and an artist standing as firmly rooted as an oak in the
work of his predecessors, thoroughly awake to the music of his day, and
drawing in his own fashion many of the features which marked it.

Like Beethoven, he invented no new forms, but took the forms at hand,
property common to all composers of his day, and, by his most uncommon
genius, gave the touches which transformed them into monuments of
imperishable beauty and perfection. But, more than in the case of
Beethoven, it was the quality of his own inspiration which gave to
these forms their first and last glory. There are symphonies of Haydn
and Mozart written ten or a dozen years before Beethoven wrote his
first symphony which we can hardly believe will ever lose their hold
upon the public, which seem destined to immortal life, for which no
apology of time nor circumstance need ever be made; but before Bach
there are no fugues, no suites, no cantatas, no settings of the Passion
for which such apologies are not necessary, which must not henceforth
conceal defect or weakness in the respectable toga of antiquity. This
distinction, of course, offers no ground for a comparison of the two
men. It is the result of circumstance, of accident.

The seventeenth century, of which Bach and Handel were the two great
results, was a period of experiment fraught with more tentativeness
and uncertainty than have ever since hindered composers. We need only
recall how, before the beginning of that very century, which was to
prove the most fruitful of all in the long history of music, the
vocal art of polyphony, the consummation of a century of effort, had
been shattered into various parts, each of which had almost to begin
life anew, to mold itself to strange needs and surroundings; how the
invention of opera had smashed down the last restraining barrier of
mediæval scholasticism and let loose a thousand restless composers to
wander at will in lands hitherto all but undreamed of. The improvement
of the organ and of other instruments, the perfection of the violin
had yet to come; the principles of form which should give music a
foundation apart from that of a text were yet to be discovered; the
modern art of harmony was to develop from the seed; and the vigor of
rhythm to be accepted little by little into the constitution of serious
music. Music was still either old-fashioned or weak or unsettled to the
very day of Bach and Handel. Through them it emerged from its period of
probation and experiment, splendid and secure. They therefore appear to
the later eye in the glory of creators, and especially Bach, because,
for all the vast number and proportions of his choral works, he is
fundamentally an instrumental composer and instrumental music was the
greatest bequest of the seventeenth century to the future of music.

Only one branch of music had developed relatively independently of the
Italian influence--music for the organ. Though this, as we have seen,
was given its first impetus by Italian composers, it had grown to its
fuller proportions among the Germans, of whom mention has been made in
Chapter XI. By the time of Bach organs were well-made and effective
instruments, a line of virtuosi in both north and south Germany had
developed an astonishing technique, and certain fairly definite
types of composition had been established. Of these the toccata, the
fugue, and the chorale-fantasy or chorale-prelude received the most
attention. The toccata was primarily a piece for display and was
looser in structure than the others. Series of brilliant runs, scales
and arpeggios over a foundation of rich and varied chords formed the
most general and characteristic features, with which were alternated,
for effect of contrast, passages of slow moving harmony and thematic
significance. The fugue was a piece of music developed contrapuntally
throughout from a definite subject and countersubjects, the direct
outcome of the old imitative polyphonic music of the later Netherland
masters. Both toccatas and fugues were treated with great skill and
ingenious variety by Bach’s predecessors--Buxteheude, Reinken, Böhm,
Pachelbel and others--but none of these organists succeeded in giving
to either form the perfect balance and proportion, the organic unity,
the architectonic grandeur, the definitive outline and shape wherewith
Bach wrought them into enduring masterpieces. The same is true of the
chorale fantasies and preludes. Three distinct types had come into
being before the activity of Bach, one dignified and smooth, consisting
actually of several short fugues upon sections of the chorale melody,
lacking therefore breadth and power; one singing and serene, in which
the flowing melody was set above or below an intricate contrapuntal
web; and one in which, in the fiery words of Albert Schweitzer, the
chorale melody was torn in fragments and tossed into a rushing torrent
of virtuosity. The first of these forms was disjunct, the second lacked
variety, the third was out of keeping with the simplicity and noble
dignity of the chorale. It was Bach who united what was best in all
three into a type of prelude which, inspired by the very spirit of the
chorale melody, was built up out of the range of organ technique into
a structure of faultless proportion. In the department of organ music,
therefore, Bach seized upon the materials gathered for his use by men
who had gone before, and, for the first time, made of them perfect
temples. He was not misled by experiment, he did not falter through
lack of power to sustain; he worked with absolute sureness and with
the instinct of only the highest genius for perfect form.

In other instrumental music, in suites for clavier, for violin, for
violoncello, for orchestra, in sonatas and concertos, he found forms
already perfected. Nor can it be said that he did anything to develop
or refine the style suitable for these instruments, since his own style
was unmistakably influenced by the organ, and is sometimes heavy in
comparison with Couperin’s, with Domenico Scarlatti’s, with Corelli’s,
and Vivaldi’s. To these branches of music he brought a richness of
feeling, an emotional depth and warmth, too, which hitherto had not
been expressed in music. Nearly every emotion worthy of expression in
music is to be met with in, for example, the Well-tempered Clavichord.
On the one hand, liveliness, wit, gaiety; on the other, melancholy,
deep sadness, religious exaltation, the lightest, the most serious
shades of feeling, the most vivid and the most subdued expression. Thus
the equable cool forms of Corelli, so justly proportioned between grace
and calm emotion, the scintillating sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti,
become suffused with a new, a real, personal life and are neither
distorted nor dulled, but animated for all time.

As to organ music, he brought the power to construct and to unify, and
to chamber music the warmth of his deep feeling. Vocal music--and his
vocal works are, with inconsiderable exceptions, for the church--he
made sublime by the true spirit of German religion which has found in
him its perfect expression. He wrote in forms which were, as we have
said, common to all composers of his day. Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann
wrote not only in the same forms as he, but actually set many of the
same texts. Undoubtedly they were men of inferior genius, but they
were, none the less, excellent musicians, and had remarkable control
of the technique of composition; and it is almost incredible that
the stupendous numbers of their compositions are lying forgotten in
libraries. Many a phrase, many an aria, and many a movement have a
real beauty of form and a grace of content, but they are dead and
not likely to be restored. The reason, not to be found alone in the
second-rate quality of their genius, is, however, not far to seek. The
development of opera in Italy during the seventeenth century influenced
the whole course of music over Europe. The enthusiasm for opera spread
veritably like wildfire. Forms were invented which were obvious and
immediate in their appeal to the general public, and these forms were
taken over into church music, even in Germany, where the tradition
of a more profound and more fitting style still lingered. Cantatas,
oratorios, even settings of the Passion, gave way to the universal
demand for dramatic and easily pleasing music, were composed of arias
and recitatives, and accompanied by instruments just as operas were.
It would be absurd to say that church music could not gain, did not
gain, as a matter of fact, by the injection of new and extraneous
forms. Some few conservatives, notably the austere Johann Kuhnau,
cantor of the St. Thomas school at Leipzig, where Bach was to pass the
last half of his life, set themselves deliberately against the new
movement. Many clergymen waxed bitter and polemical; but by far the
majority of musicians, among them the men above mentioned, hailed the
new forms with delight and, always more or less closely associated with
the theatre, deliberately tried to give to church music the glamour
and brilliance of music for the stage. Bach was himself far too much
aware of the drift of music in his own day not to take advantage of
the new forms which were the outgrowth of the opera. He adopted them
into cantata, oratorio, and Passion. But whereas the sacred works of
Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann breathed only the light spirit of the
trivial opera of the time, the arias and recitatives of Bach seemed to
be the very flower of the meditative religious spirit peculiar to the
Teutonic races. Thus his works stand at once with and aloof from his
age. Outwardly the same, inwardly different. And that his cantatas and
oratorios and Passions, cast in the mold of the Italian opera at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, are glowing with the inspiration
that was the religious voice of a whole race, is the reason why they
live when those of his contemporaries are dead. They brought a trivial
style into the church, he made a style glorious by filling it with an
intimate, profound, and indescribably tender and genuine devotion.
They tried to secularize church music, he to make a secular music the
priestess of the temple.

