Music Becomes a Youth
CHAPTER XI
Makers of Motets and Madrigals—Rise of Schools 15th and 16th Centuries
Don’t you think it strange that we have not told you of any pieces written for the lute alone, or for the viol or any other instrument? The reason is that until 1700, there was little music for a solo instrument, but only for voices alone or for voice and instrument together.
The main sport of composers of this time, was to take a popular tune and write music around it. The popular tune was called the cantus firmus (subject or fixed song) and the composer who did the fanciest things with the tune was hailed as great. So instead of wanting to make up tunes as we do, they were anxious to see what they could do with old tunes. Times change, don’t they?
“Like children who break their toys to see how they work, they learned to break up the musical phrases into little bits which they repeated, which they moved from one part to another; in this way the dividing of themes (tunes) came, which led them to the use of imitation and of canon; these early and innocent gardeners finally learned how to make the trees of the enchanted garden of music bear fruit. Still timid, they kept the custom for three centuries of making all their pieces from parts of plain-song or of a popular song, instead of inventing subjects for themselves; thus, what is prized today above every thing else—the making of original melodies—was secondary in the minds of the musicians, so busy were they trying to organize their art, so earnestly were they trying to learn the use of their tools.” (Translated from the French from Palestrina, by Michel Brenet).
By spending their time this way, they added much to the science of music. If it was not pretty, at least it was full of interesting discoveries which composers used later, as we shall see, in fugues, canons, suites and many other forms.
The most popular forms of composition during these two centuries (the 15th and the 16th) were the motet for Church and the madrigal for outside the Church.
What a Motet is
The motet probably gets its name from a kind of profane song (not sacred) that was called in Italian mottetto, and translated into French bon mot, means a jest. It dates back to the 13th century, and was disliked by the Church. The first motets used in the Church in the early 14th century are very crude to our ears, but interesting historically. The composers of the different schools of this period wrote many of them. Motets were usually those parts of the church ritual which depended on the day or season. They were not the regular unaltered parts like the mass itself.
This motet, or part-song, used as its central theme a tune already familiar to its hearers; this tune, the cantus firmus was sometimes a bit from a Gregorian chant or from a mass, but more often it was a snatch from a dance song or a folk song with very vulgar words, or it may have been a troubadour love song with anything but the right kind of words for the Church. The words for one part were often from the Bible and for other parts very coarse words from popular tunes. Imagine singing them at the same time! Still funnier, the words of the sacred song were sung in Latin and the popular song was sung in whatever language it happened to be written! Can you think of anything more ridiculous? The masses came to be known by the names from which the tune was taken and nearly every composer including the great Palestrina wrote masses on a popular tune of the day, L’homme armé (The Man in Armor). Yet they were all quite different, so varied had become the science of writing counterpoint.
Josquin des Près (1450–1521) the Flemish composer wrote a motet, Victimae Paschali, which is written around an old Gregorian plainchant, interwoven with two popular rondelli (in French roundel from which comes our terms roundelay and rondo) and a Stabat Mater of his. The cantus firmus, or subject of this motet is another secular or popular air.
The popular composers returned the compliment and took themes or tunes from church music and put secular words to them. History repeats itself, for we today take a tune from Handel’s Messiah and use it in Yes, We Have No Bananas and we jazz the beautiful and noble music of Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert and many others.
Yet this music,—the child we are watching grow up—because of mixing up sacred and profane music soon gets a big reprimand.
The northern part of France seems to have been the birthplace of the motet; a little later it found its way into Italy where some of the finest music of the period was written, and the Italian influence reached into Spain in the middle of the 15th century; at the end of the century the Venetian school had spread its work into Germany. In the 17th century the name motet was given to a kind of composition between a cantata and an oratorio, but it had nothing to do with the famous motet of the 15th and 16th centuries which we are discussing.
To show you how clever the men were in these days, one composer wrote a motet in thirty-six parts!
In the Library of the Sistine Chapel in Rome are volumes containing the motets of the 14th century, copied, of course, by hand in notes large enough to be seen and read by the whole choir! These books are beautifully decorated in gold and lovely colors, or illuminated, and are of great value.
Madrigals or Popular Motets
All music of this period not composed for the Church had the general name of Madrigal, but a real madrigal was a vocal composition for from three to six parts written on a secular subject, which often gave to the work a grace and lightness not in the motet. The vocal madrigals were to the music lovers of that day what chamber music is today, for instruments were not yet used without singing. Later, the lute played the chief melody with the voice, and it was only a step to have other instruments play the other parts of the madrigal. The instruments played a section of the composition alone while waiting for a solo singer to appear. He sang a part of the madrigal that was later called the air and the instrumental part was called the ritournelle, which literally meant that in this section of the work, the singer returned from “off-stage” where he had awaited his turn. By the end of the 16th century it had become the custom for motets as well as madrigals to have a solo air or aria, and an instrumental ritournelle, and this was the beginning of chamber music,—a very great oak which grew from a very little acorn.
In the first printed music books are many of the madrigals of the early period. We will tell you of the composers of this period separately, but remember that they all wrote practically the same kind of music,—masses, motets, and madrigals, but all with the subject borrowed from something they knew and with many parts for the voices. Often, too, the same tunes were used for Church and outside the Church. For this reason much music was published without the words, so that the singers could use sacred or profane words as they wished.
Strange as it may seem, it was the folk songs and ballads and not the learned church music, that had originality and came freely and sincerely from the hearts of the people.
Songs in Dance Form
Because these contrapuntal writings were heavy (can you imagine dancing to a canon?) a new kind influenced by folk music grew up among these people who were naturally gay and jolly and wished to be entertained. Songs for three and four parts appeared, more popular in style and simpler in form than the church motet and were the descendants of the music of the troubadours. These were in dance form, such as the French chanson, the vilanelle, the Italian canzona, canzonetta or little canzona, frottola, strambottes and the German lied. Many of these songs in dance form later inspired composers to write music for instruments alone, so that people danced to music without singing. These dance songs were called branles, pavanes, gaillardes, courantes, forlanes, rigaudons sarabandes, gigues, gavottes and many other names.
The Lute
The favorite instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries was the lute. It fought for first place with the vielle, the viole, the harp, the psalterion and the portative organ, but won the fight and took its place beside the most famous singers of the day, sometimes for accompanying and again reaching the dignity of soloist, as we told you above. In the 15th century it took the form, which we see most often represented in pictures and in museums, with its six strings, graceful round body, and long neck bent back as you can see in plate opposite page [127] already described. As time went on this lute was made larger and strings were added until at the beginning of the 17th century, it was replaced by an instrument called the arch-lute or theorbo, which had twenty-four strings, a double neck, and two sets of tuning pins.
The spinets or virginals, the great-aunts of our pianofortes first came into vogue in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Tablature
There was a notation called Tablature used in the 16th and 17th centuries to write down the music for lute and other stringed instruments such as the viol, cittern, theorbo. You will find, in pictures of Tablature, lines which look like our staff, but they do not form a staff, but simply represent the strings of the instrument. These lines vary according to the number of strings, from four for the cittern to six for the lute. The notation showed, not the position and fingering as we write music, but the position and fingering of frets and strings. Instead of neumes or notes you will find the alphabet up to the letter j, figures and queer dots and lines and slurs, but each sign had its own meaning and was important to the lutenist.
Rise of Schools
As music outgrows childhood, Schools of Music are started. But these are not like the schools to which we go every day, but are rather music groups or centers. Suppose you were a composer and lived in New York and knew a dozen or so musicians who were writing the same kind of music as you; the music, if good enough to be known and played, would be called the New York School, or it might be called the 1925 School! Or, if you were important enough to be imitated by your followers, it would be called the Smith School, if that happened to be your name, just as those who imitate Wagner are said to be the Wagner School, and so it goes. Not a school to go to, but a school to belong to!
“What makes these schools start?” we can hear you ask. Many things. Sometimes people are oppressed by their rulers and in trying to forget their troubles, they naturally want to express themselves in the art they know, and in this way groups get together and a school grows. Sometimes the Church is the cause of schools of music, literature, and art, and we shall see in this chapter how the Church influenced the schools of music of this time and made it one of the most important periods in this story. Sometimes, too, the climate has caused the development of different styles as we told you in the chapter on folk music. It often happens too, that a great man or a great school in one country affects other countries.
Franco-Flemish School
The first real group of composers to be called a “School” lived in the part of Europe that today covers the north of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The composers who were born from 1400 to about 1530, in the so-called Low Countries belonged to this school. Some writers claim that there were three schools, and that the Franco-Flemish (Gallo-Belgic) is a bridge between the Paris school of the 14th century and the Netherlands school of the 16th. But it would be impossible to say when one school began and another ended, as they all wrote the same kind of music. As the older composers were the teachers of the younger, the interesting thing to know is that many of these masters of the north of Europe went to Italy, Spain, France, and to Germany, and spread the knowledge of the “new art” of counterpoint and vocal poly-melody (many melodies) and filled positions of importance in the churches. They were considered such splendid teachers, that many of the young students of other nationalities went to Holland and Belgium to be taught.
Zeelandia, a Hollander, an important master in this new school, tried to get rid of the awkward intervals, fourths and fifths, which were used in organum (see Chapter VII), and was the first composer to give the subject or cantus firmus to the soprano voice instead of the tenor. Doesn’t it seem strange that it took so long to let the soprano have the main tune?
But the most important composer of his period (1400–1474) was Guillaume Dufay, from Flanders, who was a chorister in the Papal choir (choir of the Pope) in Rome. He made the rules and imitation for the canon (a grown up round) and he was the first composer to use the folk song L’homme armé (The Man in Armor) in a mass.
The next important name is Jan Okeghem (1430–1495), a Hollander, who improved the science of counterpoint and of fugue writing. We have already mentioned his canon for thirty-six voices (page [149]), and he wrote some puzzle canons, for use in secret guilds. No one could solve these without the key and they were much harder than the world’s best cross-word puzzles. He tried to make music express the beauty he felt, and not merely be mathematical problems in tone, as was much of the music of his day. He was the teacher of several famous musicians among whom were Hobrecht (who became the teacher of Erasmus, the learned Dutch religious reformer), Tinctoris, Josquin des Près, Loyset Compère, and Agricola who spent most of his life in Spain and Portugal. In fact, Okeghem taught so many, that the art of counterpoint was taken into all countries by his pupils, so he can be called the founder of all music schools from his own day to the present. He was chaplain at the French court and, during forty years there, served three Kings of France!
