VI
At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Germany was under the influence of the French and of the Italians. In Hamburg there was the nearest approach to a national spirit. Hamburg was one of the most brilliant opera towns, but, whereas in Dresden, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna the Italian opera was supreme and Italian singers and Italian composers held sway, in Hamburg operas were with few exceptions given in German and were furnished by German composers. It must be said, however, that most of the composers were strongly under the influence of the Italians or of Lully, and many of the libretti were translations or adaptations of Italian libretti. Chief among the composers stands Reinhard Keiser, a man of loose principles and luxurious life, but of extraordinary musical facility. Apart from a great deal of sacred music, he wrote not less than one hundred and sixteen operas. It was while he was at the height of his fame that Handel came to Hamburg.
Jean-Philippe Rameau.
At Hamburg also was Johann Mattheson, first of all a singer under Keiser, then a conductor and composer. But his compositions have all been forgotten, and he is important now only as the writer of ‘Foundations for a German Roll of Honor’ and ‘The Complete Kapellmeister,’ both of which are the source of much that is known about German music previous and up to his time. The Roll of Honor is a series of short biographies of German composers. Living composers were asked to write an account of themselves for it. Bach seems to have been invited to do so and to have declined the invitation. Mattheson is also remembered for his duel with Handel.
The most prolific of all composers in Germany was Telemann, friend of Mattheson and Handel, but of his works nothing is remembered. Of more importance is Karl Heinrich Graun, who was head of the Italian opera in Dresden and Berlin, and whose Te Deum, composed after the victory of Frederick the Great at Prague (1756), and Tod Jesu are still heard. As precursor of Bach in the St. Thomas school in Leipzig, Kuhnau is of interest. He was a staunch musician of the old school, a man of remarkable learning. In the history of German clavier music he is the most important figure before Bach. His Sonata aus dem B seems to be the first piece of clavier music in three movements not dance tunes. They were published in Leipzig in 1695. In the next year appeared his ‘Fresh Clavier Fruit or Seven Sonatas’ and after those his ‘Biblical Sonatas,’ which are surely among the most curious records of music in an age gone by. They are frankly program music. Each sonata consists of a number of little pieces illustrative of some story from the Bible. There are the story of David and Goliath, the story of Jacob and Leah, the story of Saul and David. It was in imitation of them that Bach wrote his only piece of program music, the Capriccio on the departure of his brother to the wars.
J. J. Fux was from 1698 to 1741 a court composer in Vienna, greatly beloved and admired. He is remembered more as a teacher than as a composer, and his text book in the form of dialogues Gradus ad Parnassum was for a century one of the standard books on composition.
In Dresden the figure of Hasse, the Saxon, becomes prominent after 1731. He was perhaps the most successful opera composer of his day. Probably not a little of his success was due to the glorious singing of his wife Faustina. Hasse, too, was a friend of Handel and of Bach.
Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, Graun, Hasse, Kuhnau, and a host of others, all prominent in their day, have been forever obscured by the glory of J. S. Bach and Handel. As we have chosen Purcell, Scarlatti, Corelli, Lully, Couperin and Rameau to represent what the musical genius of England, Italy and France was able to build upon the foundation of Italian experiment in the first half of the seventeenth century, so we must choose Bach and Handel to represent Germany. Germany was a little behind the other nations of Europe to present what the sum of a century was to her. This was partly owing to the destruction of the Thirty Years War from which she was slow to recover, partly because she had no central capital like London and Paris to foster the best of her native genius. Yet all the experiment, all the enthusiasm, all the labor of the seventeenth century are gathered up in the work of her two great sons; all other composers of all other nations are small beside their genius.
L. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[139] Le goût musical en France (1905).
[140] Histoire de la musique, Vol. I.
CHAPTER XIV
HANDEL AND THE ORATORIO
The consequences of the seventeenth century: Bach and Handel—Handel’s early life; the opera at Hamburg; the German oratorio—The Italian period, ‘Rodrigo,’ ‘Agrippina,’ and ‘Resurrezione’—Music in England; Handel as opera composer and impresario—Origins of the Handelian oratorio; from ‘Esther’ to ‘The Messiah’—Handel’s instrumental music; conclusion.
In myriad ways the seventeenth century had wrought a mighty task. Founding their practice upon the technique acquired by previous generations, its composers had evolved definite styles of composition, both in the polyphonic and the monodic schools. The demand for greater sonority had caused them to exploit the harmonic resources of music more than before; the perfection of instruments and instrumental technique had stimulated melodic invention and rhythmic variety, and this increased technique had in turn been applied to vocal music, which, beginning with Caccini in 1600, had developed a marvellous virtuosity demanding ever greater means of display. While the old vocal polyphony had largely yielded its sway to the more individualistic art of solo singing, its technique and ideals were preserved in the instrumental forms of chamber music, which, as we have seen, crystallized during the course of the century, and, as the same composers were bound to essay both styles, a union of the two had, in a measure, been effected.
In such a period of transition there was little chance for ultimate perfection; it was an age of innovators rather than masters. Yet the century had produced some great men, too: Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli in Italy, Lully, Rameau and Couperin in France, Schütz, Froberger, and Kuhnau were men of no small attainments. Their work had sufficient power and charm to gain acceptance for the new styles and to popularize them. But it remained for another generation to bring forth two men great enough to make them survive through posterity, to give them lasting life. Those two men were Georg Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. It is notable that both came of the same spiritual stock, that of the Thuringian church organists—that contemplative, sequestered school of artists,—imbued with a homely philosophy and influenced by the sweet quietude of German domesticity,—which wrought for the glory of God and the uplift of the human soul. Handel[141] and Bach were born within one month of each other, and within a very short distance, for Eisenach is less than an hour’s run from Halle, where Handel saw the light of day, February 23d, 1685. They were as nearly contemporaries, in the literal sense, as men can be—Bach died but nine years before his colleague,—but in spirit they were generations removed from one another. Curious as it is that they never in their life met, though well acquainted with each other’s work, we may find a psychological explanation for the fact in that Handel represented the spirit and apogee of his age, summing up the achievements of the generations immediately gone before, while Bach, penetrating into the very essence of the music of past ages, evolved from it a new art that should inspire the musicians of generations to come, that should go surging down through the centuries like a mighty everlasting stream from which the genius of composers could draw continuous inspiration without the danger of exhaustion, an art so great that it had to break all the shackles and restrictions of its time and build for itself a new system, create a new language.