Grandeur of conception, warmth and depth of feeling, nobility and often
exaltation of spirit he brought to music, and transformed the materials
which were, as the accumulation of a long century, at the service of
a hundred of his contemporaries, into masterpieces of imperishable
beauty. The cast of his genius seems almost out of place in the general
spirit of music at his age. That which makes his music supremely
great sprang from out the depths of his own nature, depths which are
to-day unsounded and mysterious, the never-failing source of highest
inspiration. Famous in his own day as an organist, and a performer on
the harpsichord of astounding skill, as a composer he passed unnoticed
or misunderstood save by a few pupils and friends. The ideal toward
which he worked was fast losing hold upon the world of musicians. He
was considered recondite and dry.


                                   I

It is only human to desire the knowledge of some intimate details in
the life of such a man, but the exhaustive researches of Philipp Spitta
have collected all that is likely ever to be known about Bach, and
there is almost a complete absence of any of those details which help
to restore the daily life of a man to the admirers of a later age. We
know little more than the facts of his life, must remain onlookers
except as we may penetrate to his great heart through his music.

He came of a family which can be traced back nearly two hundred years,
all of whom were characterized by the strong virtues of the German
peasantry, by thrift, honesty, and a sturdy piety which never wavered
among all the horrors of religious warfare. Nearly all were musicians,
connected either with the church as composers and organists, such as
Johann Christoph and Johann Michael, uncles of Johann Sebastian’s
father, or with the bands in the towns where they lived, such as Bach’s
grandfather, and his father, Johann Ambrosius. The family had so spread
over Thuringia that there was hardly a town in the province in which
some member of it was not actively associated with music. Ambrosius
Bach played the viola in the town band of Eisenach. Here Johann
Sebastian was born in March, 1685.[155]

One may believe that his talent showed itself while he was still very
young, and that he was intended to follow in the footsteps of his
father. Probably he learned from his father how to play the violin. In
his father’s house, too, he was surrounded by secular music, lively and
rhythmical, so that in his very tenderest years he must have acquired
that fondness for, and appreciation of, rhythm which are so strongly
evident in all his work. It seems likely, too, that a preference for
instrumental music was fostered in his boyhood, for he remained always
primarily an instrumental composer. Just how or when he learned to play
the harpsichord is not known, but it can hardly be doubted that he had
acquired some skill upon it before his father died.

His mother died in 1694. In little more than half a year his father
married again, but died very shortly after. Bach was thus left an
orphan at the age of ten, the youngest of a large family. He went to
live with his brother Johann Christoph, twelve years or more older than
he, in the neighboring village of Ohrdruf. Johann Christoph was an
organist, a pupil of the great Pachelbel, and in his house Sebastian
first came into close contact with church music, and music for the
organ. Here he received his first regular instruction on the organ.
Here, too, if we may believe one of the few anecdotes which have
colored the history of his life, he gave a sign of that tremendous
industry which distinguished his whole life in studying and making his
own all the scores that came within his reach. The story is that his
brother had a valuable collection of music by Pachelbel, Froberger,
and other composers famous in that day, which he kept locked behind
the latticed doors of a bookcase. Some of this collection the young
Sebastian managed to extract for his own use, and he set to work to
copy it by stealth, but one day Johann Christoph caught him at his
labor, and took the music away. Whether or not the anecdote is true, it
is typical of Bach’s method of study. The blindness which fell upon him
in the last years of his life was hastened, if not actually caused, by
his indefatigable copying of music.

At Ohrdruf he sang in the church choir and thereby gained his first
experience in choral music. When at the end of five years he had to
begin to earn his own livelihood, it was as a choir boy he went to
St. Michael’s school in Lüneburg in the north of Germany. That he had
already unusual skill as a musician is proved by the fact that after
his voice broke he was still paid to remain at St. Michael’s, probably
a prefect of the choir. The year at Lüneburg brought him into contact
with much fine music. At the church of St. John in the same town George
Böhm was organist, one of the most remarkable organists of his day. He
was a pupil of the venerable Jan Adams Reinken, one of the disciples
of Peter Sweelinck, founder of the brilliant school of North German
organists. Reinken himself was still playing at the church of St.
Catharine in Hamburg, near by, and Bach went often on foot to Hamburg
to hear the great man. About the time Bach left Lüneburg, Handel came
to Hamburg to play the violin and the harpsichord in the orchestra at
the opera house. The two men never came nearer meeting.

The circumstances under which Bach left Lüneburg are not known. In
1703 he was for three months in the service of Prince Johann Ernst
at Weimar. In August of that year he received the appointment of
organist at the New Church in the neighboring town of Arnstadt. With
this appointment his student days may be said to end; he now steps
before the world as a skilled musician. In his new position he had
not only to play the organ but to train the choir as well, and also
to train a sort of musical society which furnished a large choir for
other churches in the town. Hence he had ample opportunity to advance
himself still further in the art of playing the organ, and to train his
abilities to the composition of choral music. Only a few works can be
definitely assigned to this period. A cantata showing signs of youthful
endeavor is among them. The complaint of the church consistory that
he accompanied the congregational singing in such an elaborate and
complex way as to bewilder the singers seems to prove that he was busy
at this time in studying some of the various arrangements of chorales
and accompaniments which have come down to us in the mass of his
manuscripts. Probably the congregation sang the melody in unison. It
was customary for the organist to fill up the pauses at the end of each
line with a few flourishes of his own. Doubtless these were oftenest
improvised, yet Bach made a special study of the art of accompanying,
and wrote down many samples of his own method for the benefit of his
pupils. His ardent, independent young spirit must have led him into
every kind of experiment during these early years at Arnstadt.

By far the most interesting of his compositions of this time is the
little _Capriccio_ written on the departure of his brother, Johann
Jacob, to the wars. It consists of six little movements somewhat in
the style of the Biblical narratives published but a few years before
by Kuhnau in Leipzig. To each is prefixed a title or a program, such
as the account of various accidents which may befall the brother, the
attempts of friends to dissuade him from his journey, their lament when
they see that their tears are of no avail, and, at last, the merry song
of the postilion, and a fugue on the call of his horn. The workmanship
is perfect and the piece breathes the warm, intimate feeling which is
peculiar of all Bach’s work. It has an added interest in that it is the
only piece of program music Bach ever wrote.

In October, 1705, he obtained a leave of absence and went on foot
fifty miles to Lübeck to hear the famous Abendmusik which was given on
certain Sundays in Advent at the church of St. Mary, where the great
Dietrich Buxtehude was organist. No detailed record of his experiences
in Lübeck has been preserved; but that he stayed there three months
over the leave he obtained from Arnstadt proves how much he found
there to interest him deeply. On his return he was taken to task by
the authorities of the church in a council, the records of which have
been preserved. To their reproof for having so long overstayed his
leave he had only to reply that he had left his work in the hands of a
competent substitute who he had hoped would give satisfaction. At the
same meeting he was reprimanded for accompanying the congregational
singing too elaborately. They complained that he had made his preludes
too long, and, when spoken to in that regard, had promptly made them
too short, that he neglected choir practice altogether, and that
he went to a wine shop during the sermon. To all this Bach replied
laconically, that he would try to do better. He agreed to submit an
explanation of his general conduct in writing. All through the report
one feels the independent, often angry, young spirit held in restraint
behind the brief replies. The promised explanation was not forthcoming
and in November, 1706, he was again taken to task. This time complaint
was added that he had admitted a young maiden to the organ loft, and
allowed her to make music there. The young maiden was probably his
cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, to whom he was shortly after betrothed.

Conditions at Arnstadt soon became irksome to him, and on June 15,
1707, we find him installed as organist of the church of St. Blasius
in Mühlhausen. Here his salary was a little less than fifty dollars
a year, to which were added 'some measures of corn, two cords of
firewood, some brushwood, and three pounds of fish.’ Scanty as it
seems, it was evidently enough for him to marry on, and, accordingly,
he took his cousin to wife on October 17, 1707. They were married in
the village church of Dornheim, near Arnstadt, by an old friend of the
Bach family.

