A Popular History of the Art of Music Part 15

JEAN PIETERS SWELINCK.]

The art of organ playing found its next great exponents in Holland and Germany, all of them having been pupils of the Venetian master. The most celebrated of these, considered purely as an organist, was Jean Pieters Swelinck (1560-1621), who was born at Deventer in Holland, and died at Amsterdam. He was more celebrated as a performer and improviser than for the instrumental pieces he published. Among his pupils was the celebrated Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), organist at Halle, who is memorable as the first who made artistic use of the chorale. Scheidt is also famous as the author of a book upon organ tabulature, or the notation for organ, which in Germany at this period was different from that of the piano, and in fact much resembled the tabulature for the lute, from which it was derived. It consists of a combination of lines and signs, by the aid of which the organist was supposed to be capable of deciphering the intentions of the composer.

No especial importance appears to have been attached to the difference of notation for instruments and voices in this period. And in fact, until our own times certain instruments, the viola, for example, have had their own notation, different from the voices, and different from that of other instruments. Another celebrated German organist of this period was Johann Hermann Schein, who, with Scheidt and Swelinck, const.i.tuted the three great German musical S's of the sixteenth century. Schein (1586-1630) was appointed cantor of the Leipsic St.

Thomas school in 1615, and worked there as above. His numberless compositions are more free in style than the average of the century, and a number of them are distinctly secular. Nevertheless, in the development of instrumental music he had but small part, not being one of the highly gifted original geniuses who impress themselves upon following generations. The great German master of this period was Schutz, chapel master at Dresden, whose career forms part of the story of the oratorio, a form of music which he had so large a share in shaping into its present form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 49.

SAMUEL SCHEIDT.]

II.

In order to come once more into the path of musical empire, we must return again to Italy, where there was an organist at St. Peter's, who had in him the elements of greatness and originality. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1587-1640) was organist of St. Peter's at Rome from 1615. His education had been in part acquired in Italy, and in part in the Netherlands. As a virtuoso he attained an extraordinary success, and one of his recitals is reputed to have been attended by as many as 30,000 people. He distinguished himself as composer no less than as organist, and particularly by his compositions in free style. His Ricerari, Concertos and Canzones were all protests against the bondage of instrumental music to the fetters of vocal forms. It was the compositions of this master, together with those of Froberger, that Sebastian Bach desired to have, and which, in fact, he stole out of his brother's book case, and copied in the moonlight nights.

It would take us too far were we to enumerate all the composers who distinguished themselves in this century, no one of them succeeding in composing anything satisfactory to this later generation, but all contributing something toward the liberation of instrumental music, and all adding something to its too limited resources. Among these names were those of Johann Kasper Kerl, organist at St. Stephen's church in Vienna, who, after having served with distinction at Munich, returned later and died at Vienna in 1690. Another of these German masters, also one of those whose compositions Bach wished to study, was Johann Pachelbel, of Nuremberg (1635-1706). In 1674 he was a.s.sistant organist at Vienna, in 1677 organist at Eisenach, and soon back to Nuremberg a few years later. His multifarious works for organ, among which we find a variety of forms, were perhaps the chief model upon which Sebastian Bach formed his style. He especially excelled in improvising choral variations, and in fanciful and musicianly treatment of themes proposed by the hearer. Yet another name of this epoch, that of George m.u.f.fat, is now almost forgotten. He studied in France, and formed his style upon that of the French. A later master, also very influential in the style of Sebastian Bach, was Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707). For nearly forty years he was organist at the Church of St. Mary at Lubeck, where he was so celebrated that the young Sebastian Bach made a journey on foot there in order to hear and master the principles of his art. Buxtehude wrote a great number of pieces in free style for the organ, and, while his works have little value to modern ears, there is no doubt that this master was an important influence upon the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of instrumental music.

Among all these Netherlandish organists few are better known by name at the present day than Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722), who was born at Deventer, Holland, and after the proper elementary and finishing studies, succeeded his master, Scheidemann, as organist at Hamburg.

Here his fame was so great that the young Bach made two journeys there on foot, in order to hear him. He was a virtuoso of a high order, and his style exercised considerable influence over that of Bach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 50.

JOHANN ADAM REINKEN.]

III.

