?Sg$ ^s^ f^ffit THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES STUDIES IN MUSICAL HISTORY BY I LOUIS S. DAVIS NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS HL\>e Ztmdterbocfccr 1887 COPYRIGHT, 1887 BY LOUIS S. DAVIS Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons. Music Library Wo INTRODUCTION. IN presenting this little book to the public, I am actuated by the belief that it treats of subjects and periods of musical history with which the general reader is far from familiar. The voluminous charac- ter of Dr. Burney's and Sir John Hawkins' histories of music are well calculated to damp the zeal of the most ardent disciple of the tone art, nor does a chron- ological presentation of lives and facts offer any con- crete view of the subject. Some men there are, who through their vast power of individuality have left their impress indelibly graven upon the art, and these stand out like beacon lights along the path of history ; but their names are few, and it is with periods and institutions that we have to deal. Upon him who, in the succession of the centuries, does not observe the sequence of cause and effect, the lessons of history are wasted, and its example thrown away. Say not " Lo here, or lo there," but laying a firm grasp upon the salient points, by a synthetic process arrive at the inner comprehension of the whole. He who narrates facts without deducing principles, discovering analogies, or tracing causes, is no histo- rian ; and while he may furnish ample data for the use of others, he is at best only a compiler. The Hi iv Introduction. history of music furnishes no exception to the uni- versal law, and the intention at least of this work is to present facts in a philosophical and homogeneous manner. Since it is to the Church that modern music owes its existence, it is from the history of the Church that much of this volume is drawn. Music is but one of the effects of the great cause, the Christian Church, and upon its rituals and institutions depended the fate of the whole tone system. Whether we consider the Mass of the Catholic Church, or the Choral of the Church of Luther, we see that each has builded its part well, laying a firm foundation for the universal temple of spontaneous utterance, where all alike may worship in catholicity of belief, which knows no law but that of perfect harmony. CONTENTS. CHAP. . PAGE. I. A STANDARD OF Music i II. SPIRIT OF JEWISH Music 10 III. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN HYMN 18 IV. THE MASS 22 V. THE TRANSITION PERIOD 35 VI. CHORAL 45 VII. THE ORGAN 59 VIII. OUTLINE OF THE ORGAN 73 IX. USE AND INFLUENCE OF BELLS 84 X. COLOR AND THOUGHT IN Music 103 XL THE MODERN SONG 108 XII. TEACHERS AND TAUGHT 121 XIII. FOLK LORE 131 XIV. THE COMMON AND COMMONPLACE 152 STUDIES IN MUSICAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. A STANDARD OF MUSIC. THROUGHOUT the vast fields of art or science there is no department which possesses so remarkable a combination for refining and instructing as that of music. The word standard draws the clear-cut line between the work of the conscientious student and that of the time-server. In every department, whether it be that of medicine, painting, law, literature, sculp- ture or mathematics, a high standard of excellence is demanded, and in most cases satisfactorily accorded. Nowhere should this requisite obtain with the same inexorable severity as in music. One great difficulty in the way of a popular and correct conception of music, is that we are not wont to regard it as we do anything else, but put it aside with the feeling that it is so much a part of another world from ours, that it would be impossible ever to get en rapport with it. On the contrary the tone realm is only one of the great parts which make up the great whole in nature's intellectual laboratory. A good composition has as clearly defined I 2 Studies in Musical History. a plot as any work of fiction ; It is as logical in its development as the profoundest treatise ; its rhythms are as varied and rich in their meanings as the most complex of modern poems. Its proportions must be as perfect and its shading as delicate as the most carefully designed work of the painter's art. Always, however, with this exception, that while the painter, sculptor, or author at best only reproduces objects and characters from real life, the musician, from the unseen, unknown, unseeable, unknowable, evolves com- binations of sound for which there is no counterpart, unless it be the unseeable and unknowable, which, in a man's nature, is hidden inscrutably from himself. I have spoken thus of the character and principles of music in order the more clearly to demonstrate the absolute necessity for a fixed standard in this, as in any other department of art or science. If we admit that one composition is superior to another, we, by that admission, acknowledge the possibility of an unlimited number of degrees of merit, and come again to the original necessity a standard. True, the composition of a high order is frequently, in the popular vernacular, too scientific, too hard to understand. There is a demand for something sim- pler, not thereby meaning a fresh and childlike sim- plicity such as is found in " Volklieder" but rather a demand for a certain kind of maudlin sentimental- ity, such as the popular ballad, at once the cause and effect of such unwholesome and unpleasant emana- tions. This, the result of an ignorance of music, vaunted as though it were a virtue ; or a yet more deplorable kind of ignorance, which supposes its pos- A Standard of Music. 