Two important records of his stay in Mühlhausen have come down to
us, his recommendation for repairs on the church organ, in which he
shows a most thorough understanding of the mechanical part of the
organ even to the smallest detail, and his first important composition
the _Rathswechsel_ cantata composed in honor of the yearly change in
municipal authorities, the only one of his choral works which was
engraved and printed during his lifetime. It was performed on February
4, 1708.

Bach did not remain a year at Mühlhausen. He received an invitation
from Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar to be court organist and chamber
musician at a much better salary. The letter by which he notified the
council at Mühlhausen of his desire to accept the new post has been
preserved.

The nine years Bach spent at Weimar must have been happy and
prosperous. The character of the reigning duke influenced his
composition. There was no opera at the court and, though there was a
band of twenty or more players, in which Bach played both harpsichord
and violin, and of which he later became leader, the duke’s chief
interest was in music for the church, and Bach’s most important works
during his stay at Weimar were for the organ and for the church choir.

Meanwhile his fame was spreading over Germany. It seems probable that
every year he journeyed from Weimar to one or another of the big German
cities, on what might be regarded as concert tours. One of them has
become specially famous on account of an anecdote which has always
been associated with it. In 1717 he was in Dresden at the same time J.
L. Marchand, one of the most famous French clavicinists, was there.
In some way, quite in keeping with the customs of the day, Bach’s
friends arranged a contest of skill on the harpsichord between him and
Marchand. The outcome is well known. Bach was ready at the appointed
spot and hour. Marchand failed to appear. Whether or not Marchand fled
because he feared to be worsted in a contest with Bach is hardly of
great importance, but the anecdote is extremely important in that it
points to the fact that Bach was already one of the great masters of
the harpsichord.

His fame as an organist brought many pupils to study with him, among
whom were J. M. Schubart, who may have studied with him in Arnstadt;
Caspar Vogler, J. T. Krebs, and J. G. Ziegler. In 1715 he took the
son of his brother Christoph into his house, young Bernard Bach, to
whose industry we owe the greater part of the valuable manuscript
copy of Sebastian Bach’s compositions, which passed later into the
hands of Andreas Bach. His own family, too, was growing. Both Wilhelm
Friedemann, his favorite and most gifted son, and Carl Philipp Emanuel,
who became the most distinguished musician of the next generation, were
born in Weimar.

His resignation in 1717 from a position where he must have been so
happy comes as a surprise. In November of that year he moved with his
family to the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, where he had
been appointed chapel master and director of the prince’s chamber
music. Anhalt-Cöthen was a flourishing little community. The prince,
himself hardly more than a youth, was generous and free in spirit,
fond of art and of music. He played the violin, the 'cello, and the
harpsichord, and seems to have been an excellent bass singer as well.
His interest was chiefly in secular instrumental music. There was no
good organ at the court nor any trained choir of singers, but there was
probably a good band, though the names of only a few players have been
preserved. Among them is Christopher Ferdinand Abel, whose son, Carl
Friedrich, shared with Sebastian Bach’s son Christian the high honors
of the musical world of London in the next generation. Through them
the young Mozart was destined to be influenced. It is indeed curious
to find the fathers of the two men playing in the same little court
band. Just what Bach’s duties were in his new position has never been
discovered. It was a good appointment and well paid, and he was in high
favor with the young prince. But, as Spitta has eloquently written,
time has effaced or overgrown almost every trace of his labors, as
the grass has overgrown the castle yard which he must so often have
crossed, and his name has died out among the people of the place almost
as completely as the sounds with which he once roused the echoes of the
now empty and deserted halls.

The six years spent at Cöthen were the happiest of his life. It will
seem strange to those who think of Bach as a composer of religious
music and organ music that he could have treasured in his memory these
years at Cöthen, when his energy was directed almost wholly to the
composition of chamber music. Yet such was the case. The explanation
of this seeming riddle is to be found in his personal character and in
the peculiar quality of his genius. For all the independent strength
of his will and his intellect, his was essentially a meditative
nature, which found its truest expression apart from the public, and
in the small intimate forms of chamber music. He delighted in the
circle of his family, he delighted in the tender, faint music of the
clavichord, which, we are assured, was his favorite instrument. The
glory and majesty of his great power are in his music for the organ,
the exaltation of his spirit is in the St. Matthew Passion and in the
mass in B minor, but nowhere is the essence of his heart so warm, so
simple and so unadorned as in the music he composed for clavichord, for
violin, and for 'cello while he was at Cöthen.

His life went quietly on there within the court, broken by occasional
journeys such as he was accustomed to take from Weimar. In the autumn
of 1719 he passed through Halle, where Handel was staying for a short
while with his family, during the trip he made from London to Italy, in
search of singers. Bach made an effort to meet him, only to find that
Handel had just departed. Later in life he again attempted to see and
talk with the world-famous master, and again failed. The two greatest
musicians of their time never met.

On the seventh of July, 1720, while Bach was away with his prince, his
wife died. Left with four young children, he married again, in about
a year and a half, Anna Magdalena Wülker, youngest daughter of Johann
Caspar Wülker, court trumpeter at Weissenfels. She was at that time
twenty-one years old, intensely musical and was an excellent singer.
She was, moreover, skillful with the pen, and helped her husband in
copying his own and other music. Her clear, flowing handwriting can
be seen in the manuscript copies of the solo violin and violoncello
sonatas, and in those of later works. That she worked diligently to
master the clavichord is only one of the many instances of her desire
to improve her knowledge of music in every way that would help her to
follow and assist her husband. She thus became the centre of a home
life which must have been in many ways the source of cheer and deep
happiness to her husband and her family. How much this meant to Bach as
he grew older amid the vexations of his post in the St. Thomas school
in Leipzig cannot be overestimated, for, as we have already said, he
was at heart a man who withdrew from the bustle of society and the
world at large into the intimacy of home life.

The list of works he composed at Cöthen is a long one and momentous
in the history of music. Many of them are epoch-making; all bear the
marks of his undying genius in their workmanship, in their perfection
of form and of detail, in the warmth of the inspiration that prompted
them. Inasmuch as during the six years of his stay there he devoted
himself almost solely to the composition of secular instrumental music,
the period stands out distinct and unique in his life. What his daily
life was, what his actual duties at the court, we do not know; but that
they were happy years the music he wrote attests. Moreover, we have
his own word written some years later to a friend in Russia that he
would have been content to pass the remainder of his days there. But
the marriage of Prince Leopold in 1722 seems to have changed the spirit
of the court. The young princess had no special fondness for music,
and Bach no longer felt himself in congenial surroundings. In 1722 the
venerable Johann Kuhnau, cantor of the St. Thomas school in Leipzig,
died. Within a year Bach obtained the post, moved with his family to
Leipzig, and at the end of May, 1723, was installed in the position
which he was to hold until the time of his death.

The St. Thomas school was an adjunct of the old St. Thomas church. It
had been founded in the thirteenth century, and up to the time of the
Reformation had been under the control of Augustinian monks, but at
that time had been taken into the control of the municipal council.
Bach was, therefore, in the employ of the town authorities, for the
most part men with little knowledge or love of music, with whom he was
seldom in good accord. From the earliest times the main purpose of the
school had been to train singers for the church of St. Thomas and later
for the church of St. Nicholas, but it was a charity school for orphans
as well, and most of the boys were unruly. Bach’s chief duties were the
training of these choir boys and the furnishing of music for the St.
Thomas and St. Nicholas churches. Officially he had nothing to do with
the organ in either church.[156]

Bach was beset by difficulties and unpleasantness on every hand. To
begin, the school was disorganized and the boys unruly, as we have
said. Nor was music in very high respect there, if we may judge by the
prospectus of studies which said that, next to the glory of God, the
chief aim of singing was to promote the pupils’ digestions. Bach’s work
with them was not heavy. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday he had to
give a lesson in music at nine, and one at twelve, and on Friday one
at twelve. On Friday, too, he had to take the boys to church at seven
in the morning, and on Saturday at the same time had to expound the
Latin catechism to the third and fourth classes. On certain days in
the week he had to give a Latin lesson to the third class. On Thursday
he was free. The rehearsals of the Sunday music took place regularly
on Saturday afternoon. But the boys were frequently in bad condition.
It was a custom for them to parade through the streets from time to
time at various houses for donations. Their voices were often ruined
by colds, and Bach could have had but little pleasure in training such
material. Moreover, the spirit of the school had been demoralized by
the light Italian music which had gained a foothold through the town
opera house, and through Telemann, organist at the New Church, and the
boys frequently deserted the school to sing in the musical union which
Telemann had organized. However, in the course of a few years Bach got
control of the musical union and of music in the famous old university
as well, and was thus in a position to train a portion of the
inhabitants of the town to an appreciation of his own kind of music.

