The Ifs of History Part 2

CHAPTER VI

IF THE PHILARMONIA HAD NOT GIVEN CONCERTS AT VICENZA

For the sake of variety, perhaps of diversion, in the midst of more serious speculations, let us have an "if" of musical history--and one which, no doubt, musicians may regard as purely fanciful, totally absurd. It should be stated at the start that this chapter is written by one who has no knowledge of music, but is capable of a very keen enjoyment of it, and has in his time heard much professional music--many concerts, operas and oratorios--and also much of the spontaneous untrained music of the people, including old New England ballads now forgotten; the songs of German peasants at the fireside and spinning wheel; the native corn songs, "wails" and "shouts" of Southern negroes on the plantations; and the medicine songs, scalp songs, ceremonial chants and love ditties of the American Indians.

The contingency which will be presented here is this: If a certain group of unprofessional singers and musicians in the highly cultivated Italian town of Vicenza, about midway of the sixteenth century, had not banded themselves together in a society called the Philarmonia, and for the first time in Europe given musical entertainments to which the public were admitted, the musical inst.i.tution called the concert might never have existed, and music in that case would have remained a spontaneous expression of human emotion, untainted with what is now called virtuosity--that is, the strife and strain after technical mastery, which affects the whole character of music, and diverts it from its original purpose of pleasing the sense and comforting the heart.

Expert professional music was a thing of very slow growth. The old chapelmasters or choirmasters were, of course, in a sense professional, since they lived upon the church. But they had also a sacerdotal character. At the beginning they were always priests. To make a cla.s.s of professional musicians, vying with one another for mere mastery, the public concert, with paid musicians, had to be developed.

Though the Philarmonia gave public concerts at Vicenza, as we have said, in the middle of the sixteenth century, concert music and opera music had no general existence for as much as a century afterward. The first opera ever represented was Peri's "Eurydice," written about 1600. Even that was merely the expression of a group of enthusiasts, a sort of private attempt to embody a theory of their own about what music should be. It was not until the year 1672 that the first concert, with a price for admission, was given in London. The price then charged was a shilling, and the concert was in a private house.

By that time the start had been made. Other concerts were given soon afterward. They became popular. There was a demand for skilled musicians and soloists. Performers began practicing for the sake of excelling in technical achievement. By swift and sudden steps a premium was put upon mechanical perfection in the handling of instruments. The old spontaneous methods of expression gradually became discredited.

As a consequence of the new development, two sorts of music grew up in the world. On the one side stood concert music, professional music, virtuoso music. This was difficult and complicated, and it was impossible for ordinary people to sing it or play it. On the other side was the popular music--folk music, the music of the street, the nursery, the stable-shed and the taproom. As popular music was regularly deserted now for the concert school by those who possessed the greatest musical talent, it began to degenerate until it reached at last the degradation of "Grandfather's Clock," "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," "Waiting at the Church"

and the graphophone.

On the other hand, concert music moved farther and farther away from the hearts and the comprehension of the people, until it has become a thing apart from their lives, to be enjoyed almost as much with the eye as with the ear, the interest lying chiefly in the production, in succession, of individual masters, each of whom visibly surpa.s.ses the mechanical achievements of his immediate predecessor.

If those first concerts had not been given by the Philarmonia at Vicenza, and the idea had not slowly rippled outward thence, like spreading circles from a stone thrown into the water, until it reached Vienna, Paris and London, what would have been the state of music to-day?

Manifestly the development of church music would have gone on. The people, no doubt, would have been taking part in magnificent chorals.

The ma.s.ses of the Catholic Church would have their correspondent feature in the anthems and hymns sung in the Protestant churches by the congregations. Every instrument that existed in the sixteenth century would have been perfected, but not one would have taken on the intricate development which musical mechanism exacts.

In other words, the harpsichord would never have become a piano, and the electrical church organ would not have been heard of. We should all play some such instrument as the harp, the violin, the viol, the flute, the pipe or the dulcimer. All might have been composers, as the negroes and Indians are to-day, but on a higher plane.

What popular music might be now but for that unlucky Philarmonia discovery is suggested by an extract from the writings of Thomas Morley, an Englishman who became a great amateur and introducer of Italian madrigals in his own country. In the year 1597 he wrote that, on a certain evening, in England,--

supper being ended, and musicke-bookes, according to the custome, being brought to the table, the mistresse of the house presented mee with a part, earnestly requesting mee to sing.

But when, after manie excuses, I protested unfainedly that I could not, euerie one began to wonder. Yea, some whispered unto others, demanding how I was brought up. So that, upon shame of mine ignorance, I go now to seek out mine old friende master Gnorimus, to make myselfe his schollar.

