lifornia onal

s*

Fl LLJ^oRE

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

LESSONS

MUSICAL HISTORY.

BY

JOHN COMFORT FILLMORE.

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF PIANO MUSIC." "NEW LESSONS IN HARMONY,""

ETC.

PHILADELPHIA :

THEODORE PRESSER, 1704 CHESTNUT STREET.

ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS IN THE YEAR 1 888 I\~THE

OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AT

WASHINGTON, D. C.

College Library

flL

.

PREFACE.

THIS little book is the result of the author's own efforts to interest his pupils in the History of Music and to give them an outline of that history, presenting its salient facts in a clearer per- spective than he could find in any text-book he had tried to use. Since the book was begun, the excellent history of Dr. Langhans has appeared in English, but the translation is so clumsy as not to preclude the necessity of some other text-book for English-speaking students. There still remains the need of an exhaustive history to follow such an outline as is here attempted. Those who read German can find it in the admirable histories of Von Dommer and Ambros ; but the counterparts of these Avorks are not yet to be found in English. ChappelTs history, so far as it has gone, is interesting, and instructive to discriminating readersj but its author seems too opinionated and too~unbalanced to ~Be thoroughly trusted as a guide. Rowbotham is valuable to those who can devote attention to such details as the minute study of Greek rhythms and other fine points of ancient music, and will be interesting even to those who can read it but superficially. But the second of his two large volumes already pub- lished only brings us through the music of the Greek tragedy. The histories of Burney and Hawkins are not to be forgotten, but they are, of course, antiquated. Macfarren's, Ritter's, Bouavia Hunt's, Kockstro's and others are outlines only.

The most important auxiliary to the English speaking student of musical history is Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musicians," by far the most complete encyclopedia yet published in English, a library in itself. It ought to be accessible to every student of music. There is a short "Dictionary of Music and Musicians" appended to \V. S. B. Mathews' "How to Understand Music," which will be found very handy for reference. The book itself is valuable reading, and a second volume, now in preparation, will cover important ground in the history of music. Naumann's History is valuable for its illustrations. Many of these are also to be found in Mendel's ".Conversations-lexicon," the most extensive musical encyclopedia for those who read German. A smaller, but most valuable German encyclopedia is Dr. Hugo Riemann's 41 Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon." Among special histories

1115822

Kiemann's •' Studien zur Gesschichte der Notenschrift," is perhaps the most important contribution to our knowledge made in recent years. It ought to be translated into clear and readable English. Dr. Eiemann is doubtless the greatest living musical theorist and no student of music can afford to ignore his works. Unfortunately none of them have been translated except his lecture on " The Nature of Harmony " and his " Comparative Piano School."

In biography we are better off. The series entitled " The Great Musicians," edited by Franz Hueffer is strongly to be recommended.. Its American publishers are Scribner and Welford, New York. Kara- sowski's " Life of Chopin " is now to be had in English. This is the stand ird biography of Chopin. Liszt's " Chopin " is interesting but is, in some respects, inaccurate and misleading. Schumann's Essays are well-known and so is Wasielwski's " Life of Schumann." It is matter of pride to Americans that the standard life of Beethoven is the production of an American, A. W. Thayer. Unfortunately, it has thus far appeared only in German. The works connected with Mendelssohn's name are numerous and valuable ; his letters are especially charming. " Music and Morals " and " My Musical Memories," by the Rev. H. R. Harries, are excellent reading. But I will not further extend a list which could hardly be made exhaustive. The student who_ makes hia own choice of the books here enumerated will know how to discriminate- as to his further reading.

Milwaukee, Wisn November 1887. J. C. F.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

INTRODUCTION.

IN the logical order of thought, the considera- tion of the nature of music naturally precedes the investigation of its function. But its function was undoubtedly perceived ages before there was any thought of investigating its nature on scien- tific principles. We shall not go astray, then, perhaps, if we first try to imagine to ourselves what the first music in the world must have been and why people practiced it. If we can get at the real motive which impelled people to make music we shall surely become enlightened as to its real function in the economy of human nature. The insight we thus gain will serve as a sure guide through all the mazes of musical history.

We may assume as certain that the first ele- mentary efforts at music were vocal, and not instrumental. For the human voice was certainly in existence before any other musical instruments were invented. People sang before they had instruments to play on. Mothers crooned to their babes, rocking them backward and forward in their arms as they hushed them to sleep. Men shouted defiance to their enemies in inarticulate cries and yells. Young men and maidens danced, and sung to their dancing. We may be sure of these things, because they are to be found among the most primitive and savage peoples of our own time, and because we have authentic accounts of them among ancient primitive peoples. Human nature is essentially the same in all ages and under vii

INTRODUCTION.

The nature and function of music.

The earliest music not instrumental, but vocal.

via

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

iNTROPfCTlON.

The function of mutic if to e-jrfireff and excite feeling.

The nature of music.

Primitire mutic made up of melody and rhythm.

all conditions, and we cannot doubt that the impulse which leads to such manifestations now

our remotest ancestors to express their feelings in similar ways.

This phrase "express their feelings" suggests- at least one of the motives which impelled people i to sing. The savage yells at his enemy because his yelling is the natural expression of his emo- tional excitement. The mother croons to her babe because she feels like doing so. It is the natural expression of her emotional state. But this is not all. She does so because of its effect on the child. She knows intuitively that this monotonous, meas- ured flow of sound, the expression of her own quiet happiness, will soothe the infant into a rest- ful state of feeling and dispose it to slumber. The warrior feels that the expression of his rage by means of violent sounds will excite his comrades to valor and perhaps strike terror into his ene- mies. The singing of the dancers is equally expres- sive of their emotional state, and tends to excite those feelings to still greater activity. Vocal music, then, is a natural product of human nature, and its function is to express and excite feeling,

In the primitive music above referred to we find two of the essential elements of all music — Melody and Rhythm. Melody is a succession of single musical sounds, differing more or less in pitch. Rhythm is a succession of beats or pulsa- tions occurring at regular intervals. There is a natural tendency in human nature to make all melody rhythmic. The mother's low song to her babe naturally falls into regularly recurring rhythmic divisions, accompanied by corresponding movements of the body. Rhythm is of the very essence of the dance; and the rhythmic motions of the dancers are accompanied with rhythmic

INTRODUCTION.

IX

The beginnings of instrumental

music.

song, the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet. The element of rhythm becomes most strongly marked in war dances. In these the motions are violent, the songs loud and harsh and the rhythm often marked by the striking of war clubs on hollow logs or on some resounding instrument of percussion.

Instruments of percussion were, doubtless, the first to be invented. From marking the rhythm by pounding on a tree or post with a club, it was not far to covering the end of a hollow log with a ^tretched skin, thus producing a rude drum. CProgres| was then easy toward the whole family of drums, tom-toms, gongs, cymbals, tambourines, etc., the latter kind as soon as metals and metal working had been discovered. Wind instruments were probably invented by some such accident as hearing a broken reed give forth a musical tone when blown across by the wind. The Egyptian and Greek myth has it that the god Hermes, walking by the Nile bank, picked up a tortoise shell which had some sun-dried membranes stretched across it, and that this gave him the idea of the lyre. It is not improbable that some such accident as this really occasioned the invention of stringed instruments. Or perhaps the idea came from a tightly-stretched bowstring. However this may be, the first instrumental music must have been associated with vocal music, and must have been essentially the same in its nature and function. That is, it consisted of rhythmical successions of sounds, which owed their origin to the innate impulse to express, convey and excite feeling.

As time went on and the savage developedmto the barbarian, and from the barbarian into the "civilized man, there was, we know, a gradual

Sensuous beaut j of tone.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

INTRODUCTION.

The intellectual fitment in music.

VnUy.

growth in refinement. This improvement showed 'tselflnTlnusicanperception as well as elsewhere. The power of discriminating qualities of tone, like other faculties, grows with use and attention, and sensuous beauty of tone gradually came to be regarded as a refined sensuous pleasure in itself. It was enjoyed apart from its emotional signifi- cance, just as the perfume of a rose is. So we find it now. There are persons who lay undue stress the element of sensuous beauty in music,

on

disregarding other and higher considerations. To such, music becomes a sensuous indulgence — refined, indeed, but still involving a minimum of intellectual and moral quality.

In the course of time the awakened human in- tellect began to deal with music as with other sub- jects in which men were interested. Philosophers began to investigate the physical and mathematical relations of tones, and thus arose the science of ACOUSTICS. Composers began to analyze rhythms and to balance groups of small rhythmical units against each other to make symmetrically larger units, and thus began the science and art of MELODIC FORM. They also began to combine two and afterward more melodies sounding at the same time into one whole, and thus arose COUNTERPOINT.*

They learned to secure Unity in these composi- tions by using the same melody as a second voice- part, only beginning it some time after the first. Thus arose Strict and afterward Free IMITATION. From this principle were developed, in the strict style, CANON and FUGUE. From the free treatment of

* " Counterpoint " means "point against point." The term was first used before our modern notes were in- vented, when points were used to indicate tones.

INTRODUCTION.

XI

imitations were developed all the modern forms. This unity of idea, secured by developing a com- position through varied repetitions of a few melodic ideas (Themes or Motives), is called THEMATIC TREATMENT.

Once the idea of combining melodies had been developed, the step was inevitable to thinking sounds in combinations, or Chords. It took a long time before men learned to think complex music otherwise than as combinations of simultaneously progressing melodies. They thought it horizontally, so to speak. But after a time they learned to think it perpendicularly. That is, they learned to think of each combination of simultaneously sound- ing tones (chord) as a musical unit ; and they gradually found out the laws governing the natural relations of succession chords. The science of chords and of their successions and relations is called HARMONY.

Finally, men developed the art of combining and contrasting the different qualities of tones produced by different kinds of instruments so as to produce beautiful effects, and to heighten and intensify emotional expression. This is the art of INSTRUMENTATION, or ORCHESTRATION. All these belong to the intellectual element in music. Logi- cally and historically, they come after the emo- tional and sensuous enjoyment of music.

The imagination is the great constructive faculty. In the beginning of music it had only the simplest elements of melody and rhythm as material with which to deal. But it dealt with these in their relation to feeling, and the folk-songs of all nations are the sincere, spontaneous expression of natural feeling. Gradually, as the sensuous perception and the intellectual .elements in music were developed, the food for the imagination

INTRODUCTION.

Harmony.

Instrumenta- tion.

The

imagination.

Xll

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

IXTRODVCnON.

Summary.

Relatire rank of compoteri and their icorkt.

became richer and more varied, until we have now a wealth of musical material sufficient to tax the imaginative power of a Beethoven or a Wagner.

To sum up, then, music is, in its nature, that one of the Fine Arts which has for its material musical tones. It affords us enjoyment on its lowest plane through the discrimination of refined from coarse tones and by combinations and con- trasts of different qualities of tone. The pleasure thus derived is refined, but it is sensuous merely. Music adds to this very high intellectual enjoy- ment. In its more elaboratic forms, such as the fugue, the sonata, the symphony, the music-drama,, it taxes the intellectual resources of both composer and student in equal degree with the greatest intellectual productions of the human mind in other fields of activity. It thus adds intellectual to sensuous enjoyment, and so ranks high in the scale of mental activities.

But its primary and ultimate function is to- express, convey and excite feeling. To this the sensuous and intellectual elements are subordinate. The imagination reaches its highest flights and performs its most legitimate function when it deals with its musical materials in their relation, to emotion.

The rank of a composer, like that of any other creative artist, depends, first of all, on the vigor, vividness and fertility of his imagination. Crea- tive power means the gift of spontaneous invention* It can neither be learned nor taught ; it is an original gift which can neither be acquired nor accounted for. This is it which is commonly called Genius. Nothing else can take the place of it. Wherever it appears, as it does here and there among men, and often under the most unexpected

INTRODUCTION.

Xlll

and apparently unpromising conditions, the world does not willingly let it die. Men may be slow in recognizing it ; but once acknowledged, it becomes a precious and immortal possession for the whole race. Next to this in importance comes what is commonly called Talent. This means a special aptitude for artistic perception and attainment, and for applying acquired ideas, without much original power of invention. In its higher mani- festations talent so closely approximates the lower orders of genius that it is often not easy to distin- guish them, and there are many cases that have occasioned dispute among critics.

Butwhether a composer be_^os§essedpfggniu8 or only of talent, it is absolutely essential that fie shouIdTJave"Tn8 mmft~nnrpIyJltoTett with musical material, and should navg

INTBODUCTION.

^

the intellectual side. He must, first of all, have material for his imagination to deal with, must acquire musical experience. Accordingly, we find that all the great masters of composition have diligently studied the works of their predecessors and have missed no opportunities to hear the best music. They have studied them also from the intellectual and technical side ; have become mas- ters of the technic of composition. They have realized that no matter what ideas a composer may have, he can only become an artist by acquir- ing the power to express them. This they have done by infinite painstaking, and so much have they been impressed with the necessity of this, that the greatest of them have repeatedly said, in one form or other, that genius is only the art of taking pains !

But this is not enough. Given an original, creative mind, with acute musical perceptions, ample intellectual and technical attainments and

Need of ttudy.

The moral element.

XIV

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

INTRODUCTION.

Principles of

criticism.

a clear comprehension of the relation of music to feeling, it still remains for him to decide what kind of emotion he will choose to embody in music. He may choose noble or ignoble subjects ; he may, if he chooses, treat noble subjects in an ignoble way. This has often been done by composers of music for religious worship and for the drama. Nor can he escape moral choices even in purely instrumental music. He may make his music as high in aim as the Beethoven fifth symphony, or as unheroic, not to say frivolous and base, as an Offenbach waltz. This will depend on his own moral character. Base men cannot write great music, nor heroic men ignoble music; though even weak men may have their heroic moments, and noble men their weak ones. But, other things being equal, the rank of a composer will depend on the nobility of his feeling and of his moral purpose. The relative rank of his works will depend on the degree in which they embody the noblest and best that is in* him.

The principles above set forth are those which will determine the judgments of composers and their works which are to follow in this book. It will seek to trace the development of the different factors in musical production and in musical enjoyment at different times and in different nations. It will seek to show how and why the course of musical history became what it was. This the author regards as of even more import- ance than an authentic record of historical facts.

INTRODUCTION.

xv

5

QUESTIONS.

How do we seek to gain an insight into the nature of music ?

What natural impulses of human nature produced primitive music? Give illustrations.

What are the primitive elements of music?

Give the probable origin of primitive instruments.

How did men come to a more discriminating percep- tion of the difference in quality of tone ?

Give an account of the intellectual element in music.

How many kinds of enjoyment are derivable from music ?

On what does the rank of a composer depend ?

Why do even gifted composers need study and experi- ence?

What relation has music to the moral nature of man ?

INTBODXJCTION.

*i*^A/*^f^^ ^/W

I.— Chinese Instruments. The " Che" " or " Wonderful," a 25-stringed instrument, and the " Po-son," a small drum.

II.— The earliest Egyptian Harp. (XVI)

III. — Greek Instruments, (a) Plectrum, (b) Kithara, (c) Psaltery or long lyre, (d) Chelys, a small lyre.

IV.— Greek Instruments, (a) and (c), Varieties of the Lyre. (b) Trigonon.

(XVII)

LESSON I.

ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC.

Music, as we know it, in .its developed form as a line art, belongs to the jChristian Era,ltncl practically, to tEeTast four centuries. It is the latest born of the family of fine arts, and is that one of them which specially corresponds to the needs of emotional expression as devel- oped by Christianity.

Nevertheless, music in its more elementary forms, and even in a considerable degree of development, as regards melody, has existed for thousands of years, among nations and races the most various and diverse. Harmony, coun- ter-point, form and instrumentation's we know them, are modern and occidental. But the most ancient of Oriental civilizations, in China, in India, in Persia, in Egypt and especially in Greece, used and prized melody, established scales, investigated acoustics, and had, possi- bly, more knowledge of harmony and of instru- mental combinations than we have yet been able to discover. (See illustration I.)

In all ancient nations music was believed to be of divine origin and in that stage of mental development when mythologies invariably arise there was always a mythology connected with the art of music. In India the gift of music was ascribed to BRAHMA. To his son, NARED, was ascribed the invention of the Vina, an in- strument of the guitar type. In Egypt the invention of the lyre was ascribed to the god THAUT, who, walking one day by the Nile, took up a tortoise shell to which some dried mem- branes still adhered, accidentally set them in

1

Music a recent art.

3Telody ohter than harmony.

This chapter

preceding

ancient

mythobtpy

concerning

music.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

JWraculr/ug

l>owers fttfi'ibuted to

vibration and thus produced musical tones. In Greece a similar legend attached to HERMES. Other similar examples might be cited from China and elsewhere. (See illustrations II, III and IV.)

Miraculous powers were attributed to music and musicians. Some of the ancient sacred songs in India produced rain ; some produced darkness. Others no mortal might sing under penalty of destruction by fire from heaven. Others when sung forced men, animals and in- animate objects to obey the will of the singer. In Greece, ORPHEUS and AMPHION were followed by trees and by wild animals which lost their ferocity when they heard their songs. In Judea, the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of the priests' trumpets. These legends serve to show how great was the impression produced on the minds, feelings and imaginations of the ancients by such music as they had.

In all the pre-Christian civilizations music was regarded as an elevating exercise of the feelings, intellect and imagination, and an im- portant element of culture. Theorists occupied themselves with the science of music, with the determination of intervals, the construction of scales and the building of melodies. Curiously similar results, as regards scales, were arrived at by nations widely remote from each other in distance, blood, language, religion and customs. The Chinese and the Indians seem to have had the same pentatonic (five-toned) scale which is still to be found in the ancient music of the Celtic nations, such as the Irish and Scotch. It is simply our major diatonic scale with the fourth and seventh omitted. These intervals were supplied later, and this scale, which we call " natural," was found equally satisfactory

Music regarded as elevating.

Ancient

five-toned

scales.

ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC.

by Oriental barbarians whose ideas and feelings are incomprehensible to us. But the musical results they otained from it, especially in China, are such as do not in the least appeal to our musical sympathies. In fact they often outrage our musical susceptibilities, as our music does theirs. Some of the ancient nations also had a five-toned under-scale afterwards developed into :an eight-toned one. This last was the reciprocal of the major or over-scale, having the same order of tones and semi-tones going down that the over-scale has going up. Examples :

Five-toned over-scale :

Five-toned under-scale: CZ2— ^ ^

In both these pentatonic scales the fourth and seventh, i. e., the intervals which give the semitones or " leading-note " progressions are left out and were afterwards supplied.

All these ancient nations had stringed instru- ments, wind instruments of wood and of metal and instruments of percussion. In China, the latter class predominates. To India we proba- bly owe the invention of stringed instruments played with a bow. Egypt and Greece made common use of stringed instruments plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum, such as the lyre and the harp, the percursors of our modern harpsichord and piano-forte.

The splendid intellectual civilization of the Greeks included an elaborate musical system. The beginnings of Greek musical theory were probably derived from Egypt, but of the Egyp- tian theory of music we know nothing and of its practice very little. Of the Greek system

Over-scale

and Under-scale.

Different

families of

instruments.

The Greek musical system.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

The Mnuftonft

we are now able to give a, tolerably complete account. The latest researches have profoundly modified, not to say revolutionized the ideas of it which have been current in Christendom since the first attempts to revive the Greek scales as a basis for Christian melody about the end of the fifth century of our era. Those attempts resulted in a serious misapprehension of the facts of Greek theory and practice, and the blunders of the early Christian theorists resulted finally in the adoption and perpetuation in our system of a so-called " minor " scale vastly in- ferior in naturalness and in rationality to the Greek scale from which it was perverted. As a consequence, our present minor scale is a clumsy and confused substitute for what might have been as clear and satisfactory a scale as our present " major " one. On this account Greek musical theory has a special interest for us.

In brief, the Greek musical system had for its fundamental unit the tetrachord, or series of four tones. The three intervals separating these four tones consisted invariably of two tones and one semitone. The tetrachord was named ac- cording to the position of the semitone. When the semitone came between the first tone and the second (going downward), the tetrachord was called Lydian. When it was between the second ,and the third, it was called Phrygian. When it was between the third and fourth, it was called Dorian. There were three different octave-species," modes "or scales, as we should call them, corresponding to these, made by con- joining two tetrachords of the same kind sepa- rated by a tone. They seem to have been all written and thought downward, not upward, as we think our scales. Expressed in modern notation they would be as follows :

ORIENTLAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC.

1. Lydian Scale

2. Phrygian Scale :

3. Dorian Scale :

1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachord.

1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachord.

1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachord.

The Indian corresponds to our modern major scale thought downward. The Dorian is the exact reciprocal in under intervals of our major scale in over intervals, the semitones coming between the third and fourth and seventh and eighth, giving each tetrachord a descending leading-note, as each tetrachord of our major scale has an ascending leading-note. The Dorian scale was the favorite one of the Greeks, owing, doubtless, to this peculiarity ; for the semitone between the seventh and eighth, seems to be a natural demand of the human ear and mind. The Lydian scale they did not like so well, probably because they thought it downward and not up- ivard, thus missing the peculiarly satisfactory characteristic of the upward leading-tone.

When, after the lapse of about four centuries, there began to be felt a desire to base the music of the Christian church on scientific principles and to cultivate music in a scientific way, the natural recourse was to the Greek system, for that was the only culture-music yet developed in the world. But the Greek civilization had then perished, Greek scholarship was unknown

The " modes, "octave-

or scale*.

Greek scales thought down- ward.

Attempts to base Christian music on that of the Greeks.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

in Christendom, and the attempt to revive the Greek scales resulted in a complete misappre- hension of the way the Greeks thought their music. Bishop Ambrose, of Milan, did indeed get hold of the Greek scales, but he inverted them, thought them upward instead of down- ward, and his mistake was perpetuated in Christian music. The error was serviceable in that it gave us the real natural way of thinking the major scale, which finally became the pre- dominant scale of European music. But it did harm in that it inverted the natural order of ^e Dorian scale and prevented any true per- ception of its real character. That scale, begun on its fifth (A) and thought upward, thus.

The " complete

system" <tf the Greeks.

I

•nr

^

eventually became our present so-called "minor" scale. Thought as the Greeks thought it, there is no propriety whatever in calling it a "minor" scale ; it is an wnder-scale, the true reciprocal of the ouer-scale,which we, with equal infelicity, call "major." The revival of the under-scale with its characteristic melodic and harmonic possibilities is greatly to be desired as an en- richment of our musical resources.

In later times the Greeks had what they called a " complete musical system ; " a scale of two octaves, made up of five Dorian tetrachords not separated by a tone as they were in the octave- species, but overlapping and with a final added tone, thus :

The Greek " Complete Musical System.''1 1st tetrachord. 3d tetrachord. 5th tetrachord.

2d tetrachord. 4th tetrachord.

Added final note.

ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC.

The final A seems to have been added merely to complete the two octaves. Finally, this "complete system" was transposed, without change of the order of intervals, to each of the twelve semitones of the octave, making twelve different " modes," or, as we should say," keys." Each of these modes had a special name. Of these, five, namely, those beginning on D, D&, E, F and F 8, were regarded as principal and the others as subordinate. Each principal mode had two subordinate ones, one beginning on the fourth below and one beginning on the fourth above. Those beginning on the under-fourth were designated by the term " hypo," which means "under" and those beginning on the fourth above were designated by the term "hyper," which means "over," thus:

Scheme of the Greek Modes.

A, Hypo-Dorian. D, Dorian. G, Hyper-Dorian. AJ, Hypo-Ionian. DJ, Ionian.

B, Hypo-Phrvgian. E,

C, Hypo-Aeolian. F,

CJ, Hypo-Lydian. FJ, Lydian,

Observe that some of these are duplicates. Observe, also, that whereas the Dorian "Octave- species " began on E, the " complete system " which began on E was called Phrygian. These names were confused by the mediaeval theorists, who applied to the scale E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E the name " Phrygian Mode." So that they com- mitted at least two blunders; they thought this under-scale, the Greek " Dorian octave-species" upward instead of downward, as the Greeks thought it, and they applied to it the name which the Greeks gave only to their " complete system " beginning on the same tone. The}' blundered similarly with reference to all the other scales they adopted from the Greeks, so

G|, Hyper-Ionian. Phrygian. A, Hyper-Phrygian. Aeolian. Bb, Hyper-Aeolian.

B, Hyper-Lydian.

Its transpositions.

Confusion of

mediceval nomenclature.

LESSORS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

.'

4

that Greek musical theory, instead of being an enlightening element in our modern music, as it might have been, became a misleading and confusing one. The effects of this early and long continued misunderstanding of Greek musical ideas have been for centuries firmly embedded in our musical system and are now easily recognizable in our confused treatment of the " minor " scale. It will probably be a good while before we learn to treat the " minor " scale and the u minor " chord in a rational way. For a lucid presentation of this subject see " The Nature of Harmony," by Dr. Hugo Rie- mann, translated by the present writer and published by the publisher of this history.

QUESTIONS.

What did the ancients do in music?

What did they not do, so far as we know ?

What origin did they assign to music ?

What effects were attributed to it in their mythologies ?

Give examples.

What two five-toned scales were used by the ancient Chinese and East Indians?

What modern races have had one or both of these scales?

Into what two eight-toned scales were these afterwards developed ?

What kind of instruments did the ancients use?

Whence did the Greeks probably get their music?

Give a brief account of the Greek theory of music.

What lay at the basis of their system?

Describe the difference between their " octave-species ',' and their " complete system."

Which "octave- species" or scale was their favorite ?

How did this scale become our modern "minor" scale?

What effect did the misapprehension of Greek ideas produce on Christian music?

In what respects did the early Christian and mediaeval j theorists misunderstand the Greek musical theory which ' they sought to revive?

LESSON II.

THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES OF CHRISTIAN MUSIC.

THEhistory of music practically begins jvith the Christian era. There hacTbeen music, of one sort or anotKer, from a very early period, and some nations, as the Greeks, for example, had a very elaborate theoretical and practical musical system. But what wasreallyvaluable in their system was not madejyailable^ in modern niusic.

With the advent ^f the~TJhnstian era, music had to begin anew, almost from the foundation. The beginnings of Christianity were surrounded toy Greek influences. Begun and propagated by Hebrews, it soon spread among the Greek popu- lations which enclosed Judea on all sides, and Greek churches were speedily organized. Before the death of the immediate disciples and followers of Jesus, numerous Greek congregations called themselves by his name, professed his doctrines, worshiped on the first day of the week, broke tread and drank wine in remembrance of him, and sang hymns in divine service. Thus began a new era which was to supplant the ancient civili- zation and the ancient worship. The central element in the new faith and worship, as com- pared with the paganism OfTDlTGrreeks. ,Was a pure morality Some of the Greek religious rites, in {He ceremonial part of which vocal and instru- mental music played a prominent part, were shockingly immoral. The worship of Bacchus and of Aphrodite (Venus) consisted principally in unbridled sensual indulgence. To these licen- tious orgies, universal among pagan Greeks, all 9

LFSSUN II.

Beginning anew.

Necessity of it.

10

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LISBON II.

Character of early Ctirittian Hutic.

the resources of musical art and science as then- known contributed their fascination and power of emotional excitement. Bands of frenzied and half-intoxicated revelers danced and paraded to the sound of flutes and other instruments, and sang Bacchanalian and erotic songs. It was no wonder that, considering the associations inevitably connected with the popular music of the time, the Christian teachers and elders should have pro- claimed that " no pure Christian maiden ought even to know the sound of a flute." Those who celebrated the pagan worship were as far as possi- ble from purity; and this class included nearly or quite the whole Greek population ; so that Christian worship, accepting the ideals of its founder, seeking purity and holiness, not only in act, but in word and thought, had to break finally and completely with heathen ideas, prac- tices and associations. For the time, the music of the Christian churches must be wholly dissociated from all music to which the Greek proselyte had been accustomed, unless, indeed, as may have been the case, they perhaps retained some of the more dignified and reverential strains used in the worship of Apollo and of Diana. Clement of Alex- andria, almost two hundred years after Christ, even forbade his congregation to use the chromatic mode in their singing during the church service, and there seems to have been for a long time a constant struggle to eradicate pagan feelings, and the music with which they had been associated.

Of the real character of Christian music, and of its progress for centuries, we know very little. That the disciples of Jesus were accustomed to sing hymns in their own religious meetings, we gather from such casual remarks as that of the evangelist in his account of the Last Supper,

THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES.

