Seventeenth Century
The composer carried his melodies, however, on a very simple bass. If the opera had “symphonies,” that is to say instrumental interludes, and ballet-music, the composer would often indicate in his score “at this place the instruments can play”; and the musicians selected what they pleased. As time wore on, if the composer indicated a place for one or two violins to play, he would give them a little theme; and the players worked it up and elaborated it to suit their fancy and according to their skill. Very often, indeed, they added a brilliant musical divertissement. The scores of the earliest Italian operas have very little accompaniment save two or three violins above a bass played on the theorbo, or clavecin.
At the beginning of the Seventeenth Century a change took place in music. A great many of the old kinds of wind instruments and the grave old viols began to disappear. They were too old-fashioned for the New Art of the time. The famous opera of Orfeo by Monteverde (1607) is, perhaps, the last of the great operas of that period that contained all that was considered in those days the rich voices of the Orchestra. Orfeo is a landmark in musical history for many reasons. We shall presently see that it is also the starting-point of our modern Orchestra.
And who was this Monteverde to whom we look back through three hundred years of musical history? One of the most interesting facts about him is that he was born in Cremona, that famous “violin town,”[35] where music was literally in the air, although the Amatis and Stradivaris were not yet working.
Claudio Monteverde was born in 1567. He was a contemporary of Gasparo di Salò and Maggini.[36] At an early age he was an expert violist and was taken into the service of the Duke of Mantua. The Duke’s Court was the centre of every luxury and elegance in Lombardy and music had long been one of the arts beloved there.[37] The Mantuan collection of instruments was famous; and the Duke, like all other noble princes of the time, had his own band of private musicians. At their head for his Maestro di Capella, he had a very learned musician named Marc Antonio Ingegneri; and young Monteverde was put under him at once to finish and perfect his musical education.
Ingegneri, however, was unusually fond of counterpoint and of writing fugues and Monteverde cared very little about polyphonic music. And we can imagine, therefore, that when at the age of sixteen he burst forth with a beautiful Book of Madrigals—madrigals were all the rage in those days—his artistic nature sought relief from studies that he thought horribly dry and tiresome, but which undoubtedly did him a lot of good. This set of madrigals was so well received that he followed it with four more books of this lovely, lyrical form. Then in 1603 Ingegneri died and Monteverde was chosen to succeed him. He had been superintending the music at the Court of Mantua for four years and providing brilliant entertainments and concerts of all kinds when the Duke’s son, Francesco di Gonzaga, married Margharita, Infanta of Savoy. It was a brilliant alliance; and the Duke of Mantua, wishing to celebrate it in royal style, charged Monteverde to write the most splendid opera possible and to stage it in the most magnificent manner. So Monteverde composed Orfeo. This was one of the most popular of all subjects. It seems as if every Italian composer had to write the search of Orpheus for his beloved Eurydice. Ever since Dante had drawn his fantastic scenes of the Inferno, Italian audiences had thrilled to stage pictures of the lower regions for three hundred years! But it was strange that Monteverde should have picked out this subject; for while he was writing his opera his own lovely wife died and he was in bitter grief for her. So, perhaps, one reason that Monteverde’s Orfeo is so vital a work lies in the fact that the composer was singing of his own despair.
We often see in histories of music that Monteverde astonished the musical world with a novel Orchestra in Orfeo and that he introduced a great many new instruments into his score.
Nothing of the kind! What Monteverde called for in his Orchestra of Orfeo was exactly what the Court of Mantua had been accustomed to see and to hear. There was not a single new instrument of any kind whatsoever!
Now this is what he had: an Orchestra of forty instruments. As instruments of the piano class he had two clavicembali, two organi di legno (little organs with flute tones) and a regale (little organ). As instruments of sustaining bass—bass continuo—he had two double-bass viols, three violas da gamba and two chitaroni (deep lutes). As instruments for string ensemble he had two little violins à la française, or pochettes, ten violas da braccio (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), and ordinary violins (such as Gasparo di Salò and Maggini were making). As wind instruments he had a clarino (shrill trumpet) (see page [110]); three trompettes with sordini; four trumpets and two cornets à bouquin; flutes, both shrill and deep; and two oboes. He also had an arpa doppia (double harp).
First of all, as was usual in those days, the trumpets gave a fanfare, or “flourish,” to announce the beginning of the drama. Then came the introduction. Though called a “Toccata,” it was very nearly a real overture. It had to be repeated three times before the rising of the curtain. The organ, clavecin and chitaroni seem always to have accompanied the singers; the ritournellas, which marked the entrance of the singers, were usually played by two solo instruments—the little tiny “French violins,” or the little flutes, on a continued bass from some of the bass instruments; and in the “symphonies” two groups of instruments were used—first, a group of violins in five parts, viole di brazzo (ten in number) supported by the bass of double-bass viols, clavecins, or chitaroni. Then a group of seven instruments (five trombones and two cornets). The “symphonies” were very short—just an air played through once; but they are very sweetly harmonized and resemble dance-tunes.