Tinctoris, a Belgian (1446–1511), founded the first school of music in Italy at Naples, and wrote a dictionary of musical terms.
But the “Prince” of musicians of the 15th century, was Josquin des Près, or de Près (1455–1525). He was a pupil of Okeghem, and although born in Flanders, spent much of his life away from his home; he was a member of the Papal choir in Rome and afterwards lived at the court of Louis XII in France. He also wrote a mass on the theme of L’homme armé, and many other masses, motets, and madrigals. Luther said of him,—“Josquin des Près is a master of the notes. They do as he wills. Other composers must do as the notes will. His compositions are joyous, gentle and lovely; not forced, not constrained, nor slavishly tied to the rules, but free as the song of a finch.”
Josquin des Près had many pupils, and among them were many who became famous. Clement Janequin, or Jannequin, is one of the best known from his music, and least known from the facts of his life. Most of his works are of a secular nature and are original and amusing, and so perfect that some people thought him as good as his popular teacher. He was one of the first serious composers to imitate the sounds of Nature in music!
One of his famous madrigals is the Chant des Oiseaux (Song of the Birds) in which he tries to represent the sounds of birds of all kinds. In the middle of the piece is heard the hoot of an owl; the birds get together and chase away the poor hated owl, calling him a traitor, then all is quiet again. Another of his pieces is named The Cackle of Women! Another famous one still frequently sung is the Battle of Marignan (1515), a lively piece in varied rhythm, which was one of the most popular army songs of the 16th century. The words and music imitate, first the tools of war, then the noise of the cannons and the crackling of the guns, the joy of victory for the French, and the retreat of the Swiss.
Another eminent pupil of Josquin des Près was Nicolas Gombert, of Bruges. Like Jannequin, he was a Nature lover, and many of his madrigals imitate its sounds. Secular music was now popular, and his works show that a composer was allowed to give expression to his feelings and ideas, for the prejudices of the earlier church music had disappeared.
Jean Mouton, a native of Metz, was in the chapel of Louis XII and of François I, King of France. His style was like his master’s and some of his works were supposed to have been composed by Josquin.
Willaert Founds the Venetian School
Willaert was a pupil of both Josquin and Mouton. He was chapel master at St. Mark’s in Venice, and was so famous as a teacher that he attracted many good musicians, and became the founder of the famous Venetian school of composers. He wrote many madrigals, some of them on verses of Petrarch, the Italian poet. This work was accomplished after he was sixty years old!
Willaert was the first organist to use two and sometimes three choirs, each singing in four parts. Sometimes they sang in combination and sometimes answered each other antiphonally. According to Clarence G. Hamilton in his book Outlines of Music History, the idea of these choirs was probably suggested to Willaert because there were in St. Mark’s two very fine organs. In this you see the influence instruments have on the growth of musical compositions.
Willaert made use too, of the idea that the different parts could be sounded together to form chords, instead of individual melodies as was the case in poly-melody (polyphony or in the contrapuntal style). This was a new idea, for up to this time the musicians had been writing horizontal music, the melodic line looking something like this:
Willaert’s idea, which probably came from folk-song and from some of the hymns that Luther created, was colonnade-like (see Chapter VII) or perpendicular music, which we might illustrate like this:
St. Nicholas Tune by Orlandus Lassus
in which each line represents a chord, with the melody at the top. This is how Harmony, or the science of chords, came into use as we know it now.
Among Willaert’s pupils were Cyprian de Rore of Antwerp, who succeeded his master at St. Mark’s, and most of his works were madrigals which gained him much fame in Italy. He was one of the first to use the chromatic scale (scale in semi-tones like black and white keys on the piano).
An Italian, Zarlino, pupil of Willaert, must be mentioned here, not as a writer of music but as the author of three most important books on harmony and theory. These books seem to have been very much needed for they were reprinted many times. Another Italian pupil of Willaert was Andrea Gabrieli, like his master, also an organist at St. Mark’s.
The greatest contribution from this Venetian school was its important use of instrumental music as an independent art, thus giving music a great push forward.
A composer whose motets and madrigals we still hear frequently is Jacob Arcadelt, a Netherlander, who spent most of his life in Italy, and shared with Willaert the glory of being one of the founders of the Venetian school. He was a singer at the court of Florence, singing master to the choir boys at St. Peter’s in Rome, and then he became a member of the Papal choir.
The life of Claude Goudimel seems, from the little we know, to have been dramatic. He is supposed to have been in Rome where he taught Palestrina, the greatest composer of the age. One writer says that he never was in Rome and was not the teacher of Palestrina! Even his birthplace is disputed. What is certain, however, is that he met his death in the massacre of the Huguenots (Protestants) at Lyons in 1572. He wrote many settings of Calvinist Psalms by Clement Marot which work led to his being a victim of the massacre.
Sweelinck Founds 17th Century Organ School
One of the last of the Netherland school was Jan Sweelinck (1562–1621), the greatest organist of his time. He had so many pupils from every country in Europe, that he became the founder of a very famous school of organists. Among them were Scheidt, Reinken of whom the story is told that Bach as a young boy walked miles to hear him play, and Buxtehude, a Dane, who was one of the greatest of the time of Bach. Sweelinck perfected the Organ Fugue which Bach later made more beautiful than any other composer. Sweelinck’s talent and work were so deeply appreciated in his home, Amsterdam, that the merchants of that city gave him a generous income for his old age. A splendid thing to have done!
The Great Lassus
The greatest composer of this Netherland school was Orlandus Lassus, or Orlando di Lasso, or Roland de Lattre, take your choice! He was born in Mons, Belgium, some time between 1520 and 1532. When he was a child he had such a beautiful voice that he was kidnapped three times from the school where he lived with the other choristers. The third time he stayed with the Governor of Sicily, Ferdinand Gonzague, and went from Sicily to Milan, then to Naples and then to Rome where he became director of the choir of one of the most celebrated churches. After this he went to England and to France and finally returned to Antwerp. In 1557 he was invited to the court of the Duke of Bavaria in Munich to direct the chamber music. There he married a lady of the court and had two daughters and four sons, who were musicians. Later he was made master of the chapel, and the men who lived at that time said he was an inspiring choir director, a great composer, and was deeply reverenced and loved. The Duke was a splendid helper and patron of music, and encouraged him to make their choir of ninety men one of the finest in the world. Their lives were made so pleasant that a book, published in 1568, says, “had the Heavenly Choir been suddenly dismissed, it would straightway have made for the court of Munich, there to find peace and retirement!”
Lassus used wind and brass instruments to accompany the voices which were kept quite separate from the strings. At a banquet, the wind instruments were heard during the early courses, then the strings directed by someone else, then, during the dessert, Lassus would direct the singing of the choir. So “chamber music” appears at this point in the growth of music.
At the Duke’s suggestion, Lassus wrote music for seven Penitential Psalms which were sung to the unhappy King, Charles IX, after the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s eve.
He wrote secular music as well as sacred and showed a keen sense of humor in several of his secular pieces.
Soon after 1574, he wrote a set of twenty-four pieces for two parts: twelve have words and are vocal duets, and the other twelve are without words, to be played on instruments. The two groups are exactly alike in form which shows that many of the motets and madrigals for voices were often played on instruments alone.
The Hymn to St. John from which Guido d’Arezzo took the names of the scale degrees, was made into a beautiful composition by Lassus; the tenor sings a cantus firmus of the tones of the scales, around which are woven many parts in counterpoint.
One festival day there was a violent storm in Munich, and orders were given that the usual procession from the Church through the town should not take place, but should be held inside the Church. As the head of the procession reached the porch of the Church, and the choir started a motet by Lassus, the sun suddenly came out and the procession went on as usual through the town. This was looked upon as a miracle, and whenever fine weather was wanted very much, this motet was chosen! This story does not tell whether the miracle always worked!
In Lassus’ later church music, he simplified the complicated contrapuntal style, perhaps because he lived in the country where Luther had introduced the chorale. (Page [166].) Even though Lassus wrote masses and motets for the Catholic Church, he must have heard these new hymns, and was unknowingly influenced by them.
A complete edition of all his works would fill almost sixty volumes. If you can realize the huge task all this must have been, you will not be surprised that his over-tired brain finally gave out and during the last five years of his life he did no more composing. He died in 1594.
Orlandus Lassus was the last and one of the greatest of this Netherland, or Franco-Flemish school, that for two hundred years had led the world of music. Music had changed from a cocoon, gradually developing into a radiant butterfly, or, in our book, we should say that music had left childhood and was becoming a stalwart lad.
Ronsard—French Poet
Before leaving the subject of these northern madrigal writers, we must tell you about the famous French poet, Pierre de Ronsard, who was born just four hundred years ago (1525). He supplied more composers with words for their madrigals than any other poet of his age, and he also sang some of his poems put to music. He said that without music poetry was almost without grace, and that music without the melody of verse was lifeless. Of course, today the poetry and music have become so independent of each other, that many poets object to having verse made a servant of music, and many musicians think that music without words, that is, instrumental music, is the highest type of musical art.
In 1552, Ronsard asked four of the leading composers to set some of his sonnets to music. Jannequin, Pierre Certon, Claude Goudimel and Muret accepted, each composing music for the same ten sonnets. This experiment was so successful, that it was the talk of the entire court, and Ronsard published all the songs in his first volume of poetry. About the time that Shakespeare was born, in England, but long before he had said,
The man that hath no music in his soul
Is fit for treason, stratagem and spoils,
Ronsard wrote a preface to a collection of songs dedicated to King Charles IX, in which he says: “How could one get along with a man who innately hated music? He who does not honor music, is not worthy to see the soft light of the sun.”
Besides the four musicians who set the sonnets, others who used Ronsard poems as texts for songs and madrigals were Philip de Monte (or Mons), G. Costeley, organist to Charles IX, de la Grotte, organist to Henri III, and Orlandus Lassus.
CHAPTER XII
Music Gets a Reprimand—Reformation and Rebirth of Learning—How the Reforms Came to Be
Here is a little reminder of how music grew:
A scale came into use in Greece about 700 B.C.
It was separated into modes by the Greeks about 400 B.C.
It was adopted by the Romans and by the early Christians and was used until the 10th century A.D. with little change.