11

" And they sang a hymn and went out." Doubt- less the melodies and hymns they had used in worship from childhood continued to be used in the new church services, and it seems likely that the apostles who first preached the Gospel to the Gentiles introduced the same familiar music into the worshiping assemblies of their Greek prose- lytes. There is every reason to believe that this music was purely monophonic ; that is, it consisted of a single melody or voice-part, without any accompaniment, either of harmony or of instru- ments.

It lay in the conditions of the time that progress in music should be slow. Little or no attention could be given to it, or to the cultivation of any art or science, except that of Theology. The church had to suffer persecution. The zeal of its preach- ers found ample room for its full expression in making converts, in establishing churches, in con- firming the faithful, who were often called on to endure martyrdom, in answering the numerous doctrinal questions which the acute Greek intellect inevitably raised, in defining clearly to their own minds their own theological belief. The first centuries of the church were full of theological disputes, concerning the nature and relations of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. These disputes were in the highest degree acrimonious. Parties were formed, headed by leaders of oppos- ing views ; and party spirit led not only to virulent abuse and blows, but to massacres in the streets and even in the sacred precincts of the churches. The professed followers of the meek and lowly Jesus butchered one another for differences of opinion on the most recondite and incomprehen- sible points of metaphysical speculation. No wonder that they could give no time or thought

LESSON II.

Why progrest WHS slow.

12

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

Pope Sylvester, 314 A.D.,

etldblifhi's singing schools.

to the development and improvement of church music.

But as church services went on, and church organization and ritual grew more elaborate, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, the time must come when imperfect music would cease

cce-lo-rumlau - -'da-t* .Da-ma

FIGURE 1.

TT-*

./

I'O-'PU * " •• * ^a K1S ------ » US

FIGURE 2.

to be tolerated, and when attention would be given, not only to improvement in singing, but to the increase of musical intelligence. In the early part of the fourth century, Pope Sylvester started singing schools, the first of which we have any record in the Christian era. By that time certain musical formulae had become pretty well

THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES.

13

established, as appropriate to the different feasts and fasts of the church, and these singing schools had for their main object the preservation of these established chants. They had to be taught by rote and handed down by tradition, for the musi- cal notation of the time was extremely inadequate. There were no means whatever for indicating the length of tones, and the staff, our present means of representing pitch, was not invented until almost seven hundred years afterward. The only means of indicating musical tones for singers were the so-called " Neurase," of which Figs. 1, 2 and 4 are illustrations. They were probably developed out of the Greek accents and were written over the words of the hymns. These singing schools were the first sign of growth in the musical life of the church. One effect of them was a strong tendency to con- fine the singing in the church to those who had been trained in them and to discourage congregational singing. The latter was actually forbidden by the Council of Laodicea, held 367 A. D. This coun- cil ordained that nobody should sing in church except the choir singers appointed for that pur- pose and assembled in their own particular place. All this was, of course, in the direction of making music a matter of culture.

So far as theory is concerned, the first recorded evidences of progress in the Church is the selection of four of the Greek octave-modes by Bishop Am- brose, of Milan, and the exclusion of music based on any of the others.

These were the four, beginning on D, E, F and G, thus : —

LESSON II.

dotation of the period.

Neumte.

Congregational singing

forbidden 367 A.D.

Bishop Ambrote, of Milan, died' 397.

14

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON II.

Authentic modes.

Plagal modes.

These were afterwards called the authentic modes. These modes, or scales, were regarded as having their lowest note as a tonic or point of repose.

Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604, added to these four modes four others, run- ning from the fourth below the tonic of the au- thentic mode to the fifth above it. Each plagal mode had the same tonic or point of repose as the authentic mode from which it was derived. The following scheme will make this clear : —

1st Gregorian tone, authenic, tonic D.

2d Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic D.

3d Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic E. 4th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic E.

3.

5th Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic F. 6th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic F.

5.

6.

THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES.

15

7th Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic G. 8th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic G.

7.

8.

_2i:

I

"&~&

-<^-

It will be seen that the 8th tone differs from the 1st only in having a different tonic. These oc- tave modes still serve as basis for some of the music of the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Gregory made some use of a letter notation, but the neumse continued to be used four hundred years longer. The Gregorian music became the standard church music. It was fostered by Char- lemagne, who caused it to be taught all over his dominions.

For almost nine hundred years the Church owed such musical progress as was made to southern nations. The Italians, especially, cultivated sing- ing with success, and taught it north of the Alps, much less successfully, if we may trust contempo- rary accounts. But with Hucbald, a monk of the monastery of St. Amand, in northern France, -came the first faint dawn of a new epoch, that of polyphonic music. In this field the Teutonic race was to take the lead and keep it for about six hundred years. Hucbald began to experiment with intervals, trying what would go well together. He got no further than making his voices move in consonant intervals, parallel fourths, fifths and octaves, and barbarous enough these combinations sound to modern ears. But his work, never- theless, stands as one of the mile-stones of musical progress. It pointed out a new direction for musical activity and marked the beginning of a new era.

LESSON II.

Polyphony begins.

Hucbald died 930.

16

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON II.

HucbalcTs notation.

Guido of

Arezzo, about 1020.

But the time was not yet ripe for polyphony.. The first thing to be done was to improve the no- tation so as to have some means of fixing absolute pitch. Hucbald tried 'his hand at this. He used various devices and finally hit on something ap- proximating our present staff. But he utilized only the spaces, not the lines. In his most improved notation each space stood for a degree of the scale, and he wrote each successive syllable in the space which corresponded to the pitch in which it ought to be sung.

T" I" T" S" T- I'

ta

EcT

Isra\ /

ce\

etc.

vere/

Solution.

eto.

- oe TO - re

FIGURE 3.

About a hundred years after his time, this problem was practically solved by Guido, a monk of Arezzo. He invented a staff of four lines, and used both lines and spaces to represent absolute pitch, just as we do. Guido also improved the method of teaching then in vogue, and impressed himself so strongly on his time that many things were ascribed to him long afterwards which really ought to be credited to other men — men whose very names have been lost.

In looking back over the ground we have passed, what strikes us most forcibly is the extreme slow- ness of progress.

THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES.

17

It took a thousand years to get to a point where there was a notation fit to express pitch relations with accuracy. This slowness of progress and the fewness of landmarks doubtless grew out of the unfavorable conditions of the time. It was the time of the dark ages, and included that por- tion of those ages when ignorance and barbarism most prevailed. Imagine a time when nobody

FIGURE 4.

but the clergy could read or write ; when printing did not exist ; when the roads were bad and un- safe ; when neither life nor property was respected ; when war and violence were the rule and peace the rare exception. We can thus see, dimly at least, how music, which of all the arts owes least, — noth- ing, in fact, to visible models, — an art in which > everything had to be invented, would lag behind all other intellectual interests.

LESSON II.

18

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON II

t ft

QUESTIONS.

What kind of music did the early Christians have in their worship ?

Why did not the Greek Christians use Greek music ?

How long was it before there was any attempt at cul- tivating church music ?

What was the nature of these first attempts ?

By whose direction were they made ?

What was their effect on congregational singing?

Who established the authentic scales, and when ?

Who established the plagal scales, and when ?

Describe the authentic and plagal scales (or modes).

How long were these scales prevalent?

What can you say of the progress of music for 300 years after Gregory the Great ?

Who made the first recorded attempts at polyphonic writing, and when ?

Describe these attempts.

Who invented the staff?

What was notation previous to that ?

LESSON III.

FROM GUIDO OF AREZZO TO THE BEGINNING OF

THE SUPREMACY OF THE NETHERLANDERS,

ABOUT 1000 TO 1400.

THE dates which mark the boundaries of this period are only approximate, and are given in round numbers for the sake of convenience. Many of the dates of this and the succeeding epoch are more or less uncertain, different historians giving them differently. Guide's most important work was done during the first half of the eleventh cen- tury. He is said to have died in 1050. As we have seen, his most valuable service to musical progress was the invention of the staff, a means of representing to the eye the pitch relations of tones so perfect, that it remains in use to this day in substantially the form given it by Guido, and there is little or no reason to suppose that it will ever be supplanted.

But there was still no way of indicating the length of tones, and until this lack was supplied, the germs of polyphonic writing, already in exist- ence for a full century, could not possibly spring into vigorous life.

For this great desideratum music had to wait another two hundred years. The man who in- vented notes by which to represent the length of tones to the eye was Franco, of Cologne. At first he had only two kinds of notes, a long one (Longa F) and a short one (Brevis •), the latter half as long as the former. The two combined made triple time, and he used both the form — »•-' (Trochee) and ^ -7- (Iambus). Double time was not used 19

LESSON III.

Notes indicating length.

Franco, of Cologne, about 1200.

20

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON III.

Defects of

Franco's

notation.

until a later period, and was then considered less perfect than triple time. Franco afterward added a note twice as long as the Longa, the Maxima

( I) , and one half as long as a Brevis, the Semi- brevis (*). He also used rests corresponding to their lengths, and thus mensural music be- came possible.

The worst of it was that Franco unfortunately did not give his long and short notes a constant and uniform value, as we might naturally suppose he would have done. He made the lengths of his notes depend partly on their position in relation to each other. Thus a Longa alone counted as a whole measure of triple time; but if a Brevis followed it, the two together only filled a measure ; if two Breves followed it, then the Longa counted as a measure (triple time) and the two Breves as another measure, the second Brevis being twice as long as the first. Thus, for example, the follow- ing passage F1 • • P • • would read thus in modern notation: —

&£* — —				f
Eas^	$ /51	& •	&	-»~\

All this confusion could be obviated only by separating the measures by bars or by some similar device, and by giving each note a fixed and definite length under all circumstances. But this was not done for a long time after Franco.

Such as it was, however, this notation of Franco's was so long a step in advance that it gave a great impulse to musical development. Now that the time relations of two voice-parts could be accu- rately measured, even though the means were clumsy, composers began zealously to write " Dis- cant," as it was called, that is, to compose a second

GUIDO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

21

voice to accompany the Gregorian Chant. The latter was called the " canhis firmus" or " fixed voice."

The two most remarkable names among the composers who cultivated and improved the new Jean mensural music were Marchettus, of Padua, near the end of the thirteenth century, and Jean de Muris, a Doctor of Theology in the University of Paris, in the early part of the fourteenth century. In the writings of these two theorists occur for the first time the prohibition against parallel fifths and octaves, which has been an accepted doctrine of musical theory ever since. The Parisian Doctor was the first writer to use the word "Counter- point," instead of " Discant," a word derived from " punctum contra punctum," point against point, or, as we should say, note against note.

Philip of Vitry is also a name of nearly as great importance as these two. These men, and many others, diligently practiced the infant art of poly- phonic writing, and prepared the way for the Netherland composers of the next epoch. But all or most of their activity was in the domain of church music. We must now consider the secular music of the same epoch.

LESSON in.

about 130°-

The strongest impulse toward the production of secular music during this epoch came from the Crusades. From the end of the eleventh till the end of the thirteenth century the imagination of Christendom was fired with fanatical zeal for the recovery of the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidel. Fighting was the main business of men. Scientific investigation there was none. Europe was in the dark ages ; men's impulses were easily turned into the channels of fanaticism ; sal- vation and forgiveness were preached as the reward of all who undertook the holy task of disposses-

Influence of the Crusades, about 1100 to 1300.

22

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON III.

The Troubadours.

slug the. Saracen inhabitants of Palestine. The result was that for two hundred years swarms of men, of all ranks of society, from all Christian countries, poured into Asia Minor, and there came into violent collision with a race more highly de- veloped and a civilization more advanced than their own. Their ideas were as much jostled by this encounter as were their bodies ; the mental shock was as great as the physical. Thousands who returned brought home with them new ideas, new and strange objects, and among them new musical instruments. The lute and the guitar had hitherto been unknown in Europe. The Sar- acens used also kettle-drums and other drums in war, and these were new to the Christian soldiers. The introduction of these instruments into Euro- pean music modified it very greatly, and, of course, stimulated interest in secular music, since they were not adapted for the purposes of divine wor- ship. The Arab songs, too, must have had their effect on the Crusaders. Then the conditions were not only stimulating to curiosity and to the secular imagination, but they must have had a strong effect on the emotional life. Absence from home and friends, home-sickness, disease, wounds, hardships of all sorts, strange surroundings, — all these tended to excite and to deepen the social feelings. And these feelings soon found expression in a vast quantity of secular music, in a style hitherto un- known in Christendom. With the rise of chivalry came also the music of chivalry, love-songs ac- companied by the lute.

The most favorable soil for the development of this sentimental style of secular music was south- ern France, especially Provence. Here the " gay science," as it wag called, found its natural home, under sunny skies and among a lively, pleasure-

GUIDO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

loving people. It was cultivated by the highest nobility, such as Count Willam, of Poitiers (1087- 1127) and King Thibaut, of Navarre (1201-1254). These noblemen, however, only invented their songs, and hence were called Troubadours or Trouv£res (inventors). The songs were sung and accompanied by assistants called Minstrels (from the same Latin root as our " Minister," a servant or helper). These minstrels were always of a lower social rank than the Troubadours. They were not only dependents of great houses, but were ranked with clowns and tumblers, being kept, like them, for the amusement of their noble patrons. This is proved by the name " Jongleurs," applied to them (from the Latin "Joculator," joker), and by at least one old picture, in which a man stand- ing on his hands is represented among the players.

Toward the end of the thirteenth century, we find an exceptional Troubadour, who not only in- vented songs, but sang and played them himself. This was Adam de la Sale, a composer thoroughly familiar with the best musical knowledge of his time and one of the first writers of four-part songs. He also wrote a little operetta called " Robin and Marion," the earliest specimen of comic opera known.

Although Provence was the natural home of the love-song as developed by the Troubadours, they were not the only ones affected by the influences which called it into existence. In Germany the same tendencies showed themselves about the same time, and their manifestation differed from those of Provence only as determined by the differences of climate and of race characteristics. The Ger- man knights and noblemen, however, took pride in singing and playing their own songs instead of leaving the interpretation of them to dependents.

LKBSON III.

Adam de la Hale.

The

Minnesingers.

24

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON III.

The MtMertinrjer.

They differed from the Troubadours also in that they regarded the music as subordinate to the words. They treated the poem as primary and the music as serving the purpose of intensifying the sentiment of it ; whereas the Troubadours made the music primary and the words secondary. The two styles, therefore, often differed greatly. The Troubadours, as the Italian opera composers did later, laid prime stress on the invention of tuneful melodies, whether they exactly fitted the words or not. The Minnesingers made it their first aim to interpret the feeling of the text, whether their melodies were sensuously beautiful or not, often using a recitative style. These two opposite tendencies have distinguished the Northern from the Southern nations ever since.

The Minnesingers played their own very simple accompaniments, often on small harps of triangular shape. They were not always noblemen. A few names have come down to us, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide and others who were engaged in the " Ssengerkrieg (con- test of singers) at the Wartburg," in 1207. Wag- ner has immortalized them in his " Tannhiiuser."

Beside the secular music thus cultivated .by the nobility, there was a very strong movement of a similar sort among the mechanics and tradesmen of the German cities. The impulse to this move- ment seems to have come from the Minnesingers. The breasts of the worthy German burghers were fired with the same enthusiasm and guided by the same principles as those which inspired their high- bred compatriots. They formed a guild called " Die Meistersinger " (The Master Singers) for the purpose of cultivating music and poetry. They were not merely interpreters of other men's pro- ductions, but were themselves creators of both

OUIDO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

25

words and music. They had different degrees of 'merit in the order, passing from each degree to the •next higher by competitive examination. Their productions are said to have been rather common- place and of no lasting value ; but the love of art, .such as it was, had such vitality among them that their organization lived from the thirteenth cen- tury into the nineteenth. The last society of the .guild was dissolved in 1839. It is no small matter that so much enthusiasm for ideal aims should have burned so long in the minds of men whose lives were necessarily devoted, for the most part, to ma- terial interests. It shows the German middle-class character of that dark time in an admirable light.

The most noted of the Meistersingers was Hans Sachs, 1495-1576.

Beside the consciously intentional efforts at good music-making above enumerated, there was going on at the same time a form of spontaneous musical production of no small importance. This was the "" Volkslied," Folk-song, or popular song, of which there are numerous examples in Germany and •elsewhere. These songs sprung up among the common people, no one song, perhaps, being pro- duced entirely by any one man. They were re- peated by one and another as they were heard. A •beautiful strain invented by one might be repeated by another, who would add another to it ; and so they were passed on and handed down from gen- eration to generation. Of course, only strains which pleased many were able to live in this way, and so all folk-songs, of whatever nation, have for their prime characteristic, naive, spontaneous beauty. They are products, not of calculation or scientific intelligence, but of the original creative power of men, the sense of beauty being the de- termining factor.

LESSON III.

The Folk-song.

28

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON III.

QUESTIONS.

After Guido had invented the staff, what new improve- ment in notation was most needed ?

Who made it?

Describe the notes he used.

Explain the remaining deficiencies of Franco's nota- tion.

How were they finally obviated ?

Define "Discant," "Cantus Firmus."

Name three other great musicians of the 13th and 14th centuries.

Who first used the term Counterpoint ?

What rules were permanently fixed by these men ?

When were the Crusades ?

How did they affect the minds and feelings of those who took part in them?

How did these mental and emotional changes affect musical development in Europe ?

What instruments did the Crusaders get from the Saracens ?

What do you know of the Troubadours ?

What does the name mean ?

Name some of them.

How did they differ from the Minnesingers ?

How did the music of the two differ in principle ?

What do you know of the Meistersinger ?

Who was the most distinguished of them ?

What do you know of the characteristics of the Folk- song?

*to 4A&+A**, Ifa****..

+f, ** **"

f '

LESSON IV. LESSON IV.

THE EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDER, ABOUT 1400 TO 1600.

WITH the beginning of the fifteenth century came a new and very important epoch in the history of music — the epoch of the development and cul- tivation of the science and art of polyphony. It is commonly called the epoch of the Netherlanders, because Netherland composers took the most prom- inent part in the movement, and were the most prominent figures in the musical world for more than a hundred and fifty years. After that time, Italians and others, who had learned of them, shared their supremacy, and with the death of Orlandus Lassus, in 1595, they disappear from the pages of history.

As we have already seen, the ground had been prepared for them by the invention and gradual improvement of an adequate system of notation, and by numerous composers, who had tried their ™<e £ b« hand at " discant." Harmonic knowledge had advanced far enough to forbid parallel fifths and octaves ; and " counterpoint," as discant was now called, was both written and improvised with much fluency. The task now before the musical world was to develop and master musical materials on the intellectual side. The emotional and imagina- tive elements had to wait until the technic of composition had been mastered and had become thoroughly familiar. Those who now entered upon this task were explorers, in spite of all that had been done since Hucbald, that is to say, in the past five hundred years. The contrapuntal forms 27

What had already been

28

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IV.

1380-1430. (?)

Ockenheim, 1430-1513.

were very incomplete ; the perception of harmony was crude ; the means of v securing unity, variety, symmetry, contrast, climax, the essential elements of a beautiful work of art, were undeveloped ; probably these requirements themselves were but very imperfectly apprehended. The perception of these was to grow gradually all through this epoch of the development of polyphony. Remem- ber that from 1400 up to the very last decade of the sixteenth century, all culture music was poly- phonic.

The first distinguished Netherland composer was William Dufay, a Belgian. His contrapuntal masses are the oldest of the kind preserved in the archives of the papel Chapel at Rome, where he was a tenor singer. Both in the progression of his voices and in the treatment of his harmonies he is said to have made marked advances on his predecessors, and paved the way for a sharpened perception of what is natural and fitting, in those who were to come after him. He is generally credited with the invention of Canon, a form of strict imitation in which a melody is accompanied by an exact repetition of itself at the interval of an octave, fourth, fifth or some other interval, the imitative melody beginning some time after the original. These canons were then called fugues (Latin, fuga, a flight), because one voice pursued the other. The term " fugue " is now applied to a more elaborate style of composition. Dufay's sense of rhythm and of harmony was a long way behind what we are now accustomed to, of course. He was a pioneer, but he was a musician of great ability, so much so that his name is used to characterize the first period of the epoch of the Netherlander.

The name of Johannes Ockenheim stands as

EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS.

29

representative of the second period of this great epoch. He built on the foundation laid by Dufay. His canons are more elaborate. Dufay had writ- ten them only in the unison and octave ; Ocken- heim wrote them also in the fourth and fifth, and is also credited with the invention of double coun- terpoint. He wrote a motette in thirty-six voice parts. It is believed that only six, or perhaps nine, of these were written out, the others being canonic imitations, all being finally sung together. He is said to show a good deal of natural musical perception ; but his works are mainly the product of calculation. It was his task as well as that of other composers in his epoch to develop contra- puntal technic. This service they rendered most thoroughly and effectually. The intellectual world has ever since reaped the benefit of their long-continued, severe intellectual exertion, a men- tal activity which changed the whole aspect of musical history.

Although Josquin de Pr£s was born not many years later than Ockenheim, he shows marked ad- vances on the latter's work in the direction of emo- tional expression. He was perhaps not greatly superior to Ockenheim on the merely intellectual and technical side, although he carried the art of counterpoint so far that it may fairly be said to have culminated in his work. But he seems to have had a more powerful imagination and stronger musical feeling, and his mastery of his materials and of all technical resources was such that he could give his imagination freer play than could any of his predecessors or contemporaries. This freedom and mastery of his art was well expressed by Luther, a great admirer of his/ who said of him : " Josquin is a master of the notes ; they have to do as he pleases ; other composers have to do as

LESSOS IV-

1440-1521.

30

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IV.

Prevalent disregard of the wordg.

they please." In short, Josquin seems to have been a genuine creative genius, who not only mas- tered easily all that was then known of the art and science of music, but who had also an inborn perception of musical relations which others either could not see or discovered only by the most la- borious and painful search. This made his creative activity in the invention of melodies and of compli- cated counterpoint " as free as the song of a finch," as Luther elsewhere expresses it. It is probable, however, that, with all his genius, there was a good deal of the pedantry of the time in his work. A man who could take the trouble to set the pedi- gree of Christ to music on two different occasions could hardly have been always impelled to compo- sition by the forces of feeling and imagination. No small part of his work must have been mechan- ical and artificial.

It is thoroughly characteristic of the first three periods of the Netherland epoch that no attention whatever was paid to suiting the music to the emotional character of the words. ' This indiffer- ence to truthfulness of musical expression was carried to the extreme of grotesqueness. In the contrapuntal masses not only were secular mel- odies employed as counter-subjects to the Gregorian plain-song, but the words of these secular songs were also retained and were interwoven with those of the sacred office. And some of their songs were anything but edifying, — drinking songs, love songs of a decidedly unrefined character, and so on ; so that while one set of singers was chanting " Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi " (" Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world "), another set would be singing, in the vernacular, songs fit only for convivial gatherings of pleasure seekers, and coarse pleasure seekers at that!

EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS.

31

LB«»ON iv.

JotquMi advance in

Besides this, these masses were named from the secular songs that were most prominent in them. There was one very popular song called " L' hom- me arme" " (The armed man), which was used, text and all, over and over again by different composers. .Nobody seemed to think of anything profane in " The Mass of the Armed Man," or "The Mass of the Red Noses " ! As Dr. Langhans has pointed out in the fourth of his lectures on the history of music, "this proceeding was closely analogous to that of the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who painted themselves and their fami- lies in their ordinary costumes, in the same group with the Madonna and the Holy Child. They seemed to have felt such things not as a profana- tion of what was sacred, but as a sort of conse- cration of the secular elements of the composition."

Josquin seems to have had a sufficiently strong .feeling for the emotional element in music to see "t™nTof ^ the propriety of selecting secular melodies and words as nearly allied as possible in sentiment to the sacred words with which they were to be asso- ciated. At least, he sometimes did this. With him the special, peculiar work of the Netherlanders may be said to culminate. Practically, the tech- nic of polyphonic composition was complete, within the limits of the tonalities of the mediaeval scales. The work of Josquin's successors, up to Ihe beginning of the eighteenth century, was to apply this acquired musical material and musical knowledge to the expression of feeling, both sacred and secular.

The fourth great name among the Netherland masters is Adrian Willaert (pron. Willart), the founder of a music school in Venice which had a very wide and deep influence on musical progress. .He was director of music in St. Mark's, a large

32

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IV.

Madrigals.

de Rare,

1516-1565;

Gioteffo

Zarlino,

1517-1590.

church with a gallery and an organ at each end,, and numerous side galleries. Willaert conceived the idea of making his complicated polyphonic music more intelligible to his hearers by dividing it between two choirs stationed at either end of the church, in the two organ galleries. This experi- ment was so marked a success that he carried it further, stationing separate choirs in the different galleries, until finally he had nine choirs, each of four parts, thirty-six parts in all. Of course, this arrangement made the music incalculably more comprehensible than Ockenheim's mass in thirty- six parts had been, given, as it was, under differ- ent conditions, and went far in helping to concen- trate attention on musical expression.

Willaert did not confine his creative activity to church > music. His secular music, like his church music, was polyphonic. He set secular songs for five, six and seven voices, according to strict con- trapuntal rules. These compositions were called madrigals. They were the fashion in secular music through a large part of the sixteenth cen- tury and until they were supplanted by the air and recitative, after the invention of the opera. Constanzo Festa and Luca Marenzio were among the greatest of madrigal writers. In England, Morley, Kirbye, Dowland, Weelkes, Wilbye and Benet accomplished much in this field.

Two pupils and successors of Willaert contrib- uted very materially to the transformation of poly- phony into expressive music. These were Cyprian de Rare, a Netherlander by birth, and Gioseffo Zarlino, an Italian, the first of his nation to rival the Netherlander in their own field. De Rore wrote a vast mass of Catholic church music for St. Mark's and a large number of madrigals. His most important service to musical progress

EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS.

33

in the innovations to be found in his " Chromatic Madrigals," published in 1544. Up to that time madrigals had conformed their tonality to the Gregorian scales, which formed the basis of church music. But de Rore made a much freer use of chromatic intervals than had been made before, and thus greatly increased the expressive possi- bilities of music.

Zarlino succeeded de Rore as the director of music in St. Mark's Church, as de Rore succeeded Wil- laert. He wrote a great deal of excellent music, but his greatest fcontribution to musical progress was in the domain of theory. He was the most thorough and original writer of his time in har- mony and acoustics, and his writings had a great and far-reaching influence on musical intelligence.*

The last of the great Netherlander was Orlan- dus Lassus. The best of his life's work was done in Munich, where he was " capellmeister," or director of church music. He was a genuine creative genius, and much of his music retains its interest and charm to the present day. He wrote, of course, Catholic church music and a great many madrigals. Some of his music, both sacred and secular, has been republished in our own time, and is now easily accessible.

Contemporary with Orlandus Lassus was a great Italian composer, who, educated in the principles of the Netherlander, surpassed them all, unless we count Lassus as an exception, in point of the mastery of polyphonic music as a means of emo- tional expression. This was Pier Luigi Sante, born at Palestrina, near Rome, and commonly called by the name of his birthplace. He was

LESSON IV.

Orlandus

Latsus,

1520-1595.

* For an excellent Recount of some of his most important ideas, see "The Nature of Harmony." by Dr. Hugo Riemann, translated by the writer of the present work and published by Theo. Preeser, Philadelphia.

34

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IV.

Council of Trent, 1503.

27(e Misaa Papse Marcelli.

educated at Rome by Claude Goudimel, a Nether- land teacher and composer of great merit, who founded the first public music school in Rome. Palestrina was not only a perfect master of the whole science and art of music as practiced in his time, but was an original genius of a high order.

Palestrina's fame is, however, largely due to an accident of history. The Council of Trent, in March, 1563, discussed the abuses which had crept into church music, such as the complicated char- acter of the masses, which made them unintelligi- ble, the use of secular songs in them, etc. The assembled cardinals were fully alive to these evils, for, now that polyphony was fully developed, peo- ple had begun to feel the necessity of using music as a means of emotional expression ; moreover, the .success of the Lutheran movement in Germany was attributed, in no small degree, to the popular church music introduced by Luther, the emotional effect of which was very different from that of the polyphonic masses of the Catholic composers. The council had almost decided to abolish all culture- music from the Catholic Church, retaining only the Gregorian chant. But wiser counsels prevailed. It was suggested that at least one experiment ought to be made to determine whether, after all, the highest form of music known could not be made to subserve the highest religious ends. Pales- trina was commissioned to write some music, the effect of which should decide the fate of Catholic church music. He wrote three masses, one of which, especially dedicated to the memory of his patron, Pope Marcellus II, and hence called the " Missa Papce Marcelli," may fairly be considered not only the culmination of the polyphonic music of this great epoch, as regards all the requirements of an art-work, intellectual, emotional and imagin-

EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS.

