III
In Elizabethan England in the sixteenth century the strolling minstrels and ballad singers had already largely adopted the Ionian or major mode for their songs. This mode was in high disfavor among the educated musicians of the time, who called it il modo lascivio, the ‘lascivious mode.’ It is interesting to recall that the Greeks, including Plato, brought the same charge against their Lydian mode, which was the one of the four original modes which was most predominantly major in its feeling. In the England of Elizabeth and James the madrigal had nearly as much vogue as in Italy and the madrigal writers, chief among whom was Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), were highly regarded. Not a few of the solo songs from this period have continued in favor to this day, but the more familiar ones were in most cases the work of educated composers writing in the popular style. In fact, the pure English folk-song was so inhospitably received among its own folk during the Commonwealth and after, that, until recently, it was popularly supposed that England had no folk-song of consequence. But the folk-songs were there and have continued from generation to generation through the centuries, to be discovered of late years by conscientious investigators. Though they are dying out in modern industrial England, they still exist in such numbers and of such distinctive beauty that they prove, more than all records can, the genuine musical quality of the England that existed before the great Rebellion. From among the ‘folk-like’ songs of this period we have, preserved in full popularity, a number, notably the ‘Carman’s Whistle,’ ‘The British Grenadiers,’ ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington,’ the ‘Willow’ song which Shakespeare introduced into ‘Othello,’ and ‘The Friar of Orders Gray.’
During the Commonwealth secular music flourished, but chiefly on the Royalist side, since the Puritans, in their idle moments, were largely engaged in singing hymn tunes. From this period we have the stirring song ‘When the King Enjoys His Own Again.’ With the return of the Stuarts and the reign of Charles II the influence of France, where Charles had spent his years of exile, became dominant. The dance, not the dance of the people but the stately dance of the court, asserted its sway over song, and the flesh and blood, which had throbbed so richly in Elizabethan England, all but dropped out of the later English product. The songs which are preserved from the period occurred chiefly in the masques which were performed at court, which were French to the core. The chief song writer of the time, and of that just preceding, was Henry Lawes (1595-1662), who wrote the music to Milton’s immortal masque of ‘Comus.’ Lawes was a true musician, though not a great one, and he did much for English song in making the music respect the poetry. He loosened formal bonds and introduced something of the Italian recitative style. Along with the Restoration we have semi-folk-songs of a light character, though without the freshness of preceding decades. We may mention two of the most popular, ‘Come, Lasses and Lads,’ and ‘Barbara Allen.’ Pelham Humphrey (1647-74), whom Charles II sent to France to study under Lully, brought back to England with him the French grace and refinement and helped to set the keynote for English song for the next half century. This much the returned Stuart dynasty did for English music, in bringing French traditions across the Channel, but the more stolid English disposition of the time never hospitably absorbed the new influence. And in 1688 the Stuarts were ushered out to the strains of a most remarkable tune, ‘Lilliburlero.’ Of this song it has truly been said that it ‘drove King James II out of England.’ It was not a patriotic or warlike song, however, but merely a satire. The ribald words may seem the worst of doggerel to us now, but their rough satire awakened all England when the impudence of the Stuarts had become unbearable and the energetic melody carried them in a flash from one end of the country to the other. The upheaval of 1688 was the ‘bloodless revolution.’ King James succumbed to laughter.
And, curiously enough, this loose and somewhat commonplace tune introduces us to the greatest and most sincere of all English musicians (unless recent years have produced his peer) and to the song writer of whom, above all others, England has a right to be proud. This man was Henry Purcell. The tune of ‘Lilliburlero’ was written as an innocent dance in a book of virginal pieces and thence was brought into the open air to support the high spirits of the satiric verses. It is quite certain that Purcell never intended himself to be made immortal when he wrote it, or to be an instrument in the downfall of King James, to whom he wrote one of his many ‘odes.’ But into some of his other songs he put the best he had. They are graceful in the extreme, often decorated with the vocal turns and embellishments which were the fashion of the day, but never lacking in the musician’s touch. Their melodic facility is charming; their appropriateness to the spirit of the words is convincing; and their delicate architecture makes them, apart from their vocal quality, polished works of art. Purcell still frequently (and justly) appears on song programs. Among his many lyrics which are worth knowing we may mention ‘Full Fathom Five’ and ‘Come Unto These Yellow Sands,’ to Shakespeare’s words, and ‘I Attempt from Love’s Sickness to Fly.’
