A Popular History of the Art of Music

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[Illustration: Fig. 45.

BELLOWS BAGS IN THE ORGAN AT HALBERSTADT, AND METHOD OF BLOWING.

(Praetorius.)]

Some time before the beginning of the seventeenth century the organ
had acquired nearly the entire variety of tone that it has ever had.
The mechanism was rude, no doubt, and the voicing perhaps imperfect.
The tuning was by the unequal system, throwing the discords into
remote keys as much as possible. In Michael Praetorius' "_Syntagma
Musica_," the great source of information upon this part of the
history (published at Wolfenbuettel, 1618), he describes a number of
large organs. Among them he mentions the organ in the Church of St.
Mary at Danzig, built in 1585, having three manuals and pedal; there
were fifty-five stops. The balance must have been very bad, since
there were in the great organ three stops of sixteen feet, and only
three of eight feet. There was a mixture having twenty-four pipes to
each key, besides a "zimbel" in the same manual, having three ranks.

Praetorius also gives many other specifications of large organs of
three manuals, some with dates, some without. They belong mostly to
the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the number indicates
unmistakably the interest awakened in this part of the musical
furnishing of the large churches. Many points in these organs were
imperfect, but the foundation had been laid, and the general character
of the subsequent building settled. There was also a beginning of
virtuosity upon the organ, but this will come up for consideration at
a later point in the narrative.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Fig. 46.

SCULPTURED HEAD OF COLUMN, FOUND IN THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST.
GEORGE, AT BOSCHERVILLE, IN NORMANDY. ELEVENTH CENTURY.

(1) Three-stringed viol or rebec. (2) Two persons playing the
organistrum, a stringed instrument vibrated by means of a circular bow
or wheel, like the hurdy-gurdy. (3) Pandean pipes. (4) Apparently a
small harp. (5) Psaltery. (6) Rotta or crwth. (7) Acrobat. (8) Harp.
(9), (10) Instruments of percussion, perhaps bells.]

Book Third.

THE

Dawn of Modern Music.

THE BEGINNING OF FREE EXPRESSION IN SONG, OPERA, ORATORIO AND FREE
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

CHAPTER XVII.

CONDITION OF MUSIC AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

In justification of the name "apprentice period" for that part of the
history of music ending with Palestrina as the representative of the
finished art of the Netherlands (helped out, we may well enough admit,
with no small measure of the original insight and genius of his own),
a general view of the condition of music in all European countries at
the beginning of the seventeenth century may well be taken. The
fullness with which the details have already been treated renders it
unnecessary to repeat them here, but it will be enough to recapitulate
the principal features of the art thus far attained, adding thereto a
number of incidents omitted. Upon the side of musical phraseology,
then, we find in the north the attainment of a simple and expressive
form of melody almost or quite up to the standard of modern taste. In
the direction of the musically elaborative element we have the schools
of the Netherlands and of Italy, in which absolutely everything of
this kind was realized which modern art can show, saving perhaps the
fugue, which involved questions of tonality belonging to a grade of
taste and harmonic perception more advanced and refined than that as
yet attained. It took nearly another century before the
ecclesiastical keys were thoroughly disenchanted in the estimation of
classical musicians. It was Bach who finally made true tonality the
rule rather than the exception.

In the line of instruments the harp had had its day, its never ending
tuning having been one of the most operative forces in the development
of the ear. Its successor, the lute, equally weak in tenacity of
intonation, but with greater artistic resources, had been fully tested
in every direction. The organ had attained a very respectable size,
even when measured according to modern ideas, and its influence in the
direction of harmonic education had been well begun. The keyed
instrument, of which our pianoforte is the living representative, had
found its keyboard and a practical method of eliciting tones, which,
whatever their weakness, were at least better than those of the lute,
the chitarrone, the psaltery or harp. Best of all, the violin had
found master hands able to shape it into a model graceful to the eye,
and sonorous beyond anything else which the art of music can show.
True, it was not until about sixty years later that the powers of this
instrument in the direction of solos were fully recognized, or,
indeed, brought before the public. This was the work of Corelli, whose
sonatas were published in the third quarter of the century with which
we are now dealing. The viol, the weaker predecessor of the violin,
had made great headway, and Monteverde put himself on record in 1607,
much to his credit, by placing it at the head of his orchestra.

