THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN TWELVE LECTURES BY WILHELM LANGHANS. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN (aiCONO, ENLABGED EDITION, WITH ILLDSTBATIONi) BY J. H. CORNELL. NEW YORK a SCHIBMEK, 35 UNION SQUARE (WEST-SIDB). 1896. A^ L] Ipb ^^i'V-— ftn NERAL Copyright 1886 by G. Schirmer. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The plan of these Lectures as also the grouping of the material are, notwithstanding considerahle enlargement of the several sections, the same here as in the first edition and in the lectures, forming the hasis of the book, delivered by me in 1877 and 1878 at Berlin. The chief aim that I then had in view was to awaken in larger circles an interest for music-history, and that by the examination not only of certain epochs lying closer to our intelligence but of its entire course of development. For proxi- mately attaining this end in a limited time I had to content my- self, as regards the representative characters of those epochs, with emphasizing in a general way their art-historical significance and referring to the excellent biographers that each of them has found in modern times: Bach in Philipp Spitta, Handel in FiiiEDRicH Chrysander, Gluck lu Adolph Bernhard Marx, Haydn in Carl Ferdinand Pohl, Mozart in Otto Jahn, Beethoven in Alexander W. Thayer. With reference to more remote epochs I recommend to the reader, provided I have at all succeeded in instigating him through my scanty recital to a more exhaustive study, the valuable works of a Fokkel, an Am- BROS and a Fetis ; moreover, with special reference to the music of antiquity, the no less meritorious works of Friedrich Beller- MANN, Westphal, Gevaert, Weitzmann; to that of the Middle Age, of Heinrich Bellermann, and of modern times, of Franz Brendel But if any should deem the leap too great from my small monograph to those authors, treating their subject as they do with extreme profuseness, to such the "Manual of music-history" IV AUTHOR'S PREFACE. (Handbuch der Musikgeschichte) by A. von Dommer (2* edition, 1878), also his "Elements of Music" (Elemente der Musik) and revision of Koch's "Musical Lexicon" (Musikalisches Lexicon) will afford a trustworthy basis for their study. As to the scruples felt by some critics on account of my dragging the present time into the sphere of historical considera- tion — scruples that are at bottom well-founded, as I by no means deny — I judged that I might also in this edition dis- regard them, because the efforts of our prominent musical con- temporaries almost entirely start out from historical premises, and we in profoundly occupying ourselves with them involuntarily direct our attention to the past. That Richard Wagner especi- ally has, as writer and also as poet and musician, extensively contributed to enlivening the interest for the history of music, even the opponents of his art-tendency must concede, and I felt that even out of consideration for my knowledge I ought on this occasion not to overlook his labors as artist and esthetician. 1 do not by any means hold that the historian jeopardizes the objec- tivity necessary to him by retaining close contact with the devel- opment of his own time also; nay, I maintain even that he is bound never to lose sight of the relations between the "hereto- fore" and the "now", forasmuch as a great number of historical facts are comprehensible only in the light of the present. "It is the privilege of the living" — says Gustav Freytag in his "Pictures of German antiquity" (Bilder aus der deutschen Ver- gangenheit) — "to interpret all the past according to the needs and claims of their own time. For the Monstrous and Inscrut- able of historical life will be supportable to us only when we recognize in it a passing away corresponding to our reason and our heart's desire, in heaped up ruin an infinite source of new life, out of the Perishing the Becoming. Therefore a nation that rejoices in its Present loves also to recall its Past, because it recognizes in it the broadcast seed of its blooming fields." Berlin, May, 1879. W. LANGHANS. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. In editing the present work I have taken the liherty of oc- casionally omitting portions of it, in the interest of English- speaking readers and for giving the book a more generally pop- ular character. These few omissions concern chiefly material of interest to Germans, as such, exclusively, also one or two ex- planations of a strictly scientific character, for which I have re- ferred, instead, to easily accessible works in the English language. At the same time, not only has every single point of general interest been scrupulously retained, but considerable additions from approved sources have been made, with a view to greater copiousness or clearness where cither seemed to me desirable. New York, September, 1885. J. H. COKNELL CONTENTS. L Antiquity. Aim and plan of the study of music-history. — Characteristics of the music of the East-Indians, Chinese, Egyp- tians, Hebrews. — Music of the Greeks. — The ancient Tragedy. — Influence of Greek philosophy on art-development. — Lyrists instrumental virtuosos, theoreticians. — Decay of music under Roman dominion. — Emperor Need 1 — 14 II. The Music of the early Christian Age. Dependence of early Christian art upon the antique. — Continued influence of Greek culture even after the migration of the nations. — Theodoric, King of the Goths. — The Greek tonal-system as basis of the Christian. — Establishment of the first singing-schools at Rome. — Reforms instigated by Archbishop Ambrose and Pope GRE- GORY. — Charlemagne. — The Singing-school of St. Gall . . 15 — 2li III. The Beginnings of Pol3rphonic Music. The Arabians and the Northern nations. — Musical instruments and the "Organum". — HucBALD. — Neumes. — Guido dArezzo. — Solmisation. — Mensural music. — FRANCO of Cologne. — Scholastic philosophy 26 — 39 IV. The Musical Sovereignty of the Netherlanders. Crusades. — Troubadours. — Minnesingers and Mastersingers. — Guilds of instrumental musicians. — German Folk-song. — The Papacy in Avignon. — Discant. — The Netherlanders in Rome: DUFAT, OCKENHEIM, JosQUlN. — Improvements in the art of music- printing. — Preparation for the Renascence by Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio 40 — 53 V. Luther's Reformation and the Renascence. Plastic art and music at the beginning of the IQ^^ century. — Protestant chiu-ch- song. — Its re-action on Catholic church-music. — Palestrina. — Classic art. — Attempts at resuscitating antique art, — Monody and recitative. — Caccini and Peri. — The Opera . 54 — 62 VI. Italian opera. Venice. — Willaert gives the church-music of Venice a dramatic character. — His pupil Zaruno introduces the pure diatonic system. — A. and J. Gabrieli. — Develop- ment of the Opera. — Monteverde, Cavalu. — Chamber-music style. — The Neapolitan School of A. Scarlatti. — Its pro- pagation throughout Europe. — Artistic singing. — Rivalry of Vm CONTENTS. Fag« the later Neapolitans with Gluck and MozART. — Rossini. — Verdi 63—74 VII. French Opera. Perrin and Cambert, founders of the na- tional opera in France. — Development of the latter by LULLI and Rameau. — Equal temperament. — Comic opera. — Bouf- fonites and Anti-bouffonites. — The Philosophy of Enlighten- ment of the 18th century. — Jean Jacques Rousseau. — Gluck. — The Paris Conservatory of Music. — Foreign com- posers in the service of French opera: Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer 75—91 vm. German opera. First operatic performance in Germany. — Rise of a German national opera in Hamburg. — Reinhard Keiser. — Ennobling of the Song-play by J. A. Hiller. — DiTTERSDORF and Comic Opera. — Mozart's "Entfuhrung" and **Zauberflote". — Beethoven's "Fidelio" 92— 1C3 IX. The Oratorio. Passion and Mysteries in the Middle Age. — The musical congregations of Philip Neri. — Introduction of the dramatic style into the church: Cavaliere, Viadana, Ca- RissiMi. — LoTTi, Caldara, Marcello, the last representatives of the Venetian School. — Development of church-music in Germany: Orlandus Lassus, Eccard, Hans Leo Hasler, Heinrich Schutz. — Mixture of operatic and church styles in Hamburg. — Passion-text of the licentiate Brockes. — Handel and Bach. — Development of musical affairs in En- gland. — Mendelssohn, and his "St. Paul'' and "Elijah" . . 104 — 121 X. Instrumental Music. The Organ, and keyed string-instru- ments. — The Lute. — Tablature. — Bow-instruments and wind-instruments. — Instrumental style. — Instrumental music- forms. — Cyclical forms: Partita, Suite, Sonata. — The mod- ern pianoforte sonata and the orchestral symphony. — German philosophy of the IS^h century 122—140 XI. The Romanticists of the 19*^ century. Influence of ro- manticism on lyric poetry. — Folk-song and art-song. — De- velopment of the latter by Franz Schubert and Robert Franz. — Romantic opera: Spohr, Weber, Marschner. — Romantic instrumental music: Mendelssohn, Schumann. — Songs with- out words. — French romanticists: Berlioz, Liszt, Chopin. — Program-music. — Modern pianoforte-playing 141^156 XII. Richard Wagner 157— ra APPENDIX. Table for memorizing certain dates of musico-historical im- portance 175—178 INDEX 179—185 I. ANTIQUITY. To appreciate rightly and enjoy fully the works of the human mind, we must not only thoroughly study these works themselves, but also be acquainted with the conditions under which they could and had to attain to maturity. If then it may be maintained that we cannot be successfully occupied with the arts and sciences unless we study at the same time the historical course of their de- velopment, this is especially true in regard of Music. This is justly called the most subjective among the arts, for, in view the incorporeity of its material, the quickly passing tone, and in the absence of a prototype and corrective such as the other arts pos- sess in the visible world surrounding us, it seems impossible to estimate the value of a musical art-work according to fixed rules , and in fact, diversity of opinion within this sphere is not infre- quently so wide, that what at one time and in one place is con- sidered beautiful, other times and other men reject as ugly. To acquire therefore a solid foundation for musical judgment the study of history is the only sure way, such a study, that is, as does not content itself with simply taking cognizance of histori- cal facts, but seeks to recognize these in their inter-connexion as effects of general principles. Thus considered, even the seem- ingly barren epochs of music-history will acquire significance, the efforts of former generations will awaken sympathy, even when they were not crowned with immediate success, and to both the past and the onward-pressing present, though their aims may not yet be clear to us, we shall bring a better understanding than would be the case without that assistance. In occupying ourselves with music-history we must, however, if it is to be really profitable to us, not confine ourselves to cer- 2 AKTIQUITT. tain epochs corresponding to the sensationary method*) peculiar to the present time. In the development of music there are no leaps; indeed, it can be said that here the connexion of the va- rious epochs of history is more intimate than in the other de- partments of mental culture. Not even the deep gap between the ancient and the modem world availed to abolish this con- nexion, for the music-forms of the Greeks passed over almost unchanged into the post-christian music, and formed, as will be shown more at length farther on, the basis of the Roman church- song, upon which, again, at a later period the mighty edifice of modem music could lift itself up. But even in still more remote times, among the oldest civ- ilized nations of the ancient world, manifold points present themselves in which their view of music joins hands with that of the more modern nations — reason enough why we should not pass over those earliest culture-epochs in perfect silence, as sometimes is done in musico-historical works of smaller compass. Through all antiquity runs the belief in the divine origin yof music and in its capacity to work miracles. Among the East-Indians Brahma himself is held to be the creator of music, and his sou Nared the inventor of the national musical instrument, the guitar- like Vina, just as among the Greeks the origin of the lyre was traced to Hermes, and among the Egyptians to the god Thaut. If, according to the Greek legend, an Orpheus and an Amphion by means of song tamed wild beasts and built cities, if the trumpets of the Israelites had power to overthrow the walls of Jericho, in the same way, certain melodies of the East-Indians caused him who sang them to be consumed by fire, others had the power of eclipsing the sun, others, again, produced rain, of which latter kind one, on the occasion of a drought in the rice- fields of Bengal, delivered the people from a famine. The music-systems established by the East-Indian scholars exhibit also agreement in many points with those of the other cultured peoples of antiquity. To none of them, the eminently gifted Greeks not excepted, was it granted to discover that which to the modem ear sounds so natural — the division of the Octave *) German, Empfindungsweise, meaning the manner of receiving — way one is affected by — the impressions made on the soul through the senses, •uch as the sight, hearing, etc. Translator. ANTIQUITT. 3 into twelve lialf-steps. Like tlie Greek music-theory, the East- Indian also had the quarter-step, and even still finer tone-differ- ences, and, conformably to the variety of the intervals, a great number of keys, of which the musicologist Soma names no less than nine hundred and sixty. Just here, however, be it observed that the idea of "key" in antiquity was different from the modern one, and comprehended more: the scales of those keys — which latter should more properly be called "tone-combinations" or "me- lodies" — are determined partly by the starting of the octave- series from different degrees of the same scale (thus, c, ^, from the tones of the C-major scale, sung from D to ^, again from E to e etc., but without any chromatic signs, six new scales arise, each having its own peculiar order of intervals), partly by the modification of individual intervals by raising or lowering, partly by overleaping certain degrees of the scale. 'If the acute- ness of the Greeks availed to reduce the multitude of variants originating in this way to an easily intelligible system, the exu- berant mind of the Orientals was unable to distinguish the essen- tial from the accidental, and to discover a universal law under- lying the countless tone-combinations. In strong contrast with the unbridled fantasticism of the East-Indians is the rationalisticaUy sober nature of the Chinese. Qualified as they are for all labors in which success depends upon unremitting industry and attention, yet their performance in those departments in which imagination and mental elevation turn the scale are only of subordinate value. Accordingly, neither could music exercise with them that elevating and inspiring effect as with the Orientals, though this did not prevent its being highly prized as a subject of scientific study and also as a means of educating youth. In the latter respect China shows itself in accord with Greece. "If you would know" — so runs a saying of the first of the Chinese philosophers, Confucius (500 years before Christ) — "whether a country is weU governed and of good mor- als, listen to its music". But we find the same opinion repeatedly expressed by Plato and Aristotle: in another point, too, the phi- losophers of Greece agree with those of China, viz., in that they ascribe to certain tone-successions a special fitness for educating and ennobling the young, and put them for tliis reason under the protection of the laws. — The musical system of the Chinese 4 ANTIQUITY. differs from that of the East-Indians chiefly by its meageniess, if the latter revelled in a multitude of intervals so small that they would not be recognizable by the modem ear, the Chinese went to the other extreme: to them even the diatonic scale is not simple enough, they go farther and deprive it of two of its tones — the Fourth and the Seventh. But here again is seen an analogy of the Chinese with the Greek music, for that scale of the Chinese, c d e g a c — which C. M. VON Weber also has made the basis of his overture to "Turandot" — finds its counter- part in that of Olympus* who, as Aristoxenus relates, omitted in the minor scale the fourth and seventh degrees, and, admiring and adopting the scale constructed after this analogy, composed in it melodies of the Doric key.** Moreover, the effort to inter- rupt the strict diatonic series may be traced even down to the latest times;* at this very day that scale with fourth and seventh lacking survives in the national airs of the Scotch, and the minor scale of the Gypsies, which has been made known through Liszt's '"Hungarian Rhapsodies", follows, with its twice occurring augmented second, the same principle. The obstinate adherence to the traditional, which kept the intellectual life of the Chinese spell-bound and deprived them of the fruits of a culture a thousand years old, hindered them also from farther perfecting their music: even Prince Tsay-Yu, so universally esteemed as music-connoisseur, could not succeed in having the two lacking half- steps admitted into the above -de- scribed scale of five degrees ; to intrude these tones into the scale, said his opponents, was the same as to add to the hand a sixth and seventh finger. It was for the same reason that the Egyptians, who were, artistically, incomparably more richly gifted, were obliged to stop half-way in the career of their mental develop- ment. The high rank that they held for the time being among the civilized peoples of antiquity is attested by the artistic worth * A famous musician of Phrygia, of whom Plutarch says that he was the first to introduce among the Greeks the knowledge of stringed instru- ments; Plato, that his music inflamed his auditors; Aristotle, that it exalted the soul; and Plutarch, that it surpassed in simplicity all other music. Translator. •• As we also learn frpm Aristoxenus, Olympus was on this account reckoned the inventor of the enharmonic tone-genus, of which mention will be made farther on, (p. 20). ANTIQUITY. 5 of their numerous monuments which have been preserved to posterity, as also by the influence that they exercised upon the scientific and artistic culture of the nations around them, as, for instance, when the most celebrated investigators of Greece, a Pythagoras, a Herodotus, and, as late as the fourth century be- fore Christ, a Plato, did not shrink from the voyage across the sea in order to have a share in the Egyptian philosophies. It is true that at Plato's time mental activity among the Egyptians seems to have come to a halt, as we may conclude from the fol- lowing passage in the second book of his "Laws" : "Is it allowed" (he asks) "that everything which to a poet appears beautiful in a poem or a song, should also be taught to the young? This is allowed everywhere except in Egypt, — But why is this not allowed in Egypt? — This is indeed to be wondered at. To the Egyptians, however, it had long been known that* the young in the cities should be accustomed only to beautiful forms and to good music; but what should be the nature of the beautiful forms and good music is determined by their priests, and to neither painters nor musicians nor other artists is it permitted to introduce anything new, differing from those patterns which have been once recognized as beautiful. Thence it comes also that their paintings and statues which were executed ten thousand years ago are in not a single point better or worse than those which are made at the present day". But with this the death-, sentence of the arts was pronounced; for, as soon as it is for- bidden to surpass the ancients, to enlarge the boundaries of art and give sanction to new laws, seK-evidently the creative faculty must become extinct and intellectual stagnation must take its place. That notwithstanding all this, music occupied an important place in the public and private life of the Egyptians, is shown by the figurative representations, which have been discovered in the royal sepulchres and on other monuments, of singers and in- strumentalists, now individually, now united in choirs and orches- tras, as also by the variety of the instruments there depicted, among which the many-stringed harp appears oftenest and gives proof of the luxuriant, pompous character of the music. Yet all endeavors to enrich music outwardly afford no compensation for the lack of interior productiveness. In the history of music Egypt may take only a subordinate position compared with the Hebrews 6 ANTIQUITT. and Greeks, the two nations of antiquity whicli, to be sure, re- ceived from the Egyptians the impulse to intellectual activity, but by their own strength were soon to far surpass their pattern in one way or another. The influence exercised by Egypt on Grecian culture is espe- cially clearly noticeable in the works of fine art of the earliest development-period of Greece, as for example in the so-called Apollo of Tenea which exhibits outright the Egyptian type. Still more important must have been this influence on the culture of the Jewish nation, whose ancestors had as poor nomads taken refuge among the Egyptians, and were compelled to dwell with them for centuries in a condition of dependence. During th*- short national independence which the Hebrews enjoyed after- wards, there was developed among them also a peculiar art whose significance for the public worship as also for the social life is unmistakably evidenced by the countless statements referring thereto in the Old Testament. This temporary upward flight was, however, followed by centuries of political dependence upon nations of a comparatively high civilization, during which time the artistic acquisitions of that short epoch of freedom were of necessity gradually lost, till at length Greek culture, overflowing everything, impressed its seal upon Judaism also. Certainly, the Hebrews have cultivated one side of their nature with a con- sistency which is rare in the history of nations; their attention rather to the inner man than to the exterior life, and the conse- quent purer and higher theory of life which steadfastly resisted all the hostile influences of the surrounding peoples, — these suffi- ciently attest the peculiarity of the Jewish national spirit and account for the interest which has in all ages been taken in the history of its development. But it is precisely these peculiarities of the Hebrews that must raise doubt as to the artistic endow- ment of the latter; moreover, a study in detail of the ancient Hebrew music cannot be remunerative, for the very reason that concerning the nature of the latter as good as nothing has been communicated to us by contemporary writers, and besides, of mon- uments, such as give information of the history of other peoples, there is in the Jewish country an utter lack.* * As the only monument of Jewish antiquity we may regard the relief in the interior of the triumphal arch of Titus, at Rome, in which, in the pro- ANTIQUITY. 7 If, accordingly, we may obtain a somewhat clear idea of the Hebrew music only mediately, through the study of Egyptian and Babylonian antiquities, we have immediate and copious informa- tion concerning the music of the Greeks, in their writings and monuments. Under far more favorable conditions than in the case of the Hebrews they could undertake to develop according to the national taste the elements of the arts and sciences, handed down by the Egyptians. Their teachable nature was assisted by the geographical situation of their country; the facility of maritime intercourse induced them at an early period to open communica- tions, with a view to the exchange of material and intellectual goods, with the seaboard peoples of the Mediterranean, to some extent their superiors in culture. This intercourse was also to conduce to the development of their musical faculties; the impulse to theoretical speculation they received chiefly from Egypt, where even in the remotest antiquity music was cultivated in connexion with mathematical and astronomical investigations; their practical music, on the other hand, was influenced preeminently by the connexions with Asia Minor, for from this country Greece re- ceived, with the grape-culture and the Bacchus-worship, also the wdldly passionate music belonging to it, accompanied as it was with shrill and far-sounding wind-instruments. This music being blended with the indigenous music, arranged according to strict proportion, the cooperation of their heterogeneous elements called into existence that national music of whose elevating power the ancient writers give testimony in many places, and which attained its highest effect in tragedy. If we accept Westphal's* opinion as the correct one, accord- ing to which in the ancient tragedy not only the choruses but also the monologes and dialogues were recited musically, and it at all events "approached more closely to our modem opera than to our reciting drama", this art-species may rightfully claim the special attention of the music-historian. The story of its development is sketched in a few words. It takes its origin, ac- cording to the statement of Droysen (in his "Didaskalien zum cession of Jewish captives, among other sacred treasures of the Temple of Je- rusalem is carried also the metal wind-instrument of the Jews, mentioned in the Old Testament under the name of Schofar or ELeren. * Rudolph Westphal, Greek Rh}'thmics anrl H"rraonie8. 8 ANTIQUrrT. 'Aischylos'") from the festivals celebrated at the time of the vin- tage in honor of Bacchus, at which, amid impassioned songs a goat was offered to the god.* Choruses and dancing of the par- ticipants of the festival disguised as satyrs, whose leader recited in song during the pauses the sufferings of the god, formed the principal element of these rural festivals, which with the advance- ment of civilization attracted the attention of the cities also, and soon assumed an artistic form. Thespis (about 600 B. C.) was the first to infuse into them the dramatic element, by bringing the narrator into a determinate relation to the chorus; he likewise regulated the movements of the chorus and gave it a costume corresponding to the subject of the action. If these artistic inno- vations of Thespis found, on the one hand, violent adversaries, for example in the law-giver Solon, yet the great public seems to have recognized his efforts, as we may conclude from his art-tours, on which he is said to have carried his properties with him on a cart — that Thespis-cart, the memory of which, as symbol of a travelling troupe of players, is preserved to this day. A series of advances was still necessary before Tragedy ar- rived at that degree of exterior and interior perfection in which we find it at the time of Aeschylus. But all the improvements that it experienced during those years of development, the perfecting of the arts of dancing and gesture, the introduction of a second actor and herewith of dialogue, the use of the mask and the buskin, which seemed necessary for making the outward show harmonize with the majestic representations that people made to themselves of the heroes, — all this does not suffice to explain the powerful effect that Aeschylus' tragedy produced on the minds of the Greeks. This effect had its real cause rather in the national upsoaring of Greece resulting from the heroic prosecution of the Persian wars, as also in the deeply religious sensationary method of the Grecian people who at that time had not yet forgotten the original significance of tragedy as an act of divine worship. The philosophy of that age, whose aim was the investigation of divine things, the poetic strain in which it set forth its doctrines, nou- rished the enthusiasm of the people for the lofty and sublime, * The Greek word for "tragedy" — Tragodia — is compounded from Tragos" a goat, and "Ode" a song; hence signifies literally ''song at the sacrifice of the goat." ANTIQUITY. 9 and just as poetizing and thinking (reasoning), the diametrical opposites among the mental activities* met in the works of the philosophers, so also in the dramas of Aeschylus. If, moreover, it be remembered that he himself repeatedly staked his life on the battle-field for the honor of his native land, it is not difficult to understand the severity of his ethical conceptions, his firm ad- herence to the poet's mission "to teach the citizens virtue and right". So little as the prophets of Israel their powerful exhorta- tions — observes Droysen — did he compose his dramas for mere esthetic reasons. They were to him sermons to his people, and only in this view have the seriousness of his thoughts, the gloomy magnificence of his language, the deeply passionate repose of his theory of life, their whole power. It was necessary to sketch a picture of the poet Aeschylus, in order to form an idea of his merits as musician ^ since ais regards the latter point nothing more is known than that he was also the musical composer of his dramas, as, generally speaking, antiquity applies the word "poet" (poietes) to him only who com- bines in his person the poet and the musician. Concerning the nature of his music we can speak by way of conjecture only, yet we may assume with some certainty that in strict adhesion to the rhythm of the verse it was like our recitative or the chant of the Roman liturgy, whose formulas are modelled after the ca- dence of ordinary speech and are rooted in primeval traditions. If, accordingly, the music of Aeschylus' tragedy is hardly to be compared, in point of variety and absoluteness, with the modem music, this defect of the tone-language was doubtless counter- balanced by wealth of musical elements in the spoken language** ♦ "The object of Poetry", — says Lord Bulwer, in his translation of Schiller's Poems and Ballads — "differing essentially from that of abstract Wisdom, is not directly to address the reasoning faculty — but insensibly to rouse it through the popular medium of the emotions. * * * * The fault of certain of Schiller's poems (which he names) "is, that they strain too much the faculty with which Poetry has least to do, viz., the mere reason", etc. Translator, *• By musical elements of speech are meant the so-called onomato-poetic words, t. e., such as indicate their meaning by their sound alone, as, ding- dong, thundery cuckoo, buzz, howl, hiss, tick-tack etc., in distinction to those whose meaning is conventional and which become intelligible to us only through education, as is the case with all words not included in the species 10 ANTIQUITY. (in its then stage of development). It may even be assumed that the artistic effect of Aeschylus' dramas is chiefly due to the equi- librium that prevailed between the language of emotions and that of ideas, between tone and speech, a relation that is possible only at a time when neither one nor the other is yet compelled by the degree of its development to follow special paths. This relation of equilibrium was, however, not to exist long. As early as Sophocles' time the "gloomy magnificence" of Aeschy- lus' poetry gives way to a clearer, more determinate manner of expression, but Euripides exhibits himself so predominantly as word-poet that we can easily understand his determination to leave the musical setting of his tragedies to another, a musician by pro- fession. In intimate connexion with this poetico-musical trans- formation is the tendency, inaugurated about the middle of the 5*^ century B. C, of the Grecian philosophy. The now generally accepted Sophistic philosophy no longer — unlike the previous schools — regards the universe, generally and collectively, but man^ considered in himself alone, as the worthiest object of investigation; but in order to fathom the human soul a suitable language is the first requisite, and the cultivation of such a one, as also of grammar, of the art of consistent thinking and of oral interchange of thought (of logic and of dialectics) was of necessity a matter of primary importance to the disciples of sophistic phi- first mentioned. The history of the development of language shows how, with the progress of that development, the former element was more and more supplanted by the second. "At the beginning" says R. Wagner (Collective Writings and Poems, article "Music of the Future") "the formation of the conception of an object was almost identical with the subjective sensation of it, and the assumption that the first human language must have been very similar to song would perhaps not seem ridiculous. From a signification of words which was felt in a manner in any case altogether sensuously subjec- tive, human language evolved itself in a more and more abstract sense, in such a way that finally but a merely conventional meaning of the words re- mained, which deprived sensation of any share in understanding them, while at the same time their construction was made utterly dependent on rules which had to be learned." It need not be proved, that a language that has reached such a stage of development and is, so to speak, half torpid, is incomparably less favorable to the flight of poetic fancy than in the condition of youthful flexibility, and that the revivification of the "musical" elements that have been lost to language, must be for poetry, especially wlien intended to be joined with music, of very great advantage. Compare Chap. VII of this work. ANTIQUITT. 11 losophy. These endeavors had the twofold result of promoting knowledge and of rendering more and more intimate the rela- tions of man to man. On the other hand, it is not without good grounds that the predicate "sophistical" is at the present day applied in a reproachful sense only; for as mastery in these arts of logic and rhetoric became greater and greater, virtuosity was made the chief thing among the sophists, to that degree that language had to serve less frequently for the investigation of truth than for dialectic sham fights. To what extent eloquence had at this time become an end to itself is shown by the fact that one of those virtuosos of oratory undertook on his art-travels to speak, in two discourses in immediate succession, once for^ the second time againat one and the same thing. In consequence of this catastrophe music could no longer retain the high place it had till then taken in the life of the Greeks. Language no longer needed, for the aims it now pursued, the cooperation of musical tone. But meanwhile in the domain of music a similar process of development had been gone through: a new species of poetry, called, after the instrument used by the poet for accompanying his recitation, lyric, had attained among the Greeks, especially the lonians inhabiting the coast of Asia Minor, a high degree of cultivation. In contradistinction to the choral songs, which express the sentiments of a universality, in the poems of the Ionian lyrist, of an Arion^ a Sappho, an Ana- creon, the individual sentiments, the moods of the multifariously agitated particular soul attain to artistic representation. Here music could and had to play an incomparably more important part than in the other species of poetry, here it was seen to be, in the faculty of expressing the most secret emotions of the soul, superior to spoken language. Afld, just as language, with its ever increasing power of expression, could dispense with the association of music, so also music now began to withdraw from words, to follow thenceforth its own way, — according to Herder's expression **a dangerous separation for the defenceless human race; for music without words transplants us into a realm of obscure ideas; it awakens, in each one after its fashion, feelings slumbering in the heart, which in the torrent or the tide of artificial tones without words find no guide or leader" (Zur schonen Litteratur und Kunst^ Part XVI, p. 33). From this time forward instrumental music 1 2 ANTIQUITY. developed itself as a particular species; lyre and "aulos" — tlie latter generally anglicised as "flute", but in form and tone more closely corresponding to our clarinet or oboe — appear as solo-instruments in the musaic contests, and in one of the Pythian games instrumental virtuosity, in the person of the flutist Sakadas, who even undertook to represent in tones Apollo's fight with the serpent, celebrates a brilliant triumph. To account fully for the short duration of the palmy days of Greek art we must once more refer to the effects of the sophistic philosophy and its principles, closely allied as they were to scep- ticism. "Man is the measure of all things. As any thing seems to any one, so it is for him. Only relative truth exists. The existence of the gods is uncertain" — such is the assertion of one of its chiefs, Peotagoras ; but nothing could be more inimical to artistic enthusiasm than the axiomatic tendency to doubt that is here expressed; in a special manner the esteem for tragedy, which, conformably to its origin, was regarded as an act of divine wor- ship, must have decreased in proportion as the religious belief of the people was shaken. After the leadership in Greece had, upon the close of the Peloponnesian war (B. C. 404), been trans- ferred from Athens to Sparta, the art-creative faculty of the Gre- cian people gradually died out, and became totally extinct coin- cidently with the loss ot the national independence resulting from the victory of Philip of Macedon at Chaeronea (B. C. 328 . The preservation of that which previous generations had created now becomes the mission of the Grecian mind; making poetry gives way to speculative thought, artistic practice to theory and the structure of systems. Musical theory also finds its representatives, the most prominent of whom was Aristoxenus, surnamed "the musician", the first one to recognize the hearing as the sole cri- terion of tone-relationships, in opposition to the school of Pytha- goras, which, as in everything else so also in music, made num- her exclusively the regulating principle. Of the music-systems which then arose we shall give farther on, in passing over to speak of the modern music, begotten of those systems, the most important details; at present we will close our survey of the musical achievements of antiquity with the Roman empire. If it was the mission of Greece, as antitype and teacher to show the world the way — as Isocrates the orator once expresses ANTIQUITY. 13 himself — the aim of the Romans was, before every thing else, to win and consolidate material dominion. It was, accordingly, above all things practical and political problems whose solution was to occupy them, the artistic ones could not, along side of the others, find any consideration. And when at lenght they had ac- complished their supreme end, the sovereignty over all the nations of the earth which were known to them, it was now too late to make up for what they had neglected in the domain of ideas: Rome had at all times to be content to satisfy its artistic require- ments by borrowing from friendly nations, especially from Greece. This was in fact done at the time of the emperors on a magnif- icent scale; just as the globe was pillaged in order to heap up the works of plastic art of all schools and all lands in the public squares and the palaces of Rome, so too the city became a rally- ing-point of the musicians also of all the nations subject to the empire. The feeling for massive effects appears to have been pre- dominant among the musical public of Rome, for as early as Julius Cesar's time Suetonius narrates that once during a public solemnity twelve thousand male and female singers and players sojourned in the city; and Horace complains at the time of Au- gustus "that the modest flute with few holes, which satisfied the fathers, was forced, on account of the great dimensions of the playhouses of his time, to give way to noisy instruments." If this musical tendency, whose aim was powerful effect, can in no wise awaken our interest, it must excite downright disgust to see art dragged through the mire as it was under the emperor Nero, who had, as is well knowTi, among other hallucinations that of publicly figuring as virtuoso in singing and on the harp. His voice was so unmusical and his delivery so abominable, that on his first appearance (A. D. 60) the listeners knew not whether to laugh or to weep, and it was only by the help of a well-organised claque that the expressions of displeasure could be smothered. He afterwards undertook an art-journey to Greece, where he caused liimself to be crowned with every prize that he could in any way lay his hands on, without meeting with any opposition what- ever — a sad evidence of the demoralization that had invaded this soil which had once been consecrated by the muses. Soon after this, however, Nero's fantastic artist-career was to come to and end. In the year 60, A. D., Galea was proclaimed emperor, 14 ANTIQUITT. and nothing remained for Nero but to take his own life, at the age of thirfy — a life which disgraced not only him but also his contemporaries, whose servility not even their artistic con- science kept within limits. Under such circumstances it could be only a gain for human- ity that the torch of the ancient civilization, that had so long lightened the world, was at length extinguished, when the Roman colossus at the first impact of the barbarians bursting in from the North fell in ruins. The bright light radiated from Greece had, it is true, to be followed for a century long by darkness, yet duiing this period of seeming stagnation a new spirit and new forms were to attain their development, and most especially with reference to music we may apply in this case the words of Schilleb: **The Ancient, crumbling, falls; the times are changed n And new life blooms and springs up from the ruins.