VII
Gluck’s immediate influence was not nearly as widespread as his reforms were momentous. It is true that his music, reverting to simpler structures and depending on subtler interpretation for its effects put an end to the absolute rule of prime uomini and prime donne, but, while some of its elements found their way into the work of his more conventional contemporaries, his example seems not to have been wholly followed by any of them. His dramatic teachings, too, while they could not fail to be absorbed by the composers, were not adopted without reserve by any one except his immediate pupil Salieri, who promptly reverted to the Italian style after his first successes. Gluck was not a true propagandist and never gathered about him disciples who would spread his teachings—in short he did not found a ‘school.’ Even in France, where his principles had the weight of official sanction, apostasy was rife, and Rossini and Meyerbeer were probably more appreciated than their more austere predecessor. His influence was far-reaching rather than immediate. It remained for Wagner to take up the thread of reasoning where Gluck left off and with multiplied resources, musically and mechanically, with the way prepared by literary forces, and himself equipped with rare controversial powers, demonstrate the truths which his predecessor could only assert.
Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) with Les Danaïdes, in 1781, achieved a notable success in frank imitation of Gluck’s manner; indeed, the work, originally intrusted to Gluck by the Académie de Musique, was, with doubtful strategy, brought out as that master’s work, and in consequence brought Salieri fame and fortune. Other facts in Salieri’s life seem to bear out similar imperfections of character. He was, however, a musician of high artistic principles. When in 1787 Tarare was produced in Paris it met with an overwhelming success, but Salieri nevertheless withdrew it after a time and partially rewrote it for its Vienna production, under the title of Axur, Rè d’Ormus. ‘There have been many instances in which an artist has been taught by failure that second thoughts are best; there are not many in which he has learned the lesson from popular approbation.’[17] Salieri’s career is synchronous with Mozart’s, whom he outlived, and against whom he intrigued in ungenerous manner at the Viennese court, where he became kapellmeister in 1788. He profited by his rival’s example, moreover, but his music ‘falls between the methods of his two great contemporaries, it is less dramatic than Gluck’s and it has less melodic genuineness than Mozart’s.’
Prominent among those who adhered to Italian operatic tradition was Giuseppe Sarti (1729-1802), ‘a composer of real invention, and a brilliant and audacious master of the orchestra.’ We have W. H. Hadow’s authority for the assertion that he first used devices which are usually credited to Berlioz and Wagner, such as the use of muted trumpets and clarinets and certain experiments in the combination of instrumental colors. Sarti achieved truly international renown; from 1755 to 1775 he was at the court of Copenhagen, where he produced twenty Italian operas, and four Danish singspiele; next he was director of the girls’ conservatory in Venice and till 1784 musical director of Milan cathedral,[18] and from 1784 till 1787 he served Catherine II of Russia as court conductor. His famous opera, Armida e Rinaldo, he produced while in this post (1785), as well as a number of other works. In 1793 he founded a ‘musical academy’ which was the forerunner of the great St. Petersburg conservatory, and he was its director till 1801. His introduction of the ‘St. Petersburg pitch’ (436 vibrations for A) is but one detail of his many-sided influence.
Not the least point of Sarti’s historical importance is the fact that he was the teacher of Cherubini. Luigi Cherubini occupies a peculiar position in the history of music. Born in Florence in 1760 and confining his activities to Italy for the first twenty-eight years of his career, he later extended his influence into Germany (where Beethoven became an enthusiastic admirer) and to Paris, where he became a most important factor of musical life, especially in that most peculiarly French development—the opéra comique. His operatic method represents a compromise between those of his teacher, Sarti, and of Gluck, who thus indirectly exerts his influence upon comic opera. Successful as his many Italian operas—produced prior to 1786—were, they hardly deserve notice here. His Paris activities, synchronous with those of Méhul, are so closely bound up with the history of opéra comique that we may well consider them in that connection.
The opéra comique, the singspiel of France, was comic opera with spoken dialogue. Its earlier exponents, Monsigny, Philidor, and Gossec, were in various ways influenced by Gluck in their work. Grétry,[19] whose Le tableau parlant, Les deux avares, and L’Amant jaloux are ‘models of lightness and brilliancy,’ like Gluck ‘speaks the language of the heart’ in his masterpieces, Zémire et Azor and Richard Cœur de Lion, and excels in delineation of character and the expression of typically French sentiment. Grétry’s appearance marked an epoch in the history of opéra comique. His Mémoires expose a dramatic creed closely related to that of Gluck, but going beyond that master in its advocacy of declamation in the place of song.
Gossec, also important as symphonist and composer of serious operas (Philemon et Baucis, etc.), entered the comic opera field in 1761, the year in which the Opéra Comique, known as the Salle Favart, was opened, though his real success did not come till 1766, with Les Pêcheurs. Carried away by revolutionary fervor, he took up the composition of patriotic hymns, became officially connected with the worship of Reason, and eventually left the comic opera field to Cherubini and Méhul. Both arrived in Paris in 1778, which marks the second period of opéra comique.
