ar V low -e, • ■ y- BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME EROM THE '"■■ ■ SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 aA'isn^. soblM. arVIOII The story of music Cornell University Library i 3 1924 031 166 873 olin.anx The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 1 66873 THE STORY OF MUSIC THE STORY OF MUSIC BY W. J. HENDERSON NEW EDITION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA I912 E..y E, M, A.L-i5^7' COPYKIGHT, 1889, PY W. J. HENDERSON Copyright, 1912, by LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. First Edition, October, 1889. Reprinted, January and February, 1890; December, 1892; October, 1893; January, 1897; September, 1898; July, 1899; August, 1901; March, 1903. August, 1907. New Edition, Partly Rewritten, March, 1912. THE SCIENTIFIC PRESb HOBERT DRUMMOND AND COMPANY BROOKtYN, N. V. TO H. C. BUNNER Warm hand, strong brain, and open heart Of him who is, and hath been, friend, Of all my work, from first to end. Unceasingly i g.ve chee part. For thine hath been the honest tongue To urge, to praise, to criticise- Plain words made fair by kindly eyes — If tales were told or songs were sung. So clasping here this new-writ scroll. As one who comes from sea to land, I lean to meet thy outstretched hanil, And say, " Of this work take the whole." W. J. H. November, 1889. PRIiFACE TO THE TWELFTH EDITION. In preparing this new edition of " The Story of Music " the author has perhaps felt a par- donable pride. This little volume first invited the kindly consideration of music lovers twenty- three years ago. At that time neither the author nor the publishers expected that they would be putting forward another edition in this year of grace, 1912. But since this has come about, it is the duty and the privilege of the author to make most grateful acknowledg- ment of the favor with which the book was re- ceived when it first appeared and in which it has so generously been retained through the inter- vening years. Minor changes have from time to time been introduced, but it has seemed to be imperative that in the present edition an effort should be made to bring the work up to date. The author has therefore rewritten some passages and has added others. He has carried forward the account of the progress of Italian opera to viii PREFACE TO THE TWELFTH EDITION. the completion of the extant works of Puccini. This account will be found in two chapters. That which deals with the creations of Verdi is in Chapter VII. An entirely new chapter is devoted to an exposition of the art work of Richard Wagner and its influence on the rep- resentative operatic composers of Germany, France, and Italy. In this chapter will be found a brief review of the contributions of Strauss, Puccini, and Debussy to the lyric drama, and of their indebtedness to Wagner. A succeeding chapter discusses the latest ad- vances in the field of orchestral composition, with especial reference again to such composers as Strauss and Debussy. These additions are made in accordance with the original plan of the book, which was to give a succinct account of the steps in the develop- ment of modern music as an art. Details of biography have no place in the working out of such a plan. Neither is it requisite to enter into a rehearsal of the activities of all composers in every period. Only the work of those who have created new things in musical art and opened up paths to be trodden by their suc- cessors have to be studied in this book. The author aimed to separate the history of the art from that of the artists, and to survey in a com- prehensive but brief glance the development PREFACE TO THE TWELFTH EDITION, ix of that art. Something in the way of critical opinion has been adventured, but the author believes that what has been said need be re- ceived only as a stimulus to the thought of the reader, and not necessarily as ex cathedra. Without doubt this plan of the volume pleased music lovers twenty-three years ago and has continued to please them, and the author has for that reason made no alteration in it, but has written the new chapters in the same spirit as he wrote the old ones. This edition, how- ever, makes the book practically new. It starts forward once more a contemporary. The author's fondest hope is that in its new form it may obtain as much favor as it did in its original state. CONTENTS. PAGE Chronological Table xii CHAPTER L Making the Elements of Music . . . . i CHAPTER II. The Birth of Art-Melody and Secular Music . 2; CHAPTER III. Handel and Bach 46 CHAPTER IV. Instruments and Instrumental Forms . . .69 CHAPTER V. The Great Instrumental Writers . , , ,92 xi xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PAGE The First Operatic Reformation . . . .129 CHAPTER VII. From Mozart to Verdi 144 CHAPTER VIII. Wagner and his Influence 173 CHAPTER IX. Contemporaneous Instrumental Music . . .194 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A. p. 333. St. Ambrose born. 384. The Ambrosian chant arranged for the cathedral of Milan. 590. Accession of Pope Gregory, who arranged the Gregorian chant. 604. Death of Pope Gregory. 814. The Gregorian chant remained practically un- changed till this date, when the chant of Metz, Germany, began to be introduced in all Catho- lic churches at matins. 895-5O0. Beginning of modern harmony. Hucbald's " Organum." 1025 (about). Improvements in musical notation and introduction of solmization by Guido of Arez- zo. 1 100. Beginning of the earliest French school of con- trapuntists. Jean Perotin introduces " imita- tion." 1200. Franco of Cologne regulates measure in music and formulates some of the fundamental laws of modern harmony. 12 17. Walter Odington, an English disciple of the French school, writes a learned treatise on aii XIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. music. [He is supposed by Naumann to have composed the famous part-song " Sumer is icumen in ".] 1380. WiUiam Dufay, singer in the Papal chapel at Rome. He endeavors to imbue contrapuntal writing with euphonic beauty. Introduction of secular tunes in masses. 1425-1430 (between). John Okeghem, first master of the great Netherland school, born. Canon carried by him to its utmost perfection. 1440. Invention of printing. 1450. losquin des Pres, pupil of Okeghem, and first genius in musical history born. 1453. Fall of Constantinople and flight of scholars to Italy. 1475. The Mastersingers flourished in Germany. 1480. Adrian Willaert, father of the madrigal, born. Introduction of double choruses in antiphonal form. 1502. Invention of movable metal types for printing music. 1514. Palestrina born. 1520. Orlando di Lasso, last of the Netherlands school, born. 1 521. Death of Josquin des Pres. 1524. The first Lutheran hymn-book published. 1527. Willaert maestro in the Church of St. Marc, Venice. 1544. Cyprian di Rore's " Chromatic Madrigals " pub- lished. 1555. Palestrina's first masses published. .562. Council of Trent. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xv A.D. 1563-1570. Lasso's celebrated penitential psalms com- posed. 1565. Palestrina's " Missa Papas Marcellf " first sung. 1 594. Deaths of Orlando di Lasso and Palestrina. 1594. Performance of Jacopo Peri's '' Daphne," the first opera, at the Palazzo Corsi, Florence. 1 598. Publication of Claudio Merulo's toccatas. 1600. Cavaliere's oratorio, " L'Anima e Corpo," pro- duced. 1600. Production of Peri's " Eurydice " at the marriage of Henry IV. and Maria de Medici in Flor- ence. 1607. Monteverde's " Orfeo " produced at Mantua. 1608. Production of Monteverde's " Arianna." 1627. Opera introduced in Germany by Schiitz. 1633. Giovanni Battista Lulli, French opera composer, born. 1637. Opening in Venice of the Teatra San C.issiano, the first opera-house, with Manelli's " An- dromeda." 1659. Alessandro Scarlatti, founder of the Neapolitan school, born. 1668. Cavalli, a follower of Monteverde in style, musi- cal director at San Marco. 1672. Sebastiani's passion music published. .1683. Jean Philippe Rameau, French opera writer and musical theorist born. Domenico Scarlatti, in- strumental melodist, born . 1685. Bach and Handel born. 1710. The pianoforte invented by Cristofori. 1713. Corelli died. 1 7 14. Gluck born. xvi CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 1 7 14. Emanuel Bach, sonata writer, born. 1718. Handel makes England his home. 1722. Rameau's " Traits d'Harmonie " and Bach's "Well-tempered Clavichord" published. 1723. Bach becomes cantor of the Thomas School at Leipsic. 1724. Bach's " St. John Passion " produced. 1729. Bach's " St. Matthew Passion" produced. 1731. Handel's first English oratorio, "Esther," pro- duced by Bernard Gates, chapelmaster of St. James's. 1732. Joseph Haydn, father of the symphony, born. 1737. Rameau's " G^ndration Harmonique " published. His masterpiece, the opera " Castor and Pol- lux," produced. 1740. Handel's "Israel in Egypt" and "Saul" pro- duced. 1742. April 13th, at Dublin, " The Messiah " first per- formed. 1749. March 23, "The Messiah" produced in Lon- don. 1750. Death of Sebastian Bach. 1756. Wolfgang Amade Mozart born. 1759. Handel's death. 1759. Haydn's first symphony written. 1760. Cherubini born. 1762. Gluck's " Orfeo " produced. 1770. Beethoven born. Mozart's " Mithridate " pro- duced. 1781. Gluck's " Iphigenie in Tauride" produced. 1782. Mozart's " Die Entfiihrung " produced. 1786. Mozart's " Figaro " produced. Weber bom. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xvii A.D. 1787. Gluck died. Mozart's "Don Giovanni" pro- duced. 1788. Mozart's last three symphonies, including the "Jupiter," written. 1791. Cherubini's "Lodoiska" produced. 1 791. Meyerbeer born. 1791. Haydn visits London. 1791. Mozart's "Die Zauberflote " produced. Death of Mozart. 1792. Rossini born. 1795. Beethoven's opus i published. 1797. Schubert born. 1798. Donizetti born. 1799. Haydn's " Creation " produced. 1802. Bellini born. 1803. Berlioz born. 1804. Beethoven's "Eroica" produced. 1805. Beethoven's " Fidelio" produced. 1809. Mendelssohn born. Chopin born. 1809. Haydn died. 1 8 10. Schumann born. 181 1. Liszt born. 18 13. Rossini's " Tancred " produced, 1813. Richard Wagner born. 1813. Giuseppe Verdi born. 1818. Gounod born. 1 82 1. Weber's " Freischiitz" produced. 1821. Schubert's " Erl-King " first sung in public. 1823. Beethoven's " Missa Solemnis " composed. 1824. First performance of Beethoven's ninth sym- phony. 1826. Weber died. xviii CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. 1827. Beethoven died. 1828. Schubert died. 1829. Rossini's " William Tell " produced. 1829. Revival of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" by Mendelssohn. 1831. Bellini's " La Sonnambula " produced. 1831. Meyerbeer's " Robert le Diable " produced. 1835. First performance of Donizetti's " Lucia." Belli- ni's death. 1836. First performance of Mendelssohn's " St. Paul" at Diisseldorf. 1836. First performance of Meyerbeer's " Les Hugue- nots." 1842. Verdi's " Nabuco " produced. 1842. Wagner's " Rienzi " produced. 1843. Wagner's " Flying Dutchman" produced. 1845. Wagner's " Tannhauser" produced. 1846. Mendelssohn's "Elijah" produced at the Bir mingham Festival. 1846. Berlioz's " Damnation of Faust " produced. 1847. Mendelssohn died. 1848. Donizetti's death. 1849. Death of Chopin. 1849. Schumann's " Faust " produced. 1850. Wagner's " Lohengrin" produced. 1 851. Verdi's " Rigoletto " produced. 1856. Schumann died. 1859. Gounod's " Faust" produced. 1864. Meyerbeer's death. 1865. Wagner's " Tristan und Isolde " produced. 1868. Rossini died. 1868. Wagner's " Die Meistersinger " produced. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xix 1869. Berlioz died. 1872. Verdi's "Aida" produced. 1876. Wagner's " Der Ring des Nibelungen " pro- duced at Baireuth. 1882. Wagner's " Parsifal " produced. 1883. Wagner died. 1887. Verdi's " Otello " produced. 1 893 . Verdi's " Falstaff " produced . 1893. Puccini's " Manon " produced. 1902. Debussy's " Pelleas et Melisande " produced. 1906. Strauss' "Salome" produced. 1909. Strauss' "Elektra" produced. 19x0. Puccini's " Girl of the Golden West " produced. THE STORY OF MUSIC. CHAPTER I. MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. If I am to tell the story of the music of to-day, from its birth, in a brief space, I must necessarily omit much that would be interest- ing. In order to cover the ground without overstepping the limits of such space, I have decided to tell the history of music, not that of musicians. The object of these chapters will be to show how our music has grown from the swaddling-clothes that cherished yet confined it in the middle ages, to the splendid raiment of to-day. I shall endeavor to show, in general, along what lines and by what processes our no- ble art has developed from a strictly scientific character to one personal and romantic ; how, instead of being mechanically constructed ac- 2 THE STORY OF MUSIC. cording to arbitrary rules, it is now the embodi- ment of the utmost freedom of expression and the voice of the loftiest soul-poetry in the world. In a word, I shall endeavor to show how our music, having been originally a shell-fish, with its restrictive skeleton on the outside and no soul within, has been developed by the inevit- able laws of evolution, through natural selection and the survival of the fittest, into something human, even divine, with the strong, logical skeleton of its science inside, the fair flesh of its God-given beauty outside, and the whole, like man himself, animated by a celestial, eter- nal spirit. These chapters, then, will contain nothing more about the lives of the great composers than is absolutely necessary in treating the subject. There are numerous excellent biographies of the great musicians, and all students of music should read the lives of the masters. All that I shall strive to do will be to show what each of the bright lights in our history contributed to the advancement of his art. We shall first see how the earliest writers were occupied in creat- ing the formal materials of music, how later ones developed them till technicality went to extremes. Then we shall meet with a reaction, which resulted in the first introduction of ro- MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 3 mance into music, and opened the gate of that well-trodden path which led to Beethoven and thence to Richard Wagner. It would be unprofitable to enter into any con- sideration of ancient music, because we have no definite or satisfactory information concerning it. We know that when the daughters of Israel hung their harps on the willows, and sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept, they pos- sessed music ; for David, the author of the sub- limest hymns that were ever sung, again and again speaks of praising God with the voice and with instruments. We know, too, that the Greeks had music, and sufficient has been dis- covered in regard to it to show us that it was simple and not harsh. The first infant wail of the voice of our own musical art that has come down to us was the Ambrosian chant, " the ec- clesiastical mode of saying and singing divine service, set in order by St. Ambrose for the ca- thedral of Milan, about a.d. 384.'' We know almost nothing about Ambrose's system. He is generally credited with having chosen for the use of the Church four diatonic scales arranged after the manner of the Greeks, and to have set the service with these in some manner. The reader is to picture for himself, if he can, a music like the earth before the creation, without form 4 THE STORY OF MUSIC. and void. The only notation known at this period was a kind of musical shorthand, indicat- ing the intervals through which the voice should rise or fall. There were no bars, no phrases, and no time, and the length of the notes was gov- erned wholly by that of the syllables of the text. Yet the Church service, chanted in this way, must have been more effective than when read ; for St. Augustine, in his " Confessions," says that his first hearing of it moved him to tears. Here is a specimen of it : Glo - ri - a in ex eel sis De - o. Pope Gregory, who was the head of the Chris- tian Church from 590 to 604 A.D., made the next progress in musical art. The Gregorian chant became a master-power in ecclesiastical music, and its influence has continued to be felt in no small measure until to-day. In order to construct his music Gregory added to the four scales of Ambrose, which were called the authen- tic modes, four more, known as the plagal. You are not to suppose that he invented these scales. They existed before, but he introduced their use into the scientific music of the time. Here, then, are the eight Gregorian scales : MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. Authentic Modes. isi Tone. ^^^^^^^= Plagal Modes. 2d Tone. * 3^ Tone, if^^^^^P^^^ yik Tone. Wi Tone. s^gggg^ i These scales are designated with cumbersome Greek names, with which the reader need not burden his mind. In the course of time four more scales were added. Of these we need only note the fact that one of them was our scale of C natural, which they were bound to find sooner or later, in their process of scale-making. If these scales were set before a beginner in mu- sic at the present day, without further instruc- tion, he would treat them as simple progressions in the scale of C. But they were nothing of the sort. The black notes indicate the tonics, and the asterisks are placed over the dominants ; though the latter term did not have the same meaning then as it has now. It indicated the ' Dominant. The tonics are indicated by crotchets. 6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. tone on which the principal recitation was to be made. A chant, then, was composed on the notes of the scale to which it belonged. It con- sisted of an intonation, followed by a recitation on the dominant ; a mediation, ending with the middle of each verse ; another recitation on the dominant and a termination finishing the verse. Here is an example : Intonation, Rec. Mediation. Termination. Three Latin names were applied to the Gre- gorian chant : Cantus planus, meaning plain chant and referring to its even movement ; cantus choralis, signifying that it was sung by a chorus; and cantus fir mus, or fixed chant, indi- cating that special melodies were affixed to each liturgical text. Bear in mind this term, cantus firmus, for you will find it playing an important part in the progress of our art. We can now dismiss the Gregorian chant with a paragraph of Emil Naumann's: "The chant, as now ar- ranged by Gregory, differed from the Ambro- sian in that it was no longer recited or governed by the length or quantity of the syllables or metre of the language, but consisted of continu- ous melodies, the length of each tone differing MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 7 but slightly in value. It possessed something of that peculiarly impressive character belonging to the Church chorale, so adequately fitted for its divine purpose, partaking of that seriousness and majestic dignity which makes the chorale a fitting offering to Him who is far above time, space, and the accidents of every-day life." * * It is not improbable that Gregory's musical labors were only a part of his plan to give the Roman Church supreme temporal power. History shows us that while he left nothing undone to es- tablish the influence of the Church, he also endeavored to spare nothing that could militate against it. He built up an imposing and elaborate Church ritual, designed to overwhelm the impres- sionable minds of an ignorant people. According to Draper, in his Intellectual Development of Europe, "His oft-expressed be- lief that the end of the world was at hand was perpetually con- tradicted by his acts, which were ceaselessly directed to the foundation of a future papal empire. Under him was sanctified that mythologic Christianity destined to become the religion of Europe for many subsequent centuries, and which adopted the adoration of the Virgin by images and pictures ; the efficacy of the remains of martyrs and relics ; stupendous miracles wrought at tlie shrines of saints ; the perpetual intervention of angels and devils in sublunary affairs ; the truth of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability the stories of Greek mythology ; the lo- calization of heaven a few miles above the air, and of hell in the bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater of Lipari." This same pontiff, according to Draper, hated all human learning, " and insisting on the maxim that ' Ignorance is the mother of devotion," he expelled from Rome all mathematical studies, and burned the Palatine Library founded by Augustus Caesar. It was valuable for the many rare manuscripts it contained. He forbade the study of the classics, mutilated statues, and destroyed temples. He hated the very relics of classical genius ; pursued with vin- 8 THE STORY OF MUSIC. And thus we have learned something about the foundation of what we to-day know as mel- ody. This alone, however, does not make what we call music. Whence, then, came harmony ? The Church ritual was sung by a chorus in unison, and the first, or one of the first, to introduce part-singing into the Church, where the only musical science of the day was pre- served. Was Hucbald, a Benedictine monk of St. Armand, in Flanders, who was born about 840 and died about 930. His musical activ- ity dated, therefore, three centuries later than Gregory's. What had music been doing all this time that harmony should suddenly appear ? Let me hasten to answer this question by stating that no one knows. All that has been or can be advanced upon this subject, in the absence of historical data, is mere conjecture. Dr. Parry, in his admirable article on " Harmony," in Grove's " Dictionary of Music," expresses the opinion that harmony originated in the use of dictive fanaticism the writings of Livy, against whom he was specially excited." It is not difficult to perceive that a mind capable of devising such a policy would see the availability of the solemn and mysterious chant as a means of heightening the effect of the Church liturgy and strengthening its hold on the popular mind. We must admit, therefore, that Gregory's musical labors were inspired by no devotion to art, though they led to beneficent results which their projector could never have conceived. MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 9 instruments of percussion, which, sustaining a single note under a melody, led to the use of the drone bass, Langhans advances the very plausible theory that harmony originated in the use of the oldest bowed instruments, which had a flat bridge, thereby compelling the bow to touch more than one string. He thinks that all three strings were set in vibration at once, the two lower ones sustaining the tonic and the fifth, and the highest giving out the melody. He believes his supposition is borne out by the fact that Hucbald called his system ars orga- nandi, the art of " organating," and adds that in early mediaeval times " organum " meant any species of musical instrument. My own belief is that harmony is the child of the organ, for the word "organum " had been applied to that particular instrument eight centuries before Hucbald's time.* The Flanders monk, however, was the father of systematic harmony, for he left the first trea- tise on the subject. He gave to the world the first rules for the simultaneous sounding of dif- * Marcus Vitruvius PoUio, a Roman writer on architecture, who flourished B. c. 27, used the word as meaning a military en- gine, and previous to this time it signified an implement or instru- ment, not necessarily musical, of any kind. Suetonius, the his- torian, however, uses the word as the name of the water-organ, a musical instrument of the time of Nero, who died 68 a.d. lO THE STORY OF MUSIC. ferent tones. His principal interval was the fifth, and to this he added the fourth, and his harmony consisted in making two voices move in parallel fourths or fifths. In order to bring in a third part he doubled the lower voice in the upper octave, and to construct a quartet he doubled the fourths or fifths. Here are some samples of his harmony : Three Parts. Four Parts. ^- II F in - pe - li bus su - is. ff^'- _j — =J «. — , — -= s> II IS— -« ^ K In addition to these methods Hucbald had what he called " oblique " organum, and in this were the germs of a more facile style of composi- tion. It was always two-voiced, the lower part remaining almost invariably on one note, while the other intoned the melody. Here is a speci- men of it. Tu pa - tris sem- pi - ter- nus es fi us. MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. II And now we have the whole system of har- mony as known in the early part of the tenth century. But once the foundation-stones were laid the great edifice of modern music arose with marvellous rapidity and strength. There was little or no science in this primitive system, but to its disciples, as Rockstro pertinently notes, we owe a deep debt of gratitude, " for without the materials accumulated by their ingenuity and patience later composers could have done nothing. They first discovered the harmonic combinations, which have been claimed as com- mon property by all succeeding schools. The misfortune was that with the discovery their efforts ceased. Of symmetrical arrangement, based upon the lines of a preconceived design, they had no idea. Their highest aspirations ex- tended no farther than the enrichment of a given melody with such harmonies as they were able to improvise at a moment's notice." Mr. Rockstro's estimate of the work of the followers of Hucbald is a just one, and here let us examine one of the causes, perhaps the chief cause, of the lack of science in their unsystematic labors. This was the absence of measure, which did not take its place in music till the close of the twelfth century. The method of writing down music employed 12 THE STORY OF MUSIC. in the days of our art's infancy is called the Neumse notation. It consisted simply of a kind of shorthand marking over the words of the text, and was as old, possibly, as the days of David's psalms, for it is still to be found in the Hebrew ritual. Here is a specimen of it from a manuscript of the eleventh century : A solis ortu" This has been translated as follows : As time wore on these signs were made more intelligible by the use of a colored line. If this line was red, F was the note; if it was yel- low, the note was C. In the eleventh century both these lines were used, thus clearly marking the range of a fifth from F to C. The notes then, as now, were designated by letters of the alphabet. Guido of Arezzo, who was born in 995 and died in 1050, added two more lines to the stafT, and also restored the use of the spaces, which had been exclusively employed in a rough sort of notation practised by Hucbald. Guido made one great advance in musical art, and I pause here to mention this achievement. It was MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 1 3 the origination of solmization by means of the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. The syllable do was substituted for ut at a later date. These syllables were the initial sounds of the lines of a hymn, each of which began with a tone a degree higher than the previous one, giving in succes- sion the scale C, D, E, F, G, A. By means of this Guido was able to teach his pupils sight reading. Hucbald having introduced what may be called a system of harmony, and Guido having added some improvements to it, as well as hav- ing taught choristers how to sing, the next step in the progress of our art was a natural result. The more accomplished singers began to add ornaments to their melodies in the twelfth cen- tury, and it dawned upon the professors of music that if one part was to sing two notes to the other's one there ought to be some sort of law which would compel the tenors and basses to finish a line at the same time. This practice of ornamenting the upper part was known as " descant," and it became a perfect mania. Vari- ous unscientific attempts were made to bring order out of the ensuing chaos, but no success was achieved before the labors of Franco of Cologne, about 1200 A.D. He wrote a famous treatise called " Musica et Ars Cantus Men- 14 THE STORY OF MUSIC. surabilis," in which he not only set forth a system of measured music, but laid down laws for part-writing which are almost identical with those of modern harmony. He introduced into scientific music triple time, which he called " perfect." He recognized as a consonance the third, which had hitherto been held in disfavor by the Church. He classified the major an3 minor seventh, the second, and the augmented fourth, as the only true dissonances. And above all, he strongly advocated, in part- writing, the use of a contrary movement of the different parts, which is the most vigor- ous kind of counterpoint. He also put in order the few blind attempts that had been made, previous to his time, to make notes representing sounds of different lengths. He adopted four characters, viz., the Longa, H"",; the Brevis, {m^ ; the Duplex longa, iSHIj ; and the Semibrevis, ♦ . Previous to the time of Franco the seed sown by Hucbald had been growing in France. Writ- ers on musical history usually pass from Franco to the great masters of the Netherlands, ignor- ing the early French composers ; but Naumann's masterly review of the researches of Coussemaker ought to settle for all time the claims of France to precedence in the development of counter- MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 15 point.* Coussemaker's labors show that double counterpoint was born four hundred years earlier than the generally accepted time, and he intro- duces to us five hundred composers and about one thousand two hundred compositions, "all," as Naumann says, "bearing more or less evi- dence of the contrapuntist's skill." The period during which this great French school flourished extended from i looto 1370 A.D. It is impossible in a condensed history of music to enter into an extended account of this school. I shall there- fore enumerate its achievements as briefly as possible. Its earliest masters produced compo- sitions in four distinct parts, among them being the first motets and rondeaus ; and from the writings of Walter Odington, an English disci- ple of the school, we learn that the latter could be written without text, and must therefore have been used at times as purely instrumental com- * A manuscript in the library of the Medical Faculty at Mont- pellier was the principal source of Coussemaker's information. Naumann says : " He extracted with rare discrimination the es- sential parts of the old manuscript, publishing them, together with able and learned commentaries, in Paris in the year 1865. The issue of this work, entitled ' L'Art Harmonique aux xii" et xiii* Sidcles,' was limited to three hundred copies only, as it was intended for the exclusive use of scientific bodies. Of the three hundred and forty specimens which were taken from the Mont- pellier manuscript, fifty-one are said to belong to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." I6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. positions. Perotin, who flourished between I icxi and 1 140 A.D., is the first composer known to have employed the important musical device called " imitation." Here is the passage : -^ ^ 1 1 1 1 — 1 — 1 d _,S. ; -si— nr=- :^J-^ -^ — rr- 1 Us — u — ^' ^-^ ^=^ 5^=:^ L^=J ' gg . — ' ^^^ T! Imitation, no musical scholar of to-day need be told, is the foundation of the canon and the fugue. Double counterpoint was not long be- hind imitation, for Jean de Garlande, one of Perotin's immediate successors, in his treatise on music, says that it was known before his time. He describes it as the repetition of the same phrase by different voices at different times, and gives this example : Here you see the germ of the canon, a musi- cal form which has been cultivated by compos- ers down to the present day. After Jean de Garlande the chief composers of the old French MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. IJ school were Franco of Paris, and Franco of Co- logne, who, in spite of Coussemaker's researches, are generally confounded; Jerome of Moravia, Philippe de Vitry, Jean de Muris, and William of Machant. All of these continued to develop imitation, canon, and double counterpoint, and I need only mention especially that Jean de Muris recorded the fact that in his day three tempi were in use — lively, moderate, and slow — corresponding to our allegro, andante, and ada- gio. I repeat, also, the name of Walter Oding- ton, an Englishman, who was a disciple of the French school, and who wrote a learned treatise on music in 121 7 A.D. To him Naumann at- tributes the composition of the noted part-song, " Sumer is icumen in," which is a very ingen- ious canon for six voices. It was first brought prominently into notice by Sir John Hawkins in his history of music. The teachings of the Paris theorists spread into the provinces of Hennegau and Flanders, and there grew up a school called by Naumann the Gallo-Belgic school. The most prominent of its composers was Dufay, who lived between the middle of the fourteenth century and the early part of the fifteenth. He introduced into his masses the melodies of popular songs instead of the cantus firmus sanctioned by the Church ; he 1 8 THE STORY OF MUSIC. abolished the use of parallel fifths, which had been common ; he adopted the open-note style of notation ; and he began the practice of inter- rupted canonic part-writing, in which the imita- tion does not continue throughout a composition but appears only at occasional effective places. Above all, Dufay was the first writer who at- tempted to lift contrapuntal writing above mere mechanical construction, and to imbue it with euphonic beauty. Rockstro, in his article on Schools of Music in Grove's Dictionary, describes the music of Dufay's time thus: " At this period, represent- ing the infancy of art, the subject, or canto fermo, was almost invariably placed in the tenor, and sung in long-sustained notes, while two or more supplementary voices accompanied it with an elaborate counterpoint, written like the canto fermo itself in one or other of the ancient eccle- siastical modes, and consisting of fugal passages, points of imitation, or even canons, all suggested by the primary idea, and all working together for a common end." Dufay's introduction of secular airs in his masses establishes the fact that the folk-song, the free unscientific composition of the people, which had existed from the earliest times, had now reached a point of excellence which com- MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. I9 pelled its recognition by the learned in music. It would be interesting, if opportunity permitted, to trace the growth of this influential form of composition. The troubadours in France and the minnesingers in Germany cultivated this species of music, and wrote canzonets, serenades, roundelays, pastorals, and minnelieder, many of which have been preserved and are extremely interesting. Weber, you will remember, makes Adolar sing a minnelied in the first act of " Euryanthe," and Wagner has given us in " Tannhauser " a magnificent picture, drawn from the life, of a contest of knightly singers at Wartburg. King Thibaut, of Navarre (1201- 1253 A.D.), Adam de la Halle (i 240-1 286 a.d.), Spervogel, and Prinz Witlav were distinguished writers of popular music in the middle ages. The introduction of the folk-song into art-music was an important event, for it breathed into the nostrils of science the breath of life and awak- ened the first expressions of emotion not con- nected with religious feeling, whence music de- veloped into the supreme language of the human heart. Thus we have followed the progress of our art through what Mr. Hullah calls its first pe- riod of development, from 384 to the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it began to re- 20 THE STORY OF MUSIC. semble what we now know as music. The second period, that of the great contrapuntists of the Netherlands, extended from 1400 to 1600. Between the old Paris theorists and these Netherlands masters Dufay was the connecting link. It may at first seem strange to find the Dutch leading the world in musical progress, but we must remember that at this period they led the world also in painting and in liberal institutions. I cannot refrain from quoting a brilliant passage from Motley's noble " History of the Dutch Republic." He says : " Thus fif- teen ages have passed away ; and in the place of a horde of savages, living amongst swamps and thickets, swarm three millions of people, the most industrious, the most prosperous, perhaps the most intelligent, under the sun. Their cattle, grazing on the bottom of the sea, are the finest in Europe ; their agricultural prod- ucts more exchangeable than if nature had made their land to overflow with wine and oil. Their navigators are the boldest, their mercan- tile marine the most powerful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world. Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the pursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in mechanical and fine arts is unrivalled. Belgian musicians delight and in- MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 21 struct Other nations. Belgian pencils have for a century caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never before seen." Among such a people as this, then, our art took its next grand stride ; and it is not to be wondered at that with this practical and industrious nation the mere mechanics of music went wellnigh to perfection. The general tendency of European thought at this time also had its bearing on the tone art. Scholasticism was in full sway, and such philosophers as Albertus Magnus, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockam were en- gaged in wondrous metaphysical hair-splitting, endeavoring to reduce Aristotelianism to a Christian basis by the application of the most rigorous logic. This spirit of scholasticism en- tered music, and contrapuntal science by too much learning was made mad. The true soul of our art was struggling for expression, but like Walter in " Die Meistersinger," it was fet- tered by the iron rules of the time, and science, like Sixtus Beckmesser, confounded it with the record of its sins. But, still like Walter, its time of triumph was to come, and when once the soul of music had entered the body of science the real life of our art began. The first master of the Netherlands school was John Okeghem, born between 1425 and 22 THE STORY OF MUSIC. 1430. He was probably a pupil of Binchois, who had studied under Dufay. Okeghem elab- orated the canon to the utmost perfection of in- genuity. His skill in the construction of this kind of music led to its adoption by many other writers, and for a considerable period noth- ing else could get a hearing. Okeghem's most celebrated pupil was Josquin des Pres, who was the shining light of the Netherlands school, and the first true genius in the history of music. Okeghem's instruction enabled his pupils to overcome all the technical difficulties of their art, and Josquin, born about 1450, and a singer in the Pope's chapel at Rome in 1484, was a complete master of the formal material of music as known in his day. The number of his com- positions was remarkably great, and his work was distinguished by the fact that he always strove to make contrapuntal design subservient to true musical beauty. He added nothing to musical science, but he made far better use of it than any of his predecessors ; and he achieved during his life the widest fame ever won by a musician up to that time. His works were sung throughout Europe. This was due no more to their excellence than to the fact that in Josquin's time Ottaviano dei Petrucci, of Fos- sombrone, invented movable metal types for MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 2% music-printing, thus doing away with the rough wood-cut notes employed after the invention of printing in 1440. Josquin's printed composi- tions consist of nineteen masses, fifty secular pieces, and more than one hundred and fifty motets. Most of the masses introduced as can- tus firmus have some such air as " The Armed Man," or the " Red Noses," then popular Euro- pean songs. " L'Homme Arm6," which was so frequently used by mediaeval Church composers, is given with modern harmony by Naumann, as follows : A ndante. Naumann notes the resemblance between this air and the refrain of Osmin's song in " Die Ent- fiihrung aus dem Serail," and conjectures that it may have suggested Mozart's melody. Following Josquin was Adrian Willaert, born 24 THE STORY OF MUSIC. at Bruges in 1480. He was the father of the madrigal, which was a natural outgrowth of the use of secular songs as cantus firmus. Willaert also introduced the double chorus in antipho- nal form. He went to Venice and became there the head of a school of composers who followed the Netherlands style. Other prominent Neth- erlands masters were Jean Mouton, Gombert, Claude Goudimel, Clemens, and Cyprian di Rore. The last great light of this school was Orlando di Lasso, born at Mons, in the province of Hennegau in 1520. Di Lasso was an admir- able writer in the lyric and epic styles of his time, and probably would have distinguished himself in opera had that form of art been known. With him the art of writing sacred music disappeared from the Low Countries, while in Italy it grew to its greatest glory. I have chosen to sketch thus briefly the rise and fall of this school in order that I might dis- cuss its work apart from the lives of its masters. First of all, then, the masters of the Flemish school carried counterpoint to its farthest limits. They invented the "cancriza," a backward movement of the cantus firmus ; the inversion form of the canon, in which there was a counter- movement of all the intervals of the melody; canons by augmentation and by diminution, all MAKING THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC. 25 of which forms were cultivated by Bach. , But they went farther and made forms which were not affected by the learned Sebastian. They had a repetition of the cantus firmus beginning with the second note and ending with the first ; another, in which all the rests were omitted ; a third, in which the tenor in the repetition was half retrograde and half progressive ; and a fourth, in which the repetition omitted all the shortest notes. These canons were written down, to- gether with Latin phrases or sentences which darkly hinted at the manner in which they were to be worked out ; and it was the delight of musicians to invent or to decipher these riddle canons. Nothing but musical mathematics could be produced by such methods ; * but one good result came of them. They improved musical science and gave the composers of that period a great command over the resources of their art. In technical skill, no master has ever surpassed Okeghem ; and all that he knew he taught Jos- quin, who made it the outlet for his real musical genius. Josquin wished to please the ear, and his earnest search after euphonic effect gave music a decided impulse in the right direction. * Mozart sometimes practised at writing these forms, and Jahn notes that they served to embody little musical ideas, just as the triolet serves to embody a neat poetic conceit. • 26 THE STORY OF MUSIC. One evidence of this genius is seen in the fact that he was the first to intentionally employ the dissonance for the expression of passion and emo- tion. Later masters of the school found them- selves unable to use all Okeghem's artificial forms with such happy results as Josquin achieved, and thus we find a less florid style and simpler harmonies toward the close of the existence of the Netherlands school. Other causes, which will presently appear, also contributed to this. What I wish especially to call your attention to now is this : We have arrived at the culmi- nation of the development of early counterpoint. We have traced the progress of music from 384 to 1500, and found its masters occupied during those eleven centuries in manufacturing the materials of their art. The Netherlands school fashioned those materials into every conceiva- ble shape and added to them. When no more could be done in the invention of tone-combina- tions, the mission of the Netherlanders was at an end. The time for encrusting popular airs with contrapuntal riches was gone. The epoch of musical mechanics was completed, and the world was ready for the birth of that child of the wedded folk-song and counterpoint — art- melody. How that birth came about we are now to see. CHAPTER II. THE BIRTH OF ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. On the 29th of May, 1453, Constantine, last of the Roman emperors, lay dead in a breach through which Mohammed II. and his victo- rious Turks poured into Constantinople, capital of Rome's eastern empire. The scholars of the Greek and Latin churches fled into Italy and there sowed the seed of that renewed interest in classical antiquity which blossomed in the new birth of art and learning known as the renais- sance. Music was the last of the arts to be touched by this influence. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo were pouring forth their inspired works before Josquin's death, and long after it the musical life of the world was devoted to contrapuntal labor. The influ- ence of the renaissance on music was to find issue in a form never dreamed of by the fathers of the Church. But before this could come 28 THE STORY OF MUSIC. about it was required that music should be moved by a great popular impulse, and before this impulse could be given it was necessary that the people should lay hold on the art-music of the day. The reformation of Martin Luther accomplished this, for in it arose the practice of congregational singing. He made use of secular airs, when they were sufEciently noble in them- selves, without the words, and wrote or had written, many new hymn tunes. The undeniable influence of this kind of worship over the people became a strong argument for those priests who had no sympathy with artistic music. Advo- cates of plain chant were as numerous then as now. They forcibly opposed the complex com- positions of the Netherland masters, and the authorities of the Church admitted that some- thing must be done to abolish the abuses which had arisen through the use of popular airs and secular words in sacred music. The Council of Trent, in 1562, fully reviewed this long-discussed and troublesome subject, and decided that pro- fane tunes and words must be discarded, and that the text of masses must be made intelligi- ble. Ambros, whose authority is Paolo Vinci, historian of the Council, shows that it was not figured music so much as the unintelligibility of the text that was objected to. To Cardinals ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 2g Borromeo and Vitellozzi was entrusted the task of finding a model for mass writers, and they turned to the immortal father of modern church music, the first of the great sons of Italy, who now takes up the march of musical progress. Giovanni Pierluigi Sante, born at Palestrina in 1514, and called now by the :iame of his birthplace, was the saviour of scientific Church music. When the Council of Trent entered upon its labors Palestrina had already written his beautiful " Improperia " (Reproaches), which brought him into notice in religious circles. To him the committee appointed by Pope Pius IV. turned for aid, and he produced three masses, of which the third, dedicated to Palestrina's former patron, Pope Marcellus II., carried the authorities of the Church by storm and decid- ed once for all how true Church music ought to be written. Palestrina immediately became the chief composer for the Catholic Church in Rome, and his style superseded that of his pre- decessors and became the model for all who suc- ceeded him. He continued his labors through- out a long life, marked by a singular simplicity of mind, a rigorous integrity of action, and a pious devotion to the sacred cause of Church music. His extant works are very numerous, and are well worth the trouble of close study. 30 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Critics have agreed to disagree on the subject of Palestrina's music. One says that its most striking characteristic is its artless simplicity, while another tells us that it is absolutely Gothic in its complexity. It seems to me that the technical construction of Palestrina's masses has less to do with their individuality than their aesthetic quality. The Netherlanders had been gradually advancing toward expression in music. Josquin had made a grand stride in this direction. Palestrina put genuine soul into his work. He was just as thorough a master of counterpoint and made just as elaborate use of it as any of his immediate predecessors ; but in- stead of ostentatiously displaying his methods and laying bare the resources of his art, as they had done, he sought to conceal his mechanism and leave on the mind of the hearer only the impression of beauty and exaltation. Rockstro says : " It was not the beauty of its construc- tion, but the presence of the soul within it, that made his music immortal. He was as much a master of contrivance as the most accomplished of his predecessors ; but while they loved their clever devices for their own sake, he only cared for them in so far as they served as means for the attainment of something better. And though his one great object in introducing this ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 3I new feature as the basis of his school was the regeneration of Church music, it was impossible that his work should rest there. In establishing the principle that art could only be rightly used as the handmaid of nature, he not only pro- vided that the mass and the motet should be devotional, but also that the chanson and the madrigal should be sad or playful, in accordance with the sentiment of the verses to which they were adopted. His reform, therefore, though first exemplified in the most perfect of masses, extended afterward to every branch of art." To me this seems to be a calm and just esti- mate of the character and importance of Pales- trina's labors. Let me before dismissing this subject point out one or two prominent traits of his style. Its chief feature, as before intimated, was its art of concealing art, an achievement which had never before been considered desir- able, and hence had never been attempted. Secondly, as Rockstro notes, Palestrina's poly- phonic writing has never been surpassed in its evenness. He never writes worse for one part than another. Each is equally important, and never descends to the menial office of filling up the harmony. To quote again from Rockstro, who has written admirably of this composer : " The harmony is produced by the interweaving 32 THE STORY OF MUSIC. of the separate subjects ; and when, astonished by the unexpected effect of some strangely beau- tiful chord, we stop to examine its structure, we invariably find it to be no more than the natural consequence of some little point of imitation, or the working out of some melodious response, which fell into the delicious combination of its own accord. In no other master is this pecu- liarity so strikingly noticeable. It is no uncom- mon thing for a great composer to delight us with a lovely point of repose. The later Flem- ish composers do this continually. But they always put the chord into its place on purpose ; while Palestrina's loveliest harmonies come of themselves, while he is quietly fitting his sub- jects together, without, so far as the most care- ful criticism can ascertain, a thought beyond the melodic involutions of his vocal phrases. How far the harmonies form a preconceived element in those involutions is a question too deep for consideration here." Palestrina was the harvest and the autumn of true vocal polyphony. With him it died. But the seed which he had sown took root and blossomed in loftier music in other lands. The great principle that science should be made subservient to soul permeated music and rev- olutionized it. Contemporaneously with Pal- ART-MRLODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 33 estrina, Willaert's disciples in Venice were de- veloping the formal resources of music, and Cyprian di Rore, whom I have heretofore men- tioned, and Zarlino, had accomplished much im- portant work. Di Rore made a special study of chromatics, publishing in 1544 his " Chro- matic Madrigals," in which the common use of the semitone prepared the way for the freedom of music from the old ecclesiastical modes. Zarlino took up the now necessary subject of temperament, the object of which is to divide the octave into a number of intervals of such a nature that the notes which separate them shall be suitable in number and arrangement for the purpose of practical harmony. One of Zarlino's most important achievements was the reduction of the third by a small interval, so that it became a true consonance, thus opening the gate for the entrance into harmony of the triad, its true basis. These material labors were preparing the way for the facile flow of the melody of the fut- ure. Up to this time, owing to the absence of solo-singing and the reign of polyphony, mel- ody had not attained its normal mastery of mu- sic. I have said that we were about to see the birth of art-melody. I have told you of the in- flux of classical scholars into Italy and how their 3 34 THE STORY OF MUSIC. influence failed to take hold on church music. 1 shall now show you how these scholars were the moving power which led to the construction of that magnificent edifice — modern secular music. Choruses had been introduced in dramatic performances as far back as 1350, but they were always written in four parts, in the ecclesiastical style. In 1597 A.D., in a comic play by Orazzi Becchi, the text written for a single personage of the drama was sung in five-part choruses written in the madrigal style. Lovers of art began to see that such music was unsuited to drama. The feeling culminated at the marriage of Bianca Capello to Francesco I., the Duke of Tuscany. A dramatic performance was given, with cho- ruses by Merullo and Andrea Gabrielli, written in polyphonic style and the canon form. The musical rejoicings consequently sounded some- what like funeral dirges. Everyone was dis- gusted, and the Florentine noble, Count Bar- di, together with his friends, all art enthusiasts — for it was in Florence that the renaissance flourished best — resolved that there ought to be a better style of dramatic music. And at this\ point the exiled scholars from Constantinople made their influence felt in music. They talked of the Greek drama and its intonation or recita- tion in music, and Bardi and his friends at once ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 35 set about reconstructing the true musical decla- mation of the Greeks. Fortunately for the prog- ress of art, in the Camerata, or club, which met at Count Bardi's house, there were not more than three professional musicians. Had there been a majority of these gentlemen, the little circle never would have dared to set at naught all the rules and traditions of centuries. But there were more Walters than Beckmessers in the assembly ; the laws of polyphony and the maxims of musical sages were set at naught ; and the little body of enthusiasts proceeded independently on the principle formulated by Hector Berlioz : " That whatever produces a good effect is good, and that whatever produces a bad one is bad ; and that the authority of a hundred old men, even if they were each one hundred and twenty years old, cannot make ugly that which is beautiful, nor lovely that which is hideous." Giovanni Bardi was a moving spirit in the fes- tivities of the court. There he introduced his friends and they gave private dramatic perform- ances. Ottavio Rinuccini, poet ; Pietro Strozzi, poet and composer ; Emilio del Cavaliere, ducal superintendent of fine arts ; Vincenzo Galilei, composer, litterateur, lutist, mathematician, and father of the great astronomer Galileo; Girol- 36 THE STORY OF MUSIC. amo Mei, musical theorist; Giulio Caccini, singer and composer, and Jacopo Peri, immortal as the composer of the first opera, were the " choice and master spirits " of the club. Their open disapproval of the wedding music before men- tioned and subsequent condemnation of the contrapuntal style led them into a war of ink, paper, and logic with our friend Zarlino, of the Venetian school of contrapuntists. The Floren- tines did not content themselves with mere words ; they proceeded to support their theories by facts and to manufacture those facts them- selves. Galilei wrote a dramatic scene for one voice and one instrument on the lines about " Ugolino " in Dante's " Purgatorio." His own was the voice ; the viola, the instrument. The work was applauded by his friends. He wrote more and called them monodies. And these were the first vocal solos on record in the his- tory of art-music. Previously when a solo was wanted some one of the parts of a polyphonic chorus was picked out and sung by one voice. Galilei wrote the first dramatic solo, without which opera is, of course, impossible. Caccini imitated Galilei and produced sonnets and can- zonets for one voice. Then Emilio del Cava- liere wrote a pastoral play and set the entire text to music, which had never been done be- ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 37 fore. He made extensive use of the madrigal, and his work bore little resemblance to its successors. Next the poet Rinuccini wrote " Daphne," Jacopo Peri composed music for it, and it was performed with great success at the house of one Corsi in 1594. This stands upon the pages of musical history as the first opera. Peri immediately began another, and in 1600, at the marriage of Henry IV., of France, with Maria de Medici in Florence, he produced his " Eurydice," singing Orpheus himself. " Daph- ne " made Peri known through Italy ; " Euryd- ice" made him celebrated throughout Europe. Peri wrote a preface to the printed edition of his " Eurydice." In it he says that his study of the drama of the ancients convinced him that they had a semi-musical kind of intonation. He began to study the manner of speaking in use about him, and endeavored to imitate it in his music. " Soft and gentle speech he inter- preted by half-spoken, half-sung tones on a sus- tained instrumental bass ; feelings of a deeper emotional kind by a melody with greater inter- vals and a lively tempo, the accompanying in- strumental harmonies changing more frequently. Sometimes he employed dissonances." This, then, was dramatic recitative and Peri invented it. Here is an example of his work. 38 THE STORY OF MUSIC. ■-- ■«- * -O- i&- ^ Or di soa-ve plet-tro ar-ma- to e-d*aurea ce - tra con lagrl I =S=tE ^. -v-r mo - so me-txo Canoro ^manteim-pe-trach*ilciel ri-veggae ^^ '^i^:i This style of recitative was called stile rap- presentativo or stile parlante. The new drama was known as Drainma per musica. Melodrama, Tragedia per musica, or Tragicomedia. It was not till 1650 that it was spoken of as Opera in musica, and afterward this was abridged to opera. And thus from a search after classical form arose a new species of art, totally different from the antique drama of Greece in structure, in feeling, and in its relations to life. This new musical drama was not an outgrowth of the public heart, but a production of the learned ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 39 few, and it became the toy of the noble and the rich. It was produced in elaborate style in the salons of princes and its subject-matter was drawn from the ancient mythology. Hence it was beyond both the means and the compre- hension of the common people. Not till many years afterward did the opera become a recrea- tion for the common people, and its lofty pur- poses were then forgotten in the desire to cater to the public taste. But this is anticipating. The new form of court amusement speedily took its way to Venice, where it was somewhat modified by the influence of the emotional church style of Willaert, Cyprian di Rore, and Zarlino. An- drea Gabrielli and his nephew Giovanni were their successors, but they did little toward the development of the new form of art. In 1568, however, the first genius of opera was born at Cremona. This was Claudio Monteverde, whose chief niysical activity was during his di- rectorship at the church of San Marco, Ven- ice, from 1 61 3, till his death in 1643. Mon- teverde was the Wagner of his time, and he was criticised in much the same way ; for Artusi, of Bologna, said of him that " he lost sight of the proper aim of music, viz., to give pleasure." Be- fore entering the field of opera Monteverde had 40 THE STORY OF MUSIC. already become the father of some daring in. novations. He made a free use of dissonances previously prohibited. He allowed the domi- nant seventh, the ninth, and the major fourth to enter unprepared, and he was the first to use the diminished septimachord. He made a spe- cial study of orchestration and developed in- strumental accompaniments in a manner never before dreamed of. The powers of such a man could find a fitting field only in opera, and in 1607, at a festival at the court of Duke Gonzaga, of Mantua, Monteverde's setting of Rinuccini's " Orfeo " was produced. The next year he wrote " Arianna " and " II Ballo delle Ingrate." The former met with great success, and his contemporaries speak with especial enthusiasm of the lament of the deserted Arianna. Mon- teverde wrote a series of operas in Venice, and he was the cause of the establishment of the first opera house, the Teatro San Cassiano, opened in 1637 with " Andromeda," text by Ferrari and music by Manelli. Subsequently the theatre San Moise was opened with a revi- val of " Arianna." Opera became the reigning amusement of Venice, and up to 1727 no less than fifteen operatic enterprises were started, and up to 1734 four hundred operas by forty composers were produced. ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 4I I cannot leave Monteverde without endeav- oring to impress upon the reader's mind his importance in musical history. He was un- doubtedly the originator of the modern style of composition. He strove to make the music il- lustrative of the text in rhythm, melody, and harmony, and to these he added orchestral ef- fects which neither his predecessors nor his con- temporaries had ever conceived, and which aston- ished his musicians. Not only was he the great- est musician of his own age, but he was also the inventor of " a system of harmony which has re- mained in uninterrupted use to the present day." The unprepared seventh was absolutely new, and numerous other features of harmony, famil- iar now to almost every child's ear, were first made known by Monteverde. And every one of these combinations was employed by him with an unerring judgment as to its aesthetic significance. His " Orfeo," of which the score has happily been preserved, "may not unrea- sonably lead us to inquire," as Mr. Rockstro remarks, " whether some of our newest concep- tions are really so original as we suppose them to be. The employment of certain characteristic instruments to support the voices of certain members of the dramatis persona is one of them. The constant use of a species of mezzc 42 THE STORY OF MUSIC. recitative — so to speak — in preference either to true recitative or true melody, is another. But what shall we say of the instrumental prelude, formed, from beginning to end, upon one sin- gle chord, with one single bass note sustained throughout ? No two compositions can be less alike, in feeling, than this and the introduction to ' Das Rheingold ' — yet, in construction, the two pieces are absolutely identical." The pow- erful impulse given to dramatic composition by Monteverde, therefore, is still felt ; and to him we owe the practical promulgation of the vital principle that the business of dramatic music is to elucidate and intensify the meaning of the text. Unfortunately it was not long after Monte- verde's death that Italian opera began its descent from the lofty height on which he had placed it. Cavalli, musical director at San Marco in 1668, was the only composer who followed in the master's footsteps. The demand for ear-tickling phrases grew too great for composers to resist. The poet was relegated to the second place, and tune for tune's sake became the faith of Italy. Now arose the Neapolitan school and what have been called the palmy days of Italian opera. Alessandro Scarlatti, born in 1659, was the principal composer of this period. His music is ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 43 without great breadth or power, but it is graceful and melodious. He exhibits the first tendency toward that style which culminated in Donizetti and Bellini. He fashioned forms of the aria and overture which remained iri use long after his time. The overture as written by him con- sisted of three movements, the first and third lively, and the second slow. Scarlatti was a most accomplished singer and an excellent vocal teacher, and to this must be attributed that decadence in style which began with him. He wrote chiefly for the singer — a practice which has always been the stumbling-block in the path of true musical art. The new musical form could not long remain within the confines of Italy. It soon found its way into Germany and France. In the former country, however, the taste of the nobles and the people demanded works of the Italian school, and though operas were written by talented men, such as Johann Joseph Fux, Johann Adolf Hasse, Carl Heinrich Graun, and others, we cannot credit them with having materially assisted the progress of our art, for they were compelled to write in the Italian style. In France, thanks to the ability and in- dependence of two men, opera made some prog- ress and the science of music was further de- 44 THE STORY OF MUSIC. veloped. I refer to Giovanni Battista Lulli, born in Florence in 1633, and Jean Phillipe Rameau, born in Dijon in 1683. Lulli endeav- ored to return once more to that fount of in- spiration at which Jacopo Peri drank — the true musical declamation of the Greeks. In this endeavor he sacrificed many of the newly de- veloped forms of operatic music, which he did not appear to be able to replace. He aimed at a close union of tone with speech, and sought earnestly after forcible dramatic expression. To this end he assiduously drilled his principal singers and his choruses in the enunciation of the text, and made large improvements in the histrionic achievements of the operatic stage. His works were held in high esteem up to the time of his death. Rameau must be set down as a greater mu- sician than Lulli. He added melodic and har- monic beauty to French music, and yet clung as tenaciously to dramatic significance as Lulli. He was severely criticised at first for the exu- berance of his style, but after the production of his "Castor and Pollux," in 1737, even his oppo- nents admitted that he was the leading French composer. Rameau's labors were not confined, however, to opera. He was equally distin- guished in the domain of theory. He went fur- ART-MELODY AND SECULAR MUSIC. 