History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players

by Oskar Bie

About 1500 we meet with the first Old English clavier-pieces, as well as Aston’s Hornpipe, a variation on a popular song. A manuscript collection in the British Museum, known as the “Mulliner Book” (Mulliner was a master in St Paul’s School), offers us the earliest specimens of clavier-works of this kind, by various masters, from the middle of the sixteenth century. Many of the pieces by Thomas Tallis, the old master of this school, are exceedingly rhythmical. He was organist under four reigns—those of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary and Elizabeth. There is a canon in two parts, in lines which can be grasped at a glance, and which makes full use of sequential repetitions—a sure sign, from the early times of church music, of the advancing rhythmical consciousness. Gradually there is added to the canon a running bass, which at first sounds twice, and finally rolls forth quite unhindered, rendering the whole picture easily grasped by the eye. The unaided eye indeed, in these old pieces, is a good judge. Without being preoccupied by the archaism, which perhaps wearies the ear, it detects the intellectual art of the composer, as it were, at a certain distance. It observes the great and small curves of the voice-contours, sees the succession of the canonic themes, notices the parentheses in which long passages are confined, and the delight of the composer in the clearness of the pattern. It is indeed as a finely-sewn, carefully-fashioned pattern that we see an exercise of this kind, simply worked out, but richly adorned with broken chords—such, for example, as the figuration of the “Felix namque” which Tallis has as the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book. The nuances of the accompaniment rejoice in their ornamental existence.

William Bird, the pupil of Tallis, whose life reaches from 1538 or 1546 to 1623, would be reckoned as the father of modern piano-music, if only this English school had exerted some influence on art, and did not stand so isolated in musical history. We shall call him the first of the clavier-masters. Both organist and singer in the Royal Chapel, where both services were alternately demanded from all the adult musicians, he had a considerable interest in the monopoly of music printing and of the music paper duty which was granted by Elizabeth first to Tallis and then to him. A happy man he was not; he appears to have suffered more than most in the religious persecutions of the time. We have hardly a word in the authorities as to the hours of work of these old musicians; but indirectly we learn from the Act against Rogues and Vagabonds that private instruction was a not unusual parergon of the musicians.

Page from “Parthenia,” the first English engraved Clavier Music, 1611.

Prosniz, the collector of all clavier-literature, in his “Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur”—a work not to be implicitly relied on—calls Bird’s music coarse and tasteless. Weitzmann agrees, saying that it is composed with intelligence and art, but heavy and without soul. But this is the fate of all transition styles. If we observe, from the standpoint of modern music, the traces of the old style, as for instance the change of time and the “flabbiness” of the harmony in the Fantasia, which comes eighth in the Virginal Book, or the cross-passages in the interesting Piece 60, they are indeed coarse and tasteless. But we must endeavour in such things to put aside the modern point of view. Mediæval music is not a preliminary step to the modern, but something quite different. It is pictorial, as the other is plastic. If we would hear their “molluscous” harmonies, and their indistinctness of rhythmical arrangement, we must lay aside the rhythmical canons of modern music; we must accept the molluscous nature and want of distinctness as something purposed, and we must follow without preoccupation this web of voices, enjoying it note by note. The piece is so delicate, so quite in colour, that the last note is a shock to us. In fact, the conclusion of these pieces, with its formal clash, under which the harmonies and voices assemble themselves in a stiff group, is a contradiction to their inmost being, a desertion of the pictorial principle and—in a word—the germ of the coming style. In a greater degree than we can bring ourselves to believe, the ultra-modern expression-music is allied to this conception of the art of tone.

It is true that we justly judge Bird chiefly from the modern point of view, since we are investigating the progress of history, and therefore work for the new, the developing, rather than for the old. But it is precisely from this point of view that he presents such surprises that we are not at first able to form a decisive opinion about him. I find a quiet pleasure in observing his harmonies, which are felt rather than calculated, as, for example, the sudden D major chord in the famous song, “John, come kiss me now” (Virginal Book, No. 10), and in studying the delicate parallel legato passages, the gradual change of melody, the growing complexity, the unusual variations, the alternation of hands, the rhythmical developments. In the ninth variation there run together plain quavers, dotted quavers, and the melody above all.

New suggestions, aroused by the clavier, are constantly being introduced. Prelude xxiv. has a stiff structure. The Passamezzo-Pavan and Galliard (Nos. 56 and 57) present broken chords as a genuine clavier-motif, and the most delicate canonic repetitions by means of a thematic modulation from the key of F to that of G. Very neat is the descending D C A in the seventh galliard-variation alternating with E D B. Bird is particularly fond of writing a passage based on a chord of F, and immediately followed by another based on G. This is akin to the practice of the drone in bagpipes, and has analogy with the ancient “Pes,” or “pedal” two-part vocal accompaniment in “Sumer is icumen in.” The similarity to the bagpipe drone is rather striking in “The woods so wild” (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, No. 67) or in “The Bells,” where the lower bell voices repeat themselves in a way that reminds us of the pedal bass of Chopin’s Berceuse.

The rich technique of “Fortune” (No. 65), the wealth of figures in “O Mistress Mine” (No. 66), the harmonies of the Passamezzo dances (Nos. 56 and 57), cling to the memory. But chief are his two most modern clavier-pieces—the variations on “The Carman’s Whistle” (No. 58) and “Sellinger’s Round” (No. 64, where the piece is complete, not abridged as in Pauer’s edition). These have often been issued in popular form, and in Pauer’s collection are provided with modern execution marks.

“The Carman’s Whistle” is a perfected popular melody, one of those tunes which will linger for days in our ears. At the beginning of the third and fourth bars Bird sets the first and second bars in canon, in the simplest and most straightforward style. Next come harmonies worthy of a Rameau, with the most delicate passing notes. In the variations certain figures are inserted which are easily worked into the canonic form, now legato with the charm of the introduction of related notes, now diatonic scales most gracefully introduced, now staccato passages which draw the melody along with them like the singing of a bird. Finally fuller chords appear, gently changing the direction of the theme. From first to last there is not a turn foreign to the modern ear.