The Century of Columbus Part 10

The story of architecture, secular as well as religious, outside of Italy is quite as interesting as that in Italy itself at this time.

Everywhere throughout Europe beautiful buildings were erected in charming taste and with fine effectiveness. This is particularly true as regards the munic.i.p.al buildings of various kinds, the town halls, the hospitals, the asylums for foundling children, and all the other structures due to civic munificence at this time. Just as in regard to painting and sculpture, the Netherlands was the seat of some extremely beautiful artistic work of great originality and perfection of detail during this period. There is scarcely an important town of Belgium, and even a number of those that have become quite unimportant in our time, which does not present some architectural monument of cardinal importance in the history of architecture. While Italy is much better known, Belgium deserves, and in recent years has very properly received, devoted attention from students and amateurs in all the arts, and not least has its architecture come into its due meed of praise and appreciation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOTEL DE VILLE, LOUVAIN]

One of the most beautiful architectural monuments of the later fifteenth century is the town hall of Louvain. Indeed, it is one of the most beautiful architectural monuments of its kind in the world.

Schayes, in his "History of Architecture," says, "Not only is the Hotel de Ville of Louvain the most remarkable munic.i.p.al edifice in Belgium, but one may seek in vain its equal in Europe." Its architect, whose name was unknown until well on in the nineteenth century, was only a master mason of this capital of Brabant when he was entrusted {125} with the task of making for the burghers of one of the most important towns of the time a town hall such as they would consider worthy of them, but above all surpa.s.sing those erected by any of the neighboring towns. He succeeded eminently in fulfilling the commission, and fortunately the town hall remains almost in its original condition as a monument to the wonderful artistic workmanship of the time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALCALa, PARANIMFO (STATE APARTMENT OF UNIVERSITY)]

George Wharton James, in his book on "Some Old Flemish Towns," says, "The exquisite Hotel de Ville reminds one of the caskets or reliquaries which Kings and Queens used to give to be placed upon the high altars of Cathedrals. There is the same simplicity of design, the same beauty of line, the {126} rectangle with gables, emphasized by a graceful tower at each pinnacle, and another at each angle, the whole finished with a crown spire tipped with a golden fleche." The decorations are most delicate, reminding one of the lace work of the country, but it seems almost incredible that this effect should have been produced so marvellously in stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALCALa, ARCHIEPISCOPAL PALACE COURT]

In spite of the mult.i.tude of decorations, the structure does not strike one, as do so many of the buildings of the seventeenth century, as over-decorated, but somehow all the charming sculptured ornament seems as {127} suitably in place here as it is in the exquisite patterns of the lace of the town.

The beautiful Hotel de Ville of Brussels is almost as interesting as that at Louvain and represents the early part of the Columbus'

Century. At the opposite side of the Grande Place is what is now known as the Maison du Roi, formerly known as the Broodhuis or House of Bread, which is scarcely less interesting, though very much restored, than the Hotel de Ville. The one is a monument of the Gothic of the middle of the fifteenth century, the other shows the influence of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. The whole of the Grand Place gives an excellent idea of the devotion of these munic.i.p.alities to civic beauty and monumental construction and represents an antic.i.p.ation of ideas that are usually considered modern but that were very thoroughly developed and applied in making the "City Beautiful"

in Columbus' Century. Were there s.p.a.ce, much might be said here about the magnificent town halls of Bruges, Ghent and other cities of the Netherlands.

The architecture of Spain, practically always connected with the names of ecclesiastics and usually built for ecclesiastical or educational or charitable purposes, shows very well the profound intellectual genius of the people for whom Columbus' discovery was made and who were beginning to reap the material benefits of his extension of the Spanish realms in the Western continent. One of the most important of the buildings of the time is that of the University of Alcala, under the direction of the celebrated Cardinal Ximenes, or Cisneros. The rebuilding commenced about 1510 and continued nearly to the end of Columbus' Century. It is an extremely beautiful building. The Archiepiscopal Palace is quite equal to it, and its court has been very highly praised. Fergusson has spoken highly of the bracket capitals in the upper story of this court, of which we give a sketch, and he thinks this invention of the Spanish architect a distinctly new and valuable idea in architecture which unfortunately has not been commonly adopted.