* n. THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. The mighty revolution that with the introduction and pro- pagation of Christianity took place in all the domains of the in- tellectual life, necessarily brought with it in its train a funda- mental change in art-theories also. Yet here the new spirit is manifested at first with diffidence only: just as Greece had in the infantile stage of its artistic development most closely followed Egypt, so now the early Christian civilization leans upon that of the Greeks. In this epoch also it is plastic art that affords us the positive evidence of the absolute dependence of the younger upon the elder civilization ; the paintings in the Roman catacombs, in which the early Christians met for purposes of divine worship, exhibit everywhere the familiar figures and situations of the an- cient mythology and fable applied to the illustration of biblical events; Orpheus, taming wild beasts, answers with slight modifi- cation for Daniel in the lions' den; Hermes carrying the goat, a type often reproduced by the Greek artists, for the Good Shep- herd carrying home the stray lamb on his shoulders; Jonah and the whale that spat him out are scarcely distinguishable from Arion and his dolphin. To assume a higher degree of independence in the music of the first Christians would be in no wise justifiable; the testimonies of contemporary writers afford, in the absence of musical documents of that period, ample proofs of the contrary. For, if Pliny the younger relates of the Christian congregations of his time "that they sing to Christ, as to a god, an antiphonal hymn", and the Jewish scholar Philo, residing at Alexandria, says of the Therapeutse and Essenes, two sects converted to Christian- ity by the Apostles themselves, that they accompanied their 18 THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. liturgical song with religious gestures, with steps forward and backward, all this points to an immediate connexion with the music and mimic art of the Greek tragedy. It may perhaps be assumed that from the beginning of the Christian era it was the earnest desire of the disciples of the new religion to simplify the Greek music, which had become more and more voluptuous — one of the earliest of the fathers of the Church; Clement of Al- exandria (towards the end of the 2d century), on this account for- bade the members of his congregation the use of the chromatic tone-series in the music of the church, — on the whole, however, it may be conjectured that the chant of the first Christians, though filled with a new spirit, was nevertheless as to its form a faithful copy of the ancient music. Nor did the introduction of Christianity as state religion under Constantine the Great, A. D. 333, avail to bring about a sudden change in the musical situation; even under the political conditions which the migration of nations (A. D. 375) had totally altered, the power of Greek civilization appears yet unbroken. That the time was not yet come to exchange it for another the so-called barbarians may very likely have felt; for with few ex- ceptions they were by no means wanting in reverence for the civilization of the old world; as also they are on the whole to be held far less answerable for the ravages and devastations com- mitted at that time than the Romans, demoralized by centuries of corruption, among whom avarice and frivolity had stifled every feeling of veneration for their glorious past. But of all the peoples that about the middle of the first Christian century overran Italy, the Goths, as being indisputably the most gifted among them, deserve the most esteem; especially did the reign of their king Theodoric (died A. D. 520) in those da3^s of wild ferment exert a wholesome influence on the reorganization of affairs. In the liistory of music likewise his name deserves to be mentioned; at his court resided the musicographers, Boethius and Cassiodorus, the last scientific representatives of antiquity; the former highly esteemed even up to the end of the Middle Age as a musical authority, although he made his appearance only as translator and expounder of the older Greek music; the other, Cassiodorus, to be reckoned among Christian authors, in so far at least as he was converted in old age to Christianity. That the fame oi TIIE MUSIC OF THE EAPtLY CIimSTIAN AGE. 17 Theodoric as a connoisseur of art extended far beyond the borders of Ms kingdom is evidenced — not to give other proofs — by the petition addressed to him by the Frankish king Clovis to send him a citherode* who might domesticate in his country also the art — so greatly flourishing in Italy — of singing to the accompani- ment of the cithara. It was Boethius who received from Theo- doric, with the most flattering compliments, the commission to select the artists most fitted for that purpose. With Boethius, who afterwards feU into disgrace with his king, and, being accused of participation in a conspiracy of the Roman national party against the Gothic rule, was executed (A. D. 524) at Pavia, the mission of antiquity in respect to the pro- gress of civilization had come to an end. But before turning to the musical reconstructions now inaugurated, let us make brief mention of the Greek music-system, on which they are based. The foundation of this system is not, as with the modems, the eight-tone series, or Octave, but a series of four tones in the compass of a minor** Fourth, the Tetrachord, whose origin is to be traced to the four-stringed lyre. The Tetrachord, which inva- riably includes two progressions of a step*** and one of a half- step,f is diff'erently named according to the relative position of this half-step, viz:' Doric (when the latter is at the bottom, as: ef — g — «), Phrygian (when in the middle, as : d — ef — g\ or Lydian (when at the top, as: c — d — ef). From the junction of two tetrachords of the same species arise the (respectively Doric, Phrygian, Lydian) Octave species (Harraonia) — Doric. ^ ---^ S • Prom the Greek Kitharodos, one who accompanies his singing by playing on the cithara, a stringed instrument most resembling the guitar. Translator. •* The word "minor" is here used preferably to, and as identical with, the old-fashioned expression "perfect" (to which corresponds the word "rein" in the German original). See my Primer of Modern Tonality, 3d edition. Note, p. 53. Translator. *** Formerly called "tone", or "whole-tone". Translator. + Formerly called "half-tone" or "semitone". Translator. 2 18 THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGS. Phrygian. $^=^^^^ Lydian. I ^ -^-- ^^ ^— ^=^^^ ^ ^ to whicli were subsequently added four more, respectively begin- ning on tbe remaining tones of the diatonic scale. In the above examples we find (at the*) a whole atep between the two tetra- chords; this was called disjunctive union. But a union may also be effected conjunctively — as the expression was — by making the highest tone of the lower tetrachord form at the same time the lowest one of the upper, and this procedure, applied to the Doric tetrachord, gave rise to a new system, viz: to the Doric octave-species were added a tetrachord below (b c d e) and one above (e^f g a), and lastly, this series composed of two tetrachord- pairs was completed by adding the low a (called "Proslambano- menos", i. e., the accessory tone), as in the following example* ^ i22 !?■ . Boric octave-species. Thus was gained a two-octave minor scale, a system substantially differing from the octave-species in that it can — like the modem major and minor scales — be transposed to each of the twelve tones (counting by half-steps ^ comprised within the Octave, the order of intervals remaining — unlike the case of the octave- species — always the same. This transposing-scale (Tonos) becomes tlie so-called complete system (systema teleion) by the addition of one more tetrachord (a Z>b — c — d)y conjunctively with the parent tetrachord [e f — g — a , whereby the gap 'the whole step a — b) lit the meeting of both these tetrachords is filled up, and at the same time it is rendered possible to modulate into other keys primarily into the Subdominant). I THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. 19 Complete System (Systema teleion)^ , , Synemmendn. , , ^ ^. -^^==g- ^_a- i=^ _ — ^ — c-r — : z:i^ ^ ^ .rj -^ , ' ' Diezeugmenon. The tone common to two tetrachords united conjunctively is called Synaphe (connecting-tone, or point of contact^ the gap arising in the other case, Diazeuxis Separation). Accordingly the tetrachord which is separated from its lower neighbor by a step is called diezeugmenon oi the disjunct), and the interpolated one synemmenon (of the conjunct, i. e. strings or tones). We have thus indicated the chief points in which the Greek music-theory coincides with that of the Christian era; for, up to the time that two of the octave-species — the Ionian (our major scale^ and the ^olian ^our minor scale) — attained the suprem- acy,* the octave-species collectively continued centuries long in use and have been retained in the Catholic liturgy even to the present time. Moreover we must emphasize as an essential differ- ence between the antique and the modem music the incompar- ably greater melodic variety of the former. If the Greeks had no knowledge of harmony in the modem sense, i. ^., polyphony, yet it seems as if, in compensation, their ear was from the melodic side very much more finely cultivated than ours. This is indicated by the various tone- genera!!^ which were formed within the Doric tetrachord by changing the place of the middle tone: thus from the diatonic genus e f g a^ for instance, was formed the chromatic * The need of reducing the seven octave-species to two specially charac- teristic ones was not fully satisfiod until towards the end of the 17th century, yet it seems to have existed long before. This is indicated by the predomin- ance of the two modes — major and minor — in the folk-songs of the most ancient tradition; moreover by a remark of Plato, who, in his "Rei^ublic" (Book m, Chap. X), relates a conversation between Socrates and the musician Glaukon concerning the character of the different octave-species, in the course of which Socrates, after characterizing two particular ones, concludes : "These two octave-species, a powerful one and a gentle one, which will best reproduce the tones of the unfortunate and the fortunate, of the thoughtful and the brave, let these be retained." ♦* The expression "tone-genus" has reference to the relative places, within the tetrachord, of the steps and the half-steps. {Translator,) 20 THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. genus by lowering the ^-string a half-step, and the enharmonic* by lowering g another half-step, and / a quari;er-step, as here exemplified, the x representing the quarter-step. Chromatic. Jiatonic. ' 2half-lii;^; Enharmonic. 2 steps: 1 half-step. 1 step and a half. 2 qua rter s teps; 2 st eps. ^^S^^^^^ V2 1 1 V2 % IV2 V4 V4 2 The richness, or more properly the polychromatic effect, of the Greek melodies, was still farther increased by the applica- tion of still smaller intervals, the so-called Chroai muances), and it is easily understood that the reigning spirit of the young Chris- tian church had to strive for a simplification of the musical system. Not long after the afore-mentioned prohibition by Clement of Al- exandria of the use of the chromatic genus, the Christian church gives a second sign of musical life. The constant recurrence of ecclesiastical holy-days had necessitated the adoption of certain standards for the execution of church-song, and, in order to pre- serve these for future generations also, the first-singing schools were established by Pope Sylvester (A. D. 314i and his successor Hilary. It was, moreover, all the more necessary to provide for the education of church-singers, inasmuch as, owing to the ad- herence of the Church to the Latin language and the gradual decay of the latter as vulgar tongue, the participation of the laity in the church-song had of its own accord to cease, and in fact soon afterward the council of Laodicea (A. D. 367) made a decree that "no one should sing in church other than the singers ap- pointed to do so from their pulpit". Still more effectively than under those pontiffs was music far- thered in the same century under Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (died A. D. 397 , and two centuries later (590) under Pope Gre- gory THE Great. The former took an important step for the sim- plification of the music-system, by selecting for the use of divine service, from among the Greek octave-species the four respectively * Some authors, among them Fr. Bellermann, consider this genus an in- vention of bad singers, who had the mannerism of sliding from one tone to another by passing through the intermediate intervals, — just as the porta- mento is abused by bad singers of the present time. ( Translator,) THE ML'SIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. 21 beginning with c?, e, f and g, which were subsequently called au- thentic modes* To these Gregory added four more, respectively beginning with the Fourth below the authentic, which were called (from the Greek word "plagios", i. e. oblique, sidewise) plagal modes, collaterals, as it were, of the others.** Thus the number of the church-modes was increased to eight. It is to be observed, how- ever, that the plagal are not independent keys in the same sense as the authentic ; they are to be regarded as merely a transposition * The expression "mode" corresponds to the modern *^ey^, or "scale". It is applied also to a melody or chant, such as, for instance, is often called a Gregorian "tone". Translator. ** Here follow illustrations of these eight so-called "Ecclesiastical Modes"^ or "Gregorian Tones", the black notes representing the respective "finals" (in the modern sense, key-notes). Changes of nomenclature will be noticed, the former Phrygian mode here becoming Dorian, and vice-versa, — etc. (compare Exs. p. 17). These changes are supposed to have been made about the IQtii century. Translator. Authentic Modes (Tones), 1"* Tone. Dorian. m Plagal Modes (Tcnes), 2* Tone. Hypo-dorian. :3^=sr. 3'd Tone. Phrygian. zzr^ ^ ^ ^ 4}^ Tone. Hypo-phrygian. .-=V5— 5^^- V 5«» Tone. Lydian. 77 ^ ^ 6*^ Tone. Hypo-lydian. 7** Tone. Mixo-lydian. ^^^ 8** Tone. Hypo-mi3fo-lydian. =31 ^ ._ :;^=^g=zgzi:^ To the above scales were added in the course of time the following four* 9th Tone, ^olian. i -.^ — a. -,5^«'- 10"' Tone. Hypo-aeolian. 22=^ ll*** Tone. Ionian. 12*'* Tone. Hypo-ionian. ^ir^ 77 ^ '^-^ir-^' '"l^'^Tr 22 THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CIIRISTIAN AGE. of the former, in this wise, viz ; that the lower part of the scale, containing the Fifth, remains in its plat^e, while the upper part, containing the Fourth (Tetrachord , is transposed an Octave lower. The intimate connexion of an authentic with its plagal mode — a relationship admirably characterized by the writers of the Middle Age by means of the expressions "male" and "female" — is seen most clearly in the circumstance that the musical center of gra- vity, the "final", is common to both; the authentic mode has it in the lower part of its compass, the plagal, on the other hand, in the middle. The scale of the plagal modes, in other words, has its final (key-tone) on the Fourth^ the melody roaming above and below it within the compass of an Octave. On this principle the melodies also were classified as "authentic" or "plagal", according as they extended from the final to its Octave and back, or, from the final to the upper Fifth and lower Fourth^ ending, of course, on the final.* Of the character of the Ambrosian chant we have no know- ledge save through the meager accounts of contemporary writers, inasmuch as it was at an early date merged into the Gregorian and in time thoroughly amalgamated with it. From their descrip- tions we know only this much, that it was "solemn" and "extremely sweet", and for a while was more highly esteeiiied than even the chant of the Roman church; moreover it is called "metrical", by which is meant that it made account, after the ancient manner, of the prosodial quantity of the syllables, hereby essentially differ- ing from the Gregorian Chant, in which the tones had no deter- minate lenght, and which was therefore also called cantus planus, t. e., even or plain chant. True, this "evenness" of the Grego- rian chant is not be taken too literally, as if no difference whatever was made in the duration of the notes; in fact, it was * Accordingly, the respective first themes of Schubert's j&> Trio and Beethoven's By Symphony (Eroica) would belong to different modes, the for- mer to the authentic, the latter to the plagal. Schubert. " ^=£jzz=3zlz^ ^i|^g iS>- Beethoven. ^=^4^^=ds^ m THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. 23 optional with the singer, especially as soloist, to treat the syllables of the iex^ as in expressive speech, lengthening or shortening them at pleasure. Still, even here the restraints of prosody that hampered the antique music as also its near relation the Ambro- Stan chanty were thrown off. The liberation of music from the shackles of metrics, says Dr. Ambros ^Geschichte der Musik, Vol. 11), severed the tie that had up to that time bound the Chris- tian music to the antique, and the deep significance of St. Gre(J- ORy's musical reform lies in this, that music was now actually emancipated from poetry, in which it had hitherto made its ap- pearance dependently, almost as integrant part. The primacy that Pope Gregory the Great had acquired for the Koman church brought about an ever greater spread of Chris- tianity and simultaneously of the music connected with pubKc worship. Both found an energetic protector in Charlemagne, that enlightened ruler who was able not only to subjugate nations resisting civilization, but also to elevate them intellectually. Rightly understanding that only the benefit of a higher culture could avail to reconcile permanently the conquered nations to his rule, he founded schools throughout the whole of his extensive kingdom, among which those at Metz, Soissons, Fulda, Mayence, Treves and St. Gall soon attained to high renown. At all these schools music was cultivated equally with the other branches of learning, prin- cipally as a science ; but from the practical side also it was zeal- ously fostered by the emperor, church-song as well as secular music. He caused his secretary Eginhard to compile a collection of the heroic songs of his time, which unfortunately is lost; he had his daughter instructed in music three hours daily; he himself never failed to take part in the singing during public worship — in one of his portraits he appears in the midst of the choristers — and he repeatedly sent to Rome for chanters, that they might by their example refine the rough voices of his Frankish singers. Thus was the art of church-song enabled to develop itself more and more abundantly in the north of Europe also, especially in the school at Metz, which became greatly celebrated for its style of singing. Of these art-missionaries sent from Rome there were two that laid the foundation for the musical splendor which the mon- astery of St. Gall radiated during the period of intellectual 24 THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. darkness from the eighth to the twelfth century. Petkus and RoMANUS were the names of the two singers who, by command of the Pope, and provided with an authentic transcript of the so- called Antiphonary — a collection of church-song prepared by St. Gregory — made a pilgrimage to the north for propagating the musical gospel. In crossing the Alps Romanus fell ill, and it was only with difficulty that he reached the monastery of St. Gall; but here he was so affectionately cared for by the monks that even after his recovery he could not make up his mind to leave the hospitable abode, and — having obtained the Pope's permission — remained there to the end of his life, with him the Antiphonary, which to this day is preserved in the monastic library at St. Ga^l. From this time forward begins among the monks of the monastery an unusually earnest scientific and artis- tic activity, the results of which are recorded by the chroniclers among them, most diffusely by Ekkehard*, the fourth of this name, in his "Casus S. Galli", written about A. D. 1000. Much was done for the cultivation of music by the two Notkers espe- cially, the one with the surname Labeo the large-lipped), as author of the oldest treatise on music in the German (old High- German) language, the other, Notker Balbulus (the stammerer), as inventor of a new art-species, the Sequences. The nature of this kind of melodies is indicated by their name : they were origin- ally appendices, long-winded coloratures, with which the last tone of the "Hallelujah" was ornamented. These coloratures, which originally were improvised, grew in time to be regular melodies, to which, for better memorizing them, words were adapted. One of these melodies arranged and suppHed with text by Notker Balbulus, has not only been retained in the CathoKc church- service but also passed over into the Protestant Lutheran) choral- song: it is the sequence "Media vita in morte sumus" (in German, "Mitten wir im Leben sind von dem Tod umfangen": in English, "In the midst of life we are by death surrounded"), to the writing of which Notker received the impulse when on a ramble in the wild chasm near St. Gall, the so-called "Martinstobel" (Martin's * Victor Scheffel has utilised the accounts given by this historian foi a vivid description of the monastic life at St. Gall in his romance entitled '^Ekkehard". THE MUSIC OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGE. 25 glen), at tlie sight of a workman who was killed there while building a bridge. Besides vocal music, instrumental performance also was in- dustriously practised in the monastery of St. Gall. Of the monk TUOTILO the chronicle relates that he played quite skilfully on various kinds of wind and stringed instruments, and instructed the young nobles of the neighborhood in the use of them. Here, as in the North generally, instrumental music was sure to find many lovers for the reason that the climate was less favorable than that of the countries of southern Europe to the development of the vocal organs, and consequently the sweetness of the Italian singing was denied to the northern voices. That in this respect the singers of St. Gall also, for all the ripeness of their musical culture, had to stand in the background, is shown by the words of a traveller from Italy who, after an evening musical performance during his stay in the monastery, wrote in his diary: "The men this side of the Alps, though they make the thunder of their voices to roar towards heaven, can never mount to the sweetness of soft modulation. Truly barbarous is the roughness of these throats, hardened by drink ; when they try, by lowering and rais- ing the tone, to sing with sweetness, nature shudders, and it sounds like a wagon rattling over the frozen pavement in winter- time". The author of this sharp criticism hardly dreamed, perhaps, that the northerners so despised by him had a mission to enrich music with one of its most important accessories. It was in the north of Europe that that element was to be developed which may be regarded as precisely the characteristic feature of the modem as distinguished from the ancient music, viz: polyphony. The following section will show how insignificant were the germs from which — only, it is true, after the lapse of many centuries of hard labor — the art could shoot forth whose climax is indicated by the name of Palestrina. ra. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. Before we more closely consider the advances made in murfif by the northern nations, we must make mention of another people, which during the centuries of mediaeval storm and stress exercised a fostering influence — if not specially upon music, at least — upon the development of culture in general, viz: the Arabians. The capacity of this race to participate in the intellectual labor of humanity is indicated even by the writers of antiquity. But these qualifications attained their full development only in conse- quence of the religious and social reform brought about by Mahomet (A. D. 622) ; under its influence the Orient was able to lift itself vithin a short time to a plane of civilization to which Europe vas to attain only after centuries later. Nor did it suffice to the l-)llowers of Islam to establish only on their native soil sites which, like Bagdad and Damascus, spread over the world the fame of oriental culture and civilization; in the very next century they were impelled to propagate the doctrine of the prophet even beyond their own part of the globe. In a trice North-Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules was subjugated, and after crossing the Straits of Gibraltar (A. D. 711) an end was put to the Gothic rule in Spain, which had already been strongly shaken by party quarrels. The kingdom of the Caliphs arose from the ruins and attained with surprising rapidity to a high political and intellec- tual prominence, and its capital city Cordova was soon able to take rank with the previously mentioned centres of culture of the Orient. The Arabians distinguished themselves pre-eminently by fostering the sciences, in which the numerous Jews residing in Spain could aid them all the more effectually on account of not THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 27 being, for their part, impeded in their intellectual activity by any kind of material pressure, as they were later, in consequence of religious fanaticism under the Christian rulers of the land. For the rest of Europe the sovereignty of Islam in Spain came to be of -great importance through the circumstance, above everything else, that by the agency of the scholars residing in Spain the rest of Europe became acquainted — primarily, to be sure, in Latin versions only — with the literature of Grecian antiquity. The artistic influence also of the Spanish Arabians on the neighboring peoples cannot have been insignificant, to judge by their performances in the domain of architecture, whose im- portance and unique character are attested by the monuments which are still extant, especially the grand mosque at Cordova and the royal palace of the Alhambra at Granada. From doing as much for music the Arabians appear to have been hindered by that medley of soberness and grotesqueness which characterizes oriental art in general. The same spirit of restriction that is seen in the ornamentation of their edifices, and which, for keeping inviolate the law of the Koran against symbolical representations of natural objects, changes every ornament into mathematical figures — called, after their inventors, arabesques -— this spirit is expressed in the oriental music also with its exuberance of ornamentation, and hinders it from attaining to solid structures. Just as little, however, as the practical music of the Arabs, was their musical theory (although, as Dr. Ambros says, not a whit behind that of the ancient Greeks in subtlety and intricacy) able to afi"ord any starting-point whatever for a musical reorganization. To labor creatively in this sense was reserved to the Nations of the North, If nature had denied them the euphony of the southern voices, they had received, in compensation, the talent for tone-combinations of every kind, in a higher degree than the in- habitants of southern Europe. Let us here once more refer to the significance of instrumental music in relation to that talent. In the first place the instruments afi'orded, with their fixed number of strings, or — in the case of wind-instruments — holes, a much surer foot-hold to theoretical speculation than the human voice, which can wander through intervals of infinitely different extent; but the influence of instrumental performance upon musical com- position was in a high degree stimulating and purifying, first, 28 THE BEGINNINGS OF TOLYPHONIC MUSIC. because the instruments allow to the composer's imagination freer play than the vocal setting, cramped by the limited compass of the human voice as also by the text; then too because a piece of music without words has quite special need of inner coherence, 80 as not to degenerate into empty trifling. We may accordingly assume without hesitation that polyphonic music took its starting- point not from the land of song but from that of instrumental music, and that it was practically executed on instruments long before any one began to apply it in song or to treat it theoret- ically. The correctness of the latter assumption is vouched for more- over by the nature of the bow-instruments as they appear on the oldest monuments. The viols here represented have mostlj' three strings ; but as the bridge is flat and the depressions intro- duced in the modern violin-body are lacking, the bow necessarily had to touch all three strings at once, thus producing a tone-com- bination like that which is still heard on the Scotch bag-pipe and the hurdy-gurdy of our time : on the highest string a melody was played, while te two lower ones sustained the key-tone and its Fifth, after the manner of an "organ-point". That the first attempts in polyphonic singing, originally improvisations of a second voice to a melody of the Gregorian church-song, were instigated by the playing of such instruments is indicated by the name applied to them — "ar5 organand^ (literally, art of "organating"*j for in early mediaeval times by "Organum" was meant any species of musical instrument. And for the same reason the word "organum" was applied to the art of polyphonic composition, at the time that it found in the Flemish monk Hucbald, or Ubaldus (died A. D. 930 in St. Amand's monastery, Flanders) its first theoretical re- presentative. ■^ Hucbald's doctrine of the Organum, or — as he also calls it — Diaphony^ treats of polyphonic music, and that not only as the mere singing in Octaves or the occasional concent of a second tone, as had been practised by the Greeks, but as the simultane- ous sounding of different tone-series, — in a word, as that * A barbarous English word coined from a barbarous Latin original. The expression "organising", in common use, seems to me hardly appropriate here. Translator. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 29 wluch at the present day we mean by the word "Harmony" * The interval best adapted to such progressions was found by Hucbald to be the Fifth, already acknowledged by the ancients as a con- sonance, and accordingly he began by making two voices move in parallel Fourths or Fifths. Next, by doubling the lower voice in the upper Octave he obtained a three-voiced setting and par- allel Fourths, and Fifths, and finally, by doubling the Fourths or Fifths, a four- voiced setting.** * In antiquity by "Harmony" was understood every regular tone-series; even toward the close of the Middle Age the Netherlandic music-theorist TiNCTORis defines harmony as "the same as melody". — Of Hucbald's Orga- num it has been maintained of late that it is not to be regarded as harmony (in the modern sense of the word) ; that its tone-series moving in parallel Fifths were not meant to be simultaneous but successive. The alleged proofs of this assertion are, first, the offensiveness, to the musically cultivated ear, of par- allel Fifths ; and secondly, the Latin predicates "praecedens" and "subsequens" respectively applied to the two tone-series by the writers of that time. To the first point, it is answered that musical taste changes ; hence what is offen- sive to modern ears may have been agreeable to those who lived a thousand year:, ago. As to the Latin words it is to be observed that they may mean not only "preceding" and "subsequent", but also "principal" and "imitating". In the present case they have undoubtedly the latter meaning, for Hucbald's mission, and that of the Middle Age in general was — not to revive the an- cient antiphonal or responsive singing, but to establish a theoretical founda- tion for an entirely different kind of music, viz: for the simultaneous combi- nation of the intervals and for the connexion of these tone-combinations. ** Examples of this curious system, as illustrations of the beginnings of harmony, are lacking in the original; I have therefore given the following ones. Translator. Two-voiced. In Fourths. I^ Fifths. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ i^ &>—€>- 25: : : 9t=^ in o-pe-ri-bus su-is. Tu Patris sem-pi-temus es Fi-li-us. Three -voice d. -•«*• i^ •G> ^ g ' 'g ' g O ^ gy — \~ Nos qui vi - vi - mus be - ne - di - ci - mus Do - mi - num ISC -(^ )- "5 ^ (^)- ^ ^ ^ - hoc nunc et us - que in sae - cu - lum. 80 THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSia If we have here merely a purely mechanical tone-combi- nation, onother kind of Organum, called "oblique" * exhibits an approach to artistic form. This latter kind is invariably only two- voiced, and consists partly of parallel Fourths, partly of oblique motion, the lower voice, that is, remaining on one tone while the upper one forms with it a Second, Third, Unison, etc.** True, even this did not contribute much to the advancement of the new art, although Hucbald himself had no doubt as to the glorious effect of his Organum. "If two or more of you" — he says — •*shall sing together with discreet and harmonious strictness, each J2. -Z. §= -£? — ^ Mi - 86 - re re me - i, De - us. Four-voiced. I p in ^ pe ri-bu8 su-is. _szie: S=l i ■^^t5h-G'-&-^- -< g - g^ - g? ( g -i g ^s^TZr Tu Patris sempiternus es Fi-li-i ^ £L ^ £L£L£L^^ ^ m iszszisisis: ^-^ m * In contradistinction, that is, to the first kind, in which, as the esam- ples show, the voices move invariably in strict parallelism. Translator. ** In this system parallel Thirds were strictly forbidden, which need not seem so very strange to us when we consider that according to the system of tuning of that time every major Third was too sharp and every minor Third too flat. Hence the Third was regarded as a dissonant interval. As the original of this work gives no example of this kind of harmonization, this defect is hereby made good. Translator. Two-voiced. ^. /5^ -« ^ •» -^ -^ -^ /-> /i ^ /i £L -^- —S>^ C^ IT 9- 1 Tu Pa- tris sem-pi-ter-nus Pour-voiced. es Fi- - U - US. jf ^11 tf?^ — ^^ -g-$;- Cf o fs f:i —G^ G' f^ d> — ~^~ -%- —S>Ci (r^0 Ij . Tu C3p — S2Z Pa-tris sem - pi - ter - nus ^ ^ <^ ^ ~ es Fi - U - US. —(5*^' — '^^ — rr — -^— ff ., ,. . .. - II THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 31 carrying his own part, you will notice a delightful concent arising from this blending of tones." — With similar meagre results (as we of our day should put it) Hucbald had to be satisfied in his attempt to improve musical notation. The marking of the tones by means of the first seven letters of the alphabet, which was usual in his time, having been introduced by Gregory the great, could no longer suffice for the higher aims which music hence- forth pursued , any more than could the so-called Neumes, a kind of notation which probably arose from the accents of the Greek written language. This notation, consisting of countless characters, dots, little strokes and hooks, had, to be sure, this advantage over the letter-signs that it could represent the height and depth of the tones, yet the position of the several tone-signs was, in the absence of a system of lines (staf^, so indefinite as to allow the most diverse readings. Hucbald's first attempt at reform in this sphere, scarcely more than a modification of the Greek letter- notation, necessarily failed of success for the very reason that here no provision was made for the need just alluded to, the symboli- zation of the rise and fall of the tones. This service was rendered, it is true, by a system of notation afterwards proposed by him, having a staff on which the text-syllables were piled up and the tone-degrees indicated by the letters T [Tonus ^ whole step) and S [Semitonium, half-step) at the beginning of each space; yet this system was just as little able to supplant the neume-notation, especially on account of its clumsiness, as exhibited in the follow- ing example,* ^ ^r t5^ All T F le I u \ T I lu I i \ 8 P a\ T P translated as follows into modern notation. Al - le - lu - i - a. ♦ The signs found after the letters T and S belong to Hucbald's sbore* mentioned first attempt at reform in music-notation, and are fully explained by H. BELLERM.ANN, in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Leipsic), 1868, No. 37. 32 THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. It was not till a century later that the need of an intelli- gible music-notation was supplied, through the agency of GuiDO d' Arezzo, who was the first one to use a staff of four lines, employing not only these but also the spaces, and thus gaining for each tone of the diatonic scale its own fixed place. He car- ried out to a conclusion the attempts of his predecessors, who in utilizing the lines had not followed any fixed principle, and thus he became the creator of the system of notation still in use at the present time; for now ensued a simplification of both the number and the form of the neume-signs, which finally after all sorts of modifications were transformed into the modem notes, as, for example, the virgula (a figure resembling a comma) into our modem quarter-note. — Still greater, at least, among his con- temporaries, was the reputation acquired by Guido on account of his method of teaching singing, by means of which, as was as- serted, the pupil could learn in three days as much as previously would have required as many weeks. This method consisted in drilling the learner in an unknown melody by comparison with another one already known to him. As such a typical melody Guido recommended a certain hymn whose separate melodic phra- ses — or, in modem language, "measures'^ — form, in their initial tones, a diatonic scale. The text-syllables respectively correspond- ing to these initial tones are : ut, re, rni, fa, 6ol, la^ which casual circumstance gave occasion to the Romance nations to name the diatonic scale after these syllables (the ai, for the seventh degree, was added later in France, after the octave-system had been gen- erally accepted). The advantage which precisely this hymn offered * This hymn, in which the singers beg St. John the Baptist to deliver them from hoarseness, runs thus: ^iiz^iz^zi£zr^^Sg=i^--E_^__^_^_^i:^=g iJ zgzg -^- y-^ rfg n ^Ji^z : Tit que-ant la - xis ^e-so-na-re fi-bris Mi - - ra ge - sto-rum Ffl-mu-li tu - o-rum Sol - ve pol-lu-ti Xa-bi-i re - a - turn W=^^^=^'^=^ Sane - te Jo- an-nes. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 33 the pupil was a twofold one, as it not only afforded him oppor- tunity to memorize the scale, but was also calculated to quicken the ear for the difference between the church-modes, for which latter, as for the melodic phrases of the hymn, the varying posi- tion of the intervals forms the characteristic feature. The success of this method was so great that even the Pope (John XIX, 1024 — 1033) wished to learn it, and invited its discov- erer to Kome by three messengers, received him on his arrival in the most friendly manner and did not rise from his seat till he had correctly learned a melody previously unknown to him, and thus experienced personally what he had hardly been willing to believe on the word of others — as GuiDO narrates in a letter to his friend and fellow-monk Michael. A great part of GuiDO's success must, however, be set down to the score of his personal- ity; for although he belonged, like all other representatives of art and science in the Middle Age, to the clerical state — at first in the monastery of Pomposa near Ravenna, afterwards in that of the Benedictines at Arezzo — yet he by no means restricted himself in his labors to the cloister-cell, but exerted himself unremittingly in order that his musical achievements might accrue to the advantage of the whole world. He is mainly distinguished from all his contemporaries in that he was a man of the people, and as such he was praised by the grateful voice of the masses for centuries after his death, and even far above his desert. In fact, a whole series of inventions' belonging to later times are ascribed to him by the musicographers even of the preceding century, among other things the so-called harmonic or Guidonian hand^ which appears from the 12*^ century onward in all musical instruction-books. The object of this invention was to enable the student to learn the names of the tones employed in GuiDO's time, each one of these, except B flat and ee, being assigned to a place on one of the nineteen joints of the human hand (the finger-tips being included): the upper joint of the thumb took Gamma (I), then downward (A, B,) then across (C, Z>, B, I), up the little finger (G, a, b), along the upper joints of the next three fingers [c, d, e), down the little finger again {/, g), and so on, in a circle, up to the highest tone but one ; the last, ee, had its place above the middle finger. BEOmNINGS OF TOhYTUOmC MUSia Of incomparably greater value is ariotlier invention ascribed to GuiDO, the system of Solmisation (Sol-faing), whicli deserves to be mentioned here for tbe special reason that it was held in high esteem by practical as well as theoretical musicians long after the Middle Age. The Solmisation or Hexachord-system di- vides the tone-series (extended soon after GuiDO to 20 tones) into seven groups of six degrees each, called Hexachords, the several tones of which are called uty re^ mi, fa, sol, la. These Hexachords are, however, not joined together as the Octaves are in our modem system (for this would give a series of 42 tones), but overlap each other; the lowest (the so-called Hard Hexachord) embraces the tones T (Gamma,* or G, the tone added below the scale originally beginning with A), A, B, C7, D, E; but already on the fourth degree, (7, begins a new one, the Natural Hexa- chord, viz: C, Dy Ej F, G, «, and on the fourth degree, Fj of this Hexachord a third, the Soft Hexachord. The last designation • This tone being called gamma-ut, originated our English word gamut. Translator. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 35 has no reference to the interval-succession, which is here the same as in the two other Hexachords, but to the "soft B^ (our B flat, called B molle)y a tone inserted in the scale to make the half-step occur, as usual, between its third and fourth tones, and thus to avoid the so-caUed Tritone, or major Fourth,/ — b. On the next de- gree, G^, is then repeated the "Hard" Hexachord, then the "Natural" and the "Soft", closing with the seventh Hexachord, which as being the highest is called super-acutum^ whilst the Hexachords of the lowest Octaves are called grave, those next above them acutiun. All this is illustrated in the following figure.* Hex. 6. ft, acute. Hex. 7. hard, supe] acute. The Gamut, ^1 § e la e la. it d la d sol d la sol. c sol cfa c sol fa. 8. rave. Hex. 4. rd, acute. h?fa b^mi b fa, b mi. a la a mi a re a la mi re. g sol 9 re g ut g sol re ut. g ^ W 45 d ud ff^ fut ffa ut. A S e la e mi e la mi. d la d sol dre d la sol re. c sol cfa cut c sol fa ut. ^ a h\^fa b^ mi b fa. b mi. -in a la a mi a re a la mi re. l-s Gsol G re G ut G sol re ut. ^ Ffa F ut F fa ut. Ela E mi E la mi. D sol Dre D sol re C fa 1 C ut Cfa ut. Bmi B mi. j A re A re. ; T ut 1 r ut. I have given the illustration in the form found in Grove's »Dictionary 36 THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. The attachment to the tetrachord-system of the Greeks seems to have been one reason why the octave-system was not already adopted and a kind of transition by means of the hexachord was preferred. Nevertheless the sol-faing, in that it lays stress on the intimate relations between the principal key and its collateral keys (Tonic, Dominant and Subdominant), was by no means unimportant for the evolution of the modem music-system, and it is no wonder that even at the beginning of the last century it found ardent de- fenders, among them the excellent organist Buttstedt, of Erfurt. Despite the improvements in music-notation introduced by GuiDO OF Arezzo, one imperfection still adhered to it which with the advancing cultivation of polyphonic music was necessarily more and more keenly felt — the impossibility of indicating the duration of the tones. If two or more parts were to be sung together, their relative proportion had to be accurately determined, in regard not only to the pitch of the tones but also to their time-value. The first writer to give information regarding the rules to be observed in "mensural" music is Franco of Cologne (about A. D. 1200). Like all his predecessors in the province of music-theory he too follows the Greek tradition and admits at first only two note-values, the long and the short notie (longa ^ and brevis ■), corresponding to the long and the short syllable of the ancient prosody. The union of these two notes, the shorter of which has half the value of the longer, gives the so-called modus^ which appears either as trochee ( — ) or as iambus (-— ), and is always tripartite. This explains why in the earliest period of mensural music the three-part rhythm alone found application, and, after the two-part rhythm also came into use later on, was called "per- fect", the latter "imperfect". In carrying out his system farther, however, Franco forsakes the ancient traditions, for here appear as new note-values the double long (maxima u) and the half short (semibrevis ♦). With these signs, to which are to be added those for the restSy which also are mentioned for the first time by Franco, it was now possible to note down a rhythmically variegated piece of music. The mensural notation labored, however, under the im- perfection that the value of the notes depended not only on their of Music and Musicians" (Art. "Hexachord"), as being clearer than that in the original. Translator. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 37 shape but also on their position in regard to the neighboring note. Thus, a long alone filled a tripartite measure; but if followed by a shortj or breve it became bipartite and together with the latter formed a measure; if followed by two breves it again became tripartite, the two breves then forming together a tripartite meas- ure, in this way, that the first one had the value of one part, the second one, of two parts * After Fkanco of Cologne the greatest services in the devel- opment of mensural music were rendered by Marchettus op Padua (end of the 13*^ century) and Johannes de Muris, doctor of theology at the Paris university (beginning of the 14*^ century). In the writings of these two learned musicians appears for the first time the prohibition of the parallel Octaves and Fifths so praised by Hucbald for their sweetness, together with other rules which have remained to this day in force for strict composition. De Muris is said also to have first applied the word counterpoint [i. e.j "point against point",** in Latin "punctus contra punctum") instead of the word "discant", in use up to that time, to denote a two-voiced composition. The one-sided preference for the tri- partite measure is, to be sure, manifested by him; it is not till a century later that the bipartite measure is introduced in practical composition as of equal right with the former, and thus the re- quired free space was gained for the farther development of mensural music. Let this little sufiice to give an idea of the helplessness of the mensural notation and the laboriousness of the intellectual work of the Middle Age in general, even at the time of the meritorious personages already mentioned. We are just in the palmy days of the scholastic philosophy^ which from the time of m * A rhythm of this kind ^ ■ ■ ^ " ", expressed in modern notation seems, to be sure, to modern ears 1^ l^ not a little strange on account of the clumsy limping movement; but taken in quick time ^ '^ J t -J-J — jfe^g-J — it loses this character, as is seen in many examples of its application in modem compositions, as for instance in the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony in A (No. 7). ** This refers to the ancient manner of notation by pricking the paper, thus forming points, which represented notes. Translator. 38 THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. Charlemagne to the revival of the ancient culture, thus six hun- dred years long, ruled the world. During this period, in which the church, grown more and more powerful, had rendered both science and art tributary to herself alone, philosophical thought and dia- lectics are also found exclusively in the service of theology: philo- sophy is regarded as the serving-maid (ancilla) of religion, and even the study of the ancient authors, especially of Aristotle, had for its sole purpose' the scientific support of the edifice of Chris- tian faith erected by the fathers of the church. No wonder that under an intellectual tendency so unfavorable to the investigation of truth, humanity, in its endeavors after progress, should often go astray, and the inquirer not seldom lose himself in petty spec- ulation and trifles. Thus a Hucbald could hit upon the whimsical idea of composing in honor of Charles the Bald a Latin poem, "The praise of baldness", in which every word ha# the same ini- tial letter — c — as the Latin word for baldness — calmties\ thus too could the practical GuiDO recommend a method of com- position which consisted in substituting for each of the five vowels a tone of the scale, and then writing under the several syllables of a text chosen at option the tone corresponding to its vowel, whereby, according to his opinion, every thing written was changed into song — a "manikin-melodization in the retort of the five vowels", as Dr. Ambros has very happily characterized this man- uer of composing. Franco, too, is seen to be by no means free from the scholastic usage of referring every thing to the church; as when for instance he maintains that the tripartite longa (■) is to be called the "perfect" because it took its name from the Holy Trinity, the absolute and true perfection. But Marchetto of Padua even drags the christian doctrine into the dispute whether the tripartite long note should have the stem on the right or the left side, and settles the matter in favor of the right side thus : ''As the right side in man is more perfect than the left, because it contains that which nourishes and perfects man, to wit, the blood; so too a note with the stem at the right side is more perfect than one with the stem at the left. For this reason too, Christ willed to be pierced in the right side, in order to shed all his blood for the human race" Still, for all the unfavorable conditions of the time, the stag- nation of the intellectual life was in appearance only ; slowly, but THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONIC MUSIC. 39 Burely, the world moved forward to higlier aims. Scholasticism, ""too, had to contribute its share to the movement of minds, in that it made the objects of faith objects first of reason, then of doubt, lastly of scientific investigation. Indeed, the very vagaries of the scholastics tell of thirst for light and the spirit of inquiry, which under the pressure, of circumstances could of course reveal themselves for the most part only in the petty maimer just al- luded to. But, just as science in consequence of these endeavors struggled up to new life, so did also art, particularly music, for which, after the accomplishment of the needful preliminary la- bors, that epoch of rich development began which is called, after ihe nation chiefly concerned in it, the Netherlandio. IV. THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDERS. Through the lahors of a Hucbald, a GuiDO and a Franco the soil in which a genuine art-music could grow up was, indeed, prepared, yet it was a considerable time before the first buds of such a thing ventured to show themselves. The European nations were still too deeply sunken in lethargy and barbarity to allow to art free space for its development; when all at once an event happened which powerfully transformed not only the religious and political situation, but also the collective intellectual life of Eu- rope, that is to say, the Crusades^ beginning in 1096. It was not only to the members of the religious and the knightly orders that the summons of a Peter of Amiens, a Bernard of Clairvaux for the rescue of the holy sepulchre from the hands of the in- fidels was addressed; to all who should join the expedition eternal salvation was promised, and in consequence of this, multitudes belonging to the most diverse conditions of life who were eager for the adventure took part in the march to Jerusalem, as in a general pilgrimage. For the great majority of the Crusaders, however, the impressions and experiences gained in the East must have had a lasting effect, since, as has already been mentioned, the civilization of that country was, even from the reign of the Abassides, especially of the caliph Haroun Al Raschid (A. D. 800), who belonged to that dynasty, in every respect superior to that of the West. Similarly, the singers and instrumental musicians in the retinue of the Crusaders found in the East rich inspiration and nutriment for their art. For, although the oriental music — like that of the Arabs in Spain — was of its very nature ill- adaj?ted to the solution of ideal art-nroblems, yet the sinjjinff- THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDERS. 4l method of the orientals with its characteristic richness of orna- mentation, as also their musical instruments the lute and the guitar, which had been unknown to the Crusaders, moreover the noisy instruments used in the Saracen military music, the drum and the kettle-drum, — all these elements, after they had been introduced into the western music, necessarily gave the latter an altered character. Still more important appears to be \he enrichment experienced by the poetry of the West in consequence of the Crusades. The separation — often for years — from home and family brought about a deepening of the emotional life till then unknown; a new species of poetry arises in which the feeling for chivalry and love- service (Minnedienst) finds its expression, the so-called gay science (gaya ciencia), indigenous especially to the soil of Provence, fa- vored as it is by a happy climate and the lively disposition of its inhabitants * Here the grandees of the land devoted themselves to this science, the first being count William of Poitiers (1 087 — 1127), afterwards king Thibaut of Navarre (1201 — 1*254), these however, always only as originators of songs, whence they were also called Trouveres (from the French "trouver"), a word which has become in our English tongue (more identical with the Italian synonym "trovatore") Troubadours. The execution of the songs composed by them, as also the instrumental accompaniment of them they handed over to the so-called Minstrels (derived from "ministerialis", from the Latin "minister', a "helper"), also called Jongleurs (from the Latin "joculator", merry-maker), who belonged to a lower class of society and were often ranked with buffoons as is seen in a contemporaneous sculpture of the church of St. George at Bocherville near Rouen, representing among a group of instrumental musicians a human figure walking on his hands. An exceptional position among the troubadours is occupied by Adam de la Hale, called after his deformity and his native place "the humpback of Arras", inasmuch as he unites in his person the * The cradle of this art may probably be held to be the court of the margraves of Barcelona, whose kingdom, founded by Charlemagne as a rampart against the Arab dominion in Spain, stood in intimate political and intellec- tual relations with southern France, especially with Provence, but was at the same time directly exposed to the influence of Arabic civilization, which also on its part had an important share in the development of Provencial song. 42 THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDERS. composer of songs and the executive musician. He was moreover well versed in tlie strict art-forms also, so far as they had then been developed, and ranks among the first musicians who under- took to compose four-voiced vocal pieces. A lately discovered faudeville by him, ^^ Robin and MariatP^ the subject of which is the naive description of a rustic love-affair, was performed in 1 282 at the court of Robert the second of Artois at Naples, and is there- fore the oldest specimen of dramatic art in France, for which reason Adam de la Hale is rightfully indicated in the history of French literature as the founder of comic opera. The same intellectual current that in the case of the Romanic peoples had called into existence the art of the troubadours, ex- pressed itself among the ancient Germans who had remained un- mixed in Germany, in the form of erotic poetry called in their tongue Minnegesang* The "minnesinger" differed, however, from the troubadour in that he himself sang his songs and accompa- nied them on an instrument, usually a small three-cornered harp, such as is often seen depicted in ancient manuscripts, among ethers in that of Godfrey op Strasburg's "Tristan and Isold", be- longing to the first half of the 13*^ century, in the court-library at Munich. Moreover the minnesingers did not belong, as the troubadours did, exclusively to the knightly order; of the singers participating in the Sangerkrieg aufder JVartburg (contest of singers on the Wartburg), in 1207, under landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, Wolfram of Eschenbach, Walter of the Vogelweide, Hein- RICH ScHREiBER and Hbinrich OF ZWETZSCHIN were, as the chron- icler puts it, "knightly men", on the other hand Biterolf was one "of the landgrave's household servants", and Heinrich of Ofterdingen a burgess of Eisenach. The musical difference of the German Minnegesang or love-song from the song of the trou- badour consisted in this, that the latter made the text subservient to the melody, whereas with the former the poetry becomes the principal thing and the characteristic song-melody is supplanted by the recitative style of the ecclesiastical chant. This predominance of the poetical over the musical element is exhibited also in the songs of the Mas tet -singer Sj who under- *) From "Minne" love, and "Gesang", Bong. It is generally englished *'Minnesong". Translator, T3e musical sovereignty of the Netherlandem. 43 look the care of art after it had passed over from the knightly singers to the burghers and respectable artisans. According to F. H. VON DER Hagen ("The Minne-singers and Song-poets of the 13*^ 14*^ and 15*^ centuries". Leipsic, 1838. Vol. IV, p. 853 seqq.), by the so-called "tones" of the master-singers are meant not only the song-melodies themselves, but also the metrical schemes, hence they have special reference to the poetry. Concerning the interior economy of these singing-societies organised after the manner of a guild, we find copious information in Wagenseil's book "Von der Meistersinger holdseligen Kust" ("Of the delightful art of the Master-singers") published 1697 in Nuremberg, and in our own time Richard Wagner has renewed the memory of the Master-singers in his poem bearing that title. In these works we are made acquainted in the first place with the Tabulature^ by which is meant the whole body of laws for the government of the guild. The members are divided into three classes : whoever has learned the various "tones" is a "singer"; a higher degree, the rank of a "poet", is attained by him who composes a new and suitable text to one of the tones; but to acquire the dignity of "master" the union of both faculties, the poetical and the musical, is requisite: **The poet who, with brain so witty. To words and rhymes, by himself prepared, Can shape from the tones a new strain or ditty, He is a "Master-singer^ declared.*'* The conscientiousness and the zeal shown by the members of the guild in the observance of their laws can serve as a gratifying testimony to the feeling for art entertained by the German burgherdom, even though the artistic results of those efforts have only extremely little value. The melodies of the Master-singers were like the church pSalmody, monotonous and lacking in expres- sion, although they were embellished at the cadencing sections with all kinds of ornamentation. The relation of their music to poetry was as good as none at all; as a rule the tune was not deter- mined by the text, but vice-versa, the text by the tune; frequently • From "Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Niimberg", englished by H. and F. Corder. I take this opportunity of saying that the brothers Corder have in my judgment admirably succeeded in the difficult task of reproducing in English the wit and raciness of Wagner's original. Translator. 44 THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDERS. the tune was composed first, and after it was found to be free of faults the author was required to make a suitable text to it, upon a determined biblical or spiritual subject. With this homely manner of art-education, which moreover is manifested in the strange names given to the tunes — there was, for instance, "an Over-short evening-red tune", a "Black ink tune", a "Short monkey tune", a "Gormandizer-in-secret tune", etc. — neither poetry nor music could specially thrive. Yet the master-singer schools had unquestionably a good effect on the morality of their members, and much as we may feel repelled by the pedantry inherent in their artistic efforts, yet on the other hand the tendency of these simple natures, aiming at the ideal in the midst of all the worry of common-place life, deserves the warmest recognition. This view is taken by Richard Wagner also when he makes his master- (singer Hans Sachs (1495 — 1576) answer as follows the question as to the rules of the Guild): "By what man were they first devised ?" "By certain sorely troubled masters, '/ Their hearts oppressed by life's disasters; By suffering overweighted, A model they created, That they might take it, And ever make it A memory of youthful love. In which the soul of Spring should move."* The schools of the Master-singers fell, after the Thirty Years* War, more and more into decay; only those of Nuremberg and Strasburg maintained, up to the close of the preceding century, a certain importance. The German master-song did not actually come to an end before 1839, when the last surviving members of the School at Ulm handed over their corporation badges to the Liederkranz of that city and thereby dissolved their guild. The master-singers were moreover of advantage to the music of their time in this respect, that, after their example the instrumental musicians also united in corporations organized like guilds, gave up the wandering life which they had previously led and took up a permanent abode in the cities. Thus arose, as early as 1288, in Vienna a society under the name of the ^^Nicolai-Bruderschaft^^ ♦ "Die Meistersinger von Nflrnberg". Corder's translation. THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDER8. 45 and in 1 330 in Paris the ''Confrerie de St. Julien des Menestriers" (Minstrels), the Latter under a director with the title of "King of the violins" (roi des violons), whose rule continued till the 17*^ cen- tury, when it was terminated by Louis XIV, after the last director, DuMANOm II., had arrogated the jurisdiction over all the musicians of Paris, including the organists, and thus brought on himself his downfall. Side by side with the Minnesong and the Master-song, but independent of either, the Folksong (National Song) had in the last centuries of the Middle Age been developed. The so-called Limburg Chronicle, edited by the scribe Johannes (1317 — 1402), gives the earliest details concerning the nature of the Folksongs and of the contemporaneous instrumental music ("pipe-playing", as it calls it), but unfortunately no musical specimens; these, however, are found in great number in a manuscript of the 15*^ century, called, after the place where it originated, the "Lochheim song-book". The melodies therein given are remarkable not only for the significant tone-leading and the skilfully organized rhythms, but also for the fidelity with which they reproduce the subject- matter of the poetry and give expression to that which language is unable of itself alone to utter. If now we return to the consideration of Art-music^ we again see an ecclesiastico-historical event coincide with the evolutionary course of music — the emigration, necessitated by the political dismemberment of Italy, of the papal see from Rome to Avignon (1305). Here, in music-loving Provence, the need of utilizing for the service of the Church also the musical advances made in the course of the ages could not but find rich nourishment. In par- ticular, the till then only timidly practised art of "Organating" (see p. 28) is now, under the name of Discantus (song of two, i. e., two- voiced song), studied by the church-singers with more and more freedom and zeal, so that not unfrequently the dignity of the divine service seemed to be compromised by it. In vain did Pope John XXII issue a bull against the use of strange and unmelodic intervals in the Gregorian chant, "with the exception of certain more melodious consonances, such as the Octave, Fifth and Fourth^ applied to the simple church-song, and even these on festivals only". It was not until the middle of the fourteenth century that the rules for the discant, which had already been laid down a 46 THE MUSICAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NETHERLANDERS. century before, were fully recognised in practice also, owing chiefly to thp efforts of Frenchmen and Netherlanders in the papal chapel who were specially endowed for this art, and herewith the abuse of •mprovising was for the time being kept within bounds. In this /'eriod originates the oldest example of tetraphonic, or four-voiced in his "Modulationes sex vocum", posthumously published at Venice, 1566 — as a composer of distinguished ability, yet his merits in this domain are far behind those which he ac- quired, as theorist, in elucidating the intricacies that in his time still inhered in musical science. The maxims and doctrines enun- ciated by him in the above-mentioned "Istituzioni harmoniche", ITALIAN OPERA. 65 and still farther developed in the subsequently published "Dimos- trazioni harmoniche" and "Sopplimenti musicali", not only opened new careers to the musicians of his time, but have also been recognized by all later generations as the sure foundation of musical theory and practice. One particular in which Zarlino's agency was of wide-spread- ing importance, is that he took a decisive step in the improvement of the musical temperament, which, with the increasing cultivation of pol^honic vocal and instrumental music, had become an im- perative necessity. By temperament is understood the determination of certain deviations from the natural measurement of the inter- vals, which determination is necessary in order that the intervals may in all possible melodic and harmonic inter-relationships be euphonious, as being — to use the technical expression — "in tune"; in other words, in order to adapt them to the limits of the Octave, as determined by the nature of the human vocal organs, which limits they in their natural measurement either fall short of or exceed.* Up to Zaelino's time the accepted system had been that of Pythagoras , which consisted of perfect ** Fifths. The Third employed was that resulting from a fourth upper Fifth, J^ ^ ^ ^ as . c, g, c?, a, e, — where e forms the Third to c. This so-called Pythagorean Third, as being too sharp for a consonance, was counted as a dissonance, Zarlino established the system named after him (sometimes called the pure diatonic system), of which one of the most important features, practically, was the reduction of the Third by a minute interval ("comma"), thus enabling the Third to rank as consonance. And whereas composers had till then shunned the Third in the opening and the closing chord ot their works, the Triad, the true basis of all polyphonic music, could now enter into its kingdom — for the time being, of course, only the major Triad. As for ttie minor Third, it was not yet * See, on the subject of ** Temperament", Sedley Taylor's "Science of Music", Chapter X, my 'Trimer of Modem Musical Tonality", Chap. VI, etc. Translator. ** Perfect, that is, in the acoustic sense, not in the sense in which the term has (unfortunately, as I think) so long been applied to a species of Fifth more appropriately styled, by advanced modem music-theorists, major. See my ^'Primer", above cited. Note, p. 53. 'Translator. 5 gg ITALIAN OPERA. regarded as a consonance; for centuries long it was considered better to end a composition in minor with a major Triad, even at the sacrifice of unity of mode, than to introduce the minor Third in the final chord. To return to the subject of the Opera, it is to be especially noticed that a particularly favorable soil for its cultivation had been prepared by the antecedent labors of the masters above- mentioned. Through Willaert and his school the Venetian church-music had acquired that dramatic and highly-colored cha- racter that later also, under his successors Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew Giovanni, distinguished it from the other Italian schools, and it was inevitable that the new-bom music-drama also should be materially influenced in its development by this feature. Precisely a half-century after Willaert's death we again find in the place that had been filled by him a musician through whom opera received an impulse hardly dreamed of by its inaugurators : Claudio Monteverde (born at Cremona in 1568, and from 1613 till his death in 1 643 music-director of the church of San Marco). Even before his call to Venice, as music-director at Mantua this artist had exerted himself to augment the musical means of de- scription and of representing strongly agitated states of mind, first, by the very free use of dissonances* previously prohibited, then by a judicious treatment of the orchestra, after he had recognized the individuality of the several instruments and their adaptability for characterising the dramatis personce and the various situations. In one of his "Martial Madrigals", for instance, the four bowed- instruments accompanying the recitative take a lively part in the effective representation of the contest; here, too, appears for the first time the violin-tremolo, for strengthening, in the proper place, the impression of the violent and passionate — a style of * Monteverde did not hesitate to let the Dominant-seventh, the Ninth, even the major Fourth (Tritone) enter unprepared, and that in the outer voices; moreover he is the first to use the diminished Septimachord, — daring inno- vations, which drew upon him savage attacks from the theorists, especially from Artusi, of Bologna, who said of him, among other things, "that he lost sight of the proper aim of music, viz to give pleasure". In our own days a school of estheticians ably represented by the late eminent critic Dr. Eduard Hanslick, teach substantially the same doctrine, as opposed to modern inno- vations. Thus history repeat"? itself. Translator. ITALIAN OPERA. 67 execution that was received at first with censure and ridicule, but soon became general and has existed to this day. Naturally, opera was to be the proper field for Monteverde's activity; he did not, however, turn his attention to it before the year 1607, when he brought out, on the occasion of a festival at the court of Duke Gonzaga of Mantua, his dramatic maiden- essay, "Orfeo", the text by Rinuccini. This was followed the year after by the "Arianna", and the dance-opera "II ballo delle ingrate". In Venice he then wrote a series of operas; and to the period of his activity in that city belongs an important event for the progress of the music-drama, of which he must be regarded as the immediate instigator, the establishment of ih.Q first opera- house, in consequence of which the opera lost its character as exclusively court-festivity and became accessible to the general public. It was in Venice that in the year 1637 the first opera- house, the Teatro CassinOj was opened, the opera being the "An- dromeda", the text by Ferrari, the music by Manelli. Some years afterward the theatre San Moise was opened with Monte- verde's newly studied "Arianna", and in the course of the same century opera in Venice received such an impulse that (as Mar- purg narrates) up to 1727 fifteen operatic enterprises were set on foot by private means, and up to 1734 some four hundred operas by forty different composers were performed. Of Monteverde's successors Cavalli (music-director at the San Marco church from 1 668) is the only one who can be said to have farther developed the dramatic style; the celebrity of this composer, moreover, was not confined to his native country, as is proved by his call to Paris to produce his opera ^'Xerxes" on the occasion of the wedding of Louis XIV. After him Italian opera gradually diverges from the path originally taken, and sa- crifices the antique simplicity aimed at by its founders to the ever increasing demand for sensuous charm. The alKance of poetry and music, dissolved in the Middle Age and renewed but a few decennaries before, is again broken off, and the equilibrium that had just been acquired is sacrificed anew to the claims of music. Nevertheless, the period that now ensues can be called the palmy days of Italian opera: the musical leadership in Italy, hitherto taken in turn by Rome, Florence and Venice, is now assumed by a fourth city, Naples, and Alessandro Scarlatti 68 ITAUAN OPERA. (died 1725, as music-director at that court) is the composer that determines for opera the course of development it has now to pursue. The bright sky of Naples and the gay disposition of its inhabitants had, it is true, at an earlier period brought to ma- turity a rich musical harvest on the soil of the ancient Greek colony, but far less in the domain of serious music than in that of the secular song, the madrigal, which — not to mention other names — the highly gifted amateur and art-patron Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa died 1614), cultivated to a high degree of per- fection. But with Scarlatti the musical tendencies of the Neapo- litans began to reveal themselves in so brilliant and extensive a manner as to allow the formation here of a distinct musical style adapted to the local surroundings, called, because of its melodic charms, me beautiful style ^ in distinction to the Roman style of Palestrina and his school, called the sublime. Alessandro Scarlatti himself sprang from the Roman Fchool of Carissimi, celebrated for his promotion of chamber- music and the oratorio, of whose agency in the latter domain we shall speak later. With regard to the chamber-music style devel- oped by him, which exercised a considerable influence on the art- tendency of the Neapolitan school, be it here observed that it is distinguished from the church-style by its very nature as secular, but from the dramatic style, which conformably to its character depicts the emotions with heavy powerful touches, and for reaching its larger circle of hearers aims at simplicity and intelligibility, by a far more detailed artistic exploitation and development of the musical thought. Careful and fine work of this kind is the more necessary in the chamber-music style, as here the attention is not exacted either by external representation, as in dramatic music, nor by religious ceremonies, as in church-music, hence concentrates itself entirely upon the musical work; because, more- over, in chamber-music there is but one player to a part, and here therefore the tone-masses, dynamic effects and color-shadings obtainable in orchestral music are not to be expected. Besides Carissimi, another pupil of the Roman school, Agostino Steffani (called as music-director to Hanover in 1685) notably contributed to the development of the chamber-music style. As dramatic com- poser of comparatively little significance he indirectly promoted ITALIAN OPERA. 69 purity of style in dramatic music tkrough his Chamler-duets^ in which species he has produced model works. Trained in the strict school of chamber-music to be a com- poser, Scarlatti had now become capable of laboring success- fully in every special department of his art; and though his chief merit lies in the promotion of dramatic music, yet so noteworthy were his contributions to the church and the chamber also, that they served even a Handel as models, and were no less eagerly studied by him than his operas. His fertility was almost incred- ible: in the year 1721 — four years before his death — he had already finished his 1 1 4*^ opera , and his 200*^ mass , while the number of his cantatas — little musical dramas, as Fetis calls them — is incalculable. Dr. Burney discovered an original man- uscript of his containing 35 Cantatas (composed in 1704 at Ti- voli, where Scarlatti was visiting a colleague of the papal chapel), each bearing date of the following day. In' his operas he unites the richness of melody and the dramatic forcefulness of the southern Italians with the gravity and the purity of style of the Roman art-song; they are characterised rather by pleasing and simple melodies than by strong passionate expression, yet he can ex- cellently depict situations, especially comic ones. His forms are still extremely narrow in comparison to those of the later Neapoli- tans and of Handel and Bach, yet they served for a long time as models, especially the forms of the Aria and the Overture ; the latter is, like that introduced by LuLLi in France, in three parts, and differs from the French in this only, that its opening and closing parts are in quick, the middle part in slow, tempo^ where- as in the French form a lively middle part is enclosed between two middle parts.* Not only as composer did Alessandro Scarlatti powerfully influence the taste of his time and of the generation following; he was, besides — as were usually the song-composers of the ♦ The Scarlatti overture may be regarded as the prototype of the modern orchestral symphony. As instrumental music became more and more independent, the opera-overture, enlarged in form and enriched in subject- matter, began to be utilized for concert-purposes; afterwards its three parts were separated and became independent movements, to which in the IS*'* cen- tury a fourth one was added, by the transfer of the Minuet from the ancient Suite. 70 rPALIAN OPERA. preceding centuries — an excellent singer and singing-teaclier, moreover a genial conductor, finally an accomplished player of the clavicembalo — the piano-forte of those days (although ex- celled in this respect, as we are told, by his son Domenico, whose significance for instrumental music will be discussed elsewhere). Thus Scarlatti could fruitfully labor in all departments of his art, especially as teacher of students of music everywhere, bitterly attacked though he was by the theorists of his time for his daring use of musical resources. And as in every age we see the artisti- cally productive contemporaries of a pioneer genius follow, con- sciously or unconsciously, the path he has taken, so too Scarlatti's style became, even during his life-time, the pattern for the creations of the rising generation, and afterwards, completely developed by his pupils Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante, attained the supremacy over all musical Europe. Like the Nether- landers in the 15*^ and 16^^ centuries, the Neapolitans now exer- cised an almost unlimited influence upon the musical affairs of the civilized world. Even in France, where, about the middle of the 17*^ century, a peculiar kind of music-drama, in keeping with the national art-ideas, had developed itself, there was an oppo- sition party that received with open arms the Neapolitan opera appearing about the middle of the 18^^ century, and was power- ful enough to combat with temporary success, under the direction of the Neapolitan PicCiNi, the French opera represented by Gluck. In England Italian opera had from the end of the 17*^ century got a footing and overcome the rivalry of both French and native composers; but during the palmy days of the Neapolitan school it was strong enough to drive from the field a musician of Han- del's power and standing, as is proved by the success of the London opera at the Haymarket theatre under the direction of PoRPORA and Hasse, at the expense of Handel's opera in Covent- garden theatre. In Germany, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin strove with equal zeal to naturalize Italian opera among themselves. The most pro- minent musicians here were, it is true, mostly German by birth, but in their musicaV education and activity thoroughly italianized; for instance, Johann Joseph Fux, who, as chief music-director to three German emperors, with the aid of his sub-directors the Venetians CoNTi and Caldara, in the first half of the 18*^ cen- ITALIAN OPERA. 