45 ther than his predecessors, who had studied only the connection of chords, and in his " Trait6 d' harmonie," published in 1722, explained their origin. His rules form the basis of the harmonic theory of our day. Moreover, Rameau brought to perfection equal temperament, which we saw Zarlino beginning to study in Venice a century and a half earlier. He divided the octave into twelve equal half steps, thus removing the im- pediments offered to the progress of instrumental music by instruments with fixed tuning. Bach had already brought equal temperament into use in 1722, but it was only after the publication in 1737 of Rameau's " G6n6ration harmonique" that scientists accepted this system of tuning as the essential basis of music. And this was the death-warrant of the old ecclesiastical modes, from whose ashes arose the only scales now pos- sible — the major and minor. This magnificent work of Rameau's broke down the last of the ancient barriers to modern musical progress, and from that time the great procession of giant composers, whose materials had been fourteen centuries in preparation, takes its unbroken march across the pages of musical history. CHAPTER III. HANDEL AND BACH. Let US now go back a little, for the develop- ment of music has begun to ramify so that we can follow only one branch at a time. The oratorio was an outgrowth of the old-fashioned miracle plays. These having passed out of the control of the Church and become a popular form of amusement, sank into a state of buffoon- ery. It remained for St. Philip Neri, con- secrated as a priest at Rome in 1561, to take this form of sacred drama and elevate it into the oratorio. He arranged stories from the Script- ures, such as " Job and His Friends," or " Tobi- as and the Angels," in dramatic form with four- part choruses and occasional solos, and he em- ployed Palestrina to write the music. The performances took place in a small hall, adjoin- ing his church, and called an oratory, or in Italian, oratorio ; and hence comes the name of this form of musical drama. Emilio del Cav- HANDEL AND BACH. 47 aliere, who, you will remember, was one of the club at Bardi's house in Florence, took up this form and in 1600 produced at Rome his oratorio " L'Anima 6 Corpo." It should be noted that at this time oratorios were acted like operas with costumes and scenery, and Cavaliere wrote out elaborate directions for the stage " business " of his work, some of which are amusing and instructive, for instance : " The chorus are to have a place allotted them on the stage, part sitting and part standing, in sight of the princi- pal characters; and when they sing, they are to rise and be in motion with proper gestures." Again : " The World and Human Life are to be gayly and richly dressed ; and, when they are divested of their trappings, to appear very poor and wretched, and at length dead carcasses." The orchestra of this oratorio consisted of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar and two flutes. The development of operatic forms largely influenced and accelerated the advance of the oratorio, and Carissimi, born 1604, composed a number of oratorios full of fine choruses and showing a decided improvement over the opera writers of Peri's day in the use of dramatic recitative. Here is an example from Carissimi's "Jephtha": 48 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Heu heu mi- hi fi - li - a me- a he de - ci - pis- ti =I==F3 ^EE P fi li-a u-ni-ge-ni-ta de- ce- ^^# ^ '^ ^ :^ P f F^J7^^-J?i =l==ls= z|5=n!c: pis - ti me, et tu pa - ri - tu heu fi - li - a ^^ ^^ — d-ff^ i^^i^i^^^ 5f*-*-* )K i^= il ^ me -a de - cap - ta es, de cep - ta W^-^ T^K ^^^Ff^^^^- HANDEL AND BACH. 49 It is necessary here to note the growth of the passion oratorio, which arose from the chief miracle play, still presented once in a decade in dramatic form at Oberammergau, in Bavaria. During Passion Week it was the custom to re- cite the passion of Christ in a form half epic and half dramatic. In the sixteenth century this was presented by some of the Protestant churches with a musical setting. Henry Schuetz, a Ger- man, born in 1585, studied under Gabrieli in Venice, and, returning to Germany, settled at Dresden. Schuetz wrote "Daphne," the first opera produced in Germany, and he composed several passion oratorios, in which are visible the germs of the Handelian style. John Sebas- tiani, a Prussian chapel-master, published in 1672 passion music in which the Protestant choral, afterward used by Bach with such noble effect, is first introduced. In his music the narrative is no longer chanted in the ecclesiastical style, as it had been before, but is set in recitative accom- panied by two violins and a bass. The people sing in four-part choruses, to which the Evan- gelist, always a tenor, adds a fifth voice. In the chorals only the highest part was sung, and the other parts were played by violas and a bass. In the last stanza of the final choral all the in- strumental and vocal parts joined. This estab- 4 so THE STORY OF MUSIC. lished the foundation on which Bach built his Passion music. The text underwent further al- terations and emendations at the hands of a licentiate named Brockes, who sought to remove certain operatic tendencies lately apparent with- out destroying the forcefulness of the work. The way was now paved for the mighty masters of modern music. Opportunity was ready, and not one man, but two came to seize it. On February 23, 1685, at Halle, was born George Frederick Handel. On March 21st, of the same year, at Eisenach, was born John Sebastian Bach. Thus, you see, we are at last face to face with two giants whose monumen- tal works live with all the freshness of their youth in our day, and seem, like wine, to grow stronger, sweeter, and better as the years go by. I shall first consider Handel, because we shall have occasion to refer to his work again when we resume the subject of opera. At pres- ent we shall consider him as an oratorio compos- er, though to be strictly chronological we should take up his great contemporary first. I desire, however, to close this chapter with Bach, be- cause he is the foundation of all that is to follow. I need not tell you of Handel's childhood, when genius struggled for expression against the HANDEL AND BACH. 5 1 wishes of stern parents and finally triumphed. The story has been written often and well. Suf- fice it to note here that Handel's career as a composer began in Hamburg, where he wrote his operas " Almira" and " Nero." He went to Florence and there wrote another opera, " Roderigo." He wrote in Venice and again in Rome. In the latter city he produced his first oratorios, through the influence of his friend Cardinal Ottoboni. These were the " Resur- rection " and the " Triumph of Time." Leaving Rome, Handel travelled back to Germany. At the court of George of Brunswick, afterward King of England, he met a number of English noblemen who invited him to visit their country. He made a visit of six months, took a flying trip back to Hanover, and then returned to England under the patronage of the Duke of Chandos in 1718. He made England his home, and began his labors as director of the Italian Opera. The story of his struggle and failure in this field I need not tell you in detail. During the period of his career as an Italian opera composer Handel's genius was simply waxing strong with laborious and disagreeable exercise, and, when his last operas were falling still-born from his pen, that genius was simply gathering itself for a newer and grander flight. 52 THE STORY OF MUSIC. While he was chapel-master for the Duke ol Chandos, Handel wrote his first English orato- rio, " Esther." The manuscript was laid aside for many years, but in 1731 it was revived by Bernard Gates, chapel-master of St. James's, and was repeated a number of times with great success. In 1732 it was performed six times to full houses. It was in 1741 that Handel definitely abandoned the production of operas. From 1732 to 1740 he struggled against the tendencies of his age, producing sixteen operas and five oratorios. From 1741 to 175 1 he wrote no operas, but gave to the world eleven orato- rios, and the world is still thankful for the period of storm and stress that forced the waters of this noble genius into their true channel. In 1740 were composed and performed "Saul," " Israel in Egypt," and several minor works. In 1741 he went to Ireland, and in Dublin, on April 18, 1742, the immortal "Messiah" was produced, with Signor Avoglio and Mrs. Cibber as the principal singers. The town went mad over it, and when it was produced in London on March 23, 1749, the audience was so affected by the Hallelujah chorus that everyone, in- cluding the King, stood up and remained stand- ing till the end of the number — a custom which has been continued till this day. " Samson " HANDEL AND BACH. S3 was written for the following Lenten season. His remaining works were the " Dettingen Te Deum," " Semele," " Joseph and his Brethren " (1744), "Hercules" and "Belshazzar" (1745), "Judas Maccabasus " (1747), "Alexander" and "Joshua" (1748), " Susannah " and " Solomon " (1749), "Theodora" (1750), "Choice of Her- cules" (1751), and "Jephthah" (1752). His eyes were affected during his work on the last oratorio, and he finally became blind. Handel died on Good Friday night, 1759. It was in Handel's time that the Bishop of London, Dr. Gibson, finally decided the still debated question whether the oratorio should be given with acting or not. The decision against stage accessories was advantageous to the com- poser, for it freed him from the limitations which would otherwise have hampered him, and enabled him to appeal to the imagination and exalt the heart solely through the medium of the music. It is very easy to fancy what Handel's " Messiah " would have lost in nobility if it had been arranged for stage performance. The " Messiah " is known wherever classical music is heard. Few that listen to its inspired strains have ever heard of " Rinaldo " or " Or- lando." It is, therefore, hardly necessary to say that the composer's fame rests wholly on his 54 THE STORY OF MUSIC. oratorios. Emil Naumann calls especial at tention to Handel's achievement in perfecting the epic element in oratorio. Handel, he notes, was the first to depart from subjects immediately connected with the birth or passion of Christ. He even went further, and wrote oratorios on pagan subjects. Moreover, he changed the form and treatment of the oratorio. The old German passion-oratorios were obviously designed for church service. The frequent introduction of chorales and the elevation of the "lyrical ex- pression of devotion and moral reflection " at the expense of narrative or delineation point to this. Handel frequently omits chorals alto- gether. The reflections are more often assigned to the personages of the drama. The old-fash- ioned narrator is removed, and, instead of being told of Samson's blindness, we hear Samson himself crying, " Total eclipse ! " The dramatic element of the oratorio is immensely increased in power by these changes. Naumann brings out these points very clearly. In the progress of musical technique Handel stands in a transi- tion period, as Sir George Macfarren notes. He wrote under the domination of the ancient laws of counterpoint, to which exceptions had not been as yet set forth by the theorists. Yet he did much toward breaking the power of the old HANDEL AND BACH. 55 law. His works freely demonstrate the prin- ciple of fundamental harmony and the use of chromatics. His orchestration, of course, sounds thin and scant to ears fed on Wagner and Berlioz ; but it would be better for the health of art if ambitious conductors, not gifted with the genius of a Mozart, abstained from supplying Handel's oratorios with additional accompani- ments. It is as a vocal writer, however, that the master excels. His verbal declamation is marvellously expressive, and he has shown every- where a prodigious power of dramatic character- ization in his vocal music. But he reaches his supreme ability in the sublimity of his choral writing, which, though full of rich contrapuntal device, never lacks clearness or melody. He possessed, in the most exalted form, the secret of artfully concealing art, and he understood better than any writer, before or since his time, how to produce grand choral effects by means apparently simple, but in reality complex. The whole formal material of his art Handel made subservient to his purposes. He combined the science of an Ockeghem with the artistic pur- pose of a Josquin and the exalted purity of style of a Palestrina. But embodying, as he did, the fervid, yet austere spirit of Protestantism in his music, he surpassed all composers who had $6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. lived before him in the nobility of his melody, the largeness of his forms, and the sublimity of his ideas. He borrowed unscrupulously from the works of his predecessors, thus showing that the old custom of selecting an extant can- tus firmus for contrapuntal treatment had not quite disappeared in his day ; but whatever he borrowed he so thoroughly renovated that it became fairly his own. Yet with all his great- ness Handel founded no school. As Mr. Mar- shal has said : " That which is imitable in his work is simply the result of certain forms of ex- pression that he used because he found them ready to his hand ; that which is his own is in- imitable. His oratorios are in their own style as unapproached now as ever; he seems to have exhausted what art can do in this direction ; but he has not swayed the minds of modern compos- ers as Bach has done." Johann Sebastian Bach was known to his contemporaries as a brilliant improviser and an accomplished organist. A later generation in- formed the world of his creative powers ; and to-day he is reverenced as the father of modern music. Bach's life can be sketched in a few lines. He came of one of the most musical fam- ilies in the history of the world. His brother, an organist, gave him his first instruction. He HANDEL AND BACH. 57 was organist and concert-master in Arnstadt, Miilhausen, Weimar, and Anhalt-Koethen. In 1723 he became cantor of the Thomas- Schule in Leipsic, and held the position till his death on July 28, 1750. Bach, like Handel, sacrificed his eyes on the altar of music and died blind. Bach distinguished himself in three depart- ments of music : As a writer for the organ and clavichord (the precursor of the piano), of or- chestral works, and of passion music. His " Well-tempered Clavichord," a series of compo- sitions written with the purpose of making known the system of equal temperament, on which he and Rameau appear to have been working contemporaneously, and his " Twenty- four Preludes and Fugues," remain the greatest masterpieces of their class, and they have fur- nished education and inspiration to every or- ganist and pianist from his day to ours. His orchestral suites and concertos are still per- formed in the concert room and welcomed with enthusiastic applause ; and his passion music re- mains the loftiest and most imposing musical ex- pression of Protestant faith. In his sacred can- tatas and passion oratorios. Bach stands above all musicians who have ever lived. His relation to the development of the Protestant choral is similar to Palestrina's relation to that of the 58 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Gregorian chant. In all of Bach's works, his cantatas, motets, oratorios and organ composi- tions, we meet the choral with every conceiva- ble accompaniment of harmonic treatment. It reaches its loftiest height in his cantatas, of which he wrote five sets for every Sunday and holiday in the year, besides many single ones, and others for special occasions, such as the " Trauer-ode " on the death of the Electress of Saxony. He also wrote many secular cantatas, including two of a humorous nature. Bach is believed to have written five Passions, but only two are preserved.* These are the Passions according to St. John and St. Mat- thew. The latter is generally conceded to be the greater. It is not often performed, because it is a difficult work to give in a satisfactory manner, and appeals chiefly to persons of the most cultivated musical taste. The narrative part of the Passion is assigned to a tenor voice. The words of Jesus, Peter, the Priest, and Pon- tius Pilate are sung by a bass, and the people * Dr. Philip Spitta, in his great Life of Bach, has brought together much valuable evidence to show that the Cantor of Leip- sic wrote five passions. That according to St. Mark is lost. The authorship of the St. Luke Passion has been disputed, but Dr. Spitta argues with much force that Bach wrote it. The majestic St. Matthew Passion was produced on Good Friday, April 15, 1729. HANDEL AND BACH. 59 are represented by the chorus. The Daughter of Zion and the Christian congregation accom- pany the action with moral observations. The Protestant faith is represented by the introduc- tion of suitable chorals. The St. John Passion was written in 1724 and the St. Matthew in 1729. In the latter the passion oratorio cul- minated. No one has undertaken to write an- other, for all musicians agree that it would unquestionably be impossible to surpass, and probably to equal, Bach's master- work. The a cappella four, five, and eight part mo- tets of this genius are also of the highest im- portance in the field of sacred music, ranking second to nothing but his own cantatas. These are generally written in double chorus, with a fine variety of groupings and divisions of the two vocal bodies, and a union of both in a grand fugue. The Protestant choral is freely used in these motets, sometimes being set in its simplest form as a finale and again being made the sub- ject of a stupendous fugue. Bach's use of the choral as a cantus firmus for contrapuntal treat- ment was a new application of the old custom which we saw in vogue in the days of the Netherlanders two centuries earlier. Bach and Handel simultaneously carried their plan to perfection, and filled this manner of composing 60 THE STORY OF MUSIC. with a depth of feeling of which the Nether- landers had no conception. Bach's knowledge of counterpoint was limitless, and he readily ab- sorbed all the skill of his predecessors. His views as to the structure of a composition doubt- less arose from his familiarity with the concer- tos of Vivaldi and Albinoni, Venetian violinists, who visited Germany. He added new parts to their compositions and arranged for the organ many of the works which they had written for a single violin. But one of his greatest struct- ural achievements was the perfection of the fugue. To the reader who has not studied the theory of composition I may say that a fugue has been defined as " a regular piece of music, developed from given subjects according to strict contrapuntal rules, involving the various arti- fices of imitation, canon, and double counter- point, and constructed according to a certain fixed plan." The necessary parts of a fugue are the Subject, Answer, Counter-subject, and Stretto. To these are often added the Codetta, Episode, Pedal, and Coda. This form of music, I need hardly tell you, was the final outgrowth of the labors of the Netherland school of contrapunt- ists. It was developed to its utmost perfection by Bach, who wrote a learned treatise on it, called the " Art of Fugue." This was the labor HANDEL AND BACH. 6l of the last year of his life, and contains the rip- est fruit of his years of study and experience. This work consists of sixteen fugues and four canons, for one piano, and two fugues for two pianos, all on this theme : To these is added an unfinished fugue on three new subjects, the third being on the name of Bach, according to the German notation : In addition to this great theoretical work, I need only mention to you the noble array of instrumental compositions left by Bach. He wrote a vast number of piano pieces of all kinds — "inventions" in two and three parts; six French and six English " suites," the preludes and fugues before mentioned, sonatas (so called) for piano and violin and other instruments, con- certos for one to four pianos, concertos for vio- lin and other instruments with orchestra, over- tures, suites, and concertos for orchestra, and an endless variety of fantasias, toccatas, preludes, fugues, and arrangements of chorals for the or- 62 THE STORY OF MUSIC. gan. What I want especially to call your atten- tion to here is the grand fact that Bach applied to the structure of these instrumental works the polyphonic method previously confined to vocal music, thus founding modern instrumental mu- sic. I cannot do better than quote to you the eloquent words on this topic of Naumann, who says : " It was his genius which led him to apply the best of the then existing polyphonic art- forms to ' absolute ' instrumental music, using the form as regards its beauty and perfection of outline, and the polyphony in its contents, in the most complete manner. Nor did he restrict his use of polyphonic art-forms to works for the church instrument — the organ — only, but exten- sively employed them in his wonderful master- pieces for the harpsichord, the violin, and full orchestra. By this procedure the final, full, and complete impress of liberty was forever set to the tonal art. It was not till then that music, for the first time in its history, was able to stand boldly forth as a free, independent art, as com- plete in and by itself as Christian architec- ture and painting were during the latter part of the Middle Ages and the Cinque Cento. Now could it give utterance in precise, intelligible tones to the innermost feelings of the heart. HANDEL AND BACH. 63 No longer did it require the support of poetry, biblical or liturgical texts, Church services, civic ceremonies, or dramatic representation to assist it in making itself understood. It was supreme in its own realm of independent tone, sole sov- ereign in its world of instrumental music." To this we must add the important fact that, in order to transfer the polyphonic method to instrumental composition. Bach found it neces- sary to remodel all the forms left him by his predecessors. We saw imitation and canon ap- pear in the old French school and rise to a high level of mechanical development with the Neth- erlanders. During the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries organists now forgotten further developed the canonic and fugal forms ; but it remained for Bach to produce the model which the world has called perfect and which has re- mained intact until to-day. And Bach did not stop here. He perfected in his suites and con- certos the style of the French and Italian mas- ters of the preceding century. The motet, pro- duced by the Netherlanders, he also completed. In his own sacred cantatas we find the perfect fruit of the cantata of Carissimi and Scarlatti ; while the old German passion-plays, having been renovated by Sebastian!, are made pure and sublime in the immortal " Passions " of Bach. 64 THE STORY OF MUSIC. In short, Bach was the culmination of a thou- sand years of musical growth. In him for the first time were blended all the ideals which had hitherto been pursued by different composers. He seized upon all that was noblest in the Cath- olic and the Protestant composers, refined it in the fire of his own unapproachable genius, and gave to the world a completed, universal art. He was a human climax. All that he did re- mains to-day as supreme as it was one hundred and fifty years ago. No master has surpassed him in his own fields ; only two have touched the hem of his garments — Mozart in his " Re- quiem " and Beethoven in his " Missa Solen- nis." Bach has frequently been compared with Handel, but this is folly. Handel was great in one department of his art : Bach was master in all. Handel has left us the " Messiah " and " Israel in Egypt," together with a few other masterpieces, and thousands of pages of music for which the present age has no use. Bach wrote scarcely a measure that we can spare. Handel was a genius in music ; Sebastian Bach was almost divine. " The cantor of the Thomas- Schule is dead, and the school needs a new one." So decided the wise and puissant Town Council of Leip- sic v/hen Bach lay dead of apoplexy in 175a HANDEL AND BACH. 65 The forgotten widow subsisted on the dregs of bitterest poverty for years, and then betook herself to the grave, where one has no need of food. A subscription, in which the town had no hand, brought tardy relief to the young- est daughter. But Leipsic tore up St. John's Church-yard, wherein the mortal habitation of the mighty spirit had been laid, and scattered the bones of him to the four winds ; so that no man knows their resting-place to this day. His works were neglected, and some of them lost ; and it was not till Mozart came that the som- nolent burghers of Leipsic began to awake to the fact that they had entertained an angel un- awares. It was reserved for Mendelssohn to resurrect the great St. Matthew " Passion " and perform it at a Gewandhaus Concert one hun- dred years after it had been written. To-day musicians know the power of this wonderful genius that got so little glory during its stay on earth. To-day the students and pro- fessors of our divine art bow their heads when Bach's name is spoken and play him religiously, year in and year out, whether the light and fickle public likes him or not, trusting that in time the fire of his genius will burn through the entire world as it has already illumined all that is made of spirit and not solely of matter. No 5 66 THE STORY OF MUSIC. doubt many, who can hear with pleasure the symphonies of Beethoven or the music dramas of Wagner, wonder why musicians insist upon giving them constitutional doses of Sebastian Bach, accompanied with persistent reiteration of the assertion that this is good for them. Could these people but carry their minds back into Bach's time, and perceive with what unerr- ing wisdom he discarded all that was weak and meretricious in musical style, and increased the value of all that was worthy, adding to it the sublime outpourings of his own creative soul, they would cease to wonder at the frequency of Bach's music in the programmes of the period. They would marvel rather why so little is done to systematically publish to the world the beauties of this man's works and to enlarge and deepen the general respect and affection for his memory. As a character in the history of music Bach is large and imposing in his simplicity of mind, his modesty of manner, his conscientiousness of effort, his sympathy with the religious and emotional nature of the German people, and his wise use of all that was lofty in musical tradi- tion. As a musician his science was built upon the sternest laws of irrefragable logic, yet he moulded form to a perfect expression of his ideas, HANDEL AND BACH. 6/ and invented a recitative which for religious purposes has never been excelled, but remains the model and the despair of all composers. By the superficial he is looked upon as the chief apostle of abstruse counterpoint, designed only to confuse the brain. But though in contra- puntal science he is unsurpassed, his merit lies rather in the sublime results which he has achieved than in the means by which he achieved them. His " consistency, fertility, and feeling for organic completeness," as one has well said, are " truly inimitable." The formal ma- terials of his art are so governed and regulated by the singleness of purpose which rules his work that elements, inexpressive alone, are fashioned into a whole that is charged with immeasurable depth of feeling. This subservi- ence of severe form to the leading idea and masterly moulding of every item of material to the purpose of the man are what, above all else, stamp his writings as perfect art-forms, worthy of the constant and anxious study of all who aspire either to the production or the compre- hension of a high order of music. Even as this genius in his system of fingering laid the foundations for the piano virtuosity of to-day, so he cleared the obstacles from the path of church composers for all time, and created 68 THE STORY OF MUSIC. methods of orchestral composition which made possible Beethoven and Wagner. Let musicians continue to administer Bach as a tonic for the constitution of the musical pub- lic. He is needed especially in these days when composers betray a tendency to lose their hold on form and drift out into the void of musical chaos. It is good for us to study the noble effects produced by the cantor of Leipsic with his masterful employment of old formulas, which are too necessary to the well-being of music to be neglected or abused. To students of music I say, as has been said before, Bach is the one musician for musicians. Study him every day, and you will exclaim with Mozart: "Thank God ! I learn something absolutely new." CHAPTER IV. INSTRUMENTS AND INSTRUMENTAL FORMS. We now approach the consideration of that department of our art in which development has been the most rapid and the most marvel- lous — the orchestra and its music. The instru- ments used to accompany the singers of the first opera, Peri's " Eurydice," produced not quite two hundred and ninety years ago, were a harp- sichord — the piano of that day — a large guitar, a viol, a large lute, and three flutes. The or- chestra employed in the third act of " Die Walkiire " consists of two piccoli, two flutes, three oboes, one English horn, three clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons, eight horns, four trumpets, one bass trumpet, four trombones, one contra-bass tuba, four tympani, cymbals and bass drum, harp, first and second violins, violas, violoncellos, and double basses. Hector Berlioz, in the Tuba Mirum of his " Requiem Mass," has employed, in addition to his orchestra, four ^0 THE STORY OF MUSIC. bodies of brass instruments situated in isolated positions at the four corners of the great choral and instrumental body. His score calls for the following imposing array of instruments : Four flutes, two oboes, four clarinets in C, eight bas- soons, four horns in E-flat, four horns in F, and four horns in G ; first brass band, north corner — four B-flat cornets, four tenor trombones, two bombardons; second brass band, east corner — two first trumpets in F, two second trumpets in E-flat, and four tenor trombones ; third brass band, west corner — four trumpets in E-flat and four tenor trombones ; fourth brass band, south corner — four trumpets in B-flat, four tenor trom- bones, and two ophicleides in B-flat ; one pair of kettle-drums in D-flat and F natural, one pair in G and E-flat, a third pair in G-flat and B-flat, a fourth in B natural and E natural, a fifth in A natural and E-flat, a sixth in A-flat and C na,tural, a seventh in G natural and D- flat, an eighth pair in F natural and B-flat, a long drum in B-flat, another long drum with two padded drumsticks, a gong, three pairs of cymbals to be struck with sticks, and the cus- tomary body of violins, violas, 'cellos, and basses. How has this tremendous growth been accom- plished since the beginning of the seventeenth century, and what special line of musical develop- INSTRUMENTS. 71 ment has caused it ? I shall endeavor to tell briefly something about the origin of the prin- cipal instruments of the orchestra of to-day, but I shall give more attention to the evolution of orchestral music. It is obvious that the in- struments were not invented after the scores calling for them were written. The instrument must exist first, and the musician become ac- quainted with its possibilities before he can com- pose for it. It does not surprise us then to re- call the fact that for centuries after the time of Gregory the Great and the birth of the plain chant no music whatever was written especial- ly for instrumental performance. Instrumental accompaniments, as at first devised, consisted simply of a sounding of the notes in unison with the voice. Though harmony was the result of the discovery that two notes struck simultane- ously on an instrument sounded well, it was first applied to vocal music, and the instrumental accompaniment was made of the voice parts. It was not till human passion, in dramatic guise, became a factor in musical composition that any systematic attempts were made at special instrumental treatment. Once begun, however, the experiments of composers have never ceased, and to this day, though it seems as if the great masters of scoring had exhausted its resources, 72 THE STORY OF MUSIC. the search after novel orchestral effects contin- ues — often at the sacrifice of dignity of style, solidity of instrumentation, and honesty of ar- tistic purpose. Greek tradition tells us that the god Hermes, walking on the sands of the sea, beheld a dead tortoise, whose sun-dried intestines were stretched taut across its shell. He touched one, and it gave forth a musical note ; and, seizing upon this suggestion of Nature, he fashioned the seven-stringed lyre, which the ancients played so well and tuned so badly. Another tradition says that the wind whistling through a broken reed suggested the first wind-instruments. The oldest of these is the Pandean pipes, which con- sists of a number of reeds bound together, one reed for each note. This primeval instrument developed in two directions. It seemed proper to some people to have one pipe that would sound all the notes, and hence came the flute. To others it seemed better to have more pipes and larger pipes than any man could blow, and have them blown and sounded by machinery ; and hence grew up the organ. The lyre devel- oped into the violin family and pianos. I have not a great deal of faith in that pretty story about Hermes and the lyre, because the Egyptians had harps with a goodly number of strings before INSTR UMENTS. 7 3 the god Hermes was invente3. So far as we know, the Greeks arid Romans had no stringed instruments played with the bow. The violin, the backbone of modern orchestration, probably descended from a three-stringed fiddle called the ravanastron, used by the inhabitants of India in the remotest times, and still seen occasionally in the hands of begging Buddhist priests. From the ravanastron are supposed to have descended in succession the Egyptian rebab, a one-stringed fiddle ; the kermangeh, a Mohammedan instru- ment, made in several sizes like our violin family ; the Scandinavian guddok, and the Anglo-Saxon crowth or rotta. From this came the fithele, vitula or viol, and finally the violin, the whole process of evolution occupying five thousand years. Since the violin form was reached there has been no further evolution. The fittest has survived. Some of the violins made in the six- teenth century are still in use, though the best were made in Cremona during the seventeenth century by the Amatis, Straduarius, Guarnerius, and Rugerio. The first instrument used in art music, how- ever, was the organ, which, being employed in the church, came under the consideration of the only musical scholars of the Middle Ages. The best organist of our time would not know what 74 THE STORY OF MUSIC. to do with one of those early cathedral thunder- ers. According to the historian Wulston, who wrote in 951, an organ built for Winchester Cathedral had four hundred pipes and thirteen pairs of bellows, requiring seventy blowers. This instrument sounded but ten tones and was built simply to make as big a noise as possible. Only one note at a time was played on these organs and that had to be pressed down with the fist or elbow. As long as only a plain chant was required this system answered well enough ; but when harmony was invented, the cumbersome organ could not double the newly arranged voice parts. The mechanism of the organ, therefore, began to improve in answer to the demands of the music of the church. Its changes are too numerous to be described in detail. I need only remind you that as the organ was the instrument upon which Bach performed some of his greatest works, it must have reached a state of large improvement by that time.