35

ative, but also as the culmination of Catholic church music even up to the present time. No modern writer has written any mass which so embodies the most characteristic feelings of the Roman liturgy.

The success of these masses was immediate, and nothing more was said of returning to the bald simplicity of the ancient Gregorian chant. They were classical music in every sense of the word. Their form was perfect, their content was noble ; the form exactly fitted the content and the content ex- actly filled the form. Their excellence was such that they have exerted a powerful influence down to the present time, and there are no signs of its waning. Palestrina's death, therefore, marks not only the culmination but the close of the first great classical epoch. Among Palestrina's distin- guished contemporaries may be mentioned Nanini, Morales, Anton Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli, Vit- toria, Arcadeldt, Clement (" non Papa "), Waelrant and Lajeune,

LESSON IV.

36

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IV.

QUESTIONS.

What phase of musical progress characterized the epoch of the Netherlanders ?

What proportion of these two centuries was taken up with the development of the technic of polyphonic wri- ting?

How much of it was applied to the use of polyphony for emotional expression ?

Who was the first of the great Netherland composers ?'

Give dates.

What did he do?

What is a canon ?

Give name and dates of the second great Netherlander-

What advance did he make on Dufay ?

Who was the third Netherlander ?

What advance did he make?

What did Luther say of him ?

How did the early Netherland composers treat the words to which they set their music ?

Tell what you know of their mixture of secular with sacred words and music.

In which of them does a sense of the propriety of suiting the music to the feeling of the words begin to appear?

What do you know of Willaert?

Describe especially his attempts to render complicated polyphony intelligible.

What form of secular music was prevalent in his time?

What do you know of de Rore and Zarlino ?

Who was the last of the great Netherlanders?

Tell what you know of him and of his great Italian contemporary.

What is Palestrina's best-known work?

Why is it called " classical" ?

LESSON V.

THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC, 1600.

THE fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a time of great intellectual and spiritual activity in Europe. The long night of the Dark Ages had passed and the dawn of the new era had come. Everywhere there was intellectual and spiritual impulse, the thirst for knowledge, the craving for mental freedom, the spirit of free inquiry. Men chafed under the limitations imposed on them by the scholastic philosophy, the prevalent outworn theology, the current ideas of the time. This im- pulse led to the Reformation in Germany, Eng- land, Holland, Switzerland, and to similar move- ments elsewhere. It led also to violent attempts, on the part of those who held to the ideas here- tofore dominant, to crush out the new ideas and to suppress the forward movement of mind, — to the establishment of the Inquisition, to bloody persecutions, massacres, like that of St. Bartholo- mew, the driving out of the Protestants from France, the crushing of them in Spain and in Aus- tria,— to civil wars, disorders and confusions, out of all which, at length, Modern Europe was to emerge.

.This great movement of mind was greatly as- sisted by the invention of the art of Printing, which began to exert a powerful influence about the middle of the fifteenth century. Up to this time few, except the clergy, were able to read or write. Manuscripts were few and costly. But the new art brought ideas within the reach of every- body ; the desire to read and write soon became 37

LE880N

the ground ar'

The art of

38

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON V.

Gunpowder at a civilizing agent.

general, and a new era of popular intelligence be- gan. The common people began to feel within themselves desires and impulses which they had never felt so long as they had taken it for granted that those who were their superiors in wealth and in position must necessarily be their superiors in intelligence also, and in the power which intelli- gence brings. There was a great increase in self- respect, in hope and faith in their own capacity for improvement, and in their own future destiny, on the part of men who had heretofore been hope- less and helpless, the mere tools and servants of powerful masters. Of course, the early results of all this upward striving were social and political disorders. The newly awakened hopes and desires of the ignorant were often extravagant and unreason- able. They had to learn wisdom and soberness by the bitter experience of their own mistakes and follies. And of course, too, those who felt that their own vital interest lay in the preservation of the ancient order opposed the new movement by every means in their power.

In the political struggles resulting from the irrepressible conflict of the new ideas with the old, one of the most potent agencies in hastening the downfall of the old feudal system and the tri- umph of the new order was gunpowder. It may strike us as strange, at first, that a mere mechan- ically destructive agent should really contribute to the triumph of ideas, and to mental and spiritual progress. But we must remember that the most determined efforts were made to crush the new movement of mind by physical force; that the champions of reaction had the wealth and most of the world's physical power on their side, and that the victory of the new over the old must have come much later than it did if the invention of

THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC.

gunpowder had not greatly lessened the difference between the weak and the strong as regards de- structive and defensive power. Previous to this invention, which began to be effective about the same time as the art of printing, the feudal lords and the authorities of the Church had matters their own way. A robber baron, safely ensconced in his impregnable castle, perched on an inacces- sible rock, feared no one except, perhaps, his feu- dal superior, or the Church, which could inflict on him spiritual pains and penalties, even to the ex- treme of everlasting torture in hell-fire. Com- mon people he despised and trampled upon with impunity. Clad in their coats of mail, he and his comrades could easily subdue any number of rudely armed peasants ; his castle was proof against all possible attacks from them, and any effort at resisting his insupportable tyranny was followed by horrible punishments.

But coats of mail were not impervious to bul- lets, nor could castles, which were proof against all attempts to scale them, resist the force of can- non balls. Gunpowder changed all the conditions of warfare, made a weak man as good as a strong one in battle, put an end to the invincibility of the fortifications then in vogue ; in short, brought com- mon men much nearer an equality with their for- mer masters as regards physical power, and ush- ered in the inevitable downfall of political and social oppression. Itself a product of human in- vention, it did a great service in the cause of intel- lectual and spiritual freedom and of the mental elevation of the race.

Another event, which seemed on the face of it to be a retrograde movement in the world's progress and a detriment to advancing civilization in Eu- rope, really contributed much to the great intel-

LESSON V.

The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, 1453.

40

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON V.

Beginning of the revival of letters.

Opera came from the study of the Greek Drama.

lectual movement out of which our modern civil- ization has come. This was the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in the year 1453. This great Eastern capital held the remains of the Greek civilization and the Greek literature. The latter was as yet unknown to Western Europe, at least in its original form. Some Latin transla- tions of Greek works existed in Italy, but no one studied Greek, or had ever read in the original the great literary masterpieces of the most intel- lectual race the world had ever seen. Greek learning and culture was confined to Eastern scholars, mainly those of Constantinople, the great Eastern metropolis and intellectual centre. Its conquest by the Turks drove them out. They went as exiles into Italy, carrying with them the Greek ideas, language and literature ; they were scattered among the Italian cities, and there sowed far and wide the seeds which grew up into the Renascence (or Renaissance, as it is more commonly called). "Wherever they settled, men became in- terested in the great literary and artistic achieve- ments of the ancient Greek race, the Greek lan- guage began to be studied, the Greek epics and dramas were read and re-read with the keenest delight, the love of knowledge was kindled, the love of Art became a passionate enthusiasm, and the intellectual impulse called the Revival of Learning became an irresistible force.

The invention of the Opera, one of the most important, decisive and productive events in mu- sical history, was part and parcel of this great intellectual movement. It is one of the great turning-points in the development of modern music ; it changed the whole course of musical history. But it might never have happened at all if the revival of Greek letters had not come just

THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC.

41

as it did. The invention of opera was the direct result of attempts on the part of a few enthusiastic lovers of the Greek literature to revive the Greek drama.

It happened in the very last decade of the six- teenth century, about a hundred and forty years after the taking of Constantinople, when the leaven of ancient Greek art and literature had had time to leaven thoroughly the whole mass of Italian intellect and to permeate all Italian culture. It happened in Florence, under the reign of the art- loving family of Medici, who made their capital for a long time one of the most important intel- lectual centres of Europe.

There was a little knot of enthusiasts, some of them artists, all of them men of culture, the best culture of their time, who used to meet at the house of Count Bardi to discuss art, literature and all intellectual matters in which they were inter- ested. They called their society the " Camerata." Among them was a name ever since known all over the civilized world, Vincenzo Galilei, father of the great astronomer, Galileo Galilei. Among other matters, they read and discussed the dramas of JEschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, not only as literature, but as productions for the stage, the conditions under which they were performed, the ideals of life they embody ; in short, everything connected with them. Finally, it occurred to some of them to ask " Why cannot this great form of Art be revived ? Why cannot we do what the Drama old Greeks did ?" The suggestion at once ex- 1 cited unbounded enthusiasm, and ways and means were eagerly discussed. It was known that the ancient drama was not spoken, but sung. The principal characters used a sort of chant with an Accompaniment of the lyre, and the choruses were

LM80N v

Cam«-

They try to re- vive the Greek

42

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSOX V.

The prevalent luck of any mo- nophonic music.

First songs with accompaniment by Vincenzo (ialilei.

Caccini follows his example.

also sung. But when the members of the Camerata came to consider the musical resources of their own time they found nothing available for the dramatic needs of soloists. The chorus was amply provided for, for the whole culture-music of the time was polyphonic. They were just at the verjr culmination of the great epoch of polyphonic music, of which the Netherlander were the most conspicuous representatives, — the epoch which,, beginning with Dufay, had developed polyphonic writing on the technical and intellectual side, and had culminated in the highly emotional, spiritual and imaginative, as well as highly intellectual, compositions of Palestrina and Orlandus Lassus* The secular element, the Madrigal,. was as purely polyphonic as the Masses of the period.

How should the soloists be provided for ? This was the problem the members of the Camerata set themselves to solve. The first fruits of this en- deavor were produced by Galilei, who wrote a number of songs for solo voice and sang them to his assembled comrades, accompanying himself on the viola. Everybody applauded with eager en- thusiasm, and now others of the society took up the matter. Some of them were musicians by pro- fession, and one of them, Giulio Caccini, declared war upon counterpoint as a " mere butchery of poetry," affirmed that he had learned more of the true function of music in the Camerata than in all his thirty years' study of counterpoint, and vowed henceforth to devote all his talents, skill and ac- quired musical knowledge to the service of the new ideas. He was, of course, much better equipped for such a task than was Galilei, who was only an amateur, and the solos he wrote, on the model of Galilei s, fairly ushered in the new era of mono- phonic sung with instrumental accompaniment*

J'HE KISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC.

Recitative in- vented by

Opera was now possible, for the air would serve to express the emotions of tne principal charac- ters, while the chorus served to express those of several persons who needed to sing together. But an aria (air) involves sustained intensity of feeling for a certain length of time, whereas there are in a drama many transient emotions, many mere sug- gestions of feeling, besides more or less dialogue, for which sustained solo singing is not adapted, — at least, not in the form of the aria. These parts might, of course, have been spoken. But Jacopo Peri, another of the Camerata set, still with the | Jacopo Peri notion of Greek drama in his head, all of which was sung, hit upon the Recitative, a style so well adapted to its purpose that it has retained its place to the present day, and seems unlikely ever to be superseded. It is a sort of compromise be- tween song and speech, a sort of impassioned declamation, partaking of the nature of both.

With this invention the means of producing music dramas were fully completed, and Peri was the man who produced the first opera. He was a professional musician, a singer and an organist, amply qualified for the work he had undertaken, and his first opera, " Dafne," met with the most cordial reception in the Camerata. The words were by Rinnuccini, who also belonged to the so- ciety. The success of their first work encouraged them to write another, and this one, " Eurydice," was publicly performed at the wedding of Henry IV of France with Mary of Medici in Florence, in the year 1600.

It constitutes one of the turning points of his- tory. At the very opening of the seventeenth century, just when the elaborate polyphony of the Netherland school was at the height of its suprem- acy, came this new phenomenon, and behold, all

Pen's first two operas, "Dafne'' and " Eurydice."

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON V.

of a sudden, the whole face of the musical world is changed. In France, in Germany, in England, no less than in Italy, kings, princes and noblemen took up the new form of art, and from that day to this it has been developing. It is a long way from Peri's "Dafne" to Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde," but the germs of the latter were in the former.

THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC.

45

QUESTIONS.

Give some account of the intellectual condition of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

When did the art of printing begin to exert a powerful influence ?

What was the effect of it?

What effect did the use of gunpowder produce on the mental life of Europe?

When did this effect begin to be felt ?

Give date of the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks.

What effect had this event on the intellectual life of Italy?

What do you understand by the Renaissance ?

What has all this to do with the History of Music ?

Tell what you know of the Florentine "Camerata."

Which of its members first wrote songs for a single voice, with instrumental accompaniment?

What professional musician followed this up ?

Who wrote the first opera?

Who invented recitative ?

What is recitative ?

What opera was first publicly performed?

When and where ?

Who wrote it?

LESSON V.

LESSON VI.

Difference in origin between opera and ora- torio.

Keeii of dra- •nifitic elements in U,f Clixrch

Origin and character of these dramatic elements.

LESSON VI.

THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO, 1600.

OPERA, as we saw in the last chapter, grew out of an attempt on the part of enthusiastic lovers of art and literature to revive the Greek drama. It was one of the fruits of the Revival of Learning, a great intellectual movement which, beginning in Italy, communicated its impulse to the whole European world, and largely determined the course of mental development and of Western civiliza- tion from that time to the present. Oratorio, on the other hand, was an outgrowth of the Church. But it was, no less than the opera, distinctly dra- matic in its origin.

As soon as the Church had got far enough from the corrupt Roman theatrical spectacles, which it had to condemn in the first few centuries of its existence, to be in no danger from the remem- brance of their demoralizing influences, it began to feel the need of attracting and influencing its proselytes by some means other than its ordinary liturgy and its preaching. The common people could neither read nor write. They were not only illiterate, but ignorant. They could not read the Scriptures for themselves, and if they could have done so, the Church authorities would have op- posed it, preferring to be themselves the sole medium, not only of the exposition, but of the communication, of Holy Writ to the laity.

The clergy, recognizing the fact that an ignorant

laity were more likely to be impressed by sensuous

elements in the liturgy than by those more purely

spiritual or intellectual, soon began to introduce

46

THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO.

47

Mysteries, Mo- ralities and Miracle-plays.

Into the church services a semi-dramatic treatment LESSOIJ VI of gospel readings. One priest recited the sayings of Jesus, another those of the Evangelist, while the utterances of the disciples and of the populace were sung by the choir. After a while, poems were introduced among the settings of the gospel text, especially in Passion week, and took their place in the choir beside the other Passion music. The dramatic element became more and more prominent, and by and by it was separated from the liturgy. The priests gave dramatic represen- tations in the churches for the amusement and instruction of their parishioners.

These sacred plays were divided into Mysteries, which treated such mysterious themes as Sin, Re- demption, etc. ; Moralities, in which personifications of the Virtues and Vices were the characters of the drama, and Miracle-plays, which dealt with Scripture stories and with the legends of the saints. In these dramatic representations in the churches, no women were allowed to take part. The priests were the only actors, taking female as well as male parts. They represented such characters as God, Christ, Mary, the angels, etc., and they succeeded in making the plays very popular. The churches used to be crowded, and these plays were given sc frequently that they formed a chief amusement of the common people, as well as their sole means of Biblical instruction.

After a while the churches could not contain secularization the vast audiences which thronged to hear and see the sacred plays, and then they were taken into the open air. Temporary stages of great size were erected in market places and in other open spaces. Sometimes hundreds of actors took part, and a series of representations, lasting for several days, would be witnessed by many thousands of people.

\

48

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VI.

Degradation of them by reason of the secular element.

Laymen, as well as priests, took part in them, and secular elements of a popular character were mingled with those distinctively sacred. As was natural, considering the unrefined state of the common mind, these secular elements were often exceedingly coarse, consisting of rude jests, and, in great part, of a jocular treatment of the devil. Old Nick was, indeed, a most popular character. He was treated not so much as the impersonation of evil, as a foolish clown, whose attempts at harm were always foiled, and who invariably came to grief in some ridiculous, farcical way. The great stages on which the plays were performed were often divided into three parts. The uppermost represented Heaven, the middle one the Earth and the lowermost Hell. Even in our day there is a survival of these miracle-plays in the Passion Play still given every ten years at Ober-Ammergau, in Bavaria.

With the admixture of secular elements and the admission of strolling actors and minstrels as performers, the plays grew more and more profane, until at last the coarsest and most scandalous jests and songs became a prominent feature. These low elements even invaded the churches. At the " Fools' Festival," a sort of Christian revival of the Roman Saturnalia, the churches were the scenes of indescribably coarse revelry. A "Fool- Bishop " celebrated a burlesque mass ; the censers were filled with pieces of old boot-leather, which filled the church with an intolerable stench ; dice were cast and cards played on the altar; the priest invoked coarse maledictions instead of bless- ings on the congregation ; in short, all sacred ideas and rites were parodied in the most outra- geously profane way.

The " Feast of the Ass" was little better. It,

THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO.

49

commemorated the flight of Joseph and Mary into Egypt. An ass, dressed in a monk's costume, was led into the church, the priest intoned the Latin hymn, " Orientis partibus," closing each verse with an imitation of the ass's braying, to which the whole congregation responded with an uproarious hee-haw !

This sort of profanation could not, of course, be tolerated long, and the Church authorities frowned it down. But, while the outdoor performances continued to deal more or less in low elements, there were, in at least one place, purified continu- ations of the original miracle-plays, etc., in sacred places. This was in the " Oratorio " (the Italian name for chapel, or, as we sometimes say, oratory; properly, a room for prayer) of a church in Rome, where St. Philip Neri was a priest. In this " ora- torio " he used to preach, and in Border to attract the young people, he used to have, at first, a good deal of singing before and after the sermon. Then he wrote simple dramatizations of various Scrip- ture stories in one act, had them set to music by Animucia, director of music in the Papal chapel, and gave one before the sermon and one after it. Palestrina afterward wrote some of the music for these little chapel or " oratorio " plays. Neri's plan proved very successful in attracting the au- diences he wished, especially as they were mostly given in Lent, when secular amusements were pro- hibited. Whether his sermons were popular or not, his musical plays were very much so. Since they were given exclusively in his " oratorio," to go to hear them was to go to the " oratorio ;" and this name has ever since been applied to that form of .sacred musical art which grew out of his idea.

The piece which is accounted the first real ora- torio, probably because it was long enough to take 4

LESSIIN VI.

The origin of " oratorio."

Signification of the name.

The firtt ora- torio.

50

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VI.

Difference be- tween the early opera, and ora- torio.

up a whole evening, instead of being a mere prelude or postlude to a sermon, was simply a Morality, written by a lady — Laura Guidiccioni — and set to music by Emilio del Cavaliere. It was given at Rome, probably in St. Philip Neri's chapel, in the year 1600, the very same year in which the first opera was given at Florence. It was called " The Representation of the Soul and the Body." Among the solo characters were Time, Pleasure, the World, Human Life, etc. These last three were gayly and richly dressed at first, and afterward were to be- come poor and wretched, and finally to die. There was a chorus and orchestra, the whole was acted, and the performance closed with a ballet, to music sung by the chorus. The stage directions require that it be danced " sedately and reverentially."

Thus we see that the early oratorio differed very little in principle from the early opera. Both were dramas, both employed much the same mu- sical means, solos, chorus and orchestra, both were acted, both admitted the ballet. But the one had a distinctively moral and religious aim, while the other had not. So that, while the forms of the oratorio were influenced greatly by those of the opera, its different aim and purpose gradually brought about the real distinction which exists to- day between the two species. Oratorio ceased to be acted, excluded dancing, and admitted only serious and devout music.

THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO.

51

QUESTIONS.

Did opera and oratorio have their origin in the same intellectual movement?

What was the movement which finally gave rise to the oratorio ?

Why did the clergy introduce a dramatic treatment of Scripture readings into the service?

Describe the growth of this tendency.

Tell the difference between Mysteries, Moralities and Miracle-plays.

Describe the process by which the plays degenerated.

Describe the "Fools' Festival " and the " Feast of the Ass."

Who was St. Philip Neri?

What means did he take to interest his congregation?

Where were his plays given ?

What does the word "oratorio" mean?

How came it to be applied to a form of musical art ?

Who wrote the first oratorio, and when?

Tell what you know of it.

Give the points of resemblance between the early opera and oratorio.

Show the lines on which they afterward diverged.

LMSON VI.

LE680N VII.

Musical su- premacy'of Italy.

English com- potert.

LESSON VII.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE MUSICAL SITUATION AT THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. CONDITION OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

IN the year 1600 Italian supremacy in music had fairly begun, a supremacy which was to continue unquestioned for more than a century. Taught by the great Netherland contrapuntists — nearly all of whom spent their lives, did their life-work and found their public in Italy — the Italian composers had not only equaled but sur- passed their Flemish masters. The great epoch of Polyphony, based on the church modes, had culminated in Palestrina, and had found numerous representatives in all the leading cities of Italy » Venice, especially, had developed a school and style of its own. Since Willaert's time there had been a succession of organists, conductors and composers in the Cathedral of St. Mark, every one of whom was distinguished, many of them being of the first, or nearly the first, rank. They had cultivated the Madrigal as the form of secular music, and from Italy it had spread to Germany, France, Spain and England.

The English madrigal writers of Elizabeth's time were among the best in Europe. The age of Elizabeth and of Shakespeare was the first great flourishing period of English musical Art. Men like Tallis, Byrd, Morley, Dowland, Weelkes, Wilbye, Ward, Bennet, Bateson, Gibbons, Hilton and Bull ranked with the best European com- posers of the time, especially in the field of the madrigal and of organ and virginal music. The 52

MUSIC IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

53

music of the Anglican Church afforded less scope &»*>* for composers than did that of the Catholic Church, and Puritan fanaticism had operated to check its development, so that the English Church music of this time was not only inferior to that of the Catholic Church, but also to that of the Lutheran Church in Germany, where not only had there been no unfavorable influences, but Luther him- self had used all his vast power and influence to make music a most important factor in the Prot- estant Reformation. Nevertheless, these English composers wrote many excellent anthems, some of which are in use to this day.

Musical matters in Germany may fairly be said German mu»ic. to have followed Luther's leadership. Himself a genuine lover of music and with highly cultivated ; musical gifts, he was wise enough to call to his aid : the best, composers of the time. Besides this, j like the Wesleys, afterward, in England, he intro- duced popular melodies into the church services, speedily transformed and divested them of all unworthy associations, set his congregations to singing them in unison, and made them a great uplifting religious force. The Lutheran Choral became, and remains to this day, the best ex- pression of the true spirit of the Reformation, as the Gregorian chant, culminating in the masses of Palestrina, is the truest and best expression of, what is noblest in the Roman Catholic Church. Sung in unison by the congregation, in a slow , and dignified style, the organ carried, as it still j carries, the harmonies, and from that day to this j the Lutheran Choral has served as a basis for : -elaborate contrapuntal writing, as the Gregorian melodies did in Italy in the days of the Netherland- ers and of Palestrina. At the end of the sixteenth century, then, the Lutheran Choral was supreme

The Lutheran Choral.

54

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VII.

Prance.

What we ow« to Italy.

in the Religious music of Protestant Germany, as the developed and ennobled Gregorian chant was in that of Italy and of Catholic Europe. But, unlike Catholic Church music, the Lutheran Choral had not yet revealed its full possibilities. Protestant Church music was not to culminate until about a hundred and fifty years after Palestrina. It was Sebastian Bach who first showed what could be done with the Lutheran Choral in the way of Art-music, leaving behind him in his motets, and especially in his Passion music, models not only unsurpassed but unsur- passable— the admiration and the despair of all later composers.

Spain contributed a few able composers to the age of Palestrina, the best known are Christoforo Morales, admitted in the Sistine choir in Rome in 1540, and Tomaso Ludovico Vittoria (1560-1608). But no music of historic importance originated in that country.

To France, also, we look in vain for an original contribution to musical history at this epoch, unless we count the French-speaking Belgians (Netherlander), such as Dufay, Josquin de Pres, Clement ("non Papa"), Jaques Arcadeldt and Claude le Jeune, as French. Italy was the great intellectual and artistic centre. We owe to her the great age of Painting, the Revival of Letters, the development of Singing, and of Gregorian Church Music, the invention of the Opera and of Oratorio. In great part, also, we owe to her the development of polyphony. For, although this movement was started and carried on by Northern foreigners, it was in Italy that they found their public and their proper field of labor, and it was in Palestrina, an Italian, that their work found its culmination.

ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

55

To Italy, too, we owe the highest development LMSON VIL of instrumental music at this epoch. Naturally enough, this development came first in the do- main of organ music. As sacked music preceded secular as an art development, so the organ, used to accompany the music of the church, be- came fit for artistic purposes sooner than did any other instrument.

The progenitor of the organ was the Syrinx, or Earliest form Pan's pipes, a series of reeds placed side by sidei °/'Aeors°w- and blown by the mouth. When a bellows was invented, in the shape of a bag, to be placed under the arm, and the syrinx became a bagpipe, a step had been taken toward the organ as we know it. The next step was to place the pipes on a box, and let the wind into the box from a weighted bellows. Such organs were in use among the Greeks two hundred years before the Christian era.

The first organs of this sort in use in Christen- i First European dom of which we have any accurate knowledge organt- were in the eighth century, though there are said to have been some in Spain in the fifth century, and in Rome in the seventh. They were small, of only one or two octaves, having from eight to fifteen pipes. There was no key-board at that time. There was a slide under each pipe, which was drawn out to make the pipe speak and pushed in to stop it. Only melodies were played, and the player had to use both hands, pushing in one slide when he drew out another. In the ninth century many such organs were made in France and in Germany, the largest of them having their longest pipes four feet long. In some of them, the slides were operated by upright levers, marked with the letters A, B, C, etc., indicating the pitch of the pipes. By the end of the tenth

56

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VII.

Winchester organs.

Improvements in the organ about 1 100.

century organs had increased a good deal in size. The famous organ in Winchester cathedral, England, had four hundred pipes. It had two sets of slides, twenty in each set, with ten pipes to each slide, and required two players. Mr. E. J. Hopkins, in his excellent article on the organ, in Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musicians," says that this organ had three sets of slides and re- quired three players, a principal organist and two assistants. This organ was built in 980.

The next important step in the construction of organs was not taken until about a century later. It consisted in doing away with the slides and replacing them by keys. These keys kept the pipes closed automatically by means of springs, so that each pipe sounded only when its key was pressed down. Thus the labor of pushing in slides to stop the tone was all saved. But in the larger organs, where there were a number of pipes to each key, this action, though simple, was very clumsy and cumbersome. A key long enough to close ten or more pipes had to be pressed down several inches, sometimes even a foot, and required a very powerful spring. This made a very hard action. As late as the fourteenth century, organ keys were from three to four inches wide and had to be pressed down with the fists or elbows.

Pedals were invented, probably, about 1300, although we know very little about them until their introduction into Venice by " Bernhard the German," about 1445. Reed pipes were intro- duced about the fifteenth century.

The mechanism of the organ was gradually im- proved until, by the end of the sixteenth century, there were numerous organs with two or three manuals and a full set of pedals, the action of which was practicable for polyphonic playing.

ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

57

Toward the end of the century independent LE8SON vn- pieces for the organ began to be written. Venice Early organ seems to have been the earliest centre for the pro- j " duction of organ music. Especially from the j year 1566 on there was a great development of organ playing and organ music there, especially in St. Mark's Cathedral. In that year Claudia Merulo became organist of the first of the two organs in that church, and Andreas Gabrieli took his place at the second organ, a position which Merulo had held since 1557. They were both excellent musi- •cians, composers and organists. Merulo was suc- ceeded at the first organ by Giovanni Gabrieli, who •continued in this position from 1584 till his death in 1612. Both these men contributed much to the development of independent organ music. Merulo, particularly, devoted himself to the composition of pieces for his instrument, while Oabrieli divided his activity as a composer be- tween organ music and church music. Many young Germans came to Venice to study the orgau with the two Gabrielis, among them such noted men as Hans Leo Hasler (1564-1618) and Hein- rich Schi'te (1585-1672). With Hasler began that movement of German students of music toward Italy which lasted about two hundred years. He went to Venice in 1584 to study with Andreas Gabrieli, and was on terms of intimate friendship with Giovanni Gabrieli. Up to this time, for about two hundred years, the Netherlander had been the great educators in music, but, instead of establishing one or more musical centres in their own country, they had scattered and settled in Italy, Germany, France and Spain. Their labors had, as we have seen, borne such fruit in Italy that the predominant influence in musical culture had now become Italian. Hasler, and other young

German flu- dents in Venice.

58

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VII.

