III
The great spirit of the Italian Renaissance, which was essentially a spirit of freedom and joy in individuality, thus took shape in Germany, England, and France, and laid a hand upon music as it had already done in Italy. On every hand it scatters its seeds, which will take root and later flower. Elements of form and design, rich chromatic alterations of harmony, splendid dramatic effects of answering double choirs are woven into the intricate web of Netherland polyphonic music, touching it with color and fire, making it fertile with new and vast developments. But all is gradual; the art grows slowly and only slowly changes. Amid the turbulent restlessness, the experiment and daring, the old ideal, the ideal of the monasteries and the great cathedrals, still awaits perfection—the touch of Lassus and of Palestrina.
We have seen that Petrucci’s first publication of 1501 contained ninety-six pieces, most of which were by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin, Isaak, and others, such as Ghiselin, La Rue, Alex. Agricola, Brumel, Craen, by far the most part Netherlanders. This was in Venice. We need no further evidence of the popularity of the Netherland art in Italy. The Netherland style had become by this time the standard style of Europe; and during the first quarter of the sixteenth century Netherlanders still held sway over the development of music. There were pupils of Josquin in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. His music flowed over the face of Europe and his art penetrated to all the courts and into all the cathedrals. And upon all his pupils the spirit of the Renaissance was at work. Thousands of madrigals, of love songs, drinking songs, and hunting songs came crowding from their pens and jostled masses and motets in confusion. Program music was in the air, songs of battle, songs of gossiping women, of birds, of shepherds and of shepherdesses. It is hardly surprising that music for the church began to take on colors more and more brilliant. It is more surprising that the old ideal of exalted polyphony still endured and still called men to its standard.
Some of the pupils of Josquin are worthy of separate mention. Perhaps the most distinguished of them was Nicolas Gombert. He was a Netherlander by birth. We find him in the service of the sovereign of the Netherlands, later in the royal chapel at Brussels. In 1530 he was master of the boys at the imperial chapel in Madrid, and afterward probably first master in the same chapel. In 1556 he was back in his own country again, where, a few years after, he died. A large number of his works, from special editions of the sixteenth century, have come down to us, and some of his manuscripts, like so many other treasures of this period, are in the Munich library. His work for the church is characterized by a gentle, harmonious beauty, and Fétis called him the predecessor of Palestrina, especially on account of a beautiful Pater noster, which is marked by a lofty religious sentiment. He was very successful as a composer of motets, and, in his secular works, showed a tendency toward tone-color effects—program music—especially in his chansons, Le berger et la bergère, and Le chant des oiseaux.
Benedictus Ducis, another Netherlander and pupil of Josquin, born at Bruges in 1480, was distinguished by the musical brotherhood of Antwerp by being elected Prince of the Guild—the highest honor an artist could achieve at that time in the Netherlands. Leaving Antwerp in 1515 he appears to have visited Henry the Eighth of England, and later to have been in Germany. There is some difficulty in distinguishing the works of Ducis from those of Benedictus Appenzelder, owing to the peculiar custom of the time of signing manuscripts only with the Christian name. It is generally conceded, however, that Ducis composed a funeral ode on the death of his master Josquin, also a motet for eight parts, Peccantem me quotidie, passion music and settings of the Psalms, the earnestness and nobility of which justify his fame.
Jean Mouton, another pupil, was born probably near Metz, in Lorraine, became chapel singer to Louis XII and Francis I of France, then canon of Thérouanne and afterward of St. Quentin. His works show him to be a master of counterpoint and a worthy pupil of Josquin. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1508, and later more than twenty of his motets; and Attaignant included his compositions in the third book of a famous collection of masses published in 1532, and also in a collection of motets which appeared somewhat earlier. A few masses in manuscript are in the Munich library. A large number of his motets have been preserved, justly valued for their artistic and effective qualities, which in some instances closely resemble those of his master. His pupil, Adrian Willaert, was one of the most gifted and one of the most influential composers of the next generation. He may be regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of composers, who played such a brilliant part in the history of music during the sixteenth century, who were experimenters and innovators, whose energy opened many a new channel to the course of music. The influence of Josquin thus passed to Venice.
