Man & His Music : the Story of Musical Experience in the West [Revised] 9780712620017, 071262001X

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MAN AND HIS MUSIC THE STORY OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE WEST

ALEC HARMAN with Anthony Milner WILFRID MELLERS

BARRiE &. JENKINS LONDON

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1188 First published in 4 parts in 1957-9 by Barrie & RockliiTLtd First published in a revised, single-volume edition in 1962 by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd 289 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2QA Reprinted in 1964, 1968, 1971, 1977, 1980; new edition 1988 Copyright © Alec Harman, Wilfrid Meilers and Anthony Milner 1962, 1988 A// rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Harman, Alec, rgiy — Man and his music: the story of musical experience in the West. - Rev. ed. 1. Western music, to 1987 I. Title II. Milner, Anthony HI. Meilers, Wilfrid 780 ' .9 ISBN o 7126 2001 X Printed and bound in Great Britain by Anchor Brendon Ltd, Tiptree, Essex

CONTENTS

Preface to parts I and II

xi PART I

MEDIAEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE MUSIC f up to c. 1525) Music in the early Church: Christian chant Music in the early Church: the beginnings of part music Music outside the Church: solo song and dance music The all-embracing style of the thirteenth century The new art Music in the early Renaissance

i 40 74 95 121 185

PART II

LATE RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE MUSIC ( c. 1525-c. 1750) The late Renaissance: secular music The late Renaissance: sacred music—instrumental music The Baroque: music for the stage: I The Baroque: music for the stage: II The Baroque: music in church, hall and home The Baroque: instrumental music

239 297 366 438 498 531

Preface to parts III and IV

571 PART III

THE SONATA PRINCIPLE (fromc. 1750) , I. TRADITION AND REVOLUTION

The birth of sonata Haydn Mozart: music for home and church V

•

¿81 594 612

vi 4 5 6

Contents Beethoven Schubert Bruckner, Brahms and Mahler

631 659 683

n. OPERA, RITUAL, AND MYTH

1 2

3 4

The birth of a new kind of opera Wagner Berlioz Verdi and nineteenth-century Italian opera

711 743 759 782

PART IV

ROMANTICISM AND THE 20TH CENTURY (from c. 1800) I. INTROSPECTION AND NATIONALISM

1 2 3 4 5

Chopin, Schumann, and Mendelssohn Liszt and romantic virtuosity The Russian nationalists The nationalists of Central Europe The decline of nationalism

805 835 851' 876 893

II. INTROSPECTION AND ISOLATION

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Two song-writers Franck and his disciples: with a note on Skryabin Delius, Sibelius, and nature Debussy and Ravel Two traditionalists: Fauré and Strauss Elgar and Vaughan Williams Schoenberg and Hindemith Stravinsky and Bartok Europe today Music in a new-found land Afterword, 1988

901 913 923 935 952 966 982 1002 1020 1048 1069

APPENDIXES

Comparative chronology Recommended books Selected music Discography Index of music examples General index

1098 1131 1136 1137 1197 1207

ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES Plate

Facing page

Twelfth-century instruments University Library, Glasgow Neumes From A History of Music in Pictures, edited by G. Kinsky, published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. {London) and E. P. Dutton {Mew York)

i6

III

Square flotation

17

rv

Romanesque architecture: the nave, Durham Cathedral F. H. Crossly Giothic architecture: the nave, LincolnCathedral National Buildings Record Shawm Cornett University Library, Cambridge Transverse flute and harp From A History of Music in Pictures, edited by G. Kinsky, published by J, M. Dent {London) and E. P. Dutton {Mew York) Angels playing cometts, psaltery, horn, vièle Alinari

I

n

V VI VII

vra

IX

17

48 48 4g 4g

4g

144

X

Positive organ

144

XI

Portative organ with button and pin operation Musée Royal, Brussels Portative oi^an with keyboard Trinity College, Cambridge The chanson Le grcmt desir by Compère The superius part of the chanson Ma Fille ina mere byjanequin vii

145

xn xm XIV

145 176 176

viii

Illustrations

XV

Dufay and Binchois Bibliothèque Rationale

177

XVI

Josquin des Prez

177

xvn

Ockeghem with members of Charles VII’s Royal Chapel choir From the Oxford Companion to Music, gth edition

177

xvm XIX

XX XXI

A scene from Circe, ou le ballet comique de la Royne (1581) Awake, sweet love, from Dowland’s First Booke of Songes (1597) (British Museum)

A design by Inigo Jones for a scene in a masque (Chatsworth Trustees)

240 241

272

The beginning of the ‘Creed’ in Marbeck’s Booke of Common Praier noted (1550) (British Museum)

273 273

XXII

PsuimlSidCXliromTheWhole Booke ofPsalmes(i^^2) (British Museum)

xxin

Virginal by Andreas Ruckers (1610). (Galpin Collection) (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

432

Pavane and Galliard, The Earle ofSalisbury, Byrd from ParMenia (1611) (British Museum)

432

XXIV

by

XXV

‘Trio des Parques’ from Rameau’s Hippolyte(II.5) (From the first edition, British Museum)

XXVI

The interior of the wooden theatrespeciallycon structed in Vienna for the performance of Cesti’s II Pomo d’oro by the greatest theatrical architect and designer of his day, Lodovico Bumacini (1636-1707)

464

Two scenes from Cesti’s II pomo d’oro designed by L. Bumacini (British Museum)

465

XXVII

& xxvin XXIX

The Mozart Family Original in the Mozart Museum, Salzburg

433

592

î

Illustrations

IX

The Castle at Eszterháza Reproduced from The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn by H. C. Robbins London, published by Barrie & Rockliff and Universal Edition

593

XXXI

Symphony No. 94 by Haydn Reproduced from The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn by H. C. Robbins London, published by Barrie & Rockliff and Universal Edition

624

XXXII

Page from a Beethoven Sketchbook Reproduced by permission of the British Museum

625

XXXIII

The Schubertiad Reproduced from Schubert: Documentary Bio graphy, by Otto Deutsch, published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

720

XXXIV

Symphony No. 9 by Mahler Universal Edition

721

XXXV

Scene from Wagner’s Flying-Dutchman Victoria and Albert Museum {Enthoven Collection)

752

XXXVI

‘Un Concert à Mitraille’ Reproduced from Liszt, by Sacheverell Sitwell, pub lished by Faber & Faber

753

XXXVII

An afternoon at Liszt’s From Music in the Romantic Era, by Alfred Einstein, published by W. W. Norton

816

Chopin

817

XXXVIII

From Lelia, by André Maurois, published by Jonathan Cape XXXIX

Clara Wieck Rischgitz

848

XL

Gilles by Watteau Musée du Louvre

849

XLI

Hugo Wolf From Hugo Wolf, by Frank Walker, published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

944

XLn

Décor of The, Sleeping Princess From Six Great Russian Composers, by Donald Brook, published by Rockliff

945

Illustrations

X XLiii

Debussy

976

From the drawing by Jean Dulac formerly in the possession of Mrs. E. Calvocoressi XLiv

Stravinsky by Picasso From Stravinsky in the Theatre, published by

976

Peter Owen XLv

Page of Webern autograph score Universal Edition

977

IN THE TEXT 1

Modal notation

2

Petronian notation

115

65

3

French Ars Nova notation

143

4

Italian Ars Nova‘mixed’notation

156

5

The beginning of the aria ‘Di gli ch’io son fedele’ from Cleoßde (1731) by Hasse, as sung at the first performance by the castrato Porporino (Antonio liberti) (1697— 1783), a pupil of Porpora; it is in Frederick the Great’s own hand 497

6

‘La Garnier’ from Pièces de Clavecin, Book I, ‘Second Ordre’ (1713) by François Couperin ‘Le Grand’ (British Museum) 560

Plates I and IX arefrom A History of Music in Pictures, edited by G. Kinsky, J. M. Dent (London) and E. P. Dutton (New York).