Some of the internal arrangements have been very much admired, and the Paranimfo, a state apartment in the University, deserves attention not only for its intrinsic beauty, but {128} from its being so essentially Spanish in style. The roof is of richly-carved woodwork in panels in a style borrowed from the Moors. Fergusson says that there is another and more beautiful specimen of this sort of work in the chapel of the University above the Cenotaph of the great Cardinal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLOISTER, (LUPIANA, SPAIN)]

Elsewhere in Spain some of these beautiful courts and interiors were ornamented very highly as became a Southern {129} people, and yet with an effectiveness and taste that have caused them to be very much admired in after-times. In the Monastery of Lupiana there is a cloistered court similar in design to that at Alcala, but even grander, four stories in height, each gallery being lighter than the one below it and so arranged as to give the appearance of sufficient strength, combined with the lightness and elegance peculiarly appropriate to domestic architecture, especially when employed internally as it is here. Fergusson, from whom the opinion just expressed is quoted, thinks that the Spanish architects were far more happy than their Italian brethren in this regard and mainly because they borrowed ideas from their own Spanish art rather than kept too insistently to cla.s.sic ideas.

Two royal buildings in Spain, the Palace of Charles V at Granada and the Alcazar of Toledo, deserve to be mentioned. The Alcazar was begun before the end of Columbus' Century, but not finished until later. The sketch of it here presented gives an excellent idea of how simple and yet properly ornate for monumental purposes the Spanish architects were making their buildings at this time. The truly Spanish features of solidity below, with the increasing richness and openness above, is very effective and is all the more interesting because historians of architecture declare that this effect was little understood outside of the Spanish peninsula.

The upper portion of the famous tower of the Giralda at Seville, which has always attracted so much attention for its beauty, was being built just at the close of the century. We in modern America have given it the tribute of sincerest flattery by imitating it in the tower of Madison Square Garden. It is interesting to realize that the Spaniards put a figure of Faith at the summit of the beautiful tower, pointing strikingly heavenward. Is it significant that we in our time have found nothing better to put there than the outworn symbol of a statue to Diana?

French secular architecture at this time made some fine achievements which are very well known and have been very much admired. The Louvre in Paris is a succession of monuments to the architectural spirit of the French for centuries. I think that there is very general agreement that the portion {130} of this building erected in Columbus' Century is not only the most interesting, but the most beautiful. The Pavilion de I'Horloge is quite charming in its effectiveness. The ornamental portions are said to have been sculptured from designs furnished by Jean Goujon. This is enough of itself to make us sure that they would be beautiful, but they were besides very artistically designed to heighten the effect of the architecture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALCAZAR (TOLEDO, EXTERNAL FAcADE)]

The best-known contributions to architecture by the French in this time are their famous chateaux. The typical example of these is the Chateau of Chambord, commenced by Francis I immediately after his return from his Spanish captivity. While the design is cla.s.sical in detail, it is eminently French in character, and it has been a favorite study of architects ever since. Its repute shows how well architects at this time {131} accomplished their purpose of making an impressively beautiful building. At this same time the Chateau of Madrid, situated in the Bois de Boulogne at Paris and which was unfortunately destroyed during the Revolution, was built, and the sketches that are left to us show us its beauty and effectiveness secured through comparative simplicity. All the famous chateaux of France were either built or received their most famous additions under the influence of the new spirit that came into architecture under the influence of Francis I. Those of Bury and Blois and Amboise and Chenonceaux were products of this period. The staircase and the wing in the centre of which it stands at Blois are among the most admired, or at least the most frequently drawn, of the works of this age.

