In our range of musical mountains, we see just ahead of us one of the mightiest giants of them all, Johann Sebastian Bach, dwarfing everything around it and we must resist the temptation of skipping all the smaller mountains, for there is no musical aeroplane by means of which we can fly across and land safely on Mt. Bach. This grand old mountain, Bach, is such a tremendous landmark in the growth of music, that when we reach it we realize that everything that we have passed has been a journey of preparation. Bach is not the only peak, for there are Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and others who stand out against the musical horizon.
Before coming to Bach, however, we must bridge over the time when music was still in its youth in the 16th and 17th centuries, to when it became full grown and mature in the 18th. Music has now come of age: it has perfected scales, notation, and developed form and instruments; it is ready to go into the world and take its place with painting, sculpture, poetry, drama and architecture as a full grown art!
Nothing through which music has passed has been lost, but it has been built like the great Egyptian Pyramids by adding one huge block on top of another. It has gone from the noise of primitive man with his drum, to the attempts of the savage to sing and to make crude instruments, to the music of the ancient nations in their religious ceremonies and entertainments, to the Arab singer who handed his art to the western world through the troubadours, to the people of all times and nations who danced and sang for the joy of it. It passed from the Greek drama and music schools where definite scales and modes were formed, to the early Christian Church which kept it alive during the Dark Ages and gradually invented ways to write it, and later to the “Golden Age” of the Catholic Church. It had seen the rise of schools and the perfection of the polyphonic system give way to the recitative and the aria, which in turn brought about opera, oratorio, and instrumental music. It has seen counterpoint give way to harmony, and yet the growth of music is not complete and never will be, but constantly new forms will blossom out of the old.
The 15th and 16th centuries were vocal. The 17th was instrumental and opened the way for so-called modern music, that is, for Bach’s compositions and all that followed.
Birth of Chamber Music
Gabrieli in the 16th century in Venice, sometimes wrote madrigals for instruments instead of for voices, and he added instruments to accompany the motets and masses (page [157]); this led to composing works for groups of instruments instead of playing madrigals that had been composed for voices. The English often wrote on their compositions, “fit for voices and for viols.” After they once started playing the part songs on viols, the composers soon found out that they could write more interesting and more difficult things for instruments than they could for voices; this led to the writing of very florid music for instruments alone. This florid part-writing, not unlike the Gloss of the Arabs, and the improvisations of the soloists in the early Catholic Church, soon became so overloaded with trills, fancy turns and runs that it had to be reformed again.
In the 17th century, the lute, the popular instrument of the court and the home for so many years, even centuries, suddenly found its rival in the little keyboard instrument called the spinet and virginal in England, and the clavecin in France. In Italy and France, as in England, there were famous performers and composers for these instruments, and many volumes of charming music were written for it.
Dance Tunes Grow up Into Suites
One of the first requirements of art works of all kinds is contrast. The line and the curve are found in primitive art, light must have shadow, one wing of a building must have another to balance it, and a slow serious piece of music is usually followed by a gay one for contrast. The Arabs understood this law of contrast, for in their ancient songs we find the seed of a form that has been most important in the growth of music. They made little suites by putting two, three, four or more songs together; each song had its mode, and one would be slow and sad, and the next fast and gay. The principal music of the 17th century was the Suite, a group of pieces which had grown out of the old folk dances. (Chapter IX.) The 17th century composers, like the Arabs, feeling the need of contrast, strung several of these dances together to form the Suite. So Suites were written for clavecins and harpsichords, for violins alone and for organs, for groups of stringed instruments and other chamber music combinations. Some of these dances were in duple time, some in triple; some were slow and some were fast; some were stately and some gay. The different pieces forming a suite, had to be written in the same key. These suites were known by different names in different countries, such as partitas, exercises, lessons, sonate da camera, ordres. In England the name suite was given to this form, then the Germans adopted it, and later the great Bach wrote suites which he also called partitas. In Italy, the suite was called sonata da camera (chamber sonata) and sonata da chiesa (church sonata) and out of all this have grown the very important sonata, symphony and chamber music quartet, trio, quintet, etc.
Here are some of the dance forms used in the suite: