Some Forerunners of Italian Opera Part 5

The madrigal was originally a pastoral song, but the form came to be utilized for the expression of varied sentiments and it was treated with a musicianship which advanced it toward the more stately condition of the 'durchcomponirt' motet. In the villanelle the influence of the strophic folk song is clearly perceptible. The frottola to a certain extent stood in the middle. It is sung verse by verse, but its musical scheme is almost always conceived in a much broader spirit than that of the villanelle and gives to it almost the appearance of a durchcomponirt work. But the systematic repet.i.tion of certain couplets in the manner of a refrain occasions the recurrence of whole musical periods. Thus does the frottola acquire from its text that architectural shape which places it in marked contrast to the swift-paced and fluid contrapuntal chanson of the Netherlanders. Its rhythm and accents are arranged not by the needs of contrapuntal development, but by the meter of the line and the accent of the Italian tongue. This appears most prominently in the upper voice part, where often the controlling melody seems ready to break quite through in pure song style, but only partly succeeds.

In the texture of the voices all kinds of imitations appear, but only subordinated and in very modest setting.

"All this was a part of the steady progress toward monody, the final goal of Italian musical art, where, in extreme contrast to the Netherlandish subordination to school, the emergence and domination of individuality, the special and significant distinction of the Renaissance, were taking shape. Hence Castiglione in his 'Cortegiano' gives preference to the one-voiced song ('recitar alla lira') and it was quite natural that we find in the Petrucci collection frottole originally composed for four voices now appearing as soprano solos with lute accompaniment, the latter being arranged from the other three voices."[26]

[Footnote 26: This pa.s.sage is not a literal quotation, but partly a paraphrase and partly a condensation of the text of Ambros.]

Castiglione (1478-1529) wrote somewhat later than the period of Poliziano. The "Cortegiano" dates from 1514, though it was not published till a few years later, and the frottola was at the zenith of its excellence in the time of Bernado Tromboncino, who belongs to the latter half of the fifteenth century. But the frottola was well established before the date of Poliziano's "Orfeo," for minor Italian composers had poured forth a ma.s.s of small lyrics for which they found their models in the polyphonic secular songs of Antoine de Busnois (1440-1482) and others of the Netherlands school, especially such writers as Loyset Compere, of St. Quentin, who died in 1518. Two of his frottole appear in the Petrucci collection, showing that he was acquainted with this Italian form, and that his productions in it were known and admired in Italy. His frottole are distinguished by uncommon grace and gaiety, for the frottola was generally rather pa.s.sionate and melancholy, and full of what Castiglione called "flebile dolcezza."

In view, then, of the state of part song composition in Italy at the time when Poliziano's "Orfeo" was written we are safe in a.s.suming that its two choral numbers were set to music of the frottola type. The use of the refrains, "l'aria di pianti" in the first, and "Ciascun segua, O Bacco, te," in the second, is an additional influence in moving us toward this conclusion because we know that it was the employment of the refrain which helped to lead the frottola toward the strophic form of the song. We are, moreover, justified in concluding from the character of the final chorus that it was a ballata or dance song and hence a frottola of the carnival song variety. No student of cla.s.sic literature will need any demonstration of the probability that the Maenads in their Bacchic invocation danced; and here we have in all likelihood the origin of that fashion of concluding operas with a chorus and a dance which survived as late as Mozart's "Die Zauberflote."

CHAPTER VIII

The Solos of the "Orfeo"

The failure of the vocal solo in the field of artistic music of Europe might be traced to the establishment of the unisonal chant in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in defining such ground we should easily be led to exaggerate the importance of the solo. In the infancy of modern music the solo existed only in the folk song, in the rhapsodies of religious ecstatics and in the uncertain lyrics of the minnesingers and troubadours. Of these the folk song, and the troubadour lyrics had some musical figure, out of which a clear form might have been developed. But, as all students of musical history know, the study of the art originated among the fathers of the church and in their pursuit of principles of structure they chose a path which led them directly away from the rhythmic and strophic basis of the song and into the realm of polyphonic imitation. The vocal solo had no place in their system and hence it never appears in the art music of their time.