All the other departments of architecture, besides the ecclesiastical and munic.i.p.al, were affected by the enterprising spirit which entered into architecture at this time. Leonardo da Vinci offered to build fortifications under any and all circ.u.mstances, the more difficult the better, and succeeded in doing some excellent work. According to tradition he laid firm foundations, even under water, for certain French fortifications, and these still remain. In bridge building particularly this period did some excellent work. In the chapter on Social Work and Workers will be found an ill.u.s.tration of the bridge built across the Avon at Stratford by Sir Hugh Clopton about the time of the discovery of America, which shows that they could build beautifully as well as enduringly at this time. There are many private houses in the towns of Europe erected at this time, some of them even by families without any pretension to wealth or n.o.bility, which ill.u.s.trate very well how sincere and thorough was their domestic architecture, how beautiful because of its honest straightforwardness and how eminently enduring. Fra Giocondo, who edited the Aldine edition of Vitruvius in 1511 and who edited Caesar in 1513, introduced ill.u.s.trations into these works, and particularly a plan of Caesar's bridge across the Rhine. He used his cla.s.sical knowledge to good purpose, however, for in the service of the king of France he probably built two of the n.o.ble bridges that still span the Seine. These were finished early in the {132} sixteenth century. It would not be difficult to note other examples of this same kind in many parts of Europe at this time.

Fergusson summed up the place of this century in architecture very well in his advice to Italy as to what must be done in order to restore to that country the precedence that she won in architecture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He said (p. 169): "Italy has only to go back to the inspirations which characterize the end of the fifteenth and the dawn of the sixteenth century, to base upon them a style which will be as beautiful as it would be appropriate to her wants and her climate. If she will only attempt to revive the traditions of the great age which is hallowed by the memories of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, of Bramante, Sangallo, and even of Michelangelo, she cannot go wrong. These men erred occasionally from inexperience, and because the system under which the art was conducted in their days was such as to render success impossible; but their aspirations were right, and there was an impress of n.o.bleness on their works _which has not since been surpa.s.sed._

"Since their time the history of Italian art may be summed up in a few words. During the fifteenth century it was original, appropriate and grand; during the sixteenth it became correct and elegant, though too often also tinctured with pedantry; and in the seventeenth it broke out into caprice and affectation, till it became as bizarre as it was tasteless. During the eighteenth it sank down to a uniform level of timid mediocrity, as devoid of life as it is of art."

It is as true for all the countries of Europe as for Italy that what is needed for the redemption of architecture from the unfortunate sordid influences which have crept over it is a return to the ideas of Columbus' Century. Fortunately, since Fergusson wrote his paragraph of advice for Italy, a great change has come over the att.i.tude of men generally toward architecture, and beautiful buildings are being erected nearly everywhere, most of them with Renaissance ideas prominent in them, but above all with the lessons drawn from this fruitful period of beautiful construction guiding the minds and hands of architects and builders. All around us handsome Renaissance buildings are rising. Inasmuch as they are mere {133} imitations, they are unfortunate evidence of our lack of originality. If, somehow, using the same high standards of taste and the inspiration of the cla.s.sic authors as did the men of Columbus' Century, we can succeed in evolving an architecture suited to our conditions and our environment and appropriate for the uses of our day, then we shall accomplish the solution of the problem which they solved so well. What they did above all was to accomplish in building Horace's dictum that "he who mingles the useful and the beautiful takes every point." The merely useful is hideous. The merely beautiful is monstrous. Success lies in that combination of use and beauty, of which Columbus' contemporaries so ingeniously found the key.

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CHAPTER IX

MUSIC

Everyone concedes the supreme accomplishment of Italy in the arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, and even in the lesser arts and crafts during the Renaissance period, which we have called Columbus'

Century. It is not always realized, however, that her place in music is almost equally important and that her accomplishment in this art came also during this same period. While musical development into modern forms came as a rule after the close of our century, the great foundations of modern music were laid at this time. These are not so deep beneath the surface of developed music, however, as to be hidden from us entirely at the present time. On the contrary, there are many composers and musical measures of this period which still have an interest quite apart from their antiquity and which music-lovers know very well in spite of the time that has elapsed since their composition.