PREFACE TO PARTS I AND II In the Preface to Parts III and IV of this historyWilfrid Meilers remarks that a music historian should approach his task with both ‘circumspection and humility’. He is undoubtedly right, for when one considers what is involved in such an undertaking one should be extremely chary of adding to what has already been achieved in this sphere; indeed, it is doubtful whether the attempt should ever be made unless one is convinced that the kind of history one has in mind is sufficiently distinctive to justify the writing of yet another. In this series the authors have been guided by three chief aims, and we believe that it is in the combination of these aims that the distinctiveness of this particular history lies. To begin with, we have tried to convey something of the feelings aroused in us by the music we write ^bout and to give as many aesthetic judgments on individual works and composers as is possible in a work of this size and scope, for although we realize that such feelings and judgments are purely personal and that therefore it is hardly likely that everyone will agree with them, we believe that a history which does not seek to arouse a cridcal enthusiasm for each and every period and in which there are few or no aesthetic judgments to g;uide the taste of those less familiar with the music in quesdon is not fulfilling one of its funcdons. Our second aim has been to write a history that would be of USÇ in both schools and universities, and while conscious that there is a marked difference in ability and attainment between the English fifth-former and the third-year university student, and that hence this history will provide more for the one and less for the other than is needed, we hope that both will find onjething ofvalue, even though what is found may only have an indirect bearing on their examinations. But a history of music should do more than stimulate enthusiasm, or assess greatness, or pass aesthedc judgments; it should do more than present facts and reasonable deductions, or include well-chosen examples and quotations, or give accurate analyses of styles and techniques, important as all these are; it should also (to quote The Mew Oxford History of XI

xii

Preface

Music) ‘present music not as an isolated phenomenon or the work of a few outstanding composers, but as an art developing in constant association with every form of human culture and activity’. This has been our third aim, and in pursuing it we have tried, by giving what we hope is sufficient relevant information of a general nature, to set the stage, as it were, for each successive scene and (to continue the analogy) by out lining the principal characters involved (religion, painting, literature, etc.), to show in what ways and to what extent they influenced or were influenced by music. This attempt to present music as an integral part of western civilization is essential, we believe, because all creative artists are influenced by the spiritual and intellectual environment in which they live, and so it follows that the more we know about a particular period the more we can enter into the creative minds of that period and hence appreciate more fully their aims and achievements. This may appear, and indeed is, obvious enough, but it is all too often forgotten, because each of us can enjoy and even be profoundly moved by a work of art knowing little or nothing about its creator or general back ground. Nevertheless, it remains true that every creative artist gains in significance when his work is related to the conditions in which it was created, whether he be someone whose name is a household word, like Mozart, or a comparatively obscure mediaeval composer, like Perotin. Thus, knowing something of the rationalism, the sophisticated sentimentality, the polished elegance of society in the latter half of the eighteenth century, of the delicate sensuousness and exquisite refinement of Watteau’s and Boucher’s paintings, we marvel more than if we knew nothing of all this, not only at the utter perfection of Mozart’s style and sense of structure but also at the under currents of emotion that pervade his work and which at times amount almost to romantic passion. Compared to Mozart, Perotin gains in significance to a much greater extent when we know something about his background because the time at which he lived and the style in which he wrote have far fewer points of contact for us today than is the case with the eighteenth century. At first hearing, his music may well sound bare, monotonous, even meaningless, but when it is realized that the systematization and reiteration of rhythmic patterns, which are the main features of Perotin’s

style, not only represented a new development in music, but also reflected, as did the solutions to the structural problems of contemporary Gothic architecture, the intellectual awakening of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an awakening that was stimulated by the discovery, through Arab philosophers, of the works of Aristotle, and which led men like Peter Abelard and St. Thomas Aquinas to believe and teach that faith can only be wholly assured when founded on reason; when it is further realized that, apart from the octave, the fourth and fifth were the basic intervals because they were as satisfyingly sonorous to ears accustomed to unison singing and playing as thirds and sixths are to us; and, lastly, that the music was intended to be performed as an act of devotion in a cathedral rather than listened to as an aesthetic experience in a concert hall—then the significance of the man becomes apparent and, after adjusting our ears and minds in the light of what we have learnt, we can begin to understand, assess, and (because he was in fact a fine composer) enjoy his musicj with its marked contrast between the lively, bouncy rhythmic figures in one part and the sustained or slower-moving notes in another. But writing alone cannot give an adequate account of any period, especially with regard to the fine arts, and if there had been no considerations as to cost this history would have included many more reproductions, some of them coloured, of buildings, paintings, sculpture, etc. Nevertheless, we hope that all those who read it will want to discover more of the achieve ments in other fields and that some will wish to pursue in greater detail the development of the music itself. It is obvious, however, that the greatest value from knowing something about the background of a particular art can only be obtained if one has experienced or has the opportunity of experiencing that art, and because much of the music written in the Middle Ages is so different from that which we normally hear and, moreover, is performed so infrequently I have included, in the first five chapters of Part I, a fair number of complete compositions, together with suggestions as to performance and with the original words freely translated. Further examples for these chapters, for Chapter 6, and for the chapters in Part II can be found in the list of Selected Music at the end of the book, where may also be found a list of Recommended Books and a Discography, this last compiled by

XIV

Prefaci

Nicholas Cohu, to whom I am most grateful. Because it is seldom possible to be dogmatic about what was typical of England rather than, say, Scotland, especially in the Middle Ages, I have in most cases used the term ‘British’ when referring to the music of this Island in Part I. Admittedly the bulk of what has survived was written down, if not actually composed, by Englishmen, but this does not necessarily mean that the style or type of composition was peculiar to England; it must be remembered that the ability to write music was largely restricted to centres of learning such as monasteries and, later, universities and the Chapel Royal, of which centres there were, even proportionally, many more in England than in Scotland or Wales (St. Andrews’, the oldest university after Oxford and Cambridge, did not open until 1412). Furthermore, in Scotland, where there was a flourishing musical tradition second only to that of England, the destruction of music, particularly of partmusic, during the early years of the Reformation was far greater than elsewhere in Britain. Part II is deliberately less well balanced than Part I, the reason being that late Renaissance music and baroque opera (which together comprise nearly four-fifths of Part II) have been performed and written about less often than have baroque instrumental and vocal music. This is particularly true of baroque opera, and I wish that I could have included at least one complete aria from A. Scarlatti’s and Hasse’s later works, as well as a complete chorus and dance by Rameau. The reader must therefore be referred to the list of Selected Music and to the Discography. For Parts I and II, the main difference between this and previous editions is that the dates of composers have all been checked with the new Grove’s Dictionary; the lists of Recom mended Books and Selected Music and the Discography are also revised and updated. I wish to express my thanks to the publishers for making this improvement possible by their decision to produce this new edition. Bath, ig88

Al e c Ha r m a n

PART I MEDIAEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE MUSIC (up toe. 1525) bj ALEC HARMAN

I

MUSIC IN THE EARLY CHURCH: CHRISTIAN CHANT ]\^osT people would agree that it is perfectly natural and proper for music to have a place in Christian worship. Natural because music and religion have been associated from the earliest times, and proper because the Bible sanctions its use. But there would be and always has been far less general agreement as to the kind of music that is suitable in religious services. If the suggestion were made that hymn texts should be adapted to popular ‘hits’ and accompanied by a cinema organ, very few people would tolerate the idea for one moment. Yet this suggestion gives us some idea of the problem facing the early Christian leaders or Church Fathers, as they are usually called, for although the problem was not so serious during the first two centuries when persecution was severe and the number of Christians small, and music not only sustained the converted but was an aid to conversion, it became acute in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries when the Church expanded rapidly, especially after its official recognition in 313, and the host of new converts brought with them their own cultural and philosophical traditions. Then it was that the Church Fathers had not only to combat the infiltration of pagan ideas, but also to decide whether music; with its strong worldly associations, was in any way suited to take part in Christian worship. To understand their difficulties fully we must remember that music was an essential part of Greek and Roman entertainment, for from as early as the sixth century b .c . there had been an instrumental ‘class’ in the great Greek contests (of which the Olympic Games is now the most famous), and by the early centuries a .d . the Romans, who adopted most of the Greek forms of entertainment, but in a coarser and more spectacular manner, had caused music to be largely associated with debauchery and immorality of all kinds. Small wonder, then, that the Church authorities were in a quandary and felt it I

2

Mediaeval afid Early Renaissance Music

imperative to draw the line somewhere, but exactly where was another problem. Some insisted that all instruments should be excluded from the service, others admitted only those mentioned in the Bible, while still others allowed any instrument, regarding each symbolically—the trumpfet, for instance, being the power of God’s message, the drum the conquering of sin, the cymbals the soul thirsting for Christ, etc. The first of these three attitudes eventually won the day, with the result that the music composed for the Church during the first thousand years or so was sung unaccompanied. As regards singing, however, practically all the Church Fathers decided that it was a good thing; indeed, they would have flouted all natural instincts had they decided otherwise, but, like the old Greek philoso phers, whose influence on them was considerable, they realized that music can either ennoble or debase man’s moraJ fibre and that therefore all church music must be associated with devout words—another reason for the rejection of instruments. In the words of St. Basil [c. 330-387], “God blended the delight of melody with doctrines in order that through the pleasantness and softness of the sound we might unawares receive what was useful in words. . . . For this purpose these harmonious melodies of the Psalms have been designed for us.”* What were these harmonious melodies? Unfortunately we do not know, for they were not written down in any shape or form until about the sixth century, and not until the middle of the eleventh century was a system of musical notation invented —that is, a system of symbols which show the exact pitch of the notes, but not necessarily their values. Hence the original melodies, passed down orally from generation to generation, must have changed a great deal both from careless alteration and deliberate variation, particularly during the first four or five hundred years, before the Church began to orgahize her repertoire (see p. 8). Although we know very little of the actual music of the early Church, we do know that psalm-singing was the core of its services, the core from which radiated most of the songs now usually called plainsong. This name comes from the Latin Cantus planus and was used by some thirteenth-century theorists in order to distinguish between the ‘plain’ notes of these • Quoted from O. Strunk, Sotace Readings in Musk History, p. 65.