* I will also call your attention * Dr. Spitta gives the following account of Bach's organ at Arnstadt : " The organ was splendidly constructed, all the diap- asons being of seven-ounce tin, the gedackt also being of metal, instead of wood, as was more usual. The character of the ' Brust- Positiv ' must, indeed, have been somewhat shrill, owing to the preponderance of four-foot stops ; and it was only by using all the stops in combination that even a moderately good effect could INSTRUMENTS. 75 to the fact that the improvements in the instru- ment were largely the result of demands made by music. I have already told you that all the instruments used in art music must have exist- ed before the composers adopted them ; I now point out to you that as soon as they came in contact with art, the instruments in turn were benefited and were improved so as to expound the new ideas for which they had opened the way. The monochord and the psaltery, the latter a species of the lyre genus, are generally credited with the parentage of keyed string instruments. It is said that Pythagoras invented the mono- chord in the sixth century B.C., but he probably borrowed his idea from the Egyptians ; for Lep- sius says that the principle of dividing a string to obtain tones of different pitch was applied in the Egyptian lute two thousand four hundred years before the days of Pythagoras. The mo- nochord consisted of an oblong sound-box with one string stretched across it and a movable be produced ; nor was there on the pedals any deep stop of mod- erate strength, still the 'Hauptwerk,' was well arranged." The " Oberwerk, " or upper manual, had twelve stops; the " Brust- Positiv," or choir, seven ; and the pedals, five, in addition to the coupler. This organ existed till 1863. A new one was then erected as a memorial to Bach, but as many of the old stops as were available were retained. ^6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. bridge for dividing the string. This instrument was used to determine the length of intervals. In the course of time the movable bridge was replaced by a more complicated mechanism. Keys to operate levers were fitted in one side of the box and at the other end of each lever was a pin. When the key was pressed down the pin arose, struck the chord, causing it to sound, and at the same time dividing it. More strings were added from time to time, and in the twelfth or thirteenth century the clavichord was gradually developed. Black and white keys, like those of the pianoforte were used, but the principal of the action remained the same as that of the monochord, the hammer simultaneously sound- ing and dividing the string. The psaltery was not the instrument called by that name in King James's translation of the Bible. That so-called psaltery was the Hebrew nebel. The true psaltery was the ancient Greek dulcimer. The descendants of this instrument were the harpsichord, spinet, and virginal. In these instruments " the strings were set in mo- tion 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 upward." This instrument was very clear in quality and INSTRUMENTS. Tf after its makers learned to give each tone two or more strings it became useful in the orches- tra, where it maintained its position till after Handel's time. A description of the various improvements in action, which finally resulted early in the eighteenth century in the produc- tion of a practical piano by Gottfried Silber- mann, would furnish material for a volume. Let us now return to the orchestra. The varieties of bow and wind instruments in the early times of our art were far more numerous than they are now. Thus, at the beginning of the Middle Ages there were two kinds of viola : the viola da gamba (leg-viol) and the viola da braccia (arm-viol), and there were thirteen spe- cies of these two kinds. At this period the in- struments simply doubled the voice parts and were divided into families of basses, tenors, altos, and trebles. But when Claudio Monte- verde began to study the special character of each instrument, he paved the way for the in- evitable — the death of the useless and the sur- vival of the fittest. The old bass viola became our double-bass ; the tenor viola da gamba, our 'cello ; the tenor viola da braccia, our viola ; and the treble viola da braccia, our violin. The flute, as we have seen, is the oldest of wind instruments. There were in early ages two 78 THE STORY OF MUSIC. kinds, the straight flute and the cross flute. The former was blown at the end and has be- come the flageolet ; the latter was blown at the side and is the familiar instrument of to-day. Originally the flute was simply a fife, having six finger-holes. The system of keys now in use, giving the flute a compass of three octaves and making it the most agile of wind instruments, is the result of gradual evolution. The instrument was far from satisfactory, however, until Theo- bald Boehm, in 1832, introduced his system of boring and keying, which has since been further improved. The piccolo, as you know, is noth- ing but a small flute with a higher compass and more strident tone. The oboe is one of the most ancient of instruments, representations of it being found in Greek and Egyptian art. In the early days of modern music there was a fam- ily of instruments called Bombardi, of which the oboe was the treble. The instrument was originally used in military bands, and existed in several varieties. The Boehm fingering has been applied to the oboe with considerable success, and to-day, though a very difficult and trying instrument, it is indispensable in the orchestra by reason of its characteristic quality of tone and its adaptability for several kinds of effects whose requirements no other instrument will INSTRUMENTS. 79 exactly meet. The English horn is the alto of the oboe and the bassoon its bass. There is also a basson-quinte, which covers the tenor register, but it is seldom used, the bassoon having a suf- ficient compass. All these are double reed in- struments, descended from the Bombardi family. The single reed instruments used in the modern orchestra are the clarinets and the corno di bas- setto, the latter employed but seldom. The clarinet is descended from a very old instrument called the shawm. The clarinet was slow in acquiring prominence in the orchestra. Bach and Handel never used it, though they freely em- ployed oboes. Haydn first used two clarinets and a bassoon as a combination of wood wind instruments in his first mass, written in 1751 or 1752, but it was Mozart who raised the clarinet to its position in the orchestra. He also used the corno di bassetto, or tenor clarinet, very freely in his " Clemenza di Tito." In his " Requiem " his only reed instruments are two corni di bassetto and the bassoons. The clari- nets in use to-day are the small one in E-flat, employed almost exclusively in military bands, those in A, B-flat and C, and the bass clarinet. The horn, one of the most important of our modern orchestral instruments, was originally used to sound calls during hunts. According to 80 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Grove's "Dictionary of Music," "the introduc tion of the horn into the orchestra in France is attributed to Gossec. He, when still very young, was requested to write two airs for the d6but of Sophie Arnould, at the opera in 1757, in which he introduced obligato parts for two horns and two clarinets, the latter instrument being also heard for the first time. Lotti and Scarlatti in- troduced the horn into Italy, and were followed by Hasse and Alberti. It must have been pre- viously used in Germany, since it appears fre- quently in the scores of J. S. Bach, who died in 1750. It was first used in England as early as 1 720, by the opera band in the Haymarket at the performance of Handel's ' Radamisto.' " The trumpet, like the horn, is a very old instru- ment and was introduced into the orchestra by the earliest orchestral composers. It figures, as you know, importantly in Handel's scores and Gluck also makes effective use of it. It has un- fortunately become the custom nowadays to use the cornet instead of the trumpet, whose sweet and brilliant tone its blare can never re- place. Gluck and Handel both employed trom- bones in the orchestra, and Mozart established their use. Drums appear to have existed from time immemorial in the far East, and were early introduced into the orchestra. They have been INSTRUMENTS. 8 1 improved, like other instruments, and it is no longer necessary to tighten or loosen the heads of kettle-drums with hand-screws, a pedal hav- ing been devised which accomplishes the changes almost instantaneously. Although the harp is one of the oldest of instruments, its introduction into the orchestra was effected by Gluck. It was not till 1810, however, that Sebastian Erard completed his improvements which made it pos- sible to play the harp rapidly in all keys ; and Berlioz, I believe, was the first to show clearly the full possibilities of the harp as an orchestral instrument. All composers since then have written freely for it, and its peculiar effects add greatly to the beauty of modern scores. From what I have said concerning the gradual evolution of our modern army of instruments you will gather that the early orchestras, such as that employed by Peri in his " Eurydice," were, according to our ideas, extremely weak and ill-balanced. In harmonic symmetry and in distribution of voices they must have been far less effective than a modern string quartet ; and unquestionably the performance of a Jadassohn sextet would surpass the wildest dreams of the operatic composers of 1600. We now come to the consideration of special instrumental music and its growth. This brings 6 82 THE STORY OF MUSIC. US face to face with the development of form, especially the sonata and its highest elaboration in the symphony. Instruments, as we have seen, were originally used solely to support the voice, and this they did in the earliest days by playing the same notes as the voices sung. In remote times the religious rituals were sung and a kind of stately dance accompanied the chant- ing. The music was naturally formed largely to meet the demands of the dance. When vocal music began to develop along special lines the instrumental forms retained the greater rhythmic precision and flexibility, and instrumental music became an elaboration of dance music. During the progress of the art of " descant," of which I have already spoken, and the subsequent rise of contrapuntal church music, the instruments kept pace with the voices in the ornamental and complex figures. With the reforms of Luther and Palestrina, however, a more simple and dig- nified style became common in the church. Then the instruments continued the ornamental embellishing — the colorature — which the singers had to some extent given up. The inevitable result of the labors of composers in this direc- tion was the development of special instrumen- tal forms, of which the toccata is believed to be the oldest. INSTRUMENTS. 83 The characteristic style of this form, with its running and broken figures, made it peculiarly suitable to the instrumental tendency of the time. The form was clearly established by Claudio Merulo, a Venetian organist, who pub- lished his first toccatas in 1598. Fresco- baldi, who is called the father of modern or- gan playing, perfected this form. His toccatas contain, as Dr. Spitta notes, "all the musical achievements of his time : the fugue, free imita- tion, brilliant passage work, and mighty torrents of chord successions." This growth of the toc- cata as the earliest instrumental form points to the fact that organ playing had already reached a high stage of development. From the time of Conrad Paumann, of Nuremberg, who flourished in the fifteenth century, a long line of organists stretches forward. Among the earlier German masters were Hofhaimer, Legrant, Paumgart- ner, and Von Puttenberg. Later came Arnold Schlick, Jacob Buus, Ammerbach, Bernhard Schmid, Jacob Paix, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, and finally the immortal Bach, who brought order out of chaos and breathed the spirit of perpe- tuity into certain germinal forms. Previous to his time the organ forms were uncertain. These old masters wrote what they called fantasias, ricerari, capricci, contrapunti, introduzioni, and 84 THE STORY OF MUSIC. canzoni ; but I beg you to understand that these were nothing more than improvisations of unde- termined plan. They were, in short, nothing more than a lofty kind of descant, a refined con- trapuntal elaboration of a set theme by means of the various devices invented by the great Netherland contrapuntists — a school which ex- ercised a more absolute sway over the realm of music than any other school has ever obtained, either before or since their time. Cantabile playing grew out of the use of the Italian canzone, which was a simple air in the song style. The Gabrielis, Andrea and Gio- vanni, who flourished during the latter part of the fifteenth century in Venice, wrote in this style and made use of bow and wind instruments in the short preludes which they wrote to their vocal pieces. Some of the Gabrieli compositions were written for either voices or instruments ; and when they were played, they were called sonatas, because they were sounded. These early sonatas, you see, bore no resemblance to those of to-day. I have already told you that instrumental composers, once set free from their adherence to vocal forms, turned their attention to dance music. It soon became apparent to them that agreeable contrasts might be produced by play- INSTRUMENTS. 85 ing dance tunes of different character consecu- tively, Morley, in his " Plain and Easy Intro- duction to Practical Music," published in 1597, says that it is effective to alternate pavanes and galliards, because the former are "a kind of staid music ordained for grave dancing," and the latter for " a lighter and more stirring kind of dancing." He also calls attention to the con- trast in rhythm, one being in common and the other in triple time. Here we see the first at- tempts at consecutive movements. This method of composition resulted in the suite, which has been cultivated by the majority of orchestral composers down to our day, though here again it was the genius of Bach that established the style and left the model for his successors to follow. The only feature of the suite that remains in the modern symphony is the division into sep- arate movements of contrasting character. But there was no coherence in the suite. Any one of its parts might have been played alone, whereas our symphony is a symmetrical whole, with a definite design carried out from beginning to end. The impulse toward the development of the sonata form in this manner came from the overture in three connected movements, which was cultivated by Scarlatti in Italy and 86 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Lulli in France. The skeleton of that form supports the flesh and blood of our modern con- certo, and its higher elaboration is seen in our piano and orchestra sonatas. It was the intro- duction of the dramatic element into music which finally led composers to elaborate a form capable of expressing emotion without the aid of words or action ; and it was not until the in- strumental writers became so bold in experi- ment and so facile in expression that they could throw aside the old styles on which they had leaned for support, that the new and symmet- rical form came forth. It would be interesting and profitable to trace the gradual steps by which the sonata advanced, but to do so would be to enter too deeply into mere technicalities. Some few points of this progress, however, we can briefly notice. The instrumental composers got their first ideas from the Church. Hence we are not sur- prised to find that some of the early sonatas (so called) consisted of one movement in fugal style throughout. The second source of ideas was the dance tunes, and we accordingly find some of the early sonatas alternating movements in ecclesiastical with others in dance style. The third source of ideas was the lyric drama. Dr. Parry, in his article on the sonata in Grove's INSTRUMENTS. 87 Dictionary, describes a violin sonata in C minor by H. J. F. Biber, published in 1681. It has five movements. The first is an introductory largo of contrapuntal character, with clear and consistent treatment in the fugally imitative manner ; the second is a passacaglia, which an- swers roughly to a continuous string of varia- tions on a short and well-marked period ; the third is a rhapsodical movement consisting of interspersed portions of poco lento, presto, and adagio, leading into a gavotte ; and the last is a further rhapsodical movement alternating " adagio and allegro." Dr. Parry points out the derivation of the movements as being " in the first the contrapuntalism of the music of the Church ; in the second and fourth, dances ; and in the third and fifth, probably operatic or dra- matic declamation." This sonata shows no sign of that methodic repetition of subjects and definite arrangement of keys now indispensable in a sonata. But the work was a great im- provement on the unsystematic compositions of earlier instrumental writers. About this time in Italy, Corelli, who died in 1713, was writing violin sonatas in several movements, and the ''/'enetian violinist Vivaldi, who died in 1743, wrote a concerto in three movements. Corelli's works are of great importance in their influence 88 THE STORY OF MUSIC. on the progress of the sonata form. He wrote twenty-four " Church Sonatas " and twenty-four " Chamber Sonatas," in addition to twelve for the violin and 'cello. In these works we find many of the germs of the present sonata form. Most of them were in four movements, begin- ning with a slow one. In the church sonatas the second movement is fugal ; in the chamber sonatas it is an allemande or a courante. The third movement is always slow and full of chord effects. The last movement is always lively, gavottes and gigues occurring frequently in the chamber sonatas. Corelli's influence is indis- putable. He fixed a form for the sonata which was adopted by Tartini, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Nar- dini, Veracini, L^clair, Rust, Albinoni, Purcell, Porpora, Handel, and even Bach. Yet this form strikes us now as most uncertain. Corelli evidently felt that something was to be accom- plished by a style of composition that was free from the fugal restraints of the older writers, but he did not know just how to proceed. And one thing which greatly hampered him was the prejudice among artistic writers against simple tune, which prevented Corelli from finding his way to that distinct enunciation of subjects ex- pected by the modern hearer. Johann Kuh- nau, Bach's predecessor at the Thomas School, INSTRUMENTS. 89 wrote sonatas of uncertain form for the clavier, which may be regarded as the precursors of our piano sonatas. But he, too, was restricted by the prevalence of ecclesiastical style in music. Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), though he wrote his so-called piano sonatas in one move- ment, took one of the greatest steps toward the modern style of instrumental music by substi- tuting for the polyphonic method, which re- strained even the genius of Bach, the homo- phonic, in which the melody reigns supreme, and the accompaniment is relegated to a sec- ondary position. Scarlatti, too, made clear the difference between the technique of the organ and that of the piano, introducing such features as rapid repetition of a note with successive fin- gers, broken chords in contrary motion for both hands, and other performances now familiar to all pianists. Scarlatti, moreover, made a dis- tinct announcement of his musical themes and impressed them on the hearer's mind by fre- quent repetition. The movements composed by writers immediately succeeding Scarlatti, whom I have no time to speak of in detail, were uncertain in their distribution but approached regularity and definiteness in their internal structure. Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, second son of Se- go THE STORY OF MUSIC. bastian, further improved the sonata form. One of his styles of sonata became recognized as the best that had been contrived up to that time, and both Haydn and Mozart subsequently made frequent, though not invariable, use of it. Most of his important sonatas are in three movements, the first and third lively and the second slow. The chief merits of his sonatas are their pointed emphasis, clearness, and certainty of construc- tion. Emmanuel Bach also wrote eighteen sym- phonies, in which the great orchestral work of later days is dimly foreshadowed. But the so- nata and its orchestral form the symphony were to be further developed by Haydn and Mozart, and to reach their perfection in the hands of the mighty Beethoven. Nothing has been added to the development of the sonata form since Beethoven's day. The reader must not imagine, however, that this form is rigidly fixed. Within certain recogniz- able limits it admits of much variety. The classic symphony, which is taken as the model, consists of four movements. The first is an allegro, usually introduced by a slow passage. The second is a slow movement — andante, largo, larghetto, or modified allegro. The third in the older works is a minuet with trio, superseded later by the scherzo and trio. The fourth is an- INSTRUMENTS. 9 1 other allegro, usually more vigorous than the first. The first movement of a symphony is gen- erally built on either the applied song form or the rondo form. The song form is the result of combining several artistically constructed melo- dies in one composition. The rondo is a song form distinguished by frequent repetitions of the leading theme. Thematic development and modulation are largely employed in the first movement of a symphony. The second movement is very variable. It is founded on the same system as the first, but is shorter and less complex. The theme and varia- tions are often employed. The minuet and trio are direct descendants of the old dance forms, and present no systematic difference. The scher- zo is extremely free in form, its peculiarity consisting chiefly in style. Let the reader com- pare the scherzi of Beethoven with those of Mendelssohn, and he will perceive how impor- tant is the difference of style. The applied song form and rondo form appear again in the last move-ments of modern symphonies. CHAPTER V. THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. The latest and most important advances to- ward the present high development of the art of orchestration were made by the late Richard Wagner. He carried the employment of the technical resources of the modern orchestra to a point which will probably not be passed very 'soon. The foundations of our present orches- tration were laid by Joseph Haydn, born, 1732, died, 1809. Wagner was born in i8i3."-'T'he entire development of orchestral writing, exclu- sive of the preparatory experiments in the so- nata form, was accomplished between the birth of Haydn and the death of Wagner, in the brief span of two human lives — for only four years elapsed between Haydn's death and Wagner's birth. Music had descended from the lofty pedestal on which Sebastian Bach placed it, and when Haydn was a young man the object of all composers was to write tastefully. The THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 93 deeper aesthetic quality of music was less sought after. ^/Haydn reawakened the old hunger for sincerity in art, and paved the way for Mozart. Gluck had made experiments in the special treatment of orchestral instruments which re- vealed many possibilities hitherto unknown, but his work was entirely in the field of oper- atic accompaniment, not in that of pure instru- mental music. Haydn may fairly claim the proud title of father of the symphony and the string quartet. He wrote 118 symphonies, 83 string quartets, 24 trios, 44 piano sonatas, 5 oratorios, 1 5 masses, 19 operas, 163 pieces for the baryton — a kind of viola da gamba — German and Italian songs for one and three voices, and many minor compo- sitions. He is the first composer whose works in the sonata form show an invariable aim at achieving something nobler in the aesthetic sense th^n a mere effective contrast of move- ments./ Mozart and Beethoven accepted his principles, amplified and ennobled them by the power of their own individual genius, but did not materially alter the fundamental plan. Haydn's sonatas usually begin with an allegro. To this movement he imparted fuller signifi- cance, and his thematic development was so ar- ranged as to give it unity. His first movements 94 THE STORY OF MUSIC. nearly always have three parts : First, the princi pal subject, which decides the character of the whole movement ; second, a part composed of motives from the first part varied by harmonic modulation and contrapuntal imitation ; third, a repetition of the first, with some minor changes in treatment. Thus, you see, one of his allegri is a well-worked development of given themes with a symmetrical and effective return to the original idea, the whole having the character of an art-work built on a carefully prepared design. His second movement is a largo, adagio, or an- dante, treated with broad harmony, and always full of sentiment. The finale is usually a lively and humorous movement in the rondo form, the special feature of which is periodical repetition of the leading motive. The reader who is fa- miliar with the great sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven will see that they are modelled after this plan with such changes as we should natu- rally expect from the characters of the men. One of the greatest strides made by Haydn in his development of the sonata form was his substitution of what Naumann calls the duothe- matic style for the monothematic. The writers who preceded him had used but one theme for each movement, with rare exceptions which can be regarded only as unsystematic experiments. THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 95 Haydn, however, consciously aimed at the use of two independent themes, artd he began his labors in this direction early. In the allegros of three of his earliest sonatas (22, 24, and 29 Pohl *) we find second themes separated from the principal subjects by rests and wholly inde- pendent in melody, rhythm, and harmony. He appears to have been uncertain as to the wisdom of his method, and in some subsequent sonatas his second subjects are subordinated ; but the greater number of his mature English sympho- nies show' absolute freedom in the treatment of their second themes. " It was from Haydn," said Mozart, " that I first learned the true way to compose quartets." We have noted some of the earlier attempts at sonatas for two violins, viola, and 'cello ; but it remained for Haydn to raise the quartet to its recognized position in music. He wrote his quartets in the sonata form already described, inserting between the slow movement and the finale the menuetto. Haydn possessed in great * Carl Ferdinand Pohl, born at Darmstadt, 1819, biographer of Haydn. His catalogue of Haydn's works is the standard one, and the compositions are now invariably designated by reference to his numbers. The main facts of his great biographical work are condensed in his article on Haydn in Grove's Dictionary of Music, and have been employed almost exclusively in the present volume. 96 THE STORY OF MUSIC. fulness all the attributes of a great quartet writer. He had the faithful adherence to de- sign, the exhaustive knowledge of contrapuntal means, and the thorough acquaintance with the resources of his instruments without which it is impossible to write good quartets. He had, too, a fecund melodic invention and a wealth of fancy for presenting his themes in new and de- lightful aspects. Moreover, his string quartets are full of a buoyant, happy enthusiasm which made them in his day the favorite music of the salons, where they became the active mission- aries of musical progress. Haydn owed much to the experiments of his predecessors in orchestral writing, yet he him- self established the symphony as we know it. His first symphony was composed in 1754, and his last in 1795. During the intervening period Mozart had been born, had lived his marvellous life, and died. He learned his early lessons from Haydn, but in later life Haydn became the pupil, and his maturer symphonic works show that he profited by the labors of the mighty Mozart. One material feature of his work points to it, if no aesthetic quality does. Mozar t made new and beautiful use of the clarinet, and Haydn in his later works did likewise. It was a happy thing for Haydn that he had an oppor- THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 97 tunity during his career to conduct a small band of orchestral performers, who willingly entered into the spirit of his plans and assisted him in his orchestral experiments. He was forced to invent, improve, and enlarge instrumental writ- ing at every step, but his players readily learned the new language which he taught them. Of course, I refer to the celebrated orchestra of Prince Esterhazy.* The art of orchestration was in its infancy in Haydn's days, and his in- strumental combinations are, therefore, original, ingenious, characteristic, and effective. Some of his works are written for a very small array of instruments, as in the Queen of France Sym- phony, of which the score calls for two horns, two oboes, one flute, two bassoons, first and sec- ond violins, violas, and basses. On the other hand, the introduction to the " Creation " is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, a contra-bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tympani, and the usual strings. Handel and Bach treated in- struments, to a large extent, as if they were * The Esterhazy orchestra in 1766 consisted of 17 players : 6 violins, and violas, I 'cello, i double-bass, i flute, 2 oboes, 2 bas- soons, and 4 horns. It was afterward enlarged to 22 and 24, in- cluding trumpets and tympani when required, and, from 1776 to 1778, clarinets. 7 98 THE STORY OF MUSIC. voices or organ parts interwoven with the othei voice parts. Haydn, in his oratorios and operas, treated the orchestra as an independent factor always moving in its own way. All attempts at specific tone-coloring before Haydn were unsatisfactory. He and Mozart developed this particular feature of orchestral writing. Above all, Haydn was the first who en- deavored^o make the orchestra paint impressions for him.v/ All previous composers who had made experiments in this direction had done so in opera or oratorio, where text or action was the chief vehicle of expression, the orchestra being second- ary and illustrative.N/ Haydn was the first who tried to picture the external, or the internal im- pression made iy the external, with orchestral means alone.s/His orchestra depicted chaos, the waning of winter storms, tha birth of spring, and the bloom of summer, v In accomplishing this he laid the foundation of all our modern programme music, and indicated the means by which the composers of the romantic school were to climb the pinnacles of human emotion, till sometimes they lost themselves in clouds of mysticism. /The pastoral symphony, Raff's " Im Walde," and the " Waldweben " of " Siegfried " are lineal descendants of Haydn's " Creation " and " Seasons ; " and the " Liebestod " of " Tristan " THE GREAT IMSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 99 has some of the blood of his " Farewell " sym- phony in its veins. Indeed bars 5 1 to 54, in- clusive, of the introduction to " The Creation" are Wagner-like in melody, harmony, and espe- cially in instrumentation. In his symphony he bequeathed to us a large, well-planned, thorough- ly elaborated and symmetrical design for great orchestral compositions. Until some mighty mind contrives for us a more satisfactory plan, we must continue to regard Haydn as the orig- inator of our loftiest form of absolute music. But, no matter what the changes of the future may be, we shall always be forced to look back to him as the first to perceive the spiritual power of absolute music, the first to reveal it to us as the language of emotion. We now come to the work of him who was Haydn's master as well as his pupil. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born at Salzburg, January 27, 1756, died, December 5, 1791, was the most uni- versal genius in music that the world has ever seen. He was great as a writer of tragic, roman- tic, and comic operas, great as a composer of sym- phonies, quartets, and quintets, great as a writer of piano concertos and sonatas, great as a writer of songs, great as a composer of church music, great as an executive musician. The special ten- dency of Mozart's genius was toward operatic lOO THE STORY OF MUSIC. composition, but had he lived beyond thirty-five years it is impossible to imagine what he might not have achieved in all departments of music. I shall not now consider his operatic produc- tions, but sl^all endeavor to briefly indicate what impression he made upon the progress of music in other departments, treating especially of his instrumental compositions and principally of his orchestral work. His oratorio-cantata, " David the Penitent," was largely made up of parts of an unfinished mass in C minor, written at Salz- burg in 1783, together with some new numbers written in 1785. The music of this work is ad- mirable, but Jahn criticises the new numbers as too florid for oratorio. That Mozart subse- quently learned to grasp the oratorio spirit is shown by his additional accompaniments to " The Messiah," which are perfect in their Han- delian feeling. The " Requiem " of Mozart fully establishes his claim to unsurpassed influence on the present music of the Catholic Church. It has been called the " highest and best that mod- ern art has to offer to sacred worship." His masses — especially the grand one in C minor, and the short ones in F major (Kochel,* 192) * The standard catalogue of Mozart's works is that of Dr. Lud- wig Kochel (1800-1877). It was published by Breitkopf & Har. tel, of Leipsic, in 1862. THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. lOI and C major (Kochel, 258) are masterpieces and remain models of church composition. Jahn * successfully refutes the assertion that his masses were his weakest works. Again, Mozart in- vented the art song ; that is, the song in which each verse is set to music varying in character according to the words, instead of being set to the same melody without reference to the mean- ing. He could not help writing like a master, no matter how unimportant the work in hand. He composed two pieces in F minor for musi- cal clocks. When Mendelssohn's friend Rietz heard them, he said : " And those were written for mechanical clocks ! What is now left for us to do?" In instrumental music Mozart lifted to still higher levels the forms already improved by Haydn. He is the connecting link between Haydn and Beethoven. Mozart studied Haydn's piano sonatas early in life, and quickly began to compose in this form. His superb imaginative powers led him to enrich and enlarge the old design. He heightened and defined the con- trast between the principal and secondary theme of the first movement, making the first of spirited * Otto Jahn (1813-1869), philologist, archasologist, and writer on art and music ; author of the standard life of Mozart, a noble work. I02 THE STORY OF MUSIC. nature and the second of a singing character. The vocal character of Mozart's melody is pro- verbial ; it is predominant throughout his works. Jahn calls attention to this s ong-lik e character in Mozart's instrumental melodies and his pro- digality in the use of them. He points out the fact that the composer's fecundity "excluded, or greatly limited, the employment of connect- ing passages without sense or meaning." And he says, further : " The second respect in which Mozart's method was a gain to music was in the clearness \yhich it gave to his designs. This clearness is an inseparable adjunct of Mozart's art ; and by means of it the main points of his structure were as clearly defined as an architect- ural ground-plan, and became the supports for elaboration and development. Mozart himself was far from exhausting the resources of the method he founded ; others have followed in his footsteps, and Beethoven, his intellectual heir, has displayed all the depth and wealth of that which he has inherited." The concerto was largely improved and de- veloped by Mozart. The one quality of his concertos which most forcibly strikes the critic is their artistic sincerity. No form of music has been more abused. The germinal idea of the concerto was a desire to display at one and the THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. I03 same time the resources of the solo instrument and the accomplishments of the player. These accomplishments naturally included poetic con- ception ; but this in time was obscured — as it frequently is in our day — by the eagerness to astonish the multitude with technical brilliancy. I can find only two kinds of pianists who have 'any reason to expect consideration from the public, and only one of these has a legitimate place in art. The first is the player of surpris- ing technical virtuosity, who overwhelms the audience with the strength and brilliancy of his execution. The second is he who, with suffi- cient technical facility to enable him to sur- mount the difficulties of the great piano compo- sitions, is able to so interpret the work in hand that the auditors shall perceive its nobility and be swayed by its beauty. It is obvious that only the second is an artist. The other is sim- ply an acrobat. It is undeniable that the same principles apply to the composer of concertos. He must not write solely to heap up brilliant and difficult passages, but must offer the hearer poetic ideas. It is just here that Mozart tri- umphed and left us model concertos. He was a great pianist, and he composed in such a man- ner that his skill as a player was fully shown ; but every ornament and difficulty in his twenty- I04 THE STORY OF MUSIC. seven pianoforte concertos was subordinated to the poetic idea and to symmetry of construc- tion. He also elevated the orchestral accom- paniment. The working out of the themes was distributed among the different instruments in such a way as to fill the composition with light and shade, and make the solo a central striking figure, as it were, in the midst of a landscape of music. Mozart's quartets are still a mine of inex- haustible wealth to lovers of music. He did not advance beyond Haydn in the matter of form, but he wrote with superior melodic and harmonic treatment, and with nobler sentiment. His six string quartets dedicated to Haydn — " the fruit of long and laborious work," accord- ing to his own statement — are marvellous in wealth of ideas, symmetry of form, and mastery of the technical resources of the instruments. The grand quartet in G minor for piano and strings is worthy of special study. You will find in its first movement that Mozart knew how to be harsh when his mood demanded it. As an orchestral writer Mozart, extending and deepening the significance of Haydn's improve- ments, towers above his predecessors. Kochel gives us a list of forty-nine symphonies written by him, in addition to an immense number of THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. IO5 compositions of various kinds written for differ- ent combinations of instruments. Of his sym- phonies nine stand pre-eminent. They are num- bered in the Kochel catalogue 201, 297, 338, 385, 425, 504, 543, 550, and 551. Three are in C major, one with three movements, one in four, and the Jupiter Symphony with its double fugue. Three are in D major, with three, four, and five movements, and of the other three one is in A major, one in G minor, and one in E-flat. Jahn points out that the symphonies in C major and G major, 425 and \ \/ [ Kochel, " bear clear traces of Haydn's influence, direct and in- direct." Several years passed before he wrote his next symphony in D major, 504 Kochel. Jahn says : " The first glance at the symphony shows an altered treatment of the orchestra ; it is now fully organized, and both in combination and detail shows individual independence. The instrument ation is very clear and__brjlliant — here and there, perhaps, a little sharp— but this tone is purposely selected as the suitable one. Traces of Haydn's influence may be found in the pre- fixing of a solemn introduction to the first alle- gro, as well as in separate features of the an- dante; such, for instance, as the epigrammatic close ; but in all essential points we have noth- ing but Mozart." I06 THE STORY OF MUSIC. It was a year and a half later when Mozart again took up the composition of symphonies, and then in two months, in 1788, he wrote those in E-flat, G minor, ^nd C major, 543, 550, and 551 Kochel. These symphonies, according to Jahn, " display Mozart's perfected power of making the orchestra, by free movement and song-like delivery, into the organ of his artis- tic mood ; " and he quotes Richard Wagner, who says : " The longing sigh of the great human voice, drawn to him by the loving power of his genius, breathes from his instru- ments." Xh^ symphonies show a great advance be- yond Haydn in instrumental treatment. The themes, as well as contrapuntal combinations of them, are more frequently heard in the wind, and we gradually learn, in looking over these works, that Mozart was the father of what we know as tone-color.* His compositions for or- * The constitution of Mozart's orchestra is worthy of especial notice. His nearest approach to our present orchestra is in the D major symphony, Kochel, 297, which is scored for violins, violas, basses, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and kettledrums. Clarinets are employed in only one symphony written previous to that time — Kochel, 18, E-flat major. They occur again in the E-flat major symphony, Kochel, S43. Two oboes, two horns, and two trumpets formed his principal symphonic combination of wind instruments. Sometimes he used four horns, sometimes flutes, and again bassoons. . The THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. IO7 chestra date back over one hundred years, yet some of his instrumental combinations still come to us with all the force of novelty. His skill in instrumentation is as finely displayed in the serenades and divertimenti as in the symphonies. You have only to hear or read his serenades in B-flat major for 12 wind in- struments and double bass ; in C minor for 8 wind instruments ; in D major for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 fagotti, 2 horns, trumpets, kettledrums, and strings ; in G-flat for 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 fagotti, and 2 oboes; and in B-flat for 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 basset-horns, 4 horns, 2 fagotti, 'cello, and double bass, to understand the force of this assertion. His mastery of form and his ability to express the noblest ideas while conforming to the strictest rules of counterpoint were almost equal to Bach's. In the last movement of the Jupiter symphony he effected a combination that is still unsurpassed in all music. He made a fugue on the symphonic plan, fusing in a marvel- lous way the two art-forms which seem to be most distinct from one another. As an inventor in the domain of instrumental music we must accord Haydn the first place ; but Mozart condescend- ed to borrow nothing from him save his forms. orchestra of Haydn's first symphony, composed in 1759, consisted of violins, violas, basses, two oboes, and two horns. I08 THE STORY OF MUSIC. His ideas, his style, his coloring, are all his own, and are all greater than those of any man who preceded him. We shall be better able to con- sider the tremendous scope and majesty of his genius when we come to review the growth of opera ; but we cannot fail to be lost in admira- tion of the wonderful poetry of the thoughts he clothed in instrumental expression, nor the sur- passing beauty of his instrumental language. He founded no school, yet he paved the way for Beethoven, who never ceased to acknowl- edge his veneration for the genius of the glori- ous boy. And now arises before us the image of one whose name no lover of music can hear without emotion — Ludwig van Beethoven, born 1770, died 1827. At the age of twenty-seven Beetho- ven began to suffer severely from a disease of the ears, which finally resulted in total deafness. To some men this would not have been so sad a misfortune as it was to the composer. In a letter written to his friend Wegeler, in 1800, he says : " My hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse ; my ears are buz- zing and ringing perpetually day and night. I can say with truth that my life is very wretched. For nearly two years past I have avoided all so- ciety because I find it impossible to say to peo- THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. IO9 pie, ' I am deaf.' In any other profession this might be more tolerable; but in mine such a condition is truly frightful." You will readily understand that, feeling thus, Beethoven's life was a continual fever of suspicion, distrust, and grief, rendered endurable only by the high moral courage and indomitable will of the man. His entire inner life was a prolonged period of storm and stress. A popular novelist has said : " Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." Beethoven was one of those who feel, and feeling with the rare and intensi- fied bitterness of a nature forced to feed chiefly on itself, his existence was a long, deep tragedy. I tell you thus much of Beethoven's life because it is the key to a proper understanding of his matchless genius. In him the emotional, the dramatic, the tragic in absolute music, attained the highest expression that the world has yet seen. Indeed, the only master-genius that has risen since his day — Richard Wagner — declared his belief that beyond Beethoven absolute music could not go. While it would be unwise to ac- cept a dictum which sets a limit to the youngest of the arts, this declaration may be received as a fair representation of the enormous effect of Beethoven on the minds of other great musi- cians. no THE STORY OF MUSIC. Beethoven wrote less music than his prede- cessors, but he wrote more than casual concert- goers are aware of. His vocal compositions consist of one opera, two masses, one ora- torio, two cantatas — " The Glorious Moment " and " Praise of Harmony " — the " Ruins of Athens," the choral fantasia, 21 patriotic finales, the " Egmont " music, " Calm Sea and Pros- perous Passage," " Ah, Perfido," " Tremate " (trio with orchestra), a " Song of Sacrifice," " Bundeslied " for 2 solos, chorus, and wind, an elegiac song for 4 voices and strings, (i^ songs and I duet with piano accompaniment, the " Gesang der Monche " for 3 voices a capella, 18 canons, and 7 books of English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and Italian songs for voice, piano, 'cello, and violin. His instrumental works are 9 symphonies, the " Battle of Vittoria," the " Prometheus " music, 9 overtures, an allegretto in E-flat, a march from " Tarpeia," a military march, 12 minuets, 12 German dances, 12 contra- dances and the Ritter ballet, all orchestral works ; 1 concerto for violin, and 2 romances, 5 piano con- certos, I piano concerto arranged from that for violin, I rondo and i triple concerto for piano, i choral fantasia for piano, orchestra, and chorus; 2 octets for wind, i septet for strings and wind, I sestet for strings and wind, i sestet for wind, THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. Ill 4 quintets for strings, i6 quartets for strings, 2 equali for 4 trombones, 5 trios for strings, i trio for strings and flute, i trio for wind, 3 duos for wind, I quintet for piano and wind, i quartet for piano and strings, 8 trios for piano and strings, variations in G and 14 in E-flat for piano and strings, 2 trios for piano, clarinet, and 'cello, 10 sonatas, i rondo and 12 variations in F for piano and violin, 5 sonatas, 12 variations in C, 12 in F, and 7 in E-fiat for piano and 'cello, i sonata for piano and horn, 7 books of variations for piano and flute, i sonata, 3 marches, 8 varia- tions in C and 6 in D for piano four hands, 38 sonatas for piano solo, 21 sets of variations for piano solo, 3 sets of bagatelles, 4 rondos, a fan- tasia, 3 preludes, a polonaise, an andante in F, 7 minuets, and 13 Landlers for piano solo. In speaking of the works of Beethoven I must again confine myself to the line of instrumental progress. Beethoven was always great. " Fi- delio," his one opera, is a sombre work, but the music never fails to impress itself upon the mind as that of a master, laboring in an unfamiliar field. It stands alone. No one else ever wrote an opera like it. It belongs to no school and it has had no imitators. Beethoven's one oratorio is also plainly a master's work, but here again he was not in his element. The tremendous breadth 112 THE STORY OF MUSIC. and depth of the man's moral nature are shown better in his Missa Solennis, in which, as Dr. Marx has well said, Beethoven erected for him- self an eternal cathedral. Some of its numbers are among the sublimest creations of the human intellect. It is in the domain of the sonata, however, that Beethoven towers above all other composers before or since his time ; and we may well doubt whether the next five centuries will produce anything that can dispute with his ma- jestic sonatas for piano and for orchestra the su- premacy in absolute music. Beethoven's music is divided by Herr von Lenz into three styles, and this arrangement has gained wide acceptance. The first style shows distinct traces of the influence of Haydn and Mozart, though the individuality of the new genius breaks forth frequently. The first and second symphonies belong to this style, though there are passages in their scherzos which might have been written years later than they were. His early piano sonatas and his first piano con- certo belong to this period also. Then comes a transition, marked by the Kreutzer sonata, the C minor piano concerto, and the Eroica sym- phony, after which the master entered his period of maturity, when his works are all individ- ual, characteristic, and charged with enormous THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. II3 strength. To this period belong " Fidelio " and its four epoch-making overtures, the mass in C, the symphonies from No. 4 to No. 8, inclusive, the " Coriolanus " overture, the " Egmont " mu- sic, the piano concertos in G and E-flat, the vio- lin concerto, the Rassomouffsky quartets, and those in E-flat and F minor, the three later pianoforte trios, and a dozen of his piano sona- tas, including the D minor and the " Appassio- nata." The third style, according to Sir George Grove's admirable article in his " Dictionary of Music," began in 18 14, when Beethoven's life entered upon a series of sorrows and misfortunes that filled his soul with bitterness and an un- speakable yearning for eternal rest. To this period belong the majestic ninth symphony, the five piano sonatas, op. loi to in, and the last quartets, op. 127 to 135. As Grove wisely says, the ninth symphony differs from its predeces- sors " not only in dimensions and in the use of the chorus, but in elevation and sentiment and in the total impression produced." The piano sonatas display " a certain wistful yearning, a sort of sense of the invisible and vision of the infinite, mingled with their power." The last quartets resemble the sonatas in character, " but they are also longer, full of changes of time, less observant than before of the traditional forms of 8 114 THE STORY OF MUSIC. expression, less careful to make obvious the links of connection, and still more full of in- tense personality and of a wild unimprisoned spirit." In these last works Beethoven becomes something more than a composer ; he is a great moral power. As Mr. Edward Dannreuther has said : " He passes beyond the horizon of a mere singer and poet, and touches upon the domain of the seer and the prophet ; where, in unison with all genuine mystics and ethical teachers, he delivers a message of religious love and resig- nation, identification with the sufferings of all living creatures, depreciation of self, negation of personality, release from the world." The first two symphonies give but faint indi- cations of the future prophet. In the Eroica the master spirit is first revealed in the tone- picture of a hero fighting for victory. In the B- flat, No. 4, we meet with the first of Beethoven's subjective symphonies, and get the first orches- tral representation of his inner life. In the sub- lime No. 5, in C minor, we are presented with a great tone poem depicting the struggle of an entire people for liberty and the final triumph. The plan of the Pastoral was made known by the master's programme. The seventh and eighth are joyous and happy, the seventh, ac- cording to Wagner, being the apotheosis of the THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. IIJ dance. In the ninth we are brought face to face with the loftiest outstretchings of the human soul. From the spiritual essence of Beethoven's works in the sonata field let us now turn for a time to the form. The master made innova- tions in the sonata form which resulted in its being carried to its highest and probably its most perfect possible development. In the first place he largely increased the range of keys used in a sonata. It was the practice of his prede- cessors to confine themselves to narrow limits, always answering a first theme in the tonic by a second theme in the dominant. If the first theme was minor the second was in the relative major. The second movement of the sonata was nearly always in the subdominant. Beet- hoven followed his predecessors to a considerable extent in the relation of the first and second themes of the first movement. In 26 piano sonatas he changes to the dominant 17 times, to the mediant, 3, and the submediant, 3. In the relations of the keys of the different movements, however, he departed much further from the ways of Haydn and Mozart. In 81 composi- tions in the sonata form he passes to the domi- nant but 3 times, to the subdominant 19 times, to the mediant 4 times, and to the submediant Il6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. 30 times. From tonic major to tonic minor he changes 12 times and from minor to major 8 times. Beethoven aboli shed the intermediate periods used by his predecessors between their first and second subjects. Mozart and Haydn separated their subjects by passages not related to them. Beethoven constructed the passages by which he advanced from one theme to another by ma- terial directly made out of the first theme. Thus his works gained immeasurably in sym- metry and logical coherence. In the Eroica symphony we find some of Beethoven's widest departures from the strict plans of his predecessors. But he must not be accused of a wanton desire to alter the old forms. He was forced to write as he did by the desire to say something which could not be ex- pressed in the old way.* In what is known as * This same desire for larger means of expression led him to gradually increase the orchestra. We have seen what Mozart's orchestra consisted of ; now let us look at Beethoven's. In the first and second symphonies he used violins, violas, 'cellos, basses, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns and tympani, thus beginning where Mozart left off. In the third he added another^horn. The fourth has the same instruments as the first two. The last movement of the fifth adds a piccolo, contra- bassoon, and three trombones. The Pastoral is written for strings, wood, and two horns. The orchestra of the seventh and eighth is THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 11/ the " Avorking out " portion of the first move- ment of the Eroica he has introduced a new subject as important as anything preceding it. This symphony also contains a coda of 140 bars, which is in effect an independent member of the movement. In his later quartets Beethoven grew more bold in his treatment of form. His thoughts were too great for restraint and he spoke with the free eloquence of irresistible impulse. The ninth symphony and his last piano sonatas, however, are strictly in form. So far as the outward shape of the symphony is concerned, the alteration most noticeable to the general hearer is Beethoven's introduction oX-the scherzo in place of the minuet. This was really a creation. The third movement of a symphony by Haydn or Mozart was always a minuet, and they made out of it all that could be made out of a dance tune pure and simple. The " menuetto " of Beethoven's first symphony is less like a minuet than like a scherzo. It is the first foreshadowing of those magnificent and characteristic movements that form the third parts of the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth sym- the same as that of the first and second. In the EUIith he employs (in parts) the full conventional modern orchestra : Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, one contra bassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tympani, and strings. ii8 THE STORY 01< MUSIC. phonies, the sonata, opus io6, and the first of the Rassomouffsky quartets. One small, but peculiar, feature of Beetho- ven's style I wish to mention here ; that is, the fact that so many of his melodies con sist of con- secutive notes. It is simply marvellous to no- tice what tremendous effects this man could get out of a mere scale. Some of the noblest themes he has written are constructed in this manner, such as the scherzo and finale of the ninth sym- phony, that of the choral fantasia, the slow movements of the B-flat symphony and B-flat trio, the adagio to the quartet, opus 127, and others. It is related of him that he once im- provised a finished composition on a theme, given him by Vogel, which consisted of the scale of C major, three bars, alia breve (two minims to a bar). He followed the same plan in the minuet of the first symphony, using the scale of G major. Beethoven wrote vjariatigns often, and he wrote them as no other master ever has done, either before or since his time. As Grove says : " His favorite plan is to preserve the harmonic THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. II9 basis of the theme and to modify and embellish the melody." In another and higher form of his variations " everything undergoes a change — rhythm, melody, and harmony — and yet the individual theme remains clearly present." This is really a species of thematic development, something new being openly and visibly man- ufactured out of prepared material. " In no other form than that of the variation," says Edward Dannreuther, " does Beethoven's crea- tive power appear more wonderful, and its effect on art more difificult to measure." Beethoven has been often criticised as the inventor of music with labels attached to it — in other words, " programme music." This is not true. Bach left a sonata describing the departure of his brother. There are also two symphonies by Knecht, with programme ti- tles, which resemble Beethoven's " Pastoral " in style. Beethoven wrote a number of pro- gramme compositions, of which the chief is the pastoral symphony. In the programme of the concert of December 22, 1808, at which this work was made known, the composer published the title as follows : " Pastoral Symphonic : mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung .als Malerei " — " more an expression of emotion than portrait- ure." This is proof positive that the great I20 THE STORY OF MUSIC. master had considered the true use and aim o\ programme music. It is hardly necessary, in these days, to enter into any account of the sesthetic value of Beetho- ven's music. His supremacy has long been ac- knowledged, and the world admits that he is one of its moral teachers. I can offer no better tribute to the master of absolute music than by quoting once more from the fine words of Mr. Edward Dannreuther : " While listening to such works as the overture to ' Leonora,' the Sin- fonia Eroica, or the Ninth Symphony, we feel that we are in the presence of something far wider and higher than the mere development of musical themes. ... A religious passion and elevation are present in the utterances. The mental and moral horizon of the music grows upon us with each renewed hearing. The dif- ferent mqvements^T^like the different particles of each movement — have as close a connection with one another as the acts of a tragedy, and a char- acteristic significance to be understood only in relation to the whole ; each work is in the full sense of the word a revelation. Beethoven speaks a language no one has spoken before, and treats of things no one has dreamt of before ; yet it seems as though he were speaking of mat- ters long familiar, in one's mother tongue ; as THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 121 though he touched upon emotions one had lived through in some former existence. . . . The warmth and depth of his ethical sentiment is now felt all the world over, and it will ere long be universally recognized that he has leavened and widened the sphere of men's emotions in a manner akin to that in which the conceptions of great philosophers and poets have widened the sphere of men's intellectual activity." Wherever the works of Beethoven have been played and their spirit comprehended, I think there cannot be one moment's dissent from these admirable lines. Let me now say a few words in regard to Beethoven's relation to his suc- cessors. Two schools have claimed the mighty Ludwig. As Naumann remarks : " He repre- sents the consummation of two phases of the tonal art — the classic and the romantic — and both sections clamorously insist that he is the ideal embodiment of their special tendencies." One book has already been written on this topic, and I am not going to write another. But a few words must be said in regard to it. And a few words must first be said in regard to the romantic school. The opinion has been ex- pressed that all the instrumental composers since Beethoven were mere tone-colorists. The absurdity of this statement is self-evident to all 122 THE STORY OF MUSIC. who are acquainted with the works of the six great lights of the romantic school — Weber, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Wag- ner. I am compelled to include Liszt because he invented a new form, and to omit Berlioz for reasons which will be given. Now what is the spiritual essence of the romantic school ? Its masters have been much abused for their vio- lence, self-assertion, stormy passion, disregard of musical law, and tremendous demands upon the intellects of their hearers. The distinctive q uality o f the music of this school is its sub- jectivity. It produces introspective music. It looks into the soul, and undertakes not exactly to picture what passes there, but to produce in the hearer a similar train of emotions. It strives not so much to represent to the mind the beauty and grandeur of the world as to lead the mind into the condition which that beauty and gran- deur ought to produce. But it goes still further. In the domain of absolute music the romantic school seeks to build an invisible bond between the soul of the composer and that of the hearer, so that both shall experience the same emotions. Music can not definitely express emotion ; but it can produce i_t^ and to open a certain channel of emotional experience through which the hearer shall enter into the same current of thought and THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 1 23 feeling as the composer has passed through in the construction of his work is the aim of the modern school of romantic music. In opera the principle is the same, but the application differ- ent. The composer here seeks to place the hearer under the spell of the emotions of his characters, not of himself. No means that can lead to these ends are neglected. Sometimes we have a mystic and indefinite style, as in Chopin's works ; again, where the emotional conditions are less complex, and more com- pletely the result of external influence, we have the purest of material tone-painting, as in the " Waldweben " of Siegfried* Now I hold that Beethoven is as truly the father of the romantic school as he was the cul- mination of the classic. He bade farewell to objective music when he wrote the C-minor symphony, and in the ninth he indubitably pro- claimed himself an exponent of the internal world. The tendency of all truly great com- posers since his time has been toward subjectiv- ity, toward introspection. Whenever you hear a modern composition in which there appears to you to be something lacking, with which you * I must not be misunderstood here. I do not refer to Sieg- fried's whole scene in the forest, but solely to the instrumental passage known as the " Waldweben." 124 THE STORY OF MUSIC. do not find yourself moved, and with whose spirit you do not feel that you can become en rapport, be sure that one of two things is true : Either the composer has failed to construct his composition in strict accord with a natural series of emotional conditions, or he has constructed it without any genuine emotion at all. Mendelssohn has been classed as a romantic composer, and it is beyond question that his work shows the influence of that school. But the distinguishing qualities of his work are re- finement, elegance, grace, and tastefulness, and an adherence to classic form. On the other hand, Schubert has been set down as a classical composer; but I fail to perceive how anyone can hear " Der Erl-Konig" or "Der Wanderer" without recognizing that in this man's especial field, the art song, he was unquestionably a ro- manticist of the highest order. Schumann and Chopin were of the romantic school by the irre- sistible force of their own natures. Schumann made no new forms, but he never wrote a phrase that did not seek to convey certain emo- tions from his own soul to that of his hearer. Chopin's romanticism is beyond doubt, and his marvellous originality is equally so. I think no one but Wagner has surpassed him in originality. As for Liszt, I can only say for him that while THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. I2S he seems to me to be undoubtedly the weakest of the romanticists, and the one most certainly destined to oblivion, he has a claim to some honor for having invented their one distinctive form — the symphonic poem. This new thing in music is based upon the postulate that there is no break in a succession of emotional states. It, therefore, discards the symphonic succession of separated movements, and endeavors to pre- sent a closely connected, uninterrupted train of emotions appropriate to a series of events al- ready made known to the hearer by a poem, story, or play. It is not, or ought not to be, the object of the composition to tell the story. That is attempting to go beyond the domain of music. The composition should aim at the transfer of emotion from the composer to the hearer. The best of Liszt's symphonic poems is " Les Preludes," which has no story at all. I can only add here that the greatest symphonic poems have yet to come. A step toward them has been made by Philip Scharwenka in his noble fantasia for orchestra, " Liebesnacht." The composer does not call it a symphonic poem, but it is one. The reason why Liszt's symphonic poems are not great is that they descend too frequently into a mere material representation of externals. 