The peaceful artistic rivalry and development of this period stand in peculiar contrast to the great political holocaust which coincides with it—the French Revolution. That upheaval was accompanied by an almost frantic search for pleasure on the part of the public, and an astounding increase in the number of theatres (seventeen were opened in 1791, the year of Louis XVI’s flight, and eighteen more up to 1800). Cherubini’s wife herself relates how the theatres were crowded at night after the guillotine had done its bloody work by day. Music flourished as never before and especially French music, for the storm of patriotism which swept the country made for the patronage of things French. In the very year of Robespierre’s execution (1794) the Conservatoire de Musique was projected, an institution which has ever since remained the bulwark of French musical culture.[20]
In 1789 a certain Léonard, friseur to Marie Antoinette, was given leave to collect a company for the performance of Italian opera, and opened his theatre in a hall of the Tuileries palace with his countryman Cherubini as his musical director. The fall of the Bastille in 1794 drove them from the royal residence to a mere booth in the Foire St. Germain, where in 1792 they created the famous Théâtre Feydeau, and delighted Revolutionary audiences with Cherubini versions of Cimarosa and Paesiello operas. Here, too, Lodoïska, one of Cherubini’s most brilliant works, was enthusiastically applauded. Meantime Étienne Méhul (b. Givet, Ardennes, 1763; d. Paris, 1817), the modest, retiring artist, who had been patiently awaiting the recognition of the Académie (his Alonzo et Cora was not produced till 1791) had become the hero of the older enterprise at the Salle Favart,[21] and there produced his Euphrosine et Corradin in 1790, followed by a series of works of which the last, Le jeune Henri (1797), was hissed off the stage because, in the fifth year of the revolution, it introduced a king as character—the once adored Henry IV! This was followed by a more successful series, ‘whose musical force and the enchanting melodies with which they are begemmed have kept them alive.’ His more serious works, notably Stratonice, Athol, and especially Joseph, a biblical opera, are highly esteemed. M. Tiersot considers the last-named work superior to that by Handel of the same name. Méhul was Gluck’s greatest disciple—he was directly encouraged and aided by Gluck—and even surpassed his master in musical science.
Cherubini’s Médé and Les deux journées were produced in 1797 and 1800, respectively. The latter ‘shows a conciseness of expression and a warmth of feeling unusual to Cherubini,’ says Mr. Hadow; at any rate it is better known to-day than any of the other works, and not infrequently produced both in France and Germany. It is opéra comique only in form, for it mixes spoken dialogue with music—its plot is serious. In this respect it furnishes a precedent for many other so-called opéras comiques. Cherubini’s musical resources were almost unlimited, wealth of ideas is even a fault with him, having the effect of tiring the listener, but his overtures are truly classic, his themes refined, and his orchestration faultless. In Les deux journées he abandoned the Italian traditions and confined himself practically to ensembles and choruses. He must, whatever his intrinsic value, be reckoned among the most important factors in the reformation of the opera in the direction of music drama.
Cherubini was not so fortunate as to win the favor of Napoleon, as did his colleagues, Gossec and Grétry and Méhul, all of whom received the cross of the Legion of Honor. He returned to Vienna in 1805 and there produced Faniska, the last and greatest of his operas, but his prospects were spoiled by the capture of Vienna and the entry of Napoleon, his enemy, at the head of the French army. He returned to France disappointed but still active, wrote church music, taught composition at the conservatory and was its director from 1821 till his death in 1842. The opéra comique continued meantime under the direction of Paesiello and from 1803 under Jean François Lesueur (1760-1837) ‘the only other serious composer who deserves to be mentioned by the side of Méhul and Cherubini.’ Lesueur’s innovating ideas aroused much opposition, but he had a distinguished following. Among his pupils was Hector Berlioz.
F. H. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Collegium musicum No. 29.
[2] Riemann: Handbuch, II³, p. 121.
[3] Usually Nicolo Logroscino is named as having gone before him, but, as that composer is in evidence only from 1738 (two years after Pergolesi’s death), the date of his birth usually accepted (1700) seems doubtful (cf. Kretzschmar in Peters-Jahrbuch, 1908).—Riemann: Ibid.
[4] Born in Naples, date unknown; died there in 1763. He was one of the creators of opera buffa, his parodistic dialect pieces—Il governatore, Il vecchio marito, Tanto bene che male, etc.—being among its first examples. In 1747 he became professor of counterpoint at the Conservatorio dei figliuoli dispersi in Palermo.
[5] After his return to Naples his three last works, Armida, Demofoonte, and Ifigenia in Tauride, passed over the heads of an unmindful public. The composer felt these disappointments keenly. Impaired in health he retired to his native town of Aversa and died there August 25, 1774.
[6] Baldassare Galuppi, born on the island of Burano, near Venice, In 1706; died in Venice, 1785, was a pupil of Lotti. He ranks among the most eminent composers of comic operas, producing no less than 112 operas and 3 dramatic cantatas in every musical centre of Europe. He also composed much church music and some notable piano sonatas.
[7] Oskar Bie; Die Oper (1914).
