The Art of Music. Vol. 01 (of 14), A Narrative History of Music. Book 1, The Pre-classic Periods / A Comprehensive Library of Information for Music Lovers and Musicians

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III

Inasmuch as the organ was the instrument for which the most suitable style was clearly to be found in a modification of the old vocal polyphony, organist-composers were spared much of the difficulty which hindered composers who strove to write for other instruments, or for combinations of instruments. We have seen that organ music, set upon its way by the Italians, was dropped by them before the middle of the century. All their interest in instrumental music came very early in the century to be centred upon music for the violin and instruments of that family. This is due to the fact that during that century there arose in northern Italy families of violin makers who, selecting generally the least clumsy of the types of bowed instruments, and particularly the violin, with marvellous workmanship and natural endowment of instinctive skill, developed them into instruments of a sweetness, flexibility, and power of expression which can be rivalled only by the human voice. The names of these violin makers have long been famous in the world, and neither their skill nor their success has ever since been matched. The first of them was Gasparo da Salo of Brescia, who worked in the last half of the sixteenth century and a little way into the seventeenth. Working a little later in Brescia was Paolo Maggini. The centre of the industry soon shifted to the town of Cremona, and it is in the list of the Cremonese makers that we find the names of the Amati family, of whom the last and most famous was Nicolo (d. 1648); the Guarneri family, of whom the last and greatest was Joseph, who lived far into the eighteenth century; and the great name of Antonio Stradivari, who, born about 1644, lived until 1737. The violin itself was in use early in the century, mostly as soprano in a group of viols. The rapid and remarkable perfection of it, however, soon attracted almost the exclusive attention of composers; and it was thus raised from a minor rôle in a group of instruments to be the head of all instruments.

The earliest attempts of Italian composers to write violin music were singularly childish and unsuccessful, and in most cases they seem stupidly against the simplest principles of instrumental music. But one must not forget that the only art of composition which had been developed to a technical excellence was the art of vocal polyphony, and that the only skill the first instrumental composers had to bring to writing music for their instruments was the skill which they had acquired in the study of polyphonic choruses. We have seen that the early organ composers worked upon the same plan, but whereas a polyphonic style is essentially suitable to the organ, and the modifications of the vocal style necessary to convert it into a style for the organ suggested themselves naturally and obviously, the instrumental composers were face to face with a far more illusive problem. They progressed by much the same steps as the organists, but noticeably more slowly.

The form in which most of the earlier attempts were cast was the canzona. This, as we have already seen in organ music, was modelled upon the form of the French chanson of the sixteenth century, and its characteristic feature was a division into several short sections not actually cut off from each other, yet differing quite distinctly both in rhythm and in treatment; some being in the polyphonic style, others in a style of simple chords. The number of instruments might vary from four to sixteen, but the majority of early canzonas were written for four instruments, usually of the viol type. In a collection of canzonas published in Venice in 1608 there is one, however, written for eight trombones, and another for sixteen. The number of little sections in the canzona also varied. The tendency at first was toward a great many, ten or twelve; but with the general development of instrumental style came the lengthening of the sections and a consequent reduction of their number.

A typical canzona of this period is one for four instruments by Giovanni Battista Grillo.[137] It is made up of ten sections. The first, in common time, is but seven measures long, and is in the style of the ricercar, i. e. built upon an imitation of short motives. The second section is in triple time, in the general style of a galliard, a dance form of the time, and is eleven measures long. The third section is again in common time and in the style of a ricercar, and is twenty measures long. The fourth has ten measures, in the slow common time of the pavan; the fifth, eight measures in the triple time of the galliard; the sixth, six measures in the style of the pavan; the seventh, thirteen measures in galliard style. The eighth and ninth are repetitions of the first and second, and the whole series is brought to a close by a short coda of five measures. Those sections which are in polyphonic style are more or less closely related to each thematically. It will be observed that, of the ten sections, seven are made up of an irregular number of measures and cannot give to our ears an impression of rhythmical structure. One should notice, too, the return of the first two sections at the end, which gives some primitive balance to the little piece as a whole.

The obvious weakness in such a form of movement lies in the division into so many little sections, no one of which is long enough to claim the serious attention of a listener. True enough, the early works of the instrumental composers show very few rhythmically animated themes which could suggest any considerable treatment and development; but in the few cases where such themes do appear there is not space enough in a section for the composer to do anything with them, and they drop out of the piece almost as soon as they have awakened in the listener the desire to hear more of them.

The natural development was toward the extension of the section, therefore, until each made the impression of a definite and well-balanced whole; and from that it was but a step to cutting off the sections one from the other by pauses. That is what happened. The canzona grew from a movement in many little sections to the ripe form of a piece in four distinct movements to which by the middle of the century was given the name sonata da chiesa. Among the first to write sonatas of this type was Giovanni Legrenzi, who published a set of them in 1655. Legrenzi is one of the most gifted composers of the time, not only of operas, in connection with which his name is most often heard, but of instrumental music as well, of which the sonatas just mentioned are excellent examples. The last of them is well planned and interesting throughout. The first movement is an excellent well-knit fugue, built upon a definite rhythmical subject against which two interesting and varied counter subjects are set. All these subjects have vigor and distinct individuality, and they are treated with a skill which is proof of Legrenzi’s instinct for the instrumental style. The second movement is in the dignified rhythm of the sarabande, a dance form of the day; the third is a short adagio, leading to the last, which is lively and rapid, but rather loose in structure, recalling the old-style ricercar.