From the start he set himself vigorously to reform and improve the
condition of music in the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches. To
this end he tried to get hold of as many singers and as many players
as possible. Here he was in constant conflict with the town council,
who refused to furnish him with money necessary to engage the boys
and men he needed. In August, 1730, he submitted to the council a
statement of what material should be rightly placed at his service
if he was expected to furnish 'well-appointed church music,’ and a
brief and very telling account of what he actually had. Concerning
the instrumentalists necessary to accompany church cantatas, etc., he
writes: 'In all, at least eighteen persons are needed for instruments.
The number appointed is eight, four town pipers, three town violinists,
and one assistant. Discretion forbids me telling the plain truth as to
their ability and musical knowledge; however, it ought to be considered
that they are partly inefficient and partly not in such good practice
as they should be. The most important instruments for supporting the
parts, and the most indispensable in themselves are wanting.’ He gives
the names of the boys in the school, dividing them into three classes:
'seventeen available, twenty not yet available, and seventeen useless.’
The statement was quite ignored by the town council. Up to the year
1746 no additional appropriation was devoted to keeping up the music
in the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. That Bach was angry
and embittered by such a disregard is evident in the famous letter to
his friend Erdmann, in which he wrote, among other things, that the
appointment was by no means so advantageous as it had been described to
him, that many fees incidental to it had been stopped, that the town
was very dear to live in and the authorities were very strange folks
with no love of music, so that he lived under almost constant vexation,
jealousy, and persecution; finally, that he felt compelled to seek his
fortune, with God’s assistance, elsewhere.[157]

Affairs could not have been quite so hopeless as Bach felt they were.
At any rate, he seems to have done nothing more in the way of finding
another position. It can hardly be doubted that he would have had no
difficulty in doing so had he long wanted to. His fame as an organist
was widespread over Germany; and he was a man of firmest determination
and no end of courage. He must have decided that the advantages Leipzig
offered him outweighed the disadvantages under which the stupidity or
indifference of the town council placed him. Moreover, shortly after
this affair, in fact, just before the letter to Erdmann was written,
a new rector, J. M. Gesner, was appointed to the St. Thomas school,
a man who never failed in his appreciation of Bach and sympathy with
his aims, and who, most important of all, had the special talent of
managing boys, and was able in the few years of his stay in Leipzig to
establish order and to put the school upon a new and solid foundation.
He probably succeeded in easing the relations between Bach and the town
council, and through his efforts Bach was released from giving lessons
in Latin and all other general instruction apart from music.

Bach settled in Leipzig. His home life was happy, and varied by the
visits of all musicians of prominence who passed through the town. His
hospitality and his courtesy were famous. Men journeyed to Leipzig just
to hear him play upon the organ. One man wrote in the account of his
life which he contributed to Mattheson’s _Ehrenpforte_: 'I journeyed to
Leipzig to hear the great Johann Sebastian Bach play. This great artist
received me most courteously and so bewitched me by his uncommon skill
that the troubles of the journey were forgotten as nothing.’ Quantz,
the famous flute player, teacher of Frederick the Great, wrote: 'The
admirable Johann Sebastian Bach has at length in modern times brought
the art of the organ to its greatest perfection.’ Occasionally he
went to Dresden to hear the opera or to play for friends there. One
chronicle has it that he would say to his favorite son: 'Friedemann,
shall we go to Dresden again and hear their beautiful little songs?’
In 1736 he was appointed court composer to August III, king of Poland
and of Saxony. He retained an honorary position at the court of
Anhalt-Cöthen, though Prince Leopold, his former friend and patron,
died not long after Bach came to Leipzig. His sons Friedemann and
Emanuel grew to manhood and acquired positions. Emanuel was employed
at the court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam. Pupils surrounded him,
most of whom were not members of the St. Thomas school, but students
at the university; and in spite of the fact that on many occasions
he showed signs of quick and violent temper, he won not only respect
but love from most of them. One of the most famous, Altnikol, married
a daughter of the house. At last Frederick the Great, having heard
much of his marvellous talent through Emanuel and his pupils, many
of whom were playing in the royal band, summoned him to the court at
Potsdam. Bach arrived at Potsdam on the 7th of May, 1747, accompanied
by Friedemann, and was received with respect by the great king. The
story is well known how Frederick, when he heard that Bach was in town,
laid aside his flute, which he had taken up for his evening concert,
and saying, 'Gentlemen, old Bach is arrived,’ sent for him to come
at once to the palace. Bach was made to try over the new Silbermann
pianofortes, of which the king had several, and the next evening the
king desired him to improvise a six-part fugue on a subject which
he was allowed to choose for himself. In all this experience Bach very
evidently fulfilled the expectations which had been roused in the king.
Upon his return to Leipzig he composed his famous 'Musical Offering,’
a collection of pieces in most complicated style, all based upon or
related to a theme which the king had given him, and dedicated it to
the king. This led to the much greater 'Art of Fugue,’ the last great
work from his pen. It is made up of fifteen fugues and four canons on
one and the same theme, employing the most complicated and difficult
counterpoint in the expression of a calm and noble emotion. A good part
of it had been engraved on copper plates before Bach died, but not all.

                [Illustration: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH.]
    _After the painting recently discovered by Dr. Fritz Vollbach._

During the last year of his life his sight failed. In the winter of
1749-50 he underwent two operations, both of which were unsuccessful,
and he was left totally blind and shaken in health. On July 18, 1750,
his sight was suddenly restored, but a few hours afterward he was
stricken with apoplexy and he died on Tuesday, July 28, at a quarter to
nine in the evening. With him at the time of his death were his wife
and daughters, his youngest son Christian, his son-in-law Altnikol
and one of his pupils. The funeral was on the following Friday from
St. John’s church, where the preacher announced: 'The very worthy and
venerable Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, court composer to his kingly
majesty of Poland and electoral and serene highness of Saxony, chapel
master to his highness the prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, and cantor to the
school at St. Thomas’s in town, having fallen calmly and blessedly
asleep in God, in St. Thomas’s churchyard his body has this day,
according to Christian usage, been consigned to the earth.’ It was
remarked in a sitting of the town council on August 8 that Herr Bach
had been a great musician but not a schoolmaster.

Such are the outlines of Bach’s life. It was decidedly a happy one
as lives go. There is much evidence to show that he was impulsive and
that he worked at his music with great enthusiasm, but the tenor of his
life was even, not erratic, methodical, and simple. It is strange to
think of him as a schoolmaster, but such he was for a great part of his
life. Though the duties of teaching must have been often irksome, they
were relatively light, and in no way demanded so much time or effort
as to deprive him of opportunity or enthusiasm to compose. His own
report of the condition of the choirs and band at the school can leave
no doubt that he never heard his choral works performed in a manner
which we should deem at the present day appropriate to their greatness.
Probably the two choirs at his service for singing the St. Matthew
Passion numbered not more than twelve singers each, and the soloists
were members of the choir; he never had a complete band, and the organs
at St. Thomas church were bad. There was lax discipline and disorder,
too. Still these were inadequacies and improprieties from which most
composers of his day suffered. Even the Abendmusik at Lübeck, as fine
church music as was likely to be heard in all Germany, was interrupted
and marred by the noise of the choir boys racing and capering in the
choir loft. Bach was not exceptionally unfortunate in this regard.
In material affairs he was relatively well-off; his family life was
exceptionally happy and complete, he won the love and admiration of
many friends and pupils, and honor from princes.