In those days a person who could not sing, and sing well, was regarded as a freak, and was required to fit himself to join in the universal diversion. If we had not turned over our music making to professionals it would be so now. Instead of going to the concert or the opera after the evening meal, or playing bridge or talking scandal, people would have partic.i.p.ated in the singing of madrigals, glees or whatever other sort of popular spontaneous music had been developed, and all would have been sustained and uplifted by the exalted joy that comes from joining with others in the production of good music.

The people would have been joyously and heartily musical. Their taste would not have been degraded to the point where it is gratified, as in the graphophone, with a complicated succession of flat and strident sounds unmusical in themselves.

CHAPTER VII

IF THE SPANISH ARMADA HAD SAILED AT ITS APPOINTED TIME

When Philip the Second, son of the great emperor Charles V, came to the throne of Spain, that country had become the greatest cosmopolitan empire in the world. The throne of Castile, at one time or another during Philip's reign, was the throne not only of Spain and Portugal, but of the Netherlands and Burgundy, the Sicilies, Sardinia, Milan, Cuba, Hispaniola, Florida, Mexico, California, nearly all of South America, and the Philippine Islands. The Spanish monarch was the eldest son of the church; and Philip, strong, ambitious, bigoted and insolent, expected, as he laid the foundations of his glorious palace, the Escorial, the eighth wonder of the world, to become master of France and Britain, and to bequeath to his son the vastest empire that the sun had ever shone upon.

By his marriage with Queen Mary he acquired the nominal t.i.tle of king of England, though he was never crowned. But his grudge rose against England after Mary's death and Elizabeth's accession. The country proved itself a thorn in his side, helping the Dutch rebels and undoing at home the persecuting work of his late spouse. Philip formed a great project for the invasion of the country.

Spain was supreme then on the sea. The English navy had greatly declined. In 1575 it had but twenty-four vessels of all cla.s.ses on the water. Philip knew the cleverness of the English with their ships, however, and in planning this invasion he proposed to be invincible.

Invincible he sought to make the Armada, or fleet, that he sent against the country, and invincible not only he, but all Europe, believed it to be, when, in January of the year 1588, the great flotilla was ready to sail.

It consisted of about one hundred and thirty ships, of which sixty-two were over three hundred tons burden. It was commanded by a brave and skillful sea fighter, Santa Cruz. The English had bettered their conditions of seven years before very greatly, but they were at this moment absolutely unprepared to meet a foreign fleet. Their ships were scattered far and wide, and many were unequipped. If the Armada had sailed at that moment it would have found no force ready to meet it. And it would have escaped the storms that later befell.

But _manana_ is the curse of all Spain's projects. The Armada lingered.

Santa Cruz, its chief, sickened in port and died. Very likely if he had sailed no such fate would have overtaken him. This was the first of the big fleet's misfortunes. Philip looked about for another commander. By a fatuous favoritism his choice fell upon the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was utterly incompetent.

The months flew past. Meantime the English, fully apprised of the king's intentions, were getting a fleet together. In those days it was not necessary to wait five years for a battleship to be constructed. Almost any big ship could be turned into a fighting craft. In particular, the English were well off in guns, and the delay of the Armada gave them a chance to get their artillery on board.

When--_nombre de Dios!_--does the reader suppose that this invincible fleet, ready in January, really set sail from Coruna? On the 12th day of July! It had already been scattered and weakened by a storm off Lisbon.

On the 21st of July Medina Sidonia sailed into Drake's and Hawkins's "line ahead" formation in the English channel as Rojestvensky sailed into Togo's lair off Tsu-Shima in 1905, and the result to him somewhat resembled the subsequent fate of the Russian fleet in the Sea of j.a.pan.

It was not, however, so bad. If Medina Sidonia had gone, with his surviving ships, after the first onset, to Denmark, and refitted, he might yet have embarra.s.sed the British. But he sought to make the pa.s.sage around the north of Scotland, and a succession of storms wrecked his whole remaining fleet.

All authorities agree that in January, 1588, no English force existed which could have hoped to check Santa Cruz as things then stood. What if he had come on and landed an army of trained veterans upon England's undefended sh.o.r.es? He must have won. Queen Elizabeth must have been overthrown. Ireland would have gladly joined Philip. England was almost half Catholic, and the people of that faith might eventually have become reconciled to the foreigner. Philip might have made himself another Norman William. The Spanish culture would have been imposed upon the English nation. But unlike William of Normandy, who transferred his power to Britain, Philip would have remained a Spanish sovereign, and London would have been ruled from Madrid.

