A Popular History of the Art of Music

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The polyphonic compositions of the schools in consideration in the
present chapter go farther than this. While they consist of imitative
treatment of a single subject carried through all the voices, or of
several subjects which come together in such a way that the ear is not
able to follow them as individuals, there is a conclusion, and the
canonic imitation has a legitimate ending. Besides those compositions
consisting of repetitions of the same subjects, these schools gave
rise to other works in which several subjects are treated more or less
in the same manner as a single subject would have been in a simpler
composition. Nevertheless, in the earlier stages of the development,
all the chords arose as incidents, and not as ends. The composer
brought in his leading melodic idea at the interval prescribed or
chosen. If crudities arose when all the voices were employed, he took
no notice of them; the hearers, apparently, being too intent upon
following the individual voices to notice the forbidden parallels of
fifths or octaves, which inevitably arose until the composer had
learned which intervals might be used without harmonic offense, and
which not.

Before proceeding to the story of this chapter, the definition of a
few terms may be advisable, in the interests of clearness. By
"imitation," then, we mean the exact repetition of the melody of one
part by another part, at the same or a different pitch. Such an
imitation may be "strict," as when the intervals and progressions are
exactly repeated; or "free," as when certain changes are made here and
there in order to lead the imitation around better to the principal
key. Canonic imitation is one in which the imitation is strict, the
repeating voice exactly repeating the melody of the principal. By
"counterpoint" we mean a second voice added to a melody already
existing, the counterpoint having a strict relation to the leading
melody, but a wholly independent movement. This conception had its
origin in the art of extemporaneous descant, in which, while the choir
and congregation repeated the melody of the plain song, a few talented
singers performed variations to it, guided solely by ear and
tradition, returning to the tone of the plain song at all the points
of repose. We do not know when extemporaneous descant gave place to
written composition, but it was probably early in the twelfth century.
By "double counterpoint" is meant a counterpoint which, although
written to be sung an octave lower than the principal song, can be
transposed an octave and sung higher than the principal song without
giving rise to forbidden progressions. This will be the case only when
the original relations of the two voices have been restricted to
certain prescribed intervals. By "fugue" is meant a form of
composition in which every voice in turn enters with the leading
melody of the piece, the same given out by the leading voice at first,
called the "subject," responding alternately in tonic and dominant.
This form comes later than the period we are now about to consider,
but it grew out of the devices of polyphony, and accordingly is always
to be kept in mind as the goal toward which all this progress was
tending.

The art of polyphony is to be understood as an effort toward variety
and unity combined. The unity consisted in all the voices following
with the same melodic idea; variety, in the different combinations
resulting in the course of the progress. The limitations of polyphony
were reached when the true expression of melodic intervals was lost
through their intermingling with so many incongruous elements.

II.

The beginnings of contrapuntal and polyphonic music have been traced
to what is now known as the old French school, having its active
period between about 1100 and 1370, or thereabouts. The principal
masters known to us now by name, were all, or nearly all, connected
with the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and several of them with the
university of the Sorbonne. Paris, during the earlier part of this
period, in fact during the greater part of it, was the most advanced
and active intellectual center of the entire civilized world. When the
French school had ceased to advance, as happened some time before the
close of the history in 1370, as above assigned, it found a successor
in what is known as the Gallo-Belgic school, which was active between
1350 and 1432. This, in turn, was succeeded by the Netherland school,
extending from about 1425 to 1625. The removal of the star of progress
from one location to another, as here indicated in the succession of
these great national schools, was probably influenced by corresponding
or slightly antecedent changes in the commercial or political
relations of the countries, rendering the old locality less favorable
to art than the new one. For questions of this sort, however, there is
not now time or space. To return to the old French school--the
recognition of the importance of this school is due to a learned
Belgian savant, M. Coussemaker, who happening to discover in the
medical library at Montpelier, France, an old manuscript of music,
analyzed it, and found that it represented masters previously unknown,
and, for the most part, belonging to the period under present
consideration. In several monographs upon the history of "Harmony in
the Middle Ages," he traced the steps through which polyphony had
arisen, and was able to show that, instead of dating from the
fourteenth or fifteenth century, as previously supposed, it had its
beginnings more than three centuries earlier, and that Paris was the
first center of this form of musical effort.