But after Purcell English music showed a falling off in originality and spontaneous quality which has astonished and mystified historians. And English song suffered the same fate along with the rest of English music. Vigorous semi-folk-songs date from the early eighteenth century—notably ‘Down Among the Dead Men,’ ‘The Vicar of Bray,’ and ‘Pretty Polly Oliver’—but as the century progressed the song output became more and more vapid and superficial in spirit. This was doubtless in part due to the vogue of Italian opera which held fashionable England fascinated and smothered the creative work of native composers. And as people became disgusted with the fad they turned to the next best thing at hand, the ‘ballad opera.’ This was not a very exalted form of art, but it was at least fresher and more musical than the exaggerated vocal virtuosity of opera, with its conventionalized arias and its ‘castrati,’ or male sopranos. The ballad opera came into fashion in 1727, with the enormous success of ‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ a success comparable to that of ‘Pinafore’ a century and a half later. The ballad opera was strictly not opera at all, but only a lively and merry farce (often suggesting the operetta librettos of Sir William Gilbert) interspersed with songs and duets. These songs were at first but popular melodies of the street or countryside, adapted to new words, assuring the popularity of the opera because the tunes were favorites. As the number of native tunes seemed insufficient to supply the enormous number of ballad operas, the writers engaged well-known musicians to write original tunes in the same manner—sometimes as many as eight or ten composers for one work. The songs never appeared as organic parts of the action and hence offer no analogy to the arias of true opera, but they were usually made vaguely appropriate to the dramatic situation and were introduced in such a way as not to seem out of place. Among the host of these melodies which have come down to us there are indeed many which are fresh and attractive. But the great majority have the cheapness of the street without its abundant life. And they nearly always have a strain of the extreme sentimentality which has remained a blot on English song literature until recent times. On the whole, if the ballad operas delivered England from the pompous inanities of the Italian craze, they also seduced English taste from the exquisite manner of Purcell. The better part of musical England turned to the noble oratorios of Handel and against his thundering chords all minor lyric strains were fruitless.
The song writers of eighteenth-century England are a depressing crew. Henry Carey (1685-1743), to whom the melody of ‘God Save the King’ has been attributed, was a fruitful writer of ballad operas, though he is nowadays best known by ‘Sally in Our Alley,’ a tune which is the essence of awkwardness—a tune, in short, which could have happened nowhere but in eighteenth-century England. Thomas Arne (1710-78) was much more of a musician and a scholar, but also much of a pedant. Even such a dainty song as ‘Where the Bee Sucks’ is marred by its awkward overlaying of fiorituri. The song by which Arne is best known, ‘Rule Britannia,’ is indeed a stirring melody; but the fact that a man of Arne’s standing could write such a tune to the given words and that England could accept the two as belonging together proves to what a depth the country had sunk in musical matters. We need only quote the first line:
When Britain first at Heav’n’s command
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Wagner said that this phrase contained the whole spirit of the English people. But what about the words and that ridiculous ‘fir-r-r-r-rst?’ Samuel Arnold (1740-1802), Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), James Hook (1746-1827), and John Davy (1764-1824) need only be mentioned and forgotten. Henry Bishop (1788-1855) was a man of more artistic sense and a composer of graceful and emotional melody, but without his operas he would scarcely be remembered. The tradition of awkward and sentimental melody which these men established or maintained continued to disgrace English song until the close of the nineteenth century and even to-day in the half-conscious English popular ballad we seem to hear the debased strains of the ballad opera.