We know nothing of ancient music, and indeed are scarcely able to conceive just how Grecian music was composed or written and expressed.

It might be thought, then, that the Renaissance, representing the influence upon the modern world of the rebirth of Greek ideas, would be lacking in any important development of music. In every other department, even in that of science, indeed it might well be said, especially in that of science, the influence of contact with ancient Greek ideas can be readily seen. They formed the stimulus for study and often supplied the fundamental information on which modern, that is Renaissance, developments were built up. Without this aid from the ancients, then, it might reasonably be expected that music would be neglected or would certainly be in abeyance, but this is not the case.

There is a great period of musical history, not perhaps so significant as the progress in other departments of aesthetics, but containing within itself {135} a magnificent achievement and the germ of all our modern music.

Perhaps there is nothing that demonstrates so well the fact that the Renaissance was not, as it is so often considered, a rebirth out of nothingness after some 1500 years of darkness and lack of accomplishment than the history of music. Only that there had been a great period of advance in Europe before the Renaissance, the stimulus of Greek would have had very little effect. The old philosophers said that things are received according to the capacity of the receiver, and in the modern time a favorite maxim of teachers is that students take away from a lecture what is of value to them just in proportion to what they brought to it. It was the height of the culture of the preceding period that enabled the generations of the Renaissance to take such good advantage of the New Learning. In music, there being no New Learning, they had to depend on their own efforts, and the magnificent fruits of their musical progress show how the genius of the time was capable of accomplishment for itself.

As a result of the lack of any stimulus from Greek sources for music, the first development of it at this time is noted not in Italy, as is true for other modes of aesthetic evolution because of contiguity to Greece, but, on the contrary, in the distant West of Europe and especially in the Netherlands. Henderson, in his "The Story of Music,"

declares that "all the countries at this time took Netherlandish masters," and one finds the names of distinguished teachers of music, who were from the Low Countries, in centres so far apart as Naples, Venice, Munich and Madrid.

The first of these, who was an extremely important factor in the music of the time, was Ockeghem, or Ockenheim, of Hainault, who, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, came to be looked upon as probably the greatest teacher of the time. He is surpa.s.sed in fame by his pupil, Josse Despres, usually known by the name, familiarly used among his friends, Josquin, who is also a native of Hainault.

Henderson declares that "in technical skill no master has ever surpa.s.sed Ockeghem; and all that he knew he taught Josquin, who made it the outlet for his real musical genius." Luther said of him, "They sing {136} only Josquin in Italy; Josquin alone in France; only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Hungary, in Bohemia, in Spain, it is always only Josquin." From this testimony, and the otherwise well-known popularity of this composer's music, it is probable that there has never been a great European musician who, in his own time, has gained more universal acclaim among music-lovers than Josquin.

There is no doubt at all of the merit of his work. Arcadelt, who was Palestrina's teacher at Rome and himself a distinguished musician of this time, said of him: "Other composers make their music where their notes take them, but Josquin takes his music where he wills."

Arcadelt's musical ability is recognized; an Ave Maria by him is still often sung.

Other countries were not without an important development in music at this time. England had been the leader in musical composition and evolution before Flanders had her turn. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries England had developed part singing and also laid the foundations of counterpoint. In the fifteenth century musical composition and erudition came to be considered of so much importance that academic honors were conferred on musicians. John Hamboys, the author of some treatises on the art of music, is said to be the first on whom the degree of Doctor of Music was ever conferred. In 1463, according to the records, the University of Cambridge conferred the degree of Doctor of Music on Thomas Seynt Just and the degree of Bachelor of Music on Henry Habyngton. During the following century it was required that candidates for the degree of Musical Doctor should present an original musical composition. America has followed England in the granting of academic degrees for music, though I believe no other country has done so except Ireland.