For convenience of classification the entire duration of the old
French school may be divided into four periods, of which the first may
be taken to extend from 1100 to 1140, the great names being those of
Leonin and Perotin, both organists and deschanteurs at Notre Dame. The
Montpelier manuscript contains several compositions by both these
masters, and in them we find the germs of the most important devices
of counterpoint.

Leonin was known to his contemporaries as "Optimus Organista," on
account of his superior organ playing. He wrote a treatise upon the
art, a manuscript copy of which appears to be in the British Museum,
and its contents have been summarized by an anonymous observer, but
never published in full. He is said to dwell mainly upon the proper
manner of performing the antiphonary and the graduale. It is also
stated that he noted his compositions according to a method invented
by himself. If this work could be fully examined it might throw
important light upon the point reached in the practice of church music
in his day; his notation, also, would be a matter of interest and
possibly of importance. Quite a number of compositions by Leonin have
been discovered. The successor of Master Leonin, as director of the
music at Notre Dame, was one Perotin, who, besides being a capable
deschanteur, was an even greater organist than his teacher, Leonin. He
was also a very prolific composer, many of his compositions being
still extant. He made additions to his predecessor's manual of the
organ.

By descant in the foregoing account, reference is made to the practice
of extemporaneous singing of an ornamental part to the plain song or a
secular _cantus fermus_. This art had its origin one or two centuries
earlier than the period now under consideration, in the secular
organum of Hucbald (see p. 142), and all the more talented singers,
who were also composers as well, were expert masters of it. Descant
was the predecessor of counterpoint.

The chief forms of composition in vogue during this period were
motette, rondo and conduit. The terms were rather inexactly applied,
but in general the motette appears to have been a church composition,
in which often the different voices had different texts, so that the
words were wholly lost in performance. The rondo seems to have been a
secular composition, and was sometimes written without words. The
conduit was an organ piece, occasionally, if not generally, of a
secular character. All of these forms were also distinguished as
duplum, triplum and quadruplum, according to the number of voices. The
harmonic treatment in them is still crude, occasional passages of
parallel fifths occurring, after the manner of Hucbald, but in the
works of Perotin passages of this kind are softened somewhat by the
device of contrary motion in the other parts. He made a beginning in
canonic imitation, Coussemaker and Naumann, after him, giving examples
from a composition of his called "_Posuit Adjutorium_." In these works
of Perotin, and in many others of that day, traces are to be seen of
an amelioration of the musical ear, and a preference for thirds and
sixths, such as but a short time previously had been unknown to
musical theory. This influence was probably due to what was called
"_Faux Bourdon_," a system of accompanying a melody by an
extemporaneous second and third part in thirds or sixths.

This art, again, is clearly due to the influence of the round singing
of the British isles. Thus we have already a beginning of at least
three important elements of good music: The recognition of the triad,
or, more properly, of the third and sixth, a beginning in imitation,
and the contrapuntal concept of an independently moving melodic
accompaniment to a second voice, which in turn had been the outcome of
extemporaneous descant. The works of Perotin were undoubtedly in
advance of his time, having in them no small vitality, as is shown in
their having formed a part of the repertory of Notre Dame for more
than two centuries.

The second period of the old French school extended from about 1140 to
1170, and great improvements were made in the art of harmony
meanwhile. The three great masters of this period were Robert of
Sabillon, his successor in Notre Dame, Pierre de la Croix, and a
theoretical writer named Jean de Garland. The first of these men was
distinguished as a great deschanteur, in other words, a ready hand at
extemporaneous counterpoint. Pierre de la Croix made certain
improvements in notation, the nature of which, however, the musical
historians fail to give us. Garland divided the consonances into
perfect, imperfect and middle--a system which has remained in use,
with slight alteration, to the present day. The thirds and sixths,
however, still rank as dissonances. He also defines double
counterpoint, and gives examples. The illustrations are crude, but the
idea is correct.

