Purcell wrote a great deal of music for the theatre, but for the most part in the form of songs and instrumental dances. Among the plays for which he wrote music should be mentioned Dryden’s ‘King Arthur’ and ‘The Indian Queen’; ‘Diocletian,’ ‘The Fairy Queen,’ and the ‘Tempest.’ His most important instrumental works are a set of twelve sonatas for two violins, bass and figured bass for harpsichord, published in 1683, and another similar set of ten published after his death by his widow, and eight suites for harpsichord. All these are in keeping with the general style of the time. The sonatas, the first set of which appeared in the same year as Corelli’s opus 1, are marked by seriousness which tends toward heaviness in comparison with Corelli’s work. They are less spontaneous than his vocal music, but they are of high artistic merit. The works for harpsichord are touched by the charm of English tunefulness and are no less dainty for being conspicuously simple in comparison with the more elaborate work of the French writers. The greatest part of Purcell’s work must remain an isolated monument of great genius, for it had little influence upon the general course of music in his day. However, his anthems and semi-sacred odes hold an important historical position, inasmuch as they contain magnificent choruses, from a study of which Handel obviously and greatly profited. Purcell was second to none of his contemporaries in technical skill. He stood above them in musical power, in the fullness and virility of his ideas, in genuineness and simplicity, in those qualities which elevate genius above technical mastery and agreeable ease. His music rings clear and true.
II
In Italy itself, three men stand out most prominently, Alessandro Scarlatti, his son Domenico, and Arcangelo Corelli. Alessandro Scarlatti is one of the most brilliant figures of the period. Unhappily it is but another proof of the futility of opera music of that time that so little of his work has survived. His productiveness is nothing short of prodigious. He wrote at least 114 operas and, besides these, 500 cantatas, both for solo voice and for two voices, church music and oratorios. Born in Sicily and living at two periods in his life at Naples for several years, he was long held to have added a new flavor to Italian opera and to have founded a school of opera in Naples distinct in character from other Italian opera. But, except for the unusual charm of his personal genius and a higher artistic instinct than that with which most of his contemporaries were endowed, his music hardly differs from theirs. Certainly he is one of the most important figures in the history of music, in that he rounded Italian opera into smooth, polished shape and left it clearly defined as a model for all opera composers during the course of the next century. He was born in Sicily in 1659; the exact place is not known, but his family was of Tuscan origin. His youth was spent in Rome, where serious traditions of music still lingered; and there, under what teachers no one knows, he acquired a thoroughly solid foundation and that light, sure grasp of technique which shows in his music in striking contrast to the careless work of many a contemporary then famous. From 1684 to 1702 he was in Naples, occupied principally in composing operas for production at the royal palace or at the theatre of San Bartolomeo. The Neapolitan taste was frivolous and, there can be little doubt, was harmful to the composer, by nature inclined rather to comply with it than to defy it. Yet by 1702 Scarlatti could stand it no longer, and for nine years lived in various of the big Italian cities, always writing operas, successful and highly honored. He returned to Naples in 1713. A few years later the Neapolitans lost interest in his music and he went again to Rome. In 1723 he was back again in Naples, quite out of favor with the public, apparently forgotten by his own generation; and here he died on the 24th of October, 1725. During the last year of his life Johann Adolf Hasse, destined to universal popularity as a composer of operas in the Italian style, was his pupil.
The great number of da capo arias in Scarlatti’s works gave rise to a belief prevalent for many years that he was the inventor of this form, which is mainly responsible for the degeneration of Italian opera into the state of meaningless vapidity in which it is found during the following century; but the growth of the form and its use can be traced in the works of his predecessors. He gave to the form, however, its perfect outline, and, though none of his arias can be said to touch any emotional depth, they are models of a perfect vocal style never since excelled, and even to-day are pleasing by the faultlessness of their structure and the elegant smoothness of their flow. Scarlatti established this conventional form to the exclusion of all others. How strongly it prevents dramatic action has already been shown in a previous chapter; but Scarlatti in establishing it so firmly in Italian opera was but complying with the demands of audiences of his time, and should be less blamed for his acquiescence to popular taste than praised for the beauty with which he was able to clothe it. He bequeaths to his followers thereby one of the few valuable accomplishments of Italian opera composers of the seventeenth century, a form of music wonderfully adapted to show off the beauties of the human voice.
