The most commendable feature of this beginning of opera in France was the attention given to the musical treatment of the vernacular of the country. The principle once recognized, that opera not in the vernacular of the country can never have more than an incidental and adventitious importance, has always been maintained in France. The Académie de Musique, for which the patent was granted to Perrin, and transferred to Lulli, has been maintained with few interruptions ever since, and has been the home of a native French opera, constantly increasing in vigor, originality and interest. Italian opera has been fashionable in Paris for brief periods, and as the amusement of the fashionable world, but the native opera has nearly always held the place of honor in the affections of the people, and the foreign works produced there have been translated into the French language.
SONG.—"ROLAND, COUREZ AUX ARMES."
[From the opera "Roland," 1685. J.B. Lulli.]
II.
In Germany the contrary was the case for more than a century later. The first operatic performance, indeed, was given in the German language. A copy of Peri's "Dafne" was sent to Dresden and as a preparation for performance the text was translated, but it was found impossible to adapt the German words to the Italian recitative, owing to the different structure of the German sentences, bringing the emphasis in totally different places. In this stress the local master, Heinrich Schütz, was called upon to compose new music, which he did, and the work was given in 1627. This beginning of German opera, however, was totally accidental. All that was intended was the repetition of the famous Italian work. Nor did the persons concerned appear to recognize the importance and high significance of the act in which they had co-operated, for no other German operas were given there or elsewhere until much later. Schütz, moreover, did not pursue the career of an operatic composer, but turned his attention mainly to church music and oratorio, in which department he highly distinguished himself, as we will presently have occasion to examine farther.
It was not until the beginning of the century next ensuing, that German opera began to take root and grow. The beginning was made in the free city of Hamburg, which was at that time the richest and most independent city of Germany, and, being remote from the centers of political disturbance, it suffered less from the thirty years' war than most other parts of the country. The prime mover here was Reinhard Keiser (1673-1739), born at Weissenfels, near Leipsic, and educated at the Thomas School. His attention had been directed to dramatic music early, and at the age of nineteen he was commissioned to write a pastoral, "Ismene," for the court of Brunswick. The success of this gained him another libretto, "Basilius," also composed with success. He removed to Hamburg in 1694, and for forty years remained a favorite with the public, composing for that theater no less than 116 operas, of which the first, "Irene," was produced in 1697. In 1700 he opened a series of popular concerts, the prototypes of the star combinations of the present day. In these entertainments the greatest virtuosi were heard, the most popular and best singers, and the newest and best music. His direction of the opera did not begin until 1703; here also he proved himself a master. The place of this composer in the history of art is mainly an adventitious one, depending upon the chronological circumstance of his preceding others in the same field, rather than upon the more important reason of his having set a style, or established an ideal, for later masters. His operas subsided into farce, the serious element being almost wholly lacking, and, according to Riemann, the last of them shows no improvement over the first. Their only merit is that they are not imitations of the Italian nor upon mythological subjects, but from common life. In his later life he devoted himself to the composition of church music, in which department he accomplished notable, if somewhat conventional, success. The Hamburg theater furnished a field for another somewhat famous figure in musical history, that of Johann Mattheson, a singularly versatile and gifted man, a native of that city (1681-1764). After a liberal education, in which his musical taste and talent became distinguished at an early age, he appeared on the stage as singer, and in one of his own operas, after singing his rôle upon the stage, came back into the orchestra in order to conduct from the harpsichord the performance, until his rôle required him again upon the stage. Indeed, it was this eccentricity which occasioned a quarrel between him and Händel, who resented the implication that he himself was incapable of carrying on the performance. Mattheson composed a large number of works, including many church cantatas of the style made more celebrated in the works of Sebastian Bach, later, the intention of these works having been to render the church services more interesting by affording the congregation a practical place in the exercises. Mattheson is best known at the present time by his "Complete Orchestral Director," a compilation of musical knowledge and notions, intended for the instruction of those intending to act in this capacity.
