History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players

by Oskar Bie

The public art of the Middle Ages had divided its favours between church and hall; it was in the church that counterpoint found its development; it was in the hall that the old popular song, without making special advance, maintained itself. The popular song ranged itself over against counterpoint, for it was pure melody, as we understand melody to-day, and it was well arranged as to rhythm in four or eight-bar “strains.”[5] In two ways, however, counterpoint and popular song might meet: the first might absorb the second, or vice versa. It is well known what took place when counterpoint absorbed the popular song: throughout the later Middle Ages popular songs, even the vulgarest, are taken up in masses or motets as motives for figures; nay, more, when they alternate, while the Gregorian cantus holds its own alongside, church hymns are named after popular songs, and we stumble everywhere upon masses named after their underlying melody,[6] “L’homme armé,” “Malheur me bat,” “O Venus,” and the like. But, as might be expected, these are taken up utterly into the framework of the voice-mathematic; their peculiar aroma disappears; they are thrown into contrapuntal form. Far from betraying a worldly element, such as Ambrose conveyed under allegorical paintings of old landscape in religious pictures, they betray on the contrary a total absence of the secular sense. To them the content of the melody is so indifferent that they never once display it.

Young Scholar and his Wife.
Painting by Gonzales Coques (1614-1684), in the Royal Gallery at Cassel.

Secondly, the popular song on its own side stands apart from counterpoint. Since counterpoint is the recognised style of the time, popular song has no choice but to appropriate that means of expression. Hence arises the Madrigal, the most festive form of this appropriation, which sets popular themes to many parts, but with the utmost art. It exhausts all the requirements of better taste in secular music in the sixteenth century. Societies like the Arcadeltian[7] have resulted in an extraordinary growth of published material, and it is no mere accident that this process has continued in England, thanks to the exertions of a Madrigal Society, down to our own time. Yet the popular song was too opposed to the choral setting to feel itself at home in this form long and universally. It tended to unison or to the total absence of words; in the latter case it could still remain contrapuntal and became simply a tone-piece;[8] in the former the counterpoint existed, so to speak, simply at the pleasure of the melody, as it did in hundreds of old melodies throughout the world. These old popular songs, of remarkable origin in their plain melodious orderliness, became finally the precursors of modern music. While they marked the monodic principle, and gave to the expression the full value which it had in all early music, they accustomed the ears to the pleasure of the fully-outlined melody, and compelled the combination with this of an equally well-outlined harmony. Thus the way was prepared for the great discovery of the monodic opera, which arose in Florence about 1600.

But in that wonderful drama, which the emancipation of the secular or popular principle in the music of the sixteenth century presents, the instrument appears as the second agent, with its greater freedom as contrasted with the human voice. Choral counterpoint penetrates into the music of the future in the two ways of the one-part song and of the instrumental polyphony, which form a quite natural whole. In proportion as vocal music became more individual and more full of soul, the absolute instrumental music gained in meaning. But we must mark two impulses which necessarily condition each other. As the one-part song was, so to speak, a victory of the logic of expression over the metaphysic of many-parts, so the latter also was a transference of counterpoint to the instrument.