The third period of the old French school is sometimes known as the
Franconian period, from the two great names in it of Franco of Paris
and Franco of Cologne, whose theories have already been noticed. (See
page 146.)

Another celebrated name of this period was that of Jerome of Moravia,
also a theoretical writer, whose treatise has been published along
with the others in Coussemaker's "Mediaeval Writers upon Music." He was
a teacher and a Dominican monk at Paris. He was contemporaneous with
Franco of Cologne.

The fourth period of the old French school extended from 1230 to 1370.
The three great names were Phillippe de Vitry, Jean de Muris and
Guillaume de Machaut. They were regarded by their contemporaries as
exponents of the _ars nova_, in contradistinction to the Franconian
teaching, which was called _ars antiqua_. One of these differences was
the use of a number of signs permitting singers to introduce
chromatics in order to carry out the imitations without destroying the
tonality. Jean de Muris was born in Normandy. He was a doctor in the
Sorbonne, and from 1330 a deacon and a canon. He died in 1370. He was
a learned man of an active mind. He speaks of three kinds of
tempo--lively, moderate and slow. He says that Pierre sometimes set
against a breve four, six, seven and even nine semibreves--a license
followed to this day in the small notes of the _fioratura_. This kind
of license on the part of the deschanteurs had been carried to a great
length, the melodic figures resulting being called "_fleurettes_"
("little flowers"). John Cotton compared the singers improvising the
_fleurettes_ of this kind to revelers, who, having at length reached
home, cannot tell by what route they got there. Jean de Muris reproved
them in turn, saying: "You throw tones by chance, like boys throwing
stones, scarcely one in a hundred hitting the mark, and instead of
giving pleasure you cause anger and ill-humor." Machaut was born in
Rethel, a province in Champagne, in 1284. He was still living in 1369.
He was a poet and musician who occupied important positions in the
service of several princes, and wrote a mass for the coronation of
Charles V. Naumann thinks that Machaut was the natural predecessor of
the style of Lassus and Palestrina. He says that the use of double
counterpoint slackened from this time, whereby the music of the
Netherland composers--Dufay, Willaert and Palestrina--is simpler and
less artificial than that of Odington and Jean de Garland. Chords
were more regarded. This also had its source in the north.

III.

The Gallo-Belgic school occupies an intermediate place between the old
French and Netherlandish. Its time was from 1360 to 1460, and Tournay
the central point for most of the time. The first great name in this
school was Dufay, 1350-1432. The compositions remained the same as
formerly, triplum, quadruplum, etc. One of the masters of this school,
Hans Zeelandia, who died about 1370, is to be noticed on account of
his part writing being more euphonious than that of his predecessors.
He uses the third more freely, and he gives the principal melody in
his chansons to the treble, and not to the tenor, as do the others.
This also is in line with the British influence. Dufay was regarded by
his contemporaries as the greatest composer of his time. The open note
notation succeeded the black notes about 1400, or, according to
Ambros, as early as 1370. Coussemaker dates Dufay 1355 to 1435. The
introduction of popular tunes as a _cantus fermus_ in masses and other
such compositions is due to him; there are a large number of such
works still in the library of the Vatican. He was the first, so far as
we know, who introduced "_L'Omme Arme_," and the same subject was
treated by several other composers after him. Naumann thinks that the
most noticeable peculiarity of the work of Dufay is the interrupted
part writing, the imitation not running through the whole composition,
but appearing here and there, according to the fancy of the composer.
Dufay is also credited with having written pure canonic imitations
without descending to the level of the rota, with its endless phrases.
Quite a number of his compositions are preserved at the Vatican and
the Royal Library at Brussels. The other great name of the first
period of this school was that of Binchois, born in Hennegau, died
about 1465. A few of his compositions are preserved, but they hardly
present important differences from those of Dufay. There were several
masters intervening between those just mentioned and Busnois, who
closed the school, but at this lapse of time their work hardly retains
sufficient individuality to warrant burdening the memory with them.
Antoine de Busnois was born in Flanders in 1440, and died in 1482.
During a great part of his active life he was _chapelain-chanteur_ in
the household of Charles the Bold, and that of his successor, Maria of
Burgundy. His salary in this position was extremely meager, ranging
between twelve and eighteen sous a day, or, in our currency, between
about twenty-five cents and forty-eight cents a day, but as the
position carried provision for all the real needs of a man in the
matter of food and clothing, perhaps the salary was not so
insufficient, considering the greater purchasing power of money, which
must have been at least three or four times as great as at the
present. Busnois appears to have been on cordial terms with the duke,
accompanying him in his travels.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS.

