The great church composers of the sixteenth century were kindred to such spirits as these, and the reviving piety of the time found its most adequate symbol in the realm of art in the masses and hymns of Palestrina and [157] his compeers. These men were nurtured in the cloisters and choirs. The Church was their sole patron, and no higher privilege could be conceived by them than that of lending their powers to the service of that sublime institution into which their lives were absorbed. They were not agitated by the political and doctrinal ferment of the day. No sphere of activity could more completely remove a man from mundane influences than the employment of a church musician of that period. The abstract nature of music as an art, together with the engrossing routine of a liturgic office, kept these men, as it were, close to the inner sanctuary of their religion, where the ecclesiastical traditions were strongest and purest. The music of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was unaffected by the influences which had done so much to make other forms of Italian art ministers to pride and sensual gratification. Music, through its very limitations, possessed no means of flattering the appetites of an Alexander VI., the luxurious tastes of a Leo X., or the inordinate pride of a Julius II. It was perforce allowed to develop unconstrained along the line of austere tradition. Art forms seem often to be under the control of a law which requires that when once set in motion they must run their course independently of changes in their environment. These two factors, therefore,—the compulsion of an advancing art demanding completion, and the uncontaminated springs of piety whence the liturgy and its musical setting drew their life,—will explain the splendid achievements of religious music in the hands of the Catholic composers of the sixteenth century amid conditions which would at first thought seem unfavorable to the nurture of an art so pure and austere.
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Under such influences, impelled by a zeal for the glory of God and the honor of his Church, the polyphony of the Netherland school put forth its consummate flower in the “Palestrina style.” In the works of this later school we may distinguish two distinct modes of treatment: (1) the intricate texture and solidity of Netherland work; (2) the “familiar style,” in which the voices move together in equal steps, without canonic imitations. In the larger compositions we have a blending and alternation of these two, and the scholastic Netherland polyphony appears clarified, and moulded into more plastic outlines for the attainment of a more refined vehicle of expression.
The marked dissimilarity between the music of the mediaeval school and that of the present era is to a large extent explained by the differences between the key and harmonic systems upon which they are severally based. In the modern system the relationship of notes to the antithetic tone-centres of tonic and dominant, and the freedom of modulation from one key to another by means of the introduction of notes that do not exist in the first, give opportunities for effect which are not obtainable in music based upon the Gregorian modes, for the reason that these modes do not differ in the notes employed (since they include only the notes represented by the white keys of the pianoforte plus the B flat), but only in the relation of the intervals to the note which forms the keynote or “final.” The concoction of music based on the latter system is, strictly speaking, [159] melodic, not harmonic in the modern technical sense, and the resulting combinations of sounds are not conceived as chords built upon a certain tone taken as a fundamental, but rather as consequences of the conjunction of horizontally moving series of single notes. The harmony, therefore, seems both vague and monotonous to the ear trained in accordance with the laws of modern music, because, in addition to being almost purely diatonic, it lacks the stable pivotal points which give symmetry, contrast, and cohesion to modern tone structure. The old system admits chromatic changes but sparingly, chiefly in order to provide a leading tone in a cadence, or to obviate an objectionable melodic interval. Consequently there is little of what we should call variety or positive color quality. There is no pronounced leading melody to which the other parts are subordinate. The theme consists of a few chant-like notes, speedily taken up by one voice after another under control of the principle of “imitation.” For the same reasons the succession of phrases, periods, and sections which constitutes the architectonic principle of form in modern music does not appear. Even in the “familiar style,” in which the parts move together like blocks of chords of equal length, the implied principle is melodic in all the voices, not tune above and accompaniment beneath; and the progression is not guided by the necessity of revolving about mutually supporting tone-centres.
In this “familiar style” which we may trace backward to the age of the Netherlanders, we find a remote anticipation of the modern harmonic feeling. A vague sense of complementary colors of tonic and dominant, [160] caught perhaps from the popular music with which the most scientific composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries always kept closely in touch, is sometimes evident for brief moments, but never carried out systematically to the end. This plain style is employed in hymns and short sentences, in connection with texts of an especially mournful or pleading expression, as, for instance, the Improperia and the Miserere, or, for contrast’s sake, in the more tranquil passages of masses or motets. It is a style that is peculiarly tender and gracious, and may be found reflected in the sweetest of modern Latin and English hymn-tunes. In the absence of chromatic changes it is the most serene form of music in existence, and is suggestive of the confidence and repose of spirit which is the most refined essence of the devotional mood.
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Example of the Simple Style (stile famigliare). Palestrina.
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