Return we now to Italy, where the violin led also to an important development of instrumental music, having in it the promise of the best that we have had since. In Fusignano, near Imola, was born in 1653 Archangelo Corelli, who became the first of violin virtuosi, and the first of composers for the instrument, and for violins in combination with other members of the same family, and so of our string quartette. He died in 1713 at Rome. Of his boyhood there is little known. About 1680 he appears in high favor at the court of Munich. In 1681 he was again in Rome, where he appears to have found a friend in Cardinal Ottoboni, in whose palace he died. His period of creative activity extended from 1683, when he began the publication of his forty-eight three-voiced sonatas, for two violins, in four numbers of twelve sonatas each. He also composed many other sonatas for the violin, for violin and piano, and for other instruments. These epoch-marking works are held in high esteem at the present time, and are in constant use for purposes of instruction.

Meanwhile the orchestra had been steadily enriched through the compet.i.tion of successive operatic composers, each exerting himself to produce more effect than the preceding. In this way new combinations of tone color were contrived, and now and then introduced in a fortunate manner, and effects of greater sonority were attained through the greater number of instruments, and the more expert use of those they had. In the present state of knowledge it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace the successive steps of this progress, and to give proper credit to each composer for his own contribution to the general stock. At best, the orchestra at the end of this century was somewhat meager. The violin and the other members of its family had taken their places somewhat as we now have them, but the number of ba.s.ses and tenors was much less than at present, their place being filled by the archlute and the harpsichord. The trumpet was occasionally employed, the flute, the oboe, and very rarely the trombone. The conductor at the harpsichord, playing from a figured ba.s.s, filled in chords according to his own judgment of the effect required. Nothing approaching the smoothness and discreet coloration of the orchestra of the present day, or even of the Haydn orchestra, existed at this time. The violin players were very cautious about using the second and third "positions," but played continually with their hands in the first position. This part of the music, therefore, wholly lacked the freedom which it now has, and the whole progress of this century was purely apprentice work in instrumental music, its value lying in its establishing the principle, first, that instrumental music might exist independently of vocal, and, second, that it might enhance the expressiveness of vocal music when a.s.sociated with it. The groundwork of the two great forms of the period next ensuing, the fugue and the sonata, had been laid, and a certain amount of precedent established in favor of free composition in dance and fantasia form. Meanwhile the pianoforte of the day, the _clavicembalo_, as the Italians called it, had been considerably improved. The present scale of music had been demonstrated by Zarlino, and the ground prepared for the great geniuses whose coming made the eighteenth century forever memorable as the blossoming time of musical art.

Upon the whole, perhaps the most important part of the actual accomplishment of this century was in musical theory. While musicians for centuries had been employing the major and minor thirds, and the triads as we now have them, the fact had remained unacknowledged in musical theory, and the supposed authority of the Greeks still remained binding upon all. Zarlino, however, made a new departure. He not only a.s.signed the true intervals of the major scale, according to perfect intonation, but argued strongly for equal temperament, and demonstrated the impossibility of chromatic music upon any other basis. Purists may still continue to doubt whether this was an absolute advantage to the art of music, since it carries with it the necessity of having all harmonic relations something short of perfection; but the immediate benefit to musical progress was unquestionable, and according to all appearance the art of music is irrevocably committed to the tempered scale of twelve tones in the octave.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Book Fourth.

THE

Flowering Time of Modern Music.

BACH, HaNDEL, HAYDN, MOZART, BEETHOVEN. THE FUGUE AND THE SONATA.

CHAPTER XXII.

GENERAL VIEW OF MUSIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

It is not easy to characterize simply and clearly the nature of the musical development which took place during the eighteenth century.

The blossoming of music was so manifold, so diversified, so irrepressible in every direction, that there was not one single province of it, wherein new and masterly creations were not brought out. The central figures of this period were those of the two Colossi, Bach and Handel; after them Haydn, the master of genial proportion and taste; Mozart, the melodist of ineffable sweetness, and finally at the end of the century, the great master, Beethoven. In opera we have the entire work of that great reformer, the Chevalier Gluck, and a succession of Italian composers who enlarged the boundaries of the Italian music-drama in every direction, but especially in the direction of the impa.s.sioned and sensational. Add to these influences, already sufficiently diversified, that of a succession of brilliant virtuosi upon the leading instruments, whereby the resources of all the effective musical apparatuses were more fully explored and ill.u.s.trated, with the final result of affording the poetic composer additional means of bringing his ideas to a more effective expression--and we have the general features of a period in music so luxuriant that in it we might easily lose ourselves; nor can we easily form a clear idea of the entire movement as the expression of a single underlying spiritual impulse. Yet such in its inner apprehension it most a.s.suredly was.