In the latter half of Columbus' Century there was a vigorous native school of music in Germany which devoted itself, however, almost entirely to the composition of songs for the people. The best known of the composers of this time is the famous Hans Sachs of Nuremberg, who, in the first half of the sixteenth century, wrote so many ballads for the people and set them to his own music. He was by trade a shoemaker, and all the musical composers in this particular mode {137} seem to have been craftsmen who took to musical composition and the writing of ballads for their music as a recreation after their daily labor. They organized themselves into guilds, which, in imitation of the old knightly songsters of the days of chivalry, they called Meistersingers. In its vigorous originality this movement produced at the beginning some striking folk music with a wonderful influence on the life of the people. After a time, however, the spirit of exclusiveness a.s.serted itself and seriously hurt their work. They enacted rigid and pedantic laws, refused to admit to mastership in the guild those who did not follow these laws, and the letter killed the spirit, and true music disappeared, while men who prided themselves on their musical ability and taste were trying to uplift it, but were really regulating it out of existence. The decline in music is, however, only commensurate with the decline in the other arts and due to many of the same causes. The latter half of Columbus' Century saw the rise of the great Roman school of music which, at the end of this period, was to bring about a culmination of musical achievements that places this among the greatest musical epochs of the world. As was true everywhere in Italy, Rome owed its musical incentive and teaching to a Fleming. The great master was Claude Goudimel, who is said to have been born at Avignon, but who was educated in Flanders and is known as a Fleming. Among his pupils at Rome, where he opened a school, are the most famous musicians of the sixteenth century and some of the most famous of all time. Among others, probably, were Palestrina, the supreme master of modern church music, though the old tradition of Goudimel's great influence over him is now denied; the brothers Animuccia, one of whom was the penitent and intimate friend of St. Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratory, after which the Oratorio is named, and the brothers Nanini, who contributed so much to Italian music before the end of the sixteenth century. Another of his pupils was Orlando di La.s.so, known as La.s.sus or Latres of Mons, who was one of the greatest and most popular of the musicians of this time. He was known in many countries and popular in all of them. To him we owe the definite attempt to make words and music run along in such harmony as would {138} emphasize and thoroughly co-ordinate the meaning of both. An abuse had been growing for a considerable period by which prolix florid pa.s.sages of music were written for single syllables. Even Josquin had indulged much in this vicious mode. After Orlando di La.s.so's reformation, the practice was to come back again in the fiorituri of the opera composers, especially the Italians of the early nineteenth century, and had to be combated by Wagner. There is little in the revolution effected in music by the modern German composer in this regard at least that was not antic.i.p.ated by his great predecessor, Orlando, full three centuries before. Orlando di La.s.so was known, moreover, for the sweetness, beauty, as well as the great number and variety of his works. One of his songs, "Matona! Lovely Maiden!" has been p.r.o.nounced one of the most charming part songs in existence.

La.s.sus (di La.s.so) tried every form of music at this time, but devoted himself chiefly to musical compositions for church purposes. We have from him psalms, hymns, litanies, magnificats, motets, as well as more lengthy musical settings for religious services. Bonavia Hunt, the Warden of Trinity College, London, and lecturer on musical history, in his "History of Music" declares that La.s.sus' settings of the Seven Penitential Psalms for five voices are among his best works. They contain elements that have made them a favorite study for students of music even in our time. La.s.sus introduced such musical terms as _Allegro_ and _Adagio_ into music and brought chromatic elements into musical composition. He was very greatly appreciated in his own day and was called _Princeps Musicae_, the prince of music. He received as much honor from statesmen as Palestrina did from churchmen, and the story of the honor paid to both of them by their own generation is the best possible tribute to the musical taste of the time. La.s.sus was made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur.