Adrian Willaert, born probably in 1490 at Roulers, in Belgium, first studied law in Paris. Afterward he adopted music as his profession and became a pupil of Jean Mouton. In 1516 we find him travelling in Italy, visiting Rome, Venice, and Ferrara. There is a story to the effect that in Rome he heard a motet of his, the Verbum dulce et suave, sung by the papal choir, whose members believed it to have been written by Josquin; and that they refused to sing it again when they discovered it to be by an unknown composer. If this story be true, it may be added here that Willaert lived to see the day when his compositions were considered entirely worthy of attention, even from the most distinguished body of singers in Christendom.
That time was not yet come, however. Willaert left Italy, taking service as chapel master to King Ludwig II, ruler of Hungary and Bavaria; but in 1526 he was back again in Venice, where, in the following year, he received the appointment as first chapel master of the Basilica of St. Mark, at a salary of seventy ducats, about one hundred and sixty dollars. This was later increased to two hundred ducats, about four hundred and sixty dollars, which was considered a princely income. For thirty-five years the master kept at his post, although twice during that time, once in 1542 and again in 1556, a longing for his native country drew him back to Belgium. It was his hope, indeed, to spend his last years in Bruges; but he had taken root too firmly in Italy. Friends, admirers, and patrons urged him to remain in Venice, and it was there, in 1562, that he died.
The Basilica of St. Mark was already ancient when Willaert came to Venice. Founded in 830 to receive the relics of the second Evangelist brought from Alexandria, rebuilt a hundred and fifty years later, it had received its permanent form about the middle of the eleventh century. Five hundred years had but increased its beauty and added mellowness and historic interest to its charm. Externally, its domes and pinnacles, its encrusted marbles and pillars, its bronze horses and many-colored arches constitute a unique and splendid monument of history. Within its walls, statues, columns crowned with capitals from Greece and Byzantium, and rich mosaics blend in a beauty at once impressive and magnificent. The interior is not large, two hundred and five by one hundred and sixty-four feet; but it is particularly well adapted to the use of the two organs, which are placed opposite each other.
This circumstance suggested to Willaert the device of dividing his choir so as to contrast the mass effect of the united voices with antiphonal singing. With this device, happily carried into effect, there developed in time, under Willaert’s hands, a new style of composition for two choirs. It was this style which continued in vogue for more than a century and formed the standard and became the peculiar characteristic of the Venetian school.
In his early experiments with the divided choir Willaert made use of the Psalms, whose poetical form, with the parallel half-verses and refrains, seemed especially adapted to antiphonal rendering. Following these, he composed hymns and masses, not after the manner of the eight or ten-part compositions known in the Netherlands, but works specially adapted to the double choir, each part complete in itself, each combining with or opposing the other, and yet creating an impression of unity and centralization. This was actually a new artistic creation, and by reason of it Willaert became almost the idol of the Venetians. They called his lovely music ‘liquid gold,’ adapted his name to ‘Messer Adriano,’ honored him with verses and public addresses, and, in his old age, besought him to leave his ashes to the city in which his artistic triumphs had been achieved.
