A short account of the Mysteries or Miracle Plays of the Middle Ages may be assigned to a pupil as special work. The Passion Play, still given today at Oberammergau, Germany, is a relic of the old-time religious plays.
LESSON XIX.
Alessandro Scarlatti and the Neapolitan School.
The Neapolitan School.—What in the Venetian school had been a reaction in favor of form and melody became the established practice of the Neapolitan school. Political disturbances had hindered the spread of the Opera in southern Italy, particularly in Naples, but at the end of the 17th century it assumed the position formerly occupied by Florence and Venice. Before this, however, a strong influence had been exerted by certain composers in Rome, of whom Carissimi was first in importance. Had it not been for the disapproval of the Church, a definite Roman school might have arisen. Such a school would doubtless have been advantageous to the artistic growth of the Opera, since the public taste at Rome in matters of art was more serious in nature than at Naples. In 1697, public performances of opera were forbidden by the ecclesiastical authorities, and thus the seat of further development was transferred to Naples through the removal thither from Rome of Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), the founder of the Neapolitan school. As a lad, he had been a pupil of Carissimi and also probably of Legrenzi, whose influence is clearly seen in his early works.
Alessandro Scarlatti.—Scarlatti invested his operas with a melodic charm and a symmetrical form which thus far had appeared only sporadically. Fascinated by the freedom of the new style, the early composers had neglected the severe study which had been indispensable to mastery in the Contrapuntal School, and had in the main relied on natural gifts. Following the ideal of Peri and his associates, their operas were largely a succession of recitatives which in the end grew monotonous and wearisome; of form, of structure, of purely musical effect they bore but slight traces. Scarlatti saw that the time had come for a change in style—one that should combine the musical interest of the old with the dramatic spirit of the new. The foremost musician of his time, he perceived the weakness of the exclusively declamatory opera—its lack of variety and want of appeal to the public in general.
Alessandro Scarlatti.
His Characteristics.—He was not a reformer. He lacked the strong and rugged dramatic fibre of his predecessor, Monteverde. Scholarship; an inexhaustible fund of melody, pure, polished, refined; a gift of characterization—general, not particular, and always subordinate to a keen sense of beauty—are his distinguishing characteristics. He fell in with the taste of the day and devoted his gifts to the production of works which should satisfy the musician and please the public. The solidity of his early schooling had made him a master of counterpoint, and this he applied in the construction of logically worked-out accompaniments, fuller, richer and more expressive than had been attempted by his less learned contemporaries. In nobility of conception and skill in solving contrapuntal problems he often shows that he is not unworthy the name of the “Italian Bach,” as he is sometimes called. Like Bach, also, he was one of the most prolific composers of all times. He left one hundred and fifteen operas, sixty-six of which are still extant, more than two hundred masses, besides many miscellaneous works for church and concert, both vocal and instrumental.
His Services to the Opera.—To the simple recitative (recitativo secco), invented by Peri, he added the important form known as the recitativo stromentato (accompanied recitative). This was not strictly original with Scarlatti, since it had been introduced by Purcell in his Dido and Eneas ten years before the Italian had first used it in his opera Rosaura (1690). There is no probability, however, that Scarlatti was acquainted with the Englishman’s works; it is a not uncommon matter for two minds to arrive independently at the same result. In the accompanied recitative, the voice, instead of being supported by detached (secco) chords on the harpsichord, sometimes with the addition of a single stringed instrument, as in the simple recitative, was accompanied by the entire orchestra, which had grown to proportions undreamed-of in Peri’s day. Vastly developed by the growth of orchestral resources, it is the distinguishing feature of the modern music drama. As a rule, however, it was but little used in Scarlatti’s operas or in those of his contemporaries. Interest in the drama, as such, was fast sinking to a negligible quantity; audiences assembled to hear their favorite singers, not to follow the course of a more or less involved dramatic action. The simple recitative was, therefore, more frequently employed in order to hurry through the necessary details of the play and reach the moment when the singer could delight by his art in the aria.
Air from Scarlatti’s Opera “Turno Aricino”.