450 years before the Christian era was the Golden Age of Pericles in Greece.
450 years after the Christian era was the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Harmony was first attempted in 900 A.D.
Between 900 A.D. and 1400, music made little headway.
Music has travelled along two roads,—the Church road and the People’s road; they often crossed each other and became very much mixed up. You remember how popular songs had found their way into church music at the time of St. Gregory, and how the people took melodies from the masses, put profane words to them, and sang them in the taverns, at the street corners, in the tournaments and at work.
Early in the 15th century folk songs had again invaded the Church to the point that masses were known by the names of the folk songs from which they were taken. This led to a very important reform, as a result of which Palestrina, the greatest composer of the “Golden Age of Catholic Church Music,” wrote his beautiful masses and motets, and Luther, the founder of the Protestant faith, made up hymns that are still sung and loved throughout Christendom.
Many things happened between 1400 and 1600, the period called the Renaissance, or rebirth of the ancient Greek and Roman learning. At this time the people in Italy (later in Spain, France, England and Germany), awakened to study after the Dark Ages of war and conquest. Now the people tried to bring back the literature, drama, music, and sculpture of the Greeks and Romans. Read this list of men whose genius developed through the new learning: Hans Memling, the Flemish painter; Albrecht Dürer, the German painter and wood and copper engraver; Hans Holbein, the German painter; Leonardo da Vinci, Italian artist, engineer and scientist, probably the most gifted man of all time; Michael Angelo, the Italian sculptor and poet; Raphael, Correggio and Titian, Italian painters; Cervantes, the Spanish dramatist, author of Don Quixote; Edmund Spenser of England, who wrote The Faery Queen; Copernicus, the astronomer and Christopher Columbus.
Invention of Printing
But the greatest event of this time was Gutenberg’s invention of printing (1455) which has spread learning over the face of the earth. Soon people were able to get books cheaper than the hand written scrolls. Until this great moment the monks had been writing by hand all books and music scores. Only the great and wealthy owned them, and very few could read or write, for what would be the sense of learning to read if one had nothing to read? So the invention of printing awakened the desire to know how to read books and to learn poetry, which sharpened people’s minds and enlightened them. 12,000 volumes were printed from 1463 to 1471 where perhaps a hundred had been written before.
The first press (wooden type) was set up by Charles VII (1459) in the Sorbonne in Paris, one of the greatest institutions of learning in the world which still attracts students from all countries. The first music was printed (1501 or 1502) by Ottaviano dei Petrucci in Venice, and were three or four books of motets by Italian, French, Flemish and German composers. Music was benefited by being printed clearly and many changes were made to make it easier to read. Up to this time it was worse than cross-word puzzles! It seemed to be the object of the composers before the Renaissance to make music look just as difficult as it possibly could, and there are many examples of enigmatical canons which were used in the spirit of games and could be solved only by those having the key to the puzzles.
But now the printers who were learned men in those days, simplified the notation, and did away with many useless signs. People began to read it more easily, and music became more popular. After Ottaviano died, Antonio Gardane and his sons founded a publishing house in Venice, which was most useful to composers. Then Paris and Antwerp began to have fine printers, and in 1542 Ballard was made sole printer of music to the King and nearly all the music through Louis XIV’s time (1638–1715) was printed by his descendants. Late in the 17th century the measures were separated by bars as they are today, and when metal was used for type instead of wood, the old square note became oval like ours.
At the beginning of the Renaissance Church music was again mixed with the most vulgar words from popular songs. “The bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes”—as in The Hunting of the Snark.
At this time the people were beginning to think and read for themselves, and to question whether the Church had the right to dictate to and control them as it had been doing. They thought, too, that many of the church officers were not good enough, and by degrees the people protesting, broke away from the Roman Church and formed others. Through this protest the Protestant church won its name; this is known as the Reformation. With the new church came the need for new services, new music and new ways of singing.
Martin Luther, the Reformer
“Truth to Nature” was the slogan of the Renaissance.
In 1453, the Mohammedans captured Constantinople, and the Christian Church which had been there since the end of the 4th century, was driven out. Many of the learned Christians fled to Central Europe and brought with them a knowledge of Greek literature and art which they taught to the people.
Christopher Columbus, in his search for a passage to India, found a new continent, and in the same way these seekers for “Truth to Nature,” although they may not have found exactly what they were looking for, certainly opened gates that swept men and women towards knowledge, appreciation, refinement and culture.
The outstanding person in the Reformation of the Church was Martin Luther (1483–1546) who interests us specially for what he did for the growth of music. Luther was a priest of the Catholic Church, but he was also a German; he believed in a national life free from Church government, and in singing hymns in the language of the people instead of in Latin, in order that the words could be understood. He spoke and wrote openly against certain actions of the Church and for this he was put out of the Church of Rome. But, very soon, he had enough followers to start a church of his own, and one of the first things he did was to make a new music for it. Up to this time the only music in Germany had been some hymns translated from the Latin into the “vernacular,” the language of the people, the songs of the Minnesingers and Meistersingers, and a rich crop of folksongs that had appeared in the 14th century. There were also a few composers who had learned to write counterpoint in the Netherlands, Heinrich Isaak, Ludwig Senfl and Heinrich Fink, and they, too, influenced the music of the Reformation.
Luther, a musician himself, knew the love that his countrymen had for their hymns translated into German and for the folksongs, and realized that singing in which the congregation took part would be a power in the church. He had to gather material for new hymns simple enough for the people to sing, and besides he needed new music to replace the Mass. The result of his work is the chorale, the foundation of the great German school of music of the 18th and 19th centuries. He was helped in the work of creating these hymns by Johann Walther and Conrad Rupf. The first hymnal (1524) was selected from some of the finest Catholic hymns, Gregorian and Ambrosian melodies, dignified folk-melodies, and some original chorales by Luther himself.
He played the tunes of his chorales on a flute, and Walther wrote them down. He wrote to a friend, “I wish after the example of the Prophets and ancient Fathers of the Church, to make German Psalms for the people, and that is to say, sacred hymns, so that the word of God may dwell among the people by means of song also.” The strength and beauty of these hymns can be seen in Ein’ Feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is Our God).
The hymns were harmonized in four parts. They were usually sung in unison (all singing the same thing) with the accompaniment of the organ or a group of instruments. This great change, or revolt, broke the backbone of polyphonic music, freed the spirit of the people, and first brought into use modern scales (major and minor, as we know them). Curiously enough, this Reformed Church Music also brought about the “Golden Age of Catholic Music” with Palestrina as its leading composer.
Palestrina—Prince of Music
Martin Luther had hoped to reform the Church but instead founded a new one (another example of Columbus seeking a passage to India). But this action of Luther’s was a challenge to the Mother-Church, and steps were taken to reform many customs and practices in the Church itself. As we have pointed out many times, popular tunes with vulgar words had crept into the Church services. These works composed for the Church were used to show the skill of the composer rather than to express the love of God. Questions dealing with the reforms for purifying the services of the Church were taken up by the Council of Trent, a gathering of the learned Church men and the Catholic kings. The council lasted for twenty years (1542 or 3–1562). Fancy that for a club meeting! Towards the end of its long session, the council decided that all music in the “impure mode” (in popular style), should be banished from the Church. They decided, and we cannot see why they waited so long, that the Mass with popular airs and words not approved by the Church fathers should be prohibited. Palestrina had both the genius and the understanding to meet the requirements, and his compositions for the Church are the highest achievement of the 16th century.
You will read in many histories of music that Palestrina was asked to write three masses to be sung before a group of Cardinals, in order to find out whether or not any composer could write music fit for the Church. These three masses were considered so fine, that he was claimed as the one who saved Church music. This would have been a great honor, but it did not happen, and was only a legend to show Palestrina’s greatness. No doubt Palestrina wrote more carefully and beautifully on account of the decision of the Council of Trent, and was so great a composer that all vocal polyphonic music of the 16th century is said to be in the “Palestrinian” style.
Now this Palestrina was Giovanni Pierluigi, born in a humble home at Palestrina, a suburb of Rome. In English his name would be John Pierluigi of Palestrina. The year of his birth was about 1525 or 1526. He probably was a choir boy and was trained in music in one of the churches of Rome. You may hear that the Chapel master of Santa Marie Maggiore heard him singing on the road and picked him out for his music school, but this may be only one of many legends told of him. Even the name of his teacher is uncertain, some say that it was Goudimel, others that it was Gaudio or Claudio Mell, and still others that it was Cimello. However, his teacher’s name seems to have had the letters “mel” in it, and all the rest is guess work. Before he was twenty, he played the organ in a church at Palestrina, sang in the daily service, taught singing and music, and shortly after was married.
In 1551 he became chapel master in the Capella Giulia (Julia Chapel) in the Vatican. His first published volume of five masses (1554) he dedicated to the Pope, Julius III. There had been many volumes of sacred music dedicated to the popes, but they had always been the work of musicians of the northern school, Hollanders or Belgians. This volume of Palestrina’s was the first by an Italian composer to be written for a pope. As a reward, the Pope made him one of the twenty-four singers of his private chapel, but not having a good voice, and not being a priest, the next Pope dismissed him. But in 1571 he was again made chapel master in the Vatican.
It was the custom in those days for musicians to dedicate works not only to popes, but to rich and powerful nobles, monarchs, or other church officials. These attentions were often rewarded with gifts of money, positions at court or in the chapels. This “patronage,” as it was called, made it possible for composers to do their best work. This was not only the case in music, but in poetry, painting and sculpture. Palestrina was kept busy dedicating his music to popes, for he lived during the reigns of at least twelve.
After the Council of Trent, one of his masses was recommended as a model, so it is said, of what church music should be. He was again granted the pay of singer in the Pontifical Choir, as he had been years before, but this time, due to his well-known skill, he did not lose his post when other popes succeeded in office. Many of his masses in manuscript are now in the Vatican library.
In 1575, fifteen hundred singers from Palestrina,—priests, laymen, boys and women, marched into Rome singing Giovanni Pierluigi’s music, with the great composer leading them. This shows, that he was appreciated.
He was asked to revise some of the old church music and while he tried, he so hated to change the work of other composers whom he respected, that he never finished the task. It was like asking Stravinsky to put up-to-date harmonies into Beethoven.
