The early development of instrumental music in Venice cannot have been without its influence upon London, which not only cast an eye on the social and topographical aspect of the city of the lagoons, but also allowed itself to be consciously influenced by Italian culture. So early as 1512 we hear of Italian masques performed in the Palace at Greenwich; and when, in 1561, a tragedy by Lord Buckhurst[13] was performed with introductory pantomimes and orchestral music, we recognise the Venetian touch in the individual character of the instruments. In Act I. the violin, in Act II. horns, in Act III. flutes, in Act IV. oboes, in Act V. drums and pipes are set down.[14] The orchestra of Queen Elizabeth exhibits strong features of the mediæval physiognomy: there are sixteen trumpets (about equal to the number of the singers in the associated chorus) and three kettle-drums stand in close relation to them. It is the old official festival music once more. Eight violins, one lute, one harp, one bagpipe, two flutes, and three virginals are the relatively weaker supplanters of the more intimate orchestral type. The respective costliness appears from the account: the lute, £60; the violin, £20; the bagpipes, £12. The Italian operatic orchestra started on the opposite path, gradually getting rid of the stringed instruments and adopting wind. It was, however, very thin, and even in France the orchestra of the sixteenth century appears hardly more elaborate than a Papal orchestra of the fifteenth. It is the English orchestra that at this time stands at the head, not even the thirty instrumentalists of Munich being equal to it. Above all there seems to be growing a division of labour between orchestra and chamber-music, so much so that Prätorius, when in his great musical work (1618), he mentions such combinations of lute-choirs, calls this style of chamber-music especially English. “Die Engelländer nennens gar apposite à consortio ein consort,[15] wenn etliche Personen mit allerley Instrumenten, als Klavicymbel und Gross-spinett, grosse Lyra, Doppelharff, Lauten, Theorben, Bandorn, Penorcon, Zittern, Viol de Gamba, einer kleinen Diskant-Geig, einer Quer-Flöt oder Bock-Flöt, bisweilen auch einer stillen Posaun oder Racket zusammen in einer Compagny und Gesellschaft gar still, sanfft und lieblich accordiren, und in anmuthiger Symphonia mit einander zusammen stimmen.” Hence it appears that the orchestra and the chamber-music of old England were the chief things. In the former the wind prevailed, in the latter the strings; but the clavier had its place in both kinds. For the clavier, during many years, even when it had made good its position as a solo instrument, still took its part in orchestral combinations. Even in Hasse’s time the Kapellmeister at Dresden sat at the clavier.
Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the old English clavier should have flourished, or that it was in England that it first recognised its mission. The influence of this was great enough to bring about a speedy development on the continent. The cultivation of music was not only wide-spread, but also very ancient; so much so that the old musical writer Tinctor (1434-1520) expressly ascribes the origin of all contrapuntal music to England. The compositions of the thirteenth century were, in grace of melody, simplicity of rhythm, and modernity of harmony, far in advance of their age. (Compare the canon in six parts,[16] “Sumer is icumen in” of the Monk of Reading, before 1226.) It is noteworthy that the English possessed of old a popular, simple, melodious tendency in music which reminds us of Mendelssohn. This has made English music great and also small. Great, for at a time when the whole musical world struggled with the contrapuntal want of system in harmony and melody, the English were capable of preparing the way, in systematic, plastic form, for the new conquering secular principle. Small, because so soon as this principle became universally recognised, they laid themselves to sleep in the luxurious enjoyment of their tradition, and set up foreign ideals, such as Mendelssohn and Handel,[17] who were endowed with the like gifts.
Lady at the Clavier.
Painting by Dirk Hals (?1656), in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam.
Madrigals of Elizabeth’s time are so familiar to us that Dr Ambros, of Prague, could produce them in Prague with great success, drawing from J. J. Maier’s German collection. That free geniality of the English in its ancient dress, which conceals all triviality, overcomes us even to-day. With the clavier-pieces it is the same. We are charmed with the extreme simplicity of their musical form, and we love them because they come before us in an archaic dress. They exhale an aroma whose popular sweetness mingles beautifully with the slight harshness of their naïve style. Allowing ourselves a touch of triviality, we find ourselves wondering that these works seem to be quite outside their own time, and in the modernness of their spirit surpass even the renowned contemporary performances of Gabrieli and the other Venetians.
In this London, the imitator and rival of Venice, we fall upon the first clavier-books that, as such, were ever collected in the world. Strictly speaking, they are not the absolute first. We read on the title-page of a collection of Chansons, Madrigals and Dances, issued at Lyons in 1560 by S. Gorlier: “Premier Livre de tablature d’Espinette.” We learn from Prätorius that the inscription, “For an Instrument,” which appears so often on old works, is not to be understood universally, but to be confined to the clavier. Nevertheless, it is in England that we first find in any numbers collections of expressly-marked clavier-pieces, springing from a special impulse of musical enthusiasm. First in interest stands the so-called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, one of the chief treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum, lately transcribed into our own script for Breitkopf and Härtel. Granting that it may have been written after the time of Elizabeth, it yet, with its three hundred pieces, goes back to the earliest names of this school—Tallis, Bird, Farnaby, Bull. Next, in the library of the late Rimbault, an important English historian of music, we find, in manuscript, a Virginal Book of the Earl of Leicester, and another of Lady Nevill. Doubtless great lords and ladies had many manuscript collections of this kind, including copies of the favourite pieces of the day. But soon manuscript gave way to print. In 1611 appeared the first copper-engraved set of pieces ever seen in England. This was “Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls. Composed by three famous masters: William Byrd, Dr John Bull, and Orl. Gibbons, Gentilmen of His Majestie’s most illustrious Chappell.” A modern edition of this collection was issued in 1847 by the indefatigable London Musical Antiquarian Society. From the materials collected by this Society Ernst Pauer, whose contributions to the history of the clavier have achieved a great repute, formed his collected edition of Old English Composers, which presents, in modernised form, special pieces by Bird, Bull, Gibbons, Blow, Purcell, and even Arne, who, though later, is not uninteresting.
Title-page of the first English engraved Clavier Music, 1611.