Moreover, not only were the instruments of music in a condition
creditable even in the light of modern ideas, but the popular taste
for music was more lively and far-reaching than ever before.
Everywhere in the civilized world the practice of music was the
universal attribute of a gentleman. In Italy we shall find a circle
composed of some of the best minds of the nation engaged in the
regular study of classical learning, and in discussions having for
their object the re-discovery of the art of ancient music, which the
seekers wrongfully imagined to have been as far superior to the music
then in vogue as the sculpture of the ancients had been superior to
that of mediaeval Italy. In no country was the art of music more highly
esteemed, or, we may add, in a more advanced state than in England.

Richard Braithwaite, a writer of the reign of Elizabeth, formulated
certain rules for the government of the house of an earl, in which the
earl was "to keep five musicians, skillful in that commendable sweet
science"; and they were required to teach "the earl's children to sing
and to play upon the bass viol, the virginals, the lute, the bandour
or cittern." When he gave great feasts, the musicians were "to play
whilst the service was going to the table, upon sackbuts, cornets,
shawms and such other instruments going with wind, and upon viols,
violins or other broken music during repast." In barber shops they had
lutes and virginals wherewith the gentlemen might amuse themselves
while awaiting their turn. It was the same in reception rooms; musical
instruments were provided as the surest method of enabling waiting
guests to amuse themselves.

If it be asked why it was that in spite of this high esteem for music
so little came out of its cultivation in England that was creditable
upon the highest plane, according to the scales in which we are
accustomed to weigh the music of Italy and Germany, the answer is not
hard to find. It was in consequence of the little attention paid to
musical learning in the highest sense, as compared with the learning
and training in musicianship on the continent. English music died out,
or grew small, for want of depth of earth. High ideals and thorough
training in the technique are two prime conditions of a successful
development of an art. Besides, the art of music suffered irreparable
damage in England at the hands of the Puritans. The protectorate
lasted long enough to put the art under an eclipse from which it did
not fully emerge until nearly our own time.

A similar fondness for this form of art pervaded all European
countries. In Italy music was the delight of the common people and the
favorite pursuit of the great. In Germany the Reformation and the
influence of Luther had set the people singing. The organ had attained
an advanced state there, and other instruments of every sort were
cultivated. It was the same in France. The love for music was
universal. Hence the times were ripe for a great advance in art. There
was concentrated upon music an attention which it has rarely enjoyed
at any other period of its history, and the advances now to be
mentioned were correspondingly abundant and striking.

The contrapuntal schools had done more to educate harmonic perception
than is commonly supposed. All the devices of counterpoint, as we have
them to-day, were invented by the various schools of this period, and
brought to a high degree of perfection. But the learning had somewhat
overshot its mark. The multiplicity of parts in the compositions of
Willaert, and the other masters of the polyphonic schools, served for
the cultivation of chord perception just as surely as if they had
intentionally written chord successions without troubling themselves
with imitative canon in any degree. For, when there were so many voice
parts as ten, fifteen or twenty within the limits of the compass of
the human organ, that is to say, mainly within the limits of two
octaves and a half, the parts had no recourse but to cross
continually, and since there was no aid afforded the ear by
differences in tone color between one voice part and another, it
necessarily followed that they fell upon the ear with the effect not
of voice parts, in which the melody of each could be followed
independently of the others, but rather as chord masses, in which here
and there a prominent melodic phrase occasionally emerged, only to be
lost the next moment by the prominence of a bit of the melody of some
other voice. The effect of a composition of this kind was no other
than that of a succession of chords, and the ear was as thoroughly
educated to chord perception by this class of music as if the composer
had intended only to write successions of chords. Still the training
of these schools, while incidentally affording education to the ear
upon the harmonic side, was thoroughly contrapuntal, and the study of
every composer was to make something more elaborate than anything that
had been written by his predecessors.

