The intricate style commonly prevails in larger works—masses, motets, and the longer hymns. Only after careful analysis can we appreciate the wonderful art that has entered into its fabrication. Upon examining works of this class we find the score consisting of four or more parts, but not usually exceeding eight. The most obvious feature of the design is that each part appears quite independent of the others; the melody does not lie in one voice while the others act as accompaniment, but each part is as much a melody as any other; each voice pursues its easy, unfettered way, now one acting as leader, now another, the voices often crossing each other, each melody apparently quite regardless of its mates in respect to the time of beginning, culminating, and ending, the voices apparently not subject to any common law of accent or rhythm, but each busy with its own individual progress. The onward movement [163] is like a series of waves; no sooner is the mind fixed upon one than it is lost in the ordered confusion of those that follow. The music seems also to have no definite rhythm. Each single voice part is indeed rhythmical, as a sentence of prose may be rhythmical, but since the melodic constituents come in upon different parts of the measure, one culminating at one moment, another at another, the parts often crossing each other, so that while the mind may be fixed upon one melody which seems to lead, another, which has been coming up from below, strikes in across the field,—the result of all this is that the attention is constantly being dislodged from one tonal centre and shifted to another, and the whole scheme of design seems without form, a fluctuating mass swayed hither and thither without coherent plan. The music does not lack dynamic change or alteration of speed, but these contrasts are often so subtly graded that it is not apparent where they begin or end. The whole effect is measured, subdued, solemn. We are never startled, there is nothing that sets the nerves throbbing. But as we hear this music again and again, analyzing its properties, shutting out all preconceptions, little by little there steal over us sensations of surprise, then of wonder, then of admiration. These delicately shaded harmonies develop unimagined beauties. Without sharp contrast of dissonance and consonance they are yet full of shifting lights and hues, like a meadow under breeze and sunshine, which to the careless eye seems only a mass of unvarying green, but which reveals to the keener sense infinite modulation of the scale of color. No melody lies conspicuous upon the surface, but the whole harmonic substance is full of undulating melody, each voice pursuing its confident, unfettered motion amid the ingenious complexity of which it is a constituent part.
[164]
Fragment of Kyrie, from the Mass of Pope Marcellus. Novello’s Edition. Palestrina.
[165]
In considering further the technical methods and the final aims of this marvellous style, we find in its culminating period that the crown of the mediaeval contrapuntal art upon its aesthetic side lies in the attainment of beauty of tone effect in and of itself—the gratification of the sensuous ear, rich and subtly modulated sound quality, not in the individual boys’ and men’s [166] voices, but in the distribution and combination of voices of different timbre. That mastery toward which orchestral composers have been striving during the past one hundred years—the union and contrast of stringed and wind instruments for the production of impressions upon the ear analogous to those produced upon the eye by the color of a Rembrandt or a Titian—this was also sought, and, so far as the slender means went, achieved in a wonderful degree by the tone-masters of the Roman [167] and Venetian schools. The chorus, we must remind ourselves, was not dependent upon an accompaniment, and sensuous beauty of tone must, therefore, result not merely from the individual quality of the voices, but still more from the manner in which the notes were grouped. The distribution of the components of a chord in order to produce the greatest sonority; the alternation of the lower voices with the higher; the elimination of voices as a section approached its close, until the harmony was reduced at the last syllable to two higher voices in pianissimo, as though the strain were vanishing into the upper air; the resolution of tangled polyphony into a sun-burst of open golden chords; the subtle intrusion of veiled dissonances into the fluent gleaming concord; the skilful blending of the vocal registers for the production of exquisite contrasts of light and shade,—these and many other devices were employed for the attainment of delicate and lustrous sound tints, with results to which modern chorus writing affords no parallel. The culmination of this tendency could not be reached until the art of interweaving voices according to regular but flexible patterns had been fully mastered, and composers had learned to lead their parts with the confidence with which the engraver traces his lines to shape them into designs of beauty.
The singular perfection of the work of Palestrina has served to direct the slight attention which the world now gives to the music of the sixteenth century almost exclusively to him; yet he was but one master among a goodly number whose productions are but slightly inferior to his,—primus inter pares. Orlandus Lassus in [168] Munich, Willaert, and the two Gabrielis, Andrea and Giovanni, and Croce in Venice, the Naninis, Vittoria, and the Anerios in Rome, Tallis in England, are names which do not pale when placed beside that of the “prince of music.” Venice, particularly, was a worthy rival of Rome in the sphere of church song. The catalogue of her musicians who flourished in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries contains the names of men who were truly sovereigns in their art, not inferior to Palestrina in science, compensating for a comparative lack of the super-refined delicacy and tremulous pathos which distinguished the Romans by a larger emphasis upon contrast, color variety, and characteristic expression. It was as though the splendors of Venetian painting had been emulated, although in reduced shades, by these masters of Venetian music. In admitting into their works contrivances for effect which anticipated a coming revolution in musical art, the Venetians, rather than the Romans, form the connecting link between mediaeval and modern religious music. In the Venetian school we find triumphing over the ineffable calmness and remote impersonality of the Romans a more individual quality—a strain almost of passion and stress, and a far greater sonority and pomp. Chromatic changes, at first irregular and unsystematized, come gradually into use as a means of attaining greater intensity; dissonances become more pronounced, foreshadowing the change of key system with all its consequences. The contrapuntal leading of parts, in whose cunning labyrinths the expression of feeling through melody strove to lose itself, tended [169] under the different ideal cherished by the Venetians to condense into more massive harmonies, with bolder outlines and melody rising into more obvious relief. As far back as the early decades of the sixteenth century Venice had begun to loosen the bands of mediaeval choral law, and by a freer use of dissonances to prepare the ear for a new order of perceptions. The unprecedented importance given to the organ by the Venetian church composers, and the appearance of the beginnings of an independent organ style, also contributed strongly to the furtherance of the new tendencies. In this broader outlook, more individual stamp, and more self-conscious aim toward brilliancy the music of Venice simply shared those impulses that manifested themselves in the gorgeous canvases of her great painters and in the regal splendors of her public spectacles.
The national love of pomp and ceremonial display was shown in the church festivals hardly less than in the secular pageants, and all that could embellish the externals of the church solemnities was eagerly adopted. All the most distinguished members of the line of Venetian church composers were connected with the church of St. Mark as choir directors and organists, and they imparted to their compositions a breadth of tone and warmth of color fully in keeping with the historic and artistic glory of this superb temple. The founder of the sixteenth-century Venetian school was Adrian Willaert, a Netherlander, who was chapel-master at St. Mark’s from 1527 to 1563. It was he who first employed the method which became a notable feature of the music of St. Mark’s, of dividing the choir and thus obtaining [170] novel effects of contrast and climax by means of antiphonal chorus singing. The hint was given to Willaert by the construction of the church, which contains two music galleries opposite each other, each with its organ. The freer use of dissonances, so characteristic of the adventurous spirit of the Venetian composers, first became a significant trait in the writings of Willaert.
The tendency to lay less stress upon interior intricacy and more upon harmonic strength, striking tone color, and cumulative grandeur is even more apparent in Willaert’s successors at St. Mark’s,—Cyprian de Rore, Claudio Merulo, and the two Gabrielis. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli carried the splendid tonal art of Venice to unprecedented heights, adding a third choir to the two of Willaert, and employing alternate choir singing, combinations of parts, and massing of voices in still more ingenious profusion. Winterfeld, the chief historian of this epoch, thus describes the performance of a twelve-part psalm by G. Gabrieli: “Three choruses, one of deep voices, one of higher, and the third consisting of the four usual parts, are separated from each other. Like a tender, fervent prayer begins the song in the deeper chorus, ‘God be merciful unto us and bless us.’ Then the middle choir continues with similar expression, ‘And cause his face to shine upon us.’ The higher chorus strikes in with the words, ‘That thy way may be known upon earth.’ In full voice the strain now resounds from all three choirs, ‘Thy saving health among all nations.’ The words, ‘Thy saving health,’ are given with especial earnestness, and it is to be noticed that this utterance comes not from all the choirs together, [171] nor from a single one entire, but from selected voices from each choir in full-toned interwoven parts. We shall not attempt to describe how energetic and fiery the song, ‘Let all the people praise thee, O God,’ pours forth from the choirs in alternation; how tastefully the master proclaims the words, ‘Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,’ through change of measure and limitation to selected voices from all the choirs; how the words, ‘And God shall bless us,’ are uttered in solemn masses of choral song. Language could give but a feeble suggestion of the magnificence of this music.”[66]