The Harpsi- chord and Clavichord.

foreigners who studied in Italy, transplanted Italian ideas and Italian style to their own lands, and helped to make Italian musical influ- ence supreme all over Europe. Schtitz studied with Giovanni Gabrieli from 1609 until his death in 1612. We shall have more to say of him in a subsequent lesson.

By the end of the sixteenth century the two precursors of the piano-forte, the Harpsichord and the Clavichord, had become pretty well developed, and some independent music was written for them also. The Clavichord is supposed to have been developed from the rnonochord, an instrument which reaches back into unknown antiquity. This instrument, as its name indicates, had only a single string. It had a movable bridge, by means of which the intervals of the scale could be given, the player moving the bridge with one hand while he plucked the string with the other. It was used mainly for teaching the rudiments of music. Some time after the organ key-board was invented,, the monochord was provided with keys, each one applying a bridge to a different place in the string, corresponding to the intervals of the scale. Other strings were afterward added, and the brass wedges, or " tangents," as they were called, on the ends of the keys, not only divided the strings into parts, but produced the tone by setting the strings in vibration. The clavichord in this shape was simply an oblong box, placed before the per- former on a table, the strings running right and left. The right hand manipulated the keys,, while the left probably damped the short portion of the strings to the left of the tangents. It was always a favorite instrument in Germany, because some variation of power was possible, and because of the tremulous effect (" Bebung ") which could

ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

be produced by a peculiar touch on the key, the tangent being held against the string.

The Harpsichord (clavicembalo), and its smaller varieties, the Spinet and the Virginal, were prob- ably developed from the Psaltery and, perhaps, j the Dulcimer (Hackbrett). These were simply triangular or oblong harps, laid on their sides. The Psaltery was played with a plectrum, and the Dulcimer with small mallets or hammers. From this last, probably, came the idea of our modern piano-forte. The harpsichord, in its developed form, had thin metallic strings, set in vibration by means of stiff quills set horizontally in perpen- dicular "jacks " fastened to the ends of the keys. Thus they operated like the ancient plectrum in playing the psaltery and zither. A good deal of music used to be written " for the organ or harpsi- chord," and the latter instrument was used where the larger organ was not accessible — at choir re- hearsals and in private houses. Tallis, Byrd and other English composers of the Elizabethan era wrote much for the spinet and virginal, and the virgin queen herself is said to have been no mean performer. The harpsichord took the leading place in the early orchestras and was played by the conductor, as we shall see in the succeeding lessons.

The Orchestra was exceedingly primitive at the end of the sixteenth century. The guitar family was very numerous and very popular — had been so, in fact, since the Crusades, when the German Minnesingers, the Prove^al Tsoubadours and the wandering Jongleurs, or Minstrels, began to use them in accompanying their songs. To this class belonged various sizes and types of the Lute, one of them being called the Theorbo, the Cithara, the Mandolin, etc. The latter instrument, in various

LESSON VII.

of

chord.

The early orchestra.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VII.

Stringed instru- ment*.

Wood wind

instrument!.

Reed instru- ments.

sizes and types, remains in use in Spain and in Mexico to the present day. The ancient Keltic bards used harps and a stringed instrument called Growth or Crowd. This was played with a bow, and is the earliest European instrument of this class. The violin class of instruments was much more numerously represented in the sixteenth century than now. So long as instruments were used merely for accompanying voices, the guitar family, lutes, etc., retained their predominant popularity. It was not till after the rise of purely instrumental music in the seventeenth century that this class of instruments began to fall into disuse on account of their lack of capacity for de- velopment into solo instruments. Then the violin family began to come into prominence, those of inferior artistic capacity were gradually weeded out, and the violin, viola, violoncello and double- bass were finally left as the most available repre- sentatives of their once numerous family.

The wood wind instruments were well repre- sented. The Flute is very ancient and existed in two forms, the Side-flute (Flauto traverso), similar to our own, and the Flute-a-bec or Beak-flute, blown from the end. The modern flageolet and the common whistle are really beak-flutes. One kind of beak-flute or flageolet was called a Re- corder. There were recorders of various sizes, ranging from one to three feet in length. There was also a long, bow-shaped, tapering flute called a Cornet. The early orchestral Flute-a-bec had a mouth-piece resembling the beak of a bird, and this gave it its name. The ancients had double flutes blown from the end.

The Oboe (or hautboy) is one of the oldest reed instruments. Oboes used to be called " waits " or " weyghtes." They were also of different sizes.

ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

There was a large bass oboe called Bombard. Our present large oboe is called an English Horn ( Cor Anglais, or Corno Inglese*). The bass oboe of the present is called a Bassoon or Fagotto. The latter name is the same as Fagot, and comes from the fact that the long tube is doubled on itself repeatedly, like a bundle of sticks.

Brass instruments had been in use from very ancient times. In the sixteenth century there were Horns, Trumpets and Trombones (or Sackbuts) in use. Drums of various kinds, including the kettle-drum, were also in use as military instru- ments.

As yet (1600) there was little or no independent music for any of these instruments. They were used merely as accompaniments for vocal music. For example, Giovanni Gabrieli used two violins, two cornets and four trombones in the accompani- ment of one of his church compositions, written for only three voices, and in another piece, for two choirs, he used one violin, three cornets and two trombones. The first oratorio, by Cavaliere, used an orchestra consisting of a harpsichord, a double lyre, a theorbo (double guitar) and two flutes. Similar orchestras were used in the first operas. There was commonly, perhaps always, a harpsichord or spinet, one or two flutes, and one or two instruments each of the violin and lute family.

The general situation, then, as regarded all our modern forms of musical art, shows that they were all in their infancy. Polyphonic choral singing had attained a high pitch of perfection. Solo singing was yet to be developed, to meet the demands of the opera. Instrumental solo per- formances were hardly thought of. The orchestra was barely beginning the first experiments in the

LESSON VII.

Brass instru- ments.

Early orchet-

tras.

Summary.

62

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

L«SSON VII.

combination of instruments. The organ alone was starting on its independent career as a solo instrument, followed, at some little distance, by the harpsichord and the clavichord. All the great departments of the art of music were to be de- veloped separately and in combination. .How much of this was done in the century to the threshold of which we have now come, we shall presently see.

ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

63

QUESTIONS.

About what time did Italian supremacy in music begin?

Compare the condition of musical matters in Italy, England, Germany, France and Spain about the year 1600.

What great factors in modern intellectual life do we owe to Italy ?

What was the earliest precursor of the organ ?

Describe the first European organs.

Describe the Winchester Cathedral organ.

What great improvement was made in the action of the organ about 1100?

Describe the organ actions of the 12th and 13th cen- turies.

When were pedals invented?

When reed pipes?

Name some of the great Venetian organists of the latter part of the 16th century.

Name Germans who studied in Venice.

Describe the Harpsichord and the Clavichord,- and give their origin.

What kind of orchestra was used to accompany the •early operas and oratorios ?

What is the difference between a Jlute-a-bec and a jlauto traverso 1

What were Recorders?

Bombards?

Cornets?

How many different classes of instruments are men- tioned as in use in the 16th century?

Mention some of those belonging to the guitar family.

LESSON VII.

LKSSON TIIL

Italian opera.

Itt development in Venice.

LESSON VIII.

THE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

HAVING now given a general outline of the mu- sical situation at the end of the sixteenth century, our next task must be to trace the development of musical art, along its various lines during the seventeenth century, up to the beginning of the life-work of Bach and Haendel.

Dramatic music will claim our attention first, as the most important musical phenomenon of the early part of the century. Opera, as we have seen,_was invented in Florence. But while the Florentine musicianszealbusly cultivated the new form of musical art, it was in Venice that the most important development of the opera took place during the early part of the seventeenth century. The conditions in Venice were particu- larly favorable for the development of secular and especially of dramatic music. Venice was an iso- lated, wealthy, commercial republic. She had suffered less than any other Italian city from the political confusion of the time ; her wealth gave her citizens leisure for mental cultivation; her commercial intercourse with the Orient had broad- ened her ideas, introduced new elements of culture, and made her more a cosmopolitan city than any other in Europe. Then she had a great school of first-class musicians who were already attracting disciples from the north side of the Alps. These musicians were independent, original and pro- gressive. Zarlino had discovered important prin- ciples in harmony, the value of which is only, in our own day, beginning to be appreciated. The 64

THE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

65

two Gabrielis, and, for that matter, all the com- posers of the Venetian school from Willaert down, had given their church music and madri- gals a more dramatic coloring and a freer emo- tional and imaginative treatment than anybody else. The immediate successor of the Gabrielis was to render the infant opera its greatest service. This was Claudio Monteverde. He was born at Cremona in 1568, and was director of music at St. Mark's for thirty years, from 1613 till his death, in 1643. From the beginning of his career as a musician, before he went to Venice, he had striven to make his compositions as expressive as possible. With him the vivid expression of feel- ing was the first aim of composition. To this end he used without hesitation means unknown to or forbidden by the theorists of his time. He was the first to use the dominant-seventh without prep- aration. He used the ninth, and even the aug- . men ted fourth, in the same way, and he was the first composer to use the diminished seventh chord. As in the case of every composer of orig- inal genius, Monteverde's innovations met with severe criticism and violent opposition from the pedantic theorists of his day. But they have been accepted and incorporated into all our modern music-thinking. So has one of his innovations in the use of the violin. He was the first to employ the tremolo, now in common use, as a means of expressing agitated, passionate feeling. This, also, was treated by many of his' contemporaries with ridicule and contempt, but the result has shown that Monteverde was right.

Active as he was in employing all the harmonic and orchestral resources of his time, and in invent- ing new ones for the purpose of dramatic expression, he was just the man to do for the newly-invented 5

LE680N VIII.

Monteverde^ 1568-1643.

His innovations.

66

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LWSON VIII.

firit public optra houie built in Venice.

OavaUi, 1599- 1676.

opera what nobody else could. In 1607 he pro- duced his first opera in Mantua, where he was then director of music, and he wrote at least two more before he went to Venice. In the latter city he continued his career as an operatic composer. In these works he embodied his ripest ideas on the art of composition and of musical expres- sion, and his work marks an era in musical history.

It was doubtless due, in great part, to the stimu- lus of his example that operatic composition was so widely and so successfully cultivated in Venice. During his time the first public opera house was built in Venice. This was an epoch-making event, for it marks the beginning of opera as a public entertainment, whereas elsewhere it con- tinued to be, for a long time, exclusively the prop- erty of princes and nobles, who used it on festal occasions for the entertainment of their guests. In Venice it was a popular matter, not a court affair. So popular was it that other opera houses were built, and before the year 1734 some four hundred operas by forty different composers had been pub- licly performed in Venice ! This date takes us somewhat beyond the boundaries set for the pres- ent lesson, but it seemed necessary to make the statement. One more brief remark, and we have- done with Venice for the present. Cavalli, who became Monte verde's successor at St. Mark's in 1668, must be mentioned as the one Venetian composer, after Monteverde, who contributed essen- tially to the development of the dramatic style. He won a reputation which extended far beyond the bounds of Italy. After his time, opera in Venice began to emphasize the sensuous rather than the dramatic element, and with this change began its degeneration and downfall.

THE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

67

LESSON VIII.

outside of Italy.

H. Schtltz, 1585-1672.

The newly-invented opera, or newly-revived Greek drama, as it was then supposed to be, was Italian opera speedily introduced into Germany. The first German to do this was Heinrich Schutz (1585- 1672), referred to in the last lesson as a student under Gabrieli in Venice. It happened in this way : In the year 1627 the Elector John George I of Saxony gave his daughter in marriage to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. As the latter was a highly-educated and cultivated man, the elector wished to offer him some entertainment worthy of his intellectual and refined tastes. So it occurred to him to give a performance of Peri's first opera, " Dafne." He ordered Schutz, his court director of music, to prepare it and give it in the German language, designating Martin Opitz, the poet, as the translator of Rinuccini's text. But when the trans- lation was made, it would not fit Peri's music. So Schutz himself set the German words to music and composed the first opera ever written in Ger- many. Although written by a German, it was, to all intents and purposes, an Italian opera ; for Schutz was in full sympathy with the Italian ideas he had imbibed in Venice. A long time was to elapse before German opera composers were to develop a national style. One reason of this was the political and social confusion caused by the dreadful thirty years' war (1618-1648), which effectually prevented Schutz from following up his first attempt in this line. He never wrote a second opera.

In 1662 an Italian opera house was established IM™n °P,era

• I-. i .,i T, i- t i T i' established in

in Dresden, with an Italian conductor and Italian Dr««d«i, 1662 singers, and here Italian operas were given in the Italian language, under court patronage, until about the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. What was true of Dresden was true of

e first written in Germany.

68

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VIII.

Engliih opera composers of this period.

Hamburg; her character and musical life.

nearly or quite every court in Germany. If Ger- man composers were employed, they had to write music in the Italian style to Italian words. In short, Italian opera became the fashion, and, as in the case of most fashionable things, so long as the craze lasted, no other style, however meritori- ous, had any chance of success. In England, also, Italian opera became the fashion. The one Eng- lish composer acknowledged as of first rank dur- ing this century was Henry Purcell (1658-1695). He wrote a very considerable number of operas, but they were in no way distinguishable, as regards style, from the contemporary Italian operas on which they were modeled. Two other English opera composers of this century achieved a good reputation in their own country, Matthew Lock (1620-1677), and John Eccles, born about the same time as Lock.

In Germany, Hamburg formed an exception to the prevalent Italian style. This grew out of the fact that Hamburg was a free commercial city, and also, being far removed from the scene of the thirty years' war, had suffered less than her neighbors. These two circumstances, as in the case of Venice, enabled her to develop an indi- vidual life of her own, and caused her music to take on a peculiar character, different from that of the rest of Germany. Here, as in Venice, church music was greatly influenced by the dra- matic style, and the opera, very naturally, was from the start more characteristically German than Italian. However, no real development of German opera came out of this promising begin- ning. Unfortunately, the writers of opera texts there, as elsewhere, seemed unable to choose any other than classical subjects, and as the masses who patronized the opera had no sympathy with

THE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

69

Why German opera was not developed theref

Greek mythology, and no acquaintance with the LESSON VI11 Greek literature from which these subjects were taken, they cared nothing at all for that kind of musical drama. There was no court to support the opera ; success depended on attracting full houses, necessarily made up, in great part, of un- cultivated people ; and so the managers resorted to spectacular attractions and depended for their patronage mainly on scenic accessories. Of course, this was fatal to the development and realization of all high artistic ideals, and opera here, as later in Venice, degenerated. Decay set in, in fact, not only before operatic endeavor had borne any ripe fruit, but almost before there had begun to be any fruit at all. A considerable improvement took place, however, at the end of the century, the results of which we shall trace in the next lesson.

Italian opera made its first appearance in France in the year 1645, when Cardinal Mazarin procured a company of Italian opera singers for the entertainment of the queen, Anne of Austria. It is said, however, that opera, as performed by this company, failed to meet the demands of French

rrii r\ i T i ' i f ii opera tailed to

taste. Ihe r rench applied to it the canons 01 the ; please French drama as it had been developed by their great classical dramatists, Corneille and Moliere, who had already done much toward refining French taste in dramatic art. Measured by these stand- ards, the Italian opera of that time was faulty and defective. Although it had originated in an enthusiastic attempt to revive the Greek drama, the tendency to develop its musical forms, and to invent sensuously pleasing melodies at the cost of dramatic truthfulness, had speedily shown itself. Besides this, the Italian opera, as represented in France, aimed to produce effects largely by means

French opera.

Whi/ Italian

70

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VIII.

Obstacles in the way of French opera.

Perrin, 1620- 1675.

His lyric poems.

of decorations, scenic accessories, etc., instead of depending mainly on a vivid and forcible dramatic presentation of a well-constructed play. All this hindered the success of Italian opera among the cultivated classes in France much more than it did in Germany, where the dramatic sense was much less advanced, and where, indeed, the natu- ral turn for the drama, and natural tact and per- ception in dramatic matters, were far less marked than among the French.

But the introduction of opera into France created a desire among Frenchmen to produce a musical drama of their own more in accord with their dramatic ideals. The chief obstacle to this was found to lie in the fact that French poetry, as it then existed, was wholly unsuited to musical treatment. There were at that time no free lyric forms in the French literature, such as would give a composer free scope for his imagination in setting them to music; and the worst of it was, that the iambic line of six feet, interrupted by a csesura, unfit as it was for the purpose of an ope- ratic composer, was considered by the poets and critics of the day as the only poetic form worthy of a place in literature.

The first man who had the courage to break through this literary superstition, and to write lyric verses suitable for music, in defiance of the traditions of the elders, was the Abbe Perrin. He first published a collection of poems, irregular in form, freely adapting themselves to the varying moods of the poet and avowedly intended to lend themselves to the purposes of imaginative musical composition. They were violently opposed, of course, by the pedantic literary critics, and as violently defended on the side of the musicians, ! who saw in them the possibility of a national lyric

THE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

71

drama hitherto unattainable. A professional or- ganist named Robert Cambert, at that time the most prominent composer in France, soon set some of his songs to music, and very soon after this the two combined to produce a comic operetta called " Pastorale." This was given for the first time in the year 1659. It made a great success, in spite of the fact that it was given purposely without any of those splendid scenic accessories which the Italian party in Paris was employing to dazzle the eyes of the public. But as there was, of course, there, as everywhere, a considerable number of those who preferred tawdry glitter to solid artistic qualities, the new French opera did not make its way as rapidly as its friends de- sired. However, Perrin and Cambert worked on energetically, and in 1669 they obtained of King Louis XIV the exclusive privilege for twelve years of giving operas, not only in Paris but in all the cities of France. They formed a stock company and built an opera house, opening it with a new opera of their own, " Pomona," which ran for eight months and netted Perrin alone about $6000. It is said, however, to have been inferior in every way to their first work. Feeling the necessity of competing with the Italian opera in showy decorations, they laid more stress on /these than on the artistic quality of their new work, and by these means achieved a great popu- lar success. The consequence was that they ac- complished very little for real French opera in the four years during which they held their operatic monopoly. Their real service lay in the decisive first step of Perrin in the matter of lyric poetry, and in the impulse given by their first combined effort in opera.

"We now come to one of the great names in the

LESSON VIII.

Cambert, 1628-1677.

Kit fir ft operetta.

Work of Perrin and Cambert.

72

LESSONS IAT MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VIII.

LuUy, 1633- 1687

He buys the opera monopoly from Perrin and Oamberl, 1672.

importance of his work.

history of French opera, and, for that matter, of opera in general, the name of Giovanni JBattista Lully, who succeeded to the monopoly of opera in France in the year 1672. For two hundred years, now, it has been affirmed that he robbed Perrin I and Cambert of their privilege by means of the basest intrigue. It has even been affirmed that he poisoned Cambert, several years after he cheated him out of his rights. He has always been represented as a smart, shrewd, unscrupulous courtier, who, coming to Paris as a youngster, pushed his way up from a menial position in the household of Mme. de Montpensier, the king's niece, to that of a special favorite of the king himself. He is said to have used the power thus acquired in the most odious way, treating the noblest men of his time with contempt and con- tumely, and filling his own pockets at the expense of others. However this may be, late researches in the French archives seem to make it clear that he bought the opera monoply of Perrin and Cam- bert instead of stealing it from them.

Whatever else may be doubtful, it is certain that, although an Italian by birth, he succeeded in doing for French national grand opera what Perrin and Cambert had failed to do. Associating himself with the poet Quinault, who wrote the poems for his operas, he created, within the next fifteen years (he died in 1687), a large number of music dramas so vigorous in conception, so full of powerful rhetorical declamation, so dramatically truthful — in short, so fully in accord with the highest French ideals — that they kept their place on the stage for almost a whole century after his death. Considered as music, his operas were infe- rior to the more fully-developed Italian operas of his time. Considered as dramas, they were greatly

TEE PROGRESS OF OPERA.

73

superior, and it was this that gave them their na- LESSON VIXI- tional character. They were real French opera, not merely Italian opera transplanted into French soil. At the end of the seventeenth century, then, there were two styles of opera in Europe : 1. The Italian, in Italy, Germany and England, charac- terized by the predominance of the music over the characteristic words and the dramatic action, laying chief stress tSSmfSmck on the development of its musical forms and the and^ian elaboration of its melodies. The first requisite of j the latter was that they must be pleasing and sing- able. Dramatic truthfulness in them was, as it still is in most Italian operas, quite a subordinate matter. 2. The national French opera, based on an ideal the exact reverse of that which controlled Italian opera, laying chief stress on dramatic ex- pression and relegating the music to a subordinate position, wholly tributary to the main purpose of the drama.

74

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON VIII.

QUESTIONS.

In what city was opera successfully cultivated during the early part of the seventeenth century ?

What conditions there were favorable to it ?

Who was the composer who did most for it?

Give dates.

Mention some of his innovations.

What was the object of these innovations?

Give evidences of the flourishing condition of opera in Venice.

What caused its decay ?

Name a second prominent Venetian opera composer..

Who introduced Italian opera into Germany ?

Give dates.

Where was this ?

When was Italian opera established in Dresden?

Was the state of things in Dresden different from that in other court cities of Germany ?

How long did it continue?

Name the prominent English composers of opera at this time.

Give dates for Purcell.

Was their work essentially English or Italian in style?'

Give an account of the course of opera in Hamburg.

When was Italian opera introduced into France ?

Why was it regarded as unsatisfactory ?

What was the chief obstacle to the composition of operas in the French language ?

Who overcame this obstacle, and how ?

Who wrote the first French opera?

Give date of its production.

Why was the success of Perrin and Cambert limited ?

When did their monopoly of opera pass into other hands ?

Whose?

What service did Lully fender to French opera ?

Give an account of Lully, with dates.

Give the characteristic distinction between Italian and French opera at this time.

Carissimi, 1580- 1673.

LESSON IX.

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 1. The Growth of the Oratorio and of the Cantata.

THE man who did for oratorio much the same service that Monteverde did for opera was Giacomo Carissimi\ 1580-1673; these dates are somewhat doubtful). He is said to have been one of the most active- minded and progressive men of his time. Most of the professional musicians had been brought up in the traditions of polyphony, and were strongly conservative in their feelings and opinions. They were apt to look down on the new attempts at monophonic music, whether in drama, oratorio or church music, as mere amateurish innovations, unworthy of educated mu- sicians. So they treated all this phase of musical activity, out of which so large a part of our modern music has grown, with indifference or contempt.

Carissimi was of a different mind. He thought He adopts the there was a field for the dramatic style of solo ; %%p*°*ie singing, and that it could be made more ex- pressive and more effective than polyphony. He was a professional musician and director of music at one of the churches in Rome ; but he devoted many years of his life to the development of what he called chamber cantatas, essentially the same kind of works which we call cantatas nowadays. They were, really, musical dramas without action or scenery. The music consisted, as it still con- sists in our modern cantata and oratorio, of recita- tives, arias, duets, trios, quartets and choruses, the one or the other kind being employed accord- ing to the dramatic requirements of the text. 75

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IX.

Canssimfs recitatives-.

Difference be~ tictt'n the can- t'lin and the oratorio.

Given without stage accessories, everything was left to the imagination of the hearer. There was no drawing off of the attention to subordinate matters, no disturbance by stage incongruities or inadequacies ; the imagination had free play, and each hearer was edified in proportion to his own imaginative power and to the dramatic sugges- tiveness of the poem. But, as von Dommer has well pointed out in his excellent history of music (p. 295), the absence of the stage accessories and of action made the demands on the composer all the more severe. Where attention was concen- trated on the music, defects in form or in euphony and rhythm, or in dramatic expressiveness, were all the more glaring and noticeable.

Carissimi set himself to a task which he deemed worthy of all his powers. He sought to make of the recitative a refined and forcible kind of musical declamation, and to make it as expressive as possible in a natural way, approximating im- passioned declamatory speech. He sought to make the aria beautiful in melody, perfect in form and expressive in style. He strove for noble simplicity, beauty and dramatic truthful- ness in every portion of his work. In this he succeeded, to the delight and edification of his contemporaries. He made the cantata a real art- work, based on genuine art-principles, and laid down the lines on which it has been culti- vated ever since.

Of course, such a service rendered to the cantata was rendered equally to the oratorio, for a cantata differs from an oratorio only in having a secular rather than a sacred subject. An oratorio is, to all intents and purposes, a sacred cantata. If the latter term is ever used nowa- days in distinction from the term oratorio, it

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

77

means either a work slighter and shorter than is thought necessary for the name oratorio, or one on a subject more or less related to religious life, without having a scriptual text. Carissimi wrote " Sacred Cantatas " or " Motettes," shorter than oratorios, but he wrote oratorios also, on the same general lines as his chamber cantatas (secular). These works, like our modern oratorios, treated scriptural subjects. "Jephtha," "David and Jonathan," " Abraham an'd Isaac " were among them. How many works of these different kinds he wrote in the course of his long life is not known. Most of them are lost. But enough remain to show the quality of his work and to give him a clear title to be called the " Father of Cantata and of Oratorio." Besides, his work was not only popular in his own day, but has exerted a'most extended and far-reaching influence from that time to the present. From the time of Carissimi the cantata and oratorio have been favorite forms of composition, and there is no prospect of any diminution of their popularity. Every new composer tries his hand at one or both, and new works in this field are produced every year. All this vast and growing wealth of secular and sacred dramatic music has grown out of the work of Carissimi, has followed the lines he laid down, and has adopted the forms he de- veloped, elaborating them more or less, but, on the whole, departing far less widely from his models than might have been expected, considering that more than two centuries have elapsed since his death. His was an epoch-making activity, and his work marks the beginning of a great historical era, the end of which is not yet.

In Germany, Heinrich Schu'tz (1585-1672), already mentioned, in the last losson, as the com- '

LESSO;* IX-

Oirissimf* work and inflv ence.

, 1585-

78

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LKSSO?/ IX. I

Sebiistiana.

Yiadana, 1565- 1644, introduces tola singing into the church ser- vice.

poser of the first German opera, composed several works on the general lines of the oratorio, and so rendered quite as great a service to this branch of musical art in his native country as he did to dramatic art in the introduction of opera. He wrote The Passion, according to the four accounts given in the gospels, The Story of the Resurrection, and The Seven Last Words of the Redeemer. These works were far less advanced in style than those of Carissimi, but they served to lay the founda- tions of German oratorio. The only other Ger- man name to be mentioned here is a Prussian music-director named Sebastiani, who wrote a " Passion-music," given for the first time in 1672, in which the congregational chorals were inter- woven with the gospel narrative, the comments of the believers and the bystanders, and the choruses which represented the multitude.

As Italians were the first to introduce solo sing- ing into dramatic music, both sacred and secular, so it was an Italian who first introduced it into church music proper. This was Ludovico Viadana (1565-1644). He lived some time in Rome, then became director of music at the cathedral of Fano, and afterward at that of Mantua. He wrote what he called Church concertos (concerti da chiesa); they consisted of solo pieces and duets, trios, etc., for solo voices, with organ accompaniment. These were written about the time mouophonic music for dramatic purposes was invented in Florence. Viadana eschewed the polyphonic style because he believed that he could make the words much better understood and give them truer expression in the style he chose. It is the old story of the revolt of the Camerata against the trammels of polyphony, in the interest of musical expression of feeling. Viadana had the true, sincere feeling

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

79

for art. He carefully avoided all display of vocal attainments, aiming at a noble, dignified sim- plicity. He demanded of his singers intelligence, sincerity and true feeling.

His organ accompaniments embodied real har- mony, as distinguished from counterpoint. He wrote a continuous bass (basso eontinuo), and with chords, more or less full as occasion seemed to re- quire. Up to this time, chords had been merely the result of the combination of voice-parts in polyphony. Now they began to be used inde- pendently of any such combination. Viadana did not indicate the chords by 'figures over his basses, as Peri had done. But this speedily became a ^common practice, even in cases of polyphonic writing.

After the middle of the century the influence of Viadana's work was more and more widely felt. •Church composers wrote motettes in his style, and monophonic music began gradually to displace polyphony in the church service. The best known of the polyphonic church writers of this time is Gregorio Allegri (1580-1652). A Miserere of his is still performed on Good Friday in the Papal •Chapel. For a most admirable account of its effects see Mendelssohn's " Letters from Italy and Switzerland."

Vocal music had been specially cultivated among the Italians from the very beginning of church music in Italy. Italian voices were superior to any other in Europe ; Italian singers devoted special attention to beauty of tone and excellence in vocal execution, and easily attained Si supremacy which even yet can hardly be dis- puted. The church composers were usually, -if not always, singers. They knew how to write for the voice, and they demanded of their singers the

LESSON IX

Viadana's

harmony.

