That time was not yet come, however. Willaert left Italy, taking service as chapel master to King Ludwig II, ruler of Hungary and Bavaria; but in 1526 he was back again in Venice, where, in the following year, he received the appointment as first chapel master of the Basilica of St. Mark, at a salary of seventy ducats, about one hundred and sixty dollars. This was later increased to two hundred ducats, about four hundred and sixty dollars, which was considered a princely income. For thirty-five years the master kept at his post, although twice during that time, once in 1542 and again in 1556, a longing for his native country drew him back to Belgium. It was his hope, indeed, to spend his last years in Bruges; but he had taken root too firmly in Italy. Friends, admirers, and patrons urged him to remain in Venice, and it was there, in 1562, that he died.
The Basilica of St. Mark was already ancient when Willaert came to Venice. Founded in 830 to receive the relics of the second Evangelist brought from Alexandria, rebuilt a hundred and fifty years later, it had received its permanent form about the middle of the eleventh century. Five hundred years had but increased its beauty and added mellowness and historic interest to its charm. Externally, its domes and pinnacles, its encrusted marbles and pillars, its bronze horses and many-colored arches constitute a unique and splendid monument of history. Within its walls, statues, columns crowned with capitals from Greece and Byzantium, and rich mosaics blend in a beauty at once impressive and magnificent. The interior is not large, two hundred and five by one hundred and sixty-four feet; but it is particularly well adapted to the use of the two organs, which are placed opposite each other.
This circumstance suggested to Willaert the device of dividing his choir so as to contrast the mass effect of the united voices with antiphonal singing. With this device, happily carried into effect, there developed in time, under Willaert’s hands, a new style of composition for two choirs. It was this style which continued in vogue for more than a century and formed the standard and became the peculiar characteristic of the Venetian school.
In his early experiments with the divided choir Willaert made use of the Psalms, whose poetical form, with the parallel half-verses and refrains, seemed especially adapted to antiphonal rendering. Following these, he composed hymns and masses, not after the manner of the eight or ten-part compositions known in the Netherlands, but works specially adapted to the double choir, each part complete in itself, each combining with or opposing the other, and yet creating an impression of unity and centralization. This was actually a new artistic creation, and by reason of it Willaert became almost the idol of the Venetians. They called his lovely music ‘liquid gold,’ adapted his name to ‘Messer Adriano,’ honored him with verses and public addresses, and, in his old age, besought him to leave his ashes to the city in which his artistic triumphs had been achieved.
Willaert’s experiments with double choir effects had a profound and lasting influence upon the development of music. In the first place, owing to this, devices of imitation and canonic progression which had so long been the most prominent feature of ecclesiastical and secular music, became secondary in importance to chord progressions. The reason is obvious. To get the best effect with two answering choirs the sections which each sings must not be long and complicated, but relatively short and clear cut, otherwise the effect of balance or of echo is lost; and in these relatively short sections there is hardly time to accomplish elaborate polyphonic development. Even if there were, the polyphonic effects are far too subtle to be easily recognized in echo or answer. The tendency in writing music for two choirs was therefore toward a simple style, clearly balanced, with certain definite harmonic relationships which could not fail to be recognized when repeated. The composers of the Venetian school were almost within reach of the harmonic idea of music, which rose clearly to supremacy only late in the next century. They were actually breaking away from the ecclesiastical modes, not only by thus trying to write in a simple harmonic style, which was founded nearly on our ideas of tonic and dominant, but also by enriching their harmonies with chromatic variations. Willaert thus stands out as one of the founders of what has been called the coloristic or chromatic school of the sixteenth century. In his music, and even more in the music of his followers, the old modes are constantly altered and with them the practice of musica ficta, already mentioned, reaches its height.[115] It meant the crumbling of the model system. It must not, however, be supposed that Willaert abandoned entirely the traditions of the Netherlanders and that he gave up writing in the complicated style altogether. He, indeed, employed imitation and canon, but more casually; often only at the entrance of short alternating sections. His voice parts then proceeded in ‘solid chord pillars,’ as Naumann has happily said, in a style markedly in advance of the old contrapuntal conceptions. In him therefore we have a brilliant example of the old style worked upon by new impulses, by the spirit of the Renaissance, the desire for rich color and varied, beautiful form.
Willaert was an industrious composer, and his works go far toward making the period from 1450 to 1550 ‘the golden century of the Netherlands.’ Masses, motets, psalms and hymns, madrigals and canzone are all well-represented. One unusual composition, for five voices, in the form of a narrative based on the Bible story Susannah, seems like an early prophecy of the sacred cantata, although the treatment is severely hymnlike and not dramatic. As a writer of madrigals and of frottole Willaert’s position is discussed in another chapter; though it may be said in passing that in these, as in his sacred music, his individuality is marked, and his knowledge and musical skill evident.
Though a northerner by birth, Willaert became the founder of a school characteristically Italian, and his work seemed, to his contemporaries, to embody the very spirit of Venetian life, in its richness and variety. He brought to the Italians the inheritance of the Netherland art, turned it into new and interesting channels, and revealed to later masters what possibilities of color lay hidden under the strictness of its laws.
Upon the death of Willaert, his pupil, Cipriano di Rore,[116] was appointed to the high office at St. Mark’s. Works of di Rore, including madrigals, motets, masses, psalms, and a Passion according to St. John, were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, especially in Munich, where they were frequently performed under the direction of Lassus. Duke Albert of Bavaria caused a handsome copy of a collection of his church compositions, graced by a portrait of the composer, to be placed in the Munich library, where it still remains.
Following di Rore at St. Mark’s came Gioseffo Zarlino,[117] a member of the order of Franciscan monks, also a pupil of Willaert, and a theorist of great importance. Few of his compositions have survived, but his theoretical writing, Instituzioni harmoniche, Dimostrazioni harmoniche, and Sopplimenti musicali, remain in an edition of Zarlino’s collected works published in four volumes in 1589. There are also in manuscript French, German, and Dutch translations of the Instituzioni, which contain, besides an important discussion of the third, and the major and minor consonant triad, a clear explanation of double counterpoint in the octave, twelfth, and in contrary motion; of canon and double canon in the unison, octave, and upper and under fifth, with numerous examples based upon the same cantus firmus. Baldasarro Donati and Giovanni della Croce, both distinguished musicians, in turn succeeded Zarlino as maestro di capella at St. Mark’s.
Elsewhere in Italy important composers appear, native Italians who bring to the Netherland art the Italian gift of melody and sweetness. Constanzo Festa,[118] a Florentine, occupies an especially important place. Riemann says of him, ‘He can be looked upon as the predecessor of Palestrina, with whose style his own has many points of similarity. He was the first Italian contrapuntist of importance, and gives a foretaste of the beauties which were to spring from the union of Netherland art with Italian feeling for euphony and melody.’ Constanzo Porta, a pupil of Willaert, was successively maestro of the Franciscan monastery at Padua, and of churches at Ravenna, Osimo, and Loreto. Gafori (or Gafurius, 1451-1522), cantor and master of the boys at Milan cathedral, left many theoretical writings of great value. Arcadelt, already mentioned as a writer of madrigals, composed a volume of masses, published both in Venice and by Ballard and Leroy in Paris in 1557. Jacob Clemens, better known by the name of Clemens non Papa, to distinguish him from the pope—a fact which attests, in a jocular way, his popularity—was a Netherlander, and one of the most famous composers of the epoch between Josquin and Palestrina, leaving to posterity a large number of masses, motets, and chansons, besides four books of hymns and psalms, the melodies of which were taken from Netherland folk song.