How Music Developed / A Critical and Explanatory Account of the Growth of Modern Music

by W. J. Henderson

The Simplification of Music

Causes which led composers toward a less complex style—The Renaissance and the Reformation—The Council of Trent—Palestrina and his music—Last days of the Roman and Venetian schools—The English cathedral composers—Characteristics of the period.

IT is hardly necessary to tell the reader that the methods employed in writing church music prior to the dawn of the seventeenth century were not always judicious. The use of secular tunes together with their texts prevailed for more than two centuries, and led to great laxity in the treatment of the liturgy. In the course of time too many composers came to regard the words of the mass as mere pegs to hang tunes on, and the tremendous complexity of the huge polyphonic works was such that the words could not be distinguished. One part would be singing "gloria in excelsis" while another was thundering "et in terra pax," and there was such a jumble of words and music that, while it was all very imposing, it was not comprehensible to the congregation. As long as the congregation knew very little Latin, and less music, this condition did not have serious effects; but the time had now come when the people began to ask questions. It becomes our duty, then, to inquire what influences led to reforms in church music. I shall first enumerate the influences and afterward discuss them in detail.

1. The revival of Greek learning in Italy after a lapse of seven hundred years.
2. The invention of printing.
3. The Renaissance.
4. Popular music.
5. The diffusion of musical learning among the people.
6. The Lutheran choral hymn and congregational singing.

In 1453 the Turks, under Mohammed II., slew Constantine, last of the Roman emperors, and overthrew Rome's eastern empire, whose capital was Constantinople. The Christian scholars of Turkey fled toward the home capital of their fallen empire, and took up their residence in Italy. These scholars were all masters of the Greek tongue, and they awakened a new interest in it and its literature. The field had been untouched for about seven centuries, and the whole treasury of Greek history, oratory, and poetry was reopened to the Italian mind. Its effects were wide and general. One of them was to lead to the study of the New Testament in the original tongue, and this study very speedily demonstrated the unworthiness of the Latin Vulgate used by the Church. Any blow at Latin was a blow at the authority of Rome. The whole Italian system of worship had been built upon the Vulgate, which was in the language authorized in the Roman Church throughout western Europe, and used as the sole means of intercommunication between its branches in various nations. Doctrines and edicts alike proceeded from Rome in the ancient language of the city, and to throw discredit upon the veracity of that tongue in the Vulgate was to subject it to general doubt and suspicion. Such doubt did certainly spread among the people, who began to demand a clearer comprehension of the liturgy. To this end they desired a less complex setting of the musical part of the church service.

This demand was powerfully backed by the introduction of printing in 1444. This introduction resulted in lowering the price of books, and a plentiful supply of cheap reading attracted readers. Hence the mass of the Roman Catholic laity became readers as well as listeners. The whole system of worship had been based on the existence of a non-reading public. But now the age of popular inquiry began, and it became necessary for church music to abandon its complexity and address itself to meet the demands of awakening intelligence.

The dawn of the Renaissance in art was caused by the revival of Greek learning, which reintroduced Greek models. The enormous effect of a new contemplation by the Italian mind of Doric architecture and Greek sculpture can hardly be comprehended by us to whom these things are so familiar. The force and beauty of simplicity were brought home to the people by the very examples which awoke in them a desire for imaginative life and personal expression. The Renaissance led to a clearer, stronger, more eloquent style in all art, and in time it was bound to make itself felt in music. The fact that Leonardo da Vinci worked before Josquin des Prés proves nothing except that music was behind the other arts in the development of her technic, and had to work out her own laws of existence before she could feel the influence of reformatory thought.

The popular music of the time naturally appealed to composers as their feeling for distinctly outlined form increased, and this feeling was directly influenced by the artistic teachings of the Renaissance. As art remodelled itself on Greek patterns, and architecture found in the Doric lines a relief to the endless details of the Gothic, so music inclined toward the simple contours of the song-forms. The elementary attraction of pure rhythm grew in potency as composers realized more clearly that it was one of the fundamental components of music; and with a recognition of this fact came that of the deeper significance of chord harmony. The folk-song itself had always clung to the major and minor scales, and had not often employed the purely ecclesiastical modes. The mode known as the Ionic—the old Greek Lydian mode, condemned by the ancients as lascivious—was nothing more nor less than our major scale of G, and as such the church composers knew it. Its possibilities made themselves more and more clear as the artistic musicians of the day studied the popular tunes, and so in time it came to its true seat of honor in music.

A knowledge of music had begun to spread among the people. Not only did the constant hearing of the noble masterpieces of their time tend to cultivate their taste, but they began to practise music themselves. Conservatories had been founded in Venice, Rome, and other cities, and as far back as Willaert's day it was fashionable for young ladies of good family to learn to play the monochord, one of the precursors of the piano. The music written for the instrument was precisely like that for the organ, polyphonic in style and learned in treatment. The study of such music was naturally very difficult for beginners, and it became necessary to supply them with something simpler.

The music of the Roman Church was brought into strong contrast with that employed by Luther in his work of the Reformation. Luther insisted on the exercise of individuality in worship. He held, contrary to the Church, that every man had a right to study the Bible for himself. He even gave communion to the laity. In direct line with such work was his revival of congregational singing, which had been generally unpractised since the days of Ambrose. The first Lutheran hymn-book was published in 1524. Luther employed many extant folk songs and caused new tunes like them to be written. He is said to have written "A stronghold sure." These Lutheran hymns were broad and simple chorals, like those of the Protestant Church of today. The spread of their use among the Protestant congregations of the time was an attraction toward that form of worship which the authorities of the Roman Church could not ignore, and hence the Catholic composers moved toward a simpler style.