Christian Chant

3 melodies, which had no definite values, and ‘musica mensurata’, in which the notes were ‘measured’, i.e. had exact values. A better name, however, and the one we shall use, is Christian chant, for plainsong can be and is used to describe any un-. measured music that consists of only one melodic line. We also know that there were three main types of melody which are usually called syllabic, group, and melismatic or florid. These are distinguished by their underlay—that is, by the way the syllables of the text are fitted to the notes of the melody. Thus the syllabic type has mainly one note to each syllable. (An accented syllable here and elsewhere is shown by an acute accent. The notes printed small are sung lightly. Ex. i): Ex. I. Hymn Ut queant loxis (jW venc) Mor« fl-brit Ml - ro

poMu.tl

Ic-bi-i

- nm

tu>6 - run.

r« - a-fun, Souc - tc

The group type has from two to four notes to most syllables (Ex. 2):

So d

-

dui,

SSr

-

ctui, SSn ■ clui Dd-nl-niit D«-ut—Sa-bo-etli.

While in the melismatic type some syllables are sung to a great many notes (Ex. 3): E*.3. From MottHI-Votieoii Gradual (Kyrit DtusstmpHerne)

Kf

-

ri

- a

a-li-l-ion.

Al/eluio (tu*4 at Hon ea Eailtr Sunday)

* See Plate III. I

H M.e.i4o)

4

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

These three types, either separately or mixed, can be applied to any song that has ever been composed, and in general it is true to say that the first type is used when the text is regarded as more important than the music, while the third type shows the opposite point of view; in fact the ‘alleluias’, with their long flourishes on a single syllable, were really a contradiction of the official teaching that music was only permissible if directly associated with holy words, and were the first examples in Christian chant of the delight in singing for its own sake; the Church Fathers, however, duly pointed out that such singing praised God in a way no words could possibly express! Melismatic chant, however, was not the earliest type, being preceded by syllabic chant, and this provides one of the many examples of the so-called ‘wave-theory’ of art—the crests representing (in this case) a high degree of conscious elaboration and the troughs simplicity, either natural when the artist is unsure of or experimenting with his medium, or deliberate when he is pruning excessive ornamentation or trying to achieve a balance of expression. But the earliest Christian chants were simple not only because of this artistic wave progression, but also because the service itself had to be both simple and secret, owing to the ever-present threat of persecution which, under the Emperors Nero [37-68], Domitian [reigned 81-96], and Diocletian [reigned 283-305], was particularly severe. The central act of the service or liturgy was the Eucharist (Greek for ‘thanksgiving’) which, like the Holy Communion in the Church of England, is based on the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. At first this was held on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but was later transferred to Sunday morning after ‘vigils’ or ‘watches’ had been held during the previous night. Although the Eucharist never lost its central position and importance, local variations of the service sprang up all over Christendom, both in ceremonial and musical performance, and it was not until the fourth century that any successful attempts at unification could be made. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the division of the Roman Empire into eastern and western empires in 314 fostered existing liturgical differ ences between the eastern and western Churches and led to the formation of five main groups: the Syrian, Byzantine, and the east, where Greek remained the official language, and in the west the Roman (with its offshoot, the

Christian Chant

5 Ambrosian) and Gallican (with its offshoot, the Mozarabic), in which Latin replaced Greek in the liturgy. This split en couraged a greater degree of unity within each group, but it is with the western groups only that we shall be concerned from now on. Secondly, the official toleration of Christianity in 313 by Constantine the Great [reigned 306-337] made public worship possible, and by thus openly exposing local variations stressed the need for greater uniformity. It also made possible the building of churches and encouraged elaboration of the service through the introduction of greater pomp and cere monial, in the performance of which music took an active part, and the next five hundred years saw both a rapid development in the organization of the liturgy and the creation of most of the melodies we now call Christian chant. We do not know who composed these melodies, but some of them were certainly adapted from Greek and Jewish sources and possibly from folk-song also. Which had the greater influence, Greek or Jewish music, was a bone of contention until recently, but although Greek was the accepted language in most of the churches during the early years—hence the words ‘eucharist’ and ‘kyrie eleison’ (‘Lord have mercy’ —originally a hymn to the Greek sun-god!), which were retained even after the Roman Church had changed over to Latin—and although the Church Fathers were greatly influenced by Greek thought, it now seems certain that Christian chant owes more to the Jewish synagogue than to the Greek temple. For one thing, the chant melodies as they have come down to us are much more closely allied to Jewish than to Greek music, and as the texts are nearly all taken from the psalms (which are of course Jewish, not Christian) it seems very probable that many of the psalm melodies themselves were adapted from those used in the synagogue. In fact, it has been shown that many such tunes simg to-day by Jewish communities who have been completely isolated since preChristian times are strikingly similar to those of the Christian Church. Furthermore, the diflferent ways of singing the psalms were the same in both church and synagogue; these are now called direct, -csponsorial, and antiphonal psalmody. Direct psalmody means that part or the whole of a psalm is sung in syllabic style without any additional matter, the verses being alternately performed by either a soloist (cantor) and chorus.

6

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

or else a divided chorus (men versus women and children in the early days). In responsorial psalmody the entire psalm was originally sung also in syllabic style by the cantor, while the congregation ‘responded’ after each verse with a single word like ‘Alleluia’, or ‘Amen’, or even a short phrase; later the music became more ornate and only a few verses were sung, while the ‘response’ grew longer and often preceded the psalm as well as being sung between each verse and at the end. Antiphonal psalmody developed from direct psalmody, the distinction lying in the introduction of a short sentence which was sung before the psalm by the entire congregation, this new melody and text being known as the ‘antiphon’. At important feasts this was sung both before and after the psalm and in soine cases the psalm was omitted, the antiphon thus becoming an independent chant. So far we have only dealt with chants based on the psalms, which are poetic in feeling but written in what we can call lyrical prose. The pure prose parts of the Bible, however, were recited by the priest in a manner borrowed from the synagogue and called ‘cantillation’. This simply means chanting on a monotone or one note, but complete ‘monotony’ is avoided by the introduction of a few ascending or descending notes (‘inflections’) at the beginning, middle, or end of the phrase. Another important type of chant was the hymn, also ofJewish origin but influenced to some extent by Greek models. The first Christian hymns were written (in Greek) for the eastern churches, where they became extremely popular, and were eventually introduced into France by St. Hilary of Poitiers [d. c. 367]. St. Hilary’s hymns were in Latin, and as all but one are lost, his younger contemporary, St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan [339-97], is usually regarded as the father of western Christian hymnody. The Ambrosian hymn texts differed from those of all other chants in that they were not taken direct from the Bible, but are poetic paraphrases of Biblical passages written in a regular metrical pattern of short-long syllables, like Greek verse (see p. 29). They were meant for congrega tional singing and in fact were expressly written by St. Ambrose in order to strengthen the morale of his flock, who were being divided by an heretical sect. The music therefore, though it has not survived, must Lave been simple, with mainly one syllable to a note. This use of the hymn—which can be described as

Christian Chant

y

political in the sense that it was used to attack heresies and encourage orthodoxy—was one which lasted right through the early history of the Church; indeed, it was still a powerful weapon in the hands of Luther and others during the Reforma tion in the sixteenth century. Only four definitely authentic hymns by St. Ambrose have come down to us, of which three have been accorded places in the Roman Liturgy, but a great many more were written in imitation, and these are all called Ambrosian hymns, while the other chant melodies composed for and still used in Milan are called Ambrosian or Milanese chant. As regards the chants of the other two western groups (excluding the Roman), the Gallican flourished (as its Latin name, Gallicus, implies) in Gaul, but its influence extended as far as Ireland, whose missionaries brought it to Britain in the late fifth century, where it was sung until Roman chant was introduced in 596 by St. Augustine [d. c. 604]. In Gaul itself, however, Gallican chant continued in use until it was banned by the Emperor Charlemagne [742-814], who decreed that it should be replaced by Roman chant. Mozarabic chant was sung in Spain, where, during the Moorish conquest from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, Christians were called ‘Mozarabs’ or ‘would-be Arabs’. It had a longer life than Gallican chant, being farther from the authority of Rome, and partly as a result of this its liturgical practices often differed considerably (they actually danced during divine service in Toledo!); not until the eleventh century was it officially forbidden. Thus the chants of these three Christian provinces, northern Italy (Milan), Gaul, and Spain were ultimately replaced by that of Rome, and although this city was the obvious centre for western Christianity there is no reason to suppose that its chant, before the sixth century at any rate, was in any way superior to the others—^in fact, in some ways Rome was conservative in its attitude to new ideas (a role she con tinued to play in later centuries) and, for example, antiphonal psalmody as well as hymn-singing were only admitted some time after they had become well established in Milan. The reason why Roman chant eventually supplanted the other western chants was due to the organizing zeal of a number of Popes from Damasus I [366-84]—the patron of St. Jerome [c. 340-420], who was the translator of the official Latin Bible, the Vulgate—to Gregory Hi [d. 741], and to a lesser