126 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Berlioz, Rubinstein, Raff, and others of the same calibre in the romantic school miss great- ness from this same lack of spirituality. I feel sure that the judgment of the future will allot these men a distinctive position as accomplished tone-colorists, as talented musical landscape painters, while it will acknowledge the others as poets of the soul. Richard Wagner is the sol- itary composer since Beethoven who has shown the wide ability to embrace a complete mastery of external representation and internal revela- tion. The standard of composition set up by Beethoven when he proclaimed that his Pas- toral symphony was rather an expression of emotion than mere portraiture is the true one for programme music. The outward world is to be absorbed by the soul and its effect upon the spirit is to be revealed by music. Beyond programme music, however, stand the illimitable realms of absolute music without programme and of the music-drama. In these departments the entire psychic experience of humanity is offered to the composer. There is an illimitable supply of inspiration for the symphonist through con- stant study and revelation of his own emotional life, and for the music-dramatist in projecting the results of that study by the aid of the imag- ination upon a dramatic canvas. The transcen- THE GREAT INSTRUMENTAL WRITERS. 127 dent genius of Beethoven has convinced the entire world that the supreme language of the soul is music. He was the master epic poet of the tonal art. He was the Milton of music, just as Wagner was the Shakespeare — the one un- equalled in the epic field, the other unap- proached in the dramatic. The future may pro- duce a composer of absolute music who will surpass Beethoven in expression ; it cannot pro- duce one who will surpass him in the length and breadth and depth of his ethical revolution in our art. The world of fashion still demands, as it always has, that music should be nothing but a " concourse of sweet sounds." In the presence of Beethoven, as in the presence of Wagner, the worshippers of Mammon stand abashed. The tinsel and the glare of frivolity fall before the solemn majesty of this celestial spirit. Centuries were required for the manufacture of our musical materials. Then came the long series of composers, terminating with Haydn, who were engaged in the elaboration of a stand- ard instrumental form. Haydn established it, and used it as a medium for the publication of his clear, genial ideas, which had chiefly their pleasant humor and euphonious melody to com- mend them. Mozart improved the form, and employed it for the expression of a variety of 128 THE STORY OF MUSIC. moods, which were never so overwhelming in power as to cause him to sacrifice to them the clearness and symmetry of the form and the rounded beauty of his melody. Beethoven re- moved the one weak part of the form, the min- uet, and substituted the scherzo; and he em- ployed the now perfect whole as a medium for the expression of the great, tragic, elemental feelings of his kind, the love, the passion, the fierce joy, and the measureless woe of man. He made his symphony the " cry of the human," and the obtrusiveness of the form, together with the individuality of the composer, is swallowed up in the universality of the divine thoughts. We cannot do better than pause here, with the last words of Richard Wagner's splendid essay on Beethoven : " Let us then celebrate the great pathfinder in the wilderness of the degenerated Paradise. But let us celebrate him worthily . . . for to the benefactor of the world still belongs the precedence before the world-con- queror." CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. We considered music, in the concluding part of the last chapter, as the medium of human emotion. In its absolute form we saw the tonal art reach the magnificent elevation of the Beet- hoven symphony, and we were of the opinion that not for many years, perhaps centuries, would it rise to loftier heights. The recent productions of Wagner and of Verdi are grounds for the belief that the most important develop- ments of music in the future will be in the do- main of opera. To view our art in its business relations, the opera offers far more dazzling in- ducements to the composer than any other de- partment of composition. Success, when at- tained, is more swift, more brilliant, more uni- versal, and more profitable. It is reasonable to expect, then, that the majority of composers, having the successful reformatory achievements of Wagner as an incentive and a guide, will fol- 9 I30 THE STORY OF MUSIC. low the path which he has pointed out rather than seek to build symphonies after the unap- proachable manner of Beethoven. An opera much less admirable than the least noble of Wagner's will repay its composer in fame and wealth far more than a fine symphony. This is not art ; it is business. I desire now to trace briefly the growth of opera down to the present period. We reviewed its foundation in the second chapter. You are now to see that the history of opera has been a series of contests for supremacy between true dra- matic composition and vocal technique — a war that will end in peace only by the establishment of an indissoluble confederation between the con- tending parties. You have seen that the invent- ors of opera sought to reproduce the true musical declamation of the Greeks. The cultivation of singing and the public admiration for brilliant vo- cal accomplishments speedily led to the obscure- ment of the true purpose of opera, and compos- ers were forced to write for the singers. Gluck, as we shall see, made the first determined stand against the supremacy of the singer, and, after a stormy struggle, convinced the world that operas of true dramatic significance and absolute tonal beauty could be written. Mozart's labors were not reformatory, but his best works are examples THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 131 of genuine dramatic opera. But again Italy, with its matchless voices and superb vocal meth- ods, came to the front, and the triumph of vocal technique over dramatic truth culminated in the works of Bellini and Donizetti and the early productions of Verdi. Then arose the latest genius whose devotion to honest art compelled him to seek once again for the true dramatic recitative ; and in the works of Wagner we have it revealed to us in a new form, but with the old spirit. And now Verdi, the most gifted of Italy's later composers, a man whose position in musical history cannot yet be established, though it is unquestionably underestimated by the Ger- man extremists — Verdi has thrown over the en- tire apparatus of the old Italian system and has written operas in which he has striven to impart true dramatic significance to the arioso style. This is the first effort of the kind that has been made in Italy since the days of Claudio Monte- verde, and I regard it as a matter of great im- portance. Let us go back now, and briefly review the history of opera down to the period of Gluck's labors. We have seen how Monteverde labored to make the music of his operas a truthful illus- tration of the text. He spared no labor that could conduce to this end. His development of 133 THE STORY OF MUSIC. instrumental resources was surprising at that early period. He strove to make use of the characteristic qualities of the various instru- ments and introduced innovations which so as- tounded the members of his orchestra that they refused to play them. Among these were the pizzicato and the tremolo of stringed instru- ments. We have seen how Italian opera imme- diately after Monteverde's death began to de- scend from its high purposes. We have seen how Alessandro Scarlatti, an accomplished singer and a celebrated teacher, wrote for the singer rather than the poet. The singer speedily be- came the chief power in Italian opera. It was not the composition the public went to hear, but the vocalist ; and everything was done to give the principal singers opportunities to dis- play their powers. The course of vocal training was something that would appall an ambitious soprano of to-day. The following story I quote verbatim from the pages of Fetis' " Music Ex- plained to the World." " Porpora, one of the most illustrious masters of Italy, conceived a friendship for a young pu- pil, and asked him if he had courage to persevere with constancy in the course which he should mark out for him, however wearisome it might seem. Upon his answering in the affirmative, THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 133 the master noted, upon a single page of ruled paper, the diatonic and chromatic scales, ascend- ing and descending, the intervals of third, fourth, fifth, etc., in order to teach him to take them with freedom, and to sustain the sounds, to- gether with trills, groups, appogiaturas, and pas- sages of vocalization of different kinds. " This page occupied both the master and scholar during an entire year, and the year fol- lowing was also devoted to it. When the third year commenced, nothing was said of changing the lesson, and the pupil began to murmur ; but the master reminded him of his promise. The fourth year slipped away, the fifth followed, and always the same eternal page. The sixth year found them at the same task, but the master added to it some lessons in articulation, pro- nunciation, and lastly in declamation. At the end of this year the pupil, who still supposed himself in the elements, was much surprised when his master said to him : ' Go, my son ; you have nothing more to learn ; you are the first singer of Italy, and of the world.' He spoke the truth, for this singer was Caffarelli." Though this story is an exaggeration, it illus- trates the fact that there was little question of dramatic ability, of intellectual elevation. Not much was required of the singer beyond the 134 THE STORY OF MUSIC. most marvellous vocal accomplishments ; and when we examine the prodigiously difficult or- namental passages sung with ease by the famous male sopranists CafEarelli, Farinelli, and Senesino, we realize that vocal art in the early part of the eighteenth century attained a state of perfection which it has never reached since that time. The inevitable result of this surprising vocal perfection was that the singer became monarch of the operatic realm, and the composer was re- legated to a secondary place — precisely the con- ditions which the extreme opponents of Wag- ner are demanding to-day. During the greater part of the eighteenth century the composer was under iron rules. He could not even distribute the voices as he chose. The proper number of persons for an opera was six — three women and three men. And the men were always either sopranists or tenors. If a fourth man was intro- duced in an opera, he was permitted to be a bass. In Handel's " Teseo " all the principal singers were sopranos and contraltos ; there was no baritone, bass, or tenor. Furthermore, the forms of the arias were laid down by the law of custom. The opera-goers knew the rules and resented any attempt at in- novation. These arias were divided into five classes ; though each had a first and second part, THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 135 and Da Capo. The five different brands of mu- sical fireworks were the aria cantabile, the aria di portamento, the aria di inezzo carattere, the aria parlante, and the aria di bravura. The aria cantabile was a slow movement with a touch of pathos. The aria di portamento was also slow, but it possessed a more measured style and a more symmetrical melody than the former kind. The aria parlante had a declamatory character and was suitable to moments of dramatic pas- sion. The aria di bravura was of the famil- iar " Lucia " mad-scene style and was intended simply to display the singer's agility. Further laws of the time required that every scene in an opera should end with an aria. Each principal singer was entitled to one aria in each act ; but no vocalist was allowed to sing two arias in suc- cession, nor might two arias of the same style succeed one another, though allotted to different performers. In the second and third acts the hero and the heroine were each entitled to one grand scena followed by an aria di bravura. Moreover, the same two persons had to be sup- plied with one grand duo. The third act — the last — ended with a chorus and dance. No trios, quartets, or other concerted numbers were per- mitted ; and I cannot see how they could be, for the singer who had the principal part would 136 THE STORY OF MUSIC, have been promptly murdered by those who could not have it. No wonder that the mighty genius of Handel found the operatic climate uncongenial and re- fused to flourish in it. I do not mean to say that there is not much fine music in Handel's operas. That would be a foolish statement. Handel was too honest an artist not to see the folly of the operatic system of his day. He strove to break the barriers set up by the absurd rules of the time ; but it was impossible for him single-handed to conquer the power of popular singers and public prejudice. The great sopra- nist Senesino quarrelled with Handel and went over to the opposition, which also secured Fari- nelli. Handel was forced to retire from the field of opera. Yet we can only wonder what these singers expected ; for surely no composer of that time in England could have written for them better arias with more opportunities for display than Handel. But he had the temerity in some of his works to write two arias in succes- sion for one singer, and to introduce quartets. The princely potentates of song exiled him from the domain of opera ; and he found an ever- lasting revenge in becoming the composer of the immortal " Messiah." The labors of Alessandro Scarlatti were, to a THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 1^7 large extent, contemporaneous with those of Handel, and his pupils spread his methods and style abroad. Leonardo Leo (1694- 1746) and Francesco Durante (1684-1755) were two of his most noted disciples, while Nicola Piccini (1724 -1800) carried Scarlatti's style into France and competed against Gluck with no small success. The Neapolitan school of opera-writers, founded by Scarlatti, lasted till the beginning of the present century and numbered among its mas- ters such men as Pergolesi, Jomelli, Sacchini, Paisiello, and Cimarosa. In Rome, Bologna, and Venice such writers as Steffani, Lotti, Mar- cello, and Buononcini cultivated the Neapoli- tan style, and even in Germany it was supreme. In Vienna Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1732), who wrote a celebrated theoretical treatise called Gradus ad Parnassum, was the chief spirit, while in Berlin there was Carl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759), in Munich, Johann Kaspar Kerl (1628-1693), and in Dresden, Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783). The German cities were full of Italian singers, conductors, and com- posers, and the entire continent of Europe was expending its musical talent on the cultivation of the aria, which was held to be the central sun of the operatic system. Everything that we now regard as essential to dramatic truth was 138 THE STORY OF MUSIC. then sacrificed to the desire for mere sweetness of sound and the overwhelming authority of the inflated singers. The Neapolitan style culmi- nated in Rossini, of whom I shall have to speak later. It was in 1762 that a German, Christopher Willibald Gluck, made the first determined stand against the prevalent style of opera. His battles might have been fought in vain had it not been for the tremendous influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his philosophy of enlight- enment. Men had been so artificial in their ideas that the approved style of landscape gardening had been that in which the trees were clipped into fantastic forms instead of being permitted to assume their natural shapes. Rousseau and his followers preached what they called the gos- pel of nature. They carried their belief in the unrestrained exercise of impulse as far as their predecessors went in artificial restraint. It was this new philosophy that made the path clear for Gluck, and Rousseau was one of his firmest defenders. I need not enter into any account of the struggle of the great chevalier for recog- nition, nor need I tell you how he finally tri- umphed over Piccini, who was set up as his rival by the opposing party. You can read an account of this operatic war in any musical his- THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 1 39 tory or any biography of Gluck. What I wish to do is to call your attention to what Gluck's theories were and to his manner of applying them. The most direct and satisfactory method of doing this will be to quote some passages from the dedicatory epistle prefixed to the com- poser's " Alceste." " I endeavored," he says, " to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of the situations without interrupt- ing the action, or weakening it by superfluous ornament. My idea was that the relation of music to poetry was much the same as that of harmonious coloring and well disposed light and shade to an accurate drawing, which animates the figures without altering their outlines. . . . My idea was that the overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are about to see ; that the instruments ought to be intro- duced in proportion to the degree of interest and passion in the words ; and that it was nec- essary above all to avoid making too great a dis- parity between the recitative and the air of a dialogue, so as not to break the sense of a period or awkwardly interrupt the movement and ani- mation of a scene. I also thought that my I40 THE STORY OF MUSIC. chief endeavor should be to attain a grand sim- plicity; and consequently I have avoided mak- ing a parade of difficulties at the cost of clear- ness." You will understand from these passages that Gluck's creed was, that the office of music was not simply to please the ear, but to minister to the intellect ; and he saw that in the lyric drama the only way to do this was by making his music faithfully illustrate the text. In short, he went back to the principles laid down by Jacopo Peri, the founder of opera ; but he reinforced these laws with the improved material of an advanced stage of musical art. His reforms in opera were as radical as those of Wagner. The Italian opera of his time had just as little honesty of art and sincerity of dramatic purpose as that of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini. Gluck's prede- cessors wrote for the singers. Gluck wrote for the poet, and never sacrificed dramatic signifi- cance to vocal display, nor wrote tune for tune's sake only. Yet his operas are full of truly in- spired melodies, such as the famous " Che faro," and his instrumentation lifted the orchestra to an importance in opera previously unthought of. His sweeping changes met with quite as much opposition as those of Wagner. The public had learned to regard the opera as a place THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. I4I of fashionable amusement, and resented any attempt to restore it to its rightful position as a serious art form. But Gluck's triumph was complete, and his principles were acknowl- edged by all thinking people to be the true ones.* Gluck's " Orfeo," which still holds the stage, was produced in Vienna, in 1762, and one of the features which astonished the opera-goers of that city was the appearance of the chorus as a factor in the action of the work, and not as a mere musical background. The original score bears the significant title, " Orfeo, Drama per Musica in due Atti," the old title Opera Seria, being purposely laid aside. In " Alceste," produced in 1767, the music was still more serious, and no concessions were made to the popular taste of the day. The opponents of the re- formatory music bitterly complained that they were compelled to pay two florins " to be passionately excited and thrilled instead of * You are not to infer from this that old-fashioned opera died and had to be resuscitated. The majority of the human race does not lilce to thinlc, but prefers to be amused ; and so the com- posers of ear-tickling and meaningless music continued to flour- ish. Cimarosa (1749-1801) wrote Italian comic operas, which were somewhat better than those of his predecessors because he made effective use of concerted numbers, which he wrote with taste and judgment. 142 THE STORY OF MUSIC. being amused." Gluck's " Iphig6nie in Au- lide " was produced in Paris in 1774, and his " Iphigdnie in Tauride " in 1779. A complete triumph of his principles among intellectual people followed. " Gluck's place in musical history is peculiar and well-marked," says one of his biographers. " He entered the field of operatic composition when it was hampered with a great variety of dry forms, and utterly without soul and poetic spirit. The object of the composers seemed to be to show mere contrapuntal learning, or to furnish singers opportunity to display vocal agility. The opera, as a large and symmetrical expression of human emotions, suggested in the collisions of a dramatic story, was an utterly unknown quantity in art. Gluck's attention was early called to this radical inconsistency ; and though he did not learn for many years to develop his musical ideas according to a theory, and never carried that theory to the logical re- sults insisted on by his great after-type, Wagner, he accomplished much in the way of sweeping reform. He elaborated the recitative or de- clamatory element in opera with great care, and insisted that his singers should make this the object of their most careful efforts. The arias, duos, quartets, etc., as well as the choruses and THE FIRST OPERATIC REFORMATION. 143 orchestral parts, were made consistent with the dramatic motive and situations. In a word, Gluck aimed with a single-hearted purpose to make music the expression of poetry and senti- ment." CHAPTER VII. FROM MOZART TO VERDI. We now come to Mozart, whose chief works are " Idomeneo," " Cosi fan tutte," " La Cle- menzo di Tito," " Le Nozze di Figaro," and " Don Giovanni," all Italian operas, and " Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail " and " Die Zauber- fiote," German operas. Mozart in early life made himself a consummate master of counterpoint, and when he came to write his great operas, this study was of immense advantage to him ; for it enabled him not only to write concerted pieces better than they had ever been written before, but to develop the orchestral accompa- niment wonderfully. His genius for melody was supplemented by an instinctive apprecia- tion of the dramatic significance of a situation to which he was never untrue. The result was that he was able to produce melodies which were at once beautiful and faithful to the mean- ing of the text. FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 145 It is generally conceded that Mozart's weak- er works owe their inferiority to the wretched libretti. The dramatic instinct of the man was so strong that, while he wrote in conventional forms, his inspiration was under the direct con- trol of the text. On this point nothing better can be said than Richard Wagner's remark : " Oh, how inexpressibly I prize and honor Mo- zart in that he found it impossible to write the same kind of music for ' Titus ' as for ' Don Juan,' for ' Cosi fan Tutte ' as for ' Figaro ! ' How music would have been debased thereby 1 A sprightly, frivolous poet handed him his airs, duets, and ensembles to compose, and according to the warmth with which they inspired him, he set them to the music which would endow them with the fullest amount of expression that they were capable of." He did not disdain to make use of the forms of earlier writers, but he imbued the concerted number, developed by Cimarosa, and the finale, raised to importance by Piccini, with dramatic significance, while at the same time he elabo- rated them in a new and surprising manner. The two concerted finales in " Le Nozze di Fi- garo " contain respectively nine and seven move- ments, and those in " Don Giovanni " eleven ; yet these are so joined that they form a complete 146 THE STORY OF MUSIC. and symmetrical whole like the movements of a Beethoven symphony. His instrumentation made the orchestral accompaniment wonderfully rich in expression. Gretry, the French com- poser, told Napoleon that Cimarosa placed his statue on the stage and his pedestal in the or- chestra, while Mozart placed the statue in the orchestra and the pedestal on the stage ; there- by signifying that Cimarosa knew how to con- struct an opera better than Mozart. I do not know what M. Gretry would have said about a Wagner music drama, but the world has ex- pressed its opinion of his comparison of Cima- rosa and Mozart by forgetting the former and continuing to love and reverence the latter. Mozart did not use his orchestra simply as a means of support for the voices ; he gave it a part in the illustration of the text. His accom- paniments are thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the scene, though we do not always hear them performed as he wrote them. His admirable use of the trombones to accompany the recitative of the statue in " Don Giovanni " is one of his best examples of instrumental ef- fect ; but we do not quite appreciate it when we have heard the thunder of trombones, not called for by Mozart, in all the previous forte passages. Through his skill in writing for the human FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 14/ voice Mozart proved himself the master of all contemporaneous and previous Italian opera composers in their own special department ; for he showed that it was possible to write music that should be at once singable and dramatically truthful. Mozart did not aspire to be a re- former, like Gluck ; but his divine genius and his unfailing dramatic intuitions forced him to fill the old forms with new meaning. He studied the Italian art of song thoroughly, and though we occasionally find numbers in his operas that lean toward mere virtuosity, owing to the fact that he sometimes wrote to meet the demands of the singers, they are never frivolous nor empty, but always good music. He took the extant Italian aria and put a soul into it. In his con- certed pieces every character has its own dis- tinctive melody, and all are woven together with masterly contrapuntal skill. The salient char- acteristics of Mozart's Italian operas are their truthful and varied expression of human nature in all its aspects ; and this is wholly achieved by the music, for Mozart used the libretto merely as a skeleton which he covered with flesh and imbued with spirit.* * I have spoken elsewhere of the possibilities that were in Mozart's genius, had he lived longer. His widow died in 1842. " Der Freischiitz " was produced in 1821. Suppose Mozart had 148 THE STORY OF MUSIC. He lifted German opera to the same high plane of excellence. His " Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail " is a work in which he applied to the German lyric stage the same methods as he had already applied to the Italian. He followed this work with " Der Schauspieldirektor," and later with " Die Zauberflote," an opera whose music ranks among the finest ever written, but which is sadly marred by its inane libretto. Mozart's treatment of the orchestra in this opera deserves especial notice. Jahn says : " It is not, as in ' Figaro ' and ' Don Giovanni,' em- ployed for delicate details of characterization, nor is it, as in ' Cosl fan Tutte,' replete with euphonious charm. It has here a double part : in that portion of the opera which represents purely human emotion the orchestra is free and independent in movement, but easy and simple in construction ; while for the mystic element of the story it has quite another charac- ter. Unusual means, such as trombones and basset-horns, are employed for the production of weird and unusual effects, while through all the been living then and liis genius had come under the influence of the romantic movement, what might he not have done ? He would have been sixty-five years old. Verdi's '' Aida " was produced when the composer was fifty-nine, and his '' Otello "when he was seventy-four. FROM MOZART TO VERDT. 149 delicate gradations of light and shade, from melancholy gravity to brilliant pomp, the im- pression of dignity and solemnity is maintained and the hearer is transported to a sphere beyond all earthly passion. Not only are the hitherto unsuspected forces of the orchestra here brought into play, but its power of characterization is for the first time made fully manifest, and the ' Zauberflote ' is the point of departure for all that modern music has achieved in this direction." The particular importance of " Die Zauber- flote," according to the same author, arises from its being the first German opera in which all the resources of art were brought to bear by a genius. " The influence which it has excited in the formation of German music can be disre- garded by no one who has an eye for the devel- opment of art." Beethoven was never a slave to the glamour of the footlights. He probably would never have written an opera had not the managers of the Theatre an der Wien made him an offer to do so. Having accepted the offer the mighty Ludwig approached his labor, as he approached all musical production, in a spirit of intense de- votion. The result was that though we now know that Beethoven was a symphonist rather than a lyricist, we might, had he written noth- ISO THE STORY OF MUSIC. ing but " Fidelio " and its grand overtures, have regarded him as a second Gluck ; for the con- queror of Piccini never produced an opera in which is shown greater devotion to dramatic truth. The theoretical principles upon which Beethoven's " Fidelio " is founded are precisely the same as those which underlie Gluck's " Al- ceste." In his mature works, however, Gluck often sacrificed beauty to dramatic expression ; Beethoven, like Mozart, was successful in com- bining the two. " Fidelio " has, therefore, be- come immortal. " Fidelio " stands alone in its greatness in this period of operatic development, but we must pause a moment to consider the labors of Che- rubini, an Italian composer identified with the French stage, who after writing in the meaning- less fashion of his native land for years, produced in 1 79 1 his " Lodoiska," in which he revealed himself in an entirely new light. He began now to write in a manner thoroughly original, but based on the theories of Gluck. Beethoven had a great admiration for Cherubini, and spoke of him as one of the greatest living writers for the stage. Cherubini's choice of subjects for operas was much like that of Beethoven, and this has been attributed to a similarity of ideas between the two composers. Certain it is that Cheru- FROM MOZART TO VERDI. \^\ bini's really dramatic works are constructed on the same foundations as the operas of LuUi and Gluck, and were in the direct line of develop- ment of the French opera. We have now reached the birth of the roman- tic movement in opera — that emotional upheaval which has given us " Der Freischiitz," " Eury- anthe," and the Nibelungen tetralogy. It is to Karl Maria von Weber that we owe this move- ment, though some writers are inclined to exalt the claims of Ludwig Spohr, who wrote " Faust,'' " Jessonda," and other operas. " Der Frei- schiitz," however, was the first work of the school that fully realized its ideals and was accepted by the public as a revelation. Naumann, in his history, draws a delightful picture of the manifest joy of the German music-lovers when they real- ized that a new opera had been written which was thoroughly German in spirit. They did not at first appreciate the importance of the new field of fancy which had been opened up by Weber. The romantic element had made its appear- ance in German poetry early in the nineteenth century. The reading public was heartily tired of the pompous heroes of olden times, and when the poets took up the folk-lore of the people, with all its contrasting features of sim- 153 THE STORY OF MUSIC. pie peasant life and weird beings of excited im- aginations, its blue-eyed maidens and its head- less horsemen, its peaceful valleys and its haunted mountains, the public welcomed with delight their picturesque reproductions of the offspring of the soil. It was not long before this new poetry found its fitting mate in music, whose broad command of dramatic effects was so suitable to the delineation of this imaginative world. Weber's " Der Freischiitz " has been criticised as being so purely German in spirit as to lack the universality which is a necessary trait of a master work. The color of " Der Frei- schiitz " certainly is local ; but the human traits depicted in it — the superstition, the hunger for supernatural assistance, the morbid imagination, and the elemental passions — are not confined to any nation nor to any age, but are as general as the human race. The plot of the opera consists of a very simple love story, surrounded by a net- work of supernatural incidents. The heroine is a simple-minded, pious maiden ; the hero an honest fellow, who is a type of the weak and superstitious peasant. Caspar is an unnatural man, the sort of dreadful person that the igno- rant country people would expect a man to be who was in the habit of hob-nobbing with demons, flirting with witches, going to Walpur- FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 153 gis-night parties, and sleeping off the effects of his dissipation in the heart of the Black Forest. Weber has depicted the different personages of the drama in truly illustrative music. Agatha's measures convey to us a forcible idea of her pur- ity and simplicity. Max's weakness and vacil- lation are noticeable at all times, while Caspar's unnatural recklessness rings through all his music. There is a fine distinction between the styles of the music allotted to the peasants and the Wild Huntsman's followers. The overture, too, is a masterpiece of instrumental description. In " Euryanthe " Weber revived the glories of chivalry and put before the world a romantic picture of mediaeval pageantry. But you will find no lack of fidelity to nature in this opera. The incidents are as vital and actual through the composer's faithful musical exposition of them as if they had taken place yesterday. This is paying a high tribute to the genius of Weber, for no composer was ever