Beethoven and His Forerunners

by Daniel Gregory Mason

O mio core O mio speme
O pace O vita
Ohime Chi mi t’ha tolto
Chimi t’ha tolto
Ohime...... deve segita

FIGURE V. TWO PASSAGES FROM PERI’S “EURIDICE.”

Gioite al canto mio
selve frondo se
Gioite amati
coli e d’ogni intorno.
Ecco rimbombi dalle valle ascose.

In spite of the primitiveness of the style, there is considerable force and even definiteness of expression here. As Sir Hubert Parry points out: “the phrases which express bereavement and sorrow are tortuous, irregular, spasmodic—broken with catching breath and wailing accent; whereas the expression of joy is flowing, easy and continuous.” It was in fact the aim of the inventors of the type of operatic recitative here exemplified, to imitate, while idealizing, the actual cadence of the voice in emotional speech. The music of the choral epoch had carefully avoided the impression of passionate feeling; the new music as persistently sought it. The old music had been written for chorus, which by mere virtue of numbers is quite impersonal; the new was put into the mouths of individuals. The melodic style of the former was dignified, formal, severe; that of the latter was mobile, flexible, constantly adaptable to the most subtle changes of mood. Here again, then, we see the effect of the idealistic impulse on music. Idealism, insisting on the worth of finite experience, focusses man’s attention on himself, on his actual feelings, petty as well as universal, base and noble alike, and makes him, whether for good or evil, vividly self-conscious. It believes in the hopes and fears, the aspirations and disappointments, of men and women; believes that in human beings, in spite of their pathetic weakness, there is a unique original value, not to be denied without crippling that august whole of which they are the minute but essential parts. The music of Peri, Caccini, and Cavaliere, and later of Monteverde, succeeded in voicing, at first dimly but with increasing eloquence, the primitive human emotions that mysticism had disdained as worldly; the tendency they initiated gathered force apace, and passed with Cavalli and Lulli into France, where it culminated in the work of Gluck. The great contribution of early modern opera to pure music was the accent of genuine and various human feeling.

A third tendency toward distinctively modern methods that was steadily gaining ground throughout this period was the tendency toward metrical and rhythmic vigor. We have seen how vigorous meter, in music, serves to express our active impulses, how it grows out of that ordered gesticulation we name dance.[22] We have seen how devoid was the mediæval choral music of meter,[23] and indeed how inappropriate to its peculiar genius metrical qualities would have been.[24] The moment men’s attitude toward their own ordinary activities changed, however, and they began to see in them life rather than death, their expression in art became a desideratum. And it is a fact that very early in the sixteenth century, even before the pure choral music had reached its perfect maturity, some composers had begun to write simple dances for unaccompanied instruments, generally a combination of strings with harpsichord.

For a long while these efforts remained tentative and inchoate, because the men who made them were neither very clearly aware what they were trying to do, nor acquainted with technical means for doing it. But the scheme of treating dances as the basis of instrumental movements, the chief expression of which was that of energy, vitality, the more active and effervescent emotions, was afterwards elaborated by more trained masters, and eventually bore fruit in the innumerable suites and partitas, or bundles of dances, of the eighteenth century, and in the symphonic minuet and scherzo.

The mere fact that composers of the seventeenth century paid respectful attention to the popular minstrelsy, which had been treated with such scant courtesy by ecclesiastical masters, and that they so persistently imitated its methods, is in itself strong testimony to the change of attitude that was taking place. The songs and dances of the people are the most spontaneous expressions of purely personal feeling in the entire range of music. They were upwellings of primitive emotion, as instinctive and unsophisticated as the cries and gestures from which they were developed. And for these reasons they were norms of the proper expression of naïve feeling in music—all music, so far as it aims to express personal feeling at all, makes use of the melodic phrases derived from the cry, and of the dance-rhythms derived from the gesture. Consequently, so soon as musical artists became inspired with the new ideal of personal expression, they turned to the popular music for inspiration and methods.