A list of his compositions published by Breitkopf and Haertel include 93 Masses, 179 Motets, and 45 Hymns for the year, 68 Offertories, 3 books of Lamentations, 3 books of Litanies, 2 books of Magnificats, 4 books of Madrigals. A big list, isn’t it? But his activities covered a long period, and he composed to the time of his death (1594).
He had very few pupils whose names have come down to us.
Palestrina never had great wealth, and some biographers make him seem poverty-stricken and suffering. At any rate, he was granted his heart’s desire, to compose as much as he wanted to, and even if he was poor, he had the joy of success and the glory of being recognized as the greatest composer of his time in Italy. His works have outlived many other schools of composition, and today are looked upon as models of beauty and of masterly workmanship.
Palestrina was honored by burial in St. Peter’s, and on his tombstone are the words “Princeps Musicæ” (Prince of Music).
You must not think that Palestrina was the only famous Italian composer of the 16th century, for Constanza Festa who died before Palestrina did his important work is called the first Italian master of the polyphonic school. There were also Animuccia, Andrea Gabrieli, and Andrea’s nephew Giovanni Gabrieli. Giovanni was a Venetian, and the Venetians loved rich coloring in everything, even in their music. Gabrieli tried to get it by using cornets, trombones and violins with the organ, which at that time could not make a crescendo, that is, its volume could not be increased, but as these instruments could all be played soft or loud with crescendo effects, he created a color or quality that never had been before.
CHAPTER XIII
Birth of Oratorio and Opera—Monteverde and Heart Music
Birth of Oratorio and Opera
A friend of Palestrina, Saint Filippo Neri, was the founder of Oratorio. In 1558, Father Neri started daily religious meetings to which all sorts of people came. These were held in a side room of the Church called the Oratory (chapel for private prayer), and in addition to his talks,—hymns, litanies and motets were sung, and scenes from the Bible were performed somewhat like opera. The name “Oratorio” was soon used, not only in Rome, but throughout all of Europe, wherever there were sacred dramas with music. Palestrina arranged and wrote some of the music for Father Neri.
Bible Stories Acted
The acted stories of the Bible can be traced back into the Middle Ages, and probably descended from the Greek and Roman theatre, for many early Christians were Greeks and Romans and had a natural love for drama. The Church understood this and saw in it a way to teach the history of the Scriptures. You know yourselves how much better you remember historical events when you have seen them in moving pictures! This natural love of play-acting in mankind goes back to primitive man who acted out his prayers in his religious rites. These theatrical performances were called “moralities,” “mysteries,” or “miracle-plays,” and a very beautiful example is Everyman, which was revived in England and America a few years ago.
In the 8th century, Charlemagne’s time, people gathered in the public markets, and the merchants entertained them by shows in which were singing and dancing. The priests forbade these performances because they were coarse and vulgar, but realizing how successful and how much loved they were, they themselves turned actors, built stages in many of the churches, turned the Bible stories into little plays, and added music. Sometimes when there were not enough priests to take part, dolls or puppets were used as in Punch and Judy shows. Isn’t it interesting to think that operas and plays began in the Church?
One of the most famous of the church plays was the Feast of Asses in the 11th century.
The people did not have means of entertaining themselves as we have, and the Church was the place to which every one went for amusement as well as religion. In the 14th century some plays given in England were: Fall of Lucifer, Creation, Deluge, Abraham, Salutation and Nativity, Three Kings, Last Supper, Resurrection. The clergy hired minstrels during this period to supply the music.
In the 15th century there were also elaborate pageants.
The clergy soon saw that the people wanted to take part in the plays, so societies were formed in Paris, Rome, and in England for the people. In England, like in Germany in the 16th century, the guilds (trade-unions) performed plays that were based on religious subjects, although more or less comic. The trade-guild of water-drawers, who delivered water from door to door, liked to give the Deluge! The story goes: Mrs. Noah objected to going aboard the ark with her husband and children, because she did not want to leave her friends, “the gossips”; she even tells Noah to get himself another wife, but her son, Shem, forces her into the ark, and when she finally enters, she slaps Noah’s face!
The subjects were not always comical, some were beautiful and inspiring, like the Passion Play still given in Oberammergau, Germany, every ten years.
Masques
During Henry VII’s reign (1485–1509), which began the Tudor period, the moralities and religious pageantry were at their best, and the Masques began. Nobles, who appeared at balls in gorgeous costumes with masked faces, danced, had a jolly time, and usually surprised the guests with an elaborate entertainment in pantomime with much music and dancing. This became more and more important until it combined poetry, instrumental and vocal music, scenery, dancing, machinery, splendid costumes, and decorations in the Masque.
The greatest masques were written in the reigns of the Stuarts (17th century), by Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Milton. Comus and Shakespeare’s Tempest were set to music in this form. While the Italians were experimenting with Dramma per Musica (drama with music), England was finding a new musical entertainment in the masque, and opera was its direct descendant.
The custom of masking for the ball came from Italy, and before that, the actors in the Greek drama (400 B.C.) wore masks, and that is why the mask is used in art to represent the theatre.
Italian Opera’s Beginnings
In Italy during the second half of the 16th century, a group of people tried to combine music and drama to fit the new ideas of art. The Renaissance had influenced poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, and now it was music’s turn to profit by the return to Greek ideals. The Florentines and the Venetians felt that the madrigal was not the best form to express the feelings and emotions of the subjects of their plays. In the Middle Ages, the subjects were always Biblical, but now, as a result of the new learning they were chosen from Greek mythology and history. From the first operas at the close of the 16th century, to those of Gluck in the 18th, the names of Greek gods and heroes are used as the titles of operas: Orpheus, Euridice, Daphne, Apollo and Bacchus. These first operas were a combination of early ballets, and a sort of play called a pastorale.
Torquato Tasso, the Italian poet of the 16th century, wrote several pastorales, and was interested in music with drama. Like Ronsard in France, Tasso wrote beautiful poems for madrigals, which were set to music by the composers. He was a friend of Palestrina and of Don Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a famous patron of art, particularly of music. In the Prince’s palace at Naples, a group of men met to spread and improve the taste for music. They also wished to create music that would fit the stage-plays better than the polyphonic or poly-melodic style imported from the Northern countries. They wanted melody and they wanted it sung by one voice alone, as were their popular songs, accompanied by the lute, called frottoli, vilanelles, etc. Tasso, no doubt, talked over his ideas with composers from Florence who had formed a club, and who were directly responsible for the first opera in Italy, Daphne by Jacobo Perti.
The Camerata
This Florentine club was called the “Camerata”; it met at the home of Count Bardi, himself a poet, and among its members were Vincenzo Galilei, an amateur musician and father of the famous astronomer; Emilio del Cavalieri, a composer and inventor of ballets; Laura Guidiccioni, a woman poet; Giulio Caccini, a singer and composer; Ottavio Rinuccini and Strozzi, poets; and Peri, a composer and singer. They must have had wild times at their club meetings, for the musicians who were not amateurs did not want the popular song with lute accompaniment to replace polyphonic music, which was the “high-brow” art of that time. But the poets and singers and less cultured musicians won the day. Pretending to return to Greek music drama of which they knew less than nothing, they made a series of experiments which led to the invention of the artsong, or homophonic style (one voice, or melody, instead of polyphonic—many voices), which seemed to satisfy the Italian’s natural love for melody.
Galilei set a scene from Dante’s Inferno, for solo and viola da gamba, an instrument of the violoncello type. Following this, Peri invented the “speaking style” of singing now called recitative. This was a very important step in the making of opera and oratorio, for it did away with spoken words, and instead, the conversation was sung, or intoned, to satisfy the poets who wanted the meaning of their words made very clear. It was accompanied by simple chords on the lute, and later, the harpsichord.
Here were all the parts needed for a real opera,—the solo song, or aria; the recitative, or story telling part; the chorus or ensemble, which was the old madrigal used in a new way; and the accompanying instruments which grew into the orchestra. Peri was the first to put all these parts together in an opera for which Rinuccini wrote a real play based on the Greek story of Daphne. Caccini and his daughter Francesca sang it, and no doubt made many suggestions as to how it should be done. Its first private performance (1597) was an important event for the closing of an important century. The audience thought that it was listening to a revival of Greek music drama, but we know that it was another case of Columbus’s passage to India! Although the Greek drama was not like this, after 2000 years it helped to create modern music.
Its success led to an invitation in 1600 for Peri and Rinuccini to write an opera, Euridice, for the marriage festivities of Henry IV of France and Marie de’ Medici. Several noblemen, probably members of the “Camerata,” took part in the first performance; one played the harpsichord, and three others played on the chitarrone (a large guitar), a viol da gamba, and a theorbo (double lute). The orchestra was completed by three flutes. This orchestral score was notated in a sort of musical shorthand called figured bass which shows the chords to be used as accompaniment to a melody by means of a bass note with a figure above it. Peri and his colleagues seem to have been the first to use this, but it was adopted by all composers into the 18th century, including Bach and Handel. It was called basso continuo or figured bass or thorough-bass.
Caccini also wrote an opera which he called Euridice, but it was in the style of a pastoral ballet with songs, dances, and recitatives. This work was probably the result of his having helped Peri in working out his ideas at the meetings of the “Camerata.” This same year, 1600, which finished the 16th century, saw the presentation of Emilio del Cavalieri’s mystery play, or oratorio, La Rappresentazióne di ‘Anima e di Córpo (Representation of the spirit and body), for which Laura Giudiccioni wrote the text. This oratorio, with very elaborate decorations, was sung and danced in the oratory of a church. It must have been very like the operas except that it was based on a religious idea, and was performed in a church, while the opera by Peri was performed at the Pitti Palace and was from Greek mythology. The orchestra was composed of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a double guitar, and a theorbo or double lute.
Baif’s Club in France
While the Italians were trying to find the old Greek and Latin methods of combining drama and music, there was a movement in France to write poetry in classical verse. Following Ronsard’s example, Baif influenced the composers to write music that should express the feeling of poetry, and also imitate its rhythm. They also tried writing madrigals arranged for a single voice with accompanying instrument, or group of instruments. While the Italians invented the recitative, the French developed a rich fluent rhythmic song form, musique mesurée à l’antique, or, music in the ancient metre.
Baif formed a club or an Academy of poets and musicians much like Bardi’s “Camerata” in Florence. They worked hard to perfect mensural or measured music, and opened the way for the use of measures and bars, which in the 16th century were unknown. We are so accustomed to music divided into measures by means of bars, that it is hard to realize what a great step forward was made by Baif’s Academy. They were struggling to get rid of the plainchant which lacked rhythm as we know it, and which for centuries had used “perfect” or “imperfect” time.
