But very soon the suitable violin style began to make its appearance, and we come across passages which could not have been sung, but which were suggested by the nature of the instrument for which they were intended. The early efforts were called sonatas. Like the canzona, they were given special names, for example, Salvatore Rossi’s sonata on the air of the Romanesca, and another on the air of Ruggiero, both of which are no more than a series of variations over two melodies both well known in their day. The practice of composing variations over a bass part which remained unchanged or was only very slightly adorned in a few cases and was called a ground bass or basso ostinato, was most common throughout the entire seventeenth century. No manner of securing an effect of form and symmetry could have been simpler, and no other form could have spurred composers more effectively toward the discovery of trills, turns, runs, and other ornaments within the power of instruments as a very means of saving themselves from the deadly monotony of a few phrases reiterated inexorably again and again in the bass. That the practice even of extemporizing variations—or divisions, as they were called—on a ground bass was much in vogue, as the improvisation of descant over the cantus firmus was in the early days of church polyphony, is witnessed by the famous work of the English musician, Christopher Sympson, entitled, the ‘Division Violist,’ which appeared in 1659, and which was intended to teach the art. Sympson says, ‘A Ground, subject, or bass, call it what you please, is pricked down in two several papers, one for him who is to play the Ground upon an organ, harpsichord, or what other instrument may be apt for that purpose, the other for him that plays upon the viol, who, having the said Ground before his eyes as his theme or subject, plays such variety of descant or division in concordance thereto as his skill and present invention do then suggest unto him.’
The true instrumental monody makes its first appearance in 1617 in the works of Biagio Marini, the first famous violinist. In the first of his publications—a set of pieces called Affetti musicali, printed in 1617 in Venice, where Marini was then playing in the orchestra of St. Mark’s—there are two pieces called Sinfonie for violin (or cornet) with Figured Bass, which may be said to represent the point where two distinct styles of instrumental music begin to diverge; one proceeding directly from these to pieces of widely developed solo music, the other developing through the canzona and works of that kind to modern orchestral music. This first work of Marini presents many innovations, the bowing is suggested by slurs, use is made of the tremolo (seven years before Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, in which it was long held to have appeared first);[138] and there are many passages of double stopping.
Another composer of the early times is Francesco Turini, writing trio-sonatas in the style of Salvatore Rossi, for two violins and a Figured Bass; and the works of Giovanni Battista Fontana (1641) show ever further development, not only in violin technique, but in the construction of music as well. Treading so carefully over new ground, the early composers seldom let themselves go in melodies of any long sweep but restrained themselves to short phrases, just as in writing canzonas for groups of instruments they held fast by short sections; but, in the works of Fontana, long, smooth phrases of well-balanced melody give proof of the rapidity with which the art was progressing and the confidence that was coming in the treatment of music for the violin. In the works of a contemporary, Tarquinio Merula, there is often even a lively humorous free swing. So the first half of the seventeenth century brought an understanding of the character of the violin as a solo instrument, and of its special treatment and of some of the possibilities of virtuosity that lay within it; and through the cultivation of the solo sonata—direct offspring of the early monodic style—there grew up an art of composing long, smooth, expressive melodies for the violin which, exerting an influence upon the canzona of polyphonic birth, was to aid in freeing it from its restriction to short motives and in setting it upon its way toward the sonata da chiesa of Corelli and the symphonies of Beethoven.
IV
The importance of rhythm in instrumental music has already been pointed out. We have mentioned the part it played in the transformation of the heavy canzona into the sonata da chiesa, giving life and character to the themes, and structural regularity to the sections. We have now to consider the development of another cyclic form of music, the Suite, called in Italy the sonata da camera, which had its very being in rhythm. The orthodox suite at the end of the seventeenth century was a series of four short pieces, all of which were in the same key, each having the name of a dance, and differing from the others in its rhythm. The origin of the suite, therefore, is to be sought in the cultivation of dance music, which is essentially rhythmical music, and in the combination of several short dances in a sequence.
