At the end of the seventeenth century organ music was independent of vocal style. Free of the old church modes, built solidly upon an impressive, harmonic foundation, animated by strong rhythm and varied by a thousand devices of virtuosity which had their being in the nature of the instrument itself, it makes evident the great changes which had come into music during the century. On the other hand, the general employment of a polyphonic style, for which the organ is of all instruments the best suited, and which moreover is in keeping with the dignity and noble solemnity of the instrument, shows the perseverance of those high principles of musical composition which had been first established and glorified in the vocal works of Palestrina and Lassus. And in the forms of Prelude, Toccata, Fugue, and Choral Prelude composers had found suitable forms in which their musical ideas could stand, apart from a text and self-sufficient as absolute music.
III
Inasmuch as the organ was the instrument for which the most suitable style was clearly to be found in a modification of the old vocal polyphony, organist-composers were spared much of the difficulty which hindered composers who strove to write for other instruments, or for combinations of instruments. We have seen that organ music, set upon its way by the Italians, was dropped by them before the middle of the century. All their interest in instrumental music came very early in the century to be centred upon music for the violin and instruments of that family. This is due to the fact that during that century there arose in northern Italy families of violin makers who, selecting generally the least clumsy of the types of bowed instruments, and particularly the violin, with marvellous workmanship and natural endowment of instinctive skill, developed them into instruments of a sweetness, flexibility, and power of expression which can be rivalled only by the human voice. The names of these violin makers have long been famous in the world, and neither their skill nor their success has ever since been matched. The first of them was Gasparo da Salo of Brescia, who worked in the last half of the sixteenth century and a little way into the seventeenth. Working a little later in Brescia was Paolo Maggini. The centre of the industry soon shifted to the town of Cremona, and it is in the list of the Cremonese makers that we find the names of the Amati family, of whom the last and most famous was Nicolo (d. 1648); the Guarneri family, of whom the last and greatest was Joseph, who lived far into the eighteenth century; and the great name of Antonio Stradivari, who, born about 1644, lived until 1737. The violin itself was in use early in the century, mostly as soprano in a group of viols. The rapid and remarkable perfection of it, however, soon attracted almost the exclusive attention of composers; and it was thus raised from a minor rôle in a group of instruments to be the head of all instruments.
The earliest attempts of Italian composers to write violin music were singularly childish and unsuccessful, and in most cases they seem stupidly against the simplest principles of instrumental music. But one must not forget that the only art of composition which had been developed to a technical excellence was the art of vocal polyphony, and that the only skill the first instrumental composers had to bring to writing music for their instruments was the skill which they had acquired in the study of polyphonic choruses. We have seen that the early organ composers worked upon the same plan, but whereas a polyphonic style is essentially suitable to the organ, and the modifications of the vocal style necessary to convert it into a style for the organ suggested themselves naturally and obviously, the instrumental composers were face to face with a far more illusive problem. They progressed by much the same steps as the organists, but noticeably more slowly.
The form in which most of the earlier attempts were cast was the canzona. This, as we have already seen in organ music, was modelled upon the form of the French chanson of the sixteenth century, and its characteristic feature was a division into several short sections not actually cut off from each other, yet differing quite distinctly both in rhythm and in treatment; some being in the polyphonic style, others in a style of simple chords. The number of instruments might vary from four to sixteen, but the majority of early canzonas were written for four instruments, usually of the viol type. In a collection of canzonas published in Venice in 1608 there is one, however, written for eight trombones, and another for sixteen. The number of little sections in the canzona also varied. The tendency at first was toward a great many, ten or twelve; but with the general development of instrumental style came the lengthening of the sections and a consequent reduction of their number.