Two prominent composers of this group were Jacques Mauduit (1557–1627), also a famous lute player, and Claude Le Jeune (1530–1600), who worked with Baif to bring “measured” music into favor, composer of many chansons and of a Psalm-book used by all the Calvinist churches (Calvin was a church reformer in Switzerland) in Europe except in Switzerland! It went through more editions than any other musical work since the invention of printing. Le Jeune was a Huguenot, and on St. Bartholomew’s eve (1588), he tried to escape from the Catholic soldiers carrying with him many unpublished manuscripts. They would have been burned, had it not been for his Catholic friend and fellow-composer, Mauduit, who rescued the books, and saved his life. The title appears for the first time in history on one of his pieces, “Composer of Music for the King.” (Compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roy.)
During the second half of the 16th century, in spite of serious political and religious troubles, the most popular form of entertainment at the French court was the very gorgeous ballet. No expense was considered too great, and no decoration too splendid for these ballets in which nobles and even the kings and their families appeared “in person.” They were like the English Masques, and were the parents of the French opera. Baif, Mauduit and Le Jeune, together composed (1581) Le Ballet comique de la Reine (Queen’s Comedy-Ballet) which was produced at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris.
Beaulieu and Salmon are often named as the composers of this ballet because in those days, one composer wrote the parts for voices, and another for instruments, so probably the musicians worked with the poets and dramatists to produce it. The characters in this musical drama were Circe and other Greek gods and demi-gods.
With Marie de Medici and Cardinal Mazarin from Italy, Italian opera came into France. But this did not happen until the 17th century.
Monteverde and Heart Music
Wouldn’t you be proud if you could compose a whole book of music at the age of sixteen? Monteverde did and besides he made music grow by composing things that had never been done before.
Claudio Monteverde (1567–1643) was born in Cremona, a town made famous by the great makers of violins. Monteverde was one of the first great innovators in music, and he brought new ideas and vast changes into music as an art. His teacher, Marc Antonio Ingegneri, Chapel Master at the Cathedral, taught young Monteverde all the tricks of counterpoint and of the great polyphonic masters, and also gave him lessons on the organ and the viol. He must have been a very talented pupil, for he could play any instrument, and at the age of sixteen, published his first book of madrigals,—Canzonette a tre voci (Little Songs in Three Voices). The last song in this book has these charming words: “Now, dear Songs, go in peace singing joyously, always thanking those who listen to you and kissing their hands, without speaking.” Evidently, little Italian boys were brought up to say nice things!
Even in this first book of madrigals and the four books that followed, Monteverde tried experiments in harmony and wrote music that sounded harsh to 16th century ears. He was trying to create a style that would combine the best points of the old school of polyphony (many voices) with the new school of monody (one melody), and this is why he is called the originator of the modern style of composition, which is, melody and accompaniment. Since his time there have been many originators of new styles in music, and when first heard they have usually been received with harsh words by the many and liked by the few. Monteverde was severely criticized in a book that appeared in Venice, in 1600, on the short-comings of modern music, (and they are still writing “on the short-comings of modern music” today!). The book was written by the monk, Artusi, who liked the old-fashioned music and believed that Monteverde’s work was against all natural musical laws. But if we search we will find that music grows through experiments that are made by the composers, who “go against natural laws,” then after the natural laws are broken, comes a learned theorist who shows that no law was broken at all, and so we go on stretching the boundaries of “natural law,” and music goes on changing all the time. This is what we mean by the growth of music.
In 1590, Monteverde became viol player and singer to Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a patron of arts and letters. At one time he took the poet Tasso from an insane asylum; he was patron of Galileo, the astronomer, who was considered to be a heretic because he said that the earth revolved around the sun, contrary to the teachings of the Bible; he also invited the great Flemish painter Rubens, to visit his court; and probably influenced Monteverde to write operas. The Duke engaged many musicians at his court, who formed a little orchestra to play dance music, solos, or parts in the madrigals. These were no longer sung alone, but were accompanied by instruments, or sometimes played by the instruments without voices, (see how music grows up!) because in Italy, the composers had not yet begun to write special music for instruments as they had in France.
The composer went with the Duke on many travels, even into battle, and in the evenings between military encounters, they sang madrigals and played on instruments!
The next trip with the Duke was pleasanter, for it gave Monteverde the chance to visit Flanders, where he heard the beautiful “new music” of Claude Le Jeune, Mauduit, and others. It impressed him so deeply that he began to write heart-music instead of head-music. He was one of the most successful in breaking down old rules and traditions and was enough of a genius to replace them with new things that were to point the way for all the opera writers and most of the composers that came after him.
Monteverde must have heard the music composed by the members of the “Camerata,” but he was too much of a musician to brush aside all polyphonic writing and to value words above music. However, their work opened the way for his. Up to 1607, he had written everything in the form of vocal madrigals, but his last book seems to have been composed for string instruments instead of being madrigals for voices. These sounded as though composed for viols and lutes and not for voices, and were dramatic and full of deep feeling as if written for an opera! No wonder they sounded strange to the audience—even as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Milhaud do to most people today.
Until Monteverde was forty years old he had never written an opera, the greatest work of his life! He probably would not have done so then had it not been at the command of his patron, Vincenzo di Gonzaga. His first and second operas, Orfeo and Arianna, followed each other quickly and were epoch making. Without the work of the “Camerata,” they might never have been written, but they were much better than the best work of the “Camerata” (Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri). Monteverde was wise enough to adopt their melodramatic form which he improved by his use of the devices of the Italian madrigalists and organ composers, and the airs de cour (songs of the court) and the ballets of the French composers.
Also, following the French ideas, Monteverde used a large orchestra of forty pieces, including two clavichords; two little organs called organi di legno, which sounded like flutes; a regal, also a kind of small organ; a bass viol; a viol da gamba; two very tiny violins called pochettes, because they could be carried in the pockets of the French dancing-masters; ten violes da bracchia or tenor viols; ordinary violins, two chitarroni or large lutes, and the usual trumpets, cornets, flutes and oboes. In this Monteverde was a pioneer for he had no other works to guide him, and had to find out for himself the effects of combining different instruments. Today many of his musical effects sound crude to us, but he had no symphony concerts, at which to hear an orchestra, for such a thing did not exist. Neither were orchestral scores written out, but only indicated, and when instruments were used, their parts were made up at the moment and played, according to the “figured bass.”
During the 16th century, the musicians had learned that trombones and cornets made a wonderful effect in scenes of the underworld (Hades, Inferno, Hell), of which there were many. They discovered, too, that trumpets and drums made battle scenes and war songs real; that flutes, oboes and bassoons gave a pastoral, or shepherd-like effect; that viols were for scenes of love and of sadness; and that to represent Heaven, they needed harps, lutes and regals. Monteverde brought them all together, and studied how to simplify the orchestra to give it a better balance in tone and variety. It must have been a wonderful time to live in this “young manhood” day of music.
The opera Arianna was written a year after Orfeo, to celebrate the wedding of the Duke’s son. It must have been a sad task for Monteverde, as he had just lost his wife to whom he was very devoted. Ottavio Rinuccini, poet of the “Camerata”, was his librettist (the writer of the words), and a famous Italian architect, Vianini, built an immense theatre in the castle for the first performance in 1608. Six thousand people assembled, the largest audience that had ever heard an opera! Nothing remains of the opera today, but the text, or words, some published accounts of the performances, and a very touching and beautiful Lamentation in which Arianna expresses her grief at being left by Theseus. This one piece is enough to show Monteverde’s genius, also how freely he expressed human feelings in music. Not a house in Italy with either a clavichord or a theorbo was without a copy of the Lamentation!
About this time, Monteverde wrote a prologue for a comedy composed by five other musicians of the court, all well-known composers of their day, Rossi, Gastoldi, Gagliano, Giulio Monteverde, and Birt.
In 1613, a year after the death of the Duke, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, Monteverde was made Chapel master of St. Mark’s in Venice, which had long been famous for its fine music, where Adrian Willaert, Cyprian de Rore and Zarlino had been Chapel masters in the time of the “Golden Age of Polyphony.” Monteverde had much to live up to! But, after his hard work at the court of Mantua, he found his position very agreeable, and he gave his time now to composing music for the Church, madrigals, intermezzos, and a new form of music called “cantata.” His church music can be divided into works written in the old polyphonic style of Palestrina, and those written in the modern style of his day. So, when he did not write in the older church style, it was not because he did not know counterpoint, but because he wanted to make music express feelings through harmony and not through polyphony. He was able to do this as no one else had! His church music is not published for the parts have been so scattered, that a bass will be found in one collection and an instrumental part in another, and perhaps a soprano in still a third. So it would be very much like a jig-saw puzzle to find them all and put them together.
The Gonzaga family tried to persuade him to return to their court, but he refused, although he often wrote special operas for them or short dramatic spectacles which were called intermezzos. Of these, sad to say, almost nothing remains.
The recitative style invented by the “Camerata” had by this time taken such a firm hold upon the people, that it spread even to the music of the Church and to the madrigals. All the Italian composers began to write recitative for solo voices and accompaniment which they called canzoni (songs), canzonetti (little songs), and arie (melodies).
Monteverde was one of the first to turn the madrigal into a cantata da camera which means the recitation to music of a short drama or story in verse, by one person, accompanied by one instrument. But, as things improve or die out, very soon another voice and several instruments were added. This composition is a musical milestone of the 17th century as the madrigal had been of the 15th and 16th. The cantata for more than one voice forms a little chamber music opera without any acting. Some of the best known cantata writers were Ferrari, Carissimi, Rossi, Gasparini, Marcello, and Alessandro Scarlatti. At the age of seventy, Monteverde took up this new style of composition with all the enthusiasm and freshness of a young composer! He was not the inventor of the cantata da camera, as is so often claimed for him, as no one man was its inventor. It was the result of the constant search of the composers of that day, who followed along the same path, and worked together to perfect a new form.