[In the late sixteenth century, counterpoint can scarcely be said to survive in any popular shape except that of the Catch or (endless) canon, the performance of which, when the complete melody is once learnt, is merely mechanical, and requires no great intelligence or attention from the singer. But to perform continuous contrapuntal music requires very great intelligence, and such concentrated attention as is seldom found in its perfection amongst mere singers. Instrumentalists therefore, as being superior in these indispensable qualities, were naturally called upon, first to assist, and then to displace the singers, who had allowed themselves to rest on their physical gifts rather than on the accomplishments of the intellect.][9] Thus it is the instrument which opens to the popular song and to the dance of the same kind, within the contrapuntal style, new paths of promise; and this principle of popular music, after it had held itself for a century in the almost neglected plain melody under the wintry covering of ecclesiastical counterpoint, becomes, in a moment, conscious of its immeasurable powers. Still, further, here there was the ground on which the popular song, so long differenced from counterpoint, gradually overcame it and was able to develop its principle freshly and clearly. In the opera we see it suddenly break with counterpoint; but this kind of art suffered by this suddenness, since it swung uneasily to and fro from the heights of the stage-reformation to the depths of virtuosity. Instrumental music escaped this sudden break, took up into itself counterpoint, transformed it out of itself, and passed on to meet a development far more regular and advancing with giant strides. What instrument, then, was best for the reproduction of the contrapuntal play of the voices? Next to choral song stood the organ, with its power of holding on its tones. Slowly, therefore, as we might expect, the organ steps into the contest with the church-choir. At first more clumsily, then more gently, its voices contrast and work into counterpoint. The organ also offers, as exchange for the sung chorus, direct transferences from motets of Josquin and Orlando Lasso. But so soon as the organ recollects that it is not vocal but an instrument, it begins—shall we say?—to run off into flourishes. All kinds of adornments and grace-notes start up, and finally the organist prides himself on departing utterly from the composer’s or author’s intention, and embroidering the theme at pleasure. A Prelude and a Fugue in this style appeared to the men of that time dreadful enough to linger over; as Hermann Finck writes, “they run sometimes by the half-hour, up and down over the key-board, trusting thus, with God’s help, to attain the highest, never asking where Dan Time, or Dan Accent, or Dan Tone, or Bona Fantasia, are staying in the meanwhile.” Further, when the organ had purified itself in the great epoch of German church-music, it had perforce to remain in the service of the Church. It felt the influence of the audience, which was brought into rhythm and harmony by the secular principle of music—that influence which, in the Protestant Choral and in the creations of Bach, made itself felt as a brilliant reaction of the secular musical sense on the church tradition.

Alongside of the organ came the lute, which for so long had been the chief instrument of the home. Yet the lute, with its tones drawn from so few strings, was unable to show itself very productive. It had provided the accompaniment of songs, and music in many parts had very early been arranged for it.[10] At all times, therefore, the lute had imitated the contrapuntal style, though in simple fashion, and occasionally certain passages had been accented with chords thrown in arpeggio-wise. Whether the lute accompanied a voice, or whether it took up the popular melody into itself to produce “absolute” music, it exhibited a style of its own, conditioned by its own limitations, even as, alongside of the organ, it had its own note-script.[11] It was not convenient accurately to retain on the lute every separate voice. An instrumental style was formed; men became accustomed to the sufficiency of this simplicity of tone; dances were written for the lute, as Hans Judenkunig in his lute-book offers a “Court-dance, Panana[12] alla Veneziana, Rossina ein welscher Dantz” and the like. As time went on, all well-known pieces were arranged for the lute, as they are to-day for the piano. Encyclopædias appear—as for example in 1603 the “Thesaurus” in ten volumes of “Besardus nec non praestantissimorum musicorum, qui hoc seculo in diversis orbis partibus excellunt, selectissima omnis generis cantus in testudine (the lute) modulamina continens.” Graceful figurations arise, which in France and Italy receive fine names, while the German lute-player sets himself strongly against these complicated “battements,” “tremblements,” or “flattements,” against this or that “passagio largo,” “stretto,” “raddopiato.” But, on the whole, much as the lute achieved, it could not suffice to compel the complete admission of the whole musical material into the home.

The heavy churchiness of the organ and the light secularity of the lute were thus constrained to unite themselves in an instrument which was sufficiently flexible to effect the representation of all the voice parts at once yet more easily than in the choir, and which could embrace the whole tonic scale so completely as to expand the limits of the voice both above and below. It must be a light, moveable instrument, a miniature of the organ. The clavier offered itself for this end; and in it organ and lute met in fruitful wedlock.

Such is the position and the meaning of the clavier in the great struggle for freedom of the secular music-principle which fills the sixteenth century. With this begins the history of the clavier, and simultaneously the history of the orchestra. The orchestra flourishes where the clavier flourishes, and vice versa. The combination of single instruments in a body, and that one instrument which alone can represent that combination, are manifestations of the same movement, namely, of the transference of the church choral tone-practice into the sphere of the secular, where in place of the counterpoint which ran on by the hour, an interlaced system of harmonies, a strict organisation of melodies, gradually assumed the mastery. The orchestra occupied itself with public representations; the clavier with the advance of the new music in the home. Already, in Venice, had instruments taken their share with the singers in the church; now chamber-music also began to flourish. Later, in France, the court-orchestra gained a special significance, and very shortly the clavier also made its importance felt. In Naples the orchestra appears simultaneously with the Italian opera, and shortly afterwards arises Scarlatti with his clavier-pieces. In Old England the orchestra was regarded with a special affection; and thus it is that in England the clavier first flourishes.