Moreover, he may be said to have invented the accompanied recitative. At any rate his opera Olimpia vendicata (1686) gives us the earliest known examples of it, and, though he used it seldom, that he thought to use it at all is indicative of his genius, which, not bold enough to explore the realm of effects in the face of a frivolous public, might, under more favorable circumstances, have broken free of the conventions closing tighter and tighter about Italian opera. With his operas appear the first approximately definite models of the Italian overture. These overtures when played with the operas to which they were preludes were called sinfonie, but when played in concert apart from the operas were called overtures. They consisted of three distinct parts or movements—the first a solid allegro, the second a slow expressive movement, and the last light and lively. How much the form had influence upon the development of the symphony is shown by the fact that several of Haydn’s early symphonies were published under the name of overtures.
Other works even nearer general oblivion than Scarlatti’s operas are his secular cantatas. These are less influenced by the demands of the public, and are in general representative of his ideals. Not only are the recitative and the arias in smooth, flawless style, but the accompaniments, frequently enriched by instrumental parts added to the figured bass, are full of expressive harmony. That they are less remembered than the operas is due to the fact that the form ceased to be cultivated after his death. Handel’s cantatas, like his operas, show the influence of Scarlatti; but Handel’s cantatas, too, are forgotten.
In that he left in his operas a model of perfect form for that style of opera which was popular and successful during the next century, his influence was strongly felt, and he was imitated by countless composers who, unhappily, fell far short of his musicianship. Hasse was actually his pupil, Handel his follower; they alone were worthy of their predecessor. His figure is a striking one in the history of music, both by itself and in relation to the time which cramped and confined it.
His friend Arcangelo Corelli won a lasting fame as the first great violinist and composer of music for the violin. He was born at Fusignano in Italy in February, 1653. During his early life, about which little is known, he appears to have travelled in Germany and France, but before 1685 he had settled in Rome, where, save for a few journeys, he remained till the end of his life in January, 1713. In his lifetime he lacked neither friends nor appreciation. His works achieved immediate popularity in all the countries of Europe. Only in Naples, whither he went in 1708, did he fail to win success. Stories of his meetings with Scarlatti and with Handel show him to have been a man of gentle, kindly nature, unspoiled by the homage done him by royalty and by the first people in Italy. His position in the history of music is of twofold importance; for not only was he a great player who laid a firm foundation for the future development of violin technique, but a composer who summed up in his works what had been done in music for an ensemble of string instruments, and left models of genuine musical worth which were to serve composers of instrumental music until the full development of the symphony.
His works were published in six sets or opera, still justly famous. Sets one and three consist of twelve sonate da chiesa; two and four, of twelve sonate da camera. The fifth contains twelve solo sonatas for violin with bass and figured bass; and the sixth is made up of concerti grossi for three solo instruments, called the concertino, and an accompaniment for two violins, viola, violoncello, and figured bass, called the tutti. The sonate da chiesa and the sonate da camera differ from each other more in name than in content. The sonate da chiesa or church sonatas are, as might be expected, of rather serious character, the chamber sonatas are more frankly rhythmical; and, whereas the movements of the former are without titles and stand as absolute music, those of the latter frequently bear the names of the dance forms from which we have seen the sonata da camera developed. But the two kinds are closely related. The form in which all are cast is fundamentally tripartite, with an introductory movement. The introduction is in a slow, solid style, after the manner of the old pavan. The first movement proper is in the dignified contrapuntal style of the allemande, the second in the style of the sarabande—slow and expressive—and the last is lively and usually in the rhythm of the gigue. They are all written for three instruments, with figured bass for organ, harpsichord or lute. What is most striking about them, apart from their excellent fitness for the instruments for which they were written, is the compactness of form, the neat balance and proportion toward which composers had been toiling during the century. Here at last is mature instrumental music, music that can stand alone, that is firm and articulate. In the church sonatas, it is true, he sometimes chokes the life of the music in the contrapuntal web which was still in his day the high serious ideal of musicians, but the chamber sonatas are astonishingly free from it. Even more striking is the fine mastery of form and style shown in the twelve solo sonatas. These, too, are of the two kinds, church sonatas and chamber sonatas. In them there is no trace of uncertainty nor of insecure experiment. Master of the violin as he was, his treatment of the solo passages and his ornamentation have lost none of their beauty to our ears more than two hundred years after he wrote them. There is no trace of the slow-moving vocal style which had so long hampered his predecessors; all is purely instrumental. In him a great victory was won and a branch of music established for all time. It is noteworthy, too, that he was guided by a good taste which restrained him from writing passages merely for technical display. The feverish desire to astonish audiences, evident in the works of his famous contemporary, Vivaldi, is nowhere evident in his own; and, though they may seem to lack fire on this account, they are the more musical for being the less brilliant. His works still have their place in the repertories of great violinists. What must strike the listener is the just proportion between form and content, giving them a serene dignity; for, as the form is simple, so is the emotion equable and cool, and there is no empty pretentiousness, on the one hand, nor inadequacy of means, on the other.