Absolute Music
It is very probable that had Buxtehude not lived, Bach would have written his organ works in a different style, so deeply did the younger composer study the older man’s compositions. Buxtehude was organist in Lüneburg and there he started a series of concerts which became so popular that they were continued into the 19th century. Bach walked fifty miles to hear Buxtehude play, but was too shy to make himself known to the great man; it was probably to hear one of the concerts which had the poetic name of Abendmusik (Evening Music), that he went. Buxtehude was one of the first to try to make instrumental music stand as music (a language in itself), without a dance form, a plain-song or chorale or poetic idea behind it, to act as a Biblical text does in a sermon. This music for music’s sake is called “Absolute Music” and Bach was one of its strongest disciples. Absolute music, which was so beautifully handled by Buxtehude, became the basis of the Classic School of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The organ chorale prelude which was so important a musical form during this period had a very interesting history. Today the organist in our churches plays the hymn through before it is sung; he plays it quite simply just as it is written in the Hymnal, but in the day of these old German organists, the artistic feeling was deeper, and the organist was allowed to weave the chorale or hymn into a beautiful and complete composition. But in his love of composing and of showing how many different ways he could decorate the chorale, he often exceeded his time limit, and the chorale prelude was left behind. In its place the organ fantasia and the sonata appeared.
Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), of Nüremberg, was a pupil of another celebrated director and organist, Johann Kaspar Kerl (1628–1693), who was said to be one of the best teachers of composition of his day. There were also three German organists born late in the 16th century, all of whom were followers of the famous Dutch composer Jan Sweelinck. They were known as the “three S’s”—Heinrich Schütz was the greatest of them. He wrote organ music, but also worked out a scheme for combining the chorale with the ideas of Peri and Caccini for use with Bible texts in the Lutheran Church. This was called Passion music and was originally written for Good Friday. On this foundation Bach built some of his grandest oratorios. The Italian influence came into Schütz’s work while he was a pupil of Gabrieli in Venice. Johann Heinrich Schein was a Cantor at St. Thomas’ School before Bach, and wrote many chorales. The third of the “three S’s” was Samuel Scheidt who was called the German Frescobaldi. “What plain-song was to Palestrina and his school, the chorale was to Schütz and his followers.” (Quoted from Charles Villiers Stanford.)
The Inventor of the Sonata and of “Program Music”
Johann Kuhnau (1660–1722), wrote many compositions which today we find very amusing! For his day, however, he must have been looked upon as ultra-modern! The composition which first brought him into public notice was a motet, written for the election of the town council. Could you imagine anyone writing a serious composition for an election today, or anyone willing to listen to it at the polls? He was organist of St. Thomas’, in Leipsic, a graduated lawyer, master of several languages, writer of satirical poems, musical director of the University, and finally Cantor in two Churches. He was admired and honored after his death as one of the greatest musicians of his day and one of the most learned men. He invented a style of music for the clavier which he called Sonata. It was in several movements and was not based on dance tunes as were the suites. While it was not in the form that later was known as sonata-form, it was a sign-post pointing the way. Seven of these sonatas he named Fresh Clavier Fruit! And it was fresh in style as well as in name.
He was the first German composer to write “program music,” that is the kind which tries to tell a story, or to imitate the actual sounds of natural objects, such as the crash of thunder, the motion of a windmill, the rocking of a cradle, and the cackling of a hen. You can see how long a list one might make and how easy it would be for anyone with a vivid imagination to make up all sorts of pictures in music. This is just the opposite from music for music’s sake which we described to you as “Absolute Music,” and most of it which follows this period when music comes of age can be put into one of the two camps,—the Program Music Camp, or the Absolute Music Camp.
Kuhnau’s program music took a queer turn! He was living at a time when religion was uppermost in every one’s thoughts, when the Bible stories were bedtime stories and when the leading compositions were the sonatas written for organ. So in 1700 he published six Biblical-history Sonatas. In David and Goliath, he attempts to put into music the rude defiance and bravado of the giant; the fear of the Hebrews; David’s courage and fearlessness, and the battle and fall of the giant; the flight of the Philistines (can’t you imagine how the composer would represent this with all kinds of runs and scales?); the joy of the Hebrews; the celebration of the women who probably came out to meet David “with timbrels and harps”; and general jubilation.
At the end of the 17th century, Germany was strongly under the influence of France and Italy, especially in opera. In Dresden, Berlin, Munich and Vienna, one heard only opera in Italian sung by Italian singers, but Hamburg tried to develop a national music by giving German opera sung by German singers, and attracted many serious musicians. Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) a singer, conductor and composer, is remembered chiefly for a book called A German Roll of Honor, in which he gathered up all the information he could find about German composers up to his time. He asked all the living composers to write accounts of themselves for his book, so we take it for granted that it must be truthful!
Music had changed more in the 17th century than in any that had gone before. If we tried to sum it all up in one word we should say that it was a century of transition or the passage from one condition to another. It began with the old Ecclesiastical, or Church, modes, and ended with the major and minor scales which we still use today; the reign of counterpoint was over, and now had to share the throne on equal terms with harmony.