71 tury brought the Vienna opera to an extraordinary height of ex- cellence, and at the same time proved, by his famous work on counterpoint — "Gradus ad Pamassum" — published in 1745, that his association with Italian opera had not cost him his Ger- man thoroughness. Of equal importance for Dresden was JOHANN Adolph Hasse, born in 1699 near Hamburg, from 1724 on in Naples as pupil of Scarlatti and Poepora, eventually, after brilliant successes in Italy, appointed music-director at the court of Saxony; for Berlin, Carl Heinrich Graun, bom 1701, tiU his death in 1759 sole director of the Italian opera established by Frederick the Great on his accession to the throne. A characteristic feature of the music of this century is the perfecting of the musical means of expression, especially of artistic singing. As the father of the Neapolitan school, Alessandro Scarlatti, was an excellent singer, so his successors also. Artistic singing was the school through which every composer had to go before he might hope for any success whatsoever for his productions. Hasse began his career as tenor at the Hamburg opera-house, Graun also belonged to the representatives of the art of finished singing, and was enabled, as such, to win during his residence in Italy the applause of all critics. The Italian art of singing reached its climax in the school established by PiSTOCCin at Bologna about 1700, of whose successful activity the singers at the London opera in Handel's time give splendid testimony, notably the male soprano Senesino and the female singers CuzzoNi and Faustina Hasse. But the reverse side of virtuosity, pride and boundless vanity, manifests itself in these singers in the most disagreeable manner. CuzzONi was, we are told, a veritable dragon in cha- racter, and when Handel, to manage her better, had called to London her artistic equal, Hasse's wife, the quarrel between the two artistes soon became so violent that on one occasion they came to blows on the open stage. But the more highly the performances of the song-virtuosi were esteemed and remunerated by the public — as early as 1647 the Roman musicographer Doni could testify that "they lived in such luxury that each one of them had more than ten cantors and choir-masters could earn" — all the lower was the estimation in which the composer was held. In the opera of the 1 8*^ cen- tury the music was judged almost exclusively according to the 72 ITALIAN OPERA. opportunity it afforded the singer to display his or her virtuosity : "notably the aria was in its first part (repeated at the close) as it were merely the lattice-work which the singer decorated with all possible arabesques and graces into a little triumphal arch for himself'.* If dramatic music was able subsequently to come out of the fight against virtuosity triumphant and re-enforced, for an- other branch of musical art this precarious state of things became utterly fatal: church-music in the course of the 18*** century steadily declined; the grave and dignified style of Durante, found- er of the newer Neapolitan school (died in 1755, as music-director at the conservatory of San Onofrio at Naples), is exchanged by his successors for the showy secular style or a romantic unrest. This is seen, e. y., in Pergolese's "Stabat mater", the music of which, predominantly sensuous as it is and made to depend for its effect chiefly on the charm of the voice, only partially deserves the praises bestowed upon it by contemporaries. Jomelli is the only one among the later Italians in whose church-music the gravity and thoroughness of the Roman school are still effective, properties that are predominant in his later works, most likely in consequence of his residence in Germany (1754 — 176.')) as music- director at Stuttgart, at the court of Duke Charles of Wiirtemberg. Even at the time when the musical genius of Germany is awakened, when with Gluck and Mozart dramatic music takes an unexpectedly lofty flight, even then Italian opera by no means owns itself defeated, and continues to achieve brilliant successes. In Paris PicCiNi manages to maintain for many years a respect- able position side by side with Gluck; in Vienna at the time of Mozart's greatest celebrity the Neapolitans Paisiello and Sarti obtain enthusiastic applause, the former by his opera "Bar- biere di Seviglia", the latter by his "Due ITfciganti", which together with VmcENZO Martin's "Cosa rara" is utilized by Mozart in the second finale of his "Don Giovanni". Even the appearance of the phenomenon Beethoven could not prevent Europe from repeating in our century its surrender at discretion to Italian opera. Rossini (bom 1792, at Pesaro in the states of the church) was the magician who was able, by means of the sensuous charm of Italian melody, to captivate anew the musical world that had • See VoN Dommer's Manual of Music-history, ITALIAN OPERA. 73 been educated to a higher intelligence by the Viennese masters. From 1813, when his "Tancred" was given in Venice for the first time, till the appearance of his last work, "William Tell", in 1829 at the Grand Opera in Paris, Rossini's musical career was signal- ized by a series of triumphs such as no Italian opera- composer before him had enjoyed. This was owing, in the first place, to his creative power, which manifests itself not only in melodic invention but also in a novel — for his time — treatment of harmonies and of the orchestra, farthermore to the vocal skill at his disposal, and this especially after the impresario Barbaja had, in 1815, engaged him and the elite of Italy's male and female singers to bring out his works in Naples, Milan and Vienna alter- nately. Finally, the political circumstances also must be taken into consideration to account for the enthusiasm called forth by the appearance of the Rossini opera: the mental enervation that had settled upon Europe after the disturbances attendant upon the wars of Napoleon, and the consequent need of means of diversion and stupefaction. "From the days of the Vienna Con- gress", says RiEHL ("Musikalische Charakterkupfe") , "from the decennium, sultry, truce-bidding, flood-gate-erecting, that followed the war of deliverance, dates Rossini's world-wide fame. The weary nations required lullabies by which to go to sleep and dream, and the Italian ofi'ered them the sweetest, most voluptuous slumber-song. Every one was tired of the bombastic, tragic pathos of the Napoleonic school, on the stage as well as in life; it was desired to drink sweet oblivion at the spring of diverting art, and where was art more diverting than in the Rossini opera?" The exclusiveness with which part of the musical world gave itself up to the enjoyment of Rossini's operas, and indeed even to that degree that the greatest German masters, Beethoven and Weber, were placed, at the very posts of their personal activity, in the background as compared with the "swan of Pe- saro" — this exclusiveness excited in the circles of music-lovers with higher aims an aversion to Italian opera-music in general, which likewise was carried to excess and led to unjust depre- ciation of its value. Later Italian opera-composers, as Bellini and Donizetti, were, by reason of the cloying sweetness of their melodies and the meagreness of their harmonies and rhythm, 74 ITALIAN OPERA. not adapted to diminisli tliat aversion* The very latest phase of Italian opera-music, as represented by Giuseppe Verdi (bom 1813, at Busseto, near Parma) in his "Ai'da", seems to indicate a ten- dency to break with the traditional style, in so far as this style is characterized chiefly by the predominance of melodic forms adapted principally to the display of solo vocalism, in accordance with the genius of the Italian people, and by general harmonic and rhythmic poverty and lack of dramatic truthfulness. * What follows of this Section is substituted for considerably more mat- ter in the original, which, as being concerned mostly with what the author considers the unjust prejudices of his countrymen against Verdi and Italian opera generally, I judged would not specially interest English-speaking readers. Translator, vn. FRENCH OPERA. In no nation of Europe could the example ^ven by Italy of tlie renovation of the musical drama of the ancients more power- fully excite emulation than in the French, whose inclination to music, as no less to dramatic representation, had already in the Middle Age been variously manifested, and through the artistic current of the 1 6*^ century had received fresh nourishment. Even during the political and religious disturbances of this period the Renascence was able here to exercise its wholesome influence upon the art-situation. But after the religious schisms and the atten- dant civil wars had, in consequence of the edict of Nantes (1598), reached their termination, and after Richelieu's iron hand had broken the resistance of the nobility and restored the national unity, the artistic impulses of the French people could, side by side with material prosperity, so freely develop themselves that the nation soon came up with the start gained by the Italians in the intellectual domain. The first one to satisfy the demand for a reform of the French drama in the modem sense was a Venetian named Baif, who in 1570 solicited from Charles IX. a privilege for the erection of an academy for dramatic poetry and music, and obtained it, but was prevented by the unfavorable circumstances of the times from carrying out his design. Under the reign of the pleasure-loving king Henry IV. these musico-dramatic plans might perhaps have been realized, had his beneficial activity not been brought by Ravaillac's dagger (1610) to an unexpectedly sudden close. Henry's successor, Louis XIII, was, on account of his gloomy disposition, not inclined to offer to the arts an asylum at his 76 FRENCH OPERA. court; but tMs very circumstance was to be the occasion of the first appearance of opera in France, inasmuch as the Cardinal Mazarin, in order to enliven Queen Anne of Austria, sent for an Italian opera- troupe to come to Paris, which, in 1645, in the Salon du Petit Bourbon opened their performances with the opera **La finta pazza", composed by Strozzi. The applause that the new art-species earned at the hands of the French public could be only a partial one, as opera had at this time considerably receded from the noble simplicity orig- inally aimed at, and sought for effect almost exclusively in exter- nals, in richness of decorations, of costumes and of ballets, in which last for variety's sake all imaginable animal forms figured. But this could not satisfy a nation whose taste for dramatic poetry had, by men like Corneille, whose "Cid" had appeared as early as 1636, and Moliere, who had begun his career at Paris in 1644, been in a remarkable degree purified and polished. Accord- ingly, the desire was openly expressed to see the music-drama which had been introduced from Italy transformed in a manner corresponding to the national art-ideas. What seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to the fulfilment of this desire was the established opinion in the literary circles of France that the French language was not adapted for being joined with music. In fact, it had since the reforms of the writer and poet Malherbe (1555 — 1628) been limited to so strict forms, in poetry the Alexandrine verse had attained so absolute a supremacy, that to the vocal composer the free, independent movement of his fantasy was rendered almost impossible. As, at the time of the Nether- landic contrapuntists, poetry had been subordinate to music, now in France the situation was reversed. A freer treatment of the language seemed to be the indispensable requirement for calling to life a national opera; a poet must be found courageous enough to disregard the existing rules, and this was the Abbe Perrin, who accordingly deserves to be mentioned in the first rank among the founders of French opera. Little as Perrin could stand comparison, in point of poetic talent, with the poet-heroes of his time, yet in compensation he possessed in a high degree the dramatic experience necessary for carrying out his plan, inasmuch as the court of Gaston, Duke OP Orleans, brother of Louis XIII , at which he filled the office FRENCH OPERA. 77 of master of ceremonies, was, in perfect contrast with the court of the misanthropic monarch, the theatre of every kind of amuse- ment, histrionic especially. Here the Abbe conceived the idea of a style of poetry which, by means of new and irregular forms, as also by the expression of manifold emotions, should be calcu- lated to excite the fantasy of the musician. His poems written on this principle and after the pattern of the so-called ^'versi sciolti" (blank verse) of the Italians, which he published in 1661 as verses for music, naturally excited* the most violent opposition of the professional poets, at the head of whom was Boileau, afterwards author of the work named after Horace's "Ars poetica", "L'art poetique". All the more thankfully were they received by musicians, and the most noted composer of the France of that time, Egbert Cambert, organist of the church of St. Honore and musical intendant to the queen-mother, indicated his readiness to accept Perrin's innovations in the preface to a collection of his drinking-songs, in which he expresses the hope ''that the beauty of the words may atone for the defects of the music, they being written mostly by Monsieur Perrin, as to whose incomparable talent for writing musical texts there is no dispute". With this composer Perrin united in carrying out his musico-dramatic re- formatory plans, and the first fruit of their joint labor was a vaudeville entitled "Pastorale, premiere comedie fran9aise en mu- sique", first performed in 1659 at the castle of the farmer-general de la Haye, at Issy, near Paris. The brilliant success of this undertaking was especially cred- itable to the poet and the composer for the reason that both had disdained to employ on this occasion the customary external means of producing effect, and thus the applause showered on the work was aimed at its intrinsic worth exclusively. Nevertheless, years had to pass before French opera could take one step in advance of the first stage of infancy. In the first place, Perrin had to put up with the disappointment of seeing an Italian opera — Cavalli's "Xerxes", already mentioned — chosen for the marriage-celebration of Louis XIV., although his own "Pastorale" had, shortly after its performance at Issy, been brought out before the court at Vincennes and obtained a favorable reception. But this disappointment availed as little as the death of his patrons — first, of the Duke of Orleans, then of Cardinal Mazarin — 78 FRENCH OrEBA. to hinder the enterprising poet in the energetic prosecution of the work he had begun. By unremitting exertions and petitions he succeeded, in 1699, thus fully ten years after the first represen- tation of the "Pastorale", in getting a royal patent, granting to him for twelve years the exclusive right to establish in Paris and aU other cities of the kingdom "Opera-academies after the manner of the Italian ones."* He now formed an association with Cam- BERT, the Marquis of Surdeac and a certain Champeron, on which latter the supervision of the decoration and the financial management devolved; the best vocal talent of the kingdom as also the royal ballet-master, Beauchamp, as "chef de la danse", were secured for the undertaking, and soon a suitable place was found for erecting a theatre. At the end of five months the new building was erected on the site of the "Jeu de paume de la bouteille" (tennis-court) in the Kue Mazarin, and in 1671 was opened with the opera "Pomona", a work which in regard of both the music and the poetry was far inferior to the maiden effort of Perrin and Cambert, yet had such an attraction for the public that it had a run of fully eight months and brought into the poet alone the sum of 30.000 francs {S 6.000). Meanwhile a dangerous rival to the youthful enterprise had grown up in the person of Giovanni Battista Lully** or Lulli, who, born in Florence in 1633, came to Paris as a boy and gradu- ally worked his way up from a scullion to Mademoiselle de Mont- PENSiER, niece of the king, to a favorite of Louis XIV. Dismissed in disgrace by his mistress in consequence of a satirical poem upon her, he first obtained through his talent for the violin em- ployment in the royal orchestra, the "grande bande" of twenty- four "violons du roy"; after he had there attracted the king's attention, a special orchestra of sixteen musicians was formed for him, called the "petits violons", in distinction to the older and more numerous orchestra. Finally he managed as play-actor also to ingratiate himself with the king and to render his favor secure * **Diverses Academies, dans lesquelles il se fait des representations en musique, qu'on nomme op6ra" (sic). The designation "Academic royale de Mu- sique", to this day (with occasional change of the word "royale" into "impe- riale" or "nationale") the official name of the Paris so-called "Grand Opera", appears only after Perrin's patent had passed over to his successors. ** Properly written "Lulli", as there is no "y" in the Italian alphabet FRENCH OPERA. 79 by Ms irresistible drollery, as often as Ms position at court seemed to be imperilled. Trusting to the partiality of tbe powerful sovereign he conducted himself, for more quickly attaining his ends, towards the public as also towards his colleagues with the utmost want of consideration. As he had most grievously injured and offended the most eminent men of Ms time — Boileau, La- FONTAiNE, and even Moliere, to whose friendly advances he owed his first successes, — so now, made jealous by the success of the PERRm-CAMBERT undertaMug, he did not hesitate to apply every means of intrigue in order to rob these two men of the fruits of their labor. And in tMs he succeeded in the year 1672, when he availed Mmself of a quarrel that had broken out between the four directors of the enterprise, to transfer to Mmself the patent granted to Perrin, and thus became the master of the whole domain of French opera. Vain were the protestations of the victims of this robbery: Perrin's complaints were unheeded, and after a year's time Ms name was no longer mentioned. Cam- BERT too had to acknowledge that by the side of Lulli there was no place for him; he removed to London, but, despite Ms brilliant successes there as composer, could not forget the mishap he had experienced in Ms native country, and died a few years afterwards (1677), poisoned by Lulli, as the enemies of the latter maintained. With Lulli begins the true golden age of grand opera in France, seeing that he had rightly estimated the public need of a music-drama corresponding to the national sentiment, and was perfectly able to satisfy it. Perrin's attempt to shake off the constraint of the poetic forms could, in view of the belief of the French in the immutability of certain dogmas, not possibly have a thorough success; it had come too late to turn back the pre- viously mentioned development of the language. Lulli, on the contrary, conformed strictly to the dominant art- views, and the eminence that he attained among the French people as opera- composer is due not so much to Ms musical talent as to his ability to enter into the essential nature of tragedy, according to the representations that the French had formed to themselves of this art-species. "As the French drama", says von Dommer (History of Music), "sought to conform itself to the laws of the ancient Greek Drama, so Lulli, too, in Ms music stood far nearer 80 FRENCH OPERA. to the ideas of its nature in the antique music-drama than did the contemporaneous Italians, among whom music had, in opera also, emancipated itself from Greekism and struck out a path for itself." As musical art-works LuLLi's operas are inferior to those of the Italians of that time. With him the centre of gravity lies in the musical rhetoric and declamation, in the dramatic ex- pression, which he aims at by the close union of tone with speech ; and accordingly, his musical forms are simple, not to say meagre, as compared with the broadly developed tone-forms of the con- temporaneous Italian opera, destructive though this development must be admitted to be, for the most part, of dramatic truthful- ness. This weak side of Lulli's operas is, however, compensated by his exact knowledge of the stage, as also by his ability to make a skilful use of all external theatrical appliances. To this must be added the earnestness with which he set about to accom- plish what he had found to be right and necessary. Just as he tyrannized outrageously over his poet Quinault, and struck out from and added to his works till they perfectly accorded with his intentions, so too, when his operas were being studied he kept the singers, the chorus, the orchestra and the dancers to their task with a painful exactness. Especially he exerted himself to impart to his actors better stage-manners, a higher degree of mimetic skill, and a more distinct enunciation of the words — the latter being an essential condition of the success of his music, whose declamatory character is never disavowed, not even in the choruses, which participate far more extensively in the dramatic action than the Italian opera-chorus, and thus on their part also demonstrate the affinity of the French opera with the antique tragedy. From all this it is easily understood why Lulli's works were not only held in great esteem by the French public during his life-time, but could also after his death (1678) hold their ground upon the stage nearly a whole century long. It was not till the year 1774 that they disappeared from the operatic repertory, simultaneously with the appearance of Gluck's "Iphigenia in Aulis", whose reform of the musical drama, moreover, substantially follows the principles of Lulli, just as the latter have also remained up to the present time the standard for the French grand opera. There was but one composer who could during this long period put himself abreast of Lulli : Jean Philippe Rameau (born FRENCH OFERA. 81 16^3, at Dijon). The superior of his predecessor as musician, lie notably enriched French opera-music from the melodic and the harmonic side, yet without sacrificing the dramatic to the musical element and thus becoming disloyal to the principles followed by LuLLi. It was not till comparatively late, in his fiftieth year, that Rameau began his career as opera-composer; but as he had dur- ing the first and greater half of his artist-life been uninterrupt- edly employed with music — w4th what success is proved by what he accomplished as theoretician and as piano-virtuoso and composer for this instrument — , he could already at the appear- ance of his first opera "Hippolyte et Aricie" (October 1st, 1732) develop an epoch-marking activity in the dramatic domain also. Even here is seen the difi'erence between his talent and that of LuLLi; the latter retains from the first to the last of his operas the same musical method, whereas in Rameau's works the richest variety reigns, with an endeavor to employ constantly new means of expression and to render the style diversified. The exuberance of musical thoughts by which in the above-mentioned opera he surprised his contemporaries and at first (as may be imagined) puzzled them, justifies the opinion expressed by the esteemed composer Campra (from 1722 till his death in 1744 music-director to Louis XV.), "that 'Hippolyte et Aricie' contained matter enough for ten ordinary operas, and that Rameau would eclipse all the masters of his time". At first the artist had of course to suffer the most violent attacks from the public ; the blind adherents of LuLii especially could not forgive him his innovations and revenged them- selves on him by the following epigram, among other things: Si le difficile est le beau, C'est un grand homme que Rameau. Mais si le beau, par aventure IT^tait que la simple nature. Quel petit homme que Rameau 1 Of the above criticism we would observe that it is one that reg- ularly makes its appearance at the springing up of every new art-tendency, but is none the less senseless on that account. For, what is called "naturalness" in music is simply the result of the habituation of the ear, and the reproach constantly made to the pioneer composer — that he purposely heaps up difRculties — merely betrays the laziness of the objectors, who are unwilling 6 82 FRENCH OPEBA. to take any pains to explore the new art-domain opened to them by the genius of the artist. Subsequently also, on the appearance of every new opera, Rameau was subjected to the same attacks, although after the production of his opera "Castor and Pollux" (1737) he was acknowledged, even by his opponents, to be the first dramatic composer of France. The prominent position he had acquired at the Grand Opera, for which he produced in the follow- ing years twenty-two additional larger works, he retained up to his death (1764), and the manner in which the French nation honored the memory of the master, both by a magnificent funeral and by the memorial ceremonies on the anniversary of his death, repeated year by year, testifies that she numbered him, even in his life-time, among the best of her children. Not less considerable are the merits that Rameau acquired through his epoch-marking labors in the field of musical theory. Whilst his predecessors had contented themselves with laying down rules for the connection of chords^ without exploring their origin, in his "Traite d'harmonie", published in 1722, he succeeds in establishing this origin. His system is based on the over-tones or harmonics of a fundamental tone, viz- the Octave, the Fifth in the second Octave (or Twelfth), and the Third in the third Octave (Seventeenth). By transposing the Fifth and the Third — the former an Octave, the latter two Octaves lower — he obtains the major Triad, called by him "accord parfait"; the minor Triad ("accord parfait mineur"), on the other hand, is composed of three tones having a common over-tone, as, A, tired of worn-out formalism, was anxious to adopt the new kinds of style that had been gained for secular music. This was brought about first by Emilio del Cavaliere, until 1595 intendant of music to the ducal court of Florence, who had taken part in the initial attempts at reviving the ancient Greek music-drama, yet had not then found anything suitable to the purpose. If in con- sequence he had to forego the fame of being named among the founders of modem opera, he secured, in compensation, an honor- able place in the history of the Oratorio. For, with the appear- ance of his sacred allegorical music-drama La rappresentazione di anima e di corpo* (first performed in the year 1600 on a stage in the oratory of the monastery of Santa Maria in Vallicella at Rome), the two principal species of vocal and instrumental music connected with an action begin to develop themselves in their peculiar manner. The problem of the opera is from this time forth to unite music and poetry with an action visibly represented on the stage; the oratorio ^ on the other hand, aims at the ad- justment of ecclesiastical and secular art on the territory of biblical history, and if it likewise at first admits visible action, yet the latter retires more and more into the background, until (from Handel's time onward) the action is represented only in music. A cooperator with Cavaliere in the introduction of the dra- matic style into church-music was Ludovico Viadana (died after 1644 as music-director at Mantua), who by his Concerti da chiesa^ pieces for one or more voices with an organ-bass, was the first to naturalize in the church the monody newly invented by Caccini. Specially worthy of note in these "concerts" is the appearance of an independent obligatory instrumental bass, thd basso continuoy so-called because, unlike the vocal bass, it makes no occasional pauses but gives the harmony a solid foundation throughout the whole piece. For this reason it was called also bassus generalise'** whence arose later the error of ascribing to Viadana the inven- ♦ The name "rappresentazione" was, like "storia", "esempio", "misteric", a common designation of the Italian sacred drama. From time immemorial songs -were mingled with these representations, mostly final choruses after the acts. ** The English equivalent of this would be the old-fashioned expressioD THE ORATORIO. < 109 tion of what is now called. Jlgured bass, i. e., a bass with certain figures and signatures indicating the tones necessary to the com- pletion of the harmony. This latter kind of bass was in use be- fore his time, and occurs, e. g.^ in Peri's opera "Euridice", which appeared two years earlier than the ^^concerti da chiesa^. — But the most important part in the development of the oratorio as an independent art-species was taken by GiACOMO Carissimi (from 1528 onward music-director at St. ApoUinaris' church at Rome), in that he moulded the till then simply song-like cantata into a kind of dramatic scene with recitative, airs and choruses, in which form it bore the name of chamber-cantata. Besides numerous works of this kind, which already is closely related to the later oratorio, Carissimi wrote also a series of actual oratorios, among them "Jephtha", "The Judgment of Solomon", and "Jonah", which are full of animated dramatic expression and especially rich in effective dramatic choruses and frequently recall Handel, on whose oratorios they exercised an influence similar to that which was exercised on his operas by those of Alessandro Scarlatti. After Carissbh's death the sacred music-drama in Italy was utterly supplanted by the chamber-cantata, and at its re-appear- ance a century later it was seen to be thoroughly secularized by the spirit and the style of the opera. In the domain of church-music proper we meet, to be sure, even in the 18*'' century a number of Italian composers in whose works the traditions of their great predecessors stUl exert a powerful influence. Among these are the Venetians LoTTi (died in 1740 as music-director of St. Mark's), famous through his eight-voiced "Crucifixus"; Caldara* (died at Vienna in 173C), whose sixte en-voiced "Crucifixus" is in art-worth not inferior to that of Lotti ; Benedetto Marcello, a Venetian nobleman and amateur, who, though excelled in talent by the two just mentioned, was able nevertheless by industry, versatility and intellectual activity to gain and maintain a brilliant position in the musical world. His chief work, the setting oi fifty Psalms of David in an Italian version, procured him great fame among his contemporaries even outside of his native country. J. A. Hillee, in his "Wochentlichen Nachrichten" (Leipsic, 1769) calls hiTn % **thorough-bass", e. •., bass throughout ("thorough" here having its original -meaning). Translator, * See p. 70. 110 THE ORATORIO. man "who could unite the entire seriousness of the old music with the graces and the beauties of the new. . . In his Psalms he is so free and remote from all that is low or common, that an in- telligent hearer is kept by an infinite variety of new and beauti- ful modulations in continual delight", etc. A peculiarity of this work of Marcello is his aim at antique simplicity, which he sought to attain by the use, among other things, of Hebrew ritual music, communicated to him by Spanish and German Jews. But granting that he was right in his opinion that these melodies came directly from the ancient Hebrew temple-song, still he only half accomplished his artistic purpose by his treatment of them, because in him (as von Dommer observes) the admirer and imi- tator of antiquity and the cavalier of the 18*^ century come in conflict. His antiquising* remains on the outside and attains to no intellectual blossom; the pretended antique simplicity forms a contrast to the language of modern subjective feeling and passion that Marcello's striving — under evident influence of the opera — after flexible, flowing song is by no means calculated to mitigate. With incomparably greater care than in Italy were the Oratorio and the Passion fostered in Germany, where the most fearful of wars had annihilated material prosperity, indeed, yet not the ideal intellectual tendency. The very activity of the last great Nether- lander Orlandus Lassus, or EoLAND DE Lattre, as music-direc- tor in Munich (where he died in 1595), among whose numerous master- works the seven Penitential Psalms, attesting deep, tho- roughly German feeling, have a prominent place, points to Ger- many as the soil best adapted for the growth of ecclesiastical music. Immediately after him appear in Hans Leo Hasler (died in 16J2) and Johannes Eccard (died 1611) two artists who, though educated in foreign schools (the former in that of Gabrieli at Venice, the latter in that of Orlandus Lassus), yet may be regarded as representatives of an independent German tone- art, and of whom the latter in particular, through his "Prussian festival songs for the whole year" — an intermediate species between motet and song, yet with more of the character of the latter — essentially enriched the protestant church-music. Heinrich Schutz "Antiquise", to imitate the antique. Translator, THE ORATORIO. i 111 also (born in 1585, died in 1672 as music-director at Dresden), as pupil of Gabrieli utilized the inspiration received from Italy only for making Ms German depth and solidity avail to its whole extent, when, after his solitary attempt in the domain of the opera (see p. 93:, he had turned his whole attention to church-music. The oratorio is indebted to him for a considerable advance, not- withstanding he wrote no work of that class in the modem sense ; for his 'Resurrection", and "Seven Words" belong in character rather to the species of Passion-music. In the first of these works, printed in 1623 at Dresden, we still see a decided adherence to the old forms; the words of the title: "The Resm-rection of our Lord Jesus Christ, as described to us by the four evangelists", set to music for six voices, serve as introduction; the words of the acting persons are likewise polyphonic, according to custom ; the evangelist recites throughout according to the accentus erclesiasticus^ which is only occasionally interrupted by characteristic tone-progressions. A remarkable turn, on the other hand, in ScHiJTz's career of artistic development is seen in his "Seven Words", published in 1645, in which the recitativo arioso has entirely supplanted the accentus ecclesiasticus and the monologues are invariably set for one voice. It is re- markable moreover that here the words of Jesus are not accom- panied (as are those of the other personages) by the organ, but by stringed instruments, which, played in a high register, surround the voice as it were with a halo, a kind of accompaniment which, as is well known, has been applied in Bach's Matthew-Passion as also in later compositions of the same kind. Worthy of notice, moreover, is also the peculiar grouping of the material, already foreshadowing the future formation of the Passion-text: on the one hand the gospel history itself, clad, as action, in dramatic form, on the other hand the christian church, framing the pro- ceedings with its feeKngs and reflexions in a broadly executed five-voiced introductory and final chorus. The peculiarly character- istic element of the Oratorio, the dramatically animated chorus, is not found either in the "Resurrection" nor in the "Seven Words", but occurs in Schutz's last work, the "Powr Passions according to the four Evangelists^ (1666), in which the dramatic feature operates the more powerfully in the choruses of the people for the reason that the aged master has, in regard of the shaping of the whole, 112 THE OKATORIO. returned to the older forms, the accentus ecclestasticus , the poly- phonic treatment of the monologue, etc. In those choruses, how- ever, that ask, now timidly, "Lord, is it I?" now angrily, "Lord, shall we smite with the sword?" now cry in mockery, "Hail! King of the Jews", we see everywhere the effort not merely to accom- modate the sense of the words to the sentiment but to represent it as action, and in this sense ScHUTZ has more decidedly than Carissimi prepared the way for the Handel oratorio. A long time had to elapse after Schutz's death before the discovery of forms for the Oratorio and the Passion by whose aid Handel and Bach could bring these art-species to the highest perfection. As regards the "Passion", we would cite , as farther noteworthy moments in its course of development: first, the appearance of a Passion-work by the Prussian music-director Se- BASTIANI (1672), in which the protestant choral is interwoven into the musical representation of the passion at appropriate places conditionated by the sacred text. Next, the endeavors of the Hamburg librettists (see the preceding section) to reconcile the inclinations of the musical public with the demands of the orthodox clergy. To meet the opposition of the latter to the libretti then in favor, which were in form operatic and utterly unlike the old passion-forms, the licentiate Brookes produced at the beginning of the 18*^ century a passion-text that was, to be sure, designed like the previous ones, yet in skilful grouping and dramatic fer- vor so far surpassed them that it was admired by contemporaries as a master- work and was set to music by the most eminent com- posers of Hamburg, viz : Keiser, Mattheson and Telemann, and even by Handel (1716). For the development of the "Passion" as art-species the text of Brookes is of importance, because in it we find for the first time the three chief groups that afterwards appear in the Baoh Passion: with the scenes out of the gospel history of Christ's sufferings are confronted the reflections and pathetic utterances of two allegorical personages, the "daughter of Sion" and the "be- lieving soul", representing an assembly (the so-called "invisible church") accompanying in thought and explaining the actions and sufferings of Christ on earth: finally the protestant church and congregation also is represented by chorals, wliich, as with THE ORATORIO, , 113 Sebastiant, are at appropriate places connected by manifold allu- fiions with the action. Georg Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach are the two artists whose memory should be doubly precious for the reason that their aim was directed at the realization of the highest art-ideals at a time when the older civilized nations — Italians and Frenchmen — applied themselves, at the cost of artistic seriousness, more and more to the cultivation of external effective- ness. We like therefore to mention especially their names in con- nexion, although they are seen to be, in their artistic nature as in their life-experiences, as different one from the other as possible. Both bom in Thuringia and in the same year (Handel on Feb. 23^ at Halle, Bach on the 21^* of March at Eisenach), they develop themselves each in a particular direction, almost the opposite of the other. Bach was impelled by his nature to plunge into the depths of religious feeling, to penetrate into the innermost mys- teries of religion, and this in conjunction with Pietism, the new theory of church-life introduced by Spener in 1675, according to which, in opposition to orthodoxy, not the words of Scripture or the sermon, but the personal interior enlightenment helps us to acquire divine knowledge.* He is, accorrdingly , before every- thing else lyric (see p. 11), in his whole manner of construction and of feeling subjective, almost romantic, hence, too, more at home in instrumental than in vocal music. Handel, on the other hand, finds his point d^appui in the outer world; the drama is * Ptttt.tpp Spitta, in his monograph "Ueber Sebastian Bach" (Leipsic, 1879), advocates the contrary opinion in regard of Bach, and substantiates it by showing that the general tendency of Pietism was inimical to art, more- over, by pointing to the fact that Bach, as organist at Nordhausen (1707), was, in the dispute of the theologians of that place, Eilmar and Feohne, on the side of the former, representing orthodoxy. Now, in this case no im- portance is to be attached to Bach's action, since he could, as artist and youth of twenty-two years, hardly have been influenced by any other than personal considerations. But that he should, with his marked ideahstic and subjective nature, in riper years decide in favor of Pietism, follows from the very essence of this system, as it was not only far removed from Puritanical narrowness but in the main aspired to a warmer, more spiritual and freer appropriation of holy things, and precisely then concentrated in itself all of idealism and higher thought and feeling that was still alive in the German nation. 114 THE ORATORIO. the art-species most nearly corresponding to his nature, conse- quently his art-conception is an objective, and in opposition to Bach's modern one, an antique one. As history is the domain in which by preference he moves, so too it is bible history in which his religious convictions take root; but as regards application of tone- material he is first of all vocal composer. Bach's existence flowed quietly as to externals, he never left his native country and was seldom absent from Leipsic, where he labored as canter at the St. Thomas' school from 1723 until his death, and a journey to Dresden or to Berlin was to him an event. His choir and the organ of St. Thomas' church became his home, and while Handel extends under the influence of three nations the borders of his nationality, Bach, even if he does occasionally follow in his instrumental compositions French or Italian models, remains within the narrowest limits of national feeling. Thus the two heroes of German music also represent the double nature of the German people, viz: the devotion to what is foreign and the ex- clusiveness against it. But that neither the one nor the other was for a moment untrue to his German nature, is seen both in the character of their works and in the restless exertion and the never-flagging love of work which, even in their latest years (after both had become blind) up to their death — Bach died 1750, Handel 1759 — never forsook them. Influential as Bach's creative activity was in the most diverse departments of music, particularly upon the development of organ- plajdng and pianoforte-playing, yet it reaches its climax in the ^^Passion^, True, he did not create new forms for this art-species, nor did he attempt to find them; his merit is that he brought the traditional forms to the last possible perfection and filled them with matter corresponding to his musical giant-spirit. Accord- ing to FoRKEL* he wrote five "Passion" settings, of which how- ever but two — those according to the Gospels of St. John and St. Matthew — were made public. The St John Passion ^ the time of whose origin is unknown, exhibits in its forms the older pattern and in it we miss generally the dramatic impressiveness that so brilliantly stands out in Bach's later works. It is in the * J. N. FoRKEL, "Of JoHANN Sebastun BACH'S life, art and art-works". Vipsic, 180?,. THE ORATORIO. I 115 aS'^. Matthew Passion, first performed in 1729, that lie appears to have at last fully recognized the greatness of his mission. Here is displayed his entire artistic ability : the skilful treatment of the protestant choral, the unlimited mastery of the fugue style, in which point even Handel has not equalled him, finally his know- ledge of the orchestral instruments, which he frequently uses, according to their individual quality, by themselves alone, as ohligato accompanists of a solo voice. The St. Matthew Passion is of art-historical importance in regard also of the text, inasmuch as Bach, while he had in the St. John Passion made use of parts of Brooke's poem, here restored the text of the passion-history literally according to the gospel, hence too the accompanying reflections of the christian congregation and of the invisible church were introduced in greater moderation than before. If now we confront with the Passion, so highly perfected by Bach, the Oratorio as art-species, the comparison must still turn out in favor of the latter, because in the former we find two — strictly speaking — reciprocally exclusive properties exter- nally united, viz: the churchly in its purity and freedom from passion, and the dramatic with its powerful expression of the emotions, while in the oratorio the churchly and the secular dra- matic elements are blended as a unit into a new species of art and style. This unity of style and form, which for the reason just given cannot exist in the Passion, the oratorio owes to Han- del's activity in England, where he devoted himself to it exclu- sively and with his whole power, after having thoroughly gone through the school of opera in Hamburg, Italy, as music-director in Hanover and finally in London. It is highly creditable to England from a musical point of view to have brought to matu- rity on her soil one of the noblest and most important species of composition: for though her own children lacked the power necessary for this, yet the success of such an art-exploit pre- supposes a considerable sum of artistic labor and artistic feeling, of whose existence, moreover, the earlier music-history of England gives ample evidence. The prominent musical position of England in the Middle Age already sufficiently shows that not lack of musical talent but outward circumstances are to be held responsible for the lack of independence of English music during the last two centuries. At «♦ 116 THE ORATORIO. fchat time England appears to be, as regards the cultivation of music, especially of organ-playing, by no means behind the other nations of the West; and the lively part that she afterwards took in the development of counterpoint is mentioned by the famous Netherlandic theorist Tinctoris (about 1476 chief music-director to Ferdinand I. at Naples, author of the oldest musical lexicon, which appeared about the same time under the title "Terminorum musicae diffinitorium"). This author goes so far as to maintain "that the fount and origin of this new art is to be found in England, where Dunstable (died about 1450) is conspicuous as its head". We will not attempt to test the correctness of this assertion, seeing that the artistic legacy of the above-named contrapuntist is at this day as good as unknown. Yet the fact speaks in its favor that the English singers and composers during the palmy days of Netherlandic counterpoint were everywhere and even in the home of the latter held in favor and sought for. But English music attained to the zenith of its development during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, after the renascence-movement, originated in Italy, had given to the intellectual life of the island- kingdom also that impulse which was able to bring forth in the domain of poetry a Shakespeare (1564 — 1616). At the same time with him appear as representatives of the sister-art a number of highly gifted composers and virtuosos, who must have been all the more impelled to activity as the queen herself gave the example, and showed her appreciation of music not only as expert performer on the virginal but also as protectress of church-music against the fanatical attacks of the Puritans. After her example the cultivation of solid music became so general that it was re- garded as a sign of defective education if one should — for example — be unable to join, in an assembly, in the improvised execution of a piece of polyphonic vocal music. To judge from a passage from Shakespeare's "Twelfth night", the partiality to contrapuntal singing seems to have been carried even to excess. "But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one weaver?" asks Sir Toby Belch. And Sir Andrew Ague-cheek answers- "An you love me, let's do it; I am dog at a catch"! Nevertheless the possible abuses cannot in any wise dim the splendor of this golden age of English music, nor the fame of its THE ORATORIO. 117 cHief representatives William Byrd (from 1585 organist to the queen, in his time regarded as the English Palestrina), his pupil Thomas Morley (editor of a valuable collection of madrigals, including many of his own composition, published in 1601 under the title "The triumphs of Oriana"), Orlando Gibbons (noted or- ganist, editor of the first music for the virginal printed in En- gland), and the much-praised lute-virtuoso John Dowland, of whose playing Shakespeare says, in his "Passionate Pilgrim", 'T)0WLAND . . . whose heavenly touch upi u the lute doth ravish human sense". In the farther course of the 17*^ centiiry the progress of England's intellectual development was interrujlvd by the wars from which at the end a new form of government resulted. But after the restoration of internal order the nation was so busied with the care of material interests, and, after the destruction (in 1588) of the invincible Spanish Armada had laid the foundation of naval supremacy, with the strengthening ot its position as a Power, that the ideal pursuits retired into the background and, as for music, the field was most willingly abandoned to foreign talent. The hospitable reception of Cambert in London (see p. 77, 79), as of the Italians who appeared before him, is charac- teristic of the eclectic tendency that musical England then inau- gurated and has ever since followed. Even the most gifted of all English composers, the genial Henry Purcell, was unable to inspire anew confidence in the production of national music, and neither his numerous profound and magnificent church-com- positions — among which the Anthems are specially noticeable — , nor his dramatic compositions, which are thirty-nine in number and as genuine home-products were well calculated to form the basis of a national English opera, were able in those unfavorable times to produce any lasting effect. "At such a time", says Chrysander (Handel, vol. I) "a rigid disciplinarian is needed", — but such was Purcell as little as Mozart was. For, earnestly as they pursued art, they took life just as easily and died early. But what Purcell points to and desires is accomplished in Handel's Kfe, and by the musical healthfullness of all his works and their unity of structure, as also by the versatility of his genius, he is that fore-runner of Handel that most directly leads to him. 118 THE ORATORIO. A quarter of a century after Purcell^s early death, begin, with Handel's arrival in London, which from 1720 till his death was the scene of his labors, the golden days of the latter master, dating in fact from his engagement at the Italian opera at the Haymarket Theatre. The subversion of social relationships that had taken place in England at the beginning of the century had made it possible for opera to withdraw at this very time from the circles of the court and the nobility, and to look for support to the public, which had meanwhile artistically ripened. Under these circumstances Handel found during the twenty years of his theatre- life the best opportunity for learning to keep in view the art- necessities of the general public. But he had, on the other hand, also much to suffer from the disadvantages that the changed state of things brought with it for the artist- world. Aristocratic society, finding itself deprived of the sole direction in musical affairs, be- gan to withdraw from the artists the material assistance formerly so generously bestowed, and Handel was not the man to make concessions in the matter of musical taste in order to turn the sentiments of the former art-patrons to his own advantage. Besides this, his duties as opera-director were rendered burdensome by the constantly increasing rivalry, especially after a second Italian opera-troupe, engaged by his enemies and directed by the Neapol- itan PoRPORA, had forced him to change the Haymarket for the Covent-garden theatre; none the less, too, by the petty jealousies of the male and female singers under his direction (see p. 71); so that in the year 1740, after the performance of his thirty-first opera "Deidamia", he gave up the theatre for good, after having lost through his last venture the whole of his painfully acquired fortune. Meanwhile, however, his first oratorio "Esther" had in 1732 already been performed and received with hearty applause by that part of the London amateurs represented by the Academy of an- cient music, who saw in Handel's work a realization of their plans for reviving the antique tragedy in the territory of biblical history. At that time opinions were divided, whether the oratorio should be given with acting or should entirely dispense with vis- ible dramatic accessories. The bishop of London, Dr. Gibson, decided in favor of the latter — to the no small advantage of Handel as musician, for now he could enjoy incomparably greater THE ORATORIO. , 119 freedom in His creative work than under the constraint invariably suffered by the composer from the conditions of scenic represen- tation. It is self-evident that dramatic music, when no longer supported by visible representation, is all the more required to give to all its forms the highest possible plasticity, sharpness and clearness, in order that the whole art-work may gain for our imagination and our feeling the semblance of perfect life and immediate presence, so that the absence of visible representation no longer impresses us as a defect. This applies both to the solo vocal parts and in a special manner to the choruses; indeed, the chorus, this weighty form for expressing popular and human- itarian ideas and feelings, may justly be considered as the centre of gravity of the Handel oratorio. "In it lies, just as in the chorus of the Greek tragedy, the sum of the moral and religious ideas of the work ; it is the floor on which the individual persons move, practically confirming or contradicting those ideas in action and sentiment, subject to it as to the voice of the people and of God, and to its judicial authority and final sentence. In the orutorio-chorus the high significance of the Greek chorus has been far more fully realized than it ever can be in the opera- chorus."* Such are the essential characteristics of the oratorio, into which a more detailed examination is unnecessary from the fact that this art-species in the form given it by Handel has been popularized and by frequent repetition been made accessible to aU.** Former generations were in this regard not so fortunate, both Handel and Bach were soon after their death almost for- gotten; the style of the Italian opera had about this time extended its dominion over church-music also, and its chief representatives * See Koch's Musical Lexicon, edited by A. voN Dommer, article "Oratorio". ** This remark is especially true of that oratorio of Handel's which, from the very nature of its subject, appeals most strongly to the religious sensibilities of the multitude of protestant believers — the "Messiah", composed in 1741, in the short space of 24 days. "No musical work", says a writer in Grove's Dictionary of Music — "has had such long, continuous, and enduring pop- ularity as the Messiah, nor has any other so materially aided the cause of charity. Much of the veneration with which it is regarded is, doubtless, owing to the subject, but much also must be attributed to the splendid music, some of which .... is 'not for an age, but for all time'." {Translator,) 120 THE ORATORIO. in Germany, Graun and Hasse, were praised as excellent models when Bach and Handel were mentioned, if at all, only as learned contrapuntists. Even Mozart became acquainted only by accident and in his later years with Bach's vocal compositions, on the occasion of a visit to Leipsic, where his friend Doles, Bach's second successor as cantor at St. Thomas' church, had a motet of the old master sung for him as a rarity. It was only by the exertions of Scheible, founder ol the St. Cecilia society at Frank- fort, and of Mendelssohn, that an interest for Bach and Handel was, after a slumber of many generations, successfully re-awak- ened. The energy with which Mendelssohn, as youth of nine- teen years, brought about the first performance of the revival of Bach's "Matthew-Passion" (Berlin, 1829), and the obstacles he had to overcome in so doing, are related at length by Eduard Devrient in his "Remembrances of Mendelssohn" ("Erinnerungen an F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy"). In a similar way Mendels- sohn contributed, as director of the Lower-Rhine music-festivals, to the revival of the Handel oratorio. His loving reverence for these two masters was not, however, to go unrewarded, for it was their spirit that impelled him to the creation of his own most important works, the oratorios "St. Paul" and "Elijah".* The "St. Paul" was begun in March, 1834, and finished at. the beginning of 1836. It was first performed at Dusseldorf on Whitsunday, May 22, 1836; and in English, at Liverpool on Oct. 3 following. The "Elijah" was begun probably in 1838 (the score has no dates), and had its first performance in England, at the Birmingham Festival, Aug. 26, 1846, and in Germany, at Hamburg in October, 1847, under the direction of Krebs.** * What follows of this section has been substituted for the few closing '^rords of the original, as being (it was thought) of more general interest. Translator, ** These two oratorios have repeatedly been performed in the United States, notably in New York, Boston and Cincinnati. The translator of this work has a vivid recollection of a scene connected with the introduction of "Elijah" into New York city, probably about the winter of 1846. The members of a vocal society directed by George Loder (a native of Bath, England, and an excellent musician, who went from New York to California, where he died), were assembled one evening at their regular place of meeting, the Apollo Rooms, Broadway, in momentary expectation of the arrival of Mr. Loder with the pianoforte and vocal score of the "Elijah", of which we had heard so much. THE ORATOEIO. 121 In spite of the fact that after writing "St. Paul", Mendels- sohn had the advantage, in the composition of "Elijah", of having, meanwhile, passed ten of the best years of his life in indefatigable work and the accumulation of a vast amount of experience, "yet it cannot be said" — says a writer in Grove's Dictionary, under the title "Oratorio" — "that 'Elijah' is really a greater work than *St. Paul'; it is great in a different way. In one respect the main idea is the same as that treated in 'St. Paul' — the triumph of Truth over Falsehood. In both Oratorios the instrument by which this triumph is accomplished is a Heaven-commissioned Teacher, whose influence is distinctly perceptible throughout the entire work; only, in 'Elijah', the personality of this Teacher is more frequently brought before us than in 'St. Paul', where we are so frequently made to feel his influence without actually seeing him. As a natural consequence, the later Oratorio is much more dra- matic in structure than the earlier one." At last Mr. Loder appeared, in a state of delighted excitement and bearing the precious novelty, and seating himself at the piano gave us what I may call glimpses of the principal numhers of the work, whicii, though they were necessarily hnperfect, created the greatest enthusiasm for the new oratorio, all the more as Mendelssohn's star was then in the ascendant. {TranalatorJ^ X. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. It is only cursorily tliat we have been able thus far to pay attention to instrumental music, and to call to mind its import- ance for musical development in general, especially for the culti- vation of polyphonic music (see p. 27) and of modem opera (see p. 66). But after we have seen instrumental music grow up to be a co-ordinate power with vocal music, the time has come for making its evolutionary course also the subject of special con- sideration. In antiquity it is certainly not behind vocal music, at all events its origin reaches far beyond historic times. The in- vention of musical instruments resulted from the simplest of natural circumstances: the sun-dried intestines of a dead animal stretched across the skeleton occasioned the invention of string- instruments* a broken reed, through which the wind breathed, that of wind-instruments. How these two principal species were in use in antiquity, and that in various sub-species, partly as solo instruments, partly united in an orchestra, has been mentioned in the proper place. As regards wind-instruments, however, we must here lay stress on a peculiarity of their gradual develop- ment, a phenomenon which we shall have occasion in the farther course of the history of instrumental music to consider once more, viz: that their development, as culture advances, proceeds from the complex to the simple: the oldest wind-instrument is the "Pan's-pipes" (the "Syrinx" of the Greeks), formed of many ♦ According to Greek tradition it was a tortoise, the appearance of which Sn this condition suggested to the god Hermes as he walked by the sea-shore the idea of the Lyre. INSTKUMENTAL MUSIC. 123 reeds, later tlie "Double-flute" appears, and when the antique civilization reaches its climax, the simple Flute attains the su- premacy. During the Middle Age, besides the traditional musical in- struments those with keys and hows were also in use, especially among the Northern nations, yet were on so low a plane of development as to be utterly unfitted for rendering artistic music- forms like those that had already then developed themselves in vocal music. The first instrument to serve higher artistic pur- poses was the Organ\ by the very consequence of its relation- ship to the church it was in the hands of eminent and learned musicians at a time when th<» other instruments were exclusively given over to itinerant players or afterwards to the town-musi- cians. During the first centuries after its introduction into the cliurch it was, on account of its awkward mechanism, certainly ill calculated to contribute to the dignity of divine service. An English historian, the monk Wulston, writes in the year 951 of an organ built for Winchester Cathedral having four hundred pipes and thirteen pairs of bellows, the latter requiring seventy men to blow them : yet as the instrument had but ten tones, forty pipes being under the control of each key, evidently the chief aim must have been the attainment of the greatest possible power. It was not much better vdth the organs afterwards built at Halber- stadt, Magdeburg and Erfurt, whose keys were a hand broad and could be pressed down only by the fist or even the elbows. The Brunswick music-director Michael Pr^torius, whose "Syntagma musicum", published in 1615, contains in the section entitled "Organographie" important information about the instruments of former times, says of these organs that for the kind of music then in use one could make out very well with them, ''seeing that no composition with many voices but only the simple monophonic choral was played on them". With this the organists were satis- fied until singers had begun to sound various tone-series simul- taneously (see p. 28 and the organ also on its part wished to enjoy the advantages of polyphonic music. It was of course im- possible to play in parallel Fifths and Octaves, after the manner of the "Organum", as the stifihess of the touch did not allow more than one key at a time to be played: this was remedied, however, by so uniting several pipes tuned in Fifths and Octaves 124 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. that they could all be simultaneously sounded by means of one key. These so-called Mixtures^ which have been retained to this day, must have had at first a barbarous effect ; but in the modem organ the symphonous* Fifths and Octaves are so subdued that our ear does not recognize them as independent tones but merely as an integration and re-inforcement of the melody. Improvement in organ-playing went of course hand in hand with that of the instrument; its first evolution as also its final perfection it found in Germany, where we meet at an early date two artists of great merit for the cultivation of the technic of organ-playing: Bernhard Murer, probably identical with Ber- nard THE German, engaged at St. Mark's, Venice, in 1470, and regarded as the inventor of organ-pedals, and the organist of St. Sebaldus, Niimberg, Conrad Paumann or Paulmann, born blind, died at Munich in 1473. Subsequently Italy becomes the real seat of organ-playing, Venice especially, after th^j most famous organist of his time, Claudio Merulo, was appointed principal organist of St. Mark's, in that city. But Italian organ-playing reaches its climax in Kome with Girolamo Frescobaldi, from 1615 organist of St. Peter's in that city, whose art had such fasci- nation that his admirers followed him in his journeys from city to city, and ambitious organists of all countries sought his in- struction. After him and his likewise famous pupil Pasquini, organ-playing in Italy, whose powers were just now entirely taken up with the cultivation of dramatic music, falls into a decline and blossoms again in Germany, where Samuel Scheidt (died in 1654 as organist of the church of St. Maurice at Halle, his native city) begins the series of illustrious organists in which the names of Froberger, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Reinken, lastly Sebastian Bach appear as shining lights. All these worked not only as virtuosos but also as composers for their instrument and became creators of a peculiar style of instrumental music whose development, in view of the already mentioned specially honor- able position of the organ, necessarily followed from this as a * "We have no word in English exactly corresponding to the German ^'mitklingend", literally, "together-sounding". I have therefore ventured to coin, from the Greek, the word "symphonous", which exactly expresses the meaning of the German word. (See my Primer of Modern Tonality, first fciot-note, page 15.) Translator, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 125 logical consequence. The essential features of this style might be recognized at once in the works of the afore-mentioned masters; but for better understanding the style as also the instrumental music-forms that attained development at the same time with it, let us previously consider the evolutionary process of the other instruments, especially of the pianoforte, which at quite an early period took a similar exceptional position among the instruments to that of the organ, after it had proved itself to be as well and even better adapted than the latter to the representation of mu- sical thoughts and forms of the most different kind. The origin of the keyed string-instruments is traced to two primitive instruments — the Monochord and the Psaltery. The former consisted of a long, narrow four-cornered sound-box with one string (as the Greek name implies), which by means of a movable bridge could be divided up according to a diagram of proportionate lengths marked under it. This instrument served in antiquity as also in the Middle Age for the determination of the tone-relationships (intervals) and for the first instruction in music. In the course of time, in order to dispense with the shift- ing of the bridge, keys were adapted to one of the sides of the box, to the lever-ends of which brass pins were fixed, so that, the key being pressed down, the pins would rise and at the same time divide the string and make it sound.* After the addition of more strings, the Monochord became in the 12^'' or 13^^ cen- tury the Clavichord^ which, however, preserved up to the most recent times the memory of its origin, the number of its strings being smaller, even despite the continuous improvement of the instrument, than that of its tones and the keys corresponding to them. Until 1725, from which time the clavichord began to dis- pense with frets, one and the same string, struck at a smaller or greater distance from the bridge, served for two tones, the diatonic tone and the chromatic half-step above it, so that a simultaneous sounding of both these tones was impossible. Over against the Clavichord stand the key-instruments de- rived from the Psaltery, viz : the Harpsichord (Clavicembalo, Cem- • The shorter part of the string, not intended to be sounded, does in- deed give a tone also, but so weak as to be quite covered up by that of the longer part. 126 INSTHUMENTAL MUflT. balo) and its varieties tlie Spinet and Virginal^ this last name having been conferred in England, in honor of the Virgin Queen Elisabeth, as some say, more probably because the instrument played an important part in the education of young women. The instruments of the harpsichord, clavicembalo or spinet family differed from the clavichord in that they were constructed on the plectrum principle, i. e., '^the strings were set in motion by points of quill or hard leather elevated on wooden uprights known as 'jacks', and twitching or plucking them as the depression of the keys caused the points to pass upwards. Leather... points were probably used first, since we learn from Scaliger, who lived 1484 — 1550, that crowquills were introduced in kev-instruments subsequent to his boyhood, and he informs us that through them the name 'spinet' ;from spina, a thorn or point) befcarae applied to what had been known as the 'clavicymbal' and 'harpsichord'."* The clearness of tone resulting from this principle, to which ful- ness also was not wanting after the harpsichorci had become po- lychordal, in the sense of having two or more strings to each tone, fitted the instrument for cooperati«on with, the orchestra, and it remained till after Handel's time a valued support in larger vocal and instrumental performances. Such advantages the clavichord, with its gentle, transparent tone-quality, of course could not claim, but on the other hand it wa§ much better adapted for reproducing the psychic subject-matter oi a piece of music and bringing out its fine points. Bach is said to have preferred the clavichord to the pianoforte, and Beethoven to have expressed himself to the effect that "the clavichord among all key-instru- ments was that on which one could best control tone and expres- sive interpretation". Notwithstanding the importance of piano-playing in the 17*^ and still more in the beginning of the 18*^ century, the technics of the art remained on an extremely low plane up to Bach's time. Special difficulty was found in the treatment of the thumb, .which for centuries was employed merely for stretching larger intervals, whilst in scales and passages it could be put to no better use than supporting the fingers engaged — generally only the third and fourth, — sliding meanwhile to and fro on a board Grove's Dictionary of Music, Part VI, article "Harpsichord". INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 127 placed below the key-board. How little stress was laid upon a systematic fingering is seen in the assertion of Pr^torius, that "it makes no difference whether this or that fingering be used: make your runs with whatever fingers you choose, even use your nose for it, so long as everything is made to sound well and correct", etc. — and more than a century afterward Mattheson writes, in his ''School of Thorough bass" (Hamburg, 1731): "As many as there are players, almost so many kinds of fingering will you find. One runs with four fingers, another with five, some even — and almost as fast — with only two. It is of no consequence, so long as one adopts a certain rule and sticks to it". In this connection we will not omit to mention the merits that the French, besides the Germans and Italians, have acquired in devel- oping piano-playing. Especially after the close of the 1 7^^ century this art was lovingly cherished by the French organists, among them Louis Marchand (bom 1669 , a master in brilliant and elegant playing, though he felt obliged to decline entering into a musical rivalry with Sebastian Bach on meeting him at Dres- den; then, his pupil Rameau, already alluded to as opera-com- poser and theoretician; lastly FRANgois Couperin (bom 1668), the famous member of a numerous family of artists of this name, whose fine and elegant compositions, though occasionally over- loaded with embellishments, determined the direction of the piano- playing of his time and were highly esteemed even by Sebastian Bach. To the efforts of this artist in the department of the purely technical his "L'art de toucher le clavecin", published in 1716 at Paris, gives brilliant testimony. The fingering here recommended already points to a more frequent use of the thumb, though it would seem that it was not before Bach that all the fingers had been trained to an equal development. How greatly the devel- opment of the technics of piano-playing in other respects was promoted by Bach, is seen partly from his compositions, partly also from the instruction-book of his son and pupil Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, "Essay on the tme manner of playing the piano- forte" (Berlin, 1759), which summarizes aU the experiences made up to that time, and starting out from them effects the transition to modem pianoforte-playing. Little as Emanuel Bach is to be compared in depth and creative power with his father, he still deserves a prominent place 128 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. in the history of instrumental music, and the honors paid to him as virtuoso and composer by his contemporaries were by no means undeserved. In his various spheres of action, from 1740 to 1767 as chamber-pianist to Frederick the Great and music-director to the princess Amelia of Prussia, then until his death in 1788 as music-director at Hamburg, he was counted an authority of the first rank, especially in the domain of pianoforte-playing. "He is the father, we are the youngsters", said Mozart in an assembly, when his playing was spoken of; "whoever of us can do anything right learned it of him; and he who will not acknowledge this is a — ". Haydn, too, recognized in his last years the merits of the older master in the words: "He who knows me thoroughly must find that I owe very much to Emanuel Bach, that I have understood him and diligently studied him; he himself once paid me a compliment about it". For the present time Emanuel Bach's compositions have, as genuine expressions of the taste of his time, characterized as it was by sickly sentimentality, lost most of their effect. Yet his influence on the pianoforte-playing of that time must have been the greater for the reason that he marks the transition, from the practice of the older composers who left the details of embellishment almost entirely to the executant, to that of the later ones, by whom everything referring to the delivery is with great minuteness prescribed to the player. In spite of all the efforts of the older masters of the piano- forte thus far named, the instrument would hardly have attained its present importance in musical life had a mechanism not been invented by whose means the tone could sound in various degrees of power, which was not the case with either the clavichord or the harpsichord. The first impulse 'to the invention of such a mechan- ism was given by the Dulcimer, made by a certain Pantaleon Hebenstreit at the end of the 17*^ century, after the manner ol the cymbal, and struck with hammers in the hand. The advan- tage here of being able to strike the strings powerfully, or softly at pleasure, suggested to the Paduan Cristofali (or Cristofori), about 1710, the idea of providing the upper ends of the keys of the harpsichord with hammers, to spring up from below against the strings and to rebound immediately after the stroke. Soon afterward he perfected his invention by a contrivance for damp- ing, which suppresses the sound of the string the moment the INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. , 129 finger is raised from the key. The instrument so constructed, which was called in Italy Picmo-forte , as admitting of soft or loud playing at pleasure, made on its appearance no small sen- sation and was immediately imitated and improved by the harp- sichord-makers of that time. Some of these, as Maeius in Paris and the organist Schroter at Nordhausen, even disputed with Cristofali the honor of the invention, yet it has recently been shown that it was not till five or six years later that they pub- licly exhibited their models. Some twenty-five years after its in- troduction into Italy the piano-forte, having been improved by Silbermank (died at Dresden in 1756), became Imown in Ger- many; yet it did not succeed in supplanting the keyed string- instruments in use at that time until a pupil of Silbermaxn's, Johann Andreas Steik, of Augsburg, had in the last quarter of the preceding century raised the instrument to that degree of perfection that made it capable of giving fit expression to the new spirit of music that meanwhile had awakened. Still another instrument of musico-historical importance was supplanted by the piano-forte — the Lute^ which had for cen- turies held a scarcely less prominent place in musical life than the clavichord or the harpsichord. It was first introduced into Europe (Spain) by the Arabs, its name being derived from the Arabic al oud^ the sheU. Its shape, suggestive of the shell of the tortoise, confirms this origin, and at the same time its affinity to the most ancient string -instrument of the Greeks, invented according to tradition by the god Hermes. The strings of the lute, which were plucked by the fingers, lay partly over partly heside the finger-board; their number varied with the different patterns of the instrument, of which at Pr^torius' time seven were in use, from the theorbo, which had a very long neck and was used in Italy for song-accompaniment, and the similar great octave bass-lute, down to the treble, small treble and small octave- lute. The lute was employed not only for accompanying solo and chorus-singing, but also as a solo and orchestral instrument, and it was at home everywhere, both at church and in opera, but most especially in private circles. It has an extensive literature, beginning with Conrad Paumann (see p. 124), who invented for it a peculiar notation, the German Tablature* so-called, according ♦ The word Tahlature (froM ihe Latin tabula, table) denotes not only 130 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. to wHcli the strings lying over the finger-board are indicated by German letters, the open strings lying near them by figures, and the note-values by the stems and tails P ^ ^ of modem notation. The following, from a book by Hans Gerle (Niirnberg, 1532), is an example of a folk-song* in lute-tablature with a transcrip- tion in modern notation. Dtscant. i~i I ri I r I rrr r r I i r i -^^^^^E^^^f ^ ^ r/ r i / ; / i r/ ^5 r/ p , /_ r I I r i ^E^E^^ m m r r r r r I I r / r"t / i r i ooo5e/5o/o n/o t/ The literature of this instrument does not appear to have come to an end until the time of Johann Adam Hiller (see p. 9S), whose operettas were still printed in an arrangement for the lute, yet even then its popularity had greatly diminished. Mattheson, as early as the first quarter of the preceding cen- tury, formally declares war against the lute and blames especially the superficiality of its "professors", moreover its "insinuating tone- quality, which always promises more than it performs", finally the difficidty also of properly tuning it. This must indeed have been the whole body of the art-rules current among the Master-singers (see p. 43), but also what we now call score (vocal or orchestral), or simply, in the case of monophonic music, notation. There were two kinds of tablature for the lute — the German and the Italian, the latter consisting of a system of six lines, on which the frets were indicated by ciphers. This system was intro- duced into Germany also about the year 1600. Besides the above there is also what was called an organ-tahlature for key-instruments, a method of indicating tones by letters, as represented in my Primer of Modern Tonality, p. 12, Fig. 4. Translator. * It has been arranged by Robert Franz under the title: "Ach Els- lein, liebes Elselein". INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. , 131 almost insuperable, as tlie strings lying over the finger-board were doubled, while those lying next to them, as they could not be shortened, necessarily got out of tune with every change of key. Besides, the smallness and weakness of the whole instrument was not rightly proportioned to the number of strings, especially when their number had increased in the course of time to twenty-four, fourteen over and ten beside the finger-board. Tht species of bow and wind-instruments were in the earlier ages far more numerous than now. The former are to be traced as to their origin either to the Keltic Crotta^ called by the me- diaeval writers liota or Rotte^ or to the Arabic Rebec, afterwards the favorite instrument of the Troubadours. In mediaeval Latin these instruments were named, after the word Jides (a gut-string), fidula or vidula, which expression, variously corrupted, led through the intermediate forms jigella^ vielle and vioel to the Italian "viola" and English ''fiddle" and ''viol". At the beginning of the Middle Age we find the viola in two species: the viola da gamba (leg- violin) and the viola da braccia (arm- violin), which are again sub- divided into thirteen sub-species, corresponding to the various registers of the human voice. Tliis is explained by the fact that far beyond the IMiddle Age there was no independent instrumental music and the instruments had to be satisfied, if they were to participate at all in artistic music, with simply doubling the voice- parts of polyphonic vocal compositions. As the bow-instruments accordingly were grouped in bass, tenor, alto and treble viols, so too the wind-instruments formed each for itself a similar family in various grades, the older wood wind-instruments the bombard and shawm being specially rich in sub-species affording collectively the compass of five and a half octaves. This variety still existed in the 17*^ century, at the time of Pr^torius. Meanwhile an entirely new field of activity was opened for instrumental music; after Monteverde had recognized and taught how to consider the individuality of each separate instrument, the time came when a return from multiplicify to bim- plicity became necessary, and the majority of the instruments till then in use had to make way for some few that were best adapted for solving the higher art- problems that henceforth were pro- pounded. Of the bow-instruments but four species conquered in the struggle for existence: the bass- viola and the tenor viola da 9* 132 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. gamba passed over into the modern orchestra as contrahasso and violoncello respectively; so too the tenor viola as simply mola^ and the treble viola as molin (Italian violino, the termination 'Vwo" being diminutive). In the same proportion the number of wind- instruments was reduced; out of the many kinds of the cross-flute (flauto traverso) and the beak-flute (fltlte a bee), which latter is not held across the lips but straight out, and is blown by means of a mouth-piece like a bird's beak, only the modern j^w^e and clarinet were retained. From the shawm was developed the ohoe^ which at first (about 1700) also appears in various sizes, but at the golden age of instrumental music exists in only one form. Of the bombard finally there remained but the bass-bombard, which, after its long, unwieldy tube had been changed into a double tube like a fagot was called in Italian fagotto^ in English bassoon* Of the instruments which in time have wholly dis- appeared, we will mention here the cornet only (in the old sense of the word), a wind-instrument of wood covered with black leather, in some species straight in form, in others crooked. On account of its clear and penetrating tone it was extensively used in church-music and by town-musicians, also for sounding the melodies of chorals from church-towers, as late as the beginning of the 18*^ century. It is easily conceivable that the smaller the number of varieties of instruments the greater could be the care bestowed on their construction. Violin-making begins to flourish in Italy as early as 1600, Cremona having among all cities made for it- self a s.pecial name in this regard. Here at first labored the family Amati, whose progenitor Antonio (1592 — 1619) gave bow- instruments the form that they have in spite of all attempted improvements retained to this day. If, notwithstanding, Cremona violin-making in the last quarter of the 17*^ century was able through Andrea, Giuseppe and Pietro Guarneri, also Anton Stradivari, to make progress, still the construction of the * "There is reason to believe that the bassoon is of Eastern origin. ♦ ♦ # # # The Egyptian word for a pipe of deep tone * * # * is, according to E. W. Lane ('Modern Egyptians'), Zummarah-hi-soan , and the manner in which the word JBuzaine, Buisine, is used in mediaeval MSS., shows a possible connection with this origin." Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musicai terms, article "Bassoon". Translator, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. ' 133 instrument did not undergo at the hands of these masters any essential alteration. It is different with wind-instruments, which have up to the latest hour experienced (through Adolph Sax in Paris) transformative improvements. That epoch was however a specially important one for the development of wind-instruments also; the flute — for instance — owes many an improvement to JoHANN Joachim Quanz (1697 — 1773), court-composer and teacher of Frederick the Great, he having before his call to Berlin earnestly devoted himself to the improvement of its mechanism and after- wards (1752) published his experiences in a valuable monograph ''Attempt at a method of playing the cross-flute." The necessary consequence of the increasing independence of the instruments was their emancipation from vocal music, and the development of a style in keeping with their capacities, as also of the music-forms resulting therefrom. The instrumental style is distinguished from the vocal essentially by greater rhyth- mical precision as also by greater flexibility. The former attribute it owes to the dance, for accompanying which the instruments were seen to be by their very nature better adapted than the human voice, which for evident reasons, such as the necessity of drawing breath, and of a distinct pronunciation of the text, etc., was unable to adapt itself with perfect ease to the movements of the dancers. This did not hinder it, however, from associating itself with the dance in antiquity and even far into the Middle Age, until at last the instruments had sufficiently advanced in their development to take sole possession of dance-music, and, while retaining the song-form, to carry out still farther the inde- pendent culture of that dance-tune,* the Hyporchema of the ancients. — The greater flexibility of the instrumental style lay also in the very nature of the instruments, and showed itself at an early date in the necessity they were under of dividing up the * The primitive identity of dance-music with song is commemorated by the technical term "Song-form" (in German, ^^ Liedform^ , which is applied in an enlarged sense, as comprising the structure also of the different varieties of pieces composed for dancing. "With a view to greater exactness of termin- ology, however, the expression Trimary form" has been recommended to take the place of "Song-form". See my "Theory and Practice of Musical Form, on the basis of LuDWiG Bussler's Formenlehre" (published by G. ScmEMER, New York), Chapter VI. Translator, 134 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. long-sustained tones of song into smaller parts, wMcli was called "diminishing", "coloring" or "varying". In this, too, instrumental music had for the time being kept pace with song, as long, that is, as the "art of organating" was practised by singers with the unconstraint alluded to on page 45. But when the singers, as we saw at the same place, went back, as polyphonic music became more and more developed, to the sustained style of composition, the instruments began to cultivate all the more zealously the "dimir.ishing", etc. henceforth given over to them exclusively, and the immediate result of their efforts in this direction was the rise of special instrumental music-forms, of which the Toccata is the oldest. In this species of composition the last-mentioned pecu- liarity of style has full play, inasmuch as here instead of the sus- tained melody running and broken figures predominate, into which the harmony is decomposed. It owes its artistic form to the Venetian organist Claudio Merulo (see p. 124), who published in 1598 his first Toccatas; it obtained its perfect development through Frescobaldi, whose Toccatas include all the musical achievements of his time: the fugue, free imitation, brilliant passage-work and mighty torrents of chord-successions. What is called cantahiU playing, over against the figured style of the Toccata, came into prominence in a second art-form, the Canzone^ in name as in its nature a transformation of the French chanson. It also hails from Venice, where Johannes Gabrieli (from the end of the 1 6*^ century on) published a large number of such compositions. Still greater acknowledgments are due this artist for procuring the participation of the bow-instru- ments and wind-instruments in the improvements that had been made, after composers had up to that time devoted all their efforts to key-instruments exclusively. The independent orchestral pieces composed by Gabrieli are, to be sure, of the most modest di- mensions; their entire length amounts to from twelve to twenty measures, and they had but one aim, either as "Symphony" to introduce a vocal piece, or as "Ritornello" (interlude), to fill up the pauses enabling the singer to rest. Similar is the case with the Sonata, which likewise appears about this time; its name originally means nothing more than an instrumental piece, as is shown by the very title of Gabrieli's work (published in 1586): "Sonata a cinque per istromenti" * and by the words of Pr^to- RIUS: "Sonata (from sonandd) is so called because the performance is not with human voices but with instruments only." If more- over we read in the same author that "the word "^sonata' or "^so- nada' is applied to the flourish of trumpets for calling to meals or to the dance," we may calculate the enormous distance that separates that music-form from the modem complex sonata. The complex or cyclical instrumental music-forms are how- ever by no means of recent date; in the earliest days of town- musicians and musical guilds it was customary to perform a number of dance-tunes, united in a series or cycle, without the dance that belonged to them. The dance-tunes thus strung to- gether, in other respects having no other inter-connection than community of key, were at first called in Italian Partita^ and soon excited the attention of players of key-instruments, especially of the French, under whose hands the Partita was raised to the dignity of the Suite. As such it went back to Germany, where, as is well known, it was developed by Bach to the utmost pos- sible perfection, yet without drawing near to the modern sonata, which essentially differs from the suite in this, that its several movements have organic coherence one with another. The im- pulse to the development of this artistically immeasurably higher cyclical form was given by the tripartite opera-overture in the form it had acquired in Italy through A. Scarlatti, in France through LULLI. It has been already remarked, in speaking of the former artist, that this overture, after its movements had been separated and enlarged, and inwardly perfected for performance at concerts, led over into the modem orchestral symphony. As an interme- diate stage in this evolution we may regard the solo violin-sonata of many movements developed in Italy, especially by Corelli (died in 1713); also the concerto of three movements introduced by the Venetian violinist Vivaldi (died 1743). Already here the cyclical form appears perfectly developed, as is proved by Sebas- * This title is moreover characteristic of the primitive condition of the instrumental music of that date: up to Monteverde's time composers did not assign to each instrument a special part in keeping with its character, but were content to write out the voice-parts of an orchestral movement, leaving it to the director to fill them, according to their compass, with the instruments that he happened to have at his disposal. 136 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. TIAN Bach's "Italian concerto" for clavicliord, whicli may be re- garded as a model for the modern sonata-form. That the master who was creative in so many provinces of his art did not feel called upon to transfer this form to the pianoforte, but was satis- fied with this single attempt, is all the more difficult to under- stand from the fact that the need of such a transference had in many ways manifested itself already before his time. JoHANN KuHNAU, Bach's predecessor as precentor at St. Thomas' church at Leipsic, had first ventured on the attempt, yet without being clearly conscious of the importance of this step. In the preface to his work entitled "Clavier-exercises", etc., published 1695, he excuses his attempt in the words: "Why should such things not be done on the clavier just as on other instruments, since no single instrument has ever disputed with the clavier the precedence in perfection"?" Yet the new art-species seems to have been favorably received on the part of the piano-forte players, for soon afterwards Kuhnau published a collection of seven sonatas. With scarcely less right than Kuhnau can Domenico Scarlatti (1683 — 1757) claim the paternity of the piano-forte sonata, for^ though he went back to the one-movement form, yet in this movement the form of the first movement of our modern sonata is already distinctly imprinted. Scarlatti's special merit, how- ever, is that he brought in vogue a new method of composition adapted to the piano-forte, by introducing, in place of the poly- phonic style with its perfect equality of all the parts, from which neither Kuhnau nor Bach could break loose, the homophonic, in which essentially one voice, carrying the melody, is the ruling one, while the other voices are merely secondary, as forming the accompaniment. This advance marks at the same time the se- paration of piano-forte pla3^ing from organ playing, which had until then hardly been distinguished one from the other. True, the author of the first organ and piano-forte school, published 1593 in Venice, Pater Girolamo Diruta, a pupil of Merulo, had called attention to the difference in the technical treatment of these two instruments, yet the subsequent composers had dis- regarded his admonitions and gone on, as before, writing for key- instruments in general. Nor did Domenico Scarlatti yet recognize the real signi- ficance of the piano-forte sonata, but commended his sonatas to INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 137 the indulgence of the public with the remark that "in them not deep d'^sign would be found but the ingenious pleasantry of art". In fact, he makes more account of technics than of intellectual contents; yet by his application of the principle of tripartition, prescriptive for the modern sonata, and by a number of effective innovations of a technical kind, such as running passages in thirds and sixths, the quick stroke of one and the same key with dif- ferent fingers, broken chords in contrary motion for both hands, etc he leads us directly into the modern age. The piano-forte sonata afterwards appears fully developed with Emanuel Bach, from whose hands it was received by the great masters of in- strumental music, first Haydn (1732—1809), then Mozakt (1756 — 1791), by both of whom the form established by Em. Bach was preserved. It was reserved to Beethoven (1770 — 1827) to carry out these forms to the extremest limits of their expansibility, and thereby to adapt them for receiving the new spirit in music awakened by him. Through him also the orchestral symphony attained to full maturity: its evolutionary course need not here be described, as it essentially coincides with that of the sonata. We merely mention as chief points its transformation from the three- movement form of the Italian overture to that of four movements by the addition of the 3Imuet from the suite, as also the change of this dance-piece into the now passionate now humorous Scherzo dating from Beethoven. The brilliant and dominant epoch of instrumental music be- ginning with these last-named masters is conditionated , in the same degree as the blossoming of the Passion and the Oratorio brought about by the earlier generation of composers, by the idealistic world-view that in Germany has always, but especially since the re-awakening of the popular consciousness after the Thirty Years' War, been the characteristic feature of the intellec- tual life. For, instrumental composition affords to the creative musician far greater liberty to rise to the supersensual than vocal composition, which with its dependence on external con- ditions marks under all circumstances certain limits to the flight of his imagination. Now, just as the conception of music that came to the surface in Germany during the preceding cen- tury is contrary to that entertained by the neighboring nations, especially the French, so too Germar, philosophy, after it had, 138 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. simultaneously with music and led by the same inclination to idealism, entered upon a new epoch. If Englishmen and French- men had indicated the sensual impressions as sole source of hu- man knowledge and consequently the former had evolved therefrom Sensualism^ the latter Materialism., the Gr erman Idealis?n finds the essential conditions of all knowledge in the human spirit itself; and if the former aim at materializing all that is spirituaTj^^^ihe^ German philosophy everywhere strives after a spiritualization of matter. This is seen in Leibnitz, the father of modem German philosophy, who conceives substance, e. g., not — with his pre- decessors — as an aggregate of lifeless atoms but of intellectually animated individuals, called by him monads. The climax of this philosophy is reached by Immanuel Kant, who through his "Crit- icism of pure reason", published in 1781, arrives at the result that besides the sensuous impressions certain a priori conceptions in the human mind — as, for instance, of space, and time — are necessary for knowledge. If we cannot rise by means of pure reason to the supersensuous, Kant's "Criticism of practical reason" (1788) shows us the way in which this demand of our spiritual nature also is satisfied. Practical reason desires the suppression of the sensuous man by means of the reasonable man, which latter gives a law to the former; but this law, unHke the maxims of prudence, is not conditionated upon the prospect of certain successes, but is an absolute, the only absolute commandment — Kant calls it the categorical imperative. It is practical reason also that leads to certain claims , not indeed logically demonstrable but for all that indispensable, called by Kant postulates. As such he indicates the freedom of the will, because the will must be independent of natural necessity in order that it may follow the voice of the categorical imperative; immortality, because despite the imperfection of human nature the possibility of a con- tinual approach to the condition of moral perfection must be as- sumed; finally the existence of God, because in nature there is no necessary connection between morality and a happiness pro- portioned to it, and the realisation of this agreement, as of the highest good, must be guaranteed by a being having on the one hand absolute power over nature, whilst on the other hand it is influenced simply by moral impulses. Kant's technolopcy, contained in his "Criticism of the judicial INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 139 faculty", published in 1 790, is concerned with the Beautiful, which we estimate by taste, by means of the feeling of pleasure (the esthetic judicial faculty), as opposed to the Congruous inherent in organic nature, which we judge by intellect and reason (the teleological judicial faculty). The esthetic judicial faculty* enables us to recognize the Beautiful as that which by means of its form, harmonizing with the human intellect, excites general and necessary pleasure ; the Sublime as the simply Great, which evokes in us the idea of the Infinite and by its antagonism to the inter- ests of the senses directly pleases. These definitions, as also that of the Beautiful as symbol of tJte morally Good, were farther car- ried out especially by Schiller in his esthetic treatises, as Kant's Ethics were by Fichte. In the warm, enthusiastic presentation of these two men the Kantian philosophy soon became the com- mon property of the German nation and caused a mighty revo- lution in all provinces of the intellectual life. Under its inspi- ration the German masters of musical art also were enabled, with the sole aid of absolute music to win the victory over Italian opera, all-powerful as it then was and surrounded by the other arts as vassals. The orchestral instruments, which had till then amused themselves with the harmless performance of suites, di- vertissements, serenades, etc., began now, united in the sympJionyy to speak a language of deepest seriousness. 'Haydn was", as Richard Wagner says in his "Zukunftsmusik" (Music of the fu- ture), "the genial master that first developed this form into broader dimensions, and through inexhaustible variety of motives and of * Esthetics, literally the science of the sensuous perceptions and feelings, in a narrower sense the science of the Beautiful — ». e., the Beautiful in art as opposed to the Beautiful in nature — owes its introduction as a science to the philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, whose monograph "Aesthetica" (1750) gave it its name. Among the estheticians of antiquity — for the nature ol the Beautiful and of art has of course been at all times a subject of philo- sophical investigation — Aristotle claims the attention of the musician especially, in so far as he allots to music a prominent place among the arts. All art attains its end, the ennoblement of the mind and the heart, by imita- tion (Mimesis), yet not of visible nature but of the movements of the human character (Ethos) and soul (Psyche), which movements music (as Aristotle explains in his "Politics", Book VIII, chap. 5) directly represents, whereas the plastic arts can only give through forms (Schemata) certain signs of the esthetic occurrences. 140 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. their connections and exploitations gave it a deeply expressive significance. Mozart had recognized the charm, previously un- known to the German masters, of Italian song-melody, and, while he introduced into Italian opera the richer development of the German method of instrumental composition, imparted in turn to the orchestral melody the full euphony of the Italian song-method. Into the rich, much-promising heritage of both these masters Beethoven entered; he developed the symphonic art-work into BO fascinating a breadth of form, and filled this form with a so extraordinarily varied and captivating melodic content, that at this day we stand before the Beethovenian symphony as before the boundary-stone of a quite new period of art-history in general; for with it a phenomenon made its appearance to which the art of no other period .and no other nation can show anything even only approximately analogous. Inasmuch as here music speaks a language that with its free and bold conformity to law must seem to us more powerful than all logic, while yet rational thought holding on to the clew of cause and effect finds here no foothold, Beethoven's symphony must appear to us directly as a revela- tion from another world." It is easily conceivable that in consequence of so unexpect- edly high a leap of instrumental music, the musical world after Beethoven turned to cultivating it with a zeal that was pushed to one-sidedness. Yet it was not granted to the musical Ko- manticists of the 19^*^ century, as far as they followed after Beethoven, to come up to their model, much less to surpass it Only those composers who turned their attention to what Beet- hoven had neglected — the opera — were able with the aid of the orchestral means bequeathed by him to help this art-species to blossom anew, and thus also to protect music in general from the imminent danger of stagnation. XI. THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19™ CENTURY. The conception '^classical", with which we associate the idea of a cheerful, naive, peaceful state of mind, has for its antithesis "romantic", an expression appKed in an art-sense to a period when the more serious part of humanity, dissatisfied with the existing state of things, yearns to be out of the actual world and strives after remote, obscurely beheld ideals. Now, it is true that this inclination to rise above prosy reality has been at all times and everywhere a mark of intellectually gifted and poetic natures, and accordingly Romanticism is essentially synonymous with poetry and as old as the world itself. Yet at certain times and amonsr certain peoples the romantic impulse manifests itself with unusual power. The ancient Greeks, living more exteriorly than interiorly, scarcely knew it and certainly did not foster it; the son of the North, on the contrary, loved to descend into his interior, being already admonished by the prudery and harshness of his climate to build for himself a special imaginary world in place of the real world about him. Here too, however, we distinguish between epochs that were more or less favorable to romanticism : its flow- ering-time coincides with the periods in which humanity, after important political and social revolutions, finds the attendant dis- illusions specially galling, e. g., the centuries after the collapse of the antique world with its rich intellectual culture, and in later times the first decennaries of our century. The enthusiasm kindled by the epoch of enlightenment of Frederick the Great, then by the French revolution, lastly by the deliverance of Europe from the yoke of Napoleon, necessarily gave way to profound discour- agement and insipidity after the temporary failure of all these efforts was acknowledged, and thus it came to pass that then even the most gifted natures turned aside hopelessly from what 142 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19^" CENTURY. was to them the insipid reality, to betake themselves to a far distant phantom-existence. When this intellectual current got the upper hand it was unavoidable that art should be forced away from the path of development trodden in the century that had elapsed, and that the rich artistic harvest of that period should again be called in question. Only in certain directions could the march of time, the dawning aspiration after unattainable ideals lead to positive achievements : primarily in the domain of lyric poetry, which under the influence of the dominant mood was just now experiencing a significant enlargement of its sphere of action. In place of the general subject-matter with which the lyric poetry of the preceding century had been satisfied, the subjective feelings of the poet now came to the front, and the essential nature of lyric poetry, a bound- less submersion into the innermost life of the soul, could under these circumstances attain full prominence. It was that universal- ity of subject-matter that had hitherto prevented lyric poetry from accomplishing its true mission, i e., from operating, as it had done in antiquity, in the closest conjunction with music. Not without success had Johann Friedrich Reichardt (from 177<') on music-director to Frederick the Great), C. F. Zelter (from 1800 till his death in 1832 director of the Berlin Academy for Singing), and others exerted themselves in artistically developing the German song. For the reason just given, however, their ef- forts did not avail to bring about a substantial progress, and even such masters as Mozart and Beethoven, in view of the then state of lyric poetry, did not draw from the latter that deep in- spiration that might have induced them to interest themselves fully in song- composition. But under the influence of romanti- cism subjective lyric poetry was enabled to find new forms and richer subject-matter; it put forth glorious blossoms that notwith- standing their dazzling brilliancy of color and occasionally strange odor, never denied their rise from the very depths of the German heart. At the same time too the tongue of music was loosed, so that the long desired transformation of the folk-song into the art-song could be accomplished, and from this time forth the victory of the German song over the Italian bravura air was assured. The difference between the folli-song and the art-song is es- THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. 143 sentially tliis, that in the former one and the same melody an- swers for each strophe , whereas in the art-song the music most closely attaches itself to the poem throughout its entire course, regardless of the strophical divisions, and endeavors to illustrate its subject-matter even in the smallest particulars. This song- species* is farther distinguished from the popular strophic song by its accompaniment, which maintains a much higher degree of independence, sometimes even temporarily supplying the place of the silent voice. In the folk-song, on the contrary, the accom- paniment seems to grow of itself out of the melody, whose har- monic and rhythmic proportions are its only rule, except that it may by breaking (arpeggiating; the chords enliven the movement to a certain extent. Naturally, the German song-poem in its new form disclosed to the fantasy of the composer an immense sphere of creation; but to occupy it and rule it with genial freedom no one was found worthier than Franz Schubert, who is therefore rightly honored as the creator of the German art-song. Hardly would this artistic achievement of Schubert's have so perfectly succeeded, if his extraordinary musical talent had not been accompanied by a rare natural strength and simplicity, if what was temperate and harmonious in his artist-nature had not restrained him from the excesses of the romantic tendency, from which even his great predecessor Beethoven was not free. That the arbitrarinesses in which the latter not seldom allowed himself to indulge at the expense of beauty were little to Schubert's taste i we may infer from the following passage from his diary, written on the day of Salieri's jubilee, after the pupils of the latter had arranged a performance of their compositions : "It must be delightful and refreshing for the artist to hear in the compo- sitions of his pupils simple nature with its expression, free from all oddity, such as is now dominant with most musicians and for which we have to thank one of our greatest German artists al- most exclusively; from that oddity that mingles without distinction the tragic vdth the comic, the agreeable with the repulsive, the * In German a song of this kind is called durchcomponirt, %. e., com- posed throughout, as explained above. In the absence of a better substitute for the German word we may use the expression "wholly-composed", the anti- thesis of which would be "strophic", or "strophically-composed". [Translator,] 144 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. heroic with yelling, the holiest with the harlequin, that sets men crazy instead of melting them in love, provokes them to laughter instead of lifting them up to God." In spite of this divergent tendency of Schubekt's, in regard of the ideal of beauty, from that of Beethoven, who is doubtless here meant* by "one of our greatest German artists", he was filled with admiration for the older master, to whose imposing artist-personality he had from childhood — Schubert was born in 1797, nearly a generation after Beethoven — looked up with a mixed feeling of love and awe. And when he died (1828) of nervous fever at the age of hardly thirty-two years, his last words were: "Beethoven is not here"; which led his relatives to bury him in the vicinity of his great predecessor. More than all this, however, Schubert's com- positions for orchestral and chamber-music attest his intellectual fellowship with Beethoven, for, not to deny his inclination to elegance and pure beauty, he was able to approach the master who was unattainable in these departments more closely than any one of his contemporaries or successors. And yet it was not granted to Schubert to find for a single one of his larger instrumental works, except his ^-flat trio, re- cognition during his life-time. The short duration of his artistic career, the immediate and overpowering nearness of Beethoven, whose works took up just then the entire and eager attention of the more seriously active friends of music, while on the other hand the RossiNi opera held the great public in its fetters, — these are the reasons why Schubert did not find the merited universal appreciation until considerable time after his death. It was only as song-composer that he was celebrated by his con- temporaries, especially after his intimate friend the singer VoGL, of the Royal Opera, Vienna, had introduced to the' public his "Erl-king" in the year 1821 — not till five full years after it had been composed I This song made Schubert's name known through- out all Germany, yet even then the demand for other songs of his was in no proportion to his productive power. Scarcely the * Schubert may here have had in view the ^-major symphony with its sublime allegretto and its wantonly blustering Jinale\ or also that passage in the finale of the J'-major symphony (No. 8), where the amiable trifling in pianissimo in C-major is unexpectedly interrupted by a fortissimo Z)-flat ic all the instruments. THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE IQth CENTURY. 145 sixth part of those songs of Schubert that are now known were published during his life-time, although he did not write one that did not bear the stamp of genius, even allowing that the rich- ness of his fancy occasionally led him beyond artistic limits and that the choice of his texts was not always happy * The song- composers who came after him, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Robert Franz, proceeded more critically in many respects; be- sides, the incomparably richer development of the lyric poetry of their time enabled them to improve the species in certain direc- tions. But neither the polished form of the Mendelssohn song nor the depth of thought of that of Schumann can outweigh the unaffected power and inexhaustible melodiousness of the Schubert song. Robert Franz alone, in whose songs an unusual artistic formative power is combined with the purest naturalness of feel- ing, seems called to make up fully for S(?hubert's loss, and may even now, though still living, be designated his lawful heir. The peculiarity and significance of the Franz song consist primarily in its affinity to the older German folk-song and the protestant choral derived from the same source. With the latter especially Franz familiarized himself from his youth up, and in uninterrupted diligent intercourse with the works of Handel and Bach, particularly with the chorals of the latter, he acquired for his own constructive work that quiet strength that preserved him from the romantic unrest dominating the world during the years of his development. Just as the protestant choral, with the har- monic richness conditionated by its melody was employed by the masters last mentioned for the grandest contrapuntal creations, so too Franz's melody step by step contains a latent harmony and may therefore be called in the strictest sense polyphonic. It is to the influence of the old German song and the compositions of Bach and Handel that Franz's treatment of harmony also may be traced. For, while adhering in the main to the modem tonal system — the major and the minor scale — yet in many of his songs, especially those whose texts are of the popular * This especially at the beginning of his career as song-composer. After- wards he showed partiality for Goethe's lyric poems, yet the poet does not appear to have reciprocated his partiality, for, though he had frequent occa- sion to hear those songs of Schubert well executed, he makes no mention of the composer's name in any of his writings. 10 146 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTUET. order, he goes bacl^ to the old church-modes and makes use of their characteristic tone-material. Thus he has as it were re- discovered for modern music this almost forgotten tone-world and herewith brought to the former an extremely rich and significant element of expression. RhytJmi is with Franz, in accordance with the intimate blending of tone with language aimed at and at- tained by him, of uncommon variety, yet utterly without affecta- tion. The pianoforte accompaniment also is, for all its import- ance, never an impediment to the rhythmical flow of the vocal part; it illustrates the cantilena not from without only, but sprouts forth from it with inner necessity, and is in the same organic relationship to it as that by which the accompaniment in Fkaxz's edition of Bach's and Handel's vocal works is distinguished from the purely chordal treatment* of the figured bass-part. In con- centrating his entire strength upon song-composition Feanz was actuated by a correct perception of his decidedly lyrically and contemplatively disposed nature. The latter also exercised a de- terminative influence upon the manner in which he conceives and treats the poetic matter of Jiis songs, toning town the excesses of passionate moods and reducing them to measurable quietness. In this respect likewise he approaches the ancient German lyric muse ; for though "world-woe", as the characteristic mark of all modern lyric poetry, finds expression in his melodies, yet it appears free from every uncouth distortion or morbid self-contemplation, rather a pure and true expression of the deep yearning after the ideal that penetrates every human heart. Like lyric, so also dramatic music attained under the influence of romantic poetry to a new stage of development. It is true that the opera had through Gluck and Mozart been so enriched musically that any increase of its possessions in this regard could hardly be thought of. But on the other hand, from the side of the poetic contents and the form of the libretto the need of an improvement of this art-species also began to be felt in propor- tion as romanticism in poetry gained in importance. For the rise ♦ That is, the mere translation of the figured basses into the correspond- ing harmonies or chords, after the old manner before accompaniments were written out in full. The old method had of course its disadvantages — for the accompaniment itself; but at least it implied that the accompanist should be a harmonist, not merely an executant. Translator. THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. 147 and development of romardic opera Germany proved to be a spe- cially favorable soil, by reason of the inclination and ability in- herent in the German character to go to the bottom of things, to listen intelligently to the revelations of nature , and to fly on wings of fancy to the remotest times and regions. Moreover the feeling of nationality that in consequence of the War of Deliver- ance had broken out among the majority of Germans could be better satisfied with romantic opera than with the previous one, because the former was forced by its subject-matter, mostly taken from German popular tradition, to the cultivation of a national coloring of both poetry and music. Here indeed there was im- minent danger, for both arts, of losing the artistic equilibrium in the conflict of the world of fancy with reality, and of giving up too much to the subjective-imaginary. Yet it was precisely music that was enabled to settle this dispute by sharp delineation of characters and faithful picturing of situations, and having been required to enlarge its technical means in order to the attainment of this end, it has to thank romantic opera for an enrichment which subsequently turned to its advantage in other depart- ments also. LuDWiG Spohr (1784—1859), Carl Maria von Weber (1786 — 1826) and Hetnrich Marschner (1795 — 1861) became the musi- cal interpreters of the moods and inclinations above mentioned as slumbering in the German nation. Spohr, superior as musi- cian to both his rivals, as his numerous and solid instrumental works attest, shows himself in the dramatic line as the weakest of them. His tendency to hyper-sentimentality and elegiac pathos prevented him from consistently working out his characters, and it is only where there is question of describing situations and incidents analogous to his very limited sensationary method, as, e. g.j in his "Jessonda" (first performed in 1823), that he is able to produce dramatic as well as musical effect. Far superior tc him as dramatic composer is Marschner, a master in the repre- sentation of the unearthly and demoniacal [r, g.