8

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

extent the Emperor Charlemagne. The most ardent organizer, however, was Gregory I [c. 540-604]. Elected Pope in 590, he intensified the efforts to establish a uniform liturgy and chant which would serve the whole of western Christendom, and by his death he had largely succeeded, for the classification and repertoire of Gregorian chant, as it was called in honour of him, have remained largely unchanged to this day. At present Gregorian chant consists of nearly 3,000 melodies, the great majority of which were selected and ‘edited’ under Gregory’s authority and which the Church regarded and still regards as the only official ones. But the creative spark takes little account of officialdom, and although Gregory’s reforms may have curbed they did not kill the urge of later composers to write new chants or embellish old ones, and while from the fifth century to thp eighth may be called the Golden Age of Gregorian chant, there was also a Silver Age from the ninth to the twelfth centuries in which a whole host of new melodies and texts were composed. This renewed creative impulse in the realm of Christian chant was no isolated event, but simply the result of a general flowering of the human mind and spirit that affected all human activity, and which manifested itself in the four Crusades, ending with the capture of Constantinople in 1204, the struggles for and against authority (Magna Carta, 1215), the final separation between the eastern and western Churches (1054)9 the Norman Conquest ofEngland (1066), the organizing of communities into towns, the formation of guilds of craftsmen, the intensive study of classical literature and philosophy, the establishing of universities (Paris and Bologna, c. 1140; Oxford, early thirteenth century), the increasing use of the various vernaculars (e.g. Old English, Proven5al, etc.), the beginnings of western science (a school of medicine was founded at Salerno, near Naples, c. 1000), the magnificent achievements of the Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles, the birth of European drama, the first blossoming of secular music (troubadours and trouveres), the rise of part-music, and so on. The culmination of this renaissance came in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but this takes us out of the realm of Gregorian chant and into the new and rapidly expanding territory of polyphony (Greek, poly =m3.ny, phonos—voice), and so discussion of it must wait until Chapter 2.

Christian Chant

9 In all these different branches of human learning and action the Church was the dominating influence; it could make or mar a man’s career and help or hinder the discovery of new knowledge; indeed, as a body the Church was an educational institution, research station, and library, and her buildings were places of worship, theatres, and opera houses. This may appear to be a sweeping claim, but we shall try to justify it by beginning at the heart of the Christian religion and then, so* to speak, work outwards. By the middle of the eleventh century the Eucharist had become enshrined in an elaborate ceremonial both spoken and sung which was eventually called the Mass and which has remained unchanged to the present day in the Roman Church. The various items of the Mass are divided up into two cate gories: the Proper, in which the texts of the items vary according to the day on which the Mass is celebrated; and the Ordinary, in which the texts are invariable, although they are not all sung at every celebration, the Gloria, for example, being omitted during Lent, and the Credo being only sung on Sundays and the more important feast days. The order and names of the sung items can best be shown as follows: PROPER

Introit Gradual Tract or Alleluia Offertory

Communion

ORDINARY

Kjrie eleison (‘Lord have mercy’) Gloria in excelsis Deo (‘Glory to God in the highest’) Credo in mum Deum (‘I believe in one God’) Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus (‘Holy, holy, holy’) Agnus Dei (‘Lamb of God’) Ite missa est (‘Go, the congregation is dismissed’) or Benedicamus Domino (‘Let us praise the Lord’)

The Proper of the Mass is the oldest part, and all the items are taken from or were originally connected with the psalms;

10

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

they thus represent the three types of psalmody mentioned earlier, the Tract being an example of direct psalmody, the Gradual and Alleluia of responsorial psalmody, and the re mainder of antiphonal psalmody, except that in the Offertory and Communion the psalm verse has been dispensed with and therefore only the antiphon is sung, (In the Mass for the Dead or Requiem Mass however, the psalm verse is retained in the Offertory and Communion.) The items of the Ordinary were added to the service at various times from the sixth to the eleventh centuries, and except for the Ite missa est, which was nearly always sung to its original chants, have been set to music literally thousands of times from the thirteenth century onwards, for the simple reason that as the words never changed, compo sers were encouraged to write new settings which would be performed far more often than, say, a setting of an Introit text which was only sung once a year in memory of a particular saint; in fact, when we speak of a Mass by So-and-so we mean a composition based on the five main items of the Ordinary. In addition to the Mass, short services called the Canonical Hours or Offices took place at various times of the day and night. These developed from the vigils held before the celebra tion of the Eucharist (see p. 4), and with the addition of other vigils adapted from the eastern churches became a complete and independent system by the fifth century, consisting of Nocturns, later called Matins (the original vigils), at midnight. Lauds at daybreak. Prime at 6 a.m., Terce at 9 a.m., Sext at midday. None between 2 and 3 p.m.. Vespers at about 6 p.m., and Compline at 7 p.m., at each of which psalms, antiphons, and hymns were sung. Nowadays the Offices are rarely observed in their entirety except in monastic communities, and it was in such communities that they were first strictly organized and performed. The founder of the first monastic order in the west was St. Benedict [c. 480-c. 547], although the seeds of monasticism had been sown in the days of persecution, when groups of Christians sought refuge in wild and lonely parts. This enforced isolation came to be regarded by many as the ideal expression of the Christian life, and even after Constantine’s edict of 313 the number of such groups continued to grow all over Christen dom. Some system of organization became essential, therefore, and St. Benedict, whose devoutness and self-denial were widely

Christian Chant

II known, after establishing a monastery on Monte Cassino (destroyed, alas, in 1944, rebuilt as before), wrote the first monastic Rule in which the details of daily life and worship were laid down. The Benedictine Order eventually spread to the rest of Europe, and during the following seven centuries gave rise to a number of other dedicated brother hoods, such as the Knights Templar, the Dominicans, and, perhaps most well-known of all, the Franciscans. At first the monasteries were poor and the monks spent most of the daylight hours in manual labour in order to be selfsupporting. Later, however, as the result of rich endowments, the intensive study of both Christian and classical authors was made possible and many monasteries became centres of learning; indeed, they were the only centres before the uni versities came into being. Here most of the more important earlier manuscripts were copied, annotated, or translated, a fact which disproves the common belief that interest in classical culture was first shown in the Renaissance, for the great secular awakening in the fifteenth century was largely prepared by the study and preservation of the ancient authors in the mediaeval monasteries. But such learning was by no means wholeheartedly approved of by the Church leaders, and such eminent men as St. Gregory, St. Benedict, and St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo [354-430], condemned it strongly; their views however, only affected Italian monasteries and explain the fact that not until the late Middle Ages did Italian scholarship compare favourably with that of other countries, although paradoxically enough the two men who most strongly advocated the study of classical literature and thought were both Romans. The first of these, Cassiodorus [c. 477-570], established a monastery on his own estate in the southern tip of Italy, where he insisted on the study of pagan works in order to confound pagan philosophy, and by thus subordinating secular knowledge to Christian theology set an example which most other monasteries outside Italy quickly followed. He also wrote many books, one of which, the Institutiones, contains an important section on music—in fact, he was one of the two most influential writers on this subject between the ancient Greek authors and the Middle Ages, the other being the second great Roman scholar, Boethius \c. 480524]. Unlike Cassiodorus, Boethius valued knowledge for its own sake, not merely as a means to an end, and before he was

12

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

brutally done to death at an early age on a false charge of treason, he had written voluminously on a wide variety of subjects, his most important work for our present purpose being De Institutione Musice. This is typical of its author’s main purpose—namely, to transmit to Rome the wisdom and culture of ancient Greece, for it summarizes all that was then known of Greek musical theory, and such was its popularity and authority that it became the prime theoretical source for all mediaeval and most Renaissance musicians. The amount of time, ink, and paper that has been spent in writing about Greek music in the last i,ooo years or so is past computing, but if we are to understand much of the mediaeval attitude to music as well as its practice, some of the more important aspects must be mentioned. To begin with, music to the Greeks was largely a matter of speculation—that is, they were not so much concerned with melodies and intervals as with their effects on man or their imagined relationship with the heavenly bodies, each of which was supposed to emit a musical note as it revolved round the earth, and while they admitted that we never heard these notes they explained this awkward fact by maintaining that as they were always sounding in our ears we were therefore unconscious of them! This fantastic idea, known as ‘the music of the spheres’, was first put forward by Pythagoras [sixth century b .c .], who also claimed that man, as part of the Universe, was similarly constructed, the soul, mind, and body all being ‘consonant’ with each other, and such was his reputation and that of his advocate, Boethius, that not until the thirteenth century were these speculations seriously criticized, although they persisted in popular belief very much longer, as, for example, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene i, where Lorenzo informs Jessica that— There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings. Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins : Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. On the other hand, most of the results of Pythagoras’s mathe matical investigations into music have remained to this day and are the basis of modem acoustics.