Upon the whole, all the improvements of the time arrange themselves into two categories, namely: The better proportion, contrast, and more agreeable succession of moments in art works; and, second, the more ample means for intense expression. In the department of form, indeed, there was a very important transition made between the first half of the century and the last. The typical form of the first part of this division was the fugue, which came to a perfection under the hands of Bach and Handel, far beyond anything to be found in the form previously. The fugue was the creation of this epoch, and while based upon the general idea of canonic imitation, after the Netherlandish ideal, it differed from their productions in several highly significant respects. While all of a fugue is contained within the original subject, and the counter-subject, which accompanies it at every repet.i.tion, it has an element of tonality in it which places it upon an immensely higher plane of musical art than any form known, or possible, before the obsolescence of the ecclesiastical modes.

Moreover, the fugue has opportunities for episode, which enable it to acquire variety to a degree impossible for any form developed earlier; and which, when these opportunities were fresh, afforded composers a field for the display of fancy which was practically free. This, one may still realize by comparing the different fugues in Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier" with each other, and with those of any other collection. It is impossible to detect anywhere the point where the inspiration of the composer felt itself bound by the restrictions of this form. It was for Bach and Handel practically a free form. And the few other contemporaneous geniuses of a high order either experienced the same freedom in it, or found ways of evading its strictness by the production of various styles of fancy pieces, which, while conforming to the fugue form in their main features, were nevertheless free enough to be received by the musical public of that day with substantially the same satisfaction as a fantasia would have been received a century later. Roughly speaking, Bach and Handel exhausted the fugue. While Bach displayed his mental activity in almost every province of music, and like some one since, of whom it has been much less truthfully said, "touched nothing which he did not adorn," he was all his life a writer of fugues. His preludes are not fugues, and their number almost equals that of the fugues; but the operative principles were not essentially different--merely the applications of thematic development were different. Yet strange as it may seem, within thirty years from his death it became impossible to write fugues, and at the same time be free. Why was this?

A new element came into music, incompatible with fugue, requiring a different form of expression, and incapable of combination with fugue.

That element was the people's song, with its symmetrical cadences and its universal intelligibility. Let the reader take any one of the Mozart sonatas, and play the first melody he finds--he will immediately see that here is something for which no place could have been found in a fugue, nor yet in its complement, the prelude of Bach's days. The same is true of many similar pa.s.sages in the sonatas of Haydn. Music had now found the missing half of its dual nature. For we must know that in the same manner as the thematic or fugal element in music represents the play of musical fantasy, turning over musical ideas intellectually or seriously; so there is a spontaneous melody, into which no thought of developing an idea enters. The melody flows or soars like the song of a bird, because it is the free expression, not of musical fantasy, as such (the unconscious play of tonal fancy), but the flow of _melody_, _song_, the soaring of spirit in some one particular direction, floating upon buoyant pinions, and in directions well conceived and sure. The symmetry of the people's song follows as a natural part of the progress. The spontaneous element of the music of the northern harpers now found its way into the musical productions of the highest geniuses. Henceforth the fugue subsides from its pre-eminence, and remains possible only as a highly specialized department of the general art of musical composition, useful and necessary at times, but nevermore the expression of the unfettered fancy of the musical mind.

The discovery of the secret of musical contrast, in the types of development, the _thematic_ and the _lyric_, led to the creation of a new form, in which they mutually contrast with and help each other.

That form was the Sonata, which having been begun earlier, was developed further by the sons of Bach, but which received its characteristic touches from the hands of Haydn and Mozart. This was the crowning glory of the eighteenth century--the sonata. A form had been created, into which the greatest of masters was even then beginning to breathe his mighty soul, producing thereby a succession of master works, which stand without parallel in the realm of music.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.

All things considered, the most remarkable figure of this period was that of the great John Sebastian Bach, who was born at Eisenach, in Prussia, in 1685, and died at Leipsic in 1750. It is scarcely too much to say that this great man has exercised more influence upon the development of music than any other composer who has ever lived. In his own day he led a quiet, uneventful life, at first as student, then as court musician at Weimar, where he played the violin; later as organist at Arnstadt, a small village near Weimar, and still later as director of music in the St. Thomas church and school at Leipsic. In the sixty-five years of his life, Bach produced an enormous number of compositions, of which about half were in fugue form, a form which was at its prime at the beginning of this century and which Bach carried to the farthest point in the direction of freedom and spontaneity which it ever reached.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 51.

JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH.]

It is the remarkable glory of Bach to have rendered his compositions indispensable to thorough mastery in three different provinces of musical effort. The modern art of violin playing rests upon two works, the six sonatas of Bach for violin solo, and the Caprices of Paganini.

The former contain everything that belongs to the cla.s.sical, the latter everything that belongs to the sensational. In organ playing the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered Clavier," of Bach; the "_Gradus ad Parna.s.sum_," of Clementi; the "Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third of this preparation. Nor has the influence of Bach been confined to the province of technical instruction alone. On the contrary, all composers since his time have felt the stimulus of his great tone poems, and Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Wagner found him the most productive of great masters.

The life of Bach need not long detain us. A musician of the tenth generation, member of a family which occupies a liberal s.p.a.ce in German encyclopedias of music, art and literature, Sebastian Bach led the life of a teacher, productive artist and virtuoso, mainly within the limits of the comparatively unimportant provincial city of Leipsic. His three wives in succession and his twenty-one children were the domestic incidents which bound him to his home. Here he trained his choir, taught his pupils, composed those master works which modern musicians try in vain to equal, and the even tenor of his life was broken in upon by very few incidents of a sensational kind.

We do not understand that Bach was a virtuoso upon the violin, although no other master has required more of that greatest of musical instruments. Upon the piano and organ the case is different. Bach's piano was the clavier, upon which he was the greatest virtuoso of his time. His touch was clear and liquid, his technique unbounded, and his musical fantasy absolutely without limit. Hence in improvisation or in the performance of previously arranged numbers he never failed to delight his audience. It was the same upon the organ. The art of obligato pedal playing he brought to a point which it had never before reached and scarcely afterward surpa.s.sed. He comprehended the full extent of organ technique, and with the exception of a few tricks of quasi-orchestral imitation, made possible in modern organs, he covered the entire ground of organ playing in a manner at once solid and brilliant. Many stories are told of his capacity in this direction, but the general characterization already given is sufficient. He was a master of the first order. The common impression that he played habitually upon the full organ is undoubtedly erroneous. He made ample use of registration to the fullest extent practicable on the organs of his day.

The most remarkable feature of the career of Bach is his productivity in the line of choral works. As leader of the music in the St. Thomas church, he had under his control two organs, two choirs, the children of the school and an orchestra. For these resources he composed a succession of cantatas, every feast day in the ecclesiastical year being represented by from one to five separate works. The total number of these cantatas reaches more than 230. Some of them are short, ten or fifteen minutes long, but most of them are from thirty to forty minutes, and some of them reach an hour. Their treasures have been but imperfectly explored, although most of them are now in print. In the course of his ministrations at Leipsic he produced five great Pa.s.sion oratorios for Good Friday in Holy Week. The greatest of these was the Pa.s.sion of St. Matthew, so named from the source of its text. This work occupies about two hours in performance. It is in two parts, and the sermon was supposed to intervene. It consists of recitative, arias and choruses, some of which are extremely elaborate and highly dramatic. The other Pa.s.sions are less fortunate. Nevertheless they contain many beautiful and highly dramatic moments. Bach's oratorios belong to the category of church works, as distinguished from those intended for concert purposes. This is seen especially in the treatment of the chorale, in which he expects the congregation to co-operate. In one direction Bach was subject to serious limitation.

His knowledge of the voice, and his consideration for its convenience, were far below the standard of composers of the same time educated in Italy. In his works, while many pa.s.sages are very impressive, and while the melody and harmony are always appropriate to the matter in hand, the intervals and especially the convenience of the different registers of the voice are very imperfectly considered, for which reason his works have not been performed to anything like the extent to which their musical interest would otherwise have carried them.