Consequently the advent of the dramatic recitative introduced by Peri, Caccini and Cavaliere appears to be a striking phenomenon in the growth of music, and we are easily induced to believe that this new species burst upon the artistic firmament like a meteor. The truth is, however, that the vague desire for solo expression had made itself felt in music for centuries before the Florentine movement. The real significance of the Florentine invention was its destruction of the musical shackles which had so long hampered the advance toward truthful utterance.

We read frequently that the first instance of solo singing was the delivery of a madrigal of Corteccia in a play of 1539. The character Sileno sang the upper part and accompanied himself on the violone, while the lower parts were given to other instruments. But this was nothing new. This kind of solo was considerably older than Sileno and the performance of Baccio Ugolino in Poliziano's "Orfeo" was unquestionably of the same type. And this manner of delivering a solo, which Castiglione called "recitar alla lira," was a descendant of the art of singing with lute accompaniment which was well known in the fourteenth century.

Doubtless Casella, who was born in 1300 and set to music Dante's sonnet "Amor che nella mente," was one of the _cantori a liuto_. Minuccio d'Arezzo, mentioned by Boccaccio, was another. Here again we must recur to the observations of Burney and the examinations of Ambros. The former records that in the Vatican there is a poem by Lemmo of Pistoja, with the note "Casella diede il suono." It is likely that this musician was well known in Italy and that he would not have had to rely for his immortality upon the pa.s.sing mention of a poet if the art of notation had been more advanced in his day.

The story of Minuccio, as told by Boccaccio, is this. A young maiden of Palermo, seized with violent love for the King, begged Minuccio to help her. Not being a verse-maker himself, he hastened to the poet Mico of Siena, who wrote a poem setting forth the maiden's woes. This Minuccio set at once to exquisite and heart-moving music and sang it for the King to the accompaniment of his own viol. The poem is in the main strophic and the melody is of similar nature. Whether Boccaccio or Mico wrote the poem matters not in the historical sense. The important facts are that such a poem exists and that a hint as to its music has come down to us.

In the "Decameron" we are told often how some one or other of the personages sings to the company. Sometimes it is a dance song, as for example the "Io son si vaga della mia bellezza." To this all the others spontaneously dance while singing the refrain in chorus. Another time the queen of the day, Emilia, invites Dioneo to sing a canzona. There is much pretty banter, while Dioneo teases the women by making false starts at several then familiar songs. In another place Dioneo with lute and Fiametta with viol play a dance. Again one sings while Dioneo accompanies her on the lute.

Thus Boccaccio in his marvelous portraiture of the social life of his time has casually handed down to us invaluable facts about vocal and instrumental music. There is no question that Ambros is fully justified in his conclusion that the _cantori a liuto_ were a well-marked cla.s.s of musicians. They were vocal soloists and often improvisatori, clearly differentiated from the cantori a libro, who were "singers by book and note" and who sang the polyphonic art music of the time.

It is pretty well established that the songs of Dante were everywhere known and sung. We have reason to believe that many of those of Boccaccio were also familiar to the people. We may also feel confident that when most of the Italian lute singers of the time had acquired sufficient skill to make their own poems as well as their own melodies, they followed the models provided in the verses of the great masters.

What is still more important for us to note is that these lyrics were strophical and that they were no further removed from the folk song of the era than the frottola was. Indeed they bore a closer resemblance to the frottola. They differed in that they were solos with instrumental accompaniment instead of being part songs unaccompanied.

But this difference is not so important as it appears. The part song method was at the basis of all these old lute songs. This is well proved by the fact that before the end of the century the device of turning part songs into solo pieces with lute accompaniment had become quite familiar. It was so common that we are driven to something more substantial than a mere suspicion that Casella and Minuccio employed a similar method and that the domination of polyphonic thought in music had spread from the regions occupied by the church compositions of Dufay and his contemporaries downward into the secular fancies of people whose daily thought was influenced by the authority of the church.