Christian Chant

13

The belief that music affected man in different but very definite ways was much more fundamental, and explains why the study of it was such an essential part of Greek education, for each melody, rhythm, and instrument was thought to exert its own special influence on man’s character, a belief which, as we have seen, the Church Fathers also subscribed to, and indeed so do we in a sense if we say that a major chord is brighter or happier than a minor one, or that a trumpet is martial, or an oboe mournful. The first great advocate of this doctrine was Plato [c. 427-347 B.c.], who associated each of the Greek ‘modes’, rhythms, and instruments with a definite emotional or moral effect. Thus the Mixolydian ‘mode’ made men sad, while the Dorian ennobled their minds; the rhythm short, long, long was suitable for drinking songs, but not heroic ballads; the aulos, a reed instrument of piercing tone, was only fit for feasts and virtuoso performances, while the kithara, an instrument of seven strings (in Plato’s time) which were plucked, was regarded as more refined and moderate, and was in fact approved of by nearly all the Church Fathers, especially for music in the home, because King David was supposed to have played it. It is easy to dismiss the idea that music directly affects men’s actions, but we would do well to remember, firstly, that Plato, to put it mildly, was no fool in matters concerning the human mind, and, secondly, that Greek music was entirely monophonic {monos=one): in other words, although a song might be sung simultaneously at different octaves, or varied slightly on an accompanying instrument, there was only one melodic line, and it is therefore only natural to expect—^in fact, it has been proved conclusively— that in such a musical culture slight differences in melodic structure and rhythmic design expressed far more than they do to us, whose ears have become melodically duUed by incessant harmony, and limited harmony at that. Furthermore, the Greeks used interveils smaller than a semitone, as indeed do many Asiatic and other races today, thus increasing the flexibility and expressiveness of the vocal line. All this is important because European music was also entirely monophonic until the rise of part-music in the ninth century, and not until the thirteenth century did part-music begin to oust monophony to any great extent. This fact explains the seemingly incredible (to us) stories and legends concerning the power of music, from

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

14

Orpheus to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and when we read of the kithara player of a certain Danish King in the twelfth century who boasted of his ability to drive his royal master into a raging madness and, on being challenged, succeeded so well that the King slew four men before being overpowered, we may allow for exaggeration, but should not dismiss the story as completely fantastic. After all, when comparatively sophisti cated adolescents of the mid-twentieth century are transported into a state of near-ecstasy by the virtuosity of a jazz ensemble or the mellifluous tones of a male crooner it is perfectly credible that in an earher and far less sophisticated age people were aroused to a high pitch of emotional excitement by music that we would regard as simple or even naive. We used the word ‘mode’ in the preceding paragraph and put it in inverted commas because we have no proof that Greek music was in fact modal, for by mode is usually meant an arrangement of notes within an octave which is regarded as having a distinct and separate existence from all other arrange ments. Our major and minor scales for instance represent only four of the many modes possible (major, harmonic minor, ascending and descending melodic minor), another important one being this example of a pentatonic mode (pe«to=five) .(Ex. 4)— bA.

which is the oldest and most widely used, for it was known to the Chinese at least 2,000 years b .c ., is found in many folk-songs all over the world, and is alniost certainly the basis of a great many Gregorian chants, the gaps {d'-f' and a'-(c") in our example)* being filled in later in most cases. However, when we talk about the modes in general we mean the twelve commonly recognized in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These were divided into six main modes called authentic, which range from the lowest and most important note—the final—to the octave above, and six dependent modes * Throughout this Iraok roman letters are used either when the exact position of the notes is unmaterial (e.g. ‘the perfect fifth C-G’) or when they are qualified (e.g. ‘middle C’, ‘violin A’); italicized letters refer to Helmholtz’s pitch notation in wMch middle G, c" and r'" = the octave and double octave above re spectively, and e, C and C,, =the octave, double octave and treble octave below respectively.

Christian Chant

15

called plagal, each being ‘part’ of an authentic mode and ranging from the fourth below the final (the dominant) to the octave above (hence the prefix Hypo-, a Greek word meaning ‘below’). Here are the twelve modes, the final of each being shown by a black semibreve (Ex. 5): Ex.5 I Dorion

I .

H. Hv^derion

HT. Phr79t«A

IV. Hypophry^ion

Modes XI and XII—Locrian and Hypolocrian—were not used in practice, as the important interval between final and dominant (B-F or F-B) is not a perfect fourth or fifth and was in fact called ‘diabolus in musica’—‘the devil in music’). Of these twelve modes, only the first eight (the ‘ecclesiastical modes’) were recognized and applied to Gregorian chant, and ‘applied’ is the word, for, as practically always happens in the realm of art, theory merely classifies and clarifies previous practice, and there seems little doubt that many chants composed before the eighth century (when the classification of melodies began as a result of Gregorian reform) were later altered in order to agree with the modal system. This system was not, as is sometimes supposed, taken over from the Greeks, nor did it achieve completion until the tenth century; moreover, the usual definition of ‘mode’ already given only applies to the tenth century and later, for it is almost certain that melodies were originally classified according to their symbolical signifi cance—tliat is, their suitability for definite types of expression, praise or lamentation, for instance—because not only Greek (as we have seen), but Syrian, Jewish, and other chants went through a similar stage. Later the melodies achieved importance in their own right and were classified according to their musical significance: in other words, their melodic differences.

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music This would obviously necessitate melodic analysis, the first stage of which would be the recognition of certain characteristic groups of notes, and the frequency and position of one or more of these groups in any melody would distinguish it from other melodies. Analysis would also extend to the groups of notes themselves, and this would lead to a study of the scale in which the notes forming the groups were the most important, especially the notes which began or ended a melody, for in antiphonal psalmody—much the most popular of the three types of psalmody—the join between the antiphon and the psalm or vice versa was nearly always made easier by ending or beginning on the same note, and this led eventually to the classification of scales or modes according to their end note, i.e. their Final. In their attempts to organize the modes into some kind of system the mediaeval theorists, through the influence of the writings of Boethius and Cassiodorus, turned to Greek theory, their misinterpretation of which proved as fruitful as the misunderstanding of Greek drama by certain Italian gentlemen at the end of the sixteenth century. The confusion that reigned in the mediaeval camp concerning Greek theory is not surprising when we consider that even now we are unable to form a complete picture of how it worked in practice, for the simple reason that not only have a mere handful of melodies been preserved, but the theory itself changed at various times. It is clear to us, however, though it was not so i,ooo years ago, that the differences between Greek and mediaeval theory are greater than their similarities, as the following brief discussion will try to show. The Greeks had only one important note and one important scale, which, like all their scales, was reckoned from top to bottom, the highest note to us being the lowest to them. This definition of pitch may have resulted from the way the kithara player tilted his instrument, the lowest sounding string (to us) being the highest in position, just as in the Italian method of writing lute music or 'tablature’ in the sixteenth century, in which each string is represented by a horizontal line, the symbols representing the notes of the lowest string being placed on the top line, thus giving a clear, visual picture to the player, because the instrument was always held so that the lowest string was uppermost. On the other hand, it may be that the characteristics of highness to us were those of lowness to the

I

I Twelfth-century instruments. Chime-bells (top of main panel), harp (played by the central figure, King David), rebec, pan-pipes, recorder, vi^e (bottom of panel, L. to R.), handbell, psaltery (bottom left inset), organistrum (bottom right inset). Illumination in a late twelfth-century English Psalter.

II Neumes. From the De Harmonica Institutione of Abbot Regino von Priim (c. 900).

2. V —s . T-jr ■ 7 'JL T que-ant lA.xis ■6 -•

?