The wealth and commercial activity of the Low Countries, known as
Flanders, Brabant and Hainault, had now become greater than that of
any other part of Europe, Italy perhaps excepted. The organization of
the Communes, which began, indeed, in France as early as the tenth
century, naturally reached a greater extent during the crusades, when
so many of the higher and more energetic nobility were absent in the
Holy Land, since the defense and order of the people at home had to be
maintained by those who were left behind. Under these circumstances,
the power naturally drifted into the strongest hands available, which
quite as naturally were those of the capable merchants and
manufacturers of the burgher class. Hence the condition of society,
while much hampered by the restrictions of the guilds requiring
children to be brought up to the occupation of the parents, was
nevertheless more favorable to the freedom of the individual than at
any previous period. These social elements combining with the wealth
aforesaid, and the public spirit which has always distinguished the
mercantile classes engaged in foreign commerce upon a large scale,
united to form an environment favorable to the development of art;
and, as music was the form of art which happened to be most in demand
at the time, the effects of the stimulating environment were
immediately seen. It was perhaps partly in consequence of the burgher
character of the classes most engaged in music in Flanders that the
form music there developed should have been so exclusively vocal. All
the work of this school, extending over two centuries, was either
exclusively vocal, or written with main consideration for the voice,
the instrumental additions, if any, having never taken on a
descriptive or colorative character.

The schools of the Netherlands came into prominence about 1425, and
endured, with little loss of prestige, for two centuries, or until
1625. During this period there was a succession of eminent names in
music in these countries, and a great progress was made in polyphony,
and a transition begun out of that into harmony (which was in part
accidental, owing to their outdoing themselves, as we shall see).
Moreover, in the later times, quite a number of eminent men emigrated
to foreign countries, and there kindled the sacred fires of the art,
and set new causes in operation, leading to the development of
national schools of great vigor. The three most eminent names in the
category last referred to were those of Tinctor, who founded the
school of Naples shortly before 1500; Willaert, who founded that of
Venice soon after 1500, and Orlando Lassus, who founded that of Munich
a trifle later. The great Palestrina himself was an outcome of these
schools of the Netherlands, and, aside from the independent musical
life in Spain, there was no strong cultivation of music anywhere in
Europe during this period, which did not have its source in these
schools of the Netherlands. The entire relation of these schools is
perhaps better shown in the following table taken from Naumann, than
is possible in any other manner:

THE NETHERLAND SCHOOL. (1425-1625 A.D.)

BELGIAN SCHOOL. DUTCH SCHOOL.

_First Period--1425-1512._ _First Period--1430-1506._

OKEGHEM, Compere, Petrus, Hobrecht.
Platenis, Tinctor.

_Second Period--1455-1526._ _Second Period--1495-1570._

JOSQUIN DES PRES, Agricola, ARKADELT, Hollaender.
Mouton.

_Third Period--1495-1572._ _Third Period--1440-1622._

GOMBERT, WILLAERT, SCHWELINCK.
Goudimel,
Clemens (_non papa_),
Cyprian de Rore.

_Fourth Period--1520-1625._

ORLANDO LASSUS, Andreas Pavernage,
Phillippus de Monte, Verdonck.