^ in "The Vam- pyre", 1828), as also in the delineation of plebeian and comic characters. In this Marschner is not equalled even by Weber; with the latter it was the universality of artistic talent that, with- out prejudice to his German nature, gave his music so quickening a power that it aroused enthusiastic admiration not only in the 10* 148 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. composer's native land, but — wMcli was not the case with either Spohr's or Marschner's music — far beyond the boundaries of Germany. Not only the artistic achievements of Weber, but his life- experiences also demand our full sympathy. A wandering life from childhood on, necessitated by the circumstances of his father, a theatre-director, and the consequent unsystematic instruction, could not detract from the ardor of his artistic endeavors, any more than did his successes as pianoforte-virtuoso in his boyhood and adolescence. While yet in his twenty-fourth year, after he had written his first opera "Das Waldmadchen" (The forest Mai- den, afterwards re-constructed as "Sylvana"), and filled a music- directorship, he received instruction from Abbe Vogler, in order to make up by serious studies in composition for what he had lost before. He attained to the full development of his power in 1813 as music-director, at a theatre in Prague, yet without find- ing here perfect satisfaction, especially because his strong national feeling found on the non-German soil only insufficient nourish- ment. Berlin, the starting-point of the efforts of German patriot- ism, which Weber had artistically glorified in his settings of Korner's Songs of Freedom, "Leier und Schwert", — Berlin would have been the sphere of his activity quite in accordance with his wishes, if it had not been that here, just at this time — strange anachronism! — the musical herald of the conquered French em- peror, SpONTmi, had by direction of Frederick William III entered upon the management of operatic aff*airs in general, A call to the newly-established German opera in Dresden could only partially indemnify the master for the failure of his Berlin plans, for, among other annoyances, he had to put up with many hin- drances to his exertions through the rivalry of the Italian opera, still in high favor at court, and of its music-director Morlacchi. Thig explains why he did not succeed even in bringing out his masterpiece "Der Freischiitz" at the place of his personal activity. It was Berlin that through the first performance of "Der Frei- schiitz" (1821) paid the German master a debt of honor, so to speak, and at the same time became the theatre of one of the most brilliant triumphs of German music. For German opera had not only, with this work, entered into its full rights, it had also gained a victory over Italian opera in no wise less important THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. 149 than the one achieved forty years before in Paris by Gluck, for henceforth in the Prussian capital the foreign musical supremacy was destroyed, the success of the "Freischiitz" had put an end to the belief in Spoxtini's musical infallibility. In the "Freischiitz", which depicts in tones the true love of chaste and sincere young hearts, and at the same time the de- moniac powers by which man is ensnared, all this on the sub- soil of romantic forest-life, Weber created a work of art whose popularity can hardly at any time be excelled. The farther course of the romantic tendency exhibited by German music shows us two musicians who are through their creations so near to the present, and have found in our day so complete a recognition, that it wiU suffice here to characterize their attitude towards musical development in general. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1800 — 1847) and Robert Schumann (1810—1856) are the chief representatives of that school whose aim is the progressive cultivation of instrumental music on the basis of Beethoven's legacy. To surpass Beethoven in produc- tions of this kind we have already declared to be impossible, yet it was not denied to the two masters above named to extend in certain directions the expressional sphere of instrumental music Thus Mendelssohn excelled, in faithfully painting nature by tones, not Beethoven only but Weber also, as e. g. in his overture "Meeresstille und gltickliche Fahrt" (Calm sea and happy voyage), and even imdertook to bring to view rural pictures entirely by orchestral means, as in the overture "Die Hebriden" (The Hebri- des) and the symphonies in ^-major and «-minor, which have a double right to their surnames "the Italian" and "the Scotch", since they mirror in their music, besides the national character, also the landscape-scenery of these countries, as personally ob- served by the composer on his travels. In mastering large, broadly developed forms Schumann proves to be the more highly gifted, surpassing Mendelssohn in depth of thought also, so that with his symphonies and chamber-compositions, perfect in form and full of the charm of romanticism, he may stand at the head of the representatives of post-beethovenian instrumental music. We may not, however, look for the centre of gravity of his achievements, nor of Mendelssohn's either, in orchestral music or in the large forms generally. The thoroughly subjective nature 150 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. of botli artists, wliicli in Schumann's case even led him towards the end of his career to obstinately wrap himself up in the per- sonal sphere of feeling and thought, induced them to work by preference in the small and smallest forms, those in which the transitory moods of the individual man are, so to speak, instantane- ously photographed into an art- work, as in the song, and still more in the art-species invented by Mendelssohn, the "Lied ohne Worte" (Song vdthout words) for the pianoforte, in which the composer may follow the momentary inspirations with incompar- ably greater liberty than in the vocal song, being free from the restraints of words and prosody. In this species of mood-pictures both Mendelssohn and Schumann have produced important works, the latter in his "Kinderscenen", "Noveletten", etc.; yet music here ran the risk of losing itself too much in the individual and of suffering a loss of its universally available power. Mendelssohn's subjectivity found a salutary counterpoise in his attachment to Bach and Handel (we have already seen, in speaking of his ora- torios, how favorably his workmanship was affected by his study of the works of those masters). Schumann on the other hand allowed the subjective mood and the romantic longing to have so boundless a control, especially in his pianoforte-works, that Her- der's previously quoted observation (see p. 11) on the danger of separating instrumental from vocal music here finds confirmation; for in fact Schumann's pianoforte music not seldom "transplants us into a real^l of obscure ideas, and awakens feelings which in the torrent of artificial tones without words find no leader." From what has been said it is self-evident that neither Mendelssohn nor Schumann had special talent for dramatic music, for this branch is conditionated by the artist's ability to objectivate him- self, to bring his own individuality into conformity with the outer world, and to make his creations appear as if detached from his person. The fragments left behind by Mendelssohn of the opera "Loreley" cannot fail, despite their great musical value, to strike the hearer as being adapted for the concert-room, not for the theatre, and Schumann's opera "Genoveva", which the Leipsic critic J. C. Lobe not inappropriately called a large wholly-com- posed* song, could in consequence of a lack of dramatic vigor * See Kote, p. 143. THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. 151 lead only a sham existence, after repeated trials at different German theatres. Not less luxuriantly than in Germany did romanticism develop itself among the French, especially after Victor Hugo had in the thirties of our century stepped forward as poetic champion of the romantic ideas. The musical representatives of these ideas, Hector Berlioz (1803—1869) and Franz Liszt (born 1811), can however hardly be accounted French musicians (the latter cannot because of his Hungarian nationality); for as they found in in- strumental music the tone-material corresponding to their creative artistic impulse, they were consequently obliged to seek their point of support among the German masters of instrumental com- position. With their profound reverence for Beethoven, however, which Liszt especially could attest, having placed his incredible powers as pianoforte-virtuoso at the service of the master, it was difficult for them to avoid the rock on which part of their German art-associates had been shipvrrecked, in so far as these had gone on building up on the basis of the Beethovenian instrumental music. Yet both were enabled to escape this danger by entering into a happy alliance with poetry and taking the latter as their pilot on their voyage through the stormy sea of tones. They chose a determinate poetical material as the basis of their in- strumental works, that by it they might be stimulated to com- pobition though without restraint upon their freedom, and thus became the creators of the so-called Program-music. This path tali en by Berlioz and more decidedly by Liszt in his "Symphonic poems" has often been designated a false one, and even so re- solute a champion of artistic progress as Richard Wagner at first repudiated program-music as "an egotistic endeavor of the separate arts to communicate a purport lying outside of their sphere and unattainable by their own means". Later on, how- ever, he changed his opinion, because — as he says in his mo- nograph "On Franz Liszt's symphonic poems" — he had mean- while come to understand "that program-music does not aim to override speech or the plastic arts and represent things accessible to them only, but rather forms a special kind of union of two independent factors : poetry and music." Granting, now, that this union of audible music with poetry that operates solely in the mind of the hearer is but an extremely loose and imperfect one, 152 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19 rH CENTURY. and that the cooperation of both arts during the art- enjoyment itself is difficult to prove, yet it cannot be denied that poetry even in this case affords the creative master a prop during the development of his thoughts and leads him to the invention of new forms, while to the hearer it materially facilitates the under- standing of the musical art-work * The characteristic note of the musical romanticists of France, that union of the art-spirit of diverse nationalities, is seen most plainly in Frederic Chopin. Born of French-Polish parents in 1809 near Warsaw, and ripened into an artist amid intimate mental intercourse with the German instrumental masters, he could build up on the basis of the sensationary method of three nations blended in him, a tone-realm of his own in which he exercised unlimited sovereignty. The chivalrous feeling and the historic sorrow of the Pole, the easy elegance and gracefulness of the Frenchman, the romantic profundity of the German are united in Chopin into a total of such originality that his music, though conceived for the pianoforte solely, has extended its fruc- tifying effects beyond the sphere of that instrument. Few com- posers have found at the beginning of their career so little re- cognition as he did, yet he soon succeeded by his own strength in gaining a position far overtopping that of his rivals, and his creative genius took afterwards, despite bodily sufferings, so power- ful a flight that he was able at his early death (1849) to bequeath to the musical world a heritage of inexhaustible riches. The faculty, grounded in the nature of the pianoforte and raised by Chopin and Liszt to a surprising height, of embracing * Program-music misses its aim only when it undertakes to represent con- crete feelings and determinate incidents, as, e. g., when Froberger (ITth centu- ry) endeavors to describe the adventures of a trip on the Rhine in a piano- forte suite, "in which is represented among other things how one of the party hands the boatman his sword, and in so doing falls into the water", — and KuHNAU, in his "Musical representation of some biblical histories in six so- natas for the pianoforte", pretends to illustrate musically Jacob's deception of Laban. Under this head comes also Sebastian Bach's Capriccio on the de- parture of his brother, with the "representation of diverse accidents that might happen to him abroad", and finally, Beethoven's "Battle of Vittoria", and his imitation of the singing of birds in the second movement of the "Pastoral" symphony, though this work may for the rest be reckoned as program-music in the best sense of the word. THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE IQth CENTURY. 153 in itself alone the entire expressional sphere of music, and serv- insT as the orgran of the sensations of the individual in their wid- est extent and independently of every foreign cooperation — this faculty enables us to recognize the preponderance of the piano- forte in modem times over the other instruments, as a phenomenon essentially conditioned by the romanticism of the 19*^ century, notwithstanding that the origin of modern pianoforte-playing reaches back to the classical epoch of the preceding century. The fathers of modem pianism are Mozart, who had inherited the traditions of J. S. Bach transmitted by Emmanuel Bach, and Muzio Clementi (bom at Rome in 1752, died at London in 1832), who was not behind Mozart in thoroughness, and in elegance of playing even surpassed him. These masters became the heads of two schools, which we may designate as the Vienna school and the London school, and of these it was, strange to say, the former in which virtuosity first gained the upper hand over the strict serious style. Mozart's pupil Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 — 1837) is in fact the representative of the new tendency, which, while thorough, at the same time does not despise brilliancy and dash. In the twenties of our century Carl Czerny (1791 — 1857) became the head of the Vienna school, from which thenceforth a great number of virtuosi came, in whose performances was pro- minently manifested the endeavor to astonish by finger- dexterity at the expense of the musical subject-matter. On the appearance, next, of the three most eminent pupils of Czerny — Franz Liszt (bom 1811), SiGiSMUND Thalberg (1812—1871) and Theodor KuLLAK (bom 1818), pianoforte-playing again took for its aim the solution of higher art-problems. Of these, LisZT and Kullak especially have leaned upon Beethoven, entering into the spirit of this master, who stands alone also in his treatment of the pianoforte, and awakening the understanding of his artistic reve- lations that was still slumbering in more distant circles, while Thalberg by the cultivation of a particular side of pianoforte technics — cantabile playing — enlarged the expressional capacity of the instrument in accordance with the new demands. The London school of Clementi was continued by his pupil J. B. Cramer (1771 — 1858), who acquired principally through the study of the works of Bach and Handel that mastery in piano- forte composition that we admire in his famous "Studies". Other 154 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. notable pupils of Clementi are Ludwig Berger (1777—1839), Mendelssohn's teacher, and John Field (1782—1837), famous for his Nocturns, closely akin to those of Chopin. — A third school of pianoforte-playing, originated in Prague about the be- ginning of the century, directed at first by DiONYS Weber then by ToMASCHEK, found in the pupil of the former, Ignaz Mosche- les (1794 — 1870), its chief representative, who, like C. M. VON Weber and Mendelssohn, took a direction as player and com- poser in which brilliant technics and intellectual depth prevail throughout. On French soil the artistic feeling for the pianoforte that was formerly so richly developed seems to have disappeared for a considerable time, for among the pianists that excelled there after Rameau's death not one of prominent distinction is found. Not till the appointment of Louis Adam as teacher at the Paris Conservatory does French pianoforte-playing begin to lift itself up again, and soon afterward Adam's pupil, Friedrich Kalk- brenner (1778 — 1849), could claim the attention of the whole world by his playing and his compositions, although he by no means followed strict artistic maxims, but rather, in union with his younger contemporary, Henri Herz, became the author of the shallow drawing-room music that exclusively captivated the great public for several decennaries. Over against them there was how- ever no lack of artists in Paris also that extended the cultivation of pianoforte-playing in the spirit of the classical masters, at their head Henri Bertini (1798 — 1876), basing himself on Clementi's school and honorably known by his "Studies", which in pedagogic value are hardly below those of Cramer; moreover, Zimmermann and Stamaty, to whom the present French generation of pianists owes its development, Alkan (senior/ and Lacombe to the former, to the latter Saint-Saens and others. As the spread of pianoforte-playing increased from year to year it was unavoidable that the other instruments should fall by degrees into the background, and that the public interest in them should more and more decrease. Even the violin had to jdeld up the brilliant position it had held during the second half of the 18*^ century, especially in Italy, where the schools of Corelli (Rome^, Vivaldi (Venice) and Tartini (Padua) had fostered clas- sical violin-playing and by means of their pupils propagated it over all Europe. Nevertheless it blossomed anew even in this THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. 155 century in the French violinist-school founded by Viotti, a de- scendant of Tartini's school, the representatives of which former, KoDE, Kreutzer and Baillot may claim, as virtuosos and com- posers, but especially as authors of the celebrated "Methode de Violon" (Paris, 1803 , a high rank among the patrons of this in- strument. Afterwards Belgium became the theatre of the develop- ment of violin-playing, where DE Beriot and his pupil ViEUX- TEMPS presided over a school that aimed at the cultivation of brilliant technics, yet without losing sight of the exemplars of classical times. While the Italian violin-school, formerly so in- fluential, had in the meantime lost all importance — for even the genial Paganini was unable to exert a fructifying influence on the slumbering productive power of his native country — in Germany a school was called into life by Louis Spohr, that with the same success as the French school of Viotti preserved and farther developed the valuable acquisitions of the older Italians. Spohr's merits with regard to the violin, both as virtuoso and as composer and teacher, transcend those that he gained in regard of romantic opera. In the former capacity he aroused universal admiration side by side with Paganini, whom he met in Italy during the winter 1816 — 17. In his numerous violin compositions the noble and tender feeling predominates throughout that char- r.cterizes his dramatic works also, and with it the finest sense of the technical peculiarities of the instrument. As teacher he in- fluenced the whole of violin-playing Germany, in part personally, partly through his excellent "Violin School", published in 1831, finally also through his pupils, of whom his biographer Alexander Malibran names no fewer than one hundred and eighty seven. Among these Ferdinand David distinguished himself by his com- prehensive activity at the Leipsic Conservatory, to which he was attached as teacher from its foundation in 1843 till his death in 1873. Until towards the middle of our century we see musical romanticism expanding itself more and more under the guidance of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Then came the eventful year 1818, in which the political and social aims that during the first half of the century were only obscurely perceived, showed them- selves in perfect clearness to humanity hungering for progress. Mendelssohn was not to survive the movement of that year; 156 THE ROMANTICISTS OF THE 19th CENTURY. Schumann was most likely externally touched by it as is shown by his "Four marches, 1849", in which he endeavored to represent on the pianoforte the impressions of the martial life about him — meanwhile his art-tendency remained the same, in fact his in- clination to romantic dreaminess increased to the point of morbid- ness. And yet the epoch with its positive acquisitions urged to the setting up of new aims for art also ; for, if Socrates gives the warning "nowhere to change the laws of music and to in- troduce no new music-species unless simultaneously with the most important civic regulations",* yet we may maintain on the other hand that so radical a change of "civic regulations", so powerful a revolution as that of the year 1 848 necessarily involved a change also of art-aspects and art-needs. To satisfy this desire, to sub- stitute something new for romanticism, which had outlived its time, required a more robust artist-nature than that of Mendels- sohn and Schumann, or even of their epigones. In Richard "Wa-GNER, with whom our musico-historical survey comes to an end, we shall become acquainted with the man who with rare many-sided talent and iron will-power opened new careers to music, and, as is made more plainly manifest from year to year, has by his reformatory labors supplied the need of progress felt Hot only by his own nation but by the entire cultivated world. • Cited by Plato in his "Republic". xn. RICHARD WAGNER. The discussion of an artist still living and creating among us* in the same line with the greatest masters of the past is, to be sure, on principle not allowable, because to his contemporaries is denied a general survey of his work, and it must therefore be left to a later time to authentically determine its value.** If * The German original of these lectures was published in 1879. Richard Wagner died on the V6^^ of February, 1883. Translator. ** Just as we cannot correctly judge the height of a mountain when we are near to it, and it is only at a certain distance that we can notice its pro- portion to the neighbouring peaks, so too the judgment for or against an ex- traordinary phenomenon in the art-domain will be erroneous until it can be surveyed in its entire significance, which experience shows us to be imprac- ticable for contemporaries and granted to a succeeding generation only. This by no means new experience, as also the other, that categorical judgments favorable or unfavorable to a new tendency antagonistic to the older one con- stantly lead only to fruitless .party disputes, should not however induce us to remain passive and wait till the new ideas struggling for existence have either conquered or been conquered. We ought rather to use all diligence to ap- propriate them, to overcome the feeling of strangeness that on superficial ac- quaintance separates and repels us from them: in this way we shall show fair play to the pioneer artist who offers us the best he has, the richest treasures of his mind, and at the same time form a counterpoise to the great number of those who, chiefly from indolence and dread of what seems strange, disdain these gifts and then are soon ready to condemn the giver. But after we have become intimate with the new art-tendency and have clearly recognized the intention of its representative, we should not withdraw ourselves from his leadership at an arbitrarily determined point; we should rather regard it as an artistic duty to follow the man of whose superior art-insight we have once had proof, even when he strikes out a path differing from his previous one. The so common saying: "I have all respect for So-and-so, but I do not go with him through thick and thin", is at bottom nothing but the ridiculous 158 RICHARD WAGNER. nevertheless in Richaud Wagner's case we make an exception to tlie principle according to wliich history has to do only with what is already accomplished, we are justified herein for many reasons. First, because the movement originated by him has its starting-point in the facts of an artistically glorious past; next, because the ends to which he aspired have through his literary labors been most accurately indicated and made discernible to every one; lastly, because more than a generation is already be- hind us since he excited universal attention by his artistic crea- tion, so that a survey of this latter is even now to a certain de- gree practicable. To occupy ourselves in detail with what Wagner has done as poet, composer and philosopher is of course imprac- ticable in this place, in view of the immense extent of it all, as also of the limited time at our disposal. Nothing more can be done here than to cast a glance at the formation-process of Wagner's art, and, since the chief moments of his eventful life are in close relation to his artistic development, a short sketch of his career up to the well-known events of the last years will be the best means of attaining our end. For, as Goethe happily puts it to his friend Zelter, after affirming his partiality for the study of musical history, "who understands any phenomenon when he is not penetrated by the process of its origination?" Richard Wagner was bom in Leipsic on the 22*^ of May, 1813, only four years after Mendelssohn and three years after Schumann, accordingly as contemporary of the men beyond whose musical sphere of thought he took, a generation later, so power- ful a leap that one should be inclined to imagine a distance of many generations. The cannon's thunder of the battle of the nations, which, announcing Germany's deliverance, was mingled assumption of prescribing to genius the domain of its creative labors, of draw- ing the lines beyond which it may not go. "When we think we have dis- covered something wrong in an approved author", says CoLERmGE, "we should first assume that we are unable to understand him, until we have fully satis- fied ourselves of his incapacity." The fate of Richard Wagner's works can leave no doubt that the observance of this rule would have spared the artist many a disheartening experience, and his over-hasty critics many a subsequent mortification. Moreover Wagner is by no means alone in his experiences: the lot of his "Tannhauser", "Lohengrin", "Tristan and Isolda", and "Meister- singer" was the same as that of Rameau's operas, for instance, each one of which fell through on its first performance because — it was not sufficiently like its predecessor, i. e. surpassed it in si^^nificance. KICKARD WAGNER. 159 with the suckling's first indications of life, the national enthusi- asm amid which he received his earliest impressions, can hardly have failed to have an enduring influence on the development of the child's disposition. In his very cradle that love of country must have germinated in him that afterwards proved to be one of the essential traits of Wagner's character, and which neither his clear intelligence of foreign superiority in some points nor the obstinate mistrust he long met with in Germany was ever able to weaken. His artistic predispositions likewise even in tender childhood did not lack nourishment, thanks to the loving stimu- lation of his step-father, the play-actor Ludwig Geyer, who left nothing undone to compensate the boy for the early loss of his own father. His musical education was, to be sure, not a success, and the instruction in pianoforte-playing had, on account of the pupil's aversion to purely technical study, to be given up ^-fter a short time. On the other hand, as pupil of the Kreuzschule at Dresden, whither his family had removed after Geyer's death, he showed a lively interest in ancient languages and antique poetry. The Greek poets especially attracted him, afterwards Shakespeare also, through which latter he was inspired, before attaining ado- lescence, to his first poetical attempt. This was a grand tragedy, of which the author himself tells us that it occupied him two full years, and in the matter of piling up bloody combats was on a par with any of the dramas of his great model. "Forty two men died in the course of the piece, and at the performance I found myself obliged to let most of them reappear as ghosts, as other- wise I should have had no personages in the last acts."* To this period belong also the first lasting impressions on the youth's musical nature, the occasion of which was a performance of "Der Freischiitz", which was enthusiastically received in Dres- den as previously in Berlin, in spite of the opposition of the champions of Italian opera, as also of the poets of literature, whose head, Ludwig Tieck, had called "Der Freischutz'' "the most unmusical clatter th^t had^ever blustered on the stage". Wagner's admiration of Weber's art and person, which dated from that time, was not diminished in the course of his develop- ment, not even when, in Leipsic, after he had returned thither Id / • R. Wagner, Autobiographical sketches, in his collected writings. 160 BICHARD WAGNER. consequence of his step-father's death, he had become familiar with Beethoven's music. This acquaintance was by all means calculated to take up the exclusive attention of the fifteen year old youth for some time; the "Egmont" music particularly so af- fected him that he resolved to make music his profession, being stimulated to this chiefly by the desire of bringing his tragedies before the public with similar musical accompaniments. That he was the man to compose such music one day, and that he also need not fear the difficulties of the study requisite for it, was for him virtually a matter of course ; but this was not the opinion of his relatives, to whom it appeared a serious matter that the young enthusiast should exchange the already adopted profession of poet for another. A union of the poetical and musical callings, in view of the opinions dominant at their time (to some extent even now) ,^ and after the practice of a century had, in spite of all ef- forts to the contrary, as it were sanctioned the division of this work between two persons, necessarily appeared to them a fan- tastic and aimless undertaking.* Wagner too had to acknowledge the necessity of his devot- ing himself primarily to music exclusively, in order to attain the end held out before him, and accordingly he began, after com- pleting the scientific course (first at the Leipsic "Nicolaischule", afterwards at the University), to give himself up to the study of counterpoint with all diligence. Aided in this by the precentor of the "Thomasschule", Weinlig, and in farther attempts at com- position by Heinrich Dorn, at that time music-director at the Leipsic theatre, he was able as early as 1 833 to come before the * The yearning for the re-union of the poet and the musician in one person appears since the downfall of antique culture to have never entirely died out, for we repeatedly find it expressed by artistically inclined natures. Thus, Frederick the Great writes to the electoral princess Maria Antonia of Saxony, who had sent him two operas written and composed by her; "You give an example to composers, who, in order to succeed well, should all be poets at the same time.'''' And Lesueur, music-director at the church of Notre Dame, Paris, complains, thus, in an essay published 1787, of the restrictions put upon the catholic church-composer- "Oh! if it were only permitted to the musician to write the words! What could he not do!" Examples of similar vain wishes might be multiplied indefinitely; all the fewer for this reason ap- pear the musicians who contrary to custom have regarded it as an artistic duty to write their text themselves. EICHARD WAGNER. 161 public as composer, to wit, with a symphony, which was performed at one of the "Gewandhaus" concerts, as also with a concert- overture, played during the same season. He approached still more nearly the practical side of his calling on a journey under- taken soon after to Wurzburg, where his brother Albert was engaged as singer and play-actor and he himself temporarily took part in the theatrical performances as chorus-leader. Here he also composed his first dramatic work, a three-act romantic opera "The Fairies", the text of which he hinaself had written after Gozzi's "La donna serpente." He was very anxious to have this maiden work performed, after he had returned to his native city; yet new obstacles were constantly arising to cause delay, and as a turn in the direction of Wagner's taste had occurred at this very time, after he had through the agency of the celebrated singer Madame Schroder-Devrient recognized the charm and the merit of Italian and French opera, he lost all interest in his own opera and threw away the advantage of a public performance. Literary activity now indemnified him for the success denied him for the time being as creative artist. An essay written under the in- fluence of Auber's opera "Masaniello" exhibits him to us as the inexorable adversary of one-sidedness and routine, in which char- acter he afterwards provoked a no less bitter opposition. "We certainly^ve", he maintains, "a department of music that is pe- culiarly our own, and that is instrumental music; but a German opera we have not, for the same reason that we have likewise no national drama. We are much too intellectual and much too learned to create warm human forms. ... I have of course no desire that French and Italian music should crowd out our own, but we ought to recognize the true in both and beware of all selfish hypocrisy. — We ought to breathe anew out of the rub- bish that threatens to stifle us, to get rid of a good lot of afi'ected counterpoint and at last become human." The position of theatrical music-director at Magdeburg, upon which Wagner entered in the autumn of the following year (1834), afforded him ample opportunity to satisfy his many-sided art-needs as above expressed. The motley change in the opera-repertory of a German city-theatre, the daily rehearsal and direction of German, Italian and French operas, together with the experiences thus gained, helped him to bear cheerfully the burdens of his 11 162 KICHAED WAGNEB. new calling and kept up his courage, though he often had to acknowledge that his efforts to elevate the theatre would he un- successful, owing to its petty surroundings. Meanwhile a second opera also had heen finished: "Das Liebesverbot", founded on Shakespeare's "Measure for measure", the music of which shows an incomparably greater freedom than that of "The Fairies", which was strongly influenced by Weber. This work was put on the stage in the winter of 1 836, but the circumstances of its perform- ance were so little favorable that, with the exception of some tolerably well executed scenes, it produced no effect, while the author realized on this occasion more deeply than ever the dark side of his calling and recognized the impossibility of achieving anything artistically advantageous with the means at the disposal of a city-theatre of smaller rank. He determined therefore to adapt his next great work from the very outset to a stage of the first rank, without troubling himself where or when he should find the latter. With this view he made the sketch of a grand tragic opera in five acts: ^^Bienzi^ the last of the Tribu7ies'\ and so planned it as to render it impossible to produce this opera — at least, for the first time — at a theatre of limited resources. For the present Wagner continued of course to be assigned to stages of subordinate rank, having to act as theatrical music- director in 1836 in Konigsberg and in the following year in Riga. That he did not find artistic satisfaction in either of these cities was no more than what he should have expected after his pre- vious experiences, and as he had moreover to struggle with ma- terial cares he formed the resolution — in his circumstances a romantic one — of removing to Paris, to arrange there, if pos- sible, for the production of the meantime finished "Rienzi" at the Grand Opera. In the summer of 1839 this plan had been matured; the journey was entered upon in a sailing-vessel bound for London • — "The voyage" — writes Wagner — "lasted three weeks and a half, and was full of disasters. Three times we suffered from a most violent tempest and the captain was once obliged to run into a Norwegian harbor. The passage through the Norwegian head- lands made a wonderful impression on my imagination ; the legend of the "Flying Dutchman", as I heard it confirmed by the sailors, took on in me a determinate and peculiar color, that only the BICHARD WAGNEB, 1(J3 sea-adventures I had had could impart to it." After a short stay in London Wagner betook himself to Paris, where he arrived in the autunm of the same year, rich in hopes but with greatly reduced finances. Being entirely without letters of introduction he had no one but Meyerbeer to go to, having made his acquaint- ance on his journey, in Boulogne, where the latter had most cordi- ally promised his assistance. But neither his own energy nor the efforts of his influential colleague could guard the sanguine artist against those disappointments that were necessarily involved in the enormous competition of skilled labor in the French cap- ital. During the very first winter he was forced to the convic- tion that in the state of things in Paris, regulated by the laws of fashion and of speculation, his ideal tendency would with dif- ficulty ever find appreciation. The extreme poverty that some- times forced him to lay aside all independent art-labor, that he might gain a subsistence by literary work for the "Gazette Musi- cale" and by opera-arrangements, even for the comet, increased his bitterness against his surroundings. This feeling of his found its utterance in the Overture — composed during this winter — to Goethe's ^^Fausf^ the motto of which indicates the mood that was fermenting in the artist's interior and was transferred to the composition: **The god who thron'd within my breast resides. Deep in my inmost soul can stir the springs; "With sovereign sway my energies he guides. But hath no power to move external things; And thus my very being I deplore, Death ardently desire, and life abhor." We pass over the unhappy period from the beginning of 1 840, the date of the Faust-overture,* till the spring of 1842, when Wagner, without having gained a single success, but for that all the richer in experience, turned his back upon the French capital. %\ This work is worthy of note for two reasons* first, as being the first of Wagner's works to give to the great public evidence of vitality; second, because here, in the midst of so much that is gloomy, we recognize the ener- getic nature of the artist, which does not allow itself to be overwhelmed, after the manner of the earlier romanticists, by the miseries of life and the world- woe, but courageously enters into the fight with the powers of darkness and at the end comes off victorious. 11* 164 RICHARD WAGNER. The news that his operas "Rienzi" and the long finished **The Flying DutclimaiP had been accepted for performance, the former in Dresden the latter in Berlin, had thrown a cheerful light upon his ever darkening prospects, and at the same time powerfully kindled in him the yearning for his native country. He arrived in Dresden just in time to superintend the rehearsals of the "Rienzi" and to be witness of the enthusiastic applause with which the public, in spite of high-wrought expectations, received the work on its first performance (Oct. 20, 1842). As the composer was appointed music-director at the opera-house the very next year and thus made sure of a subsistence, one should naturally think that the time of trial was over for him. Had he only been content to remain standing at the stage of development now reached, to follow as poet-composer in future, as he had already followed in his "Rienzi", the prototypes of French grand opera, and to tread conscientiously the path indicated by his predeces- sors — his artist-career would presumably have elapsed in un- disturbed peace. But nothing of all this occurred. At the very appearance of "The Flying Dutchman" (Berlin, January 1844) the friends of his art-tendency, who had expected a kind of music like that of "Rienzi", felt for the greater part dissatisfied; but still greater and more general was the disappointment when in 1845 the "Tannhauser" had its first performance. The effect of this opera even on the Dresden public was, despite Wagner's personal relations to it, one of such surprise that the artist once more had to bear the whole weight of the feeling of isolation. Moreover, as director he had in the very first days of his official duties in many ways offended his superiors as well as his sub- ordinates by his want of consideration in combating the abuses inseparable from operatic affairs. Under these circumstances he was convinced that even under the most highly favorable condi- tions, such as the Dresden court-theatre was well able to offer, a realization, though but approximate, of his artistic ideals was entirely out of the question. If we put ourselves in the place of the artist, whose ill humor had passed over into perfect discouragement after he been obliged to give up even the hope of bringing out his "Lohengrin",* which * It was not till 1850 that the "Lohengrin*' was performed, through the RICHARD WAGNEB. 