Willaert’s experiments with double choir effects had a profound and lasting influence upon the development of music. In the first place, owing to this, devices of imitation and canonic progression which had so long been the most prominent feature of ecclesiastical and secular music, became secondary in importance to chord progressions. The reason is obvious. To get the best effect with two answering choirs the sections which each sings must not be long and complicated, but relatively short and clear cut, otherwise the effect of balance or of echo is lost; and in these relatively short sections there is hardly time to accomplish elaborate polyphonic development. Even if there were, the polyphonic effects are far too subtle to be easily recognized in echo or answer. The tendency in writing music for two choirs was therefore toward a simple style, clearly balanced, with certain definite harmonic relationships which could not fail to be recognized when repeated. The composers of the Venetian school were almost within reach of the harmonic idea of music, which rose clearly to supremacy only late in the next century. They were actually breaking away from the ecclesiastical modes, not only by thus trying to write in a simple harmonic style, which was founded nearly on our ideas of tonic and dominant, but also by enriching their harmonies with chromatic variations. Willaert thus stands out as one of the founders of what has been called the coloristic or chromatic school of the sixteenth century. In his music, and even more in the music of his followers, the old modes are constantly altered and with them the practice of musica ficta, already mentioned, reaches its height.[115] It meant the crumbling of the model system. It must not, however, be supposed that Willaert abandoned entirely the traditions of the Netherlanders and that he gave up writing in the complicated style altogether. He, indeed, employed imitation and canon, but more casually; often only at the entrance of short alternating sections. His voice parts then proceeded in ‘solid chord pillars,’ as Naumann has happily said, in a style markedly in advance of the old contrapuntal conceptions. In him therefore we have a brilliant example of the old style worked upon by new impulses, by the spirit of the Renaissance, the desire for rich color and varied, beautiful form.
Willaert was an industrious composer, and his works go far toward making the period from 1450 to 1550 ‘the golden century of the Netherlands.’ Masses, motets, psalms and hymns, madrigals and canzone are all well-represented. One unusual composition, for five voices, in the form of a narrative based on the Bible story Susannah, seems like an early prophecy of the sacred cantata, although the treatment is severely hymnlike and not dramatic. As a writer of madrigals and of frottole Willaert’s position is discussed in another chapter; though it may be said in passing that in these, as in his sacred music, his individuality is marked, and his knowledge and musical skill evident.
Though a northerner by birth, Willaert became the founder of a school characteristically Italian, and his work seemed, to his contemporaries, to embody the very spirit of Venetian life, in its richness and variety. He brought to the Italians the inheritance of the Netherland art, turned it into new and interesting channels, and revealed to later masters what possibilities of color lay hidden under the strictness of its laws.
Upon the death of Willaert, his pupil, Cipriano di Rore,[116] was appointed to the high office at St. Mark’s. Works of di Rore, including madrigals, motets, masses, psalms, and a Passion according to St. John, were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, especially in Munich, where they were frequently performed under the direction of Lassus. Duke Albert of Bavaria caused a handsome copy of a collection of his church compositions, graced by a portrait of the composer, to be placed in the Munich library, where it still remains.
Following di Rore at St. Mark’s came Gioseffo Zarlino,[117] a member of the order of Franciscan monks, also a pupil of Willaert, and a theorist of great importance. Few of his compositions have survived, but his theoretical writing, Instituzioni harmoniche, Dimostrazioni harmoniche, and Sopplimenti musicali, remain in an edition of Zarlino’s collected works published in four volumes in 1589. There are also in manuscript French, German, and Dutch translations of the Instituzioni, which contain, besides an important discussion of the third, and the major and minor consonant triad, a clear explanation of double counterpoint in the octave, twelfth, and in contrary motion; of canon and double canon in the unison, octave, and upper and under fifth, with numerous examples based upon the same cantus firmus. Baldasarro Donati and Giovanni della Croce, both distinguished musicians, in turn succeeded Zarlino as maestro di capella at St. Mark’s.
Elsewhere in Italy important composers appear, native Italians who bring to the Netherland art the Italian gift of melody and sweetness. Constanzo Festa,[118] a Florentine, occupies an especially important place. Riemann says of him, ‘He can be looked upon as the predecessor of Palestrina, with whose style his own has many points of similarity. He was the first Italian contrapuntist of importance, and gives a foretaste of the beauties which were to spring from the union of Netherland art with Italian feeling for euphony and melody.’ Constanzo Porta, a pupil of Willaert, was successively maestro of the Franciscan monastery at Padua, and of churches at Ravenna, Osimo, and Loreto. Gafori (or Gafurius, 1451-1522), cantor and master of the boys at Milan cathedral, left many theoretical writings of great value. Arcadelt, already mentioned as a writer of madrigals, composed a volume of masses, published both in Venice and by Ballard and Leroy in Paris in 1557. Jacob Clemens, better known by the name of Clemens non Papa, to distinguish him from the pope—a fact which attests, in a jocular way, his popularity—was a Netherlander, and one of the most famous composers of the epoch between Josquin and Palestrina, leaving to posterity a large number of masses, motets, and chansons, besides four books of hymns and psalms, the melodies of which were taken from Netherland folk song.