Furthermore this method of turning part songs into solos survived until the era of the full fledged madrigal dramas of Vecchi in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and at what may be called the golden era of the frottola was generally and successfully applied to that species of composition. Whatever the troubadours and minnesingers may have done toward establishing a metrical melodic form of monophonic character was soon obliterated by the swift popularity of part singing and the immense vogue of the secular songs of the polyphonic composers. When the desire for the vocal solo made itself felt in the exquisitely sensuous life of medieval Italy, it found its only gratification in the easy art of adaptation. In such scenes as those described by Boccaccio and much later by Castiglione there was no incentive to artistic reform, no impulse to creative activity.

We find ourselves, then, equipped with these significant facts: first, that the composition of secular music in polyphonic forms was at least as old as the thirteenth century; that part singing was practised in Italy as far back as the fourteenth century; that songs for one voice were made with Italian texts at least as early as the time of Dante and Boccaccio; that the art of arranging polyphonic compositions as vocal solos by giving the secondary parts to the accompanying instrument was known in the time of Minuccio and Casella; that at the time of Poliziano's "Orfeo" the frottola was the reigning form of part song, and that then and for years afterward it was customary to arrange frottole as solos by giving the polyphony to the lute or other accompanying instrument.

It seems, then, that we shall not be far astray if we conclude that the solo parts of Poliziano's lyric drama consisted of music of the better frottola type and that the moving appeals of his hero were accompanied on a "lyre" of the period in precisely the same manner as frottole transformed into vocal solos were accompanied on the lute. For these reasons an example of the method of arranging a frottola for voice and lute will give us some idea of the character of the music sung by Baccio Ugolino in the "Orfeo." The examples here offered are those given in the great history of Ambros. The first is a fragment of a frottola (composed by Tromboncino) in its original shape. The second shows the same music as arranged for solo voice and lute by Franciscus Bossinensis as found in a collection published by Petrucci in 1509.

[Musical Notation: two excerpts]

How far removed this species of lyric solo was from the dramatic recitative of Peri and Caccini is apparent at a single glance. But on the other hand it is impossible to be blind to its relationship to the more metrical arioso of Monteverde's earlier work or perhaps to the canzone of Caccini's "Nuove Musiche." The line of development or progress is distinctly traceable. At this point it is not essential that we should satisfy ourselves that the solo songs of Caccini were descendants of the lyrics of the _cantori a liuto_, for when the two species are placed in juxtaposition the lineage is almost unmistakable.

What we do need to remember here is that the method of the lute singers entered fully into the construction of the score--if it may be so called--of Poliziano's "Orfeo" and pa.s.sed from that to the madrigal drama and was there brought under the reformatory experiments of Galilei and his contemporaries. This subject must be discussed more fully in a later chapter.

The first lyric number of the "Orfeo," that sung by Aristaeus, is plainly labeled "canzona," and was, therefore, without doubt a song made after the manner of the lutenists. The words "forth from thy wallet take thy pipe" indicate that a wind instrument figured in this number. What sort of instrument we shall inquire in the next chapter. At present we may content ourselves with a.s.suming that no highly developed solo part was a.s.signed to it. The existence of such a part would imply the co-existence of considerable musicianship on the part of the pipe player and of an advanced technic in the composition of instrumental obbligati.

It might also presuppose the existence of a system of notation much better than that of the fifteenth century. But this is a point about which we cannot be too sure.

The decision must be sought in the general state of music at the time.

The learned masters cultivated only _a capella_ choral music, and the unlearned imitated them. There was no systematic study of instrumental composition. Even the organ had as yet acquired no independent office, but simply supported voices by doubling their notes. It seems unlikely, then, that the pipe in "Orfeo" could have had a real part. What it probably did was to repeat as a sort of ritornello the clearly marked refrain of the song. This would have been thoroughly in keeping with the growing tendency of the frottola to use refrains and advance toward strophical form.

