We have spoken of the da capo form and its unfortunate influence on the monodic style. Strictly speaking, the term da capo was not used until Tenaglia used it in his opera Cleano, in 1661. But the ordinary statement that the da capo was invented by Tenaglia (or by Alessandro Scarlatti, as is more frequently said) is quite misleading. Tenaglia’s da capo aria is of little historical importance. The composer used the term probably not out of a sense of form, but out of pure laziness, preferring not to copy out the opening section a second time. The real da capo, which in its more developed state becomes the sonata form, can be traced back vaguely into primitive music, and exists in miniature perfection in many folk-songs. It becomes a recognized mold for musical composition about the time of Monteverdi. With the later opera and oratorio composers we find it in a debased state, where it exists not as an artistic form but as a mere stenographic convenience.
This debasement is typical of the cheapening of opera which continued pretty steadily up to the time of Gluck. The coloratura aria obscured to all minds the expressive possibilities of the stile rappresentativo, and left to song nothing but the old madrigal tradition fused with certain elements of popular feeling. The many arias, ariettas, canzoni, cantate, and even one-voiced madrigals, which were published by the fashionable composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed little regard for dramatic or precise emotional expression, but continued to sing with the placid lyrical feeling of the great madrigal age. They were only obliged, with the growth of solo singing, to become clearer as to form, more regular in metre and line. For their ability to achieve this they had the popular song almost wholly to thank. Scarlatti’s beautiful canzonetta, O cessate di piagarmi, with its simple guitar accompaniment, might pass for a Neapolitan folk-song of to-day. Yet, on the whole, the solo songs of this period failed to fulfill the high artistic promise of the early seventeenth century.
There was a great quantity of these lyrical pieces, however, and they gained a high popularity. For the most part they remain to-day in their original state, published with the curious notation and the archaic clefs of the time, unknown except to the savants. But certain anthologies have presented a few of the songs to the general public, and these have astonished hearers with their strange placid beauty. In some ways it is the best genius of the time which we find in these songs. In them the lyric impulse of the Italians came out in its purest form. The flashy ideals of the opera house were far removed from their tender strains. Their beauty is like the sunlight of an early spring morning, which illumines all things and exaggerates none. The words, though naïve and somewhat conventional in their continual playing with sentimental love, are not without their grace and beauty. And the music is remarkably varied. Among these songs we find lullabies, fanciful dialogues, dance songs, gentle laments, and delightful musical jokes. There is among them much less of pure convention than in the operas of the period, and at times there is a sensuous or emotional quality which seems to look forward many decades. To the singer these songs are especially valuable, since they represent at its purest the old Italian ideal of bel canto, free from either declamatory or coloratura influence. There can be no better school for the formation of purity of tone and fluency of phrasing than these early canzoni.
Their general character, as contrasted with that of modern music, is strikingly illustrated in Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier. In the first act of this work the court musician sings a few strophes of a song which is supposed to be of the period of the opera, and the composer has deftly imitated the music of the time. The song shows no touch of emotional agitation or harshness. It has no climaxes, scarcely any variations of tonal power. It is merely a lovely melody, sung purely and smoothly, somewhat aimless in melodic formation, in long fluent phrases and gentle melancholy cadences. To hear this canzone, contrasted with the agitated modern music which surrounds it in the opera, will demonstrate most eloquently the spiritual difference between the music of the seventeenth and that of the twentieth century.
The song composers of this period are those whose names we meet in the history of opera and oratorio, for it continued to be the part of every popular composer in the larger forms to maintain and broaden his reputation by means of small and popular pieces. Further, some of the best of the songs are taken from the larger works. Not all the arias were of the coloratura type. Often, especially in the seventeenth century, charming canzoni and ariosos found their way into a long choral or stage work. The harmonic support (in many cases supplied by the modern editors from the original figured bass) is at the beginning simple and somewhat angular. But as the seventeenth century wears on we find Monteverdi’s great discovery of the unprepared dissonance working more freely into the texture of the accompaniment. The lower voices of the accompaniment become more connected and song-like as the rappresentativo feeling gives way to the lyrical. And long before the end of the century the simpler vocal numbers begin to look very much like those of the early Handel operas. With Alessandro Scarlatti, working at the end of the century, the change from the madrigal style of Palestrina’s time is complete. In place of pure, motionless triads and solid, block-like architecture, we have the movement and flow of song in all the parts. Music becomes sharply differentiated in character by the nature of the emotion or feeling it is intended to express. What we miss, judging by modern standards, is a definite rise and fall of the feeling. The phrases seem too long, too little differentiated. There is no definite climax-point in the whole. There is too much linked sweetness. But this is precisely the virtue of the songs. They are the canonization of bel canto. They seek before all else perfect purity of tone and style.