New Feelings Expressed
One of Monteverde’s most important works in this style is the Combat of Tancredi and Clorinda (Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda) a poem by Tasso, which is noteworthy for several new things. In the preface of the published edition, Monteverde says that he had long tried to invent a style concitato, or agitated, that he had been struck by the fact that musicians had never tried to express anger or the fury of battle, but had expressed only tenderness and sweetness, sadness or gayety. (Perhaps he did not know Jannequin’s Battle of Marignan.) So he wrote battle music.
The second innovation was the tremolo, which, however familiar to us today, he used for the first time to express agitation, anger and fear, and the musicians were so surprised to see something that they had never seen before, that they refused to play it! This was neither the first nor the last time that musicians balked at something new.
The third innovation was that he wrote independent parts for the orchestra, and for the first time the instruments did not “copy” the voice, but had notes all to themselves to play.
In 1630 there was a terrible epidemic in Venice, the “Black Plague” which lasted a year and took off one-third of her population! In gratitude for having been spared, Monteverde became a priest in the Church. This did not seem to interfere with his composing secular works, for after this, he wrote several operas.
Venice was the home of the first public opera house in the world! It was opened (1637) in the San Cassiano theatre by Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Manelli, and for this in these last years of his life, Monteverde wrote some of his most important operas. Monteverde’s operas of this time were a combination of the Roman opera-cantate, then in style, and his first operas, Orfeo and Arianna, written thirty-five years before. He had great enough genius to fit his work to the conditions that he found in the opera house, so that when they had to reduce expenses, Monteverde cut down the size of his orchestra to just a clavichord, a few theorbos, a bass viol and a few violins and viols, and wrote works without choruses! He was agreeable, wasn’t he? A thing which people of “near” greatness rarely are!
The last work he composed at the age of 74 is one of his best! Is it not wonderful to think that he had not lost inspiration and enthusiasm after a long life of hard work? The Italian name for his last opera is Incoronazione di Poppea, or the “Coronation of Poppea.” It is a story of the court of Nero, and Monteverde has sketched his characters in vivid music, and has made them seem true to life. Henry Prunières, who has made an earnest study of Monteverde says in his book, Monteverde, “Monteverde saw Imperial Rome with eyes of genius and knew how to make it live again for us. No book, no historical account could picture Nero and Poppea as vigorously as this opera.” It is the greatest opera of the 17th century, and actually created the school of Italian grand opera. With it, mythological characters gave way to the historical in opera, which enlarged the field of drama with music.
So Monteverde, the great innovator, died in Venice in 1643 and was given by the citizens of Venice a funeral worthy of his greatness.
He dug new paths on which all modern composers travel and throughout his life he followed his ideal, which was to translate into the language of music, human feelings and ideas.
After a painting by Molenaer in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam.
A Lady at the Clavier (Clavichord).
After the painting by Terborch.
A Lady Playing the Theorbo (luth).
CHAPTER XIV
Musicke in Merrie England
You will recall how far away England was in the 16th century from Rome, the Pope, and the other nations. Not that it has been pushed any nearer now, but the radio, the aeroplane and the steamship have made it seem closer. In the 16th century it took a long time to reach the people of the continent, and for this reason England seemed to many to have little musical influence, but in reality it had much for it was forced to develop what it found at home.
About 1420, John Dunstable wrote beautiful motets, canzonas and other secular music in the contrapuntal style of his period. He is supposed to have held a post in the Chapel Royal, founded during the reign of Henry IV, and to have taken part in the musical services held to celebrate Henry’s victories in France.
Then came the War of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and musical composition in England was checked for the sake of war-making. Yet, the Chapel Royal was maintained and the universities gave degrees to students of music. Judging from the number of singing guilds and cathedral choirs, and from the amount of singing and organ playing, music, even in spite of war, seemed to have its innings.
In the 16th century England made such strides forward that she holds a high place in the growth of music. England loved the keyboard instruments such as the virginal, and in this century, developed her own way of making a delightful combination of polyphony and harmony with the new music for the Protestant Church service.
Bluff Prince Hal
Right here came the Reformation of the English Church under Henry VIII of the six wives. In 1535 he wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn, her lady in waiting, which the Pope would not permit him to do, as the Roman Catholic Church prohibits divorce. So, like Germany and Switzerland, England cut herself off from the Pope and founded the English or Anglican Church with the King as its head. You can imagine the excitement this caused, can’t you? People lost their heads in very truth, for what they thought right and religious, some of the rulers called sacrilegious and heretical.
Breaking away from the Church of Rome gave English music a great push forward, for, the Mass (the musical setting of the main part of the service), the motet (the particular lines of the particular day) and the plain song (which ministers intoned), were discontinued, and for these were substituted, after Henry VIII’s reign, the Church “Services” founded on the Elizabethan Prayer book. On this book, still in use, the new music was written and included such compositions as would fit this Liturgy (prayers), the Litany, Creed, Psalms, Canticles (line verses), and the Communion, the Plain Song, Versicles and Responses. Then, too, came hymn tunes and anthems. Among the composers of these in the Elizabethan reign were John Shepherd, John Marbeck, Robert Whyte, Richard Farrant, William Byrd and John Bull.
But let us go back to Bluff Prince Hal (Henry VIII), who was good to music. Not only did he love it, but he played and composed himself. One of his pieces is called The King’s Balade, or Passetyme with Goode Companie and the pastimes of this monarch were many. Read this list, set down by one who knew him: “He spent his time in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders (a reed instrument), flute, virginals (the English spinet) in setting songs and making ballads.” So with eating and sleeping and attending to affairs of state and to his many wives as they came along, he must have had plenty to do! How many kings and governors today write music as a “passetyme”?
In 1526 he had a band of players, says Edmundstoune Duncan in his Story of Minstrelsy, “composed of fifteen trumpets, three lutes, three rebecks, one harp, two viols, ten sackbuts, a fife, and four drumslades”; a few years later a trumpet, a lute, three minstrels, and a player of the virginals were added. (A rebeck is an early form of violin; a sackbut is a reed instrument with a sliding piece such as we have today in the trombone; the drumslade is an old word for drum.)
Anne Boleyn, second of King Henry’s many wives, loved music and dancing, and she too tried her hand at composing, to which fact her O death, rocke me on slepe is proof. It is said that “she doated on the compositions of Josquin and Mouton,” and that she made collections of them for herself and her companions.
Up to this time there was no English Bible and only Latin and Greek versions were used. The Church did not consider it proper for the common people to read the Scriptures. The Priests wanted to read and interpret it to them instead. You remember, too, one of the reasons that the Reformation took place in Germany was because Luther wanted to let the people think for themselves, read their Bible, and choose their own ways of worshipping and interpreting it. The same feeling crept into England, and William Tyndale made the first English Translation of the New Testament (1538). Soon the Psalms were translated and set to music to any air from a jig to a French dance tune! The gayer the air the more popular the Psalm!
Chained Libraries
Because the Protestants did not want anything left that had been part of the old religion in England, a rather dreadful thing happened. The monasteries were either destroyed or their libraries and organizations were discontinued. On account of this, many fine manuscripts of music and poetry were lost, for as you know, the monks copied out, with much effort, the literature of their day, and these painstaking glorious bits of hand work were kept in the monasteries.
There are today four chained libraries in England, two of which are at Hereford, the old city that holds yearly musical festivals of the “Three Choirs.” The books are on the old chains and may be taken down and read on the desk below the shelves, as they were hundreds of years ago! Here they are, in the cloisters, a great collection of treasures beyond price, just as the medieval scholars read them in days when books were the costliest of luxuries, three hundred volumes dating back to the 12th century. The earliest manuscript is the Anglo Saxon Gospels which was written about 800 A.D. One of the greatest treasures is a Breviary (prayer book) with music (1280)—the plain-song notation as clear and as easy to read as modern print.
As something had to take the place of monasteries, the universities became the centers for study and the cultivation of music. As far back as 866, King Alfred founded the first chair of music at Oxford! Do you remember that this was the time of the bards and minstrels? We do not seem very old in America, when we think of a college with a chair of music eleven hundred years ago!
Before the printers were expelled from England, Wynken de Worde, printed the first song book (1530) which contained pieces by men important at the time: Cornyshe, Pygot, Gwinneth, Robert Jones, Dr. Cooper, and Fayrfax.
Music for the New Church
As the kingdom changed its king at the death of each monarch, the country swayed from Catholicism to Protestantism and back again, and many a poet and musician lost his head or was burnt at the stake because he wrote for the Protestant Church. In the case of Marbeck who had made music for the Book of Common Prayer, he just escaped death for the crime of writing a Bible concordance (an index)!
Before Wynken de Worde’s song book came out, William Caxton, the great printer, published a book called Polychronicon by Higden. In this, was an account of Pythagoras and his discovery of tone relations (Chapter IV); this proves the great interest in England for the science, as well as the art, of music.
In Frederick J. Crowest’s book, The Story of the Art of Music, he tells very simply the state of music in England at this time:
“When the adventurous Henry VIII plunged into and consummated (completed) the reformation scheme, it was at the expense of considerable inconvenience to musicians obliged, perforce, to change their musical manners as well as their faith. In double quick time the old ecclesiastical (church) music had to be cast aside, and new church music substituted.... This meant pangs and hardships to the musicians, possibly not too industrious, accustomed to the old state of things. Simplicity, too, was the order, a change that must have made musicians shudder when they, like others before them, from the time of Okeghem, had regarded the Mass as the natural and orthodox (correct) vehicle for the display of the contrapuntal miracles they wrought.”
Now the Mass became the “Service,” and the motet was turned into the “Anthem,” which we still use in our churches. Most of the famous composers of the 16th and 17th centuries in England wrote for the new Anglican or Protestant Church, and made the new music lovely indeed. Many of them were organists or singers in the Chapel Royal, so they had been well prepared for their work.
To make this new music different from the old, the writers were ordered to fit every syllable with a chord (in the harmonic style). In the old counterpoint, of course, the words were somewhat blurred. These experiments with chords did much to free music for all time.
One of the earliest of the church composers is Thomas Tallis (about 1520–1585), a “Gentleman of the Chapel Royal” and father of English cathedral music. Through his long career, Tallis followed the different religions of the rulers from Henry VIII to Elizabeth, writing Catholic music or Protestant as was needed. You see he liked his head, so he changed his music with each new monarch. He, like some of the composers of the Netherlands school, wrote a motet for forty voices.