The lyre, with which Baccio Ugolino as Orfeo accompanied himself, may have been a cithara, but the probabilities are that it was not. As late as the time of Praetorius's great work (Syntagma Music.u.m) the word "lyra"

was used to designate certain instruments of close relationship to the viol family. Praetorius tells us that there were two kinds of Italian lyres. The large lyre, called _lirone perfetto_, or arce violyra, was in structure like the ba.s.s of the viola da gamba, but that the body and the neck on account of the numerous strings were somewhat wider. Some had twelve, some fourteen and some even sixteen strings, so that madrigals and compositions both chromatic and diatonic could be performed and a fine harmony produced. The small lyre was like the tenor viola di braccio and was called the lyra di braccio. It had seven strings, two of them outside the finger board and the other five over it. Upon this instrument also certain harmonized compositions could be played. The pictures of these two lyres show that they looked much like viols and were played with bows.[27] An eighth century ma.n.u.script shows an instrument with a body like a mandolin, a neck without frets and a small bow. This instrument is ent.i.tled "lyra" in the ma.n.u.script. If now we come down to the period when the modern opera was taking form we learn that Galilei sang his own "Ugolino" monody and accompanied himself on the viola. Various pictures show us that small instruments of the bowed varieties were used by the minnesingers, and again by jongleurs in the fifteenth century. Early Italian painters put such instruments into the hands of angels and carvers left them for us to see, as in the cathedral of Amiens. In fact there is every reason to believe that the wandering poets and minstrels of the Middle Ages used the small vielle, rebek or lyre for their accompaniments much oftener than the harp, which was more c.u.mbersome and a greater impediment in traveling.

[Footnote 27: Michael Praetorius, "Syntagma Music.u.m," vol. ii, Organographia. Wolfenb.u.t.tel, 1619-20.]

The instruments used to support song, that of the troubadour or that of a Casella, or later still that of a Galilei, being of the same lineage, the only novelty was the adaptation to them of the lutenist's method of arranging polyphonic music for one voice with accompaniment. That this offered no large difficulties is proved by the account of Praetorius. If at the close of the sixteenth century chromatic compositions, which were then making much progress, could be performed on a bowed lyre, there is no reason to think that in Poliziano's time there would have been much labor in arranging frottola melodies for voice and lyra di braccio. It is safe to a.s.sume that the instrument to which Baccio Ugolino was wont to improvise and which was therefore utilized in "Orfeo" was the lyra di braccio and that del Lungo's imaginative picture must be corrected by the subst.i.tution of the bow for the plectrum. We have not even recourse to the supposition that Ugolino may have employed the pizzicato since that was not invented till after his day by Monteverde.

We are, however, compelled to conclude that Baccio Ugolino preceded Corteccia in this manner of solo, afterwards called "recitar alla lira."

We may now reconstruct for ourselves the cla.s.sic scene with Orpheus "singing on the hill to his lyre" the verses "O meos longum modulata lusus." The music was the half melancholy, half pa.s.sionate melody of some wandering Italian frottola which readily fitted itself to the sonorous Sapphics. The accompaniment on the mellow lyra di braccio, one of the tender sisters of the viola, was a simplified version of the subordinate voice parts of the frottola. And perchance there were even other instruments, an embryonic orchestra. Here, indeed, we must pause lest reconstructive ardor carry us too far. We must content ourselves with the conclusion that the vocal music of the entire drama was simple in melodic structure, for such was the character of the part music out of which it was made. It was certainly well fitted to be one of the parents of the recitative of Peri and Caccini with the church chant as the other.

