The Italian School.—But it is with the Italian schools that we are most concerned. The school at Naples had as its principal master Johannes Tinctoris (1446-1511) a Fleming by birth, a doctor of laws and a mathematician, one of those peculiar combinations seldom noticed after the Paris school, and almost sure to mark the theoretician. His work was principally theoretical and his treatises are of great value. Adrian Willaert (1480-1562), born at Bruges, was a pupil of Jean Mouton, at Paris. After visiting Rome and Ferrara, he settled in Venice and, as organist of St. Mark’s, founded an important school. He introduced the use of large double choruses which caused him to write harmonically rather than polyphonically. This influence caused him to relegate the imitative polyphonic part writing to smaller forms (motets, etc.) and to write plain chord progressions in his larger works; and before long he began to observe and to use the relationship between the Tonic and the Dominant. This tendency and the invention of the Madrigal furnished the basis for a new instrumental school at a later date. His best-known pupil, Cipriano di Rore (1516-1565), was short-lived, and worked in both Venice and Parma. He made some investigation into the use of chromatics, thus showing the growing tendency to abandon the Church modes for the natural scales. Following these Dutch masters came the two Gabrieli’s, who were native Italians. Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586) was a great organist and wrote in the style of Willaert, his famous master. Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1613) was a pupil of his uncle Andrea, and carried the latter’s methods further toward perfection. He also wrote for instruments in conjunction with voices, abandoning to a certain extent the a capella style, and opening that epoch of instrumental music foreshadowed by Willaert in his madrigals. Rome was the centre of church government, of church art and also of church music, and as such, had the largest and greatest of Italian music schools. Jacob Arkadelt (1492-1570), a Netherlander, lived nineteen years in Rome and did most of his work there; he wrote both secular and sacred compositions in the strict polyphonic style, and in that of Willaert. Claude Goudimel (1510-1572), though a prominent master in Paris, worked much in Rome and was the teacher of Palestrina. He set to music in four parts metrical versions of the Psalms, published in 1565. In him is to be observed that clearness of expression and beauty of melodic flow with which Palestrina attained such a high point of expression.
Palestrina.—It remained for his pupil Palestrina, (Giovanni Pierlugi Sante, 1514-1594) an Italian, to reach the highest point of emotional expression and technical freedom; we must, however, rank Orlando di Lasso with him. He carried to the highest fruition the teachings of the Netherlands, tempered by the romantic and melodic tendency of the Italian nature. His writings were so free technically that they have been called simple in form; this they are, but the simplicity is the simplicity of genius. His style is melodic, and has a clearness never attained by any writer before his time, and yet his music is written in the most severe forms. He founded a school of music in Rome which, however, never produced any great masters, for it was the time when the reformation of Opera began and carried the development of music into other channels.
The end of a composition by Palestrina, showing the melody in the upper voice instead of the tenor, as was usually the case in polyphonic compositions, and the use of our modern Minor mode. This composition, at least this last part of it taken alone, might be by a modern writer, so familiar do its progressions sound; indeed, the melody of the first two measures is strikingly similar to a progression used by Beethoven in one of his string quartets. The entire example with words may be seen in Naumann, History of Music, Vol. I, page 510.
Summary.—The Polyphonic Era has many important characteristics and results which make it worth while to sum it up. Its development is largely the history of the development of vocal music to its highest point, and the consequent failure of it to provide accurate expression for human needs. It marks the development of scales, intervals, forms, instruments and emotion. In scales we find the trend to be always toward the natural; in intervals, toward freedom, using only the ear as a criterion; in instruments we note the development of the organ, but the lack of others which would have changed music entirely; in emotion, we note the evolution from crudeness to the highest and most polished forms of impersonal expression. The lack of the Polyphonic school was not in the intrinsic value of the music, nor in any lack of the desire to express emotion; the failure to provide a suitable means of musical expression was due to the idea of church relation to God rather than to the personal individualistic relations established by Luther. After the Reformation music takes up this new idea and immediately a secular music, vocal and instrumental, begins to develop, culminating in an emotional school of a totally different and truer style than the Polyphonic. Polyphonic music expressed the old monkish ideas of religion perfectly, but monophonic music expresses the emotion of the people, a universal emotion. Polyphonic music must always be appreciated for its value, but it must be examined for its fundamental principles and reasons for being, before it can be understood. Then we may know its value as a foundation for our modern music.
- References.
- Grove.—Dictionary of Music and Musicians, article on Schools
- of Composition, section relating to Italy.
- Naumann.—History of Music, Vol. I.
- Langhans.—History of Music.
Questions and Suggestions.
Why did the centre of music shift to Italy?