Of his many children but three boys and a girl long survived him,
Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, and Regina.
Friedemann, the most gifted and the favorite son, became a drunkard,
Emanuel and Christian became famous, one in Germany, the other in
London. All three are to blame for the fact that their father’s
widow, all but their mother, fell into abject poverty and dependence
upon public charity. Regina lived to be an old woman, friendless and
likewise poverty-stricken until not long before her death, Rochlitz,
the publisher, undertook a publication by subscription of her father’s
works. Among the subscribers Beethoven was the first.

Bach published only a very few works during his lifetime. The majority
of his compositions passed in manuscript into the keeping of his sons.
Emanuel later brought out many, but much of what fell to the keeping
of Friedemann was carelessly lost or sold for a pittance here and
there. There is no way of telling how much of the great man’s music has
disappeared, but the amount which has been preserved is prodigious.
As is so often the case among musicians, and, indeed, among most
artists, his activity is more or less clearly divided into several
periods. Thus the early years at Arnstadt and Mühlhausen are years of
experiment and study. In the account of his life the 'Necrology,’ which
was published by Emanuel in a periodical owned by Mizler and called
the _Bibliothèque_, we learn that during these years he frequently
spent the whole night in study and practice. During the Weimar period,
when he was both organist and player in the duke’s band, he came into
contact with Italian music, and devoted himself with enthusiasm and
evidently untiring energy to the mastery of those principles of clear
and lucid form which were at that time exemplified at their best in
the violin works of Corelli and Vivaldi. It was a period of great
and brilliant works for the organ, probably the toccata and fugue in
D minor, which, however, because of its very evident relationship
in style and even in theme to works of Buxtehude, may have been
conceived earlier; almost certainly the fugue in G minor, the prelude
and fugue in A minor, the colossal toccata in F, and perhaps the one
_passacaglia_. At this time, possibly largely as a matter of study
and exercise, he transcribed concertos of Vivaldi for harpsichord,
mastering thus the form, practically invented by the Italian, which he
later used so brilliantly in the Italian Concerto for clavicembalo.

At Cöthen he was cut off from the organ and associated wholly with
secular music, and in this period naturally fall the first part of the
Well-tempered Clavichord, the French suites, the suites for violin
alone and for 'cello, the Brandenburg concertos and the overtures for
orchestra. Finally at Leipzig, where he was expected to furnish music
for almost every Sunday of the year, he composed his great choral
works, about three hundred cantatas, six motets at least, the Christmas
and Easter oratorios, the Magnificats, the great mass in B minor,
and shorter masses, and four settings of the Passion, of which that
according to St. Matthew is perhaps the most sublime of his works and
the perfect expression of his genius. Instrumental works also belong
to this period, marked by maturity and calm, a broadening of form, an
alienation from the lucid conciseness of the Italian and French styles.
There are, for example, the prelude and fugue for organ in E-flat
major, the English suites and the second part of the Well-tempered
Clavichord for clavier, the overture _à la manière française_, the
'Musical Offering,’ and the 'Art of Fugue.’


                                  II

Within the limits of a single chapter there is no space to discuss
these great works in detail, nor to point to the ways in which Bach’s
genius manifested itself in each of them. We shall, therefore, give a
brief analysis of that genius in general and then proceed to show the
position Bach occupies in the course of the development of music.

Bach’s skill in polyphonic writing is perhaps unequalled both in
its minute perfection and in its breadth and power. It is evident
in nearly everything he wrote, be it the simplest of the two-part
Inventions or the mighty choruses in the B minor mass, the fugues
for organ or the fugues for solo violin. Within the most confined
limits or ranging over mighty expanses it still serves his end,
marvellously flexible and seeming spontaneous. Yet this skill does not
constitute his genius. In general it differs more in degree than in
kind from that of his predecessors and his contemporaries. In spite
of the rapidly spreading domination of the monodic style, which was
the style resulting from the Italian opera, the style of melody and
simple accompaniments in chords, the polyphonic style still retained
the allegiance of serious musicians, and even, in fact, of those who
were less serious. All composers, probably all church organists, in
the time of Bach could write fugues, double or single; could even
improvise fugues; could write canons; wrote them as a pastime. Such
skill was acquired almost in childhood, aided largely by copying
volumes of music. Many composers discarded it altogether in writing for
the public, many made a false show of it. It was, however, a manner of
expression still common to the time, almost an idiom. So, though Bach’s
skill could amaze even those who had been brought up to write fugues as
daily exercise, it appeared to his contemporaries something as a matter
of course, and to historians and critics allied with the new schools
a positive detriment--a failing. At the present day the idiom in its
naturalness is so far lost that our ears can hardly understand it. We
no longer listen to polyphonic music without very special training. We
do not follow it naturally, almost instinctively. The skill amazes,
does not immediately express. It was, of course, thoroughly natural
to Bach. But it was no more to him than an art, than, let us say, the
art of speech; for he was wont to liken the interweaving of several
parts in music to a conversation upon a given subject. Bach’s skill
in polyphony is but a manner of speech, most faultless and subtle and
powerful. Others acquired the manner, not perfectly, but none had
the ideals, the emotions to express which have filled his works with
warmth, with vitality, with actual life.

Thus his melodies are beautiful and expressive. Take, for example,
the subjects of the fugues in the first part of the Well-tempered
Clavichord. Here one might reasonably expect type melodies,
mechanical phrases inexpressive in themselves, worthless, except as
polyphonic material; the sort of phrases handed on from composer to
composer, almost note for note--mere formulas. But one is astonished
by the endless variety and freshness. All are original. Even the
shortest, those which are hardly more than a kernel of melody, have
a distinction, such as the subjects of the very first fugue, in C
major, of the serious, indescribably sad figures in C-sharp minor,
and E-flat minor, and the exalted, inspired fugue in B-flat minor. A
more passionately expressive phrase is hardly to be found in music
than that upon which the fugue in G minor is built, a more graceful
melody than the subject of the fugue in C-sharp major; more delicate
or humorous than those of the C minor and B-flat major fugues. These
touches of pure melodic expressiveness are but preludes to the great
melodies of the cantatas and the Passion. The melodies _Mein gläubiges
Herze_ from the Pentecost cantata, 'Only Weep’ and 'Have Mercy, Lord’
from the Passion according to St. Matthew are no more conspicuous than
many others for their expanse and the depth of feeling which breathes
in them. The grace of certain melodies in the suites for violin and
for 'cello alone are captivating, the aria for the G string from the
second orchestral suite most profound; and there is a type of melody
especially dear to him, such as is found in the middle movement of
the sonatas and concertos for violin, wonderfully free, rhapsodical,
as though improvised. In general he avoided the elaborate, ornamental
roulades characteristic of the Italian aria, even when writing in that
form. In the few cases in which he did employ them they are expressive
and gently realistic. In all his work there is evidence of a melodic
genius of the purest kind, often not vocal, it is true, and often wound
in a polyphonic web, but astonishingly genuine and inspired.

Though the quality of a great part of the music of Bach is meditative
and not seldom mystical, parts of it are conspicuous for their
rhythmical lightness and delicacy. Especially the suites for violin and
'cello have a rhythmical animation which is irresistible. The dance
movements which compose the last parts of the _Ouverture à la manière
française_, and movements in the English suites, depend almost wholly
for their charm on the incisiveness and zest of their rhythm. Nor is
such sprightliness lacking in the fugues, though in polyphonic music
it is usually unemphasized. The fugue in D major in the first part of
the Well-tempered Clavichord might be called a fugue in rhythm; the
fugue in F minor in the second part, too, is almost wholly guided by a
playful rhythm. It is to the music of Bach therefore that one should
look to find the polyphonic style set free of its proverbial heaviness
and inertia, light and airy as laughter and true wit, strong as the
march of an army.