Nevertheless there was an influence in another direction. An art form
was invented, which by the end of this period had established itself
as the type of a musical form whenever the composer would arrive at
something more spontaneous than could conveniently be attained by the
way of a motette or conduit. That form was the madrigal. The meaning
of the name is unknown. Some have derived it from Mary, and point to
the sacred madrigals, many of which were composed by all the
contrapuntal writers. Others have assigned a different origin for it,
and it is not possible now to decide which is the true one. Enough if
we find this form emerging from obscurity by the middle of the
fifteenth century. The first writer of compositions under this title
whose name is known to us was Busnois, and in the same collection are
compositions of the same class by many other composers of the
Netherlandish schools. A madrigal was a secular composition, generally
devoted to love, but in polyphonic style, and in one of the
ecclesiastical modes. They were always vocal down to the seventeenth
century, but from that time forward they were generally marked for
voices and instruments. One of the best composers of madrigals was
Arkadelt, of the Netherlandish school. The success of the great
Orlando Lassus in this school has already been mentioned, together
with the name of one of the best known of his compositions in this
line (p. 167).

The strange modulations, like that from F to E flat in one of
Arkadelt's madrigals, are current incidents of the ecclesiastical mode
in which they are written. Many of the secular works of this class are
hardly to be distinguished from those intended for the Church, and
some are to be met with, having two sets of words, one secular,
occasionally almost profane; the other sacred, some hymn or other from
the offices of divine service.

In England this school had a great currency, and the madrigals of the
British writers of the seventeenth century are every whit as free and
melodious as the best of those of the Italian school. The number of
writers of this class of works was innumerable, so much so that we
might well class it as the ruling art form of the century, just as the
dramatic song was in the eighteenth century, the fugue in the last
half of it, and the sonata in the beginning of the nineteenth.
Everybody wrote madrigals who ever wrote music at all. According to
the dates of collections published, the English followed the Italian
composers. The earliest Italian compositions of this class are
contained in three collections printed by Ottaviano di Petrucci, the
inventor of the process of printing music from movable type. These
collections were published in Venice, 1501-1503, and copies are still
retained in the library at Bologna and at Vienna. The English
cultivation of this form of composition became general toward the last
of this century, and in the first part of the next ensuing, and it is
but just to say that the English composers finally surpassed the
continental in this school, and developed out of it a beautiful art
genre of their own, the glee. Toward the latter part of the sixteenth
century certain attempts were made in Italy at something resembling
our opera, but in place of solo pieces by any of the performers there
were madrigals. When Juliet, for example, would soliloquize upon the
balcony, she did so in a madrigal, the remaining four parts being
carried by chambermaids inside. When Romeo climbed the balcony and
breathed his sweet vows to Juliet, one or two of his friends around
the corner carried the missing melodies in which he sought to
improvise his warm affection. The absurdity of the proceeding was
manifest, but it needed yet another point of emphasis. There was a
grand wedding in Venice in 1595, at which the music consisted of
madrigals, all in slow time and minor key. The contradiction between
the doleful music and the festive occasion was too plain to be
ignored, and led, presently, to the invention of a totally different
style of song of which later there is much to say.

The seventeenth century was one of the most memorable in the history
of music, not so much, however, for what it fully accomplished as for
the new ideas brought out and in part developed. The specific part of
the general development of music which this century accomplished was
_the development of free melodic expression_. While, as already
noticed, the musical productions of the preceding centuries had
manifested an increasing melodic force and propriety, the secret of
genuine melodic expression had yet to be found. In the madrigal and
motette the conditions were wholly unsuited to the development of this
part of music. Instead of one prominent voice, in which the main
interest of the production centered itself, the composer of that
period had a certain number of equally important voice parts, all
taking part in the development of the one leading idea of his piece.
Melodically speaking, the standpoint was wrong and the situation
false. Melody means individuality, individualism; the free
representation of a personality in its own self-determined motion. At
the point of the year 1600, speaking with sufficient exactness for
ordinary purposes, the ruling standpoint of musical production
changed, in the effort to rediscover the lost vocal forms of the Greek
drama. The new problem was that of finding, for every moment and every
speech of the drama, a form of utterance suitable to the sentiment and
the occasion. Thus entered into music, through the ministry of
self-forgetfulness, the most important principle which has actuated
its later progress, the principle namely, of dramatic expression--in
other words, the _representative_ principle, the effort to represent
in music something which until now had been outside of music. Out of
this principle, co-operating with that other idea of two centuries
later, the inherent interest of the individual, has grown the richness
and manifold luxuriance of modern romantic music, together with the
entire province of opera and oratorio. We have now to trace the steps
which led to this great transformation in the art of music; and to
illustrate the application of the new principles to the province of
instrumental music, which had no beginning of genuine art value before
this period. When examined with reference to the matured productions
of the century next ensuing, those of the seventeenth appear quite as
much like apprentice efforts as those of the latter part of the period
covered in the preceding book of our story; but they have in them,
however, the seeds of the later development, and stand to us,
therefore, in the character of first fruits. To state it still more
unmistakably, we have to trace in the operations of the seventeenth
century the _origin of dramatic song_, the beginnings of _free
instrumental music_, the discovery of the _art of voice training_ and
the formation of what is called the "old Italian school of singing,"
and the operation of the representative element in music, together
with the new forms created through its entrance into art.