He shared with his pupil, William Byrd, the post of organist of the Chapel Royal, and together they opened a shop “to print and sell music, also to rule, print and sell music paper for twenty-one years” under a patent granted by Queen Elizabeth to them only. How successful the two composers were in the publishing business is not stated, but at least they could publish as many of their own works as they cared to! After Tallis’ death, in 1585, for a while Byrd ran the shop alone, and published a collection of Psalms, Sonets, and Songs of Sadness and Pietie. In this was written “Eight reasons briefly set down by the Author (Byrd) to persuade every one to learn to sing” to which he added:
Since singing is so goode a thing
I wish all men would learne to sing.
Famous Old Music Collections
England was the land of famous music collections in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first of these by Byrd was a book of Italian Madrigals with English words, Musica Transalpina, (Music from across the Alps). The entire title was (Don’t laugh!): “Musica Transalpina; Madrigals translated of foure, five, and sixe parts, chosen out of diuers excellent Authors, with the first and second part of La Virginella, made by Maister Byrd vpon two Stanz’s of Ariosto and brought to speak English with the rest. Published by N. Yonge, in fauer of such as take pleasure in Musick of voices. Imprinted at London by Thomas Easy, the assigne of William Byrd, 1588. Cum Privilegio Regise Maiestatis (With permission of her Royal Majesty).” A long title and one that would not make a book a “bestseller” today! Do notice how they mixed u’s and v’s and put in e’s where you least expect them!
There were fifty-seven madrigals in the long titled collection including the two by “Maister Byrd”; the others were by the Italian and Netherland madrigal writers, such as Palestrina, Orlandus Lassus and Ferabosco, a composer of masques and madrigals, who lived for years in England.
Byrd’s compositions in this work mark the beginning of the great English school of madrigals, which were so lovely that this period (1560 to 1650) was called the “Golden Age.”
The Golden Age of Madrigals
Now the madrigal becomes the great English contribution to music. It was a part-song in free contrapuntal style and the music was made to fit the words. For the first time, secular music was held in great honor, and prepared the way for arias, dramatic solos and original melodies.
After Byrd and Edwards, came other madrigal writers: Thomas Morley, John Dowland, George Kirby, Thomas Ford, Thomas Ravenscroft, Orlando Gibbons and others.
While the madrigal was being written in England and elsewhere, the part-song was being written in Germany. It was the companion of the chorale, as the madrigal was the secular partner of the motet. The chorale was written for part singing, had a continuous melody and the same air was used for all stanzas. In this the church modes were never used, yet, it is baffling sometimes to tell a madrigal from a part-song.
In Italy the villanella, or villota is a part-song. In France it was the chanson, in England it was the madrigal or the glee.
“The Triumphs of Oriana”
Monarchs, besides ruling the country, inspired poets and composers from earliest times, and Queen Elizabeth was no exception. The Triumphs of Oriana is a collection of madrigals by many English composers in praise of Queen Elizabeth, made by Thomas Morley. Because William Byrd does not appear in it, it looks as if this collection had been published to show Byrd that the English could write good madrigals, too. Anyhow, it definitely proves that the English madrigals are as charming as the French, Italian or Flemish. There is a copy of the original edition in the British Museum.
Maister Byrd Gives Advice
In 1611, an important work of Byrd’s appeared called Psalms, Songs and Sonets: some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the words: Fit for Voyces or Viols. In the dedication, the composer gives this good advice: “Onely this I desire; that you will be but as carefull to heare them well expressed, as I have beene both in the composing and correcting of them. Otherwise the best Song that euer was made will seeme harsh and vnpleasant.... Besides a song that is well and artificially made cannot be well perceived nor vnderstood at the first hearing, but the oftner you shall heare it, the better cause of liking it you will discouer; and commonly the Song is best esteemed with which our eares are best acquainted.”
Over the door of the music hall in Oxford University, is a canon (or round) for three voices, said to have been written by William Byrd. Some day, if you have not already seen it, you will have the thrilling experience of visiting the venerable college, and you may remember to look for this canon.
Ladies of the Realm Play Virginals
As today we consider no home complete without a piano (or pianoforte which is its real name), so in the 16th and 17th centuries we would have found a little key board instrument so small that it could easily be swallowed whole by one of our grand pianos, and you would never know where it had disappeared! It was known by several names,—spinet, clavecin, and virginal or virginals. Another instrument belonging to the same family and period is the harpsichord, which is more like our grand piano in shape. But later we will tell you more of the pianoforte’s family tree, and of its tiny but important grand-parent.
It was quite the proper thing for all the ladies of the realm to play the virginals, and the Queens, Mary, Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, were excellent performers.
The very first music printed for the virginals in England was called Parthenia (from the Greek word Parthenos, meaning unmarried woman or virgin). The printed title also tells us that it was “composed by three famous masters, William Byrd, Dr. John Bull and Orlando Gibbons Gentilmen of his Majesties most illustrious Chappell.” There are twenty-one pieces from the old dances which formed the Suites, of which you will soon hear,—Preludiums, Pavanes, Galiardes, a Fantasia, and one The Queene’s Command. It was published in 1611, on staves of six lines, instead of five, as we use, and it was the first musical work engraved on copper plates!
More Famous Collections
Another most valuable collection was for many years called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, but is now the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the original manuscript is in the Fitzwilliam museum at Cambridge. It was supposed to have been “Good Queen Bess’” book, but it was not, as some of its compositions were composed after her death. It is not known who copied 220 pages of music, but it may have been a wealthy Roman Catholic, Francis Tregian, who spent twenty-four years in prison on account of his religious faith. This name, abbreviated or in initials, is found in several places in the manuscript. An edition in our notation has been made by J. A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire. Many of the old songs of English minstrelsy are found among the numbers, and they were arranged for the instrument by the famous composers of that day. There are also original compositions as well as “ayres” and variations. Among the composers we find Dr. John Bull, Thomas Morley, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Giles Farnaby, Richard Farnaby, Thomas Tallis, Jan Sweelinck, the Dutch organist, and many others. Here are some of the quaint titles: St. Thomas’ Wake, King’s Hunt, The Carman’s Whistle, The Hunt’s Up, Sellonger’s Round, Fortune My Foe, Pawles Warfe, Go from My Window, Bonny Sweet Robin, besides many Pavanes, Galiardes, Fantasias, and Preludiums.
There is also a collection of Byrd’s virginal music called My Lady Nevell’s Booke. Lady Nevell may have been a pupil of Byrd. There are two collections of this same kind at Buckingham Palace, the home of the King of England,—Will Forster’s Virginal Book and Benjamin Cosyn’s Virginal Book. In the index of the latter, we read: “A table of these Lessons following made and sett forth by Ben Cos.” In all, he copied more than 90 compositions!
Later came John Playford, music publisher, whose first musical publication, The English Dancing-Master (1650), contains almost a hundred old folk tunes. Select Musical Ayres appeared three years later, and is a typical 17th century song collection of first-class poems by Jonson, Dryden and others set to music by well-known composers. His book on the theory of music, used for almost a century, contained “lessons” for the viol, the cithern and flageolet. His Dancing Master, a collection of airs for violin for country dances, has brought to us many popular ballad tunes and dance airs of the period.
In these collections we often find the names Fancies, Fantazia, or Fantasies, a type of composition that grew out of the madrigal and led to the sonata. It was the name given to the first compositions for instruments alone like the ricercari of the Italians, which were original compositions and not written on a given subject (called in England “ground”), or on a folk song. The Fancies were sometimes written for the virginal, and sometimes for groups of instruments such as a “chest of viols” or even five cornets(!).
The Chest of Viols
“Chest of Viols” may sound queer to you, but it isn’t! It was the custom in England at that time for people to have collections of instruments in or out of chests. So, when callers came they could play the viol, instead, probably of bridge! You can read about these interesting old days in Samuel Pepys’ Diary. He played the lute, the viol, the theorbo, the flageolet, the recorder (a kind of flute) and the virginal, and he was the proud owner of a chest of viols. He always carried his little flageolet with him in his pocket, and he says that while he was waiting in a tavern for a dish of poached eggs, he played his flageolet, also that he remained in the garden late playing the flageolet in the moonlight. (Poetic Pepys!)
Thomas Morley, Byrd’s pupil, who was made a partner in the publishing house after Tallis’s death, wrote his madrigals for virginal, and a collection called First Book of Consort Lessons for Six Instruments, Lute, Pandora, Cittern (an old English form of guitar), Bass Viol, Flute, and Treble Viol, and much sacred music. He also wrote a Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musick, a book of great value and interest to musicians for the last three centuries, for it is a mirror of his time and of his fellow composers.
He tells of a gentleman, who, after dinner, was asked by his hostess to sing from the music she gave him. It was the custom in England to bring out the music books after dinner and for the guests to play and sing, as we wind up our graphophones and switch on the radio. The gentleman stammeringly declared that he could not sing at sight and “everyone began to wonder; yea, some whispered to others, demanding how he was brought up.” He was so ashamed of his ignorance that he immediately took music lessons to remedy his woeful lack of culture. This proves that musical education was not looked upon as a luxury but a necessity in the 17th century.
Truly, it was a musical era, this time of Morley and Byrd! Fancy playing, while waiting for the barber, the viol, flute, lute, cittern, or virginal left for that purpose. Yet what would our dentist do today if he had to listen to a saxophone and jazz chorus from his waiting room? In those days, too, there was always a bass viol left in a drawing-room for the guest, to pass the time, waiting for the host to appear. Think of all the practising you could do waiting for the busy dentist or eternally late hostess!
The children of people who were poor, were taught music to make them fit to be “servants, apprentices or husbandmen.” Laneham, a groom who had been brought up in the royal stable, was advanced to the post of guarding the door of the council chamber and this is how he described his qualifications for the job: “Sometimes I foot it with dancing; now with my gittern, and else my cittern, then at the virginals (ye know nothing comes amiss to me); then carol I up a song withal; that by-and-by they come flocking about me like bees to honey; and ever they cry, ‘Another, good Laneham, another!’” (From The Story of Minstrelsy by Edmundstoune Duncan.)
Shakespeare and Music
This was the day in which Shakespeare lived, and from his plays we get a very good idea of the popular music of his time, for he used bits of folk songs and old ballads. It was a Lover and his Lass from As You Like It was set to music by Thomas Morley, and is one of the few songs written to Shakespeare’s words in his own day that has come down to us. In Twelfth Night there is O Mistress Mine, Hold thy Peace, Peg-a-Ramsey, O, London is a Fine Town, Three Merry Men be We, and the Clown’s song:
Hey! Robin, jolly Robin,
Tell me how thy lady does, etc.