But to harmony more than to all else in music the touch of the genius
of Bach brought new life and a splendor that can never grow dull. It is
as a harmonist that he stands the father of modern music. His pupils
have told us that the first task to which he set them was exercise,
not in counterpoint, but in harmonization of simple chorale melodies.
If one tries to analyze the difference between a Bach fugue and other
fugues it is not to be found in the superior workmanship and finish,
nor, save little, in the melodic and rhythmical inspiration, but in the
background of harmony. In harmony lie the mystery and wonder of Bach’s
imperishable music. It is half the strength of its form. One might well
ask what is a fugue without Bach. The seeds of it are in the old vocal
polyphonic style, passages in which one voice imitated another at the
interval of a fifth or fourth, were perhaps suggested to composers by
voices singing the same words in turn; and the device was taken over
by organists in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and
used in _ricercari_ and _canzone_, with no notion of form and balance;
it was used in preludizing to the singing of the congregation, but
had no true independent existence apart from the chorale to which it
led; it was used as the second part of the so-called French overture.
Experimenting in one way or another, composers gradually built up a
fairly definite instrumental form of fugue. But the fugues, notably
the organ fugues, of even the greatest organists before Bach, lacked
logical construction. Buxtehude’s were built, as Albert Schweitzer has
said, on a principle of _laisser-aller_. There seemed to be no good
reason, according to Dr. Hugo Riemann, why any of them should not end
or should not go on. It was Bach at last who gave to the fugue perfect
proportion and organic unity. Principles of a form in music more
clear-cut than any German forms he acquired, as we have said, in Weimar
from a study of Italian and French masterpieces, but he based all his
forms on a foundation of harmony and to all his works gave proportion
and logic sprung from harmony alone.

Sir Hubert Parry in his study of Johann Sebastian Bach has demonstrated
by careful analysis what a surprising number of preludes in the
Well-tempered Clavichord are fundamentally progressions of chords.
The name alone of this great series is suggestive, as we shall later
prove. The clearest example of this harmonic prelude is the very
first--that in C major. Hardly less clear are the second, the third,
the sixth, the fifteenth, the twenty-first, and the twenty-third.
Practically all, indeed, are upon the same plan, though in those
mentioned the plan is clearest. This is, of course, no invention of
Bach. The prelude grew out of a few chords rolled by an organist
or player of the harpsichord or lute to claim the attention of his
audience. The point is that Bach has made out of these preludes music
of ineffable beauty merely by the gift of his genius in harmony.
The sequences of his chords may be as modern as Wagner’s, chromatic
alterations even more subtle; or, as in the organ works, they may
move through broad diatonic highways, powerful in suspensions and
magnificent in delays. And, as to his power of expression through
harmony, let one listen to the recitatives of the St. Matthew Passion,
one of the immortal, unfathomable creations of man’s genius; consider
how they move on phrase after phrase, page after page, bearing the
whole weight of a mighty composition and unaccompanied save by a few
scattered chords. It may well be doubted if any art has or could have
added one touch more of inexplicable, unspeakable beauty to the story
of the Passion, save only these few scattered chords of Bach’s genius.


                                  III

We have already observed that all great composers from the time of
Beethoven have acknowledged Bach as the father of modern music, but
this relationship which his descendants have so gladly acknowledged is,
on the whole, general and intangible. The reason is partly that Bach
invented no new forms, and that the forms which he chose, and the style
in which he wrote, passed out of circulation, so to speak, immediately
after his death. The fugue, the cantata, and the Passion he brought to
the highest point it was possible for these forms to attain. They have
rarely been attempted since with near enough success to suggest even
imitation. The fugues of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are essentially
different from the fugues of Bach. Mendelssohn fell far short of the
master whom he, more almost than all others, worshipped. César Franck
has been compared to Bach, but is curiously unlike him. The cantata
and the Passion grew up to Bach and then stopped: the cantata, because
even in the hands of Bach it was an uncouth hybrid, neither opera,
which is itself an illogical mixture, nor church music; the Passion,
because, as Bach left it, it is as unattainable as the sun. As far
as form and outward show are concerned, therefore, Bach’s position
in the history of music is that of the culmination, the ultimate
consummation, of certain styles and forms now obsolete. To understand
his appearance in the history of music one must step back into the
history of the seventeenth century in German music, a history strangely
complicated with that of Protestantism, Lutheran hymns, and cantata
texts, inextricably associated with the church and with the organ loft.
In the growth of church music in Germany Bach had not one, nor two
predecessors. A dozen different courses converged in him. Strangely
enough, of the music of the one man before him with whom he might
seem related, Heinrich Schütz, he knew little or nothing. All others
worthy of the name of composers, however, contributed some share to his
development.

All the great organists from the time there were great organists
led to Bach, step by step, unmistakably. Every new phase of form,
every new device of virtuosity but paved the way for one who was so
supremely great as to cast them all into shade or oblivion. All hymn
writers, all composers of chorales led the same way. The Protestant
religion found its perfect artistic expression in Bach, not in the
cantatas but in the chorale fantasies for organ, the motets and the
Passion according to St. Matthew. Catholic art contributed its share.
He copied out masses by Palestrina, and by other men now forgotten,
such as Lotti and Caldara. For a good part of the Lutheran service,
especially at St. Thomas church in Leipzig, was practically Catholic in
form. The _Kyrie_, the _Gloria_, _Credo_, _Benedictus_, _Sanctus_, and
_Agnus Dei_ had their place in the ritual; and, what is more, German
composers, and Bach was no exception, seldom troubled to set them to
new music but adapted music of the earlier Italian writers to the new
German words. The enormous number of cantatas was owing to the fact
that the form had grown out of a native German custom of singing hymns
between the reading of the _Gospel_ and the _Credo_, on the one hand,
and the sermon, on the other, and composers were given opportunity to
set texts not already time-worn. The history of these texts is one full
of sad failures to achieve a truly artistic form, of futile efforts to
reconcile chorale and hymn with the new operatic style, of bad verse
and trivial, mechanical sentiment. Bach was constantly harassed by
problems of text, varying in his choice between an old style Bible text
woven with the strophes of the chorale hymns, by far the best though
least suited to the operatic style of music which had established
itself in the church, and a free text developed from a line or passage
in the Bible, consisting of strophic arias and passages for recitative
in the so-called madrigal style, a loose versification. The artistic
perfection of the Passion is due no little to the fact that he himself
supervised the arrangement of the text, the introduction of strophic
verse for arias, and madrigal style for ariosos and the chorales.

The history of Passion music leads to Bach, and further than that it
cannot go. Way back in the Middle Ages the story of the Passion was
chanted in the churches, some time, usually on Good Friday in holy
week. The words of the evangelist, of actors in the drama, and of
Christ were chanted by a priest or deacon in the monotonous reciting
tone, and the choir was given the ejaculations of the crowd. Later the
words of Christ, the evangelist, Pilate, Peter, etc., were allowed
to different chanters and with the growth of the operatic style the
monotonous chant was changed to more expressive recitative. This
intrusion of the operatic style was at times bitterly opposed, and
the greatest German composer before Bach--Heinrich Schütz--was among
the reactionaries, though he had received his training in Italy under
Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi himself. However, the influence of
opera was too strong for the conservative clergy, and not only did
recitative, aria, and dramatic choruses come to play a part in the
singing of the story of the Passion, but instruments were introduced
into the accompaniment, and the whole became practically a drama. The
need for texts suitable for treatment in recitative and aria finally
led to versified arrangements of the Biblical narrative itself, as well
as to the introduction of strophic stanzas interpretative of the mood
or action of the story. A new character, the so-called daughter of
Zion, was introduced as a convenient spokeswoman for the congregation.