The greatest musician of this time, however, probably indeed the greatest of all times, is Palestrina, who in 1551 was appointed the musical director of the Julian Chapel in the Vatican with the definite hope that he would reform the evils that had crept into music and were making the art in its most recent {139} development so unsuitable for religious purposes. The Council of Trent, whose sessions were being held with interruptions at this time, had to legislate so as to secure suitable music for the ma.s.s. Ornamental pa.s.sages of all kinds, or at least what were supposed to be such, had been introduced into church music, until finally it was quite impossible to follow the words of the service. As Cardinal Borromeo said, "These singers counted for their princ.i.p.al glory that when one says _Sanctus_ another says _Sabaoth_ and a third _gloria tua_ and the whole effect of the music is little more than a confused whirling and snarling, more resembling the performance of cats in January than the beautiful flowers of May."

He was one of the committee who insisted at various sessions of the Council of Trent on musical reform, and while their work has sometimes been falsely represented as derogatory of music itself, all that the Council wished to accomplish was to secure intelligibility of the words, and as a matter of fact their insistence on the simplification of music led to a magnificent new development in the art.

It has sometimes been said that Palestrina's work represented a revolution in the music of his time. This is not true, however, for his great ma.s.s music was only an evolution in the hands of the great master of the musical movement that had preceded his time. The story of his having been asked to write music very different from that which had immediately preceded, in order that church music might be preserved and figured music be thus still used in ecclesiastical services, has been discredited by recent historical research. At the end of Columbus' Century a climax in musical expression had been reached which Palestrina represents and which marked an epoch in the history of music. The abuses that had crept in were quite apart from the genuine evolution of music. Henderson, in his "How Music Developed" (New York: Stokes, 1898, page 73), has told the story:

"The ma.s.s of Marcellus was not written to order, and there was nothing new in its style. The ma.s.s is simply a model of all that was best in Palestrina's day. It embodied all that was n.o.blest in the polyphonic style developed by the Netherlands school. Its melody is pure, sweet and fluent, and its {140} expressive capacity perfectly adapted to the devotional spirit of the text. Palestrina's contemporaries, such as La.s.so and some of his predecessors, wrote in the same style. La.s.so's 'Penitential Psalms' are much simpler in style than this ma.s.s. Its apparent simplicity lies in the fact that its profound mastery of technical resources conceals its superb art.

The polyphonic writing is matchless in its evenness; every part is as good as every other part. The harmonies are beautiful, yet there is apparently no direct attempt to produce them. They seem just to happen. But above all other qualities stands the innate power of expression in this music. It is, as Ambrose has hinted, as if the composer had brought the angelic host to earth."

Mees, in his "Choirs and Choral Music," has outlined what the place of Palestrina's music in church services is, and made it very clear how helpful it is for devotion instead of suggesting distractions, as modern music is so sure to do. d.i.c.kenson, in his "Study of the History of Music," says that in "Comparing a ma.s.s by Palestrina with one of Schubert or Gounod he (the hearer) will perceive not only a difference of style and form, but also one of purpose and ideal. The modern work strives to depict the moods suggested by the words according to the general methods that prevail in modern lyric and dramatic music; while the aim of the older music is to render a universal sentiment of devotion that is impersonal and general. Music here conforms to the idea of prayer. There is no thought of definite portrayal; the music strives merely to deepen the mystical impression of the ceremony as a whole."

Mees had said in his work, p. 61:

"Palestrina's conception of what the music of the Roman church should be was in perfect accord with the principle held by the early church: that music should form an integral part of the liturgy and add to its impressiveness. ... No sensuous melodies, no dissonant tension-creating harmonies, no abrupt rhythms distract the thoughts and excite the sensibilities. Chains of consonant chords growing out of the combination of smoothly-flowing, closely-interwoven parts, the contours of which are all but lost in the maze of tones, lull the mind into that state of submission to indefinite impressions which makes it susceptible to the mystic influence of the ceremonial and turns it away from worldly things."