A

iT ■ , « , ■ ■ • 7 " ■ " t resona-re fi'bris Ml- ra gesto-

.

rum famu-li tu-6-rum, S61-ye pollu-ti

1

■ ■.

1

.■ “ '«. 1

labi-i re-a-tum.

S6ncte Jo-annes. Ill Square notation. Ut queant laxis from Liber Usualis (see Ex. i).

istian Chant

17

©reeks. The important note was a, called ‘mese’, the middle of a two-octave scale ranging from a' down to A, the central octave of which—e' down to e—^was the important scale called Dorian, shown within square brackets in Ex. 6. (The black semibreve here and in the following examples is the mese.) Dofiati ectqy

The Dorian scale, as can be seen, is built up of two tetrachords or four-note groups separated by a tone, each group consisting of the intervals tone, tone, semitone, thus: T, T, S/T/T, T, S. By at least as early as the fourth century b .g . there were as many as six different Dorian scales, two diatonic (so called because they need no sharps or flats), three chromatic and one enharmonic. In both diatonic scales the semitone is the same size, but whereas in the commoner of the two scales the tones are all equal, in the other they are not. The most common chromatic scale consisted of the notes e', c#', ctj', b, a, /#, while those of the enharmonic were e',c',c*', b, e, the asterisk standing for a quarter-tone. As regards the diatonic scale, it is worth noting that the order of the intervals is exactly the same as our ascending major scale, a fact which has provoked much speculation, particularly as the Greek idea of high and low was the opposite of ours. All Greek diatonic melodies used the notes of the Dorian scale but they did not all, of course, keep to the octave range t -e. Now if someone composed a song using these notes (Ex. 7)— Ei7

It is quite obvious that the relative position of the mese has changed; instead of being in the centre as it is in the Dorian scale, it is now near the top,* and as the mese was the most frequently used note in any composition, this new position to the melodically sensitive ear would give quite a diflferent flavour’ compared with a song which used the Dorian range. Unless otherwise indicated, ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘ascending’, ‘descending’, etc., are

*n our sense, not the Greek.

18

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

As there are seven different notes in the scale there are clearly seven different positions for the mese, the highest being shown in Ex. 7, while the lowest is obviously this (Ex. 8):

If we put the two scales of Ex. 7 and 8 together, and add to Ex. 7 the low A (to which was given the magnificent name of Proslambanomenos, or ‘the added’) we get the complete diatonic scale shown in Ex. 6. In actual practice, however, all the scales except the Dorian were transposed so that they lay within the Dorian octave e'-e, which was not only the average range of a man’s voice (and it must be remembered that only men performed in public, whether at feasts, competitions, or in drama), but was also the range of the kithara, the earliest Greek type of which had six strings probably tuned pentatonically, thus (Ex. 9): E1.9

In order to obtain the missing notes c' and f of the Dorian scale the kithara player had to ‘stop’ the two strings b and e by pressing on them firmly with his fingers. Now, when the scale in Ex. 7 weis transposed up a fourth so that it ranged from e'-e the notes sung or played were these (Ex. 10)— E>.IO

Miaalydion tono% (trontposed)

the relative position of the mese and the order of intervals being, of course, the same as in Ex. 7, while the notes c', b^, and f were stopped. Similarly the transposed scale of Ex. 8 was (Ex. ii)—

Hypedortofi tonct Ctraniposed)

c' and

being stopped, and so on with the remaining four

Christian Chant

19

scales. All these scales were called ‘tonoi’ (tonoj=tightening) because two or more of the kithara’s strings had to be stopped and hence tightened in order to produce all the notes. Each scale was given a name. Ex. 10, for instance, was called the Mixolydian tonos, and Ex. 11 the Hypodorian tonos, the order of the tonoi, from highest to lowest, being shown by the position of the mese in each scale, thus: Mixolydian (mese d'), Lydian («#'), Phrygian (i), Dorian (a), Hypolydian (gljf), Hypophrygian (/#), and Hypodorian (e). (Notice that the hypotonoi are a fourth lower than the three main tonoi with which they are linked.) It was these tonoi, these transposed scales all based on the Dorian scale, which represented actual Greek musical practice and which the mediaeval theorists mistakenly thought were modes. Moreover, they misinterpreted Boethius, for when he stated, as we have done, that the Mixolydian is the highest and the Hypodorian the lowest scale, he was referring to the position of the mese in the tonoi, but they thought, firstly, that he was referring to the untransposed scales (Exx. 7 and 8) because, having different octave ranges, they were more closely allied to mediaeval practice than were the tonoi, and, secondly, that he was judging the pitch of a scale by its lowest note (as they did), but that he used the words ‘high’ £ind ‘low’ in the Greek sense. Thus the order of the untransposed scales, if judged by their lowest note, is the exact opposite of the transposed scales—the tonoi, as a comparison of Exx. 7 and 8 with Exx. 10 and ii will clearly show, the untransposed Mixolydian (Ex. 7) being the lowest and the Hypodorian (Ex. 8) being the highest; but if‘lowest’ and ‘highest’ are interpreted in the Greek sense, then to the Greeks Ex. 7 was the highest and Ex. 8 the lowest scale. Thus when the Greek names were applied to the mediaeval modes round about a .d . 950 the h%hest mode was called Mixolydian (g up to g'), and the i®west Hypodorian {A up to a). Before the tenth century the ihodes had been called either ‘Authentus Protus’ (‘First feader’), ‘Plaga Proti’ (‘Part of the First’), and so on with tWeuterus*, ‘Tritus’, and ‘Tetrardus’, or else ‘Primus Tonus’, ^cundus Tonus’, etc., up to ‘Octavus Tonus’; this latter wd we still use when we write Mode IV or Mode VIII of the more clumsy Hypophrygian or Hypomixolydian

20

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music It may well be asked that, even allowing for mediaeval confusion concerning Greek theory, why is it that the modes bear so little resemblance to their namesakes in the untrans posed Greek scales (compare the octave ranges in Ex. 12 with their equivalents in Ex. 13)? We do not know, but there are two possible answers, one theoretical and one practical. The theoretical explanation depends on the fact that in the untrans posed Greek scales the mese is always the same note, a, while the octave ranges vary; thus the four main scales can be shown as follows (Ex. 12): E1.13 The faurMieCreak icelei.

Derla ntrygiaa (S«b.6)

Ljdio*

MiiolyJiee (S« b-7)

But to the early theorists it was not the mese but the octave range that was important, and hence they may have argued that in the Dorian octave for instance, as e' (to the Greeks) was the lowest note a fifth below the mese the equivalent effect to western ears would be obtained by making d the lowest note, for this {to lir) is a fifth below the mese. Similarly, with the others; for example the lowest note (to the Greeks) in the Mixolydian scale was b, so that the equivalent to us would be g, hence the following, which of course tallies with Ex. 1 s Jjl J ^ n 1 ^'n~l n*i 11111 Et in fb ..re tpi*n*.tus Qui-ct>cit po.ro cli And^ffomr1h9tp/rft^t 0^X

In flee i%thm

nc >

But not all St. Martial organa are written like this; in fact. Ex. 19 is rather exceptional in that both voices sing different * Adapted from H. Gleason, Examples of Music before 1400, p. 33.

The Beginnings of Part-Music

47

words, for usually the upper part has the same words as the lower, chant-bearing part, although this lower part was often performed by an instrument or by voice and instrument together. Moreover, there was another kind of organum in which the parts move together in note-against-note style. If the parts are melismatic, then the notes are presumably of roughly equal value, but if syllabic, then the notes probably follow the verbal rhythm, as in Ex. 20,* which is transcribed in triple time, although it sounds just as well in duple time: StMortid Sdiool

E1.3O Organum Mira Ltgt

(e.U25)

-----fhrf—F

1

Mi - ra li - 9t

(£ ft

By a tawan^ r

h j ^

r

n 1

mi • fo mo - do

in

a fa-shhn

....... .. J......

®

Mi - re IM > qlt

kune

rc'for > mot

.1

^ r =y=

^

De - ui for- mot ho ' ni > n«m. iron - dtr tui doth God makt men. 1 sj .. 1 —i—* • 4' J

r &r

1

vi >> do mi > rum

1 ^

_____ ..=1 r

or - di - nem_____

Bui iQ heid mor won-dtr-tu! thh won-drout plan ht forms a-gain____

t

^

1---------.M

1

i»

B

r..”"B"~

Rc • fbr-moR-d1} 77^os« who than tNt b|

* Adapted from H. Gleason, ibid., p. 31.