In the Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, The Tempest, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello are folk songs that are very well known and loved. Two songs from The Tempest, Where the Bee Sucks and Full Fathoms Five, were set to music by a composer, Robert Johnson, who lived at the same time as Shakespeare, but was not as famous as Morley, who also lived then. O, Willow, Willow, sung by Desdemona in Othello is one of the most beautiful and saddest folk songs we know.
One Shakespeare song has been made famous by the beautiful music which the great German song writer, Schubert, wrote to it. It is from Two Gentlemen of Verona and is called Who is Sylvia?
Many of the English composers of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Henry Purcell and Dr. Arne made music for the Shakespeare songs because they were so lovely and so well written that they almost sang themselves; this we call lyric verse.
Thomas Weelkes (1575?–1623) whose madrigals were included in The Triumphs of Oriana, also wrote many Fancies for Strings which were the ancestors of the string quartets, the highest type of music.
Cryes of London
Several composers of this period, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) and Richard Deering (1580?–1630) wrote pieces using the old “Cryes of London” as their themes. Each trade had its own song, and the street pedlars used these tunes just as the fruit vendors, old-clothes men, and flower vendors cry their wares in our streets today. There is this difference, however; the street cries of today are mere noise, while the old “Cryes of London” were interesting and usually beautiful songs. Cherry Ripe is one of them, and Campion used it in 1617 in his famous old song, There is a Garden in Her Face. Some of the composers made rounds and catches based on the “Cryes,” and Weelkes in his Humorous Fancy used the songs of the chimney-sweep, the bellows-mender, and the vendors of fruit, fish and vegetables. In telling about this “fancy,” Frederick Bridge, a British composer and professor of music in Gresham College, says: “The Fancy at one point leaves its regular course, and for a few bars a delightful dance tune is introduced, to the words, whatever they mean, ‘Twincledowne Tavye.’ It is as if the vendors of fish, fruit and vegetables met in the street and had a bit of a frolic together.” Bridge also says that he thinks all lovers of Shakespeare will be glad to make the acquaintance of the music of the “Cryes of London” which saluted the poet’s ears in his daily walk.
Orlando Gibbons called his composition on the “cryes,” a Burlesque Madrigal, and beside the cries, he has used in one of the inner parts for viol, an old plain-song melody, a form used very often by the Italian madrigalists of the 16th century. Richard Deering’s Humorous Fancy, The Cryes of London, is the most elaborate of the three we have mentioned, having among many other tradesmen’s songs, those of the rat-catcher (this makes us think of Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin), the tooth-drawer, and the vendor of garlic.
Some Famous Composers
Orlando Gibbons was one of the composers of Parthenia. But he is famous as a composer of sacred music, in fact, he is looked upon as the greatest composer of the English contrapuntal school. His anthems are still sung in the English Cathedrals, and one of them made for James I, was sung, in part, at the coronations of both Edward VII and George V, and is now called the Abbey Amen.
Gibbons, Byrd and Bull were very fine organists. Gibbons was organist of Westminster Abbey, and we are told by a writer of his own day that “the organ was touched by the best finger of that age, Mr. Orlando Gibbons.”
Dr. John Bull (1563–1628) was brought up, as were many of the young English musicians, as one of the “Children of the Chapel Royal Choir.” Later he became organist and player to King James I. Bull left England, entered the service of a Belgian archduke, was organist at the Antwerp Cathedral, and when he died in 1628, he was buried there. In the University of Oxford, where Bull took his degree as Doctor of Music, is his portrait around which is written:
The Bull by force in field doth rayne
But Bull by skill good-will doth gaine.
John Milton, father of the great poet, was an important composer of this period. It is well known that his famous son was very fond of music, was a good musician himself, and had many friends among these composers and musicians.
The music for Milton’s famous Masque, Comus, was written by Henry Lawes (1595–1662) and was first produced in 1635. Lawes studied with an English composer named John Cooper who lived for so many years in Italy, that his name was translated into Giovanni Coperario. He turned the thoughts of his pupil to composing music for the stage, instead of church music. It looks as if Milton had been a pupil of Lawes, and had written Comus specially for him.
Lawes played a very amusing joke upon the concert-goers. At that time, as now, many thought that the music of other countries, and songs in foreign languages were better than their own. While Lawes himself knew the Italian music very well, he was eager to compose music that should be truly English. In the preface to his Book of Ayres he confessed: “This present generation is so sated with what’s native, that nothing takes their ears but what’s sung in a language which (commonly) they understand as little as they do the music. And to make them a little sensible of this ridiculous humor, I took a Table or Index of old Italian Songs and this Index (which read together made a strange medley of nonsense) I set to a varyed Ayre, and gave out that it came from Italy, whereby it has passed for a rare Italian song.” (Quoted from Bridge’s Twelve Good Musicians.)
Lawes helped to compose a work that is looked upon as the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes. This was played during the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and in this piece for the first time in England, women appeared upon the stage.
A year after the Commonwealth was overthrown, Henry Lawes died and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but the spot where his body lies is not known.
From 1641 to 1660, music must have had a hard time for this was the period of the Commonwealth, when the country was going through all the horrors of civil war, and Cromwell’s soldiers destroyed many things of great artistic value, that could never be replaced. Among them were the works of art found in the wonderful old English cathedrals, including organs and musical manuscripts. At Westminster Abbey, the Roundheads (the name given to Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers) “brake down the organs for pots of ale.”
Matthew Locke (1630?–1677) is looked upon as the “Father of English Opera.” He wrote the music for Psyche and The Tempest (1673). Another Shakespeare play to which Locke wrote the music was Macbeth.
Captain Cooke’s Choir Boys
Immediately after the Restoration, the Chapel Royal Choir was reorganized. For centuries it had been the great school of music for the sons of both rich and poor, and had produced nearly all the English musicians. Captain Henry Cooke, the first chapel master of the new choir, seems to have picked out unusually gifted children, some of whom wrote anthems while they were still in the Choir, and afterwards became very famous composers, among them John Blow, Pelham Humphrey and the great Henry Purcell. The Captain evidently knew how to train his boys!
Pelham Humphrey, having attracted the attention of the King, was sent to Paris to study with the famous opera composer, Lully. The effect of this study was felt in English music, as Humphrey was Purcell’s master at the Chapel Royal, after the death of the good Captain Cooke, and he introduced his new ideas to his talented little choir boys and musical friends. Samuel Pepys says that the visit to Paris made a snob of “little” Pelham Humphrey: “He is an absolute Monsieur, full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everything and everybody’s skill but his own. But to hear how he laughs at all the King’s Musick here, ... that they cannot keep time nor tune nor understand anything.”
Dr. John Blow (1648–1708) composed Anthems while still a choir boy, and at twenty-one was organist of Westminster Abbey. In 1674 he was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and became its organist as well, without giving up his post at Westminster. During part of the time Purcell was at Westminster, and Blow was Almoner and Master of the choristers in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Think of filling three of the greatest positions in musical London at the same time! He wrote an Anthem, I was Glad, for the opening of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1697.
He wrote many church compositions, masques, and pieces for harpsichord.
Purcell called him “one of the greatest masters in the world.” Like Monteverde, he tried out new effects in harmony and made new combinations which have since been called “crude,” but were signs of a musical daring and understanding that belong only to very gifted musicians.
He died in 1708 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Maister Purcell
The last of the great 17th century English composers, and the greatest of them all, is Henry Purcell (1658–1695). His father was a well-known musician, and the uncle, who brought him up, was also a musician, so the young boy heard much music in his own home, and no doubt knew many composers.
Sir Frederick Bridge in Twelve Good Musicians tells us that the Purcell family came from Tipperary in Ireland and that Henry’s father and uncle were Gentlemen in the Chapel Royal in London. Henry began his music studies at the age of six, for he, too, was one of “Captain Cooke’s boys,” and when he was twelve years old, “Maister Purcell” wrote a composition in honor of “His Majestie’s Birthday.”
The young Purcell, sometimes called the “English Mozart,” gained much from Pelham Humphrey who told him of Lully in France. After Humphrey’s early death (he was only twenty-seven), Purcell studied with Dr. Blow, and the two musicians were devoted comrades. Their tombs lie close together near the old entrance of the organ loft, where they must have spent many hours of their lives.
Matthew Locke was also a friend of Purcell’s, and probably did much to interest the young composer in the drama, for in spite of his early church training, Purcell’s greatest offering to English music was his opera writing. While Purcell’s are not operas in our sense of the word, they are the nearest thing to them that England had, before the Italians came with theirs in the 18th century. He wrote music to masques and plays, several of which were even called operas, yet only one really was an opera. Purcell’s music “was so far in advance of anything of the sort known in any part of Europe in his day, in point of dramatic and musical freedom and scenic quality, that one can only regret his early death’s preventing his taking to opera writing on a larger scale.” (W. F. Apthorp.) Among the things he put to music were the plays of Dryden and of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Purcell was one of the first English composers to use Italian musical terms, like adagio, presto, largo, etc. He was also one of the first composers to write compositions of three or four movements for two violins, ’cello and basso continuo, a part written for harpsichord or sometimes organ as an accompaniment to the other instruments. The name of this style of composition also came from the Italian, and was called Sonata. The first sonatas were composed by Italians. The word Sonata comes from an Italian word suonare which means to sound, and was first given to works for instruments. Another form of composition is the Cantata, from cantare which means to sing. It is a vocal composition with accompaniment of instruments, a direct descendant of the motet and madrigal, and of the early oratorios.
The Toccata, too, comes from the Italian toccare, meaning to touch, and was originally a work for instruments with keyboards. The Italian language gave us our musical names and terms, because Italian music was the model of what good music should be, and England, France and Germany copied Italian ways of composing. Everyone uses the Italian terms for musical expressions so that all nationalities can understand them.
When Purcell was only 17 years old, he composed an opera to be played by young ladies in a boarding school. This was Dido and Æneas, and it is so good that few writers on musical subjects believe that it was written in his youth.
In every branch of composition in which Purcell wrote, he excelled. His church music is the finest of his day, his chamber music and his operas are looked upon as works of genius. In fact, he is still considered the most gifted of all English composers.
He was only 37 when he died, and was a very great loss to the growth of English music.