A typical canzona of this period is one for four instruments by Giovanni Battista Grillo.[137] It is made up of ten sections. The first, in common time, is but seven measures long, and is in the style of the ricercar, i. e. built upon an imitation of short motives. The second section is in triple time, in the general style of a galliard, a dance form of the time, and is eleven measures long. The third section is again in common time and in the style of a ricercar, and is twenty measures long. The fourth has ten measures, in the slow common time of the pavan; the fifth, eight measures in the triple time of the galliard; the sixth, six measures in the style of the pavan; the seventh, thirteen measures in galliard style. The eighth and ninth are repetitions of the first and second, and the whole series is brought to a close by a short coda of five measures. Those sections which are in polyphonic style are more or less closely related to each thematically. It will be observed that, of the ten sections, seven are made up of an irregular number of measures and cannot give to our ears an impression of rhythmical structure. One should notice, too, the return of the first two sections at the end, which gives some primitive balance to the little piece as a whole.
The obvious weakness in such a form of movement lies in the division into so many little sections, no one of which is long enough to claim the serious attention of a listener. True enough, the early works of the instrumental composers show very few rhythmically animated themes which could suggest any considerable treatment and development; but in the few cases where such themes do appear there is not space enough in a section for the composer to do anything with them, and they drop out of the piece almost as soon as they have awakened in the listener the desire to hear more of them.
The natural development was toward the extension of the section, therefore, until each made the impression of a definite and well-balanced whole; and from that it was but a step to cutting off the sections one from the other by pauses. That is what happened. The canzona grew from a movement in many little sections to the ripe form of a piece in four distinct movements to which by the middle of the century was given the name sonata da chiesa. Among the first to write sonatas of this type was Giovanni Legrenzi, who published a set of them in 1655. Legrenzi is one of the most gifted composers of the time, not only of operas, in connection with which his name is most often heard, but of instrumental music as well, of which the sonatas just mentioned are excellent examples. The last of them is well planned and interesting throughout. The first movement is an excellent well-knit fugue, built upon a definite rhythmical subject against which two interesting and varied counter subjects are set. All these subjects have vigor and distinct individuality, and they are treated with a skill which is proof of Legrenzi’s instinct for the instrumental style. The second movement is in the dignified rhythm of the sarabande, a dance form of the day; the third is a short adagio, leading to the last, which is lively and rapid, but rather loose in structure, recalling the old-style ricercar.
However, the sonatas of Legrenzi are often in more than four movements, and the credit of giving the sonata da chiesa its definite and lasting form belongs to Giovanni Battista Vitali, in whose collection of them, published in 1667, there is at last a regularity of plan in the number and arrangement of movements. The scheme is practically tripartite. There are two fast movements in common time and in fugal style, one at the beginning and one at the end; and between them a movement generally in simple harmonic style and in triple time. There are also a few very slow measures either before or after the middle movement or at the beginning of the sonata as introduction to the first fast movement. The two fast movements are frequently in thematic relation to each other. Here we have the form made ready for the later masters, of which we shall see them make use. Compared with the canzona of the first half of the century, Vitali’s work shows a striking, sudden advance, not only in clearness of form, but in instrumental style. Not much is known of his life, but his works show that he was a player of brilliant skill, one of the first of the virtuoso violin composers.
Though the sonata da chiesa was descended directly from the old canzona da sonar and is therefore connected with the old music, it was greatly affected on the way by influences not remotely connected with the old polyphonic style. In the preceding pages it has been shown how the cultivation of the monodic style led to the cultivation of the technique of the human voice. Already in the works of Caccini, himself a great singer, there appear passages for the solo voice intended to show off its flexibility and technique. The influence of the monodic style made itself felt at once in violin music, and prompted the cultivation of a form of solo music which had little or nothing to do with the polyphonic canzona. No pieces have come down to us from the first ten years of the century which were written for the violin alone with accompaniment of Figured Bass for lute or harpsichord; but there are many written for two violins, which, in that they play seldom together but pursue a sort of dialogue in music, may be said to belong to the monodic style. The early pieces in this manner are under the influence of the new vocal style. Passages of any lively movement are written after the manner of Caccini’s newly discovered vocal agilities.