CHAPTER IX

The Orchestra of the "Orfeo"

That there was some sort of an orchestra in the "Orfeo" is probable, though it is not wholly certain. The letter of the Envoy Pauluzo on the performance of Ariosto's "Suppositi" at the Vatican in March, 1518, has already been quoted. From this we learn that there was an orchestra containing fifes, bag-pipes, two cornets, some viols and lutes and a small organ. It is a pity that Pauluzzo did not record the number of stringed instruments in order that we might have some idea of the balance of this orchestra. On the other hand, as there was no system of orchestration at that time, we might not learn much from the enumeration. Rolland, in commenting on this letter, says, as we have already noted, that this was the type of musical plays performed in Italy at least as far back as the time of Poliziano. There is no imperative demand that Rolland's statement on this point should be accepted as authoritative, for his admirable book is without evidence that the author gave this matter any special attention. On the other hand it is almost certain that his a.s.sertion contains the truth. All the instruments mentioned by him were in use long before the date of the "Orfeo." Furthermore a.s.semblies of instruments played together, as we well know. But we are without data as to what they played, and are driven to the conclusion that since there was no separate composition for instruments till near the close of the sixteenth century, the performance of the early a.s.semblies of instruments must have been devoted to popular songs or dances of the time. A little examination into the character of these early "orchestras" may serve to throw light on the nature of the instrumental accompaniments in Poliziano's "Orfeo."

Symonds's description of the performance of Cecchi's "Esaltazione della Croce," already quoted in Chapter III, shows us that in 1589 a sacred representation had an orchestra of viols, lutes, horns and organ, that it played an interlude with special music composed by Luca Bati, and that it also accompanied a solo allotted to the Deity. Another interlude showed David dancing to lute, viol, trombone and harp. It is evident, therefore, that at a period a century after that of the "Orfeo" there was a certain sort of orchestra. But this period was somewhat later than that of Striggio, who had already employed orchestras of considerable variety. In his "La Cofanaria" (1566) he used two gravicembali, four viols, two trombones, two straight flutes, one cornet, one traverso and two lutes, and in a motet composed in 1569 he had eight viols, eight trombones, eight flutes, an instrument of the spinet family and a large lute, together with voices. To delve backward from this point is not so easy as it looks, yet however far back we may choose to go we cannot fail to find evidences that a.s.semblies of instruments were employed, sometimes to accompany voices and again to play independently.

The antiquity of music at banquets, for example, is attested by sayings as old as Solomon, by bitter comments of Plato, by the account of Xenophon and by pa.s.sages in the comedies of Aristophanes. The instrumental music at banquets in Plato's time was that of Greek girl flute players and harpers. Early in the Middle Ages the banquet music consisted of any collection of instruments that chanced to be at hand.

In an ancient ma.n.u.script in the National Library of Paris there is a picture of Heinrich of Meissen, the minnesinger (born 1260), conducting a choir of singers and instrumental performers. The instruments are viols and wooden wind instruments of the schalmei family. A bas relief in the church of St. Gregory at Boscherville in Normandy shows an orchestra of several players. This relief is of the twelfth century. It presents first on the left a king who plays a three-stringed gamba, which he holds between his knees, like a violoncello. A woman performer handles an organistrum, a sort of large hurdy-gurdy, sometimes (as apparently in this case) requiring two players, one for the crank and another for the stops. Then comes a man with a pandean pipe, next another with a semicircular harp and then one with a portable organ.

Next comes a performer on a round-bodied fiddle (the usual form of the instrument at that time). Next to him is a harper, using a plectrum, and at the right end of the group is a pair of players, man and woman, performing on a glockenspiel. This orchestra was probably playing for dancing, as no singers are in sight.

In a fifteenth century breviary reposing in the library of Brussels there is a representation of a similar orchestra, and this brings us nearer to the era of Poliziano's "Orfeo." The instruments are harp, lute, dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, double flute, pommer (an ancient oboe form), bag-pipe, trombone, portable organ, triangle and a straight flute with its accompanying little tambour. One of the musicians did not play, but beat time as a director. It is interesting to make a brief comparison between the two representations, for this shows the novelties which entered between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. The lute, the trombone, the pommer and the triangle were new acquisitions. If now we refer again to the orchestra of 1518 mentioned by Pauluzo we shall seem to have gone backward. But the truth must be clear to all students that these orchestras were not brought together with any definite musical design. They consisted of the players who chanced to be at hand.