Allegri, 1580- 1652.

Vocal music in Italy.

80

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON IX.

Discipline uj students of siny- iii'/ in Italy in the nth century.

ability to perform the best works they were able to compose.

Of course, the introduction of solo singing in the church service, in opera and oratorio greatly stimulated vocal cultivation. How far this was carried in the seventeenth century, and how great were the demands of various kinds made on singers, we may learn from the following para- graph, translated from von Dommer's " History of Music," (Chap. XVI, page 440). It refers to the training of the singers for the Papal Chapel in the time of Pope Urban VIII, about 1636.

"The pupils were obliged to practice difficult, passages one hour daily, in order to acquire a good technic. Another hour they devoted to the practice of the trill ; a third to correct and pure intonation, — all in the presence of their mas- ter, and standing before a mirror, so as to observe the position of the tongue and mouth, and to avoid all grimaces in singing. Two more hours they devoted to the study of expression and taste, and of literature. This was the forenoon's work. In the afternoon they devoted a half-hour to the theory of sound, another to simple counterpoint, an hour to composition, and the rest of the day to harpsichord playing, the composition of a psalm or motette, or some other work adapted to the talent and inclination of the pupil. Sometimes they sang in some of the other Roman churches, or went there to hear the works of masters. When they came home they had to give the master an account of all they had experienced. They fre- quently went out by the Porta angelica to Monte Mario, to sing, where there was an echo, in order to observe their own faults from its responses. Such studies may well have produced results which seem incredible to us. It is said of the

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

81

distinguished singer Baldasser Ferri, of Perugia (1610-80), for the possession of whom the courts of Europe competed, that he could sing a chain- trill of two octaves in chromatic intervals up and down in one breath, and this with absolute purity of intonation. Besides this, he was quite as dis- tinguished for characteristic variety of expres- sion."

This may serve to show the condition of vocal technic toward the latter part of the century. It is quite probable that what was then regarded as characteristic expressiveness in singing would sound very crude to our ears. But as regards mere vocal gymnastics, purity of intonation and beauty of tone, the results then achieved were probably the limit of human capability.

LESSON IX.

82

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

QUESTIONS.

Who was The Father of the Cantata and the Oratorio ?

Where did he live?

How did his ideals differ from those of most contempo- i rary musicians?

What is the difference between a cantata and an ora- torio?

What traits have they in common ?

Of what elements do they consist?

What can you say of the influence arissimi's

work ?

Who wrote the first German oratorios ?

Name another German composer in this connection.

Give some account of Schutz's work.

Who first w.rote monophonic church music in Italy ?

Give an account of his work.

What is a basso continue* ?

Who was the best known composer of polyphonic church music at this period?

What influences conduced to the development of solo singing?

Give an account of the studies of young singers at this period.

Give an instance of Ferri's attainments in vocal technic.

LESSON X.

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

(Concluded.)

The Development of Instrumental Music.

THE crude orchestration of the early opera and oratorio was referred to in the last lesson. But it , music- was a matter of course that, although solo sing- ing naturally received the greater stimulus from the new monophony, nevertheless the instrumental portion of the operas, oratorios, chamber cantatas, church concertos, etc., should share more or less in this impulse, and should gradually be developed. The attempt to give characteristic expression to all portions of dramatic works led to a keener and more refined perception of instrumental effects, and so the art and science of orchestration was gradually developed. The necessity of .perfection in details also led to the gradual development of each individual class of instruments, the sifting out of those kinds least available for the purposes of dramatic expression, the further sifting of the varieties within each class, and the survival of the fittest. Thus, for example, the stringed instru- in$trwne«t» of ments played with a bow were of two gen oral orders : I. Knee violins (da Gamba), and II. Ann violins (da Braccio). In the first order there were three kinds of bass and three of tenor viols In the second there were three kinds of violas and four kinds of violinsj three of them smaller than ours. Thus there were thirteen different kinds of instruments played with a bow. The sifting pro- cess has reduced this number to four: violin, viola, violoncello and double-bass. The wood-wind and 83

the violin clast.

84

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HIS. TORY.

LZSSON X.

Lolly's over- turn.

A, Scarlatti.

Chamber music.

Corelli. 165^-1713.

brass instruments also diminished in number by the same process.

Side by side with this sifting went on the gradual development of the individual instruments and of solo playing. In the accompaniments of dra- matic music, composers had to study the capacities of each kind of instrument for characteristic ex- pression and also its technical capabilities, and, of course, both they and the players gained knowledge and skill from experience. With the improvement in individual playing came in- creased freedom in writing, and the gradual de- velopment of independent pieces for the orchestra, Lully wrote overtures to his operas, which, though short, were, nevertheless, in form, the germ of the modern overture, sonata form and symphony. They had a slow introduction, followed by a lively minuet or a fugue. Alessandro Scarlatti, whose work belongs partly to the next century, and who will be mentioned further in the next lesson, did a great deal for the development of the orchestra.

Instrumental chamber music began to flourish in the latter half of the, seventeenth century. The world owes the early development of thisj branch of art also to Italy. " The father of th$ true chamber music style and of real violin play- ing," as von Dommer calls him (p. 456), was Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the most renowned violinist of his time. He is said to have produced a pure, clear, even, beautiful tone; his style of playing was characterized by a noble, dignified simplicity and by profound musical feeling. He composed a great deal for his instrument — church sonatas, chamber sonatas, concertos and sonatas for the violin associated with other in- struments. They were short, but well defined in

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

LESSON x.

form, rich in power of melodic invention, beauti- fully lyric in style, refined and pure in harmony, dignified, avoiding all display of what is now called virtuosity. " Corelli set instrumental music for the chamber, once for all, on the right path," says von Donimer. He was not distinguished for great execution on his instrument ; indeed, many other violinists of his time surpassed him in this. But the main features of his style, both as player and composer, are models for all time, because based on universal principles. His pupils, of whom he had many, and successors only carried out and developed what he had begun.

Corelli is said to have been a very modest, dif- fident man, easily embarrassed and confused, so much so that in the orchestra and in concerted playing he frequently appeared at great disad- vantage as compared with others who were in most important respects greatly his inferiors.

The Venetian School of Organists was supreme : organ music. up to the early part of the seventeenth century. The sceptre was then transferred to Rome. The j greatest organist of the first half of the century was Girolamo Frescobaldi (1588-1653), called " the father of the true organ style." His com- plete works are still preserved. He wrote a great many pieces for the organ and harpsichord, and attained the highest reputation as organist of any man of his time. People flocked to hear him play, his admirers followed him from city to city, and at his first public performance in Rome, thirty thousand people are said to have crowded to hear him ! Pupils came to him from all over Europe, and he educated the best German organ- ists of the next generation. He contributed much to the development of the fugue style of organ music which culminated in Sebastian Bach, and

Frescobaldi. 1588-1653.

86

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON X.

Sweelinck, 1540-1621

Scheldt and other distin- guished German organists.

Patquini, 1637-1710.

marks the culminating point of Italian organ- music From his time there was a gradual fall- ing off, and supremacy in this field passed over t© Germany.

But it ought not to be forgotten that both Fres- cobaldi and his German contemporaries owed much to Netherland teaching. Frescobaldi spent several years of his early life in Flanders, where the organist of the principal church in Amster- dam, Jan Pieter Sweelinck (1540-1621), had a great reputation, and taught a great many foreign pupils, especially Germans. Sweelinck, however,, had studied in Italy, having gone to Venice in 1557, where he was a pupil of Zarlino. He seems to have been an exceptionally excellent teacher as well as a great organist, and he educated a large number of the best German organists, among; them Samuel Scheldt, of Halle (1587-1654), the greatest German organist of his time ; Melchior Schild, of Hanover ; Paul Syfert, of Danzig ; Jacob Schultz and Heinrich Scheidemann, of Hamburg,, and Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722), also of Hamburg. Other renowned German organists of this century were Johann Jacob Froberger (1635-1695), Johann Caspar Kerl (1628-1693), both pupils of Frescobaldi, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637- 1707). Sebastian Bach, when he was a lad in the school at Luneburg, used to walk to Ham- burg to hear Reinken, and made at least one trip to Liibeck to hear Buxtehude.

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was, next to- Frescobaldi, the greatest Italian master of the organ. He was, like his older contemporary, a thorough musician, furnished with all the best knowledge of his time, and highly respected not only in Italy but in Germany. He also educated

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

«7

many German musicians, and distinguished him- self as a harpsichord player and as a dramatic composer.

The harpsichord was an instrument so con- venient for producing harmony and for poly- phonic playing by a single performer that, al- though its artistic capabilities were very limited, it nevertheless grew into high favor among musi- cians and amateurs. Its development kept pace with that of the organ, and by the end of the seventeenth century it had nearly or quite reached the limit of its capacities. It had become quite a large, elaborate instrument, with two keyboards. These two manuals could be coupled together, the upper one reinforcing the other by a separate set of strings an octave higher, thus adding power and brilliancy to the instrument. In this form it was in common use, especially for concert pur- poses and in the orchestra. The spinet or vir- ginal, a small, square harpsichord, was much used in small rooms, in convents and households. The clavichord was used more by artists and less by amateurs, for reasons given in a previous lesson.

Mastery of these instruments was expected of every professional musician as a matter of course. Every organist was also a harpsichord player ; music written for the organ was played on the harpsichord, and vice versa. There was also some writing of music specially adapted for the harpsi- chord and clavichord. The numerous embellish- ments of the harpsichord music of this and the following century seem to have been not so much mere imitations of vocal ornaments as attempts to fill up the time of long notes on an instrument in- capable of a sustained tone. The French excelled at this time as harpsichord players. There was a family named Couperin, at Paris, very distinguished

LESSOX X.

Harpsichord and clavichord

88

LESSONS .EV MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON X. F. Ootiperin,

,7. P. Rameau.

ckutid. 1069-L737.

/Summary.

both as organists and harpsichordists for more than a century. Francois (1668-1733) had the highest reputation for the elegance, refinement and tastefulness of his harpsichord music. His works and performances did much to establish French taste in this field all over Europe.

J. P. Rameau, to be mentioned later as a French opera composer and an epoch-making theorist, wrote fine harpsichord music, and Louis Marchand (1669-1732) was an extremely brilliant player of this instrument as well as an excellent organist. In Italy, Frescobaldi and Pasquini were excellent harpsichordists ; so was Alessandro Scarlatti ; and, in general, organists and musicians made it a point to master the harpsichord. The German organists mentioned above were all good harpsichord play- ers, some of them very distinguished.

At the end of the seventeenth century the status of instrumental music was this : The violin family had been reduced, by a process of natural selection, to nearly its present limits and the art of violin making had been brought to perfection. All through this century the Amati family, and later the Guarneri and Stradivari families, in Cremona, were making their famous instruments, never since equaled and worth enormous sums to their pres- ent possessors.

The lute family had come to occupy a decidedly subordinate position. The incapacity for artistic purposes of all instruments of the guitar type was recognized and they have ever since been mostly given over to peoples and individuals whose musical taste is of a primitive, undeveloped char- acter.

The wind instruments, both wood and brass, were still undergoing the sifting process. The combination of them into the groups of our mod-

MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

LESSON X.

Deficiency-* of the harpsi' Imrd and tlte clivi- chord.

era orchestra had not yet been dreamed of, and was not to come until nearly a century later.

The harpsichord and the clavichord had reached the limit of their development and their deficiencies were so generally felt that active efforts were being made to improve them in the direction of sustained tone and increase and diminution of power. Out of these efforts came the piano-forte, in the first decade of the next century, an instrument which only partially meets these demands. But the experiments which finally j resulted in the invention of our present instrument j were by no m3aas the only ones. Attempts were i Attempts to i made to transform the harpsichord into an instru-|pro< ment producing the same effect as if played with a bow. In this instrument the pressing of each key brought a resine J wheel in contact with the string. The wheels were kept rotating by machinery set in motion by the foot. Other ideas looking toward the improvement of the harpsichord were also broached. As regards this instrument the attitude of the musical world was one of eager desire and expectation of radical improvement. The organ was in condition to meet the fullest demands of polyphonic playing and a vast deal of music in this style was written for it by the organists of the time.

Solo playing on all the instruments in use had solo playing. reached a high degree of perfection, both as re- gards technical execution and grace, finish and expressiveness of style. Concerted chamber music was fairly under way and a good deal that was j valuable had already been accomplished. Out of these elements the materials of the orchestra of the future were shaping themselves. As for the actual orchestra of the time, it had hardly emerged from infancy.

90

LESSONS .LV MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON X QUESTIONS.

What motives operated to reduce the number of varie- ties in each class of instruments ?

How did the development of the different kinds of instruments and of solo playing come to pass?

How many kinds of stringed instruments played with & bow were there?

How many are there now?

Into what two orders were they divided ?

Name two men who contributed to the early develop- ment of orchestral music.

Who was "the father" of chamber music?

Tell what you know of him and his playing.

What great Italian organist was called <l the father of the true organ style?'' Give some account of him. Who was his teacher?

Name some of the German pupils of this teacher.

Name some other great German organists of this time.

Name the second greatest Italian organist of thia ceutury.

Describe the harpsichord of the end of this century.

Give an account of the state of harpsichord music.

Name some distinguished French harpsichord players- German. Italian.

Who were the great Italian violin makers of this cen- tury and in what city did they live?

What was the fate of the guitar (or lute) family of instruments?

What was the condition of the wind instruments at the end of the century?

Of the harpsichord and the clavichord?

Describe the attempts to improve the harpsichord.

How far was the organ developed ?

What was the condition of solo playing on all solo- instruments?

What was the condition of the orchestra ?

LESSON XL

ITALIAN OPERA FROM ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI TO THE PRESENT.

ITALIAN OPERA, as we have seen, originated in an attempt to revive the Greek Drama. As music-drama, it involved music as one of its principal elements ; but the element of dramatic representation ought to have been, and was, at first, the predominant one. We have already seen that the French, a nation pre-eminent in dramatic taste and talent, retained this ideal of opera after Italy had lost it. Opera in Italy went from Florence to Venice, where it was developed by Monteverde and others. Then the seat of its supremacy was transferred to Naples. In this city there was developed a style of music, especially in opera, no less origi- nal and influential than that of Venice. The first great name in Neapolitan music is that of Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725). He wras a pupil of the Roman school of Carissimi, and was thoroughly educated in the style of church music, oratorio and chamber music cultivated by that distinguished master. His general musical education was of the very best; he was thoroughly trained in all the special branches of his profession, and as singing teacher, con- ductor, performer and composer in all styles. he ranked among the first musicians of his time. The Roman school of church music, of which Palestrina had been and will always remain the foremost representative, was char- acterized by sublime elevation of style, by

91

Opera in

Venice and in

2fapies.

Alessandro Scarlatti, 1659-1726.

LESSORS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

JScarlatti'i Muxical Forms.

Character- istics of Italian Opera.

noble and dignified simplicity. That of the Neapolitan school, headed by Scarlatti, was characterized mainly by sensuous charm and beauty of melody. He was an incredibly pro- lific composer. He is said to have written two hundred masses, a very large number of motets, psalms, concertos, etc., five hundred cantatas, many madrigals, etc., and one hundred and fourteen operas, besides a great deal of instru- mental music.

In his hands the musical element of the opera was predominant. Not that he did not seek to fit his music, in a general way, to the emotional character of the words and of the situations of the drama; but he was concerned still more with the perfecting of the musical forms, and his arias and overtures served as models for Haendel and for all composers of Italian opera. His overtures resembled those of Lully, and contained the germs of the modern symphony. They were commonly in three divisions, the middle part being slow and the other two fast. After these overtures and others written on their model began to be played as separate orchestral pieces in concerts, the three parts of the overture were gradually de- veloped into three separate pieces, or "move- ments," and became what is now called a symphony.

From Scarlatti's day to our own the Italian opera has laid prime stress on its melodies. The first aim of Italian opera composers has been to invent good singable, pleasing melodies, well developed as regards musical form and grateful for singers. The emotional character, while not disregarded, has been a subordinate matter, and no Italian writer has hesitated to

ITALIAN OPERA.

93

stop the action of the drama in a critical situa- tion in order to give a singer opportunity to sing a long and elaborate aria, pleasing in melody, perhaps sensational in character and often full of technical difficulties, for the display of the singer's attainments in vocalization.

For the rest, Scarlatti was as bold and original in his treatment of harmony as was Monte verde before him, and was treated in much the same way. His innovations were condemned by pedants and theorists, and imi- tated by all the young generation of composers ; so that his school became a model, and exercised a most powerful influence, not only in Italy, but in Germany, in England and even in France, where Italian opera had a strong party of de- fenders opposed to the national school.

Scarlatti's Italian pupils, Leonardo Leo (1694 -1746) and Francesco Durante (1684-1755) were among the most distinguished of those who helped to establish the supremacy of his style ; Nicola Piccini ( 1 724-1 800) , another Nea- politan, carried it to France and competed against Gluck with considerable success.

George Frederick Haendel (1685-1759) mod- elled his operas on it, carried it to London and produced numerous works for the English stage for a period of about forty years ; and numerous pupils of Scarlatti, both native and foreign, spread the ideas and traditions of the Nea- politan school all over Europe. Other import- ant Neapolitan composers of the time immedi- ately succeeding Scarlatti were his son, Do- menico Scarlatti (1683-1757), Francesco Feo (born 1699), Nicolo Porpora (born 1685), Gio- vanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1737), almost the first to write comic opera; Leonardo Vinci

Scarlatte* influence.

His pupflt.

Haendel^ 1685-1759.

Important

Neapolitan

composers

after Scarlatti.

94

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

1690-1734) and Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774). Antonio Sacchini (1784-1786) did most of his ife-work as an opera composer in Paris; Gio- vanni Paisie-llo (1741-1815) wrote for most of the Italian stages and even for that of St. Petersburg, and was a favorite in Germany. Dominico Gimarosa (1749-1801) was one of the greatest Neapolitans. He wrote seventy operas, and his II Matrimonio Segreto, written for Vienna, was one of the greatest operas of its time.

After Alessandro Scarlatti, and even partly

ontemporary with him, "there were Italian

omposers in Rome, Bologna and Venice, who

were second in ability and reputation to him

alone. But there was no school of operatic

omposition which can be discriminated from

the Neapolitan in fundamental principles. His

successors equally devoted themselves mainly

to the musical side of the opera, neglecting the

dramatic element, broadening and perfecting

Scarlatti's musical forms, and making the Aria

the principal element of the opera. In Rome,

one of the most renowned masters was Giuseppe

Pitoni (1657-1743). Another was Francesco

Gasparini (1660-1737), and still another was

Agastino Steffani (1655-1730), part of whose

life was spent in Hanover. In Venice the

greatest name was Antonio Lotti (1667-1737).

Of other Venetians, Antonio Caldara (1670-

173(5), Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) and

Baldassare Galuppi (1706-17 8f>) had great

reputation. Of similar rank were Giovanni

Bononcini (1670-1750), for some time a rival

of Handel's in London, and Emanuale Astorga

(1681-1736). In Germany, besides Haendel,

most of whose writing was, however, for the

Emnan and Venetian composers.

ITALIAN OPERA.

95

German compoifru of Italian opera.

London stage, there were numerous celebrated composers of Italian opera on the model of Scarlatti. In Vienna the greatest name before Mozart, who also wrote Italian opera, but modi- tied, and who holds a unique position, was Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1732), renowned not only as composer, but as conductor and the- orist ; his Gradus ad Parnassum was for a long time the standard text-book in counterpoint. In Berlin, Carl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759) -was the leading name; in Munich, Johann Caspar Kerl (1628-1693) ; in Dresden, Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783). In all these cities there were numerous Italian conductors, com- posers and singers. The Italian language was used in the librettos, even by German masters, .and Italian opera held its ground with great tenacity until well into the present century.

Meanwhile, not only was prime stress laid on the music as opposed to the dramatic action, but this one-sided tendency was carried to the greatest extreme. The aria became not only "the most important element of the opera, but •came to serve mainly as a means of displaying the utmost brilliancy of vocal attainments on the part of singers. Male sopranos (eunuchs) •competed with female singers in virtuoso per- formances. Great schools for the training of solo singers arose in Bologna, Eome, Milan, Venice, Naples and Florence, and solo per- formances were the central feature of Italian opera, everything being sacrificed to sensuous -charm, brilliant effect and th» vanity of soloists. Among the most celebrated male singers of this period were Pistocchi (born 1659), Ber- nacchi (born 1700), Senesino (born 1680), Nicolini (born 1685), and, greatest of all, Far-

Italian opera degenerates into a mere display of

vocalization.

Great singers of the 18th century.

or,

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

Great singers

since

Jfaendel's time.

Rosirini. 1792-1868.

inelli (born 1705). Among great female sing- ers were Francesco, Cuzzoni (born 1700) and Faustini Bordoni (born 1693), the wife of Hasse, the composer. These two ladies and Senesino were among Haendel's singers in London, where he was not only composer, but conductor and theatre manager, until quarrels with the nobility, his patrons, threw him into bankruptcy, and forced him to devote his powers to oratorio. Many amusing anecdotes are related of the vexatious trials he had to undergo from the vanity, rivalries and unend- ing caprices of these singers, especially Cuz- zoni's. For details of these matters the reader must be referred to Schoelcher's or Rockstro's "Life of Haendel," or to Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians." The plan of these lessons will not admit of biographical sketches of any 'length.

A long list of singers since Haendel's time have been the exponents of Italian opera : Catalani, -Pasta, Sontag, Malibran, Viardot, Schroeder-Devrient, Grisi, Persiani, Alboni, Jenny Lind, Cruvelli, Titiens, Nilsson, Patti and numerous others, both male and female, of greater or less distinction. The first require- ment in such singers has always been beauty of tone combined with florid execution ; but many of them also possessed in a, hig-h degree the dramatic instinct and that peculiar " magnetic " quality which attracts and captivates an audi- ence.

Italian opera, embodying the tendencies above noted, culminated in Giachomo Rossini (1792-1868), one of the most original creators of melody known to musical history. His operas are full of sensuous charm of melody

ITALIAN OPERA.

97

and harmony. They are brilliant and striking, easily to be enjoyed without intellectual effort, calculated for the entertainment of an idle, luxurious, pleasure-seeking societ}-. As such, they continue to amuse the civilized world, even to this day. Only one of them, William Tell, has any special dramatic force or elevat- ing tendency. His principal operas, besides William Tell, were Tancred, The Barber of Seville, Othello, La Centenerola, La Gazza Ladra, Moses in Egypt, The Lady of the Lake and Semiramis. He was born at Pesaro, studied under Padre Martini, a celebrated teacher of Bologna, began writing operas early, made a fortune by his brilliant produc- tions and retired to Paris to enjoy it. Not- withstanding his spontaniety, which enabled him to produce fine melodies with the utmost ease and fluency, he seems to have had no im- pulse to compose after the pressure of pecuniary necessity ceased. For nearly forty years he lived a life of luxurious ease in the French capital, producing nothing but his brilliant and sensational, but false and imreligious, Stabat Miter. His remains were taken to Italy in 1887.

Following Rossini came Vincenzo Bellini (1802-1835), whose principal works were Norma, La, Sonnambula and / Puritani, and Gaetano Donizetti (1798-1848), the composer of .Anna Bolena, Elisire d'Amore, Lucrezia Borgia, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Fille du Regiment and other popular operas. These two are only second in rank to Rossini, and their best works still keep the Italian operatic stage, being heard more or less frequently all over Europe and America. Lesser names were

His opera.

His Stabat Mater.

Bell.ini,

Donizetti and

others.

98

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

Mercadante (1797-1870) and Carafa (1787- 1872).

One great Italiai\operatic composer remains to be mentioned, more serious in aim than Rossini or any of his successors, and nearly or quite as great in every respect as Rossini himself. This is Guiseppe Verdi, born in 1813 and still (1888) living and producing important works. His early life was devoted to operas of the common Italian type, full of melodic charm, but much more markedly dramatic in style, and far more conscientiously written, than those of other Italian composers. The orchestra, too, is treated more seriously than in most Italian operas, where, as Wagner once said, it is commonly used

as style. '' like a mighty guitar." With Yerdi the orches- tra is less a mere accompaniment of arias. ?.nd more an integral portion of the musical means of enhancing the dramatic effect. In short, he has aimed more at the creation of real music- drama, and less at mere sensational effects than have his Italian contem poraries and predeces- sors. This tendency is shown in all his great works, such as 77 Trovatore, Eigoletto and La Traviata, and still more decidedly in his latest opera's, Aida and Otello, written in his later years, and showing decided traces of the in- fluence of Wagner's theories and practice. His great "Manzoni" Requiem Mass shows the same influence and tendencies.

Of the present generation of Italian com-

Botto. posers, the best known outside of Italy is Arrigo Boito, born in 1842, a talented composer and poet. He wrote the text to Yerdi 's Otello, and has become widely known in Europe by his great opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethe's "Faust." He has travelled much, and is thor-,

ITALIAN OPERA.

99

oughly conversant with the theories of Wagner, as is proved by the style of Mefistofele. Since the liberation and unification of Italy, the in- tellectual life and artistic efforts of the Italians seem to have taken an upward tendency, and it looks ns if we might hope for a new " Revival of Learning," such as made the Italy of three hundred years ago the intellectual and artistic centre of the civilized world, and the source of mental inspiration.

100

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

QUESTIONS.

In what city, after Venice, did Italian opera receive its greatest impulse?

Who was the great composer who did most for its de- velopment there ?

Give some account of him.

How did his church music differ from that of the school of Palestrina?

What was the predominant element in his operas? 1 What did he do for Italian opera?

What has been, since his time, the chief characteristic of Italian opera ?

Give an account of its degeneration.

Name some of Scarlatti's Italian contemporaries and successors.

Name the most important German composers of Italian opera.

Name some of the great singers of the first half of the last century.

Name some later singer*, down to our own time.

In whose work did Italian opera culminate ?

Name his most important successors.

Name some operas by these composers.

Give an account of Verdi's work.

Name his leading operas.

Who is the best known Italian operatic composer of to- day?

Name his principal work.

LESSON XII. *

FRENCH OPERA FROM LULLY'S TIME TO THE PRESENT.

LULLY'S operas, as we have seen, kept the French stage for about a century. During this long period no French composer appeared who even approximated Lully's creative power. The first of his successors who could bear com- parison with him was Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). He was a much greater musician than Lully, a man of great scientific attain- ments. His works on harmony made an epoch in the treatment of the subject. He sought a basis both for the major and the minor chord in the science of acoustics. He derived the major chord (over-chord) from the series of harmonic overtones, but failed to discover the corresponding under-tone series which make the minor chord (under-chord) the reciprocal of the major. This discovery was reserved for our own time, and the application of it to the science of harmony is only now fairly begun. But much of Rameau's work is permanent, and most of it was so valuable that it has formed the foundation of harmony teaching from that day to this. He did much toward introducing the system of "equal temperament," and he, perhaps more than any one else, determined the abandonment of the old church modes and the establishment of our modern major and minor keys. He was a virtuoso on the harpsichord, and his compositions for that instrument had a great reputation in their day.

101

Mameau, 1683-1764.

His theoretical work.

102

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

His wwk at a composer.

Rise, of French comic opera.

Rameau was nearly fifty years old when he wrote his first opera. His works of this kind are twenty-two in number, and are a great advance on Lully's in originality, in wealth and variety of resources, and in dramatic effective- ness. Like all epoch-making minds, he was violently attacked bj* those who were accus- tomed to the old, and could not reconcile them- selves to the new modes of musical expression y however suitable. But his works made their way and are justly regarded as among the most brilliant achievements of the French musical genius. His work, like Lully's, had for its main object truthfulness of dramatic expres- sion, and is by this distinguished from the Italian school. It surpassed Lully's mainly in the enlargement of the musical means of expression.

Rameau, like Lully, devoted himself to "Grand Opera," as it is called — musical dramas on seri- ous and mostly classical subjects. But it was during his time that French operetta (opera comique) arose, and has held its place beside grand opera ever since. In 1752 a company of Italian singers produced Italian comic opera in Paris, and although they remained there only two years, they gave the Parisian public an impulse which resulted in the production of French comic opera on national everyday sub- jects in a free, unconventional style. There had been French operettas before, but they were comparatively insignificant. Now, stimu- lated by the awakened desire of the public and by the reaction against the stiff and stilted manner which had become established as the only respectable style in French literature and art, men of ability began to devote themselves to

FRENCH OPERA.

