No doubt you have heard Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, Deep River, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Go Down Moses, Weeping Mary and many others.
Such a wealth of feeling and beauty could not fail to leave its mark in the land where it was born.
Just how it will bear fruit we cannot say, but it is making its appeal more and more, not only to the American, but to the foreign composers as well, and they believe that this music,—the syncopated rhythm that the American is at last developing in his own way—in spite of its humble origin, is the one new thing that America has given to the growth of music, and they envy us that wealth of rhythm that seems to be born in the American.
Music Becomes a Youth
CHAPTER XI
Makers of Motets and Madrigals—Rise of Schools 15th and 16th Centuries
Don’t you think it strange that we have not told you of any pieces written for the lute alone, or for the viol or any other instrument? The reason is that until 1700, there was little music for a solo instrument, but only for voices alone or for voice and instrument together.
The main sport of composers of this time, was to take a popular tune and write music around it. The popular tune was called the cantus firmus (subject or fixed song) and the composer who did the fanciest things with the tune was hailed as great. So instead of wanting to make up tunes as we do, they were anxious to see what they could do with old tunes. Times change, don’t they?
“Like children who break their toys to see how they work, they learned to break up the musical phrases into little bits which they repeated, which they moved from one part to another; in this way the dividing of themes (tunes) came, which led them to the use of imitation and of canon; these early and innocent gardeners finally learned how to make the trees of the enchanted garden of music bear fruit. Still timid, they kept the custom for three centuries of making all their pieces from parts of plain-song or of a popular song, instead of inventing subjects for themselves; thus, what is prized today above every thing else—the making of original melodies—was secondary in the minds of the musicians, so busy were they trying to organize their art, so earnestly were they trying to learn the use of their tools.” (Translated from the French from Palestrina, by Michel Brenet).
By spending their time this way, they added much to the science of music. If it was not pretty, at least it was full of interesting discoveries which composers used later, as we shall see, in fugues, canons, suites and many other forms.
The most popular forms of composition during these two centuries (the 15th and the 16th) were the motet for Church and the madrigal for outside the Church.