MELOZZO DA FORLI. ANGEL WITH LUTE (ROME)
Perhaps the best proof of the enduring value of Palestrina's work is to be found in the fact that some of his compositions are still to be heard in the Sistine Chapel, and that even in our own time [Footnote 14] a definite movement to restore his music to its proper high place in the service of the Church has been initiated. Whenever, since his death, music has been really on a high plane, Palestrina has been thoroughly appreciated. Whenever musical taste has been debased and men have gone seeking after novelty and bizarre effects and over-decoration, Palestrina has been neglected. For music, he is what Dante is to literature and art, the touchstone by which it is easiest to estimate properly the value of a generation's critical faculty and spirit of appreciation. Henderson, in his "How Music Developed," already quoted from, has summed up Palestrina's accomplishment in a few words:
[Footnote 14: The decree of Pope Pius X, requiring the restoration of the Gregorian Chant to the place of honor in the Liturgic Services and making Palestrina's music the standard to which choir music should properly conform, seemed to many music-lovers distinctly reactionary and perhaps old-fogyish. As a matter of fact, it was a well-judged restoration of such criteria in church music as would preclude the possibility of modern unsuitable developments of music finding their way further into church services. It was open to the same objections on the part of those who knew no better as the decree of Pope Leo XIII that St. Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy should be the standard in Catholic schools of Philosophy and Theology. The two decrees will be set beside each other in history as examples of the ability of great Popes so to direct church policy as to preserve the faithful from human degeneracies of taste and thought. Palestrina's music is as firm a standard of church music as Aquinas' thought is a safe criterion in philosophy.]
"Before leaving the subject of Palestrina, let me endeavor to make clear to the reader wherein his style is so fine. Composers before him had begun to aim at the simplification of church music. They sought to accomplish their purpose by breaking the shackles of canonic law. The canon had demanded the most exact imitation in the different voice parts. The new style allowed the greatest freedom. The result was that free polyphony took the place of rigid canon. [{142}] Consequently composers were able to devote more attention to the development of fluent, beautiful and expressive melody. The merit of Palestrina's work was that it carried this style to perfection. His compositions became the models for succeeding composers, and indeed they remain to this day unequalled as examples of pure church music."
Palestrina's career furnishes another striking example of the opportunities for genius to express itself provided by this period. According to a contemporary manuscript authority, so that the story is probably much more authentic than such stories usually are, young Pierluigi of Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, while peddling in the streets of Rome the products of his father's farm, used to sing songs, one of which was heard by the choirmaster of Santa Maria Maggiore. He found that the boy had not only a beautiful voice, but a taste for music, so he gave him the opportunity for a musical education. Palestrina lived to be over eighty years of age, with manifold opportunities afforded him for the display of his genius. The latter half of his life was spent as one of the most honored men of his generation. His most brilliant period began when he was nearly seventy and when he was apparently thinking his career at an end. His complete works in thirty-three volumes have just been published, the last volume of the completed edition being presented to Pius X in 1908, who was most interested in this great modern monument to the Catholic genius of music. The great composer is worthy to stand beside St. Teresa, St. Philip Neri and St. Ignatius Loyola as one of the protagonists of the counter reformation. He did for music and the Church what others did for education, mysticism and social reform.
One of the most interesting chapters in the history of music began just about the end of Columbus' Century. St. Philip Neri, of whom we have spoken in the chapter on Social Work and Workers of the period, was himself devoted to music and recognized how much it might mean for occupation of mind with higher things that would be a source at once of pleasure and social relaxation. He appreciated also how much of value music might lend to the proper expression of religious feeling, and even how much it might add to genuine religious [{143}] sentiment. The Miracle Plays of the latter half of the fifteenth century had always been accompanied by certain songs and glees with words relating to the sacred subjects often set to popular music. St. Philip recognized that these performances might be raised to a higher plane by introducing more music and using the best possible music for their illustration. Accordingly, in the course of services held in his oratory, he introduced historical scenes and sacred allegories with a musical setting, calling as a rule on his musical friends in Rome, and especially Animuccia, to supply him with compositions. Hence the term oratorio, the Italian word for oratory, for this class of music. It was not to reach its highest form of expression, the dramatic, until the end of the sixteenth century, but it is an invention of Columbus' period.
An extremely important invention of this time was the introduction of the chord of the dominant seventh. The discovery is usually said to have been due to Claudio Monteverde of the seventeenth century, but the earliest extant musical works, in which examples of the phenomenal chord of the dominant seventh with the full freedom of present-day practice are found, are those of Jean Mouton of Holling in Lorraine, who died about 1522. For nearly a century after this time this great discovery, like so many others in every department of science, struggled for a place. It was finally acknowledged. This discovery brought music into close relation with science, and demonstrated its foundation in the natural laws of acoustics. In his article on the History of Music in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica," Sir George A. MacFarren, Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, declared "that the discovery of the dominant seventh lays open the principle for which pagan philosophers and Christians had been vainly groping through centuries while a veil of mathematical calculation hung between them and the truth." The curious feature of the history of its introduction lies in the fact that it failed of appreciation from orthodox musicians for a considerable period and actually met with organized opposition.
Even this brief sketch will suffice to show how greatly music developed during Columbus' Century. There is probably no corresponding period in the world's history that can show as [{144}] much real advance that is lasting progress. Perhaps in no department of aesthetics does supposed progress come and go from generation to generation more easily than in music. What certain generations of musical critics have very highly praised is often judged by their successors quite worthless. The musical achievements of this period have, on the contrary, been beacon lights for succeeding generations. Whenever the principles that came to be accepted at this time have been much departed from, musical taste has proved false and musical accomplishment trivial. It is this sort of achievement, absolutely enduring in its quality, which above all counts for humanity, and it is nowhere so well illustrated in every department of intellectual effort as during this century of Columbus.