[8] Bohuslav Czernohorsky (1684-1740) was a Franciscan monk, native of Bohemia, but successively choirmaster in Padua and Assisi, where Tartini was his pupil. He was highly esteemed as an ecclesiastical composer. At the time when Gluck was his pupil he was director of the music at St. Jacob’s, Prague.
[9] Born 1712; died 1778. Though not a trained musician he evinced a lively interest in the art from his youth. Besides his Devin du village, which remained in the French operatic repertoire for sixty years, he wrote a ballet opera, Les Muses galantes, and fragments of an opera, Daphnis et Chloé. His lyrical scene, Pygmalion, set to music first by Coignet, then by Asplmayr, was the point of departure of the so-called ‘melodrama’ (spoken dialogue with musical accompaniment). He also wrote a Dictionnaire de musique (1767).
[10] Le petit prophète de Boehmisch-Broda has been identified by historians with the founder of the Mannheim school, Johann Stamitz, for the latter was born in Deutsch-Brod (Bohemia), and but two years before had set Paris by the ears with his orchestral ‘sonatas.’ The hero of the Grimm pamphlet is a poor musician, who by dream magic is transferred from his bare attic chamber to the glittering hall of the Paris opera. He turns away, aghast at the heartlessness of the spectacle and music.
[11] Pierre Alexandre Monsigny, born near St. Omer, 1729, died, Paris, 1817. Les aveux indiscrets (1759); Le cadi dupé (1760); On ne s’avise jamais de tout (1761); Rose et Colas (1764), etc., are his chief successes in opera comique.
[12] François-André-Danican Philidor, born, Dreux, 1726; died, London, 1795. Talented as a chess player he entered international contests successfully, and wrote an analysis of the game. His love for composition awoke suddenly and he made his comic-opera debut in 1759. His best works are: Le maréchal férant (1761); Tom Jones (1765), which brought an innovation—the a capelli vocal quartet; and Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège (1767), a grand opera.
[13] Sonnenfels, a contemporary Viennese critic, was active in his endeavors to uplift the German stage. (Briefe über die Wienerische Schaubühne, Vienna, 1768.)
[14] Gluck’s marriage was childless, but he had adopted a niece, Marianne Gluck, who had a pretty voice and pursued her musical training under his care. Both Gluck’s wife and niece usually accompanied him in his travels.
[15] After Iphigénie en Aulide Paris became the international centre of operatic composition. London was more in the nature of an exchange, where it was possible for artists to win a good deal of money quickly and easily; the glory of the great Italian stages dimmed more and more, and Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich were only locally important. Operatic control passed from the Italian to the French stage at the same time German instrumental composition began its victories.
[16] Gluck declared that the music of Armide was intended ‘to give a voluptuous sensation,’ and La Harpe’s assertion that he had made Armide a sorceress rather than an enchantress, and that her part was ‘une criallerie monotone et fatigante,’ drew forth as bitter a reply from the composer as Wagner ever wrote to his critics.
[17] W. H. Hadow: Oxford History of Music, Vol. V.
[18] During this period he produced his famous operas, Le gelosie vilane; Fernace (1776), Achille in Sciro (1779), Giulio Sabino (1781).
[19] André Erneste Modeste Grétry, born, Liège, 1742; died, near Paris, 1813. ‘His Influence on the opéra comique was a lasting one; Isouard, Boieldieu, Auber, Adam, were his heirs.’—Riemann.
[20] The Paris Conservatoire de Musique, succeeding the Bourbon École de chant et de déclamation (1784) and the revolutionary Institut National de Musique (1793), was established 1795, with Sarrette as director and with liberal government support. Cherubini became its director in 1822, and its enormous influence on the general trend of French art dates from his administration.
[21] The two theatres, after about ten years’ rivalry, united as the Opéra Comique which, under government subsidy, has continued to flourish to this day.
CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CLASSIC PERIOD
Classicism and the classic period—Political and literary forces—The conflict of styles; the sonata form—The Berlin school; the sons of Bach—The Mannheim reform; the Genesis of the Symphony—Followers of the Mannheim school; rise of the string quartet; Vienna and Salzburg as musical centres.
It is impossible to assign the so-called Classic Movement to a definite period; its roots strike deep and its limits are indefinite. It gathered momentum while the ideas from which it revolted were in their ascendency; its incipient stage was simultaneous with the reign of Italian opera. To define the meaning of classicism is as difficult as it is to fix the date of its beginning. By contrasting, as we usually do, the style of that period with a later one, usually called the Romantic, by comparing the ideal of classicism with the romantic ideal of subjective expression, we get a negative rather than a positive definition; for classicism is generally presumed to be formal, and antagonistic to that free ideal—a supposition which is not altogether exact, for it was just the reform of the classicists that opened the way to the free expressiveness which is characteristic of the ‘Romantics.’ On the other hand, the classic ideal of just proportions, of pure objective beauty, did find expression in the crystallized forms, the clarified technique, and the flexible articulation that superseded the unreasonably ornate, the polyphonically obscure, or the superficial, trite monotony of a great part of pre-classic music.