165 meantime (1817) had been finished, we can scarcely wonder that the storm- and-stress year 1848 fomid him in the ranks of the discontented. As regards his active participation in the reform- movement of that year he kept himself, it is true, strictly within the limits of his calling, and restricted himself to laying before the Saxon minister of public worship and education a "Plan for the organisation of a German national theatre", whose chief aim was the change of the Dresden court-theatre into a national the- atre, and its support by the state and assignment to the ministry of instruction, in accordance with its destination as institute for popular culture* Nevertheless, with his warm and always un- reservedly expressed interest in social and political questions generally it was inevitable that he too should become involved in the disturbances of May, 1819, and figure, after the reaction had set in, with his name on the list of the suspected. Fortu- nately he realized the danger of his position early enough to enable him to take flight. A writ of arrest sent after him and renewed as late as 1853, commanding the German authorities "to seize Wagner, Richard, one of the most prominent adherents of the Destructives,** in the event of meeting him, and to hand him over to the royal city court at Dresden", must have removed from his mind every doubt as to the dangers from which his flight had delivered him. By way of Paris, where he found the soil for his endeavors not more favorable this time than at his first sojourn, Wagner arrived at Zurich, and being thus a second time snatched away from the native soil so indispensable for his practical art-labors, he now felt the urgent desire to attain by the way of theory a thorough clearing up of his ideas, to give himself and them that agency and under the direction of Franz Liszt, at "Weimar, where the latter had a year before taken the position of court-music-director. Wagner him- self had to wait eleven years longer before it was granted to him (during his residence in Vienna in 1861) to hear his work for the first time. * This very important work, which however at that time utterly failed of success, is found in Wagner's collected writings. Vol. II. ** "A name given by their political opponents to men who call themselves radical reformers", is the definition of the original German word "Umsturz- partei" (literally, "party of subversion") given in Flugel's German and English Dictionary. A Translator. ) 166 RICHARD WAGNEB. were striving with liim a detailed account of the reasons and aims of his reformatory activity. Here, far from musical occupation and without any opportunity whatsoever to manifest himself as executive artist, he began a literary activity that as complement of his musico-poetic activity is hardly of less importance than this latter. In his first publication "Art and Revolution", which appeared in 1849, Wagner expresses his dissatisfaction with the modem practice of art, whose moral aim he pronounces the ac- quisition of money, its esthetic pretence the amusement of the biases. He hopes for an improvement of this state of things solely through a return to the ancient art-conditions, the essence of which he declares to be man's joy in himself and in nature, in opposition to Christianity, which preaches discomfort and the re- fraining from all spontaneity, in order to break forth from the condition of intellectual oppression* Especially the Theatre, in which all arts combine to form the highest art-work, the drama, is to be released from a servitude to which at the present day all men are subjected, viz: industry.** "If industry is no longer our master, but our servant, we shall make the aim of life the delight of existence and strive to render our children, by means of education, capable of and fitted for the most effective enjoy- ment of this delight. Education, starting from the exercise of strength, from the fostering of personal beauty, will, out of un- disturbed love for the child, and out of joy in the increase of its beauty, become a purely artistic one, and every man will in one respect or another be in truth an artist." In a second, larger work — "The art-work of the future" (1850) — we find these principles farther carried out in an art- reformatory sense. Wagner here indicates the people as the conditionating power for the art-work, and man — in conformity wdth the teaching of Ludwig Feuerbach, to whom the book is inscribed — as his own god and superior to nature. For this man that art alone is suitable that, as the only true one, arises * Franz Brendel, one of the earliest champions of Wagner's theories, in his "Music of the present" justly calls attention to the fact that Wagner, in announcing a great "revolution of humanity", overlooked the social side of the christian doctrines, through which this revolution was already called into life. **) Less euphemistically, "working for one's living". Translator. RICHARD WAGNEE. 167 from the combination of all our art-genera. The individual arts, that hitherto quarreled and separately strove for precedence, ought to draw near to each other in reciprocal love and modesty and take each its proper rank, in order at length to unite, in the drama, for the joint art-work, the art- work of the future. — Still more sharply does Wagxer define his aim in a third work, — "Opera and Drama" (1851). Here he sets out from the maxim that modern opera, as art-species, is an error, since in it a means of expression — music — is made the end^ and on the other hand the true end — the drama — becomes a means. Only by unity of poetry and music can the music-drama attain immediate effect. But to obtain this unity each of these two arts must sacrifice the conventional peculiarities developed in them in the course of time, speech must again lay hold of the musical elements see page 9) that were lost in the progress of its development and concern itself exclusively with material that, like the Greek myth and the German national legend, addresses itself to sensuous perception. The music — more correctly, the melody, as its essence — must not exist for its own sake but spring naturally from the expres- sively delivered language, and be in uninterrupted connection with it as also with the action represented on the stage. In his philosophical investigations Wagner followed at first the doctrines of L. Feuerbach, afterwards those of Arthur Scho- penhauer, whose theory of life is already partially expressed in his poems written before his acquaintance with Schopenhauer's philosophy, but afterwards was fully accepted by him and genially applied for determining the nature of his art. Schopenhauer, in his principal work "The World as Will and Idea", which, ap- pearing in 1819, was for decennaries long almost unnoticed, de- notes the world surrounding us as ^phenomenon (Vorstellung, i. e., representation or idea) formed by ourselves, to which he confronts the Will as the real. His conception of the latter is however to be taken in a sense far transcending the commonly accepted one, as he understands by it not only the conscious desire, but also the unconscious impulse, even down to the forces manifesting themselves in organic nature. The will, in Schopenhauer's view, is the essence of the world and the kernel of every phenomenon, the permanent in the constant alternation of rise and decay of external things, hence synonymous with the "Ideas" of the Pla- 168 RICHARD WAGNER. tonic philosophy, and with the "thing in itself of that of Kant. But whereas the "ideas" in Plato's sense can be imagined only notionally, and Kant holds the "thing in itself to be unknow- able, it is possible for us. according to Schopenhauer, to com- prehend the substance of things, in as much as perception breaks loose from its original subjection to our will and no longer re- gards things in their relations to it. By this means the perceiv- ing subject ceases to be a merely individual one, and rests in fixed contemplation of the object presented (out of its connection with any others) and becomes identified with it.* Now this kind of perception is the origin of art, which re- peats the eternal ideas comprehended through pure contemplation, the essential and permanent of all the phenomena of the world. In the art-work we recognize the archetype^ of which the individ- uals making their appearance are only likenesses. Art alone is capable of temporarily freeing us from the torment of life, which latter is according to Schopenhauer a constant suffering.** Life * **!£", — says Schopenhauer in his work above named — ""lifted up by the power of the spirit we let go the usual way of looking at things, and cease to follow up radically, by the clue of the formations of the sentence, only their interrelations, whose final aim is always the relation to the individ- ual will, thus considering no longer the Where, the When, the Why and the Wherefore, but only the What; and do not allow abstract thought, the con- ceptions of reason, the consciousness to be captivated, but instead of all this yield the whole power of our intellect to contemplation, sink ourselves entirely in it and allow our whole, consciousness to be filled with the quiet con- templation of the natural object, happening to be present, be it a landscape, a tree, a rock, a building or anything whatsoever; utterly losing ourselves in this object, i. e., precisely forgetting our individuum (our will) and continuing to exist only as mere subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as if the object alone existed, without any one to perceive it, and thus we can no longer separate the contemplator from the contemplation, but both have become One, the whole consciousness being entirely filled and possessed by one single perceptible image; when, I say, in this way the object has stepped out of all relation to anything outside of it, the subject out of all relation to the will, then that which is thus perceived is no longer the individual thing, as such: it is, rather, the Idea, the eternal Form." ** In his Ethics SCHOPENHAUER indicates as man's highest duty the sup- pression — not of life itself, but — of the desire to live, by means of ascet- icism. Here his doctrine agrees on the one hand with that of the Buddhists concerning the removal of suffering by quitting the checkered world of life (Sansara) and entering into unconsciousness (Nirvana), and on the other hand RICHARD WAGNER. 169 is never beautiful (says he in another place) , but the images of life alone are, to mt, in the transfiguring mirror of art or of poesy. The essential denotement of the nature of the artist is his ability to see constantly the general in the particular, to rec- ognize in individuals the ideas expressing themselves in them. "Wliat we call the quickening of genius, the hour of inspiration, the moment of enthusiasm, is nothing else than the liberation of the intellect, when the latter, temporarily freed from its subjec- tion to the will, no longer sinks into inactivity or exhaustion, but, for a short time, entirely alone, of its own accord is active. It is then of the greatest purity and becomes a clear mirror of the world; for, entirely separated from its origin, the will, it is now the very world as idea concentrated in one consciousness" (ihid.). Wagner, in his monograph "Beethoven"* (written in 1870 for the celebration of the centenary of the mastery's birthday) starts out from the above doctrine for attaining musico-philosoph- ical results of the greatest importance. Schopenhauer had already ascribed to music a nature entirely different from plastic and poetic art, and recognized in it not merely a copy of the idea of the world but this very idea itself. As for the phenomena of the visible world outside of us, their character in the abstract most clearly speaks to us out of the works of plastic art, "the proper element of which, consequently, is the employment of the illusive semblance of the world, spread out before us by the agency of light, for the manifestation, by virtue of a highly thoughtful play- with the ascetic elements in Christianity. The same theory of life forms also the basis of Wagner's grand and touching poem "Tristan and Isolda", in which we find repeatedly expressed not only Schopenhauer's view of the world as a phenomenon of our own creation ; but also the yearning to fly from the de- ceptive light of day to the twilight of unconsciousness, — as, for instance, in the words : + "Blissful beams our eyes are binding, "Abashed is earth with radiance blinding; "Lit by the daylight's dazzling lie, "Undaunted by falsehoods which we defy, Thou'rt my world, thine am I." * This work has been translated into English with the author's express permission and approbation, by Mr. Albert R. Parsons. New York, G. Schir- MER, 1883. t) The translation given is Corder's. (Translator.) 1 70 EICHARD WAGNER, ing with that semblance, of the Idea which it veils. ^ « « « But the semblance of things^ to the contemplation of which we devote ourselves during moments of aesthetical perception free from Will, always remains the effective element here. « « « « Our conscious- ness which, even in gazing at a semblance, alone enables us to grasp the Idea which is manifested by it, may at last feel im- pelled to exclaim, with Faust: "A wondrous sliow! but ah! a show alone 1 ^^here shall I grasp thee, infinite nature, where?^ The most certain of answers to this cry is given by music. The outer world speaks to us with such incomparable intelligibil- ity here, because, by virtue of the effect of sounds, it commu- nicates to us through hearing precisely what we call out to it from the depths of our soul. The Object of the tone that is heard coincides immediately with the Subject of the emitted tone; we understand without any intermediation through conceptions what is said to us by the cry for help, or of mourning or joy, which we hear, and answer it at once in the corresponding sense * * * No illusion, as in the semblance of light, to the effect that the fundamental nature of the world external to us is not completely identical with our own essential nature, is possible here, by which the gulf that to the sight seems to exist at once vanishes."* The antagonism that the appearance of the first named writ- ings of Wagner called forth was especially violent, for the reason that their author had attacked together with the existing opera its representatives also, some of whom were still living, and had acted, it was charged (as too often happens in like cases), from personal motives in uttering his opinions. But even among those who did not doubt of the purity of his artistic intention AVagner was unable, owing to the roughness with which his theory con- fronted the temporarily ruling one, to find for the time being more than slight appreciation. This state of things was not im- proved when the artist courageously followed up his theories by deeds, and in his music-drama "Tristan and Isolda" (finished in 1859) consummated with most perfect consistency the break with the previous opera-form. Nay, the verbal and tonal language of "BEEiHOVExN", A. R. Parsons' translation, pp. 26, 27, 28. mCHARD WAGNER. 171 the Tristan", so utteriy divergent from the operas of his prede- cessors and even from his own "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin" which had meanwhile become known and liked, estranged from him even a part of those art-friends who had till then been his supporters. Moreover it was reckoned certain that the difficulties of performance were insuperable, after the efforts made at Carls- ruhe and Vienna to produce the work had been of no avail. Under these circumstances Wagner resolved in the year 1859 to appeal a third time to the susceptibility of the Parisian public; but this time aho he was to be deceived in his faith in the French art-insight that had so unequivocally been displayed at the ap- pearance of Gluck. For the public, although to a certain extent familiarized with the new music-tendency through a series of bril- liant and artistically successful concerts in the Theatre Italien (at the beginning of 1860), felt, at the subsequent performances of the "Tannhauser" {in March, 1861), so annoyed in its artistic rou- tine and expressed its displeasure so recklessly — even a critic so experienced and a musician so devoted to progress as Berlioz joined on this occasion in the almost universal sentence of con- demnation! — that the author had no resource but to withdraw his score after the third performance. Again poorer by one expectation Wagner left Paris, and, the interdict resting upon him from 1849 having meanwhile been raised, turned to Germany, where the number of the friends of his art had increased from year to year and sympathy for him had in consequence of his Parisian experience been greatly inten- sified. It was of course not yet his fortune to find a permanent abode for his work. Then occurred the event so momentous for his artist-career, the accession to the throne of LuDWiG II. of Bavaria. This prince, filled with love for Wagner's art from boyhood, hesitated not a moment to call the master to him at Munich (1861), and to place absolutely at his disposition the rich musical resources that the royal residence afforded. Wagneb obeyed the call, and the proximate consequences of his emigra- tion were the establishment of a music-school according to hia plan, as also the performance of "Tristan and Isolda" (1867^) with the co-operation of the ScHNORRS, husband and wife, in the title- roles, and under the direction of Hans von Bulow, when it was proved that this work, formerly accounted impracticable, requires 172 EICHARD WAGNER. only the entire devotion of the artists engaged in it to attain its effect without fail. We have thus arrived at the third period of the master's life — that is, if the second must be dated from the appearance of his "Rienzi" — and have accordingly reached the limits imposed at the outset upon this short recital. The subsequent principal events of his career have been as it were personally lived through with him by the art-friends even of the latest generation, and scarcely need to be specially brought into prominence. How Wagner saw his restless activity so hindered even in Munich that he was obliged to leave the city even at the end of 1865; how he then finished* his "Meistersinger von Nurnberg" in the rural solitude of his villa Tribschen near Lucerne, and with the first performance of this work in Munich in 1868, despite all the counter-currents working there met with a triumph that put all his previous successes in the shade ; finally, how he conceived at the beginning of our decennium the idea of the Bayreuth Fes- tival-plays, and spite of the boldness of this plan found so warm an interest in it that as early as 1872 (on the 22*^ of May, the artist's fifty-ninth birth-day) the corner-stone of the theatre to be built for this purpose could be laid — all this lives still fresh in the memory of contemporaries. So too the most significant event in Wagner's life, the bringing about (in 1876) of the Festival- plays at Bayreuth, up to the last day considered by doubters an impossibility, and their inauguration by the representation of the Nibelungen-trilogy, composed to that end. If there is any indemnity at all for the sufferings and dis- appointments that are never lacking to the artist who is in ad- vance of his time, it must on these memorable days have been granted to Richard Wagner in unusually rich measure. For here he was able to attain to the certainty that the German na- tion, though represented at Bayreuth of course by a small frac- tion only, attached itself to him in full confidence and had learned to appreciate his exertions in behalf of German art. And many a one of the festival guests, in so far as he did not allow his * According to the date of origin the "Meistersinger" comes between **Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin", for the poem was sketched by Wagner as early as 1845, while he was at Marienbad. BICHARD WAGNER. 173 feeling of susceptibility to be disturbed by tbe external defects that were unavoidable by reason of tbe novelty of tbe undertak- ing, but dispassionately gave himself up to the solemn frame of mind induced by the seclusion of the place and the concurrence of thousands of like mind — many a one of them must have felt during those days the full significance of Herder's prophetic words uttered (with reference to Gluck) almost a century before: "the progress of the century will lead us to a man, who, despising the frippery of wordless tones, perceived the necessity of an intimate connection of human feeling and of the myth itself with his tones. From that imperial height on which the ordinary musician boasts thfl,t poetry serves his art, he stepped down and made his tones only serve the words of feeling, the action itself. He has em- ulators : and perhaps some one toill soon outstrip him in zealy over- throwing the whole shop of slashed and mangled opera-Jingle and erecting an Odeon^ a consistently lyric edifice ^ in which Poetry f MusiCf Action and Decoration unite in one/* APPENDIX. TABLE for memorizing certain dates of musico-historical importance Althongh it is not to be expected of the reader that he should memorize the dates occurring in this short recital (to say nothing of thope found in more detailed works on music-history), yet the retention of some few dates, round about which the remaining facts may group themselves, may be' considered an indispensable condition of successful study. For facilitating this I have in the following Table placed opposite to the musico-historical dates certain well-known epochs of general history, the latter having been chosen solely on mnemotechnic grounds, although, in con- formity with the character of the book, reciprocal relationships between the development of music and that of general history were kept in sight as far as possible. Antiquity and the Middle Age. 753. Borne founded by Romulus and 776. Beginning of the Olympic games Remus. and of the Olympiad-era. 600. Solon, law-giver of Athens, an 600. Thespis brings about the trans- opponent of dramatic representa- ition from the Bacchus-festivals tions. (Dionysia) to Tragedy. 490. Victory of the Greeks over the 472. Attic Tragedy reaches its cli- Persians at Marathon. max in Aeschylus. Performancs of "The Persians". 176 APPENDIX. 429. Death of Pericles. 404. End of the Peloponnesiau War; the leadership in Greece passes over from Athens to Sparta. 838. Battle of Chaeronea. Down- fall of Grecian liberty. 836. Alexander the Great accedes to the throne. 68. Death of the emperor Nero. 833. Constantine the Great pro- claims Christianity the state re- ligion. 876. Beginning of the Migration of Nations. 626. Death of Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths in Italy. 622. Establishment of Islamism by Mahomet. 814. Death of Charlemagne. 1077. Emperor Henry IV. does pen- ance at Canossa before Pope Gregory VII. 1270. End of the Crusades. 1805 — 1877. Residence of the Popes in Avignon. 1463. Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. Separation, with Euripides, of the calling of the poet from that of the musician. 405. Palmy days of Attic Comedy. Performance of "The Frogs", by Aristophanes. Development of the Sophistic Philosophy. Development of Oratory. Demosthenes died 322. Aristotle died 322. His pupil, the music-theorist Aristoxe- nos. A. D. 67. Nero's art-journeys in Italy and Greece. 814. Pope Sylvester founds in Rome the first singing-school. 867. The Council of Laodicea for- bids congregational singing. 886. ArchbishopAmbrose introduces into the church of Milan the chant named after him. 624. Death of Boethius, last philo- sopher and music-theorist of antiquity at the court of Theo- doric. 604. Death of Pope Gregory the Great, founder of the Grego- rian Chant. 840—930. Hucbald. First attempts at polyphonic music ^Organum or Diaphony). 1024. Pope John IX. Guido of Arez- zo's method of vocal instruction and improvement of music-no- tation. 1200. Franco of Cologne, oldest writer on mensural music. 1880. The Netherlander "William Du- fay, member of the papal choir at Rome. 1476. The Netherlander Tinctoris publishes the first music-lexi- con. "Terminorum musicaB dif- finitorium". APPENDIX. 177 1490. 1492. Discovery of America by Co- lumbus. 1517. Martin Luther posts 95 theses against Indulgences on the door of the Cathedral at Wittemberg. 1663. Close of the Council of Trent. 1565 1672. Massacre of St. Bartholo- mew. 1600. Marriage of Henry IV. of France and Maria de' Medici at Florence. Adrian Willaert, founder of the Venetian school, bom at Bruges. 1521. Death of Josquin des Pres. Netherlandic counterpoint at the climax of its derelopment. Performance of Palestrina's three 6-voiced masses dedicated to Philip II., among them the **Missa Papae Marcelli". 1670. Orlando Lasso, music-director at Munich, finishes his Peni- tential Psalms. 1600. First performance of the music- drama Euridice by Rinuccini, music by Peri, and of the sacred music-drama ^TJa rappresen- tazione di anima e di corpo"a by Cavaliere. Modern Times. I618*p-1648. The Thirty Years' War. 1627. 1673.* Passage of the Test-act, England, under Charles IL 1686. Bepeal of the Edict of Nan- tes. 1704.** Battle of Blenheim. First appearance of opera in Germany. (Performance of Ri- nuccini's **Dafne" with music by SchQtz in Torgau.) 1637. Establishment of the first public opera-house, the Teatro Caa- siano at Venice. in 1672. Iiulli acquires the supreme di- rection of operatic affairs in France. 1685. Bach and Handel bom. 1703. Handel begins his labors for the opera at Hamburg. 1726. Death of Peter the Great. Russia received among the Eu- ropean Powers. 1725. Death of Alessandro Scarlatti. The Neapolitan school found- ed by him obtains supremacy throughout Europe. 1729. First performance of Bach's Matthew-Passion at Leipsic. * I have taken the liberty of substituting here for the "Battle of Fehr- bellin", with its date, 1675, an eveut of more interest to the English-speaking reader. ( IVanslator.) ** Historical event substituted (see above Note) for that given in th^ originaL ( Translator.) 12 178 APPENDIX. 1740. Accession of Frederick the Great to the Prussian throne. 1740. Handel closes his operatic ca- reer and devotes himseK to Oratorio. Mozart born. First performance of Gluck'a **Iphigenia in Aulis", at Paris. Establishment of the Paris "Conservatoire de musique et de declamation." First performance of Beetho- ven's 'Tidelio" at Vienna. Death of Joseph Haydn at Vienna. Bichard Wagner born. First performance of Bossini*s "Tan- credi", at Venice. First performance of Weber's *Der Preischiitz", at Berlin. ♦ Historical eyent substituted (see Note, p. 177) for that given in the erii^al. {Translator^ 1766. Beginning of the Seven Year's War. 1766. 1775. * Battles of Lexington and of Bunker Hill. 1774. 1795. • Partition of Poland by Rus- sia, Prussia and Austria. 1796. 1805. Battle of Austerlitz. Napo- leon I. in Vienna. 1806. 1809. Battle of Wagram. 1809. 1813. Battle of the Nations near Leipsic. 1813. 1821. Death of Napoleon L at St. Helena. 1821. INDEX. Accentus ecclesiasticus, 105. 106. 111. Adam de la Hale, 41. Adam, Louis, 154. ^olian Scale, 19. ^schylus, 8. Alkan, 154. All Fools* Day (Fools' Festival), 105. Amati, 132. Ambrose, Archbishop, 20. Ambrosian Chant, 22. Ancient disuse of final minor Triad, 65. Ancient Greek music, tone-genera of, 19. Ancient Modes, the, reduced to two, 83. Animuccia, 107. Anti-bouffonites, 83. Antiphonary, 24. Antiquity, the music of, 1. Arabians, the, influence of on culture, 26. Aristoxenus, **the Musician", 12. Ars organandi, 28. Artistic (Italian) singing, 71. Art-song, 142. Ass's Festival, 105. Auber, 91. Authentic Mode, 21. Azione sacra 107. Bach, C. P. Emanuel, 127. 137. Bach, J. Sebastian, 83. 94. 113. 124, 135. Baif, 75. Baillot, 155. Bardi, Giovanni, 61. Basso continuo, 108. Bassoon, 132. Bassus generalis, 108. Bass-viola, 131. Bayreuth, festival-play 172. Beak-flute (flute k bee), 132. Beauchamp, 78. Beethoven, Louis van, 101. 137. UO Bellini, 73. Berger, Ludwig, 154. Berlioz, Hector, 151. 171. Bernhard, Christoph, 94. Bernhard, the German, 124. Bertini, Henri, 154. Boccaccio, 52. Boethius, 16, 17. Boieldieu, 91. Bombard, 132. Bouffonites and anti-bouffonitei, 8X Bow-instruments, 131. Billow, Hans von, 171. Buxtehude, 124. Byrd, William, 117. Caccini, Giulio, 61. Caldara, 70. 109. Cambert, Robert, 77. 117. Camerata, of Florence, 61. Campra, 81. Canon, 48. Cantabile pianoforte playing, 153. Canzone, 134. Carissimi, Giacomo, 08. 109. Cassiodorus, 16. Cavaliere, Emilio dal, If.?.. Cavalli, 67. Cembalo, 125. Chamber-cantata, 109. Chamber-music style, 68. unamperon, 78. Charlemagne, 23. Cherubini, 90. Chinese, music-system of the, S. Chopin, Frederic, 152. Chorus, origin of the, 64. 12* 18u INDEX. Chromatic element in music, the, 64. Church-music, 109. — in the 18^^ cen- tury, 72. — at Hamburg, 94. Clarinet, 132. Classic, Classical, 59. Clavicembalo, 125. Clavichord, 125. 126. Clement of Alexandria forbids the chromatic tone-series, 16. Clementi, Muzio, 153. Complete system of ancient Greek mu- sic, 18. Composer, function of the, in the Middle Age, and in Luther's time, 58. Confrerie de la Passion, 105. Congregational singing, forbidden by the Council of Laodicea, 20. — pro- moted by Luther, 56. Conservatoire de musique, etc., of Pa- ris, 90. Contest of singers at the "Wartburg, 42. Contrabasso, 132. Contrapunto a mente, 47. Corelli, 135. 154. Cornet, 132. Council of Laodicea forbids congrega- tional singing, 20. Council of Trent on church-music, 58. Counterpoint, 37. 47. 60. Couperin, Fran9ois, 127. Cousser (Kusser), 96. Cramer, J. B., 153. Cristofali (Christofori), 128. Cross-flute (Flauto traverse), 132. Crotta, 131. Crusades, the, influence of on "Wes- tern musical cult are and poetry, 40. Cuzzoni, 71. Cyclical instrumental forms, 135. Cyprian de Rore, 64. Czerny, Carl, 153. Dance, the, originally accompanied vo- cally, 133. Dance of Death {Danse Macabre), 106. Dante, 52. Dauvergne, 84. David, Ferdinand, 155. de Beriot, 155, Diaphony, 28. Diruta, Girolamo, 136. Discant, 37. 45. Dissonance, 51. 66. Dittersdorf, C. D. von, 100. Doles, 120. Donizetti, 73. Doric tetrachord, 17. Dorn, Heinrich, 160. Double choir, origin of the, 64. Dowland, John, 117. Dramatic music, influenced by Roman- ticism, 146. — of Mendelssohn and Schumann, 150. Dufay, Guillaume, 47. Dulcimer, 128. Duni, 85. Dunstable, 116. Durante, Francesco, 70. 72, Earliest Christian times, music of the, 15. East-Indians, their music-theory, 2. Eccard, Johannes, 110. Ecclesiastical Modes> 21. Eginhard, 23. Egyptians, the, 4. 6. Ekkehard, 24. Elizabeth, Queen of England, 116. England, musical position of in the Middle age, 115. Enharmonic tone-genus, 20. Equal temperament, 82. Equilibrium in ancient-times between tone and speech, abolished through Euripides, 10. Esthetics, 139. Faburden (Faux-bourdon), 46. Fagotto, 132. Festival-play at Bayreuth, 172. Fiddle, 131. Fides, 131. Fidula, 131. Field, John, 154. Fifths, parallel, earliest prohihitloii of, 37. Figella, 131. Figured bass, 109. Flauto traverso (Cross-flute), 132. Flute, 123. 132. 133. Flilte a bee (Beak-flute), 132. Folk-song (Volkslied), 45. 49. 56. 130, 142. Fools' Festival (All Fools' day), 105. INDEX. 181 Forkel opposes Gluck, S9. Form of the Scarlatti overture, 69 {note). Four-voiced vocal music, earliest ex- ample of, 46. Franco of Cologne, 36. 38. Franz, Robert, 145, French opera, 75. Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 124. 134. Froberger, 124. Fugue, 48. Fux, Johann Joseph, 70. Gabrieli, Andrea, 66. Gabrieli, Giovanni, 66. 134. Gafor, Franchinus, 46. Galilei, Vincenzo, 61. German idealism, 137. German Opera, 92. 148. Germany, first opera-performance in, 92. Germany, Italian opera in, 70. Gesualdo, Carlo, 68. Gibbons, Orlando, 117. Gluck, Christopher von, 86. 97. »9. Gluckites and Piccinites, 87. Gossec, 90. Goudimel, Claudio, 59. Graun, Carl Heinrich, 71. 120. Greek music-system, 17. Greek tragedy, origin of, 7, Greeks, music of the, 7. Gregorian chant, 22. Gregorian tones, 21. Gregory the Great, 20. Gretry, 85. Guarneri, 132. Guido d'Arezzo, 32. Guidonian Hand, 34. Haendel (Handel), G. F., 70, 96. 112. 113. 115. 117. Hamburg, church music at, 94. — German opera at, 93. 96. Hand, the Guidonian, 34. Harmony, ancient meaning of, 29. Harpsichord, 125. Hasler, Hans Leo, 110. Hasse, Faustina, 71. Hasse, Johann Adolph, 70. 71. 120. Haydn, Joseph, 98. Hebenstreit, Pantaleon, 128. Herz, Henri, 154. Hexachord system, 34. Hilary, Pope, 20. Hiller, Johann Adam, 98. 130. Homophonic style of pianoforte play- ing, 136. Hucbald (Ubaldus), 28. Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 153, Hyporchema, 133. Idealism, German, as affecting German instrumental music, 137. **Improperia'' (Reproaches), 59. Instrumental forms, cyclical, 135. Instrumental music, 11. 122. Instrumental style, 133. Instruments with keys and bows, 123, Invention of the pianoforte, 129. Invention of music- printing, 51. Ionian Scale, 19. Italian opera, 63. 70. Jewish musical culture, 6. Johannes de Muris, 37, Jomelli, 72. Jongleurs, 41. Josquin des Prfes, 50, Kalkbrenner, 154. Kant, Immanuel, 138. Kauer, Ferdinand, 100. Kayser, Christoph, 99. Keiser, Reinhard, 94. 96. 112. Key, idea of, in antiquity, 3. King of the violins, 45. Kreutzer, 155. Kuhnau, Johann, 136. Kullak, Theodor, 153. Kusser (Cousser), 96. Lacombe, 154. Laodicea, Council of, 20, Lassus (Lasso), Orlando, 110. Laudi spirituali, 107. Leibnitz, 138. Leipsic, German opera at, 98. Leo, Leonardo, 70. Lied ohne Worte, 150. Liszt, Franz, 151. 153. 164. Lotti, 109. Lulli, Giovanni Battista, 78. Lute, 129. Luther, Martin, 54. 56. 182 INDEX. Lydian tetrachord, 17. Lyric poetry, 11. 142. Madrigal, 60. 68. Manelli, 67. Marcello, Benedetto, 109. Marchand, Louis, 127. Marchettus of Padua, 37. Marenzio, Luca, 60. Marius, 129. Marschner, Heinrieh, 147. Marseillaise, La, 90. Martin, Vineenzo, 72. Master-singers, 42. Master-song, German, end of, 44. Mattheson, 94.^ 112. 127. Mazarin, Cardinal, 76. Medieval notation of mensural music, 36. Mehul, 90. Mendelssohn -Bartholdy, Felix, 120. 145. 149. Merulo, Claudio, 124. 13* Meyerbeer, 91. 163. Minnegesang (Minnesong), 42. Minnesinger, 42. Minstrels (Jongleurs), 41. Minuet, 137. Missa Papse MarcelH, 59. Mixtures (organ\ 124. Mode, 21. Modes, ecclesiastical, 21. Modes, the ancient, reduced to two, 83. Monochord, 125. Monody, first appearance of, 61. Monsigny, 85. Monteverde, Claudio, 66. 131. Morales, 107. Morlacchi, 148. Morley, Thomas, 117. Moscheles, Ignaz, 154. Mozart, 97. 99. 100. 140. 153. Miiller, Wenzel, 100. Murer, Bernhard, 124. Music, dramatic, 146. Music of the early Christians, 15. Music of the Greeks, 7. Musical culture, Jewish, 6. Musical development of the Egyp- tians, 4. Musical elements of speech, 9. Musical temperament, 65. Music-notation, Huchald's attempted reform of, 31. Music-notation, improved by Guide d'Arezzo, 32. Music-system of the Chinese, 3. Music-system of the Greeks, 17. Music-printing, 51. Music-theory, 64. 82. Neri, Filippo, 107. Nero, Roman emperor, 13. Netherlanders, musical sovereignty of the, 40. Netherlandic counterpoint, 48. Neumes, 31. Northern nations, as cultivators of instrumental music, 27. Notation, 31. 32. Notkers, the two, 24. Oboe, 132. Ockpuhpirr* 49. OoidVo- species, 17. Octave-species, reduced to two, 19. Olympus, 4. Onomato-poetic words, 9. Opera, beginnings of, 62. Opera, French, 75. Opera-academies, 78. Op6ra-Comique, 84. Opera, German, 96. 148. Opera-house, the first, 67. Opera, Italian, 63. 70. Operetta (Song-play, Singspiel), 97, Oratorio, 104, 107—110. 115. Oratorio-chorus, 119. Orchestral symphony, 69. 137. 139. Organ. 123. Organating fars organandi), 28. 45. Organum, 28. 29. 30. Organ-pedals, 124. Origin of scale-names, Ut, iZe, JIfi, etc., 32. Ottaviano del Petrucci, 51. Overture, Scarlatti's, 69 [note), Pachelbel, 124. Paisiello, 72. Palestrina (Pier Luigi) 58. 60. 107. Pan's pipes, 122. Parallel octaves and fifths, 37. Paris Conservatory, 90. INDEX. 183 Partita, 135. Pasquini, 124. Passion, 104. 110—112. 114. 120. Passion-play, 106. Paumann(Paulmann), Conrad, 124.129. Pergolese, 72. Peri, Jacopo, 61. Perrin, Abbe, 76. 78. 79. Petrarca, 52. Petrus and Romanus, 24. Philidor, 85. Philosophy, Sophistic, 10. 12. Phrygian tetrachord, 17. Pianoforte, 126. 129. 136. 152. Piccini, 70. 72. Piccinites and Gluckites, 87. Pier Luigi (Palestrina), 58. 60. Pistocchi, 71. Plagal Mode, 21. Poet, in antiquity, 9. Poetry, lyric, 11.' 142. Polyphonic music, 26. 28. Porpora, 70. 118. Praetorius, Michael, 123. 127. Program-music, 151. 152. Psaltery, 125. Purcell, Henry, 117. Pythagoras, 12. 65. Pythagorean third, 65. Quani, Johann Jcadum, 133. Rameau, Jean Philippe, 80. 127. Rebec, 131. Recitative (stile rappresentativo), 61. Recitative arioso. 111. Reduction of ancient modes, 83. Reduction of the seven octaye*species, 19. Refoimation (Luther's) and the Re- Dp.soence, 54. Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 98. 142. Reinken, Johann Adam, 94. 124. ^^Reproaches'* (Improperia), 59. Re-union of poet and musician in one person. Note, 160. Rinuccini, 61. "Robin and Marian**, 42. Rode, 155. Roi des violons, 45. Roland de Lattre (Orlando Lasso), 110. Romans, the ancient, a native art not developed among them, 12. Romantic, 141. Romanticism, 141. Romanticists of the 19ti» century, 141« 151. Rossini, 72. Rota (Rotte), 131. Rouget de Lisle, 90. Ro-i^seau, Jean Jacques, 85. 89, !>vj 'f. Conrad, 57. Sachs, Hans, 44. 92. Sacred music-drama, 109. Saint -Saens, 154. Sakadas, 12. Salieri, 101. Sarette, 90. Sarti, 72. Sax, Adolph, 133. Scarlatti, Alessandro, 67. 69. Scarlatti, Domenico, 70. 136. Scarlatti overture, 69. Scheldt, Samuel, 124. Schelble, 120. Schenck Johann, 100. Scherao, 137. Scholastic philosophy, 37, Schopenhauer, 167. SchrSder-Devrient, 161. Schroter, 129. Schubert, Franz, 143. Schumann, Robert, 145. 149. 150. Schats, Heinrich, 93. 106. 110. IIL Sebastian!, 112. Senesino, 71. Sequence, 24. Shawm, 132. Silbermann, 129. Singing, artistic, 71. Solmisation (Sol-faing), 34. Solo song, first introduced, 61. Sonata, 134. 135. 136. Song-form, Note, 133. Song-play (Singspielj, 98. Sophistic philosophy, 10. 12. Sourd6ac, Marquis de, 78. Spinet, 126. **Spiritual song-booklet", 57. Spohr, Ludwig, 147. 155. Spontini, 91. 148. Stamaty, 154. 184 IND£X. Steffani, Agostino, 68. Stein, Johann Andreas, 129 St. Gall, monastery of, 23. Stile rappresentativo {recitatiye^, 61. Stradivari, 132. String-instruments, 122. Strozzi, 76. Suite, 135. Sylvester, Pope, founds the first sing- ing schools, 20. Symphony, the modern orchestral, 69. 137. 139. Syncopation, 47. Tablature, 43. 129. Tartini, 154. Telemann, 94. }7. 112. Temperament, musical, 65. 82. Tenor, original meaning of, 46. Tetrachord, 17. Thalberg, Sigismond, 153. Theile. 95. Theodoric, Emperor, 16. Theorbo, 129. Theory of music, enriched by Hameau, 82. Thespis, 8. Thibaut of iS'avarre, 41. Thomas, Ambroise, 90. Tinctoris, 116. Toccata, 134. Tomaschek, 154. Tone-gene -a of ancient Greek music, 19. Tripartite measure in the Middle Age, 36. Tritone, 35. Trouv^res (Troubadours), 41, Tutilo, the monk, 25. Ubaldas (Hucbald), Umlauf, Ignaz, 99. 28. "Ut queant laxis" (Hymn), Z% Ut, Ke. Mi, Fa, etc., 32. Verdi, Giuseppe, 74. Viadana, Ludovico, 108, Vielle, 131. Vieuxtemps, 155. Vioel, 131. Viol, 131. Viola, 131. 132. Viola da braccia, 131, Viola da gamba, 131, Violin, 132. Violin-making, 132, Violoncello, 132. Viotti, 155. Virginal, 126. Vittoria, 107. Vivaldi, 135, 154. Vocalmusic, four-voiced, earliest ei- ample of, 46. Volkslied (Folk-song), 45. Wagner, Richard, 156. 157. Walther, Johann, 57. Wartburg, contest of singers on the, 42, Weber, Carl Maria von, 147. Weber, Dionys, 154. Welnlig, 160.^ Western music-culture and poetry af- fected by the Crusades, 40. Wholly-composed song, (ATo^e) 143, Willaert, Adrian, 63. William of Machaud, 46. William of Poitiers, 41. W'ind-instruments, 122. 131. 133. Wulston, his description of an orgaiw 123. Zarlino, GiosefFo, 64. 65. Zelter, C. F., 142. Zimmermann, 154. 14 DAY USE REIURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED MUSIC LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. AUG 5 1968 i i ' » ft / o Berkeley m THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA UBRARY