hampered by worse rubbish than the libretto which that conceited and prudish old blue-stocking, Hel- mina von Chezy, manufactured out of the old legend called " Histoire de G6rard de Nevers et de la belle et verteuse Euryanthe, sa mie." Weber's music makes us cease to wonder at Beethoven's hailing him as a " devil of a fel- 154 THE STORY OF MUSIC. low." Dramatic intensity and marvellous wealth of expressiveness are combined with delightful fluency of melody and symmetry of form. In- deed, the perfect manner in which the music fits the dramatic and undramatic situations of the opera has resisted all attempts at altering the libretto. I have already described the charac- teristics of the romantic school of music. It is only necessary to add that Weber was not only its first, but one of its brightest lights. From him all the succeeding composers of the school have drawn inspiration. Richard Wagner glad- ly acknowledged the debt he owed the com- poser of " Der Freischiitz " and was proud to preside at the final interment of his remains in Dresden in 1844. Of Spohr it is only necessary to say that his music presents one feature now prominent in the romantic school. I refer to the masterly command over the intricacies of chromatic and enharmonic modulations. Weber in the con- struction of his principal subjects and melodies confined himself largely to the diatonic scale. Spohr's manner led to richer forms of expres- sion, which you will find are used with match- less skill and expressiveness in " Tristan und Isolde." Of the minor celebrities of the roman- tic German school, such as Marschner, Ernst FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 155 Theodor Hoffmann, and Lindpaintner it is not worth while to speak here, for they have been but followers of the greater mind of Weber. I need only point out to you that Carl Goldmark, whose " Queen of Sheba " and " Merlin " have been performed with success, is one of the famil- iar living representatives of the school, Arrigo Boito, by his " Mefistofele," has also established a claim to high rank, and there are others whom I will not pause to mention. Richard Wagner was the second great light among the romanti- cists, being classed as one of the new romantic school ; but his manner differed so greatly from that of his predecessors that he may be said to constitute an entirely distinct wing of the ro- mantic army. He is reserved for consideration in the next and last chapter. Having thus disposed of Germany, let us return to Italy. At the first performance of Rossini's " Barber of Seville," Garcia, the great tenor, sang a Spanish song which did not please the audience, and Rossini proceeded the next day to make a change. Mr. H. Sutherland Ed- wards, well known as a writer on musical topics and as a biographer, says in his sketch of Rossini that this alteration gave him no trouble. " He simply transcribed," says Edwards, " for the solo voice the melody of the celebrated chorus which IS6 THE STORY OF MUSIC. had already figured first in ' Ciro in Babilonia' and afterward in ' Aureliano in Palmira.' Such was the origin of the beautiful ' Ecco ridente il cielo,' which he handed to Garcia as he wrote it, and which was sung the same evening. Those who believe in the absolute significance of music apart from words may be interested to hear that Almaviva's charming love-song was, as first com- posed, a prayer — as a love-song, after all, may well be." If you will consider for a moment the effect of using the pilgrims' chorus in " Tannhauser " as a serenade, or Siegmund's love-song as a chorus, you will not fail to perceive the immense gulf that separates the music drama of Richard Wagner from the opera of Rossini and his fol- lowers. Rossini spent the years in which he established his fame as a composer in writing music solely for the sake of effect. He com- posed tune for tune's sake alone, and he was willing to hide a simple and agreeable air be- hind a glare of vocal pyrotechnics for the sake of affording some clever singer an opportunity to bring down the house. Nevertheless during these years he made many improvements in the technical resources of Italian opera,^ particularly in the orchestral department. He abolished from the Italian stage the old-fashioned recita- FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 1 57 tivo secco, and in his " Otello " produced a work with recitative stromentato throughout. His instrumentation was a vast improvement on the work of his predecessors in Italy, and his em- ployment of four horns and clarinets in " Semi- ramide " and other orchestral devices in the same opera were at the time revelations. It is the fashion nowadays to decry Rossini, and I fully agree with those who hold that he was not a great genius. But it is folly to deny his extraordinary talent in the face of two such works as " II Barbiere " and " William Tell." Rossini had rare comic power and his " Barber of Seville " is one of the brightest, most tuneful, and most amusing comic operas ever written. Moreover, its music is written with a view to dramatic expression, and for this reason the work has a vitality not possessed by some of the composer's more serious operas. Rossini's masterpiece, "William Tell," was produced in Paris, August 3, 1829, when the composer was thirty-seven years of age, and it failed so signally that, although he lived till 1868, Rossini never wrote another opera. The influence of the French school is shown in " William Tell." The overture is not a hodge-podge, as in his earlier operas, but a truly dramatic and significant pre- lude, as faithful in purpose, though by no means IS8 THE STORY OF MUSIC. as lofty in thought or execution, as any one ol Wagner's introductions. You will find in this opera no more of the absurdities of the com- poser's first years, no hymn of thanksgiving set to a polonaise, no more cabalettas, no more Italian gallopades, no more commonplace worn- out phrases. There is a duet in the second act which is concert-room music, and the finale of the third act does not fit the situation ; but the work as a whole is a radical departure from the Italian opera style of its time. Rossini threw off the tinsel and glitter of his younger days and endeavored to produce something honestly dra- matic, and though he did not succeed in attain- ing the " grand simplicity " of Gluck, he cer- tainly gave the world a valuable opera. To us of the present day the chief faults of " William Tell " are its continuance of old forms essentially undramatic, such as the set trio or duet, the long protracted repetition of passages of text for the sake of vocal embellishment, and the oc- casional stoppage of the progress of not only the drama but also the music to admit the introduc- tion of cadenzas. These things were the airs and graces of the old style of opera, but since we have decided once again that the opera should be a lyric drama, there is no excuse for their ex- istence. FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 1 59 Rossini was the last great light of the Neapol- itan school, unless you agree with the extreme Wagnerites and set down Verdi as an equal- ly great offender. Donizetti and Bellini fol- lowed Rossini. Donizetti wrote nearly seventy operas, of which three are still performed much too frequently (" Lucia," " Lucrezia," and " La Favorita"). Mr. Sutherland Edwards narrates that when Donizetti's father finally consented to his becoming a professional musician, he pre- sented his son with an ivory ink-eraser. " Doni- zetti," says Mr. Edwards, " never went to work without the paternal scraper by his side. The fluent composer, however, had no occasion to make use of it for scratching out notes ; and it seems never to have occurred to him to strike out feeble passages, not to say entire pieces. What Donizetti's father should have given him was not a scraper, but a pair of scissors." I cordially agree with Mr. Edwards. I even go further. I am compelled to express my be- lief that if Donizetti's father had presented his son matches with which to burn his operas as fast as they were written, the progress of true dramatic art on the lyric stage would have been freed from some of its most serious obstacles. For Donizetti wrote tune solely and simply fof its own sake. He cared nothing whatever for l60 THE STORY OF MUSIC. dramatic significance, and had no more coHcep tion of the serious nature of his art than an oyster. His biographers and the Italianissimi combat such views with great indignation ; but their arguments are feeble against the evidence of the operas themselves. The finest thing Donizetti ever wrote is the noted finale in " Lucia." As music separately considered it is unquestionably an excellent piece of work, and any one may hear it with pleasure when it is well sung in the concert-room. Considered in connection with the dramatic situation it is ri- diculous. To ask us to believe that in an emo- tional crisis, such as would be brought about by the appearance of Edgardo at the signing of the contract, a large assemblage of persons, torn by conflicting passions, would stand still, and for six or eight minutes, in an elaborately artificial form of speech, harangue the audience, of whose existence they are supposed to be ignorant, is too much. But Donizetti does not stop there. In the next act he introduces to us Lucia de- mented, singing a slow waltz, covered all over with the most anxiously prepared and carefully executed fiorituri, which are always hailed by the hearers with demonstrations of ecstatic de- light, causing the young lady to come forward, bowing and smiling, to do it all over again. FROM MOZART TO VERDI. l6l Contrast this episode with the incoherent and broken utterances of Shakespeare's Ophelia in her mad scene, her wandering, disconnected thoughts, pathetic fancies, and snatches of simple folk-song, and you see at once how far removed is the work of a charlatan like Doni- zetti from that of a true poet. Before leaving this composer let me say that in his comic operas he shows to better advan- tage. " L'EHsir D'Amore " is a merry and agreeable work,* in which the light and melo- dious music is by no means ill suited to the scenes. The same thing may be said of some of Donizetti's other comic operas ; but he has no claims to rank with the great composers of opera. I promised at the beginning of this work to try to show you what each writer had contributed to the progress of our divine art. In speaking of Donizetti, however, I am com- pelled to show what he did to oppose that prog- ress. If all these things are true of Donizetti, what is to be said of the sugar-coated Bellini ? Even Emil Naumann, a German, posing as an un- biassed historian, finds much to praise in Bellini's compositions. He says that this composer in- vested his cantilena with a breath of romance. To my mind it is redolent of nothing but effemi- 1 62 THE STORY OF MUSIC, nate melancholy. Bellini unquestionably wrote for the singer. Few tenors have been able to sing the music of the role which he wrote for 'the high-voiced Rubini in " II Pirata." Again, Bellini was so anxious to make vocalization the prominent feature of his work that he reduced the orchestra to the position of a most humble and insignificant accompanist. I have only this to say in leaving the school of Rossini : During its existence there was a marvellous growth of instrumental and vocal virtuosity. Now no truth is taught more forci- bly by musical history than the fact that great virtuosity is an almost insurmountable obstacle to the progress of true art. The public loves to be surprised ; and as soon as players or singers appear who can astound their hearers by remark- able feats of technical agility, the composer be- comes a secondary personage and the music's poetry is consumed in its fireworks. The period in which Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini were the three chief lights of the Italian school was that in which flourished those singers most dis- tinguished for vocal facility since the days of Caffarelli and Farinelli. Among them I need mention only the sopranos Catalani, Pasta, Grisi, Persiani, Viardot, and Malibran, the con- tralto Alboni, the tenors Rubini and Duprez, FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 163 and the baritone Lablache. During the same period flourished also the violin virtuosi, Bru- netti, Viotti, and Paganini. The last Italian composer of opera who has attained celebrity is still living, and so also is the last prominent French opera writer. It would be interesting and profitable to enter into an extended consideration of the causes which led to the production of so excellent a work as Gounod's " Faust," and to endeavor to estimate its place in the literature of the stage. Gounod's masterpiece is a legitimate result of the general tendency of French opera since the days of Lulli and Rameau. The French school at its best has always sought to combine suave, flowing, and lofty melody, unhampered by vocal pyrotechnics of any sort, with dramatic expres- siveness. Gluck and his successors, among them M^hul, firmly fixed this as the direction of French operatic music. Gounod's " Faust," while unquestionably sacrificing much to the de- sire to please the majority, nevertheless pos- sesses dramatic continuity, and the music is ad- mirably expressive of the somewhat sentimental book. There are passages in " Faust," unhap- pily too few, such as the death of Valentine, and Marguerite' s scene with Mephistopheles in the cathedral, which seem to me to come nearer to II 1 64 THE STORY OF MUSIC. the ideal music drama than anything outside ol the best scenes in Wagner's works. I believe that the secret of the opera's hold upon the pub- lic is to be found in the combination of agree- able melody with dramatic power, and it seems to me that the work fails to reach real greatness and a permanent influence on operatic art only because of Gounod's concessions to the tawdry sentimentality and uneducated musical demands of the masses. As it is it stands alone, and its possible influence on the progress of our art has been overcome by that of the more important I'ecent work of Verdi. The composer of " Nabuco " and of " Otello " was one and the same man, though one would hardly believe it from such evidence as is af- forded by the two works. Verdi is another composer who spent a large part of his life in writing operas in the bad old-fashioned way, without any true artistic design, making music for the ear but not for the brain, and then in later years saw the error of his ways and proved to the world that he, too, could speak the accents of truth. Verdi's earlier operas, such as " Rigoletto " and " Ernani " display the ex- istence of rare vigor and power, together with a most fruitful melodic invention. There are many scenes in the works of his first and sec- FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 165 ond periods which show the presence of genu- ine dramatic feeling, misplaced and distorted by devotion to undramatic traditions. Again in these earlier operas we find noise and confusion in the orchestra offered us in place of expressive instrumentation, and our ears are everywhere saluted with the worn-out elementary rhythms of the Italian stage. To my mind one of the worst operas ever written is " U Trovatore." My objection to it is that it is a series of concert pieces, for whose execution the entire dramatic action is suspended. Yet these same concert pieces are full of melodic invention, they are eminently singable, and some of them have a certain vigor and warmth. It was when Verdi made his inventiveness, his vigor, and his warmth subservient to a genuine artistic pur- pose that he first revealed his great ability, and it is, therefore, as the composer of " Aida " and " Otello " that I prefer to consider him. " Aida " is a work of rare power, and indeed some of its scenes are vital with the eloquence of something very like true genius. The melodies are no longer founded on the worn-out rhythms of the Italian stage. The harmonies are of the richest and most complex character. The vocal parts are written with unfailing dramatic force. And the instrumentation is far in advance of 1 66 THE STORY QF MUSIC. anything before attempted in Italian opera. It is unquestionably Verdi's most inspired work, though not his most ambitious nor his most sin- cere. In " Aida " he does not abandon the old forms, but seeks to disguise them in original melodic and harmonic vesture and in a new reality of dramatic aspect. After " Aida " Verdi marked time till he brought before the world his masterly tragic opera, " Otello," based on the play of Shake- speare. The subject was not new in the field of the lyric drama, but it had been treated only in the old fashioned manner and it therefore re- mained for Verdi to point out clearly to his compatriots in particular and to the artistic world in general what might be accomplished by applying to the spoken drama the new methods of musical embodiment. The influence of his " Otello " on his successors, and chiefly on Puccini, has not been defined quite as clearly as it might have been, but it ought to be mani- fest to any one who thinks about it. " Otello " was produced in 1887 and it intro- duced a new period in Italian opera. In the first place the composer abandoned all the time- honored methods of parading his arias and ushering them before the audience with a pre- liminary proclamation of recitative. There are no formal instrumental introductions to the FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 167 monologues of the work, some of which, such as the " Credo " of lago, are arias in disguise. But these arias lack the formal and constrictive repetitions regarded as essential to the sym- metry of their forerunners in the operas of Verdi's early period. The purpose of the com- poser to treat such a number as the " Credo " as a soliloquy is as clearly shown as Shakespeare's in the soliloquy of Hamlet. lago's drinking song is a song and would have been so, even if used in a spoken drama. The " Ave Maria " and "Willow Song" of Desdemona are lyrics and we are expected to regard them as songs introduced into a play. Verdi named " Otello " a lyric drama and that is what it is. The single speeches are treated as speeches, not as songs, and the dialogue is pure dialogue, not duets or trios. Much of the score is in the modern style of arioso, a species of recitative in which the phrases are all melodic in character, but do not shape themselves into a complete tune. The orchestration is delineative throughout and is generally independent of the voices. It even rises to thrilling heights of de- scriptive power, as in the famous recitative of the basses which accompanies the entrance of Otello into Desdemona's chamber in the last act. There are no leading motives in the Wagne- rian sense, but certain melodic ideas are repeated 1 68 THE STORY OF MUSIC. with dramatic purpose. The libretto is one of the best productions of its type, being a remark- ably skilful adaptation of Shakespeare's text by Arrigo Boito (born 1842), himself the composer of a very fine opera, " Mefistofele," which is intensely modern in style. The music dramas of Wagner, which will be treated in the next chapter, had all been pro- duced before " Otello," and the charge was made that Verdi was greatly influenced by them. The Italian master's abandonment of the old patterns used in the design of the operas of his country and his development of the representative power of the orchestra were the only grounds on which the charge could rest, but he had already fore- shadowed both in his " Aida." It is doubtless true that the great Italian had his eye on the new movement in music, but he did not subor- dinate his own individuality, nor did he in any particular seek to rob his music of its distinctively Italian character. On the contrary he displayed his creative genius in its most splendid power by showing how all that had been restrictive of artistic growth in Italian opera could be put out of the way and the pure nationalism of it preserved. This he achieved by the logical process of writing the voice parts of his later works in a style wholly advantageous to the modern FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 169 singer. The development of the art of singing, particularly in the lyric drama, had proceeded from a state in which the utmost repose and finish of style were paired with the most dazzling skill in the delivery of florid music to one in which floridity was almost entirely abolished from the opera and a heavily accentuated, declamatory manner, grounded on irregular rhythms and supported by powerful orchestra- tion, was substituted for it. This style required voices of far larger caliber than the old music, and it was for singers of great vocal vigor that the later works of Verdi were designed. But the scores show a careful and consistent preser- vation of the singing style which had developed in Italy. They contain no evidence of any attempt to imitate the distinctive manner of the German school or even that of the French grand opera. In his last opera, " Falstaff " (1893), Verdi yet more clearly showed how a purely Italian opera could be written without the slightest approach to the style of any other school, and nevertheless with departures from the old Italian methods even greater than those disclosed in "Otello." " Falstaff" is an opera buffa (opera with a comic story) a form in which the Italians always excelled from the beginning. The comic opera (which must not be confused with the comic 170 THE STORY OF MUSIC. operetta of the " Pinafore " and "Merry Widow" varieties) was born, like the serious opera, in Italy. In the beginning it was a part of the latter. It was the custom of the early composers toward the third quarter of the seventeenth century to lighten their tragic works by the introduction of what playwrights call a "comic relief." This means a series of scenes in which comic char- acters appear and furnish a foil to the heavier incidents of the drama. In the early operas these scenes were usually enacted by an old woman and an old man, the former impersonated by a tenor and the latter by a bass. In time this element became so important that separate comic operas, at first short and slight, were written. These little operas soon grew to larger proportions, and the comedy of intrigue, as it is called, found its way into the realm of the lyric drama. One of the finest and most familiar specimens of this form is Mozart's " Marriage of Figaro." Another is Rossini's "Barber of Seville." Verdi was 70 years of age when his only opera buff a was produced, and the whole artistic world was amazed at the immense vigor of his spirit and the inexhaustible fund of his musical invention. The Ubretto, founded on Shake- speare's " Merry Wives of Windsor " with one or FROM MOZART TO VERDI. 171 two brief excerpts of text from other plays, was again the work of Boito. The music reveals still further reformatory advances. The com- poser employs even less of the old materials of Italian opera than he does in " Otello " and yet the opera is just as distinctively Italian. With the exception of two frank lyrics in the last act and Falstaff 's " Quand ero Paggio," there is not a number which leans upon the old aria pattern. There are concerted numbers, but they are so constructed that they give a perfect illusion of rapid dialogue. They are composed with enor- mous musical mastership and inspired by the most delicate fancy. The dialogue is again all in the arioso style, but the melodic phrases are perfectly suited in character to the nature of the play. The orchestral portion of the opera is most brilliantly written. It is independent and delineative, and it uncovers a profound and polished humor of which no previous achievement of the master had given any reason for expectation. Rich and varied as the instrumental score is it never for a moment interferes with the delivery of the text by the voices. The voice parts themselves are so subtle in their reflection of the swiftly moving sentiments of the play, so elastic in their fluent treatment of the lines of the book, so exquisitely singable in every phrase and so replete with 172 THE STORY OF MUSIC. expressiveness as to challenge the admiration of the listener every instant. And above all the entire opera shines resplendent with pure musical beauty at the same time as it continues always to depict character. It might not be too much to say that if Mozart had been a master of the late nineteenth century, this is the sort of music he would have written. From the time of his first pronounced success to his death Verdi was the leader and represent- ative man in Italian musical art. A master of unquestioned genius, a patient and thoughtful student of his craft, a thinker and a highly sen- sitive emotional being, he absorbed all that was best in the spirit of his time, and, having assim- ilated it, gave it forth again as a product deeply tinctured with his own individuality and wholly colored with his ardent Italianism. In this achievement he placed all other Italian composers since his maturity under enormous debt to him. Italian opera is still what he made it. In Italy no other master has yet arisen possessed of sufficient originality to strike out a new style. Verdi's successors are in almost all things his disciples. What they have borrowed from others is the least characteristically Italian part of their equipment. CHAPTER VIII. WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. Richard Wagner, born 1813, died 1883, was in at least one respect the most extraordinary composer in the entire history of music. With- out founding a school he exerted a greater influence on the world of musical art than any other master who ever lived. He revolutionized the opera, profoundly affected the manner of writ- ing orchestral compositions, touched seriously the treatment of chamber music and even cast the shadow of his individuality upon the piano. He made fashionable many new instrumental idioms, introduced a new melodic diction, opened up a treasury of novel harmonic tints and created a new type of songs. All of this he achieved by the tremendous force of his own few masterpieces, in which the novel ideas were displayed as factors in the pro- duction of the general result. He wrote essays and books in support of his artistic theories, and accomplished not a little in explaining his aims. 174 "^^^ STORY OF MUSIC. It was not the preaching, but the practice, which converted the entire modern musical world. The strongest men among Wagner's contemporaries were those who preserved their independence, for in so doing they shone by the power of contrast. Those who have followed Wagner in fundamen- tal ideas but have superimposed upon them a style of their own have also gained wide consideration. Of these it will be possible to say something. Wagner's early operas were experimental, and, although they are sometimes performed in Europe as memorials or for historical purposes, they are not generally demanded by the world. His large works, which are 'given in all musical centers, are "Rienzi" (1842), " Der Fliegende Hollander" (1843), "Tannhauser" (1845), "Lohengrin" (1850), "Tristan und Isolde" (1865), "DieMeis- tersingervonNiJrnberg" (1868), "Die Walkiire" (1870), "Das Rheingold" (1869), "Siegfried" (1876X "Gotterdammerung" (1876), and "Par- sifal " (1882). The four consecutive dramas pre- ceding the last named constitute the tetralogy entitled " Der Ring des Nibelungen." The years named are those of the first performances. The first of these above-mentioned works, " Rienzi," was composed before Wagner had conceived any of his theories about the music drama and is a brilliant and admirable opera in the style of Meyerbeer. While laboring at it, WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 175 the composer arrived at the conclusion that a true artistic success could not be reached by the employment of the methods which he was fol- lowing, and subsequently, at a time when his fortunes were at a low ebb and his future so un- certain that he rather desperately dared to pur- sue his own ideas, he wrote " Der Fliegende Hollander," in which the germs of his subsequent system are found in a state little above the embryonic. In " Tannhauser " parts of the score embody splendidly the style which afterward became characteristic of all his work, while other parts lean backward into the manner of "Rienzi." In " Lohengrin " certain features of his system which were almost obUterated in "Tannhauser" assume renewed clearness, while the style of the melody, harmony and declamation becomes better defined and more continuously sustained. In " Tristan und Isolde " suddenly appears the complete system in the fullest and most over- powering demonstration of its grandeur. For the reasons of this unexpected leap into the future the reader must go to some biography of the master. The purpose of this volume con- fines the present consideration to the finished product and its nature. The scores of the six music dramas of Wagner, composed when his system had acquired definite 176 THE STORY OF MUSIC. shape, disclose certain fundamental qualities. The vocal parts consist of sustained passages of recitative, arioso and melody. The recitative is all of the fully instrumented type, modern in its character, and heavily accented. The arioso forms a consistent step between the recitative and the purely lyric passages, some of which, as in the case of Isolde's " liebestod," are of con- siderable extent. The orchestral part of the works is, in the main, entirely independent of the voices. Rarely does it fall to the level of a mere accompaniment. It is developed from a num- ber of melodic fragments, called representative themes, or leading motives. These themes are intended to represent persons, ideas, actions, or even things, significant in the unfolding of the story. They are repeated in the instrumental part of the music whenever such repetition seems to convey a message to the hearer. Furthermore these motives are so designed that they can be developed into powerful instrumental climaxes and also worked in pairs or even larger numbers in the construction of complex and delineative contrapuntal passages. In the four dramas of the " Niebelung " series the master used the ancient staff rhyme or alliterative verse of the Norse poets for reasons which will be explained hereinafter. He fur- WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 1 77 thermore founded the tetralogy on the great Teutonic and Scandinavian epics and utilized many ideas from Norse mythology. In "Tristan und Isolde" he employed material found in another great medieval epic and in " Parsifal " matter found in still others. A brief account of the artistic beliefs which led to the development of these works may now be given. The first feature of the system which presented itself to the mind of Wagner was the representative theme. This came to him when he was composing the music for "The Flying Dutchman." Having invented a certain musical idea to represent, in the ballad of Senta, the personality of the Hollander in one of his aspects, and another the personality of Senta herself as revealed chiefly in her redeeming influence upon the unhappy man, he concluded that these two principal ideas in the psychology of his drama should continue throughout the score to be associated with the same musical expressions. He felt that to devise new musical embodiments for them would be illogical and would lead backward toward the old custom of giving the musical forms the dominating place in the lyric drama. Wagner had come to believe that the proper function of the music was to interpret the poetry and to hence be controlled by it instead of governing it. 178 THE STORY OF MUSIC. The representative themes in the completed Wagnerian system may be divided into several classes and so dividing them renders the under- standing of their purpose clearer. The first kind is the personal theme, as that of Siegfried the Hero, the Briinnhilde theme, the Freia motive. Next may be mentioned those which represent persons as connected with their race or kind, as the Volsung theme, often heard in connection with Siegmund and Siegfried ; the Nibelung theme, which travels after Mime; the Valkyr theme, which suggests to us often the origin of Briinnhilde or Waltraute. Still more important are the themes which represent the fundamental forces of the play, as the motive of Alberich's hate, the contract, the need of the Gods, the curse and love themes. Again we have others which indicate places and things, as the sword and Walhalla themes. Lastly there are those which may be described as purely scenic, as the forging music, the Rhine motive, and the magic fire. The psychological character of the themes is well illustrated by the fact that the devices of musical development are rarely applied to those which stand for places or things and rarely to those meaning race or people. On the other hand those which are associated with personali- ties are modified in accordance with the changes WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 179 wrought in the development of the story. One finds that the modifications are employed with the plain intention of depicting some change in the character. In short when the object repre- sented is liable to change, its theme is likewise ; but otherwise no change is made unless it is one suggestive of an important thought in the play. For example the Rhine music changes when the Rhine daughters warn Siegfried of approaching danger. The early dramas naturally contain much purely scenic or descriptive music, while the elaborately wrought later works contain more of the psycho- logical and malleable themes. Frequently the themes are arbitrarily formed, but for the most part the composer has called in the most expres- sive powers of music to give the motives fitness and eloquence. The student of Wagner's dramas must also not forget that in numerous instances enthusiasts have labeled many melodic frag- ments which the master himself left untitled and in some cases have done much toward making the system appear ridiculous. Wagner himself made the purpose of his themes quite clear by his method of introducing them. The explanation of