Meantime in Germany we find also musicians of distinction, though as yet none of the very first rank. One of the oldest of these was Adam von Fulda, a learned monk, known both as a composer and theorist, and the author of at least one highly esteemed motet, O vera lux et gloria. Heinrich Finck, Thomas Stolzer, Ludwig Senfl, and Heinrich Isaak all deserve an honorable place in the history of German music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isaak, though for some time considered a German, was born in the Netherlands, probably about 1450, and was one of the most learned of the contemporaries of Josquin. He lived for a time in Ferrara, afterward becoming organist at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From this post he went to Rome, and finally entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Vienna. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1506, and included many of his other compositions in collections published early in the century. Manuscript works are in the Munich, Brussels, and Vienna libraries. His part songs were considered models of their kind, and are not lacking in interest even to-day. It is to Isaak we are indebted for the lovely Inspruck, ich muss dich lassen, used as a hymn by the followers of Luther, and by Sebastian Bach in the St. Matthew Passion.
Ludwig Senfl (born 1492, died about 1555), a pupil and the successor of Isaak at the court chapel of Maximilian I at Vienna, was later chapel-master at Munich. According to Riemann, Senfl was one of the most distinguished, if not the most important, of the German contrapuntists of the sixteenth century. He is further remembered as a friend of Luther. A great number of his compositions are preserved, among them being masses, motets, odes, songs, and hymns for congregational singing.
The work of the brilliant Clement Jannequin in Paris was largely secular and will be treated in another chapter. It may be remarked in passing that types of composition perfected by him were to have great influence upon instrumental music before the end of the century. In England John Merbecke (d. 1585), Christopher Tye (d. 1572), Thomas Tallis (d. 1585), and William Byrd (d. 1623) match the Netherlands in skill and bring to their music not only the spirit of the new age, but the peculiar melodiousness which has always characterized English music. The works of Tallis became great favorites and in the famous English collections of music for the virginals toward the end of the century several of his vocal works appeared as transcriptions. Byrd must be ranked as one of the most daring composers of the time. Though he conformed to the new religion he remained at heart a Catholic, and his great works are akin to those of the greatest Catholic composers on the continent. He has, indeed, been called the Lassus of England. Here, too, must be mentioned, though belonging almost more to the next century, Thomas Morley (d. 1602), John Dowland (d. 1626), and perhaps the greatest of all English composers except Henry Purcell, Orlando Gibbons (d. 1625). All these men were composing at the end of the century, especially madrigals and other secular forms famous not only for their great technical skill, but for their remarkable sweetness and expressiveness. They were all, moreover, skillful instrumentalists and brought music for the harpsichord to a state far advanced beyond anything on the continent. John Bull (d. 1628) was not only a master of the art of counterpoint but a virtuoso on both organ and harpsichord, whose match could be found only in Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli in Venice.
Everywhere the Renaissance spirit was at work, but prosperous Venice stands out clearly as the centre of the new movement which so colored and remodelled music. Effects of double choirs, chromatic harmonies, tendencies toward definiteness of form, and even the combination of voices and instruments within the church itself, all marks of the changes which were affecting the development of music, all signs of the liberation of music from the sway of the church and of its closer relationship with passionate active life, are first found in the works of the composers who were connected with St. Mark’s cathedral. But these men were really pioneers and the results of their innovations, though radical and far-reaching, were hardly foreseen. They sowed seeds, so to speak, which were to grow and flower long after their death. We have now to consider how the art of the Netherlanders grew to a present perfection in the works of two men—Orlando di Lasso and Pierluigi da Palestrina—both of whom, but particularly the latter, pursued an ideal untouched by the modern forces playing upon music about them; an ideal which, moreover, they attained and by attaining brought to an end the first great period in the history of European music.