103

comic opera in real earnest. First among these composers were Dauvergne (1713-1797), an Italian; Duni (1709-1775); Philidor (1726- 1795), and Momigny (1729-1817). Their work culminated in Gretry (1741-1813), in whose works French operetta reached a point perhaps never since surpassed. They are thoroughly representative of the French dramatic genius in this field.

How great was the unnaturalness of the intel- lectual tendencies these men combatted, we may learn by a single example. In Louis XI Vs time, the art of landscape gardening in France was held to require that all the trees should be clipped into regular and fantastic artificial forms, no tree being allowed to develop itself natur- ally or express its own nature in its own way. The mental tendencies of the French cultivated .classes were just as artificial in all departments of art and literature as in landscape gardening, and it was inevitable that a reaction should take place in the direction of giving free play to the natural tendencies of human nature.

This reaction culminated in the so-called " philosophy of enlightenment," of which Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is the greatest representative. In the thought of these men the ideal of the unrestrained play of all human impulses was carried to as great an extreme as had been the ideal of artificial restraints and even distortions in their predecessors. This ideal culminated in the. license and extrava- gance of the French Revolution, extended its influence to all fields of mental activity and to all social relations, and has not yet spent its force. Rousseau contributed to musical history some important controversial writings directed

Comijaaers of

French comic

opera.

Artificialness of intellectual Hfa in France at this period.

enlighten- ment."

104

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY

against the artificial forms prevalent in grand opera, a Dictionary of Music, and an original operetta or melo-drama.

Other composers of operetta at this period and later were D'Alayra c (1753-1809), who wrote about sixty operettas and operas; Isouard (1777-1818); Berton (1766-1844); Catel (1773- 1830); Boieldieu (1775-1834); the composer of The (Jaliph of Bagdad and La Dame Blanche; Gossec (1734-1829); also an important composer of grand opera and of symphonies and chamber music, Mehul (1763-1817), best known by his opera of Joseph and his Brethren; Herold (1791-1833), best known by his opera Zampa, the overture of which is familiar to everybody ; Halevy (1799-1862), author of The Jewess, Auber (1782-1871), author of Fra Diavolo and Masianello, and Adam (1803-1856). These names bring us fairl}' up to our own time and to comic operas, and, for that matter, to serious operas, which are still heard on the French, German, English and American stage.

Now, to go back to the development of French Grand Opera, the greatest name imme- diately succeeding Rameau was Christoph Sitter von Gluck (1714-1787), a Bohemian, the author of Orpheus, Alceste, Armida, Iphegenia and other grand operas on classical subjects. His was a creative genius of a high order, and his Orpheus, at least, is still given both in concert- rooms and on the stage. He held very strong opinions in favor of dramatic truthfulness in operatic music, as opposed to the prevalent Italian tendencies ; and, as he was unable to make any headway against the fashion of the time in his own country, he went to Paris, found there a congenial field, and spent most

Oluck.

.His work and influence.

FRENCH OPERA.

105

of his life writing for the French stage On of the prominent characteristics of his opera and of French Grand Opera since, has beei recitative, in broad, elaborate form fully ac companied by the orchestra, giving free, spon taneous utterance to the emotions of the indi vidual actor in the drama, as opposed to th, formal ana of the Italian opera, where th. musical predominates over the dramatic ele ment. It is the recitative that primarily char actenzes the French Grand Opera.

Two Italian composers deserve to be men tioned here, because they were both strongly in- fluenced by the works of Gluck, and both wrote more or less for the Paris stage These are SaUeri (1750-1828), who spent most of his life in Vienna, but wrote The Danaides for Paris- and Spontini (1784-1 851), for a long time direc^ tor of the Royal Opera at Berlin, whose best known opera is La Vestale.

The next great name in the annals of French Grand Opera is M. L. Cherubini (1 7(50-1 842) He was an Italian, born in Florence, trained a -musician, and a composer of Italian operas until he went to Paris in 1786. A visit to Vienna enabled him to hear some of Haydn's symphonies, which produced a great effect upon him, and influenced profoundly his whole future tivity as a composer. His style is severe and classical. His operas, Medea. The Water- carrier Faniska, The Abencerrages, Lodoiska and others, give him a very high place as an operatic composer. His Requiem is considered the noblest Catholic church music since Pales- Tina, and he wrote many other important works. From 1816 to his death he was Director the Paris Conservatory of Music, and Pro-

LISBON Xlf.

Salieri and Spontint.

Cherubini.

His operas

and other

works.

K6

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON XII.

Meyerbeer.

His operas

and heir

character-

istics.

fessor of Composition there. As the titles of his operas show, classical subjects, taken from the Greek mythology, began now to give way to other serious subjects in Grand Opera. From his time on, the characteristic distinction be- tween Grand Opera and Comic Opera has been that Comic Opera admits spoken dialogue, while in the Grand Opera everything is sung, the dialogue and soliloquies being mostly in recitative.

It is surprising how many of the great names among French Grand Opera composers are names of foreigners. Lully and Cherubini were Italians; Gluck was a Bohemian; Gossec was a Belgian. To these names we have to add that of Jacob Meyerbeer (1794-1864), a German Jew, born in Berlin, where his father was a. wealthy banker. He was a fellow student with Weber, under the Abbe Yogler, in Vienna, found his congenial place in Paris, and wrote a series of Grand Operas for the Paris stage. The greatest of them are Eobert the Devil, The Huguenots and The Prophet. Meyerbeer had great gifts and much skill as a composer ; but he wrote for effect, more to please and amuse than to elevate the Parisian public, and stands lower in the estimation of musicians than he would if his aims had been higher. He helped to degrade French taste and to make Wagner's success in Paris impossible.

Since his time the greatest names in French opera have been Ambroise Thomas (born 1811), who has written many operas, both serious and comic, Mignon being the best known; and Charles Gounod (born 1818), best known by his masterpiece, Faust. Hector Berlioz (1803- 1869) occupies a unique position in Frenqh

FRKNCH OPERA.

107

Offenbach.

opera, and, indeed, in French music generally L'"°»* His operas, Benvenuto Cellini, Beatrice and ' Benedick The Trojans in Carthage and The JBril of Troy, had no success in his lifetime. The same is true of his symphonies, cantatas and sacred music. He is only now beginning to come into vogue.

Camille Saint-Saens (born 1835) has also written good operas. But comic ' opera has *fc~~ been the characteristic field of French com- posers since the time of Boieldieu, that is, since about 1800. Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) another foreigner, a German Jew, born in Co- 1 logne, represents the culmination of the ten- dency toward burlesque in French comic opera He flourished during the corrupt period of the I icond Empire, and wrote burlesque full of equivocal situations for the amusement of the Parisians. He had much originality and his melodies are often striking. His operettas: Orpheus in the Underworld, La Belle Helene Blue Beard, The Grand Duchesse of Gerolstein\ and others have made their way all over the civilized world. E. Audran (born 1842) is known in this country by his operettas, Olivette\ and the Mascotte; Robert Planquette (born 1850) by his Chimes of Normandy; Victor Massel (born 1822), by his opera, Paul and Virginia] he has written many others), and ./. E. Massenet (born 1842), by his opera, Don Csesar de Bazan. Ihe last two are professors in the Paris Con- servatory and have composed much in other fields.

Audran, ki^quette Masse,

Jfassenet,

108

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

QUESTIONS.

Who was the first important French opera composer after Lully ?

What was his rank as a theorist ?

In what special way did he advance the science of harmony ?

How old was he when he began writing operas ?

How were they received and why ?

In what were they an advance on Lully's ?

When did French operetta begin to be prominent ?

To what was the rise of operetta due ?

Name some composers in this field ?

What name marks the culmination of this species?

What were the intellectual tendencies of the time, as illustrated in French landscape gardening ?

What was meant by the "philosophy of enlighten- ment?"

Who was its greatest representative ?

Give dates ?

Name some of the important composers of French comic opera up to our own time ?

Name the great composer who succeeded Hameau ?

Give dates ?

Name some of his operas?

Name and describes a prominent characteristic of his operas and of French grand opera since ?

Name two Italian composers who were strongly influ- enced by Gluck ?

Who was the next great composer for the Paris stage ?

Name some of his operas ?

What is now the distinction between grand opera and comic opera?

Give an account of Meyerbeer's work ?

Give dates and name his important operas?

Name the greatest French opera composers since his time and those of operetta ?

LESSON XIII.

GERMAN OPERA

sfsrSr-'sSsSS

been graceful melodies and passionate If hU

temporary popular success to ideal so degenerated and finallv lost tho

,-»•*• 4_r 11. ******** jr iOou l/UG

the public. His genius raised the fg opera for a short time, to a high

109

LESSON

Opera in Hamburg.

Reiser.

110

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON XIH.

Xattheson. Telemann.

The "Sing- spiel."

Mozart, 1756-1791.

In the meantime, Hamburg had greatly profited by the work of some remarkable men, especially Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), a composer of talent, an excellent theorist and a highly accomplished musician in every respect ; George Philip Telemann (1681-1767) and, finally, of Haendel himself, who went there as a youth of eighteen, played in the orchestra, and wrote his first opera for the Hamburg stage.

The beginnings of German opera proper, in Hamburg as elsewhere, are to be found in the King-spiel. The Sing-spiel, like the English Ballad-opera and the French Vaudeville, was originally a light play interspersed with popu- lar songs, generally ballads, apt to be of a satirical tendency and with a short refrain. Such plays were popular all through the period when Italian opera was fashionable, and were often composed by writers of high standing in the various capitals and musical centres of Europe. W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), in Vienna, some of whose best operas were written to Italian texts, and most of whose work is quite as much Italian as German, adopted this form, used German words and subjects which, if not characteristi- cally German, were no more Italian than Ger- man, and made real operas out of them. These works, especially his Magic Flute and his Ab- duction from the Seraglio, may be looked on as addressed more to the German than to the Italian taste. But this can hardly be said of his Don Juan and The Marriage of Figaro.

Mozart was, in short, a German, with Ger- man feelings and tastes, but trained in the prevalent Italian school. He never departed in any essential particular from the princi- ples of Italian opera. The plan of his works

GERMAN OPERA.

Ill

is the traditional one; the arias are, to all intents and purposes, Italian arias. But hav- ing German leanings and being an original -creative genius of the first rank, his Italian schooling was sufficiently modified, especially when he wrote from the Sing-spiel standpoint, to give his works, in part, a quasi-national character. The Magic Flute, in fact, is com- monly regarded as a real German opera. But its arias and its forms betray Mozart's Italian training. It is really a mixture of styles, but with strong German tendencies.

L. von Beethoven (1770-1827) made a single attempt at opera, and aimed to make his Fidelia a German opera. So it was, if we regard only its serious aims, its earnestness and depth of feeling and the absence of all concessions to the vanity of solo singers. In these respects, indeed, it is an advance beyond Mozart. But Beethoven established no new principles of form or content in the music-drama, and the subject of Fidelio is cosmopolitan rather than German. In short, what Beethoven did was merely to inculcate seriousness and elevation of aim in this one example. But these qualities .are not necessarily confined to Germany. To create a really characteristic German music- drama something more was needed than a mere protest against the shallowness, the brilliant :sensationalism and the seductive tunefulness of current Italian opera as represented by Bee- thoven's great contemporary, Rossini. Fidelio is German in that it represents an earnestness and elevation of tone much more frequently found among German than among Italian com- posers since Palestrina. But it is, after all,' Beethoven rather than Germany that speaks in

r XIII.

Beethoven,

1770-1827.

112

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

Weber,

it. It is an opera which represents an indi- vidual rather than a nation, and it does not mark the beginning of a national style of opera. Besides, it has serious defects as a singable and dramatic work. Beethoven's great field lay in the symphony, not in the opera. Schubert's attempts at dramatic composition were still less successful.

What neither Beethoven nor Schubert could do for German opera was done by a great con- temporary of theirs, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826). The son of a theatre manager and actor, Weber was familiar with stage effects from his earliest childhood. A roving life made him familiar with German feelings, Ger- man legends, German modes of thinking in all classes of society. His training was German rather than Italian, and was picked up in a desultory way from a variety of masters. He acquired experience as, an opera conductor when he was very young, taking his first con- ductorship at Breslau when he was only eigh- teen years of age. Thus he was amply equipped to write operas in the German spirit to German text, embod}ring German legends, ideas and feelings. This he did in his great opera, Der Freischutz, written for Dresden in 1821. He had been called there for the express purpose of conducting German opera in a theatre espe- cially set apart for it, in opposition to the es- tablished Italian one, which principally enjoyed the favor of the court. He had a hard fight, meeting with all sorts of opposition. But Der Freischutz was such a master work, it was so original and fresh, it so characteristically em- bodied the peculiar romantic spirit of the Ger- many of that day, it appealed so strongly to

GERMAN OPERA,

113

national and patriotic feelings that it overcame all opposition. No opera was ever more popu- lar. It went all over Germany, it aroused popular enthusiasm, it stimulated hosts of imi- tators among young composers; m short, it marks an epoch in musical history and may fairly be considered as the beginning of Ger- man opera. Two other operas followed this, Euryanthe and Oberon, both of high rank. Weber's earlier attempts, Abu Hassan, Peter Schmoll and Sylvana are less important.

With Weber begins the great Romantic period of musical art. We have already ap- plied the term " classical " to Palestrina (see Lesson XI.) on the ground that he combined nobility of Content (what he had to express) with perfection of Form (mode of expression), and that he exerted permanent, profound and far-reaching influence on the future course of musical history. In this sense, Bach and Haendel were " classical" composers, so were Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in the field of instrumental music. But when, through the labors of these and other great men, musical Form, the whole technic of musical composi- tion, had been developed to the point where it was available to express freely and perfectly all phases of human feeling, there came a time when men began to lay more stress on the emotions to be expressed than on the form of the expression. The " Classical " movement was essentially a development of Form. The " Romantic " movement, beginning with Weber, was essentially an attempt to utter, perfectly if possible, but at any rate to utter, whether perfectly or not, feelings remote from every- day experience, aspirations after ideals unat-

LESSON XI It.

Beginning of

the Romantic

Period.

Thf "Clasni-

with the" Ro- nutntic" move- ment.

114

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

tained and perhaps unattainable, dissatisfac- tion with present surroundings, longings after ideal conditions more or less vaguely appre- hended in imagination. The Romantic move- ment in music was nearly contemporary with a similar movement in German literature, and was a part of the same great movement of mind. As Dr. Langhans has pointed out in Chapter XI of his " History of Music," the tendency to seek relief from present unsatis- factory conditions in the imaginary surround- ings of an ideal world is lay no means new, nor is it confined to any period of the world's history. But it shows itself with peculiar force whenever outward conditions become peculiarly unsatisfactory or painful. Whenever men are oppressed with pain, hunger, want, disappoint- ment of any sort, they turn for relief to the world of the imagination, and this life of the imagination sooner or later finds expression in some form of art.

The Romantic movement in German litera- ture and German music was closely connected with the oppressions, confusions, privations and political and social disturbances of the Napoleonic era. Beethoven, for a time, was a worshipper of Napoleon, as the world's great deliverer and the champion of Liberty, Equality and Fraternit}r. The noblest hopes and aspira- tions of the time of the French Revolution find expression in Beethoven's music. But when Napoleon became a self-seeking despot, the oppressor instead of the deliverer of Europe ; when governments fell before him, when whole peoples were thrown into confusion, homes were destroyed, women were maltreated, men were butchered by the thousand for his

Dentition of the Romantic

movement in Germany.

GERMAN OPERA.

115

aggrandizement; when all Europe seemed to be crushed under his despotic sway, and every one seemed powerless to cure the evils of the time, men's dissatisfaction, aspiration, anxiety, despair, anger, fear, hope, denied their natural outlet of action, found relief in the fields of literature and art. Thus was born the German romantic literature and, a little later, the Ger- man romantic music.

Weber's " Der Freischiitz " was popular not only because its subject and treament were Tomartic, but because they were national. Following him came a host of lesser competi- tors. The greatest of them was undoubtedly Heinrich Marschner (1796-1861). He was a •highly-educated, liberal-minded man, a musi- cian of great accomplishments and a composer of marked talent. From 1831 to 1859 he was conductor of the Royal Opera at Hanover. His greatest opera, Hans Heiling, forms a sort of connecting link between Weber and Wagner. He wrote a number of other operas, of which only two survive, The Vampire and The Tem- plar and the Jewess, founded on Sir Walter .Scott's Ivanhoe.

Next to Marschner in importance comes Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859). His greatest and "best known opera, Jessonda. was first given in 1823.

The romantic movement in opera culminated in the work of Richard Wanner (1813-1883), certainly one of the greatest minds of our time and probably one of the greatest yet produced by the human race. He was born in Leipzig during the year of the great battle there iff which Napoleon received his first check. His •childhood and youth coincided with the re-

LlSSONXIII

Marschner.

Spohr.

Richard

Wanner, 1813-1883.

116

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

t

His youthful

characteristics

aiul mental

activity.

actionary years when the defeat of the great French emperor had strengthened all the other European sovereigns against all liberal tenden- cies in France and among their own subjects. It was a time of dissatisfaction, of suppressed aspiration and longing among the nations. The fceaven of the great ideas of the French Revolution was working in the mind of Europe,, and fresh outbreaks of the revolutionary spirit were gradually preparing.

Young Wagner was of an ardent tempera- ment, had a clear, strong intellect, a glowing imagination, and shared enthusiastically in the liberal, patriotic aspirations, enthusiasms and disappointments of his time. His early study of the piano came to nothing, because he could not be made to practice the necessary technical exercises, and there is no record of any other systematic study of music in his early years. After his father's death, which happened in his infancy, his mother married an actor, Ludwig Geyer, a cultivated, intelligent man, who did much for Wagner's education. The family then removed to Dresden, where he became interested in ancient languages and in the Greek literature, especially, and afterwards in Shakespeare. His reading of the latter stimu- lated him to write a tragedy in which, as he informs us in an autobiographical sketch, he killed off forty-two of his characters before the end of the second act, and had to let most of them reappear as ghosts in order to keep up the action. This play occupied him for two years. Such energetic mental activity as this, in a mere child, was prophetic of the creative power which afterwards engaged the attention of the whole civilized world.

GERMAN OPFRA.

117

The first profound impression made on him "by music was at one of the early performances of " Der Freischiitz." His mother, again a widow, soon after removed to Leipzig, and here he made the acquaintance of the Beethoven symphonies and of the same master's music to Goethe's JEgmont. This stirred him up to write music to his own tragedy. He found he knew nothing of harmon3r and that he needed it, so he undertook to prepare himself for composi- tion in a week's stud}- of a text-book, without a teacher! Characteristic, this, of his un- bounded self-confidence, independence, and also of his native energy and spontaneous mental activity. His whole student life was full of just this sort of self-guided activity. His mind responded to whatever stimulus suited its peculiarities, and whatever he became inter- ested in he pursued with resistless energy until some new interest turned his intellectual forces into a new channel.

It was during these student years in Leipzig that he determined to become a musician, pur- sued his musical studies, partly under excellent teachers, for he did, at last, find out that teachers could help him, arid wrote considera- ble music, of no value except as apprentice work preparatory to his future creative career. He developed himself on many sides, not only by musical and literary study, but by practical acquaintance with the stage, availing himself of the opportunities given him by his relatives, some of whom were connected with the theatre, making the acquaintance of many works and writ- ing an opera, which was not performed. He also began writing criticisms which showed much vigor of intellect and keenness of perception.

I.»880N XIII

Repioval to

Leipzig and

stiide-nt, life

there.

Musical studies.

113

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

LESSON XIII.

Conductor in gdtburg, 1834.

Conductor at

JConipx'Mtrg

and Riga,

18B-6.

Composes " Rienzi."

Goes to Paris. Poverty.

This brings us to 1834, the year of his majority. In the fall of that year he became onductor at the Magdeburg theatre, a position, which he held two years, profiting greatly by lis experience. He studied thoroughly a great number of the current German, French and [talian operas, and learned a greal deal more irom his work in preparing them for stage per- formance than he could ever have learned in any other way. He wrote here his second opera, on Shakespeare's " Measure for Measure," and had it performed, but with very incomplete success. In 1836 he was conductor at Kb'nigs- oerg, and the next year at Riga, but became more and more dissatisfied with the deficiencies inevitable in the appointments of the theatres- of these small towns, and more and more con- vinced that they were no place for him and his- work. They had served his ends for appren- tice experience, and he had outgrown them. He had planned and finished a grand opera on the story of " Rienzi," the last of the Roman Tribunes, an opera which demanded the full resources of a first-class stage. With character- istic audacity he determined to strike out boldly for success on the Parisian stage. Noth- ing less than this would content this plucky young fellow. So to Paris he went, sailing first to London through the Baltic and North Seas, meeting with storms, picking up sea legends from the Norwegian sailors, seeing much of the coast scenery of the Baltic and conceiving the plan of his next opera, " The Flying Dutchman." But when he got to Paris,, success did not come. Meyerbeer tried to help him secure a hearing for his Rienzi, but failed. He had no money, he lived from hand to mouthr

GERMAN OPERA.

by doing hack work for the music dealers and by writing for the newspapers. There 'was absolutely no opportunity for him in Paris. He stayed there in poverty until the spring of 1842, wrote his "Faust" overture and his " Flying Dutchman " during the interval, and tried to get them performed in Germany. In this he at last succeeded. " Rienzi " was ac- cepted in Dresden and the "Flying Dutchman" in Berlin, both in the spring of 1842. He'went to Dresden to supervise the production of " Rienzi," and was soon appointed to the con- ductorship forme'rly held by Weber. Now be- gan his great career as a composer. " Tann- hiiuser " was given in 1845, but was so original in style, so different from anything to which the public was accustomed, that hardly any- body liked it. and the critics fell foul of it in the savage way to which every one of his predecessors in original musical creation had to submit. It was no new phenomenon in musical history. He wrote "Lohengrin" in 1847, but could not get it performed in his own theater.

Then came the storm}' year of 18*8, a year of uprisings against oppression, thrones totter- ing, aristocracies shaking in their shoes, but ending in hopeless submission for the masses and death or exile for many of the noblest men of Germany. Wagner, always a liberal, took active part in the revolutionaiy movement, and when the end came, had to take refuge in Switzerland. In Zurich he lived until 1859, occupy ing himself largety with writing contro- versial pamphlets in which he set forth his own art beliefs, his theories of the relation of music to the drama and his opinions on things in

Fauat over- hire, flying

DutchrtMn.

Conductor in Dresden, 1842.

Tannhauser, 1845.

Lohengrin, 1847.

Revolution and exilf, 1848.

Hi s contro- versial icritinps.

120

LhSSUA'S 2N MUSICAL HISTORY.

7/,'v audacity.

ffmunds for

Jiix xetf-confl-

detice.

flummary of

/u'.< ill -til of

general and art matters in particular. He violently attacked not only the absurdities and trivialities of the Italian opera, but Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, in short most of the reigning powers, saving Beethoven, whose worshiper he always declared himself to be; and whose work he aimed to continue and enlarge. He did not stick at trifles, this man whose operas the public would not listen to. Nothing was too audacious for him. He went his own way, thought his own thoughts, expressed them publicly in no measured terms, knocked the popular idols from their pedestals right and left with sledge-hammer blows, set up his own productions in their place and loudly called on the outraged devotees to fall down and worship the new divinities on pain of being considered stupid, dull Philistines, devoid of all true artistic intelligence.

In most men this would have been insane conceit. In Wagner it was self-confidence, based on a true insight. He had seen, clearly, truths which the greatest of his predecessors had at best dimly divined. " The Music of the Future " was the title of one of his pamphlets in which he set forth the theories on which he worked. It became a rallying cry for his friends, and a phrase of contempt in the mouths of his enemies. The central point of his con- ception, briefly stated, is as follows: The ideal art-work, which is to meet the rational require- ments of the future, must combine all the arts in the service of one poetic conception. Music must not, as in the Italian opera, claim pre- cedence of poetry, nor must poetry exclude music, because music is capable of vastly in- tensifying the emotional effect of the words.

GERMAN OPERA.

121

Combined with these two must be the added effect of the other fine arts — painting, sculpture, acting, pantomine, dancing, everything, in short, which can add to the clearness of the author's conception and enhance the effect upon the im- agination. No concessions must be made to the vanity of singers, none to intellectual supine- ness or indolence on the part of the audience. The creative artist's poetic ideal must be su- preme. The personality of the interpreters

st be sunk in the realization of this ideal. In short, the art-work of the future was to be a music-drama, setting forth in beautiful form some noble conception, and combining the resources of all the arts for its worthy embodi- ment. Each art must sacrifice its supremacy to artistic unit}' of effect.

It was not enough for Wagner to set forth this conception in glowing colors in his numer- ous pamphlets ; he attacked all existing, ao well as all previous art-work, 'as unworthy of this, the only true ideal. He proclaimed the inferiority of the spoken- drama, of purely in- strumental music. He affirmed that Beethoven, the greatest of instrumental writers, after bring- ing pure music to the utmost limit of its de- velopment, had felt the necessity of combining it with words, and that the Ninth Symphony pointed the way to the art-work of the future, which it was Wagner's mission to proclaim to the world.

He did more than theorize and controvert. He embodied his theoretical principles in a series of stupendous master-works, which, in spite of the violent storm of opposition they had to encounter, both on account of their novelty and on account of the personal enmity

His attack on other produc- tions.

Hi& great Master -works.

122

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

their author had incurred by his audacious polemics against established and long -cherished ideals, forced their way to recognition, chal- lenged, and gradually commanded the respect and admiration of the best minds, and stand to-day acknowledged as «,mong the most colos- sal products of human genius. He had now reached his intellectual maturity, and had made clear his own ideals to his own mind, partly by his attempts to embody them in his music- dramas, and partly by his efforts to explain them to others in his controversal writings. Henceforth, he looked not only on "Rienzi" and "The Flying Dutchman," but also on " Tannhauser " and " Lohengrin," far in ad- vance of popular appreciation as they then were, as mere apprentice work — the necessary preparation for his mature period of produc- tion. In " Tristan and Isolde " he fully and satisfactorily embodied his ripe views, and* fol- lowed it up with his great tetralogy, based on the " Niebelungen Lied," called, " Der Ring des Niebelungen," a series of four connected music- dramas, "D.as Rhinegold," "Die Walkiire," "Siegfried" and " Gotterdamerung." The list of his masterpieces closes with " Die Meis- tersinger," his sole effort at comedy, and " Par- sifal," which deals with the legend of the Holy Grail.

In consonance with the principles above stated, these works show important peculiari- ties of structure. They dispense entirely with the traditional operatic and instrumental forms. There are no arias, no "closed" forms any- where. Wherever the action goes on the music- goes on. The continuous flow of melody cor- responds to the emotional current of the-

Tristan and Isolde.

The Niebel- ungen. tetralogy.

The Master- singers.

Structure of these music- dramas.

6KRMAN OPERA.

123

drama. The vocal parts are more impassioned L»9o*XI declamation than singing in the traditional sense. The orchestra has a principal place in- stead of being subordinated to a mere accom paniment. Each leading character is indicated or suggested by a characteristic " leading-mo- tive," and these motives are continually inter- mingled in the orchestra in a complex web of melodies varying according to the dramatic situations, and to the progress of events upon the stage. Nowhere is the attention of the auditor withdrawn for an instant from the mat- ter in hand. All the elements present combine into one grand, artistic whole. From the be- ginning the interest is concentrated on the progress of events, until the drama culminates in a magnificent climax. In all the essential requirements of an art-work, unity, variety, sym- metry, contrast, climax, these music-dramas are ideally perfect.

In harmony, Wagner was an innovator. The essential peculiarity of his harmonies lies in his recognition of the value and naturalness of the third and sixth relationships.* There had been hints of this in Beethoven, Schubert, and others. But in Wagner the principle comes, for the first time, to its full recognition and application. He broadened the conception of tonality to its utmost limits, to the utter confu- sion of contemporary theorists. No stricture on him was more common than the assertion that his music was devoid of tonality. It is now beginning to be recognized that even those harmonic connections in his works which once

* See the writer's " New Lessons in Harmony." To pursue this subject in detail here would take up too much space.

Peculiarity of his Harmony.

124

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

His orchestra- tion.

JfiJi creative power, and energy and commanding influence.

seemed most forced, strange, and unnatural, are really simple and easily comprehended. He merely discovered, clearly recognized and applied certain natural principles of harmonic relationships which had been overlooked by his predecessors. This is one of the strongest evi- dences of his genius. It was real creative in- sight.