The remarkable English collections of music for the harpsichord or virginal already alluded to contain many dance tunes. In the treatment of them, however, as we have said, composers showed the influence of the polyphonic style to such an extent that they frequently disguised or even suppressed the characteristic rhythms as far as possible by cross accents and polyphonic intricacies. Yet that the English composers of that time, great men like William Byrd, John Bull, and Thomas Morley, were conscious of the contrasting characters of various dance rhythms, and of the pleasant effect of playing a dance in one time after a dance in another, is shown by a passage in Morley’s famous book, ‘Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music’ (1597), which describes the effect to be got by alternating a pavan and a galliard, ‘the first of which was a kind of staid musick ordained for grave dancing, and the other a lighter and more stirring kind of dancing.’
But the practice of stringing dance tunes together antedates Morley’s book by nearly a century, if not more. Among the first pieces of music ever printed were sets of dance tunes for the lute, which were printed by Petrucci in Venice in 1508. Some of these sets consisted of a pavan followed by other dances—saltarello and piva—which were thematically related to it; and throughout the sixteenth century many such embryo suites made their appearance. In the early lute music of the time the rhythmical element was quite obvious, clearly because the polyphonic style could not be reproduced upon the lute. Indeed music for the lute is the first instrumental music which presents a definite special instrumental style, and this because by its nature the instrument was quite unfitted for polyphony. The separate pieces in the early suites were often thematically related; they were, in fact, variation suites, built up upon the same theme presented in various rhythms. Toward the end of the century it became customary to print together many pieces of the same kind, so that one encounters sets of pavans, of galliards, of passamezzi, of courantes, etc. Thereby the stringing together of dances of different types in the order of a suite disappears from printed music, though doubtless players of the lute and of the harpsichord chose single dances from the various collections and put and played them together according to their own taste.
In Italy the interest, newly aroused early in the seventeenth century, in toccatas and ricercari for the organ, and in the canzona and solo sonata for other instruments, banished for a time interest in the combination of dance tunes; but German and English composers accepted the canzona very slowly, and all through the century gave themselves conspicuously to the combination and development of dance tunes, at first for an ensemble of instruments, and later for the harpsichord. They early broke away from the restrictions of church modes and built up their pieces over a clear harmonic foundation generally richer and more varied than the harmonies of the Italians. But in these early suites, too, there is the same rhythmical hesitation which has been found characteristic of all early instrumental music, and the metrical structure of the various dances is often irregular and unbalanced, so strong were the old polyphonic traditions and the mistrust of liveliness.
Of the old dance tunes two are almost invariably present in the suite up to the middle of the century, the pavan and the galliard. The pavan was a broad, stately kind of music in common time, and was generally divided into three sections, of which the first was in simple harmonic style, and the second and third more contrapuntal. The galliard, on the other hand, was in triple time, and was always set in simple harmonic style. Here is the same principle of construction as that upon which the instrumental canzonas were built—pieces of polyphonic style contrasted with those of a simpler kind.
At what time the pavan and the galliard gave way to the allemande and courante, which are the nucleus of the orthodox suite, has yet to be determined, but at the end of the century the suites of the great German and English writers present uniformly four standard movements, of which the arrangement is allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue. The origin of the allemande is unknown. It was always in common time and was of stately though not slow movement. Of the courantes there were two distinct types, one called French and the other Italian, both in triple time and both rapid, but the former complex and full of cross accents and the latter simple and gay. The sarabande was of Spanish or Moorish origin and was in slow triple time with the rhythmical peculiarity of a dwelling or accent upon the second beat of the measure. It differed from the other movements in that it was invariably in harmonic style; and its rich though simple chords and the quiet dignity of its movements have expressed many of the deepest and most emotional thoughts of the great masters, Purcell, Handel, and Bach. The gigue was lively and usually in six-eight time. It was the only dance of British origin to find a central place in the suite, which is remarkable in view of the fact that the English masters were among the first to work with the suite form. Between the sarabande and the gigue it was customary to insert one or more extra dances, of which those most frequently met with are the minuet, gavotte, bourrée, etc. At the beginning of the suite was often a prelude in the form of the early canzona, and called ‘sonata’ or ‘symphony.’