Classicism and the classic period—Political and literary forces—The conflict of styles; the sonata form—The Berlin school; the sons of Bach—The Mannheim reform; the Genesis of the Symphony—Followers of the Mannheim school; rise of the string quartet; Vienna and Salzburg as musical centres.
It is impossible to assign the so-called Classic Movement to a definite period; its roots strike deep and its limits are indefinite. It gathered momentum while the ideas from which it revolted were in their ascendency; its incipient stage was simultaneous with the reign of Italian opera. To define the meaning of classicism is as difficult as it is to fix the date of its beginning. By contrasting, as we usually do, the style of that period with a later one, usually called the Romantic, by comparing the ideal of classicism with the romantic ideal of subjective expression, we get a negative rather than a positive definition; for classicism is generally presumed to be formal, and antagonistic to that free ideal—a supposition which is not altogether exact, for it was just the reform of the classicists that opened the way to the free expressiveness which is characteristic of the ‘Romantics.’ On the other hand, the classic ideal of just proportions, of pure objective beauty, did find expression in the crystallized forms, the clarified technique, and the flexible articulation that superseded the unreasonably ornate, the polyphonically obscure, or the superficial, trite monotony of a great part of pre-classic music.
I
When Gluck’s Alceste first appeared on the boards of the Imperial Opera in 1768, Mozart, the twelve-year-old prodigy, was the pet of Viennese salons; Haydn, with thirty symphonies to his credit, was laying the musical foundations of a German Versailles at Esterhàz; Emanuel Bach, practically at the end of his career, had just left Frederick the Great to become Telemann’s successor at Hamburg; and Stamitz, the great reformer of style and the real father of the modern orchestra, was already in his grave. On the other hand, there were still living men like Hasse and Porpora, whose recollection reached back to the very beginnings of the century. These men belonged to an earlier age, and so did in a sense all the men discussed in the last chapter, with a few obvious exceptions. But their influence extended far into the period which we are about to discuss; their careers are practically contemporaneous with the classic movement. The beginnings of that movement, the first impulses of the essentially new spirit we must seek in the work of men who were, like Pergolesi, the contemporaries of Bach and Handel.
To the reader of history perhaps the most significant outward sign of the impending change is the shifting of musical supremacy away from Italy, which had held unbroken sway since the days of Palestrina. We have seen in the last chapter how with Gluck the operatic centre of gravity was transferred from Naples to Paris. We shall now witness a similar change in the realm of ‘absolute’ music—this time in favor of Germany. The underlying causes of this change are fundamentally the same as those which directed the course of literature and general culture—namely the social and political upheaval that followed the Reformation and ushered in a century of struggle and strife, that kindled the Phœnix of a united and liberated nation, the Germany of to-day. A glance at the political history of the preceding era will help our comprehension of the period with which we have to deal.
The peace of Westphalia (1648) had left the German Empire a dismembered, powerless mass. No less than three hundred ‘independent’ states, ruled over by petty tyrants—princes, dukes, margraves, bishops—each of whom had the right to coin money, raise armies and contract alliances, made up a nation defenseless against foes, weakened by internal and military oppression, steeped in abject misery and moral depravity. For over a hundred years it remained an ‘abortion,’ an ‘irregular body like unto a monster,’ as Puffendorf characterized it. Despite its pretensions it was, as Voltaire said, ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.’ Flood after flood of pillaging soldiery had passed across its fertile acres, spreading ruin and dejection; the ravages of Louis XIV, the invasion of Kara Mustapha, the Spanish, the Swedish, the Polish wars, left the people victims of the selfish ambitions of brutish monarchs, men whose example set a premium upon crime. These noble robbers had made of the map of Europe a crazy-quilt, the only sizable patches of which represented France, Austria, and Russia. Italy, like Germany, was divided, but with this difference—its several portions were actually ruled by the ‘powers’—Austria had Tuscany and Milan, Spain ruled Naples and Sicily, while France owned Sardinia and Savoy. Its superior culture, having thus the benefit of a benevolent paternalism, penetrated to the very hearts of the conquerors, to Vienna, Madrid, and Paris, and spread a thin but glittering coat all over Europe. Germany, on the other hand, was, under the sham of independence, so constantly threatened with annihilation, so impoverished through strife, that the very idea of culture suggested a foreign thing, an exotic within the reach only of the mighty. Friedrich von Logau in the early seventeenth century bewailed the influx of foreign fashions into Germany, while Moscherosch denounced the despisers and traitors of his fatherland; and Lessing, over a century later, was still attacking the predominance of French taste in literature. We must not wonder at this almost total eclipse of native culture. The fact that the racial genius could perpetuate its germ, even across this chasm of desolation, is one of the astounding evidences of its strength.
That germ, to which we owe the preservation of German culture, that thin current which ran all through the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, had two distinct manifestations: the religious idealism of the north, and the optimistic rationalism of the south, which found expression in the writings of Leibnitz. The first of these movements produced in literature the religious lyrics of Protestant hymn writers, in music the cantatas, passions, and oratorios of a Bach and a Handel. Its ultimate expression was the Messias of Klopstock, which in a sense combined the two forms of art; for, as Dr. Kuno Francke[22] says, it is an ‘oratorio’ rather than an epic. As for Leibnitz, according to the same authority, ‘it is hard to overestimate his services to modern culture. He stands midway between Luther and Goethe.... In a time of national degradation and misery his philosophy offered shelter to the higher thought and kept awake the hope of an ultimate resurrection of the German people.’ The one event which signalizes that resurrection more than any is the battle of Rossbach in 1757. This was the shot that reverberated through Europe and summoned all eyes to witness a new spectacle, a prince who declared himself the servant of his people. With Frederick the Great as their hero the Germans of the North could rally to the hope of a fatherland; their poets, tongue-tied for centuries, broke forth in new lyric bursts; the vision of a united, triumphant Germany fired patriots, philosophers, scientists and artists with enthusiasm for a new ideal. This idealism—or sentimentality—stood in sharp contrast to the somewhat cynical rationalism of Rousseau, Diderot, and d’Alembert, but it had an even stronger influence on art.
The immediate effect of this regeneration was an increased output of literature and of music, a greater individuality, or assertiveness, in the native styles, the perfection of its technique, and the crystallization of its forms. In literature it bore its first fruits in the works of Klopstock and Wieland. Already in 1748 Klopstock had ‘sounded that morning call of joyous idealism which was the dominant note of the best in all modern German literature.’ This poet is an important figure to us, for he is of all writers the most admired in the period of musical history with which these chapters deal. His very name brought tears to the eyes of Charlotte in Goethe’s Werther; Leopold Mozart could go no further in his admiration of his son’s genius than to compare him to Klopstock. Wieland, who lived less in the realm of the spiritual but was fired with a greater enthusiasm for humanity, was among the first to give expression to his hope of a united Germany. He was personally acquainted with Mozart and early appreciated his genius.[23]
A transformation was thus wrought in the minds of the people of northern Europe. Much as in the humanitarian revelation of the Italian Renaissance, men became introspective, discovered in the recesses of their souls a new sympathy; men’s hearts became more receptive than they had ever been; and, as, after the strife of centuries, Europe settled down to a placid period of reconstruction, all this found manifold expression in people’s lives and in their art.