The first composer of the Belgian branch of the Netherlandish school
was Joannes Okeghem, who was a singer boy in the choir of the Antwerp
cathedral in 1443, and is supposed to have been a pupil of Binchois.
Directly after the date just mentioned he gave up his place at
Antwerp, and entered the service of the king of France. For forty
years he served three successive kings, having been in especial favor
with Louis XI. He resigned his position at Tours soon after 1490, and
lived in retirement until his death in 1513, at the age of nearly 100
years. Okeghem was a very ingenious and laborious composer, who
carried the art of canonic imitation to a much finer point than had
been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having
composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices
later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab,
etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully
written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being
developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive
choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin
directions printed with the music. The other composers belonging to
this period were comparatively unimportant, with the exception of
Johannes Tinctor, who was born about 1446 and died in 1511. Tinctor,
after being educated to music in Belgium, emigrated to Naples. In
early youth he studied law, and took the degree of doctor of
jurisprudence, and afterward of theology; was admitted to the
priesthood, and became a canon. He then entered the service of
Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples, who appointed him chaplain and
cantor. He founded a music school in Naples, and published a multitude
of theoretical works of the nature of text books. He is entitled to
the honorable distinction of having published the first musical
dictionary of which we have any record. This book is without date, but
is supposed to have been printed about 1475. None of the compositions
of Tinctor have been printed, and his importance in music history
ranks mainly upon the theoretical works which he composed, and his
relation as founder of the Naples school.

The second period of the Belgian school has the great name of Josquin
des Pres, who was born about the middle of the fifteenth century,
probably at St. Quentin, in Hainault. He was a pupil of Okeghem; was
chapel master in his native town, and in 1471 was a musician at the
papal court of Sixtus IV. This great master is to be remembered as the
first of the Netherlandish school whose works still have vitality. He
was a man of genius and of musical feeling. Martin Luther said of him
that "Other composers make their music where their notes take them
[referring to their canonic devices]; but Josquin takes his music
where he wills." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, speaks of him as
having been the idol of Europe. He says: "They sing only Josquin in
Italy; Josquin alone in France; only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders,
in Hungary, in Bohemia, in Spain--only Josquin." ("_Si canta il solo
Jusquino in Italia; il solo Jusquino in Francia; il solo Jusquino in
Germania_," etc.) Josquin was a musician of ready wit, and many
amusing stories are told of the skill with which he overcame
obstacles. Among others it is told that while he was at the French
court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off
with the answer, "_Lascia fare mi_." Weary of waiting, Josquin
composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over
and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much
amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not
having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette:
"_Portio mea non est in terra viventium_" ("My portion is not in the
land of the living"); and "_Memor esto verbi tui_" ("Remember thy
words"). Another anecdote of similar readiness is that of the motette
which the king, who was a very bad singer, asked Josquin to write,
with a part in it for the royal voice. Josquin composed a very
elaborate motette, full of all sorts of canonic devices, and in the
center of the score one part with the same note repeated over and
over, the one good note of the king's voice--the inscription being
"_Vox regis_" ("voice of the king"). It will be too much to claim
Josquin as a composer of expressive music. The mere fact of his having
written motettes upon the genealogies in the first chapters of St.
Matthew and St. Luke sufficiently defines the importance he attached
to the words. Speaking of Josquin's treatment of effects, it is
recorded of him that a single word is sometimes scattered through a
whole page of notes, showing that he attached no importance to the
words whatever. One of the most beautiful of his pieces was a dirge
written upon the death of Okeghem. Owing to the good fortune of the
invention of music printing from movable types, in 1498, when Josquin
was at the height of his powers, a large number of his works have come
down to modern times.

In the corresponding period of the Dutch school the name of Jacob
Arkadelt is to be remembered, who, although not a composer of the
first order, was nevertheless a man of decided power, and is known to
us through a number of his works still existing in considerable
freshness. Arkadelt was a singing master to the boys in St. Peter's in
Rome in 1539, and was admitted to the college of papal singers in
1540. About 1555 he entered the service of Cardinal Charles of
Lorraine, duke of Guise, and went to Paris, where probably he died.
Besides a large number of motettes and masses, he was one of the most
famous of the Venetian school of madrigal writers, a form of
composition of which it will be in order to speak later. One of the
most pleasing of Arkadelt's compositions is an _Ave Maria_ which is
often played and sung at the present day.

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