1

48

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

Four things should be noted about this very attractive little piece. Firstly, the predominance of contrary motion and the frequent crossing of parts. Secondly, the number of thirds and sixths that occur between the parts. Thirdly, the fact that the lower voice, the vox principalis, is not a borrowed chant, but a newly-composed melody—an important feature, as it led eventually to a quite distinct type of composition known as ‘conductus’ (see Chapter 4, p. 97). Fourthly, that each part has roughly the same number of notes. This note-against-note style was usually called ‘discantus’ by contemporary theorists, and later (c. 1300) the term ‘punctus contra punctum’ was applied to it, from which we get the word ‘counterpoint’. Strictly speaking, counterpoint means the combination of two or more melodies which are more or less rhythmically identical, as in Ex. 20, but unfortunately it is often used as an alternative word for ‘polyphony’. However, we shall use the word ‘counter point’ throughout this book to mean the combination of melodies that are only independent as regards their shape— that is, their movement up and down—^while the word ‘polyphony’ will mean the combination of melodies that are rhythmically independent as well. Thus by the middle of the twelfth century there were two kinds of part-music or ‘organum generale’—namely, the polyphonic ‘organum speciale’ (Ex. 19) and the contrapuntal ‘discantus’ (Ex. 20). (Whenever we use the word ‘organum’ in future we shall mean ‘organum speciale’.) The only other important school of composers which flourished in the first half of the twelfth century was that at the monastery of Santiago (St. James) de Compostela in the north-west corner of Spain, the only part of the country not conquered by the Moors. The organa of this school are clearly influenced by the earlier St. Martial compositions, but it can lay claim to the earliest composition in three distinct parts that we know. The existence of this school, however, does not alter the fact that from c. 1100 to c. 1400 France was the undoubted leader in European music, for during this period the French genius contributed more to the development and enrichment of music and exerted a greater influence than any other country, an achievement she has never repeated. But this musical domination was no isolated feature; it was paralleled by the growing importance of France in European

T

I

IV

t

V

Romanesque architecture: the nave, Durham Cathedral.

Gothic architecture: the nave, Lincoln Cathedral,

VI

Shawm—twelfth-century (Canterbury Cathedral).

VII Cornett. Detail of illumination iii an early eleventhcentury Anglo-Saxon Psalter.

Herrad von Landsberg. Second half of the twelfth-century,

The Beginnings of Part-Music

49

affairs, by the achievements of her scholars and craftsmen, and by the fact that Paris, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at any rate, was the intellectual centre of the world. Capital of France since the end of the tenth century, Paris had rapidly increased in size, importance, and beauty during the succeeding 300 years. Famous for her university, her teachers, • and her architecture, it is small wonder that music too shared in her greatness, and the school of composers who made her musically pre-eminent among European capitals flourished at the same time as the erection of her most famous building, Notre Dame (1163-1257). By the middle of the twelfth century the florid polyphonic organa of the St. Martial composers had made the introduction of a system in which notes had more definite values a crying necessity, and it is the great distinction of the Notre Dame School, as it is usually called, that it formulated the principles of such a system and put them into practice. This system is now known as ‘modal rhythm’ and consists of six metrical and accen tual patterns which are almost certainly derived from the Greek poetic metres, for, as we have seen in Chapter i (p. 11), classical culture was assiduously studied in many monasteries, and this eventually led to what has been called the “Renaissance of the twelfth century”. Here, then, are the six rhythmic modes reduced to modem note values, together with the Greek poetic metres and patterns (Ex. 21):

I

Ex. 21 Rhythmic Mode 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

t

Pdttern

^ d

d-Jl j

«I>J J. j- J-

IT'S

Creek name and pattern Trochee •1 ^ lamb ^ ei Dactyl d ^ Anapaest Spondee

eT3 «l J d

Tribrach

By comparing the mediaeval and Greek patterns given above it is obvious that whereas in the Greek system only the first, second, and sixth patterns consist of ternary groupings, all the mediaeval patterns were so grouped, in France at any rate, for there seems httle doubt that in twelfth-century England the

50

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

third, fourth, and fifth modes were binary like the Greek patterns, but that this deviation from Continental practice disappeared towards the end of the century. Many reasons have been suggested as to why a ternary grouping was forced on rhythmic modes III-V, but it was probably due to the belief, held long before the twelfth centvuy, that the number three was a symbol of perfection together with the strong desire for an ordered, logical system, a desire that affected all branches of learning during this period. Thus as the first rhythmic mode (the most common and probably the earliest in time) is naturally ternary, the naturally binary modes were altered so as to bring them into line, and £is three cannot be divided into two equal whole numbers one of the short notes had to be

doubled, hence, for example, J J1 became ^ J. There were now therefore two basic note values, both derived from the notation of Gregorian chant (see Chapter i, p. 28), the ‘long’, which was either ternary as in the third, fourth, and fifth rhythmic modes, or binary as in the first and second modes, and the ‘breve’, ■ (Latin ‘short’), which was either normal and equalled a third of the ternary long, or else ‘altered’, when it doubled its value as in the third and fourth modes. These differences in value, however, are not explicitly shown in the notation, and the only way in which a composer could ensure that his music was performed in one particular rhythmic mode and not another was by grouping his notes into ligatures of two, three, or four notes and by arranging them in a certain order; for instance, a four-note ligature followed by a series of three-note ligatures indicates the sixth rhythmic mode, while a single note followed by a series of three-note ligatures indicates the third rhythmic mode, and so on, each mode being written down in a different way from the others. All this was admirably clear provided composers used only the six rhythmic patterns given above, but artistic creation never has been and never will be bound by a rigid set of rules, and composers therefore varied what might otherwise have become rhythmically monotonous pieces either by making a note longer than it would be normally or else by breaking it up into notes of smaller value; thus a binary long might become ternary, and a breve be divided into two. But despite the fact that modal rhythm makes no written distinction between the different note values, it was a tremen dous step forward in the development of notation, for whereas

The Beamings of Part-Music

51

the notation of Gregorian chant neither indicates nor implies exact note values, although such values were almost certainly applied in practice to syllabic chants, the notation of the Notre Dame School, while it too does not indicate differences in note values, definitely implies them by means ofa well-ordered system. The history of any art shows among other things that when one aspect of an art is being developed other aspects tend to suffer. This was certzdnly the case in the part-music of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, for mainly as a result of their preoccupation with rhythm the melodies of the Notre Dame School were definitely inferior compared to those of Gregorian chant or of the contemporary trouveres and troubadours (see next chapter), just as the melodies of Stravinsky’s early works are compared to those of Brahms or Wagner, and for the same reason. This melodic inferiority is particularly noticeable in three-part writing which became common round about the beginning of the thirteenth century, because it is obviously more difficult to add two interesting parts to a borrowed chant melody than one, especi2illy when the ranges of the two parts are identical (as they normally were) and certain rules of concord and discord have to be observed. In theory the only concords were the unison, fourth (but see p. 42), fifth, and iheir octave dupheations, although thirds and sixths were sanctioned by some theorists; in any case these last were certainly used in practice, as indeed was the tritone (e.g. B-F or F-B). Not until after c. 1425, however, were thirds and sixths generally recognized as essential con stituents of part-music. In theory, all intervals on strong beats had to be concordant with the tenor, although what we would call accented appogiaturas were permissible provided they were short and resolved on to a concord, but in practice discordant intervals which are not appogiaturas and do not i^olve on to-concords also occur on strong beats, particularly in three-part writing, but it is unusual for both added parts to have different discordant notes with the tenor. The inability or perhaps the disinclination of the Notre Dame composers to write continuous melodies resulted in their chopping up the added part or parts of an organum into short sections called ‘ordines’ (Latin, ordo=‘rov/’ [of notes]), and it is worth noting that this constant interrupting of the melodic ^ow was an important characteristic also of the ‘New Music’

52

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

composed around 1600 and of the instrumental compositions of the mid-eighteenth century which preceded the symphonies and sonatas of Haydn and Mozart, the link between all three periods being that each followed and, to a greater or lesser degree, reacted against a tradition in which the melodic line was the dominant factor: Gregorian chant before 1200, Renaissance polyphony before 1600, and the Baroque operatic aria and instrumental fugue before 1750. The composers of the two later periods marked the end of their sections by cadences which consist of certain conventional chord progressions; such a procedure, of course, was out of the question for the Notre Dame composers, as harmonic considerations did not begin to enrich (and impoverish) music for another 250 years or so, and what they were largely concerned with was the interval between one accented note of an added part and the tenor, not with the effect of a succession of such intervals nor, in three-part compositions, with the simultaneous sound of all three notes; instead of cadences, they indicated the end of an ordo by drawing a short vertical line through the stave; this mark—the first ancestor of our modern system of rests—tells the performer to pause, usually for the duration of either a breve or a long, depending on the rhythmic mode. In three-part pieces the sections for the two added parts nearly always tally, thus making it easier for the singers to keep together, particularly if the normal notes of the mode are lengthened or broken up into smaller values. (The added part written immediately above the tenor in the original MS. was called ‘duplum’ and the part above this—^if there was one—^was called ‘triplum’.) Like the earlier St. Martial School, the Notre Dame composers wrote not only organa, but discanti as well. Both types of composition are divided into short sections (ordines) and both are based on a Gregorian melody in the tenor, this melody being only that portion originally sung by a soloist (cantor). Thus from the following Benedicamus Domino melody (the same as that used in Ex. 19) only the notes set to the first line of the text are used, the response, ‘Deo gratias’ being chanted in unison by selected members of the choir (Ex. 22): Es.22 Cragerion doit Bvm/lcmut Domino

(Oieirl De

-

0

gro

-

-

-

.