From the Monteverdi operas, much talked-of but little known, we should mention the famous arioso from Arianna, the so-called ‘Ariadne’s Lament.’ In all the Italian music of the time no more poignant emotional utterance can be found. In its freedom and directness, it seems to be a foreshadowing of the opera of the late nineteenth century. But as the line of opera composers continues the pure bel canto ideal gains the upper hand. This we find represented in the one-voiced madrigals of Monteverdi’s contemporaries, as, for example, in the charming Amarilli of Caccini. Cavalli, who continued the operatic tradition of Monteverdi and gave greater freedom to the aria, gives us a type of song which contains many elements of the popular. Carissimi, first writer of oratorios and founder of the great Italian coloratura tradition, writes more brilliantly. One of the best known songs of the time is his Vittoria,[13] which has an irresistible verve and energy. Marco Antonio Cesti, follower and disciple of Carissimi, was by nature more of a lyricist. His style is wonderfully suave and melodious, often appealing in a striking way to the sentiments and the senses. Though he was primarily a religious composer, his many madrigals and secular ariettas bring to us the sunny sensuousness of the south. Many more of the popular composers of the time are all but unknown to us.
Antonio Caldara (1671-1763), a maestro di capella in Mantua and Vienna, wrote secular songs, of which one, Come raggio di sol,[14] has preserved his fame. This, with its fine sostenuto melody over a throbbing accompaniment of repeated chords, carries eloquently a delicate rise and fall of feeling which seems to be of the age of Schubert. A certain G. B. Fasolo, whose dates are not even known, has left us a charming song of sentiment, Cangia, cangia tue voglie, which in its delicacy of workmanship suggests the French songs of the eighteenth century. Giovanni Battista Bassani (1657-1716), maestro di cappella at Bologna and Ferrara, left a number of love-songs of exquisite grace and tenderness, of which the lullaby, Posate, dormite, will serve as an example. Other song-writers, most of them more or less known for their work in the larger forms, were Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Stradella, Francesco P. Sacrati, Paolo Magni, Jacopo Perti, Antonio Lotti, Niccola Jomelli, Domenico Sarri, Raffaello Rontani, Benedetto Marcello, Pier Domenico Paradies, Francesco Gasparini, Andrea Falconiere, Francesco Durante, G. B. Bononcini, Arcangelo del Leuto, and S. de Luca. Some of these men are no more than names in musical history, who are known at all only because some dusty manuscript preserved their fame. For some the primary biographical facts are missing.
Others, of course, were men of wide influence, who have made a place for themselves in musical history. But the excellence of the work of the obscure men reveals to us how widespread was the art of musical composition at the time, how excellent the tradition that was rooted in the whole nation.
Easily the greatest song-writer of the period was the distinguished opera composer, Alessandro Scarlatti. He was a notable innovator in many forms, and this power of origination is shown in the poetic variety he has given to his songs. We have already mentioned his folk-like song, O cessate di piagarmi, which combines with the grace of the dance the sweetness which invites to tears. In a quite different vein nothing could be finer than Su, venite a consiglio, in which the author holds a dialogue with his Fancies—a smoothly-moving allegro of the utmost delicacy. Scarlatti’s emotional style is represented in the arietta, Sento nel core, and as a pupil of the worldly Carissimi he can, of course, show numberless arias in the brilliant bravura style which was so popular at the time.
Pergolesi, the brilliant composer of opera buffa, whose early death robbed music of one of its most promising votaries, is known to singers everywhere by his song Tre giorni. The purest Italian lyricism also flows in his andantino song, Se tu m’ami, se sospiri. Coming down to a later date we find the extremely popular song-writer and composer of opera buffa, Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816), whose arietta, Caro mio ben, is one of the purest examples of cantilena in all music. We may also notice the delicate gypsy song, Chi vuol la Zingarella. In Paesiello we find all the traditional Italian virtues in the highest degree—simplicity, grace, expressiveness—together with a sympathetic understanding of the voice which has rarely been surpassed in Italian song-writing.