This is especially true of the greatest of all, the Pa.s.sion according to St. Matthew. It was first performed on Good Friday, 1729, in the St. Thomas church at Leipsic, and it does not appear to have been given again until 1829, when Mendelssohn brought it out. Since that time it has been given almost every year in Leipsic, and more or less frequently in all the musical centers of the world, but its elaboration is very great and its vocal treatment unsatisfactory to solo voices, for which reason it succeeds only under the inspiration of an artistic and enthusiastic leader. In fact, all the great works of Bach are more or less in the category of cla.s.sics, which are well spoken of and seldom consulted. While, in Beethoven's time, the whole of the "Well Tempered Clavier" was not thought too much for an ambitious youngster, at the present time there are few pianists who play half a dozen of these pieces. The easier inventions for two parts, some of the suites, several gavottes, modernized from his violin and chamber music, and a very few of his other pieces for the clavier, are habitually played.

It would be unjust to close the account of this great artist without mentioning what we might call the prophetic element in his works. The great bulk of Bach's compositions are in two forms, the Prelude and the Fugue. The fugue came to perfection in his hands. It was an application of the Netherlandish art of canonic imitation, combined with modern tonality. In a fugue the first voice gives the subject in the tonic, the second voice answers in the dominant, the third voice comes again in the tonic, and the fourth voice, if there be one, again in the dominant. Then ensues a digression into some key upon what theorists call the dominant side, when one or two voices give out the subject and answer it again, always in the tonic and dominant of the new key. Then more or less modulating matter, thematically developed out of some leading motive of the subject, and again the princ.i.p.al material of the theme, with one or more answers. The final close is preceded by a more or less elaborate pedal point upon the dominant of the princ.i.p.al key, after which the subject comes in. With very few exceptions the fugues of Bach are in modern tonality, the major key or the modern minor, with their usual relatives.

The prelude is a less closely organized composition. Sometimes it is purely harmonic in its interest, like the first of the "Well Tempered Clavier." At other times it is highly melodic, like the preludes in C sharp major and minor of the first book of the Clavier, and, as a rule, the prelude either treats its motives in a somewhat lyric manner or dispenses with the melodic material altogether. Thus the prelude and fugue mutually complete each other. But it is a great mistake to regard Bach as a writer of fugues alone. He was also very free in fantasies, and one of his pianoforte works, concerning the origin of which nothing whatever is known, the "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue,"

is one of the four or five greatest compositions that exist for this instrument. The remarkable thing about this fantasia is the freedom of its treatment and the facility with which it lends itself to virtuoso handling, as distinguished from the rather limited treatment of the piano usual in Bach's works. The second part of the fantasia is occupied by a succession of recitatives of an extremely graphic and poetic character. Melodically and harmonically these recitatives are thoroughly modern and dramatic, the latter element being very forcibly represented by the succession of diminished sevenths on which the phrases of the recitative end. The fugue following is long, highly diversified and extremely climactic in its interest. In other parts of his work Bach has left fantasies of a more descriptive character. He has, for instance, a hunting scene with various incidents of a realistic character, and in general he shows himself in his piano works a man of wide range of mind and extremely vigorous musical fantasy.

In the department of concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, his works are very rich. There are a large number for piano, quite a number for organ, several for two and three pianos, with orchestra, and various other combinations of instruments, such as two violins and 'cellos, and so on. In these each solo player has an equal chance with the other, and solos and accompaniment work together understandingly for mutual ends. The most noticeable feature of his elaborate works is the rhythm, which is vigorous, highly organized and extremely effective. In the department of harmony, it is believed by almost all close observers that no combination of tones since made by any writer is without a precedent in the works of Bach; the strange chords of Schumann and Wagner find their prototypes in the works of this great Leipsic master. Melodically considered, Bach was a genius of the highest order. Not only did he make this impression upon his own time and upon the great masters of the next two generations, but many of his airs have attained genuine popularity within the present generation, and are played with more real satisfaction than most other works that we have. This is the more remarkable because from the time of his first residence in Leipsic when he was only twenty-four years old he went out of that city but a few times, and heard very little music but his own. He was three times married, and had twenty-one children, many of whom were musical. Three of his sons became eminent, and the princ.i.p.al episode of his later life was his visit to Potsdam, where his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, was musician to Frederick the Great. Here he was received with the utmost informality by the king and made to play and improvise upon all the pianos and organs in the palace and the adjacent churches. As a reminiscence of this visit he produced a fugue upon a subject given by Frederick himself, written for six real parts. This work was called the "Musical Offering," and was dedicated to Frederick the Great. In his later years Bach became blind from having over-exerted his eyes in childhood and in later life. He died on Good Friday in 1750.