Such were the theatrical arrangements made by C. F. Hunold, known as
Menantes, and by B. H. Brockes, a town councillor of Hamburg, whose
arrangement was set to music by Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, and
Handel. Chorale melodies and hymns found no place in these passions.
Schütz had employed them at the beginning and the end of his settings,
as introduction and epilogue. They were apparently first woven into
the body of the work by a little-known composer, Johann Sebastiani,
about 1672. The arrangement which Bach finally used for his St. Matthew
Passion was a combination of these earlier styles. For the narrative he
reverted to the Biblical text, divided among the various characters.
He retained the interpretative arias which in the midst of the story
dwell for a time on the suffering, on the horror of it all, and their
effect upon man; he included among the singers the Daughter of Zion.
The chorus was used for the utterances of the crowd, with considerable
restraint, and, throughout the work, for richly harmonized chorales
which served to draw the congregation into the tragedy even though they
were but once or twice given a voice in them. At the beginning and the
end massive double choruses, into the first of which a chorale melody
was woven, opened and concluded the story. Orchestra and organ made up
the accompaniment. All these various elements he combined with unerring
sense of proportion and fitness and with no inconsistencies and no
histrionic glamour, so that the work stands perfect as a piece of art,
and as the purest expression in music of the Lutheran religion.

In his general treatment of the orchestra Bach is allied so much more
closely to the past than to the future that in this regard he can be
said to have had practically no influence upon his successors. Before
his death the Mannheim school, led by Johann Stamitz, was already
pointing the way toward a new treatment of the orchestra which was to
be taken up and developed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Bach differs
from these later men not so much in a lack of appreciation of tone
color as in his forcing all instruments, irrespective of their peculiar
capabilities, to conformity in a polyphonic style much influenced
by the organ. The result is that trumpets and oboes, for examples,
are made to play rapid, agile figures suitable only to violin. All
instruments are treated in the same way, may be required to take
equal and similar parts in the music. This is, of course, distinctly
old-fashioned. Purely technical reasons would prevent any composer of
the new school from writing for the oboes as he would write for the
violins. Sonority and color, too, ousted the old polyphonic ideal. Bach
was not, however, deaf to orchestral color. Often in the accompaniments
to cantatas and other vocal works the coloring is rich and unusual, and
unusual combinations of solo instruments in the Brandenburg concertos
seem to show him on voyages of discovery, so to speak, into the effects
of combinations of different timbres.

The two series of orchestral works are the Brandenburg concertos and
the _Ouvertures_, both written during his stay at Cöthen. The names
themselves speak from the now distant past of orchestral music. The
name concerto then signified a composition written for a small group
of solo instruments, called the _concertino_, accompanied by or
alternating with a larger group called the _tutti_. For instance, in
the second concerto the solo group is composed of trumpet, flute, oboe,
and violin, the _tutti_ being in all cases made up of strings. The form
is Corellian. The relatively modern treatment of a solo instrument
in a concerto, writing for it to show off its special qualities and
technical peculiarities, is hardly suggested, _tutti_ and _concertino_
having to play the same musical material in the same polyphonic style,
offering principally contrast between sonority and delicacy; though, as
we have said, the element of tone color plays a part. It must be added,
however, that the long passage for harpsichord at the end of the first
movement of the fifth concerto is very similar to modern cadenzas. The
treatment of all parts is consistently polyphonic.

The same is true of the four _Ouvertures_. These compositions are
in reality suites, having as the first two movements the two
characteristics of the French _ouverture_ invented by Lully, one slow
and serious, the other an extended _allegro_ in fugal style. The
following movements are in dance forms and rhythms. They are scored for
the customary brass, wood, and strings, employed here not so much for
their specialties as for contrasts of sonority and delicacy.

Bach has not, therefore, contributed in matters of style and form to
the development of music after his time nor to the growth of orchestral
music, which was the distinguishing feature of the age which followed
immediately upon his death. This is due, as we have said, to the
fact that the style and forms which were his own inheritance passed
out of circulation. In many cases, too, his work was of such unique
greatness that no imitation of it could come near enough to suggest
more than most vaguely an influence. Copies of his style but emphasize
its remoteness, both in time and quality. Certain works must remain
forever unique because their peculiar perfection must always keep them
in a class by themselves. Among these there are none more striking
than the works for solo violin and for solo violoncello, works which
have no counterpart in music. Still, we are not limited to intangible
influences of melody and harmony in noting the effect which his
compositions have had upon his followers. In two ways at least he gave
a definite impulse to the course of music; he reorganized the system
of fingering keyboard instruments, and invented a satisfactory and
universally accepted method of equal temperament.


                                  IV

About the time Friedemann, his first born son, was nine years old
Bach began to compose for him the book of pieces known as the 'Little
Clavier Book.’ It is what we should call to-day a graded collection of
short pieces intended to perfect the already striking abilities of his
son. Beginning with the simplest elements, he introduced difficulties
by degrees until the last pieces, in polyphonic style, demand a very
considerable skill. The most interesting passages are those in which
Bach has indicated the fingering, for they prove that he reorganized
all the systems of fingering in use in his day and perfected one of his
own upon which future developments are based. His chief innovation is
in the manner of using the thumb. Up to the time of Couperin, players
of keyed instruments used only the four fingers of the hand. The thumb
hung idle. The position must have been stiff and awkward and it is
hard to understand how such brilliant performers as the north German
organists ever overcame the difficulties of it. Yet Bach himself told
his son Emanuel that in his youth he had seen great organists play
who never used the thumb except for the widest stretches. Couperin’s
famous book on the art of playing the harpsichord appeared in 1717,
the very year Bach went to Cöthen. In it he advocated the use of the
thumb, but over the fingers, not under them. Bach was one of the first
to appreciate the advantages of passing the thumb under the hand. It
is hardly possible that he invented the practice. Many of the oldest
works for the harpsichord must have called for a use of the thumb, and
the contemporary works of Domenico Scarlatti would have been almost
insurmountably difficult without it; but in theory the use of the thumb
under the hand was avoided, and Bach’s 'Little Clavier Book’ contains
probably the first open recognition of the advantages of so using it,
no matter what the actual practice of virtuosi had been up to that
time. One will observe that Bach did not abandon the old system, and
that many passages marked by him are to be played in the old way; that
is, by passing the long fingers, chiefly the middle finger, over the
short ones; but he laid the foundations of the new. The most famous of
players in the next generation was his own son Emanuel, whose book on
playing the harpsichord was the standard authority down to the time
that the harpsichord was finally supplanted by the pianoforte. Haydn
and Mozart undoubtedly profited by it, and thus the methods of the
father were spread abroad through the son and played a considerable
part in the development of music for the pianoforte.

'The Well-tempered Clavichord’[158] is unquestionably an epoch-making
work. It is, as is well known, a series of preludes and fugues in
all major and minor keys. The term 'well-tempered’ refers to Bach’s
method of tuning the clavichord, which for the first time made such
an unbounded use of harmony possible. It will be remembered that the
first keyboards had only those keys which are to-day white, sounding
only the diatonic tones of the modes. The first chromatic alteration
allowed in these modes was the B-flat, which was practically forced
upon musicians in order to avoid the augmented interval between F and
B natural, an interval excruciating to their ears. So the black key
between A and B was the first to find its place on the keyboard, and it
was tuned in the relation of a perfect fourth with the F below. E-flat
seems to have been the next black key and was tuned in the relation of
a perfect fourth to the B-flat. The other black keys were added one by
one, nearly always in exact relation to some one of the white keys or
the original diatonic notes of the modes, F sharp in that of a perfect
fifth with the B below, G sharp in that of a perfect major third with
E, C sharp in the same relation with A. Inasmuch as all these intervals
were mathematically exact--and such was the idea of tuning all through
the Middle Ages and nearly to the time of Bach--the black keys were in
perfect relation only with one or more of the white keys, and often
quite out of relation with each other. The intervals between them were
very noticeably out of tune and false. When, during the seventeenth
century, our harmonic system of transposing keys finally supplanted the
old modal system, composers for the harpsichord and the organ still
found themselves limited by their keyboards to three sharp keys and two
flat, so long as their instruments were perfectly tuned.

