Rise of Schools
As music outgrows childhood, Schools of Music are started. But these are not like the schools to which we go every day, but are rather music groups or centers. Suppose you were a composer and lived in New York and knew a dozen or so musicians who were writing the same kind of music as you; the music, if good enough to be known and played, would be called the New York School, or it might be called the 1925 School! Or, if you were important enough to be imitated by your followers, it would be called the Smith School, if that happened to be your name, just as those who imitate Wagner are said to be the Wagner School, and so it goes. Not a school to go to, but a school to belong to!
“What makes these schools start?” we can hear you ask. Many things. Sometimes people are oppressed by their rulers and in trying to forget their troubles, they naturally want to express themselves in the art they know, and in this way groups get together and a school grows. Sometimes the Church is the cause of schools of music, literature, and art, and we shall see in this chapter how the Church influenced the schools of music of this time and made it one of the most important periods in this story. Sometimes, too, the climate has caused the development of different styles as we told you in the chapter on folk music. It often happens too, that a great man or a great school in one country affects other countries.
Franco-Flemish School
The first real group of composers to be called a “School” lived in the part of Europe that today covers the north of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The composers who were born from 1400 to about 1530, in the so-called Low Countries belonged to this school. Some writers claim that there were three schools, and that the Franco-Flemish (Gallo-Belgic) is a bridge between the Paris school of the 14th century and the Netherlands school of the 16th. But it would be impossible to say when one school began and another ended, as they all wrote the same kind of music. As the older composers were the teachers of the younger, the interesting thing to know is that many of these masters of the north of Europe went to Italy, Spain, France, and to Germany, and spread the knowledge of the “new art” of counterpoint and vocal poly-melody (many melodies) and filled positions of importance in the churches. They were considered such splendid teachers, that many of the young students of other nationalities went to Holland and Belgium to be taught.
Zeelandia, a Hollander, an important master in this new school, tried to get rid of the awkward intervals, fourths and fifths, which were used in organum (see Chapter VII), and was the first composer to give the subject or cantus firmus to the soprano voice instead of the tenor. Doesn’t it seem strange that it took so long to let the soprano have the main tune?
But the most important composer of his period (1400–1474) was Guillaume Dufay, from Flanders, who was a chorister in the Papal choir (choir of the Pope) in Rome. He made the rules and imitation for the canon (a grown up round) and he was the first composer to use the folk song L’homme armé (The Man in Armor) in a mass.
The next important name is Jan Okeghem (1430–1495), a Hollander, who improved the science of counterpoint and of fugue writing. We have already mentioned his canon for thirty-six voices (page [149]), and he wrote some puzzle canons, for use in secret guilds. No one could solve these without the key and they were much harder than the world’s best cross-word puzzles. He tried to make music express the beauty he felt, and not merely be mathematical problems in tone, as was much of the music of his day. He was the teacher of several famous musicians among whom were Hobrecht (who became the teacher of Erasmus, the learned Dutch religious reformer), Tinctoris, Josquin des Près, Loyset Compère, and Agricola who spent most of his life in Spain and Portugal. In fact, Okeghem taught so many, that the art of counterpoint was taken into all countries by his pupils, so he can be called the founder of all music schools from his own day to the present. He was chaplain at the French court and, during forty years there, served three Kings of France!
Tinctoris, a Belgian (1446–1511), founded the first school of music in Italy at Naples, and wrote a dictionary of musical terms.
But the “Prince” of musicians of the 15th century, was Josquin des Près, or de Près (1455–1525). He was a pupil of Okeghem, and although born in Flanders, spent much of his life away from his home; he was a member of the Papal choir in Rome and afterwards lived at the court of Louis XII in France. He also wrote a mass on the theme of L’homme armé, and many other masses, motets, and madrigals. Luther said of him,—“Josquin des Près is a master of the notes. They do as he wills. Other composers must do as the notes will. His compositions are joyous, gentle and lovely; not forced, not constrained, nor slavishly tied to the rules, but free as the song of a finch.”