3 sessor not only a musician, but a critic of no mean capacity. Without doubt there is a distinct tendency in a musical utterance to morality or to immorality, as may be expressed in more familiar or definite forms. Here, as elsewhere, the standard of right and wrong must be fixed. And now we are confronted by two questions which must have suggested themselves from the start : What shall the standard be, and who shall enforce it ? First, as to the standard. Adhering to the princi- pal parallels in substance and degree in all depart- ments of thought, I find nothing which more fully illustrates the world of music than the world of litera- ture. Only a few examples may be cited, but they are so mutually reciprocal in their plan and mode of thought, their orbit is so essentially one, that the most incredulous must admit that I am advancing some- thing more than an hypothesis. In a certain sense all literature is true, and in the same sense all music is true. But there are some truths to which we attach greater importance than to others. There are some truths which it is not only idle to discuss, but which it is best not to discuss at all. Among great thoughts, what is there more similar than a Bach fugue and an essay by Mill. In both cases we begin with the subject, then its developments and train of inductions and corollaries, its culmination and triumphant con- clusion. Who tells best the lives of such men as " William the Silent " ? Beethoven, in his " Symphony Heroical," or Motley, in his " History of the Dutch Republic " ? It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all 4 Studies in Musical History. the German schools of philosophy a transcendental mysticism more profound than that which pervades and saturates every page of Robert Schumann, Dramas there are in Chopin, crowding a whole life's story into an interval not greater than fifteen minutes. As in literature some history becomes romance, and some romance history, we know not where to draw the line, so in true life, the intellectual is so clouded with the keenest and most subtle appreciation of the beautiful, that we draw the line nowhere, saying this is such and such, but rather leave that to the senti- ment and interpretation of the artist. It will thus be seen that a good standard of music neither limits the field of taste nor the mood of the individual, rejecting only that which is condemned by the unerring laws of harmony as laid down by our greatest musical authorities. It now remains to find an agency power- ful enough and sufficiently omnipresent to make musi- cians in every village and home in the land. The worst feature of the case is that before supply we must create a demand, and this on a scale com- mensurate with the vastness of an American popula- tion. If the United States Government had the power and the will to attempt such a creation, no effort on its part, no matter how strenuous, would avail except in isolated instances. But the Central Government has neither the will nor the power to inculcate art, and it is not to it that we can look. Conservatories founded by individuals must, through their incapacity to reach the mass, fail to make ours a music-loving people. America for her musical instruction must look to the greatest and most universal educator that the world A Standard of Music. 5 will ever possess the Christian Church. She, who for upwards of two thousand years has been the guide and schoolmaster of Europe, is the only power which could make this or any other a music-loving people. The larger number of our greatest musicians and com- posers have come to us from the Old World, through the doors of the sanctuary. Two hundred years ago, two great and typical men were born into the world, and those two men were called John Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel. What the Church did for them they tried to pay back to the Church. How well they met their ob- ligation the Church knows better than any one else. Indeed, there is no branch of education which has so faithfully, and in so spiritual a manner, endeavored to recompense their mother and teacher, the Church, as that of music. So, admitting that the Church has been the greatest patron and benefactor of musicians, we must also admit that the musician has been the great- est beautifier of her rites and services, giving her a high spiritual standard of music, which in this country, however, is but little known. I believe that no one will dispute that whatever is intended for a sacred purpose cannot be of too sacred or elevated a charac- ter. If music is essential in a church, it should be of as pure and devotional a character as possible. But in the majority of churches it is so tawdry, frivolous and commonplace that to be a Christian and a musician rather partakes of the nature of a paradox. The dig- nified and intelligent calling of the musician, the sacred and responsive position of the organist, are unrecog- nized by the public at large. There is a remedy, but 6 Studies in Musical History. to get at it we must go to the fountain-head. How shall a minister know if his church has a good stand- ard of music unless he has been instructed in music ? In suggesting this, I do not propose a course of coun- terpoint and fugue for the theologue, but a theoretical course which shall enable him to distinguish good