The musical movement of this century in its entirety was a part of the
general operation of mind, which was now of great amplitude and
spontaneity. The fervor of the Renaissance indeed had passed, having
resulted in the creation of masterpieces of architecture, sculpture,
painting and poetry during the previous two centuries. Music came to
expression last of the forms of art, and when mental movement was less
intense. For this reason the Italian mind failed to rule in it after
the early beginnings in the new direction had been made. The
representative element entered the art of music in Italy; but the
mastery of its application, and the development of new forms fully
completing the representation, were carried on by other nationalities
where the mental movement still retained the pristine vigor of new
impulses and rich vitality.

The city of Florence was the center where the drama and song-like
melody found its beginning. Almost immediately, however, Venice became
the home of music, and fostered the growth of dramatic song for more
than half a century. At this time, as for a century previous, Venice
was the most active intellectual center of Europe. Perhaps nothing
gives so clear a realization of this supremacy as the statistics of
books printed in the leading centers of Europe from 1470 to 1500. The
largest centers were Strassburg, with 526; Basle, 320; Leipsic, 351;
Nuremburg, 382; Cologne, 530; Paris, 751; Rome, 925; Bologna, 298;
Milan, 625, while Venice heads the list with 2,835. Toward the end of
the century, the appearance of the genius, Alexander Scarlatti,
effected the transference of the musical supremacy of Italy to Naples.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVIII.

FIRST CENTURY OF ITALIAN OPERA AND DRAMATIC SONG.

During the last decade of the sixteenth century a company of
Florentine gentlemen were in the habit of meeting at the house of
Count Bardi for the study of ancient literature. Their attention had
concentrated itself upon the drama of the Greeks, and the one thing
which they sought to discover was the music of ancient tragedy, the
stately and measured intonation to which the great periods of
AEschylus, Euripides and Sophocles had been uttered. The alleged
fragments of Pindar's music since discovered by Athanasius Kircher (p.
69) were not yet known, and they had nothing whatever to guide their
researches beyond the mathematical computations of Ptolemy and the
other Greek writers. At length, one evening, Vincenzo Galilei, father
of the astronomer Galileo, presented himself with a monody. Taking a
scene from Dante's "_Purgatorio_" (the episode of Ugolini), he sang or
chanted it to music of his own production, with the accompaniment of
the viola played by himself. The assembly was in raptures. "Surely,"
they said, "_this_ must have been the style of the music of the famous
drama of Athens." Thereupon others set themselves to composing
monodies, which, as yet, were not arias, but something between a
recitative and an aria, having measure and a certain regularity of
tune, but in general the freedom of the chant. Among the number at
Count Bardi's was the poet Rinuccini, who prepared a drama called
"Dafne." The music of this was composed in part by an amateur named
Caccini, and in part by Jacopo Peri, all being members of this
studious circle meeting at the house of Count Bardi. "Dafne" was
performed in 1597 at the house of Count Corsi, with great success, but
the music has been lost, and nothing more definite is known about it.
This beginning of opera, for so it was, was also the beginning of
opera in Germany, as we shall presently see, for about twenty years
later a copy of "Dafne" was carried to Dresden for production there
before the court, but when the libretto had been translated into
German, it was found unsuited to the music of the Italian copy,
whereupon the Dresden director, Heinrich Schuetz, wrote new music for
it, and thus became the composer of the first German opera ever
written. In 1600 the marriage of Catherine de Medici with Henry IV of
France was celebrated at Florence with great pomp, and Peri was
commissioned to undertake a new opera, for which Rinuccini composed
the text "Eurydice." The work was given with great _eclat_, and was
shortly after printed. Only one copy of the first edition is now known
to be in existence, and that, by a curious accident, is in the
Newberry Library at Chicago. The British Museum has a copy of the
second edition of 1608. The opera of "Eurydice" is short, the printed
copy containing only fifty-eight pages, and the music is almost
entirely recitative. There are two or three short choruses; there is
one orchestral interlude for three flutes, extending to about twenty
measures in all, but there is nothing like a finale or ensemble
piece. Nevertheless, this is the beginning, out of which afterward
grew the entire flower of Italian opera. On page 225 is an extract.