Philip would never have temporized with English Protestantism. The chances are that he would have stamped it out utterly and at the start, as he sought, too late, to do in the Netherlands. If he might have worked his will, he would also have suppressed English learning and literature. William Shakespeare, who had just come up to London, had never produced a play when the Armada sailed, and probably he never would have produced one if it had conquered. The glorious Elizabethan culture would have been nipped in the bud.

All Britain's possessions in the new world, already existent or to be, would have fallen to Spain or France if Philip had overthrown Elizabeth--doubtless to Spain, for Philip's ambition to seize the French throne would have been furthered by his conquest of England. Spanish viceroys would have borne sway for centuries over all North America. A hybrid Indian-Latin race would have arisen here, as in Mexico and Peru.

Lacking the inspiration of North American freedom, all Spanish America to the southward would have remained to this day under the dons.

Castilian speech, Castilian cultivation, Castilian manners, the Castilian faith, might have reigned supreme over a dusky race from the St. Lawrence to the Straits of Magellan.

CHAPTER VIII

IF CHAMPLAIN HAD TARRIED IN PLYMOUTH BAY

On the 18th of July, in the year 1605, Samuel de Champlain, in command of a ship of the King of France, and engaged in the search for an eligible site for a great settlement, anch.o.r.ed in the harbor which was afterward to be known as the harbor of Plymouth, in New England. Two days before, he had been in Boston Bay. He mapped both these havens, and expressed his approval of the physical resources, and also the native Indian peoples, of the region.

At that time the coast of New England was really unappropriated, though soon after it was claimed by both France and England. It was merely a question which power should first seriously undertake the settlement of the country. If France planted her colony here, the land was destined to be French. If England hers, it would be English.

Champlain carefully studied the advantages of Boston and Plymouth. That he thought favorably of the latter place is proved by the very decent map, still extant, which he made of Plymouth and Duxbury waters. "Port St. Louis," he called the place, after the patron saint of France, and after his royal master. It looked very much as if he hoped that the spot he so honored would be made the seat of the French empire in the western world.

But Champlain sailed away, bearing with him the blessing of the thickly settled and sedentary native people. He pa.s.sed around Cape Cod, and went westward as far as Nauset harbor, near New Bedford. And then, in due time, he sailed for France. When, in 1608, he finally laid the foundations of the city which was to be the capital of France in the new world, he did not lay them at Plymouth or Boston, but at Quebec, on the St. Lawrence.

Why was his choice thus made? Largely, no doubt, because Champlain, whose accurate information and seemingly always wise observation were greatly trusted by the King of France, was infatuated with the n.o.ble aspect and vast proportions of the gulf and river of St. Lawrence. He was first of all a sailor, and he had seen nothing to compare with the magnificence of this great _embouchure_. Here were scope and refuge for the greatest of navies! Here, it seemed, was a place designed by the Almighty to be the seat of an empire!

Champlain had an excellent eye for harbors, but not so good an eye of prophecy for the grand constructive events that were to be. He left the Ma.s.sachusetts coast unappropriated. First its native inhabitants, so numerous, so gentle, so industrious, were decimated by a plague that came to them from the white men. Only a remnant survived. And when, in 1620, their sachem, Samoset, shouted "Welcome, Englishmen!" to the men of the Mayflower, the Indian king hailed, unconsciously, the advent of an empire which was to cast the domain of New France into a cold and waning shadow. For Quebec was too far north, and its hinterland too poor and restricted, ever to nurse an imperial race.

What if Champlain had been more sagacious, and had made his stand on the coast of Ma.s.sachusetts? In all probability the settlement would have been definitive. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Boston, finding no place for their settlement in the north, would, in 1620, have gone to Virginia or Georgia. The steely Yankee wedge which, on one side, was to force the Dutch out of New Amsterdam, and on the other the French out of Port Royal and Acadia, would never have been driven. New England would have been French forever, and New York Dutch.

The principle of the hinterland was a.s.serted so successfully in our early history that Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut were able to claim territory as far west as the Mississippi River. It was by means of this hinterland claim that the young American republic succeeded in rounding out its northwestern possessions, after the War of the Revolution, and obtaining Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. All these would have been French if Champlain had made New England French; and the English colonies, if they had ever become strong enough to throw off the British yoke, would have consisted of a restricted section in the Southeast.

Indeed, without Sam Adams, Otis, Warren, and Israel Putnam, without the revolt against the Stamp Act, and without Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill, it is impossible to conceive of the American republic at all.

Supposing it to have been const.i.tuted notwithstanding, it would have had to do without the influence of the New England town meeting, the New England common free school, the New England college, and the congregational system of church organization. It would have been deprived of the work of Franklin, Hanc.o.c.k, the Adamses, Webster, Sumner, Garrison, Phillips, Grant and the Shermans, in its affairs, and of Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier, Hawthorne and Parkman in its intellectual life.