their meaning can always be found in the text. When Alberich bestows his curse on the Ring, we hear the curse motive ; and when Fafner slays Fasolt after the two have l80 THE STORY OF MUSIC. quarreled over the possession of the Ring, we hear the same motive again thundered out in such a way that we at once understand how the curse has begun its fatal work. Wagner sought the poetic material for his dramas in old myths and legends. It was his theory that the personages appearing as the actors in these were not bound by the conven- tions of the historical drama, that they were elemental types and could be treated as the primal exponents of human thoughts and pas- sions. Furthermore he believed that the sim- plicity of the action in these old tales would leave the dramatist free to concentrate his force upon the exposition of the emotional content, which was the suitable subject for musical em- bodiment. His theory as to this is best illustrated by " Tristan und Isolde," in which the action is sim- plicity itself, while the music is almost wholly occupied with the communication to the audi- ence of the tremendous passions of the drama. It will readily be understood from this that the Wagner system revolutionized the musical plan of opera. Instead of arranging a libretto, as the early Italians did, so as to present a pleasing pro- cession of arias, duets, quartets, ensembles and so on, it was the purpose of the new lyric poem to develop itself naturally and inevitably as a WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. l8l drama and in doing this to provide great emo- tional climaxes which would lend themselves to expression in the free and informal kind of music built upon the melodic fragments called repre- sentative themes. The new operatic plan was in its fundamentals twin to that of Peri and the Florentine reformers in that it made the music not an end, but a means. Wagner, in one of his essays, declared that the new kind of lyric play would be the " art work of the future," and that it would consist of an organic union of all the arts tributary to the drama — poetry, music, paint- ing and action. All would work together for a common end and none would dominate. In some of his dramas Wagner used rhymed verse, but in the Nibelungen tetralogy he em- ployed the " staff rhyme " or alliterative line. He explained at some length his reason for do- ing this. In brief his purpose was to avoid the governing influence of the metrical verse. In setting the poetic stanza to music a composer despite himself is under the sway of the rhythm and measure of the verse itself. But if he uses blank verse, he can break up the musical phrases to suit the poetic idea. The musical phrase need not be identical with the verse-line. But the master did not wish to obliterate all rhythmic character from his poem, and so he selected the alliterative verse in which the em- 1 82 THE STORY OF MUSIC. ployment of similar consonantal sounds at the beginning of words, and again the reiteration of successive open vowels, would accentuate the rhythm without placing the poetry under the domination of any verse or stanza form. An ex- ample of the rhythmic effect of this verse is found in the beginning of Siegmund's love song in " Die Walkure " : " Wintersturme wichen dem Wonnemond, in milden Lichte leuchtet der Lenz ; auf lauen Liiften lind und lieblich Wunder webend er sich wiegt." Passages with such iterations as " immer und ewig," showing the successive open vowels, are numerous in the poems, and these Wagner knew to be favorable to the production of a full and free tone in singing. These are the principal technical features of the Wagnerian system. It is important, how- ever, to add that the composer ardently desired to bring the theatre into close relation with the national life. He wished to give the German opera house a place such as the Greek theatre had occupied. It was partly for this reason that he sought the materials for his lyric dramas in the great Teutonic epics and legends which WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 183 he thought embodied the ideals and emotions of the German race. It is now a matter of history that in the be- ginning the new ideas of Wagner were fiercely opposed and indeed ridiculed. But gradually the majestic beauty of his conceptions conquered the artistic world, and now the great Wagner war is quite over. The famous lyric dramas are performed in all countries, even in France, and among the most famous interpreters of them are numbered many Italians. So great were the difficulties in the way of realizing Wagner's ideals that a special theatre was constructed at Bayreuth in Bavaria, and there in 1876 the first complete performance of " Der Ring des Nibelungen " was given. " Par- sifal," the master's last drama, was produced there in 1882 and for years was presented there exclusively. On December 24, 1903, it was pro- duced at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, and has since that time been frequently performed there. New York and Bayreuth re- main at present (19 12) the only places where this work can be heard. All the other great Wagner dramas are often sung in opera houses all over the world. The influence of Wagner's theories and meth- ods on other opera composers has been large. Indeed no one in recent years has attempted to 1 84 THE STORY OF MUSIC. construct an opera, even of the lightest order, by stringing together a series of airs, duets, choruses, etc., on a thread of recitative. On the contrary Italians, Frenchmen and Germans now habitually build operas chiefly of dialogue in arioso form, more or less melodic, rising herg and there to sustained lyric passages. The Ital- ians lean more toward the lyric while the Ger- mans use heavily accented declamation and the Frenchmen a more subtle and intangible variety of musical speech. All of them employ a much richer type of orchestration than they did before Wagner's con- quest, and harmonies have been extended till the limit of complexity and, at times, of ugliness ap- pears to have been reached. But in view of the advances made in harmonization of melodies in the last quarter of a century no one can declare that a limit actually exists. The leading motive or representative theme system has been adopted by some composers in some of their operas while others seem to regard it as essential to all opera. Still others employ the representative themes sparingly and only for the communication of a few vital ideas in the drama. In Italy the working together of the influences of Wagner and Verdi has brought about interest- ing results. Ruggiero Leoncavallo (born 1858) and Pietro Mascagni (born 1863) have made WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 185 impressions with their one-act operas. Leon- cavallo composed " Pagliacci " and Mascagni "Cavalleria Rusticana." These works are short, compressed tragedies, in which all the apparatus of the grand opera of five acts is utilized. The solo lyrics in these works are a little more clearly defined in form than in the ideal modern opera, but the recitation is quite in the modern style and the works as a whole belong unmistakably to the school of the later Verdi. Both musicians have written operas in several acts, but up to this time only their one-act creations have taken firm hold of the publics in various parts of the world. A more potent factor in the music of Italy has been Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca in 1858. For some years he has been regarded by the Italians as their leading master, and his works have been sung with immense success throughout Europe and America. His principal operas are " Manon Lescaut" (1893), "La Bo- heme" (1896), "Tosca" (1900), " Madama Butterfly" (1904) and "The Girl of the Golden West " (1910). The last-named opera was com- posed to a libretto built on the play of David Belasco, an American dramatist, and was per- formed for the first time on any stage at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on Dec. 26, of the year mentioned. 1 86 THE STORY OF MUSIC. Puccini's operas show the influence of Wagner in their opulent orchestration, their complex and changeful harmonies and in some cases in the employment of representative themes. The melody in all of his works, however, is distinc- tively Italian, and he has followed his national predecessors in making the voice the chief pub- lisher of his melodic ideas. In his latest work written for America he has somewhat modified this system, inasmuch as he has broken up the vocal melody in response to the necessities of a book combining brief speeches with rapid action. There are few situations admitting the develop- ment of large vocal forms. The composer has therefore utilized more extensively in this opera than in any of his others the Wagnerian leading motive system. He has provided a representative theme for every one of the personages in the drama, even the Indian, Billy Jackrabbit, and for all of the operative forces in the development of the story. These themes are introduced, repeated, and in some cases even modified in precisely the same way as those of Wagner had been before them. The harmonic background of the melodies calls into play every device of the most recent kind as well as those of the older masters, and the instrumentation is enriched with all the latest inventions. WAGNER AND HIS INFLUENCE. 1 8/ In " Tosca " the composer had already gone into the Wagnerian fold in so far as representa- tive themes were concerned, but had used fewer of them and had treated them in a more primi- tive manner. But in " Tosca " he had a book allowing him larger freedom in the construction of great vocal climaxes, and consequently there are certain airs and scenes, which are available for concert use, while it has been found difficult to extract from the score of "The Girl of the Golden West" for such a purpose anything beyond the solo of Johnson in the last scene. " Madama Butterfly " has a few representative themes, but they are of no vital significance in the plan, while "La Boheme" has only shadows of such motives. But in these two operas the triumph of vocal melody is complete and the most popular single " selections " from Puccini are found in their scores. The impor- tance of Puccini as a figure in the history of Italian opera lies in his successful endeavor to utilize the most modern methods in opera with- out sacrificing the leading position accorded to the voice parts or trying to denationalize his melodies. The style of Puccini's cantilena is broad and fluent and calls for sustained phrasing on the part of the singer, while both his declamation and his arioso demand large tone and vigorous emphasis. 1 88 THE STORY OF MUSIC. The progress of the Wagnerian influence in German opera has been most strikingly illustrated in the works of Richard Strauss, born in Munich in 1864. His operas are " Guntram " (1895), "Feuersnot" (1900), "Salome" (1906), "Elek- tra " (1909). He has also produced (191 1) an operetta called " Rosencavalier." There will be more to say in regard to Strauss in the account of the latest developments in instrumental music, and for that reason his operatic art may be dismissed with comparative brevity. In the first place Strauss has shown a predilection for opera stories either revolting in their tragic aspects or extremely frank in their treatment of purely sensuous ideals and usually in both. The stories of his " Feuersnot " and " Rosen- cavalier " are salacious ; that of his " Elektra " is brutally tragic : that of " Salome " is both. In his musical methods Strauss goes far beyond Wagner in the employment of purely declamatory utterance for the voices, while the orchestra monopolizes the musical tone painting. He em- ploys leading motives as freely as Wagner did and in the same manner. He calls for great arrays of instruments and orchestrates \vith marvellous opulence. He revels in the bitterest harmonic accents and his counterpoint is productive of a vast number of passing discords which the unaccustomed ear finds extremely displeasing. W AGNES AND HIS INFLUENCE. 189 The clearly defined vocal air does not exist in the Strauss opera. The nearest approach to it is the broken and impassioned monologue, such as that in which Salome apostrophizes the head of Jokaanan, the last scene of the opera bearing her name. Duets are merely dialogue in dec- lamation. Occasionally the composer writes for assemblies of voices, but only in some such situ- ation as that of the wrangling of the Jews in " Salome." There are at times splendid outbursts of melody in the Strauss operas, but they are not numerous and do not dominate the scores, as they do in the Puccini works. The ceaseless proclamations of the orchestra and the declama- tory speeches of the singers are the salient features of the Strauss scores. These operas are more precisely to be described as music dramas, for there is little of the operatic about them except that they call for a certain type of singing and an orchestral foundation. In France the influence of Wagner has shown itself in many ways. It has affected the work of Alfred Bruneau (" La Reve," 1891) and " L'At- taque du Moulin "(1893), Vincent D'Indy, chiefly an instrumental composer, and most significantly of all Claude Achille Debussy, born at Saint Germain-en-Laye in 1862. Debussy will have to be discussed again in the chapter on contem- I go THE STORY OF MUSIC. poraneous instrumental music, but at this point something must be said about his opera " Pelleas et Melisande," produced in 1902. The work is built on the play of Maurice Maeterhnck and through all the differences of critical opinion to which it has given rise there runs one agreement as to the perfect fitness of the method of compo- sition for the musical embodiment of this drama. Debussy's " Pelleas et Melisande " was pro- duced in New York by Oscar Hammerstein on February 19, 1908, and the music aroused great interest. The dialogue is carried on entirely in a colorless recitative, precisely the opposite of that of Strauss in that it is soft, smooth, and not heavily accented. There are not a dozen meas- ures of what people usually mean by melody in the score, but it is full of melodious phraseology. Rhythm is not absent, but it is so vague and shifting as to be almost inappreciable. It is something like the rhythm of rhythmic prose. It makes no illusion of metrical movement, but rather of the absence of it. Beneath this intan- gible musical measure lies a harmonic scheme of amazing subtlety, highly artificial, yet endlessly pliable. The composer employs not only the modern major and minor scales, but also the ancient ecclesiastic modes. With these he has brought into the modern musical system also the whole tone scale, and its derivative harmonies. wagner and his influence. 191 Whole Tone Scales. ^ ^3^^= i Out of the endless blendings of the chords originated by these various scales he has built up a system of harmonies evasive and baffling. Upon this he has reared his recitative phrase- ology. The almost rhythmless movement of it, together with its want of elemental musical ma- terial, its wilful employment of any and every modulation except the primary ones, makes the dialogue of the opera a strange and moody ut- terance perfectly in character with the speech of Maeterlinck. No melody remains in the mind of the hearer. There is only the impression of a ceaseless kaleidoscopic change of tonal and harmonic tints. The orchestration supporting these voice parts is exquisitely chaste and rich in color. Without ever being noisy or rude it reflects perfectly every shade of the speech and paints the weird atmospheres of the different scenes adequately. There is no attempt at extended themes, since these would have to possess a melodic definite- 192 THE STORY OF MUSIC. ness foreign to the Debussy style. The whole musical product is perhaps best described as im- pressionistic. It is the Wagnerian idea, diluted and softened till its outlines are all gone and only its lowest tonal tints remain. And when all is said, it must be declared that the thing is Debussy's own creation and that he and others have utilized it with beautiful results in other fields, especially that of the song. The works of Puccini, Strauss and Debussy in the domain of the lyric drama exemplify the three manners in which the Wagnerian art has fructified in the Italian, German and French schools. The endeavor in all three schools has been to escape the domination of musical forms which were supreme in the typical Italian opera of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Wagner's demolition of the old forms resulted in a continuous melody, which was coincident with the extent of the act itself and in which the climaxes were those em- bodying the salient emotional moments of the scene. Strauss transferred much of the vocal melody to the orchestra and brought the voice parts to a general condition of powerful declamation. Puccini held the orchestra to the level at which Verdi had left it and strove to impart a distinc- tively Italian sensuousness to his recitatives and WAGNER AM^ HIS INFLUENCE. 193 his numerous lyric passages. Debussy in his "Pelleas et Melisande" abolished all traces of old fashioned tune and, resting a series of me- lodic phrases upon a new harmonic basis, of which the chief characteristic was an indetermi- nate tonality, produced an entirely new variety of operatic recitative and created what has been called the " atmospheric " style. Whether this style will be suitable to the gen- eral purposes of opera instead of exclusively to the mysteries of Maeterlinck remains to be seen. All music at this time of writing seems to be in a state of uncertainty, and all that can be done in a volume of this kind is to point out what exists and make no attempt to speculate on its proba- ble outcome. It may be noted, however, that there are already some signs of a revolt against the extreme style of Strauss, and also against the concessions to popular fancy in the scores of Puccini. CHAPTER IX. CONTEMPORANEOUS INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. After Beethoven, as we have already noted, the romantic school was broadened by the works of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. In the com- positions of all these musicians the fundamental principles of the sonata form, upon which the orchestral symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were reared, were preserved though the application of them was slightly modified. It was perhaps one of the most significant and influential events in modern music when Johan- nes Brahms (1833-1897) projected into the field of the tonal art his methods of composition. He followed the forms of. Beethoven and made his advances without turning to the right hand or to the left. His symphonies combine classicism of form with deeply romantic feeling, and at the same time their melodic idiom is extremely chaste, indeed sometimes almost austere. The instru- mentation is sober in color and never aims at brilliancy for its own sake. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 195 For these reasons Brahms has had little influ- ence on orchestral music in the present period, when high coloring, sensuous allurement, and dramatic representation are sought by most com- posers in preference to architectural grandeur of construction or sculpturesque purity of style. In his piano music Brahms has wielded a wider in- fluence, and many of his successors have imitated his technical ideas, developed, as they were, chiefly from those of Schumann. But the representative instrumental composi- tions of the present period all show the influence of Richard Strauss more unmistakably than that of any other writer. It becomes, therefore, the duty of the chronicler to bestow particular attention upon these works. The orchestral tone poems of Strauss are "Macbeth" (1887), "Don Juan" (1888), "Death and Apotheo- sis" (1889), "Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" (189s), "Thus Spake Zarathustra"( 1896), "Don Quixote" (1897), "A Hero's Life" (1898) and "Symphonia Domestica" (1904). All of these are romantic compositions in which the repre- sentative powers of music are used to the fullest extent. Strauss sees symphonies only as means of explicating the emotional content of stories or of programmes made in his own mind. " Mac- beth" is for Shakespeare's tragedy, " Death and Apotheosis" for a representation of a conception 196 THE STORY OF MUSIC. formed in the mind of the composer and after- ward embodied in a poem by Alexander Ritter placed at the top of the score ; " Til Eulen- spiegel " rehearses some of the incidents in the life of a legendary German character; "Don Quixote " was inspired by Cervantes. Other tone poems publish certain phases of the personality and life of the composer himself. The methods of Strauss are difficult to describe. First of all in the formal plan of his tone poems he adapts himself largely to the needs of the story. For instance, wishing to preserve through various incidents the identities of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, he chose the variation form. The identity of the themes carried out the repre- sentation of the two natures, while the character of each variation served to suggest either physical or psychological features of the dramatic situa- tion. The ingenuity of the plan commands instant admiration, and the extraordinary orchestral skill with which it is developed increases this. Again in the " Hero's Life " the composer has kept himself before the hearer by the use of a representative theme, while another equally per- sistent theme, preserving its identity through many and interesting modifications, portrays the feminine soul which eventually crowns the victo- rious hero with love. But instead of variations, we have in this work a succession of clearly INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 197 defined movements, each depicting some great era in the hero's life, yet moving forward in the unbroken succession of the symphonic poem. The musical form of this composition is as rigor- ous and as perfectly developed as that of any Brahms symphony, yet the outward result is utterly different and the aims of Strauss are briUiantly accomplished. It is therefore possible to enumerate certain fundamental traits of the art of Strauss in the following manner. His aim has been to widen and intensify the descriptive and delineative powers of the orchestra. In this he has stood directly in the line of descent from the early romanticists. He is a child of Schumann, Ber- lioz and Liszt, and in his improvements in the art of orchestral coloring a younger brother of Wag- ner. The special fitness of orchestral instru- ments for characterization has appealed to his fancy and he has not neglected the significant employment of solo instruments in his composi- tions. But the production of brilliant color effects and startling contrasts by the use of bodies of instruments at once, either strings as against wind or wood as against brass, but more often by combinations of various individuals selected from the three families, is a more con- spicuous trait of Strauss's tone poems. As the present writer has said in another ig8 THE STORY OF MUSIC. volume, "He has sought to make the orchestra tell stories, but he has not made the error of supposing that he could ignore the fundamental principles of musical form which constituted the ground plan of the old symphony. He has utilized themes with definite meanings attached to them, as Wagner did, without confining him- self to two as the older writers did and as Liszt did in most of his works. He has returned in his later compositions to the fashion of clearly separated movements, while he has made them pass before the hearer without pauses between any two of them. He has developed his themes according to the principles laid down by the symphonic masters and has striven to enforce their meaning with all the effects of orchestral color. And withal he has endeavored to com- pose music only with a purpose, never music for its own sake. In short Strauss has shown that the principles of musical form, which the earlier writers painfully evolved out of their attempts to produce nothing beyond musical beauty, not only can be, but must be, utilized by the com- poser who cares nothing about musical beauty, and who aims only at making music a means of expression." In studying the methods of Strauss the music lover will surely be impressed by his adaptation of the Wagnerian plan of thematic alteration to INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. I99 the purposes of purely orchestral composition. Strauss uses large numbers of leading motives in his works, and the most important ones are sub- jected to rhythmic and harmonic changes when the development of the story calls for these, just as some of the Wagner themes are modified to meet the progress of the development of his drama. Again the music lover will be struck by Strauss' manner of making certain solo instru- ments represent certain characters in his com- positions. This is notably the case in " Ein Hel- denleben." Here a solo violin impersonates the " eternal womanly " which crowns the hero's love with lasting bliss. A strictly technical feature of the art of this musician is his treat- ment of orchestration. He uses polyphonic methods more than simple chord harmonies. His counterpoint is difficult to grasp, because in some cases he writes contrapuntally on one theme for one section of the orchestra and on another for a different section and thus results a second counterpoint, namely, that of the one section against the other, and this is frequently productive of clashing of keys and long succes- sions of discords, by which the composer appar- ently is quite untroubled so long as he achieves the final effect conceived by him. In planning his scores Strauss writes many passages which older musicians would have regarded as diametri- 200 THE STORY OF MUSIC. cally opposed to the nature of the instruments called upon to play them. He thus requires an orchestra of the most highly skilled performers. He also often asks for unusual instruments and occasionally introduces effects producible only by means not belonging to an orchestra, as in the case of the storm in " Don Quixote " when a theatrical stage machine designed to imitate the sound of wind is needed. Itmaybe mentioned in conclusion that Strauss has been sharply censured by some critics for endeavoring to delineate revolting and therefore inartistic things. He has also been reproved for trying to embody in orchestral music representa- tions of purely intellectual processes. These matters, however, may be left for the verdict of the future. In this little volume only those features of the composer's art which may be deemed settled should be described in detail. The contemporaneous French school of orchestral composers has not so closely pursued the representative ideal as the Germans have. Symphonies in the old form, but reduced to three movements, have been written by several composers and some of their works are possessed of positive merit and interest. But their melodic and harmonic idioms have almost without excep- tion been affected by the music of Debussy, who is in his orchestral music Wagner carried INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 201 out to an infinite decimal. Debussy writes descriptive and delineative pieces in which the old forms are no longer utilized. These compo- sitions must be classed under the elastic title of tone poems. They are subtle and elusive in thematic matter, but possess a definite rhythmic character not found in the opera music. Their chief means of expression consists of a rich, trans- parent style of orchestration, and the kaleido- scopic treatment of tonality already noted. As in his operatic music, Debussy makes much use of the whole tone scale, but also employs the established major and minor and the old ecclesiastic modes. By a continuous and rest- less modulation from one to the other he imparts to his music the appearance of a formlessness which does not really exist, while the impression left upon the hearer is one impotently described as atmospheric. The older methods of composing, utilized by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Liszt, when considered in comparison with the De- bussy method, seem to be strikingly clear in communicative power, while by the force of the same comparison the Debussy works appear in- tangible and evasive. The old symphonies and symphonic poems look like solid architectural monuments, while those of Debussy in a certain sense resemble the fluid and shapeless atmos- 202 THE STORY OF MUSIC. phere in which buildings might be placed. It is conceded by all serious lovers of the art that Debussy has contributed something new to or- chestral music, if it is nothing more than a new manner. At the time of this writing heated dis- cussion of the artistic value of his music is still raging in France, and opinions brusquely contra- dictory are uttered. With the artistic perma- nence of the compositions themselves a book of this character is, of course, not concerned. All that is required of this author is a record of the indisputable facts. Debussy has without question been influenced by Wagner, but in working out the ideas which he gained from his German prede- cessor he has formulated a new melodic and har- monic style of his own, and this style has had a sufficient force to make it permeate contempo- raneous French composition and to color some of the music of both Germany and Italy. Puc- cini's " Girl of the Golden West " shows the unmistakable influence of Debussy in many passages. The writer of this volume might easily be tempted to speak of the work of several other composers, but the original plan of the book makes it easy to resist. All that is essential to this work is a mention of the steps in musical progress and of the men who have taken them. It is quite unnecessary, therefore, to record the INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 203 doings of many talented and widely admired com- posers whose music merely follows the methods of the past or copies those of other musicians of the present. On the other hand a few words may be said as to the present tendencies in music as gener- ally disclosed. The deeper drift seems to be toward more definite representation. In the opera and in orchestral composition the em- ployment of the leading motive (or represent- ative theme) with its positive assurance of a message and its demand that the hearer keep a fixed significance before his mind throughout a composition shows that composers are elab- orating their works not with the intention of merely embodying moods, as the first romanti- cists did, but of conveying complete and com- plex analyses of those moods and oftentimes statements of their causes. The first symphonists were satisfied to make pleasant music, with a variety in the succession of movements founded on the broadest and most simple states of feeling. Their first movement finally became an appeal to the taste for design and sought to give delight by a demonstration of the fruitfulness of certain thematic ideas in glories of development logically worked out. The slow movements, less rigorous and analyt- ical in form, and relying more on the sensuous 204 THE STORY OF MUSIC. charms of music, made their appeal to senti- ment. The minuet furnished relief . by its ex- citement of the elementary delight in sharply marked rhythm, and the finale sought to stir the listener by its swiftness and brilliancy of motion or its rollicking humor. As the expressive powers of orchestral music became better understood and the technic of in- strumental composition more highly developed, the composers sought for a deeper significance. Finally the symphonic form in the hands of Beethoven became the embodiment of the greater moods of the spirit; and the scherzo, which took the place of the minuet, spoke a humor which sometimes wore the tragic mask, while the finale in some instances, as in the fifth, rose to a song of universal triumph. Liszt and his contemporaries found themselves trying to tell stories in music ; and finally we recognize that we ourselves live in a period when composers like Strauss ask us to read the "world riddle " in tonal essays, or, like Debussy, invite us to enter a realm of imagination whose most tangible inhabitants are colors, perfumes, lights and shadows. Yet we are required to grasp in these a perfectly definite language of represen- tation and to comprehend the divine message of the composer's remote spirit. The influence of Wagner dominates the whole INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 205 world of orchestral music. His revolt against the domination of established form in opera con- firmed the belief of the new romanticists that the older symphonic pattern was inimical to the free expression of emotion as contemplated by them in the stories of others or in their own inner lives. His employment of the represent- ative theme seemed to show them the way into the promised land of orchestral delineation, and they hastened to construct works in which the use of motives without explanatory text should accomplish even more definite representation than Wagner's music had achieved with the as- sistance of the dramatic word. Leaning heavily on his orchestral methods, they went forward to pile up larger and larger masses and to seek for more flaming colors. Noting the innovations in his harmonic scheme they boldly threw overboard most of the rules of the fathers and declared that there was no such thing as a forbidden chord or succession of chords, no such things as key families, no such things as inevitable resolutions or essential cadences. It is in this state that music now stands. The "progAmme" rules supreme and is held up as the justification of everything revolutionary or even destructive in art. But out of all such con- ditions in music progress invariably comes, and 206 THE STORY OF MUSIC. the ears of later hearers, accustomed to much that puzzles contemporaries, may find clearness in the riddles and make the dark places light. What is false in the present art will perish. The good, of which there is much, will survive.