Famous composers and their works, Vol. 1

by Unknown

The last noteworthy representatives of the polyphonic school of the sixteenth century were Orlando di Lasso (Munich), Giovanni della Croce (Venice) and, chiefly, Gregorio Allegri.

Allegri, a beneficed priest attached to the cathedral at Fermo, and a member of the same family which produced the painter Coreggio, was a composer of much distinction. He was born at Rome about 1580, and died in 1652. He was instructed in music by G. M. Nannini. During his residence at Fermo he acted as chorister and composer for the cathedral. Certain motetti and concerti, published at this time, attracted the notice of Pope Urban VIII., and Allegri received from him, in 1629, the appointment to a vacancy among the cantori of the Apostolic Chapel. Allegri's name is chiefly associated with a Miserere in nine parts for two choirs, which has been sung annually in the Pontifical Chapel, during Holy Week. This is held to be one of the most beautiful compositions ever dedicated to the service of the Roman church. There was a time when it was so much treasured that to copy it was a crime punished by excommunication. But in various ways it came to be known outside the Sistine Chapel. Dr. Burney (1726-1814), the famous English historian of music, obtained a copy of it. Mozart, when a boy of fifteen, took down the notes while the choir sang it. Choron, the well known French musician, managed to insert it in his collection of pieces used in Rome during the Holy Week.

In the Sistine Chapel this Miserere has always excited the enthusiasm of musicians owing to a certain indescribable intensity of sadness that characterizes it, and to its perfect rhythmical adaptation to the words to which it is wedded.

We have now to deal with an epoch in the history of music which saw the culminations of a great reform. New artistic ideas manifested themselves, and thrust into the background the achievements of polyphonic science. The movement had its beginnings in Florence. There, at the palace of the Count Bardi, was formed a society of art connoisseurs, composed principally of men of noble birth. The fundamental purpose of this coterie was to reëstablish the Greek drama on a basis at once artistic and modern; but the final result of their experiments and discussions was the invention of the opera and the oratorio. Curiously enough, through the fact that only few musicians belonged to the Bardi circle, their ideas were able to make greater progress than they would otherwise have done; for professional musicians in that age were not willing to grant, even for purposes of dramatic expression, the smallest freedom in harmonic or contrapuntal treatment. Here, for the first time in the history of music, we may justly pay high tribute to dilettantism, since it was owing to the efforts of these ardent Florentine amateurs that two of the noblest and most popular branches of musical art were originated.

GREGORIO ALLEGRI.

From an engraving by C. Deblois. 1867.

We find among the friends of Count Bardi the foremost men of the time. The count himself was a gifted poet and composer. Corsi, who afterward became president of the society, was a man of great learning. Ottavio Rinuccini, a highly accomplished poet, supplied the libretti for the first two operas ever performed. Pietro Strozzi was also a poet and composer with advanced ideas. Emilio del Cavalieri, the creator and inventor of the oratorio, was "ducal superintendent of fine arts." Prominent in the society was also Vincenzo Galilei, father of the immortal astronomer, and himself a distinguished composer and clever mathematician. He and Battista Doni were the society's chief representatives in the literary war carried on with the celebrated Zarlino, who furiously condemned the new ideas, and prophesied the ruin of musical art if such innovations should be permanently adopted.

The credit of having introduced a new, fresh and enlivening element into the artistic attempts of the Bardi society is to be attributed chiefly to Giulio Caccini and Vincenzo Galilei. The former was a composer, a singer, and a writer on musical matters. He was generally considered to be the staunchest defender of the new art. In his much discussed work "Nuove Musiche," he places himself in the front rank of the battle and urgently demands the recognition of solo song, so heartily despised by the professional musicians of the time. Caccini, whose own singing gave his hearers intense delight, felt that this department of the art could never reach individual development while the Palestrina style of composition prevailed. He had little theoretical knowledge of music; but, following the example of Galilei, who was the first to use recitative in his musical productions, Caccini enlarged and improved this form, and sung his compositions to the Bardi society. His only accompaniment was the theorbo, a species of lute, but his efforts gained enthusiastic approval. From the small beginnings thus made he passed, in company with Galilei, to the composition of long dramatic scenes, the text being furnished by Count Bardi. This gave to the effort in the direction of reform a new and unexpected significance. Galilei's chief endeavor in his artistic experiments was to introduce the popular element into composition; for, as he insisted, music was not simply the scientific occupation of a few learned men, but belonged to the whole world. Hence, almost all his music is homophonous. No doubt unison vocal music, with little or no accompaniment, had been heard in the canzonetta, villanella, and other forms of popular melody, ages before the birth of Galilei. That the recognition of what we call now the "leading-note" as an essential element of melody was no new thing, may be gathered from the words of Zarlino, who, writing in 1558, says: "Even Nature herself has provided for these things; for not only those skilled in music, but also the contadini (peasants), who sing without any art at all, proceed by the interval of the semitone in forming their closes." The germs of this new element, destined to work one of the most sweeping revolutions known in the history of art, are evidently in all the early attempts of the monodists. In exchange for the contrapuntal glories of the sixteenth century, the composers of the seventeenth offered the graces of symmetrical form, hitherto unknown. The idea was not thrown away on their successors. It was not long before symmetrical form was cultivated in association with a new system, not of counterpoint, as it is sometimes erroneously called, but of part-writings based on the principles of modern harmony, and eminently adapted to the requirements of instrumental music. Thus, in such slight indications of regular phrasing, reiterated figures and prearranged plan as are shown in Caccini's unpretending little arias, we may recognize the origin of much that delights us in the grandest creations of modern musical genius.

The Bardi society wholly failed to attain that for which it struggled,—a revival of the Hellenic drama; but, in the same way that their contemporaries, the alchemists, failed to find a formula for making gold and yet discovered a new science, so these connoisseurs, while failing to impart Greek character to their productions, gave new individuality to music, and introduced into it many important things.