The new style thus invented was known to the Italians as _il stilo
rappresentivo_, or the representative style, that is to say, the
dramatic style, and there is some dispute as to the real author of the
invention. About the same time with the production of "Eurydice," a
Florentine musician, Emilio del Cavaliere, wrote the music to a sacred
drama, of which the text had been composed for him by Laura
Guidiccioni, the title being "_La Rappresentazione del Anima e del
Corpo_." The piece was an allegorical one, very elaborate in its
structure, and written throughout in the representative style, of
which Cavaliere claimed to be the inventor. This oratorio, which was
the first ever written, was produced at the oratory of St. Maria in
Vallicella, in the month of February, ten months before the appearance
of "Eurydice" at Florence. It is evident, therefore, that if the style
had been in any manner derived from the Florentine experiments already
noted, it must have been from the earlier opera "Dafne" and not from
"Eurydice." The principal characters were "_Il Tempo_" (time), "_La
Vita_" (life), "_Il Mondo_" (the world), etc. The orchestra consisted
of one lira doppia, one clavicembalo, one chitarrone and two flutes.
No part is written for violin. At one part of the performance there
was a ballet. The whole was performed in church, as already noticed,
as a part of religious service.

Seven years later we enter upon the second period of the opera, when,
on the occasion of the marriage of Francesco Gongeaza with Margherita,
Infanta of Savoy, Rinuccini prepared the libretti for two operas,
entitled "Dafne" and "Arianna," the second of which was set to music
by Claudio Monteverde, the ducal musical director, a man of
extraordinary genius. The first of these operas has long since been
forgotten, but Monteverde made a prodigious effect with his. The scene
where Ariadne bewails the departure of her faithless lover affected
the audience to tears. Monteverde was immediately commissioned to
write another opera, for which he took the subject of "_Orfeo_," and,
being himself an accomplished violinist, he made an important addition
to the orchestral appointments previously attempted in opera. The
instruments used were the following:

2 Gravicembani.
2 Contrabassi de viola.
10 Viole da brazzo.
1 Arpa doppio.
2 Violini piccolo alla Francese.
2 Chitaroni.
2 Organi de Legno.
2 Bassa da Gamba.
4 Tromboni.
1 Regale.
2 Cornetti.
1 Flautino alla vigesima secunda.
1 Clarino, con 3 trombi sordine.

[Music illustration: FLUTE TRIO AND SCENE.

(From the first opera, "Eurydice" (1600). Jacopo Peri.)

Nel pur' ar-dor del-la piu bel-la stel-la
au-rea sa-cel-la di bel foc' accen-di
E qui dis-cen-di su l'au-ra-te plu-me, etc.]

A very decided attempt is made in this work at orchestra coloring,
each character being furnished with a combination of instruments
appropriate to his place in the drama. These works were not given in
public, but only in palaces for the great, and it was not for more
than twenty years that a public opera house was erected in Venice. In
1624 Monteverde at the instance of Girolamo Mocenigo composed an
intermezzo, "_Il Combatimento di Tancredi e Clorinda_," in which he
introduced for the first time two important orchestral effects: The
_pizzicati_ (plucking the strings with the fingers) and the
_tremolo_. These occur in the scene where Clorinda, disguised as a
knight, fights a duel with her lover Tancredi, who, not knowing his
opponent, gives her a fatal wound. The strokes of the sword are
accompanied by the _pizzicati_ of the violins, and the suspense when
Clorinda falls is characterized by the tremolo--two devices universal
in melodrama to the present day.

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