His orchestration is as original as his har- mony. The most impressive quality of it is a rich sonority, which makes even the colossal Beethoven symphonies sound somewhat small in comparison. Yet, Wagner's orchestration is by no means noisy. It is surprising, when one thinks of it, how sparingly he uses the brass instruments, and how few additions of special instruments he has made to the Bee- thoven orchestra. The overwhelming sonority of his scores seems to be due mainly to the dis- tribution of harmonic elements, and to the rich- ness and variety of the chords themselves. It shows what can be done by a great master with resources which, in the hands of a com- monplace composer, would produce only insig- nificant effects.

Whatever we may think of Wagner's the- ories, or of certain details in them; whether he was or was not more or less one-sided ; whether he did or did not exaggerate this or that truth at the expense of others, which will sooner or later claim and obtain recognition, the facts will always remain that he created some of the most important and effective art-works the world has yet seen, that he occupied a most commanding position during a large part of the present century, and that he possessed an intellect and a creative power never surpassed

GERMAN OPERA.

125

and seldom equaled in the world's history until now.

He won worldly success, also. Failing a second time in Paris, after he left Switzerland, he turned again to Germany, made his way gradually, and in 1864 was called to Munich by Ludwig II, who had just acceded to the throne of Bavaria. From that time until his death he enjoyed the support of his royal pa- tron, he outlived the worst of the opposition to his works, he actually got a special theatre built at Bayreuth, a little remote town, had it fitted according to his own ideas for the pro- duction of his own works, and thither the best and most intelligent musicians and connoisseurs flocked from all over the world to hear his music-dramas. In that theatre the orchestra and conductor are out of sight, the auditorium is in gloom, and the whole attention of the hearer is concentrated on the drama enacted before him on the stage. Recalls are unknown ; each singer devotes himself exclusively to the interpretation of the drama ; in short, it is a temple where art alone is worshipped and where self-seeking vanity is sacrilege.

The man who achieved such results may have made mistakes; he had his errors, follies, weaknesses; but he also had splendid, noble qualities, he believed in his ideals, he had the courage of his convictions, faith in himself, indomitable energy, perseverance and courage. He made the world go his way at last, and his achievements are a permanent enrichment of the world's intellectual and spiritual life.

His worldly success.

Bayreuth, 1876.

Summary.

126

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

QUESTIONS.

In what city was the earliest advance made towards the production of real German opera?

Name one of the most important composers there give dates, at least approximately, and give some account of lii« character and work.

Name other composers of that city.

What is a " Sing- spiel " ?

Give an account of Mozart's work.

Give dates of his birth and death.

What opera did Beethoven write?

Did it involve any new principles of dramatic compo- sition ?

What is the general tone and spirit of it ?

Give dates of Beethoven's birth and death?

Who gave the first effective impulse toward the produc- tion of German opera ?

Give dates of his birth and death.

What opera produced this result ?

In what year was it composed and where ?

Name the two other great operas of this composer?

What great period of musical art begins with Weber?

State, as clearly as you can, the difference between the "classical" and "romantic" ideals.

What periods of history have been specially favorable to the development of" romantic " art and literature and why ?

What era gave rise to romantic literature and music in Germany?

Name two of Weber's greatest successors and their most important works.

In whose work has German opera culminated ?

Give dates of Wagner's birth and death.

Give some account of his mental activity in his child- hood and youth and of his education.

In what cities was he conductor of opera during his apprentice period ?

What was his first important opera ?

To what city did he go to get it performed?

By what route? Describe his fortunes there. What was his second great opera ? Where were his third and fourth written and how came he there ?

GERMAN OPERA.

1-7

What were they, and what was their fate ?

How came he to leave Dresden?

Where and how did he spend the next period of his life?

Where did he live from 1864 to 1883 ?

Name his remaining operas.

Give some account of the Bayreuth Theatre.

Give an account of Wagner's theory of the music-drama.

Describe the peculiar! ties of structure in his later works

What are the most striking innovations in Wagner's harmony?

Of his orchestration ?

Give a brief summary of his character, work and place in musical history.

The two lines

atony which.

opera ha.t

ileveloped.

Italian. Pre-

dominanre of

the foi-mal

element.

French and German. Pre- dominance of

the (trtimatic element.

LESSON XIV. THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK.

THE music-drama, started in Italy almost three centuries ago, has developed along two great lines. In Italy its course was in the direction of musical form. The musical part of the opera was exalted at the expense of the dramatic element, with the inevitable result of making the singers eventually the 'ruling per- sonages of the opera. Vocal attainments and vocal display naturally and inevitably became the prominent feature; singers were no longer interpreters of a dramatic work, and Italian opera was degraded from the ennobling aims of the drama to a mere entertainment. It cul- minated, so far as this tendency is concerned, in the brilliant, hollow, showy but enticing operas of Rossini.

Verdi's tendencies have been toward higher aims, and there are not wanting signs that Italian opera is to be regenerated, largely through the influence of Germany and espe- cially of Wagner.

The other line was that looking toward dra- matic truthfulness of expression as the true aim of opera, and making the musical element subordinate to this end. To the French be- longs the credit of keeping this ideal alive when Italy had lost it, and for a century or more before there was any independent national qpera elsewhere. As regards this, its true ideal, French opera culminates in the works of Gluck. Meyerbeer, the greatest Parisian favorite since Gluck, among composers of grand 128

THE OPERA SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK.

129

opera, was nearly as insincere and as con- sciencless as Rossini himself, and contributed in no small degree to the degradation of French taste. Ballet, scenic display, sensationalism, these are but too prevalent now in French » grand opera, and as for comic opera, one needs only to mention Offenbach to be conscious of how low French taste for "amusement" has fallen. But Gounod and Saint-Saens, at least, are redeeming elements of a high class, and there are indications of radical improvement.

The honor of developing opera in the line of the true music-drama passed over to Germany about 1820. The two great names are Weber and Wagner, in which last it has reached a height the immensity of which we cannot yet fairly estimate and beyond which we cannot yet see. No one can prophesy the future of German opera. There are signs, however, that serious aims in opera are not to be given up. Anton Rubinstein's " Nero " is a work whose merits are highly extolled, and Hermann Goetz's (1840-1876) "Taming of the Shrew" was an admirable work, and gave great promise of what might have been but for the untimely death of its author. But probably little remains for young composers, at present, except to imitate Wagner. Such periods as his are commonly followed by periods of rest and a lying fallow of the creative imagination before another great period of production can come. Minds like Warner's appear only at rare intervals.

The field of comic opera and of operetta has been well worked in Germany, and especially in Vienna, which pleasure-loving city fairly vies with Paris in its craving for amusement. Resi- dent composers have not been slow to provide

Anton

Rubinstein.

Hermann

Goetz.

130

THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK.

mcolai.

Opera in England.

it, and the operettas of Suppe, Strauss, Genee and Milloecker have nearly or quite crowded out Offenbach's in Europe and in America, in North Germany there has been less of this sort of work, composers there rarely descending be- low comedy to farce. Nicolai's '• Merry Wives of Windsor" is a fair example of the type of comic opera in North Germany, as Suppe's "Boccacio" is of the Viennese operetta. All this activity on the lighter side of the musical stage has gone on side by side with the serious work of Wagner, and there are no signs of its diminution.

In England there has been no original school of opera. English composers of more or less talent have followed on the lines of Italian, French and German composers, and have pro- duced works of some merit, though it would be difficult to mention any such works that arc likely fo prove lasting. The two most impor- tant of the older names are M. W. Balfe (1808- 1870), who wrote a considerable number ol operas, the best of which was " The Bohemian Girl," and W. V. Wallace (1814-1865), whose best opera was " Maritana." To these names should be added two foreigners, long resident in London, Sir Michal Costa (1810-1 884), and Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885).

Sir Arthur S. Sullivan (born 1842) is now extremely conspicuous in the field of the oper- etta. He owes a great deal to his librettist. W. S. Gilbert, who is an adept in the manufac- ture of droll absurdities in rhyme. His libret- tos are wholly free from the risk}- situations and improper suggestions which characlerize so many of the Parisian and Viennese operettas, a fact to which they doubtless owe 110 small

Balfe. Wallace. Costa. Benedict.

Gilbert and Sullivan.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

131

portion of their popularity among . the best classes in England and America. Sullivan is not a composer of any marked originality. His scores are full of reminiscences and borrowed ideas. But both he and Gilbert are clever writers and skillful purveyors of amusing trifles, and have won an enormous popularity. Their H. M. S. Pinafore was their first successful operetta. It had a great run in England and an enormous one in this country. It was fol- lowed by Patience, lolanthe and TJ\e Mikado, all of which have been successful.

Frederick H. Cowen (born 1852) is an opera i composer of promise, who has done excel- lent work in the field of instrumental music. A. (7. Mackenzie (born 1847) has done nothing; Mackenzie, yet in the field of opera, but his other work | suggests that he might be successful here also. ( England has at present a number of thoughtful, j earnest, native composers ; but there is nothing j to indicate that they are about to originate a national school of opera, unless, indeed, we look on the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas as a national type. The librettos, at least, could have been produced nowhere but in England.

In America, thus far, there have been but few attempts at operatic composition, and none of them have yet won a pronounced success.

132

THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK.

QUESTIONS.

What were the two great lines along which opera developed ?

What was the result of the Italian method ?

In whom did this tendency culminate ?

What great Italian composer has shown himself some- what superior to this tendency ?

Have the French maintained their original standard of opera?

Name two prominent composers whose influence tended to degrade it.

Who adopted the French ideal and improved on what that nation had done?

Name two great contemporaries of Wagner.

Name some of the Viennese composers of operetta.

Name the prominent English composers of opera and operetta.

LESSON XV.

ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION MUSIC AND SACRED MUSIC FROM 1700 TO THE PRESENT.

MOST of the opera composers of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries wrote more or less church music, and many of them wrote also oratorios and secular cantatas. There was a gradual broadening of the forms and a growing freedom of treatment until the oratorio culmi- nated, as regards perfection of form and dignity and nobility of content in the works of George Frederick Haendel (1685-1759). He was a Saxon by birth, showed musical gifts in early childhood, mastered all or nearly all the musical knowledge of his time while he was still a youth, spent some time in the Hamburg opera, went to Italy for what he could learn there, then became conductor and composer in Hanover, but soon went to London, where he spent the rest of his life. He wrote a good deal of music for the organ, harpsicnord and violin, but devoted him- self mainly to the Italian opera, on the model of Alessandro Scarlatti. He was composer, conductor and theatre manager, all in one, and wrote forty-six operas, which survive now only in detached arias. His career as an opera com- poser closed in 1740. He had failed two or three times, owing to quarrels with the nobility, the only patrons of the opera at that time, and thenceforth devoted himself to oratorio exclu- sively. He had already done some work in this field. Esther, Deborah, Athalia, and the cantata Acis and Galatea antedate his withdrawal from the opera, and so do his Anthems and the Det-

133

Haendel, 1685-1795.

134

ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUSIC-

His great, oratories.

Distinction

between " or'atories" " sacred

cantatas" and" secular cantatas."

Israel in Euypt.

The Messiah.

tingen Te Deum. His greatest oratorios, written in the full maturity of his powers are The Messiah and Israel in Egypt. Others which approximate these are Judas Maccabaeus, Saul, Samson, Joseph, Joshua, Susanna, Solomon, Theodora and Jephtha. The Messiah and Israel in Egypt are the only ones which employ scrip- tural words exclusively. The others have texts based on scriptural stories, written by con- temporary authors of reputation, and might appropriately be called " sacred cantatas." " Ora- torios," " sacred cantatas " and " secular canta- tas" have precisely the same form, differing only in character of the words. All three are written for solos, chorus and orchestra. The solo parts consist of recitatives and arias, then there are commonly duets, trios, quartets, etc., for solo voices. But the most characteristic feature is the chorus, a large part of the genius and skill of the composer being spent on the choral writing. Israel in Egypt is a chain of colossal choruses, many of them double chor- uses, for two choirs. The solo work is compara- tively slight. It is given much less frequently than The Messiah, which has become the com- mon property of all English speaking men and is now given every Christmastide in many places in England and America. It owes its enormous popularity largely to Haendel's happy selection of his text from the Holy Scripture. He had a special aptitude for appreciating and expressing the sublime, and The Messiah, perhaps even more than Israel in Egypt, shows him at his best. It was written in an incredibly short time and with the greatest facility, and everywhere displays the band of a great master. The steady march of his magnificent chorusus has never

LESSORS /A' MUSICAL HISTORY.

135

ceased to uplift and to inspire the souls of thousands, and the noble climaxes of the Halle- lujah chorus and Worthy is the Lamb have never been surpassed in choral writing. There are tender passages, too, such as the part beginning "Behold the Lamb of God." The contralto aria " He was despised " and the short tenor aria " Behold and see " are unsurpassed in pathos, and the noble soprano air" I know that my Redeemer liveth " is perhaps as immortal as the sublime hope and faith of which it is the worthy expression. There is a good deal, how- ever, in The Messiah which betrays the Italian opera composer. In the soprano air " Rejoice greatly, "and in numerous other portions of the work there are ronlades and fioriture which are much more suggestive of solo display than of devout worship. Notwithstanding the fact that even these portions of the work correspond in their general emotional tone to the sentiment of the text, they are largely made up of ele- ments which are temporary and according to the fashions of the time rather than permanent and universal. It is probable that this will become more and more clear to the general musical perception as men become gradually familiar with the noble, serious music of Wag- ner's Lohengrin and Parsifal, and that The Messiah, as a whole, will suffer by comparison. There are not wanting signs that the time will come when the musical world may possibly receive more religious inspiration from Wagner than from Haendel, though this opinion must now seem extremely heretical.

The Passion Music differs from oratorio, first, in confining itself in its selection of Scriptural texts to those portions of the Gospels narrating

Influence of Italian opera

in the Messiah.

Comparison of

Wauntr with

Haendel.

Passion. Music.

136

ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUSIC.

J. .?. Sach,

liW5-17r.lt.

St. Matthew, Passion Music.

the suffering and death of Christ; and second, in combining with the Scriptural narrative solos expressive of the emotions of the individual believer and choruses to express the feelings of the multitude. Both these latter have words not taken from the Scriptures. Most, if not all, the examples known were written for actual use in church service on Good Friday.

The great master in this form was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Like Haendel, he was a Saxon by birth, began his musical edu- cation in early childhood, mastered the harpsi- chord, violin and organ, became the greatest organist and fugue-writer of his time, perhaps of all time, and finished his life as organist and choir-master in the Church of St. Thomas in Leipzig. This position he occupied for twenty- seven years, writing hundreds of motets, canta- tas, chorals, etc., for the use of his choir. He is said to have written five separate examples of" Passion Music," the greatest of them being the " Passion Music according to St. Matthew." a colossal work in every respect and a perma- nent embodiment of this phase of Christian faith and worship. It was first given at the Good Friday service of 1729. and then was laid aside for a whole century. It was revived by Mendelssohn and his friend Edward Devrient in 1829, and is now given publicly ever}' year in Leipzig and elsewhere.

Not only did the Passion Music culminate with Bach's great work, but it seems to have ended with it. Since that time, so far as the present writer's recollection goes, there has been no art-work of importance of this kind. The oratorio, however, has been successfully cultivated. The most conspicuous examples of

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

137

it since Haendel have been The Creation, by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), which perhaps ought to be called a sacred cantata, and the two oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, by Felix Men- delssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847). The latter, especially, is of a highly dramatic character. Unlike The Messiah, it illustrates the progress -of a story, and is a real music-drama, without ;action or scenic accessories. Both musically •and dramatically, it is of a very high order of merit, and its climaxes are exceedingly effective. So is that of the first part of St. Paul. These two oratorios would be sufficient to give Men- delssohn a permanent place in musical history, if he had written nothing else.

Since Mendelssohn a good many oratorios of merit have been written. Conspicuous among them are Naaman, by Sir Michael Costa ; Christus, by Fredrick Kiel (1821-1885), late professor of composition in the High School of music in Berlin ; Calvary, by Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859), and in America, St. Peter, by John K. Paine (born 1839), professor of music in Harvard University.

Related to this are sacred art-forms intended for concert performance rather than for church service. Such are the great mass in B minor. by J. S. Bach, some of the masses of Mozart, particularly his Requiem, those of Beethoven, especially the great Missa Solennis in D major, .Rossini's Stabat Mater, a brilliant and effective, but insincere and non-religious work, Cheru- bini's " Requiem, Berlioz's Requiem, Yerdi's " Manzoni " Requiem, etc.

The masses for the Catholic church service have been numerous, but none of them have ever approximated the dignity, nobility and

LISBON XV. Haydn.

Mendelssohn.

Costa. Kiel. Spohr. Paine.

Concert, Masses, etc.

Church Mule.

138

ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION', SACRED MUSIC.

LMKW XV.

Moritz Hauptmann.

English and

American Church Music.

serene religious feeling of Palestrina. Many modern masses, especially by Italian and French composers, are showy, false and mere- tricious to the last degree. The Lutheran Church music is based on the choral. Its art- forms consist mainly in motets and short sacred ;antatas. Bach wrote them in great numbers, and most German composers since his time tiave written more or less of them, especially motets. Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868) one of Bach's successors in his Leipzig post, was one of the best of motet composers, distinguish- ing himself in this field of composition, more than in any other, and surpassing most if not all others in it. In the Anglican Church, the Anthem is the most important form, and well- trained English composers, from the madrigal composers down, have written anthems for the church service. The other Protestant sects have mostly eschewed the chants of the Angli- can Church, but have largely adopted her hymn- tunes and in part her anthems. They have also borrowed motets, etc., from German sources. Besides this, many congregations use frequent arrangements from operas, secular songs, etc.r set to sacred words, not always in the best taste. The hymn-tunes and especially the Sunday School tunes of this country are often mere jingle, wholly unrelated to true religious feeling and corrupting to the taste of those who habitually use them. But there are also excellent tunes in use, and on the whole, the tendency is probably toward better and higher things. Among our best native church music is the work of Dudley Buck, whose two motette collections have exercised an elevating influence on American church music.

LES80N& IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

The secular cantata has been cultivated from the time of the birth of the oratorio. Bach secular

TT 11 -rr i vantutas,

and Haendel wrote cantatas, Haydn wrote The Seasons, Mendelssohn wrote Antigone and others, Schumann wrote Paradise and the Peri, based on Moore's " Lalla Rookh," and the ex- amples since are too numerous to mention. Berlioz's splendid Damnation of Faust belongs to this species. Conspicuous among later German works are Max Bruch's (born 1838) Lay of the Bell and Frithjof, Heinrich Hoffman's (born 1842) Cinderella, Johannes Brahms'1 (born 1833) Binaldo, Song of Fate, and others, and Anton Dvorak's (born 1841) The Spectre's Bride. In England A. C. Macken- zie's (born 1847) Rose of Sharon is perhaps the best work of this kind. Sir Arthur S. Sullivan (born 1842) has written The Prodigal /Son and a setting of Longfellow's Golden Legend, but the latter is inferior in every respect to that of our own Dudley Buck (born 1839), who has also written The Legend of Don Munio,a,nd a " Cen- tennial" cantata. J. K. Paine's OeUipusis an excellent work. Most of these works are essentially operas without action.

140

ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUSIC.

QUESTIONS.

In whose works did the oratorio culminate ?

Name his two greatest oratorios.

How came Haendel to devote himself to writing ora- torios ?

Describe the distinctions between "oratorios" and sacred and secular " cantatas."

Tell what you know of the peculiarities of The Messiah and Israel in Egypt.

How does the " Passion Music " differ from " oratorio "?

Who wrote the greatest work in this kind ?

What do you know of him and of his work ?

Who wrote The Creation ?

What do you know of Mendelssohn's oratorios?

Name them.

Name some other oratorios and their composers.

Name some great masses intended for concert perform- ance.

Name one of the greatest motet composers.

Describe the condition of English and American sacred music.

Name an important American composer in this field.

Name several prominent composers of cantatas and their principal works.

LESSON XYI.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG.

SONGS were among the earliest, probably the very earliest, manifestations of what could be called music. The impulse to express feeling vocally is universal. All the world over women have sung lullabys to their babes, and men have given vocal expression to emotional excitement. The feeling for rhythm, too, is universal. The monotonous chants of savages naturally and spontaneously fall into measured cadences, and their war songs are accompanied by the rhyth- mical beating of drums, gongs, etc. Out of this natural feeling for melody and rhythm grew both lyric poetry and the music to which it was sung. The early song is, in fact, com- monly a four line ballad stanza, fitting exactly to an eight-measure musical period having two four-measure clauses (or sections), each sub- divided into two phrases of two measures each. The plan of such a period then is as foll6ws : 4 meas. clause. 4 meas. clause.

1st Phrase. 2d Phrase. 3d Phrase. 4th Phrase.

The first phrase rhymes with the third and the fourth with the second, i. e., the third is a nearly or quite exact repetition of the first, and the fourth repeats the second, but commonly with a different close. Quite often, however, the fourth differs from the second more than merely in the close. The two clauses stand in the relation of antecedent and consequent (Thesis and Antithesis). This simple period-

141

Genesis of Song.

Metrical

Form.

The simple period.

142

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG.

Two periods

with

connecting link, (refrain.)

Development of lorm.

The elaborate

song of the

Romantic

epoch.

Schubert,

1797-1828.

form, applied to. the first stanza of a ballad, used to be applied equally to all the rest, the same tune being used for all the stanzas. Sometimes there is a short refrain of two lines after the stanza, and then the stanza is repeated. An excellent example of this is the ancient French tune " Malbrook," known in this coun- try as " We Won't Go Home Till Morning." Here the two-phrase refrain is in the nature of a connecting link between two repetitions of the main period, and the whole is the germ of what some writers call the " First Rondo- Form." These simple formations were more or less extended as Form was developed in the hands of the great masters. The arias of the great operas and oratorios were elaborate forms, either in the smaller rondo-form or in the composite primary forms, and the more elaborate songs of Mozart, and especially of Beethoven, were built on a similiar plan. But it ought to be noted that the more elaborate of these songs and arias were often, if not gener- ally, set to words not cast in the ballad mould. Even the great masters, when they treated the ballad stanza, were apt to make a single air do duty for a good many stanzas.

With the rise of the romantic epoch came the feeling that every portion of the song ought to have its special, appropriate form of emo- tional expression in music. The man who once for all established this principle in song-writing, and made the emotional character of the sepa- rate stanzas the governing principle in the music, was Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). In spite of what had been done before him, his work was so important, both in quantity and in quality, that he is regarded as the creator of

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

143

the German art-song, as opposed to the folk- song, or popular ballad. In Schubert's songs, the instrumental portion takes a much more prominent place than in the folk-song and in the songs of the masters who had preceded him. It is no longer a mere accompaniment ; it is an essential portion of the emotional interpreta- tion of the poem, has independent melodic value, and frequently takes the principal mel- ody, the vocal part being subordinate. In this respect, Schubert's innnovations in the song are closely analogous to those of Wagner in the opera, where the orchestral portion is as important as the vocal, or even more so. Schu- bert wrote some six hundred songs, and set to music a large part of the German lyric poetry known in his day, and no small portion of the English. He was a creative genius of the first rank as regards spontaneity in the invention of beautiful and characteristic melodies, and his work constitutes an art-treasure of perma nent value.

Following him came the great romanticists, Mendelssohn (1809-1847), Schumann (1810- 1856), and later, Robert Franz (born 1815), a most original and charming composer.

Among the greatest of living song-writers are Anton Rubinstein (born 1830), and Johannes Brahms (born 1833). There is a host of song composers of merit, both contemporary with these men and younger than they. They are far too numerous to mention, and mention is the less needed, as none of them have made any innovations on the principles of the romantic writers. They have simply enriched musical literature with numerous songs, more or less excellent.

Mendelssohn.

Schumann.

Robert Franz.

Rubinstein. Brahms.

144

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG.

QUESTIONS.

In what impulse of human nature did vocal music take its rise ?

What determined the form of the simple period ?

Give plan.

Do lyric popular ballads commonly have more than one tune for the different stanzas ?

Give an example of ballad stanzas with a refrain.

Of what art-form is this the germ ?

What is the essential difference between the lyric ballad and the art-song, as developed in the romantic period ?

What was the feeling which led to the development of the art-song ?

Who was the great composer of such songs ?

Give dates.

What is the relation of the instrumental to the vocal portion of Schubert's songs ?

Give some account of his work, both in quantity and quality. •

Give names of later song composers of the first rank.

LESSON XVII.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FROM 1700 TO THE PRESENT.

THE germs of the symphony, as we have seen, were in the opera overtures of Lully and of Alessandro Scarlatti. The three, parts of which they were composed became separated after the overture began to be used as a sepa- rate instrumental piece in concert performances, and thus it became the modern symphony. The sonata, originally a piece in one movement, also took on the same form as the symphony.*

J. S. Bach and Haendel cast a great deal of their harpsichord music in the form of suites, generally consisting of six or eight dance tunes, contrasted with one another in tempo, but all in the same key. Johann Kuhnau (1667-1722), Bach's predecessor at Leipzig, was the first man who used the tit^e u sonata " for his harpsi- chord music. Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), son of Alessandro, was a great harpsichord vir- tuoso. He wrote numerous " sonatas " in one movement for his instrument, which differed little, if any, from the single movements of Bach's suites. All the composers of the time wrote fugues, Bach's " Well Tempered Clavi- chord " and his organ fugues being the culmi- nating point of this style.

The first to write sonatas for the harpsi- chord in three movements was Carl Phillip Em- manuel Bach (1711-1788), son of J. S., for a long time court-pianist to Frederick the Great of Prussia, and afterwards settled in Hamburg.

* For a fuller exposition of the sonata, see the writer's " History of Piano-Forte Music."

145

LMSON XV1T.

Origin of the symphony.

The Suite.

The Sonata Jfuhnau.

D. Scarlatti^

C. f. E. Bach, 1711-1788.

146

Jfaydn

Mozart, 17o6-1791.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

:

His style differs greatly from that of his father, and he is the real creator of the modern sonata, for Haydn, Mozart, and even Beethoven mod- eled on him. The French contemporaries of Bach and Haendel, Rameau, Couperin, Mar- chand, etc., have been referred to in a previous lesson.

After Emmanuel Bach had outlined the so- nata, it was taken up by Joseph Haydn (1732- 1809) in Vienna. He wrote a great number of piano-forte sonatas, trios, string quartets and symphonies (one hundred and eighteen of the latter), all in the same form, and showed so much inventive genius, originality and skill that he is by far the most prominent figure of his time in instrumental music. His work marks an epoch in this field.

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) lived during Haydn's career,' had the benefit of his work, possessed a splendid originality, and surpassed Haydn in the development of his forms, and in the richness, fulness and variety of his instru- mental combinations. The most of Haj'dn's symphonies were written for a small orchestra, made up of the usual string quintet (first and second violins, viola, violoncello and double bass), two oboes and two horns. Mozart added to these two flutes, two clarionets, two fagotti (bassoons), two trumpets and two kettle-drums. Haydn's later symphonies, after Mozart's work was published, approximated his in fulness. Both had the four great families of instruments : viz., 1, stringed instruments played with a bow; 2, wood-wind; 3, brass; and 4, instruments of percussion. In his three greatest sj-mphonies, the "Jupiter" in C, the G minor, and the E-flat major,Mozart not only developed the symphony

LESSONS TN MUSTCAL HISTORY.

147

form to its utmost limits, but enriched the world with beautiful instrumental combinations greatly in advance of Haydn, and hardly surpassed by even Beethoven- himself. Mozart wrote a vast quantity of piano music, chamber music, songs, and orchestral music, besides his operas, church music, and forty-one symphonies.

Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) was the next great symphony writer, although he was much less prolific than Mozart or Haydn. He wrote only nine symphonies, the last closing with a movement for solos, chorus, and orches- tra. He accepted the form of the S3rmphony as completed by Mozart. He added to Mozart's orchestra two more horns and three trombones, a combination now known as" grand orchestra," and accepted by all symphony composers since. The piccolo and contra-bassoon he used but rarely. His acknowledged superiority to all other symphony writers before and since lies in the nobility, elevation and depth of the emo- tional content of his works. They reveal a moral earnestness and a high spiritual quality not to be found before him, nor after him until we come to Wagner. His chamber music, his church music, his one opera and his piano-forte sonatas display the same nobility of character, the same serious thoughtfulness and the same consummate mastery of style.

Franz Schubert (1797-1827), the great song- writer, also wrote nine symphonies and a great quantity of piano-forte and chamber music, very little of which was performed during his lifetime. His greatest work is the ninth sym- phony, in C major. All these works are charac- terized by spontaneity, freshness of melodic invention, exquisite beauty of harmony, refine-

,

1770-1827.

