Glee.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the madrigal, properly so called, disappeared from amongst the compositions of both English and foreign musicians. The word glee is the Anglo-Saxon “gligg”—music, and has no special reference to joyfulness; in fact, it is as common to find the title “serious glee,” as it is to see “cheerful glee.” A glee is unaccompanied, and is written for at least three solo voices, most frequently men. The chief differences between the glee and the older form of madrigal are the natural results of evolution in harmony, and the wedding of words to expressive music, even in defiance of ancient and mechanical rules. The tonality of the former is modern, the subjects are constantly changing, and are seldom developed, leaving an unsatisfactory feeling of restless abundance, inability to make the best use of the rich resources, and a consequently frequent complete cadence, which in many cases gives a detached, hesitating feeling to the work. Continuity seems to be the best test of great ideas; having something to say, and if worth saying, saying that something thoroughly and logically.
Our best glee writers, living from 1740 to the early part of this century, were Samuel Webbe, Dr. Callcott, his son-in-law, William Horsley, Sir H. R. Bishop, and Sir John Goss. If you go back to the commencement of the glee period, by a careful study of the works of Weelkes and Gibbons, you will find in the latter’s compositions many striking novelties in harmonic progression, and in those of the former equally powerful and novel contrasts in movement and expression, and in the masterpieces of both great independence of thought, in which combined advances we trace the transition from the madrigal to the glee, the latter being essentially English.
Later in the seventeenth century, during and after the Commonwealth, meetings for the singing of glees and catches were generally held in inns and taverns, the musicians being forbidden the theatres, previous to the restoration of King Charles II.
Glees were first published in the collection by John Playford, called the “Musical Companion.” Catches, canons, and rounds took the place of the old glee after this: and even these, according to Dr. Greene, were seldom sung about the middle of the eighteenth century. Amongst excellent writers of catches and canons we find Henry Purcell, Dr. Croft, Dr. Blow, and many others. Shortly after Dr. Greene’s lament—that is, in 1760—a catch club was started for the resuscitation of glee and catch singing, and since then unto our own times clubs and societies have flourished for this purpose, and have encouraged English composition in these forms.
It is thought by some writers that Sir Henry Bishop’s glees are not properly so called, because they have independent accompaniments. Their form, however, is generally that of the best glees.
A canon is a species of imitation, the most strict and exact of all imitations, written according to rule (καυώυ), the idea being that one voice shall start a melody and some other voice follow with the same melody a few beats later on, imitating the first voice note for note, and usually interval for interval, either at the unison, the octave, or some other distance. At one period canons were made musical puzzles, by the composer writing only the first part (called the “dux,” or leader), and then, by some sign over one of the bars, indicating at what point the following voice (or “comes”) should come in, the latter singer having to guess the correct interval at which he was expected to enter. However ingenious such riddles may be, they do not help art.
A catch at first greatly resembled the round, where a complete continuous melody was written out, and when one singer had reached a certain point in this melody, another singer had to begin, and catch up his part in time—the difference between catch and canon being that in the former each part imitates at the same pitch; in the latter the imitation may be at any interval from the original voice. Besides, many canons are connected with sacred words, and introduced into our cathedral services, whereas the catch, in the reign of that dissolute monarch, Charles II., degenerated into an improper play upon words, assisted by music. At a later date, in the eighteenth and at the beginning of this century, this idea of the singers “catching at each other’s words,” so as to alter the meaning of those words, was cleverly used by S. Webbe, Dr. Callcott, and others. A well-known example by the latter will best explain the effect produced:—
“Ah! how, Sophia, could you leave
Your lover, and of hope bereave?”