Even the letter of the Duke of Milan in 1473 (see Chapter III), in which he announces his intention of engaging a good orchestra from Rome, can hardly mean anything more than a purpose to get as many good instrumentalists as he could.[28]

[Footnote 28: "Although the existence of 'Orfeo' as an opera appears to me to be problematical, there would be nothing impossible about the construction of a tragedy accompanied by music, because instruments were cultivated in Italy more than in France. Before that epoch the Medici had given concerts at Florence. Giovanni de Medici died in 1429, and Cosimo, who succeeded him and reigned till 1464, gave at the Pitti Palace concerts where there were as many as four hundred musicians. Under his successors and before the death of Alexander de' Medici in 1537, the violinists Pietro Caldara and Antonio Mazzini were often the objects of veritable ovations, and about the same time, 1536, at Venice, was played a piece called 'Il Sacrificio,' in which violins sustained the princ.i.p.al parts."--"Les Origines de l'Opera et le Ballet de la Reine," par Ludovic Celler. Paris, 1868.]

While, then, it must be confessed that no conclusive evidence can be produced that an orchestra was employed in the "Orfeo," the indications are strong that there was one. We may a.s.sume without much fear of error that it was used only to accompany the choral numbers and the dance and that in fulfilling the last mentioned function it was heard to the best advantage. Years after the period of the "Orfeo" of Poliziano independent instrumental forms had not yet been developed. Fully a century later compositions "da cantare e sonare" betray to us the fact that bodies of instruments performing without voices merely played the madrigals which at other times were sung. Such compositions were not conceived in the instrumental idiom and must have floated in an exceedingly thin atmosphere when separated from text and the expressive nuances of the human tone. But the music of the dance was centuries old and it had in all eras been sung by instruments, as well as by voices.

The invasion of the realm of popular melody by crude imitations of the polyphonic devices of the Netherlanders could not have crushed out the melodic and rhythmic basis of dance music and this had fitted itself to the utterance of instruments. We are therefore justified in believing that if the accompaniment of the first chorus in the "Orfeo" was superfluous and vague that of the final ballata must have been clearer in character and better suited to the nature of the scene. The dance following the ballata must have been effective. The instruments were most probably lutes, viols, flute, oboe, and possibly bag-pipe, hurdy-gurdy and little organ.

We have already inquired into the nature of the instrument which Baccio Ugolino carried on the stage and with which after the manner of the minstrels of his time he accompanied himself. It remains now only to ask what was the pipe which the shepherd Aristaeus mentions in the first scene. It was probably not a flageolet, though that instrument suggests itself as particularly appropriate to the episode. But the good Dr.

Burney says that the flageolet was invented by the Sieur Juvigny, who played it in the "Ballet Comique de la Royne," the first French pastoral opera, in 1581. It could have been a recorder, the ancestor of the flageolet, which was probably in use in the fourteenth and surely in the fifteenth century. But more probably it was one of the older reed instruments of the oboe family, the pommer or possibly a schalmei. The schalmei is mentioned as far back as Sebastian Virdung's "Musica getuscht und ausgezogen" (1511). Its ancestor was probably the zamr-el-kebyr, an Oriental reed instrument. The schalmei was developed into a whole family, enumerated by Praetorius in the work already mentioned. The highest of these, the little schalmei, was seldom used, but the "soprano schalmei is the primitive type of the modern oboe."[29]

[Footnote 29: See "A Note on Oboes," by Philip Hale. Programme Books of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, season of 1905-06, p. 644.]

It is thus tolerably certain that the instrumental tone used to voice the pastoral character of the scene was the same as that which Beethoven used in his "Pastoral" symphony, as Berlioz used in his "Fantastic," as Gounod used in his "Faust," and that thus at least one element of the instrumental embodiment of Poliziano's story has come down to us.

CHAPTER X