Schubert. 1797-182*.

148

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

Weber.

Hummel.

Otter

instrumental composers.

ment, and, in the chamber and orchestral works, by extreme beauty in the instrumental combina- tions and contrasts. Most of them are prolix and lack mental concentration", and in general there is more vividness and exuberance of im- agination than intellectual restraint and self- control. He shows the dawning influence of the romantic period even more than Beetho- ven, who, more than any other composer, com- bines in himself the superior excellences of both the classical and the romantic ideals.

The opera overtures of C. M. von Weber, the great contemporary of Beethoven and Schu- bert, are instrumental compositions of high ex- cellence in every respect. They are romantic in spirit ; but as regards form, do not depart from classical models. His piano-forte music is of less importance.

Next to these three, their most renowned contemporary in the field of instrumental music was J. N. Hummel (1778-1837). In his time he had a great reputation as a pianist and a composer of piano-forte and chamber music, and some of his concertos and chamber compo- sitions are still played. Other composers of distinction in this field were Muzio dementi (1752-1832), Pleyel, Dussek, Steibelt, Woelfl, Cramer, Field, Hies, Kalkbrenner, Onslow, Moscheles, Czerny*

These names bring us up to and even beyond the opening of the romantic epoch, for Mos- cheles and Czerny outlived most of the great romantic composers. The four years, 1809- 1813, ushered into the world five great com- posers, whose work, taken together, constitutes

* See the writer's " History of Piano-Forte Music," for a more definite account of these men and their work.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

14'J

the romantic epoch. These were 'Felix Men- delssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Eobert Schumann (1810- 1856), Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883). To these names must be added that of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), who wrote in the spirit of extreme romanticism, but his work was almost isolated, met with very little success during his lifetime, and exer- cised comparatively little influence in shaping the course of musical history. His symphonies, " Episode in the Life of an Artist," " Hai'old in Italy," and others, are extremely fantastic. Of the others, Wagner's instrumental writing, although of great importance, was almost ex- clusively in his music-dramas, and has already been treated of under the head of German opera. Of the others, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt wrote piano-forte music, chamber music and orchestral music. Chopin's writing, with the exceptions of his two concertos, a few other concerted pieces and some songs, was confined to the piano-forte. The work of these four men has been so fully estimated, especially as regards their piano-forte writing, in the pres- ent writer's "History of Piano-Forte Music," that the subject may be treated briefly here.

Mendelssohn was, by nature and education, a classical composer. He modeled on the classic writers ; the violence, self-assertion and stormy passion of the extrame romanticists was foreign to his nature and repulsive to his taste. His music is. above all, refined, elegant, graceful. His style is clear and finished. But he could not escape the influences of his time, and was more or less of a romantic composer, whether he would or no. Probably his greatest

Thf, Romantic composers.

Berlioz, 1803-1869.

Mendelssohn, 1809-1847.

150

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

8"hwnann, 1810-1856.

orchestral work is the overture to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," a thoroughly romantic work in every respect. He is roman- tic, also, in that he sought, in his overture, " The Hebrides," his " Italian," " Scotch" and " Reformation " symphonies, and in his " Songs Without Words " for the piano-forte, to express emotions connected with definite scenes. He wrote a great deal for the piano-forte and for the organ, and some excellent chamber music, besides his orchestral works.

Schumann was constitutionally a romanticist, and his natural tendency was fostered by his early reading of the German romantic litera- ture. He was taciturn, but the passion which did not express itself in words or behavior I found vent in his music. His songs, his piano- forte works, his chamber music, his symphonies, are characterized by profound feeling, by burn- ing passion, often by headlong impetuosity. His imagination is vivid and powerful, but he has also light and playful fancy. His intellect was characterized by strength and depth, rather than by clearness. His style as a com- poser is bold and original, but often somewhat obscure. This last quality is partly due to his original and peculiar rhythms. He was late in mastering the technic of composition, and never had it at such complete command as did Mendelssohn, whose " Midsummer Night's Dream " overture, perhaps his greatest orches- tral work, was written when he was only seven- teen years of age.

Schumann wrote several symphonies, an opera, " Genoveva," and some cantatas ; but he will probably live in history by his piano-forte music, especially the Fantasia op. 17, the Etu-

LESSONS AV MUSICAL HISTORY.

151

des Symphoniques, the Kreisleriana, the Novel- ettes, the Fantasy Pieces and the Forest Scenes, by his songs and his chamber music. Schumann can hardly be said to have originated any new forms ; his forms are adopted or slightly modi- fied from the traditional ones. He is at his best when, using the simpler forms, under no re- straints imposed by an elaborate plan, he gives free rein to his imagination, and allows the stream of his romantic feeling to flow without hindrance.

Chopin was perhaps the most strikingly original of all the romantic writers except Wagner. His reputation depends exclusively on his piano-forte music. It is characterized by extreme refinement and finish, by elegance and grace, but some of it also by a volcanic passion which knows no restraint but that imposed by an exquisitely refined artistic per- ception. Chopin is profoundly original in his melodies and embellishments, in his harmonies and cadences, and in his applications of the principles of form. Among his greatest works may be named the two concertos, especially the one in E minor, the Etudes, op. 10 and op. 25, some of the Polonaises, especially those in E flat and in A flat, the Scherzos, the Ballades, the Impromptus and the Fantasie in F minor. But hardly less original and fine are the Noc- turn, Mazurkas and Preludes and, in truth, he has written almost nothing which would not be sufficient to stamp him as an epoch-making composer.

Liszt will be known in history as the man who, more than any other, developed the mod- ern piano-forte to its highest capacity, by the demands which his works make on the instru-

LUBON XVII.

Chopin,

1MO-LS4!!.

Liszt, 1811-18*6..

152

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

LBWOK XVII.

The Symphonic

Poem

compared urtth the symphony.

ment, especially as regards sonority. He also ranks as the greatest of piano-forte virtuosi. But he will also be known as the inventor of the " Symphonic Poem, "an important modifica- tion of the orchestral S3rmphony.

The Symphcny, as developed by Haydn and Mozart and applied to the highest ends of emotional expression by Beethoven, may be regarded as the culmination of classical form. In its most elaborate form, it consisted of four separate pieces or " movements," contrasted with one another in tempo and in emotional character. One of these movements was always a " sonata-form," * the most elaborate of the different forms of the classical epoch.

The symphonic poem, on the other hand, is the culmination of the romantic ideal in the field of instrumental music. That ideal de- mands that form shall be subordinate to con- tent ; that the free expression of feeling shall be the first aim and end of music ; and it re- gards form merely as an indispensable means to this end. In the symphony, each separate movement serves to express a separate phase of emotional experience. It comes to an end, the players stop, and the work enters upon an- other phase of feeling, disconnected with what precedes and what follows. But in actual ex- perience, feeling is continuous throughout our waking hours. One emotion fades into another, or is replaced by another, without any break in consciousness. Commonly, each phase of feel- ing is developed from those which went before it ; when it is not, there is either a profound modification of feeling or a change, which

* See the chapter on " Form " in the writer's " History of Piano-Forte Music," or any good work on musical form.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

amount to revolution, by the occurrence of some unexpected event. The symphonic poem seeks to conform itself to these facts of emo- tional experience. Its movements follow each other without break, and it aims to express truthfully not only separate phases of feeling, but the connection and relation of these phases. It discards entirely the classical sonata-form, rondos and dance-forms, such as the scherzo and the minuet, and aims to determine the suc- cession and relation of its musical ideas solely in accordance with the exigencies of emotional expression. Of course, it must and does meet the intellectual and aesthetic requirements of every work of art. It must, in order to be beautiful, meet the demands of unity, variety, symmetry, contrast and climax. But this orderly arrangement of ideas is not, as in the classical symphony, predetermined according to a cut-aiid-dried formal plan, to which the emotional content is subordinate, but is de- pendent on the natural order and succession of the emotions to be expressed. In the syrn- phon}r, the logical order is form first and con- tent second. In the symphonic poem, the logi- cal order is content first and form second. Form is only a means of expressing feeling.

Perhaps a word may be needed here with ref- erence to the capacity of music to express feeling. No one will doubt that music is capable of expressing and revealing such simple emotional states as pain and pleasure. Every one regards certain music as cheerful, or joyous, or exultant, or martial, or sad, or solemn, or melancholy, etc., as the case may be. But can music express the more complex feel- ings, such as love, hate, anger, jealousy ? The

Music as an

expression of

emotion.

154

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

"Programme • Music."

answer is, yes and no. Love, for example, im- plies the relation of two persons, and these persons and their relation constitutes a neces- sary element of the conception. This element music cannot express. There is no musical formula, no succession or combination of tones which can represent to our minds a man or a woman, or the relation of the two. But the emotional element of the case, the states or movements of feeling involved, are expressible in music. It is entirely possible to write music which shall be universally acknowledged as ap- propriate to a love-scene, as revealing an emo- tional state which could exist under no other conditions. Love, then, is not merely a feeling, but the conception of it implies an intellectual as well as an emotional element, and this ele- ment must be supplied by words, or scenery, or pantomime, or by all three, if the conception is to come to complete and vivid realization. Music expresses only the emotional element, but it expresses it with a 'force, subtlety and intensity such as no other means of emotional expression can pretend to. These considera- tions are the true ground on which the Wagne- rian music-drama must rest for its justification. It is the union of all the arts for the complete embodiment of complex mental states and move- ments, such as cannot be fully and perfectly realized to the imagination by means of any one of them alone, or perhaps even by any two in combination.

The symphony and the symphonic poem, being instrumental music, can, of course, ex- press feeling and only feeling. But, since all our feelings, except occasionally the simplest ones, are induced by ideas, by scenes, events,

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

155

the relations of persons, etc., it was natural and perhaps inevitable, that the composer of the symphonic poem, starting from the desire to express definite feelings and laying out his emotional plan on which the form of his work was to depend, should imagine to himself some story. A connected series of events, power- fully affecting the feelings and progressing to a climax, would afford the needed basis for such a work, and would be likel}7 to kindle his im- agination more vividly than would mere musical phrases unconnected in his mind with any characters or defined occurrences. This is what Liszt did. His symphonic poems bear such titles as "Mazeppa," "Tasso," "Hamlet," " Dante," "Prometheus," etc., and are attempts to express the train of emotions appropriate to the series of events in the stories, and to ex- press them in their natural connections and relations.

Whether he aimed to express them with such definiteness as to make his music suggest clearly each separate incident of the story be- yond the possibility of mistake, may perhaps be questioned. The best of all his " symphonic poems" is probably " Les Preludes" which aims to express the emotions awakened by a passage from Lamartine, the gist of which is that life in all its vicissitudes is but a prelude to eternity. This central thought gives scope for lofty feeling, noble aspiration, solemn, sub- lime emotion in the contemplation of Infinity, and for the contrast of such feelings with the ordinary experiences and passions of human nature. Liszt's success in this work is proba- bly due, not only to the more inspiring char- acter of his theme, but also to the fact that

LISBON XVII.

LiszPs syrnphonic poem "Les Jf^relitdes."

156

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

LISSOM XVII.

Tendency to overstep the

limits of

expression in

music

2,iizt's place in musical history.

there was no story. It is no part of the func- tion of music to tell a story. While it may legitimately illustrate a story by intensifying the expression of the feelings connected with it, there is a constant temptation, in a purely instrumental composition, where a story is used as basis, to make the music overstep its natural limitations. There will be a constant tendency to try, not only to express the feelings, but to suggest the ideas. There have been marvel- ously clever, ingenious and measurably suc- cessful instances of this in the "programme music " which makes up so large a portion of

eNWork of the romantic writers, and to which Berlioz's symphonies and most "symphonic poems " belong. But, at best, such efforts can only be incompletely successful. Purely in- strumental music is better confined to the ex- pression of moods and movements of feelings without seeking to embody other than musical ideas. If a story is to be told, words or visible scenes and pantomime can express fully and clearly what music can, at best, only suggest vaguely and indefinitely.

It is, perhaps, too early io make a final esti- mate of Liszt's rank as a composer. His place in history, as regards his creative work, will ultimately depend on his intellect, imagination, originality, feelings and moral qualities. As regards intellect, imagination and originality he will rank high; though this latter quality showed itself less in power of melodic invention than in his innovations in harmony and in his extensions of the traditional limits of tonality. In these particulars he is hardly inferior to Wagner himself. But when we come to the content of his music, to the feelings he sought

LESSONS JN MUSICAL HISTORY.

157

to express and the moral qualities they reveal, it is at least very doubtful whether he can be accorded ai^ but an inferior rank. " Les Pre- ludes " is probably his greatest work, and it certainly deals with the noblest and most in- spiring themes, but it nevertheless reaches no such heights of elevated emotion as do the noblest works of Bach, of Beethoven or of Wagner. The moral implications of the best works of these three men are such as raise them high above the plane of feeling revealed in the best of Liszt's compositions. But the fascinating influence of his personality, the dazzling brilliancy of his performances as a piano-forte virtuoso, the force of his character, the consciousness of power and the quiet audac- ity with which he commanded worldly success, as well as some amiable and generous qualities, have so possessed the imaginations and blinded the perceptions of two generations of young musicians, that comparatively few of his con- temporaries are capable of applying sober judg- ment, either to his works or to his personal character, of which his works are the outcome. Later generations will probably judge his seri- ous defects much less leniently.

Among the best writers of " programme music" is Camille St. Saens (born 1835), a Parisian organist, pianist, conductor and com- poser of great ability. His symphonic poems, " Phaeton," " Danse Macabre," " Le Rouet d' Omphale" and " La jeunesse d' Hercule " are extremely clever and successful attempts at suggesting the story indicated by the title, by means of characteristic musical treatment. But he has not confined himself to this field of com- position. He has also cultivated the classical

Saint Sttens.

158

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

L«sso* XVIL

Other

<xntipoiter» of instrumental music in our

time.

forms, writing symphonies, concertos, organ music and piano music, besides church music, an oratorio and several operas. He ranks high among living writers, and is the most origi- nal among the younger generation of French composers, as Berlioz is the most original in the generation which preceded him. His work is much more sane than that of his extremely eccentric predecessor, whose work, although it has latterly excited much interest as the work of a powerful intellect and a brilliant, vivid, lu-ated imagination, is never likely to be accepted as a model. In one respect only has Berlioz's life- work been obviously productive of results in the musical world. He enriched the orchestra with new instruments and with new combinations and contrasts, producing many novelties in special effects. His work on in- strumentation has been widely studied and ver}' influential.

In Germany, composers of sonatas, sympho- nies and chamber music have been innumerable, this kind of work being aimed at by every ambitious student. The greatest names are Joachim .fta/f (1822-1882), who occupies middle ground between the classical composers and the extreme romanticists; Johannes Brahme (born 1833), and Anton Rubinstein (born 1830), whose work is of the most important in our generation. Other noteworthy names in this field are Carl Eeinecke (born 1824), Niels W. Gade (born 1817), Robert Volkmann (born 1815), W. Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875), an English pupil of Mendelssohn; Max Bruch (born 1838), Heinrich Hoffman (born 1842), 8. Judassohn (born 1831), Anton Dvorak (pron. Dvorshak, born 1841), a most origi-

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

159

nal and eccentric genius ; Edw. Grieg (born 1843), /. L. Nicode (born 1853), ' Morit.z Moszkowski (born 1854), Philip ticharwenka (born 1847), and his brother, Xaver (born 1850), Peter Tschaikowsky (born 1840), G. tiyambati (born 1843), one of the best represent- atives of the New Itaty, F. H. Cowen (born 1852), and A. C. Mackenzie (born 1847, in Eng- land), and John K. Paine (born 1839, in this country). This list might be indefinitely ex- tended. The mere mention of all the names of composers of ability and promise would take up too much space for our present limits. It is peculiarly gratifying to an American to see how many young composers are now coming forward in this country, with thoroughly creditable work. This remark would be still more forcible if applied only to pianists and composers for the piano-forte. America now contains a large number of these of very high standing, and their ranks are being constantly recruited.

Because of the primary importance of the violin as an orchestral instrument, this lesson would hardly be complete without a brief sketch of the progress of violin music since the time of Corelli. In his day, Italy was the home of violin music, as of all other music, and that country long retained her supremacy in this field. Omitting lesser names, the next great Italian violinist was Giuseppe Tartini (1692- 1770). He was a highly educated man, and contributed much not only to the development of violin-playing, but to general musical intelli- gence. He discovered the combination (re- sultant) tones, and utilized them as a means of securing pure intonation. He not only derived the major chord (over-chord) from the first six

LKS30N XVII.

Violin music.

Tartini.

160

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT.

Viottl.

Paganini.

of the overtone series, as did Rameau,his great contemporary, but he succeeded, where Rameau had failed, in basing the minor chord (under- chord) on the undertone series. But, as in the time of Zarlino, who made the same discovery before him, this idea bore no fruit, because the mind of musical Europe was not yet prepared to receive it. Whether the time is even yet ripe for the inevitable revolution in harmonic conceptions consequent on this idea, remains to be seen. It doubtless lies at the foundation of scientific harmony teaching in the future, near or remote.

Tartini was a prolific composer, writing a great deal of violin and chamber music. He had a romantic experience in early life, conse- quent on a secret marriage with a young lady related to Cardinal Cornaro, the discovery of which necessitated flight and a long conceal- ment in a monastery. Most of his life was passed as solo-violinist, orchestral conductor and teacher in Padua, where he founded a high school of violin playing. His compositions rank high, and are even now played.

Another great Italian name in the field of violin-playing is Giovanni Battista Viotti (1753- 1824), called, " the father of modern violin- playing," and regarded as one of the most im- portant composers for his instrument. He wrote twenty-nine violin concertos, eighteen violin sonatas, and a great deal of chamber music. A larger part of his life was spent in Paris.

The greatest of all Italian virtuosi on the violin, and probably the greatest player yet known, as regards technic, was Niccolo Pa- ganini (1774-1840). He was a Genoese, came

LESSONS 7.V MUSICAL HISTORY.

161

of an uncultivated famity, had little or no edu- cation, and was by no means an admirable character. But he possessed special talent for music, early became a master of the violin, combined all the excellence of other virtuosi and surpassed them all, and astonished all Europe with his enormous technical attain- ments, and with the fire and passion of his playing. He was not an interpreter of the great classics for his instrument; he was original, wilful, capricious, and, above all, effective, not to say sensational.

In France and Belgium, a French-speaking country, there have been many great violinists in our time — Artot, Baillot, de Beriot, Lafont, Molique, Leonard, Vieuxtemps, Sauret, Rhode, Ovide Musin, and others. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the greatest names of our century are Spohr, Ferdinand David, long a distinguished teacher in the Leipzig Conserva- tory, Kreutzer, Ernst, Wienawski, Auer, Dan- da, Joseph Joachim, August Wilhelmi, Bemenyi, Saraste. Many other distinguished players might be named, and there are now young vio- linists coming forward who bid fair to rival the solo performances of the best of their predeces- sors.

LlSBOK XVII.

Modern Violinists*

162

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT,

QUESTIONS.

How did the modern symphony arise? What is a "suite?"

Who were the greatest writers of suites? Who was the first composer who employed the title sonata?"

How many movements in D. Scarlatti's sonatas? How did these differ from the pieces of Bach and Haendel?

Who was the greatest composer of fugues? Who wrote the first harpischord sonatas in three move- ments?

What great composers modeled their sonatas on his ? Describe Haydn's services in the development of instru- mental music.

How did Mozart's symphonies differ from Haydn's? In whose works did the symphony form culminate ? Who is acknowledged as the greatest of symphony com- posers and in what does his superiority consist ?

Give some account of Schubert's instrumental music. Weber's.

Name some noted contemporaries and successors of theirs.

Who were the great romantic composers? Give some account of the works of Mendelssohn, Cho- pin and Schumann.

Also of Berlioz and his works.

Name some of the principal works of each of these composers.

By what achievements will Liszt be known in history? What is the characteristic difference between the Sym- phony and Symphonic Poem f

What is the relation of music, as a means of expression, to such emotions as love, hate, etc. ?

What considerations justify Wagner's principles as a composer of music drama ?

How comes it that so many symphonic poems of Liszt and others have names-implying a story or underlying plot ? Can music tell a story ? If not, why not ?

Given a story which excites a series of contrasted feel- ings, can music suggest the story to any one who knows beforehand what it is?

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

163

Would it be likely to suggest the story to any one who did not know beforehand that the composer had the story in mind when he wrote his music ?

Name Liszt's greatest orchestral work.

Why is it more successful than his other works?

How does it compare in nobility with the greatest works of other great writers ?

By what qualities will Liszt's final place in history be determined ?

In which of these qualities is his pre-eminence doubt- ful?

By what qualities did he become popular?

Name the best of the younger French composers of programme music and give some account of his work.

Give some of the greatest names in instrumental music in Europe and in America.

Give some account of Tartini.

Of Viotti.

Of Paganini.

.Name some of the other great violinists.

LXMON XVIII.

Relation of

Ancient to

Modern Music.

Twelve centuries of but slight progress.

LESSON XYIII.

CONCLUSION.

WE have now dealt, in outline, with the whole history of music as developed in the Christian Era. Pre-christian music has received but slight treatment, not because the subject is not in- teresting, but because it is greath* inferior in interest and importance to our own music. Ancient music, even in Greece, never passed a certain rudimentary stage, and it is to our own time that we must look for all the higher de- velopments of the art. Nevertheless, the Greek theory and practice, although the latter was imperfectly understood and the former grossly misapprehended, exercised on Christian music an influence so important that it seemed neces- sary to give a brief account of the Greek theory, at least, and to point out its relations to our own, as was done in Lesson I. But the limits of the space allowed forbade a complete state- ment of all the later refinements of Greek theory, such as the enharmonic and chromatic modes, etc.

The history of modern music begins with the first attempts of Christian prelates to improve church music. The first events of note are few and far between. The setting up of singing schools and choirs in the early part of the fourth century, the establishment of the four " authen- tic " scales by St. Ambrose about the end of the same century, the addition of the four "plagal" scales by Gregory the Great, two hundred years later, the spread of the Gregorian chant under the Empire of Charlemagne, the first crude 164

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY.

1C5

attempts at harmony by Hucbald, three hundred years after Gregory, the beginnings of our staff notation by Guido of Arezzo a hundred years after Hucbald, the first use of notes to measure *-he length of tones by Franco, of Cologne, two hundred jrears later still, these are all the events of note in the development of scientific music for the first twelve centuries of Christianity. It was a thousand years after the early Christians began singing hymns in their worship before there was any adequate means of representing relative pitch, and twelve hundred years before there was any adequate notation for represent- ing the length of tones. Thus slowly did the fundamentals of musical science develop them- selves.

After the thirteenth century progress went on with constantly accelerating rapidity. The beginning of the fourteenth century ushered in the great and decisive epoch of the Netherland- ers, and at the very culmination of their work came the invention of opera, as an attempt to revive the Greek drama, and the oratorio, grow- ing out of the miracle plays. Out of these has come a steady growth up to the latest culmina- tion of the opera in the music-drama_Q_f_ Wagner. These forms of art necessitated the, perfection of vocal music, both solo and choral, and the independent development of the organ and harpsichord and of the several orchestral instru- ments. Out of the latter came solo playing and the special development of instrumental music, culminating in the fugue, as the acme of the contrapuntal style and in the sonata, symphony and finally, of the symphonic poem as the acme of free style.

LESSON XVIII.

Accelerated progress from

the

13th century onward.

166

CONCLUSION.

No new path, yet clearly marked out.

Theflfldof the ti/mphonic poem open to original work.

Thus far we have come ; and the question naturally arises : What next ? Is there to be an advance on Wagner in the field of the music- drama? If so, in what direction? Will any composer in the field of the oratoria surpass Haendel's Messiah or Bach's Passion Music according to St. Matthew? Will orchestral music go beyond the Beethoven symphonies or the symphonic poems of the later romanticists?

If there is now existing any new principle to be developed in any field of musical art, it is not plainly to be seen, and, so far as known to the present writer, no one has announced the discovery of any new path into which the com- posers of the next few decades are to lead us. Instrumental composers content themselves with reproducing the classic forms of Mozart and Beethoven, infusing into them more or less of the spirit of the romantic school, or they return to still earlier, even archaic forms, such as the suite and its components. Comparatively few seek to follow in the steps of Liszt and of Berlioz. Yet precisely in the field of the sym- phonic poem is there room for the originality of genius to assert itself. That form is new and it is also legitimate, based on true natural princi- ples. Liszt originated it, but he ctid not exfiaust it. With the symphony it is different. Beet- hoven's genius was so colossal that it is hardly conceivable that his greatest symphonies can ever be surpassed. Whereas Liszt's genius was by no means commensurate with the form he invented. It is quite within the possibilities that men now living may listen to symphonic poems by some composer as yet unheard of, the content of which shall be vastly more sublime than that of any such works now existing.

LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTOR Y.

167

As regards oratorio, no one seems to dream of any advance in principle on those of Haendel. Mendelssohn's " Elijah " is more dramatic, but that is merely because it deals with a subject capable of dramatic treatment. And no ora- torio since " Elijah " has equalled that work.

The music-drama of Wagner represents the culmination both of dramatic ideals and dra- matic effects in the realm of opera, so far as yet appears and so far as can now be foreseen. And as regards solo performances, both technical skill and interpretative power seem to have reached the limit of human capability.

Nevertheless it would be rash to conclude that the art of music has fully exhausted its possibilities and is now to enter on a period of stagnation and decadence, as other arts have done. It would be presumptuous now, certain- ly, to affirm that the next generation may not have as great surprises in store for it as the great romanticists have given us. When they have come, if they do come, they will furnish matter for the critic and the historian. At present they are beyond prophecy and even beyond conjecture.

LKSSOS. XVIII.

Apparent culmination of the opera and the Qratorio.

168 CONCLUSION.

QUESTIONS.

Why was it best to deal but briefly with Ancient Music?

Why deal with it at all ?

Describe the slow progress of early Christian music.

Give a brief summary of musical progress after 1300.

Do we know of any new principle in musical art likely to be developed in the near future ?

Why is there now more room for the exercise of original creative power in the field of the symphonic poem than in that of the symphony ?

Is there any apparent prospect that the Wagnerian music-drama will be surpassed ?

>• "8

81

^j 5

if

o £ *1

fe 3

w I

H- 3 O

PQ 'g

W £

"*^ « :P2 5

^ §

TJCAL A

EVEN

- -

is

gis

ill

M CB n = H>

St^w

If

PU

a g £ g

H 5

^ §

55

9° a

I5

I

1 m m

<!-a< *

lEll*!

•g-S.|5£°o

HHiii

;OEH*-3fe«

a s e^

1 llll *|*

« 1s a« Is?

-s fell .|s,g .

1 gl|-s I !« 1'

SJJJ.2

^

^

do x oS

—•o * -w

IMl

Ss;-:.sf'S

Sllfl

169

170

TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY.

TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY.

171

c« = ^ <* *°

til!

li!

HI

ss s c is illlii § mi iiiFSSf i g Illll3llis3illllilll^i31

- as

172

TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY.

i— i^- r» i-- 56 r- i^ 3? 06 f^ oc '00 « 06 QC x .^f36 3c a

a -id:

o-j«?;

~'i o c^ito o n-r in X -5 j^ t>- t^ r- r-

JfflL

INDEX.

PAGE.

Preface iii

Introduction vii

Oriental and Ancient Music I

The First Ten Centuries of Christian Music 9

From Guido of Arezzo to the Beginning of the Supremacy of

the Netherlanders, about 1000 to 1400 19

The Epoch of the Netherlanders, about 1400 to 1600 27

The Rise of Dramatic Music, 1600 37

The Beginning of Oratorio, 1600 46

General Survey of the Musical Situation at the End of the Six- teenth Century. Condition of Instrumental Music 52

The Progress of Opera 64

Music in the Seventeenth Century 75

Music in the Seventeenth Century (Cpncluded) 83

Italian Opera from Alessandro Scarlatti to the Present 91

French Opera from Lully's Time to the Present 101

German Opera 109

The Opera : Summary and Outlook 128

Oratorio, Cantata, Passion Music and Sacred Music from 1700

to the Present 133

The Development of the Song 141

Instrumental Music from 1700 to the Present 145

Conclusion .^164

A Comparative Table of Chronology 169

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388

Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.

APR I 1 'l(M>

College Library

UCLA-College Library

ML 161 F481 1888

L 005 688 265 7

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

A 001 117480 2

f

•

•

.