from bad in music as in theology, and to know a sound mu- sician as readily as he would a sound theologian. Another point now presents itself, the musician's pay. In this country, where we hire music-teachers as we do serving-girls, and organists as we do blacksmiths, these callings receive pay proportionate to the respect in which they are held. A competent minister commands a proportionately good salary, and a good musician should be recompensed according to his competency. If a congregation gets good preaching, or good playing for a trifle, they have, through the necessity of the in- dividual, gotten that for which they have not made an honest equivalent. The minister who permits his or- ganist to receive only a pittance is aware of one of two things either, that the organist is worth only a pit- tance, or that he and his congregation are what in any other calling would be denominated " beating down," and that, for the best of reasons, because they can. The brain-work of the educated musician is as great as that of a minister, and his physical labors are greater. The Protestant Church in this country is degrading rather than elevating the standard of music. First, through the musical ignorance of her ministers ; and second, the trifling inducement which it offers for good music. The rule of values which holds good in all else, does A Standard of Music. 7 not hold here. In most cases an organist is not chosen by virtue of any talent or education he may possess, but by reason of being a member of a particular church or because he is in needy circumstances. This last is most frequently the case, and is the clearest indication of the slight respect in which music and musicians are held, when an organ becomes nothing more than the means of an act of charity to one individual. Minis- ters are never employed as a matter of charity ; why should organists be ? Charity is a noble action, but a charity which denies a rightful salary to a legitimate musician to give a pittance to an incompetent person is an economical perversion of the eleemosynary spirit, a degradation of music, and an offence against the Church. I have heard these cheap organists improvise during the ser- vice such doggerel, as in more musical communities would have been considered rather bad for a hand- organ. There is a retributive justice in the fact that it is the nature of men to give the last word an undue importance. I have known the effect of the most elo- quent and solemn preaching neutralized, if not dissi- pated, by the slap-dash jig which let the congregation out of church, and spoke of anything but the just finished sermon. The position of organist is a very responsible one. He should be en rapport with the minister he should have the capacity to re-echo his words. His position confers a great, but unrealized power, for good or evil, and this consideration makes the responsibility of selecting an organist a very grave one. Before closing, I wish, in order to prevent any mis- 8 Studies in Musical History. apprehension of the object of this paper, to indicate some of the offences of the average cheap organist and repeat my suggestion of a remedy. The head and front of their offences against God and man is the ridiculous and monstrous practice of improvising on all occasions. Four-fifths of these persons could not make a practical application of a rule in musical theory. Three-fourths could not name the simplest rule, and two-thirds never heard there were any rules ; and yet they improvise. The reason for this abnormal ten- dency lies in the fact that very few of those who play on organs are acquainted with or capable of playing legitimate organ-music. To play organ-music requires that both feet shall be used with equal dexterity, and as legato on the pedal-board as both hands on the key- board. It would not be unnatural to suppose from the staccato pedalling, that these organists had at one time been engaged in a great war, and had each had a right foot shot off, but that the same right foot is kept see-sawing on the pedal which opens and closes the swell-box of the instrument, the object of the swell being to increase or diminish sound at the exact pas- sage where each would be most effective. But the see- saw with the swell-pedal becomes a habit with the one- footed organist, ceasing to produce any effect but that of monotony. What opinion can we have of an indi- vidual who, having the whole world of the greatest or- gan-music to choose from, prefers to enthrall his audi- ence with his own inspired drivellings ? There is in proportion to the number of performers, more good music written for the organ than for any in- strument in the world. Suppose that any person of ordinary musical talent should call together an audi- A Standard of Music. 9 ence and improvise for their delectation on the piano,, violin or any other instrument, how long would it be tolerated ? Yet in the performance of the most sacred office of music, this impertinence goes unchallenged. How many organists could plead guilty of knowing even the names of such men as Best, Schneider and Ritter ? If the manner of considering could in any degree express the real value and importance of the matter considered, it would not fail to lead to salutary results. To sum it up in a few words, music is an intellectual, refining and humanizing influence. A standard is just as much needed in music as in any other department of thought and feeling. There can be but 0