However, the sonatas of Legrenzi are often in more than four movements, and the credit of giving the sonata da chiesa its definite and lasting form belongs to Giovanni Battista Vitali, in whose collection of them, published in 1667, there is at last a regularity of plan in the number and arrangement of movements. The scheme is practically tripartite. There are two fast movements in common time and in fugal style, one at the beginning and one at the end; and between them a movement generally in simple harmonic style and in triple time. There are also a few very slow measures either before or after the middle movement or at the beginning of the sonata as introduction to the first fast movement. The two fast movements are frequently in thematic relation to each other. Here we have the form made ready for the later masters, of which we shall see them make use. Compared with the canzona of the first half of the century, Vitali’s work shows a striking, sudden advance, not only in clearness of form, but in instrumental style. Not much is known of his life, but his works show that he was a player of brilliant skill, one of the first of the virtuoso violin composers.

Though the sonata da chiesa was descended directly from the old canzona da sonar and is therefore connected with the old music, it was greatly affected on the way by influences not remotely connected with the old polyphonic style. In the preceding pages it has been shown how the cultivation of the monodic style led to the cultivation of the technique of the human voice. Already in the works of Caccini, himself a great singer, there appear passages for the solo voice intended to show off its flexibility and technique. The influence of the monodic style made itself felt at once in violin music, and prompted the cultivation of a form of solo music which had little or nothing to do with the polyphonic canzona. No pieces have come down to us from the first ten years of the century which were written for the violin alone with accompaniment of Figured Bass for lute or harpsichord; but there are many written for two violins, which, in that they play seldom together but pursue a sort of dialogue in music, may be said to belong to the monodic style. The early pieces in this manner are under the influence of the new vocal style. Passages of any lively movement are written after the manner of Caccini’s newly discovered vocal agilities.

But very soon the suitable violin style began to make its appearance, and we come across passages which could not have been sung, but which were suggested by the nature of the instrument for which they were intended. The early efforts were called sonatas. Like the canzona, they were given special names, for example, Salvatore Rossi’s sonata on the air of the Romanesca, and another on the air of Ruggiero, both of which are no more than a series of variations over two melodies both well known in their day. The practice of composing variations over a bass part which remained unchanged or was only very slightly adorned in a few cases and was called a ground bass or basso ostinato, was most common throughout the entire seventeenth century. No manner of securing an effect of form and symmetry could have been simpler, and no other form could have spurred composers more effectively toward the discovery of trills, turns, runs, and other ornaments within the power of instruments as a very means of saving themselves from the deadly monotony of a few phrases reiterated inexorably again and again in the bass. That the practice even of extemporizing variations—or divisions, as they were called—on a ground bass was much in vogue, as the improvisation of descant over the cantus firmus was in the early days of church polyphony, is witnessed by the famous work of the English musician, Christopher Sympson, entitled, the ‘Division Violist,’ which appeared in 1659, and which was intended to teach the art. Sympson says, ‘A Ground, subject, or bass, call it what you please, is pricked down in two several papers, one for him who is to play the Ground upon an organ, harpsichord, or what other instrument may be apt for that purpose, the other for him that plays upon the viol, who, having the said Ground before his eyes as his theme or subject, plays such variety of descant or division in concordance thereto as his skill and present invention do then suggest unto him.’

The true instrumental monody makes its first appearance in 1617 in the works of Biagio Marini, the first famous violinist. In the first of his publications—a set of pieces called Affetti musicali, printed in 1617 in Venice, where Marini was then playing in the orchestra of St. Mark’s—there are two pieces called Sinfonie for violin (or cornet) with Figured Bass, which may be said to represent the point where two distinct styles of instrumental music begin to diverge; one proceeding directly from these to pieces of widely developed solo music, the other developing through the canzona and works of that kind to modern orchestral music. This first work of Marini presents many innovations, the bowing is suggested by slurs, use is made of the tremolo (seven years before Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, in which it was long held to have appeared first);[138] and there are many passages of double stopping.

Another composer of the early times is Francesco Turini, writing trio-sonatas in the style of Salvatore Rossi, for two violins and a Figured Bass; and the works of Giovanni Battista Fontana (1641) show ever further development, not only in violin technique, but in the construction of music as well. Treading so carefully over new ground, the early composers seldom let themselves go in melodies of any long sweep but restrained themselves to short phrases, just as in writing canzonas for groups of instruments they held fast by short sections; but, in the works of Fontana, long, smooth phrases of well-balanced melody give proof of the rapidity with which the art was progressing and the confidence that was coming in the treatment of music for the violin. In the works of a contemporary, Tarquinio Merula, there is often even a lively humorous free swing. So the first half of the seventeenth century brought an understanding of the character of the violin as a solo instrument, and of its special treatment and of some of the possibilities of virtuosity that lay within it; and through the cultivation of the solo sonata—direct offspring of the early monodic style—there grew up an art of composing long, smooth, expressive melodies for the violin which, exerting an influence upon the canzona of polyphonic birth, was to aid in freeing it from its restriction to short motives and in setting it upon its way toward the sonata da chiesa of Corelli and the symphonies of Beethoven.