A cursory glance at some of the old harpsichord music shows that
composers did not by any means submit to such a restriction, and we
must presume that, unless they were willing to endure the sound of many
hideous imperfections, they developed in practice at any rate some
system of tuning which softened or tempered them. Bach, therefore,
is not the inventor of the first tempered tuning, but it is doubtful
if any composer before him had worked out such a satisfactory system
as his which has been called equal temperament, and which amounts
practically to the division of the keyboard octave into twelve
equal though slightly imperfect intervals. Only the octave remained
strictly in tune. The imperfections of the other intervals were so
slight, however, as to be hardly perceptible. Thus the black keys of
the keyboard came to represent two notes, different in theory, the
sharp of the note below and the flat of the note above; and, by such
a compromise, composers for the instrument were enabled to modulate
freely through all keys. Bach must be acknowledged the first great
musician to recognize the inestimable value of such a liberation,
in proof of which he wrote the first series of the 'Well-tempered
Clavichord.’ The fugues notably are enriched by the most beautiful
modulations, and in this regard the collection may be said to be almost
the foundation upon which all subsequent music has been built, and to
contain the seeds from which the most soaring harmonies of Beethoven,
Chopin and even Wagner have sprung. Thus we are brought back by the
'Well-tempered Clavichord’ to the crowning glory of his genius, his
gift for harmony. Beethoven knew the Well-tempered Clavichord.’ He is
said to have won his first distinction as a pianist by his playing of
those preludes and fugues in Vienna. And Beethoven called Bach the
forefather of harmony.

Probably no collection of pieces has been so carefully studied and
sounded again and again by generation after generation of composers
and probably no other set of pieces will ever prove so impervious to
every influence of time. It is like an eternal spring, forever fresh,
forever marvellous. Scarcely less wonderful are the collections of
two- and three-part Inventions. Both these and the preludes and fugues
were written as exercises--the one, in Bach’s own words, as 'an honest
guide by which the lovers of the clavier, but particularly those who
desire to learn, are shown a plain way not only to play neatly in two
parts, but also, in further progress, to play correctly and well in
three _obbligato_ parts; and, at the same time, not only to acquire
good ideas, but also to work them out themselves; and, finally, to
acquire a _cantabile_ style of playing, and, at the same time, to gain
a strong predilection for, and foretaste of, composition’; the other
'for the use and practice of young musicians who desire to learn,
as for those who are already skilled in this study, for amusement.’
There can be no better testimony to Bach as a teacher than these short
prefaces, written in his own fine hand, upon the title pages of the
two sets. For him, the greatest virtuoso of his day, virtuosity was
nothing, and he taught those about him above all to seek to express
only what was genuine and fine in music. So he continues to teach the
world of musicians, though music has passed through fire and tempest
since he wrote these pieces all but two hundred years ago in the castle
at Cöthen. Styles have changed, forms have changed, instruments have
changed; the state, the world, are no longer the same; yet in every
state and to every corner of the world where there are men and women
who have devoted their lives to music, there will Bach be found as the
touchstone of all that is good in the art.


                                   V

This is in essence his position at the present day in music, a position
unique and special. He will always be the greatest of teachers. His
music is profoundly mystical and for this reason the secret of its
extraordinary vitality will perhaps never be revealed; and it is
nearly always intimate; in this most different from Handel, his great
contemporary, with whom he will ever be compared, though the startling
contrasts between them lead no nearer to the comprehension or just
estimate of either. Handel is outspoken, Bach suggestive; the one
compels, the other stimulates.

In conclusion we may once more draw attention to some of the salient
points in his genius. As a man he had keen practical knowledge, yet
he was impulsive and ardent. He was unshakable in his convictions.
He was generous but not always peaceable. And he was always quietly
but profoundly thoughtful. Among his friends were men of prominence,
knowledge, and high social rank. The circumstances of his life kept
him from the theatre, which was the goal of most composers of his time,
but, furthermore, his genius was not of the dramatic kind nor his
nature one to seek public acclaim. He was, however, in the words of
a contemporary, the prince of all players on the harpsichord and the
organ, and was so recognized over a large part of Germany.

His unmatched technique in composition was acquired by constant labor
and a never-ending study of all available music, both Italian and
French, as well as German, while he remained essentially a son of
his race. The works of Couperin were known to him, those of Vivaldi
and Corelli, of all the great German organists and composers, save
only Heinrich Schütz, of the old Italian masters, Palestrina, Lotti,
and Caldara. The forms of his day he mastered, both those of ancient
descent and those of more recent make; and he invented no new forms.
He was first and foremost an organist, the culmination of a long line
of German masters. His music for the organ rises higher than that
of any of his predecessors, largely because of the logical harmonic
foundation upon which he built it. It has never since been equalled. To
music for other keyboard installments, precursors of the pianoforte, he
brought a richness of harmony and of feeling not to be found in such
music before his day. The polyphonic forms, especially the fugues,
were influenced by the organ style. Other forms, such as the suites,
suggest the influence of French writers. The so-called English suites,
the name of which has given rise to much discussion, are the greatest
suites in existence. The suites for violin and 'cello alone are unique.
The polyphonic style in which many movements of them are written is
characteristic of German violin music of the time; the conciseness of
form, of the Italian masters. All his vocal works show the influence
of the organ style, which was the most natural and most familiar to
him, but in these he has incorporated forms such as recitative and _da
capo_ aria directly from the contemporary Italian opera. Difficulties
and improprieties of text affected the cantatas. The Passions,
especially that according to St. Matthew, are flawless in structure.
The perfection of the latter is largely due to his supervision of and
arrangement of the plan and the text. The mass in B minor is his most
colossal work, seeming, however, a less natural expression of his
genius than the Passion. Preludes, fugues, suites, concertos in the old
style, the church cantata and the musical setting of the Passion he
brought to their highest point.

After his death other forms occupied composers, so that he has not
served as a model. Also, the next age was preëminently the age of the
orchestra, the modern orchestra with its peculiar problems, to the
settlement of which Bach contributed little or nothing. The sonorous
pianoforte persuaded composers from the organ. The polyphonic style was
abandoned or was radically modified. Thus the new era of Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven is seemingly completely severed from Bach, totally
disconnected save for the links of a revised system of fingering for
keyboard instruments and a satisfactory method of equal temperament.
But the new age was the age of the supremacy of harmony in music and
the genius of Bach, often concealed behind the polyphonic fabric of
his greatest works, is essentially harmonic. Chords, modulation,
chromaticism are the essence of his music. In all his compositions they
give the mysterious warmth. They are the basis of his form, the power
of his suggestion. That he might be free to modulate at will he so
tuned his clavichord that all keys, both major and minor, could mingle
through it; and as initiative for his students to the beauties of
harmony unrestricted he composed two series of preludes and fugues in
every key which to-day seem an epitome of musical expression. Written
for students, they have taught every great composer from Beethoven to
Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. They open the way to his other and
to his bigger works, where the lover of music may so lose himself in
wonder and deepest joy that he will say, as many have said, here is the
beginning and the end of music.
                                                                 L. H.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[155] The exact date is not known.

[156] Both St. Thomas school and church are still In existence. The
boys’ choir is one of the finest in Germany and may be heard as in
Bach’s time every Sunday of the year, in a motet.

[157] This famous letter is printed in full in Spitta’s _Life of Johann
Sebastian Bach_. It is illuminating in regard not only to Bach’s
character, but to his family life as well.

[158] The clavichord was suitable only for the most intimate sort of
music. It differed from the harpsichord in that the tone of it was
produced not by a plucking of the strings but by a pressure brought to
bear on them by little uprights attached to the key levers. The tone
was very slender but sweet and within its limitations capable of fine
shading. A varying pressure of the key produced that tremolo which on
the violin is called _vibrato_, and gave the tone a delicate warmth
wholly lacking in the clean-cut, frosty tone of the harpsichord--and,
indeed, in the rich tone of the pianoforte.