.

tl-oj_____

:3TAe Beginnings of Part-Music

53

The Notre Dame discanti, however, only use the melismatic portion of the soloist’s section of the chant, e.g. that portion set to the word ‘domino’ in Ex. 22, and they are further distinguished from the organa in that the tenor also is written in modal rhythm. This means, of course, that the notes of the chant melody are sung very much faster than in organum, and in order perhaps to compensate for this and to make the length of the organum and discantus sections more equal, composers usually repeated the portion of the chant melody used in the latter. In the later Notre Dame pieces the discantus sections were called ‘clausulae’ (Latin, clausula=‘ending’) because, as in Ex. 22, the part of the melody on which they are based usually comes at the end of a Gregorian chant. The dominant characteristic of the Notre Dame composers was undoubtedly their ability to organize their material, for not only did they develop a system which gives the written notes both accent and metre, and divides their compositions into well-defined sections, but in their clausulae they frequently arranged the chant melody in the tenor so that it consists of a number of rhythmically identical patterns, and if the melody is repeated the pattern is usually altered in each repeat. This was not only the culmination of the Notre Dame School’s pre occupation with rhythm, but was also a very important innova tion, because it eventually developed into the chief structural device of the fourteenth-century motet (see Chapter 5, p. 129). It also represents the highest intellectual achievement of the School, an achievement fully comparable with the new scholasticism and philosophy of men like Peter Abelard [10791142] and his pupil, John of Salisbury [c. 1115-80], and with the rise of independent thought fanned by the recently acquired knowledge of Arabian philosophy and science and, in Arabic translations, of the works of the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle [384-322 b .c .]. The two outstanding composers of the Notre Dame School are Leonin and Perotin. The former flourished from about 1163 to about 1190 and can be regarded as the bridge between the St. Martial School and the fully developed style of Perotin. Thus the notation of several of L6onin’s early organa shows modal rhythm in its infancy, for the grouping of ligatures is less regular, the rhythmic patterns change more frequently, and the general melodic line is more fluid than in his later

54

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

pieces. His discanti, however, are rhythmically much clearer, due to the fact that both parts are written in modal rhythm, although even here the ligatures often give no indication of the note values—in fact, in both the organa and the discanti of Leonin and his contemporaries the rules of concord and discord are often as much a guide to the performer as the grouping of the ligatures. (The tempo of Notre Dame organa and discanti was almost certainly quicker than that of Exx. 19 and 20, because when there is little difference in rhythm and texture, between melismatic and syllabically underlaid com positions, as in this case, it is more natural to sing the latter at a slower pace than the former. During the Renaissance, however, the distinction between the two styles became more pronounced, rhythm and texture being simpler in syllabic pieces than in melismatic, and hence Ae latter was almost certainly sung more slowly—^see Chapter 6) (Ex. 23* opposite). In the replica of the original opening given in Ex. 23, the short vertical stroke which marks the end of an ordo can clearly be seen in the upper part; in the transcription this is shown by a rest or comma. The tenor notes of the organum section have been written as breves, this being the conventional way of showing that they have no fixed value. They are based on the chant given in Ex. 22. The slurs in the upper part indicate the ligatures in the original, and the notes printed small should be sung lightly. The organum section contains numerous instances of broken modal rhythm, and particularly striking are the rapid scale passages in bars 6, 7, and 43, which appropriately enough were called ‘currentes’ (Latin, currere=‘to run’) and which show clearly that this kind of music was performed by soloists in whom, moreover, a certain degree of virtuosity was expected. These soloists were members of the choir who, because of their natural ability and special training, were chosen to perform the polyphonic settings of the chant. This applies to all mediaeval part-music from the St. Martial School onwards, and it should be remembered that to perform a Notre Dame organum or indeed almost any composition before 1600 with a body of more than about twenty singers and instru mentalists is as indefensible as playing a Mozart symphony on a modern full-sized orchestra. * Transcribed from MS. Florence, Bibliotica Medicea-Laurenziana,/i/ut. i^./. pp. 87'''o , 88 (facsimile in W. Apel, The Notation of Polyphonic Music: goo-i6oo, 4th Ed., p. 247).

'he Beginnings of Part-Music

55

56

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music EX. 23 (CONTD.)

I

Ohcantaf]

N 111

I i

The Beginnings of Part-Music

57

The discantus section of Ex. 23 is simpler and more consistent rhythmically than the organum section, but the chant notes in the tenor are not yet arranged in a definite, reiterated pattern. At bar 75, however, the chant is repeated and performed in shorter note values. The keen-eyed will notice that in bars 63 and 79 (the repeat) the tenor shows a local variation from the official version of the chant (Ex. 22), and that the last seven notes of the chant are missing from the end of the first statement (bar 74). Ex. 23 should be compared with that in H.A.M. (No. 29), which is in Leonin’s later style, being more precise rhythmi cally and using a repeated pattern in the tenor of the last section (clausula). Leonin’s outstanding work is his Magnus Liber Organi, ‘The Great Book of Organa’ (i.e. organa generale), which consists of thirty-four pieces for the Canonical hours (see Chapter i, p. 10) and fifty-nine for the Mass for the entire ecclesiastical year. Thus, for example, at First Vespers during Solemn Feasts, instead of singing the Benedicamus Domino chant in the traditional manner as shown in Ex. 22, a small choir (one to three voices per part and accompanied by suitable instruments) sang the polyphonic setting (organum and discantus) of the opening words, while the response (‘Deo gratias’) was chanted in unison by the select choir. This manner of performance also applied to Perotin’s organa and discanti (clausulae), which, however, differ from Leonin’s in their greater rhythmic precision and clarity of notation. P^rotin and his contempor aries in fact re-wrote some of the pieces in the Magnus Liber Organi, shortening them and making their rhythmic patterns more consistent, and also composing a number of clausulae which were intended as substitutes for Leonin’s discanti. In these clausulae, of which there are a great many, the arrange ment of the chant melody in the tenor is developed in three mam ways from Leonin’s somewhat tentative beginnings, (i) The melody is organized in a reiterated rhythmic pattern which fits the notes of the melody exactly and which is main tained through all its repeats (see Ex. 26); hence it is identical m principle and construction with the ‘ground bass’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (2) The pattern is altered when the melody repeats, as in this tenor part, for instance (Ex. 24*). Transcribed from MS. Florence, ibid., p. 175 (facsimile in Apel, ibid., p. 855). C*

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

58

(3) The pattern is maintained, but does not fit the melody exactly, and so when the latter is repeated it is given a different rhythmic guise, as in Ex. 25, where Arabic numerals show the repeats of the rhythmic pattern and Roman numerals the repeats of the melody (Ex. 25*): Ei.2S Taior part e( clatmila ^|]- Iclu^ fimi oAganam AUuh Aooto noHnm „ I^

2-

J

£a i ]

•

^ It

•

iu

w - •

a-

h S.

(e.l22S)

^ I

Here is a complete clausula of the Perotin period which, being based on the same chant melody, was composed as a substitute for Leonin’s discantus in Ex. 23. As in previous examples, slurs indicate the original ligatures and rests the ends of ordines, which in this case do not always tally between the two parts (Ex. 26| next page). The thirteenth-century theorist known as Anonymous IV describes L^onin as “optimus organista” (“the greatest composer of organa”) and Perotin as “optimus discantor” (“the greatest composer ofdiscanti [or clausulae]”); apart from this handsome compliment we know almost as little about Perotin as about his predecessor, but it seems that he was at Notre Dame, possibly as a boy chorister, at about the same time as the choir of the Cathedral was completed in 1183, and he may have held the post of succentor or first bass in the choir * Adapted from G. Reese, Music in the Middle Ages, pp. 301-2. t Transcribed from MS. Florence, ibid., pp. 88t o , 89 (facsimile in Apel, ibid.,

P- 857)-

Beginnings of Part-Music

59

from c. 1208 to 1238. Perotin, however, was more than just a ' composer of clausulae, for he wrote organa as well, not only in two parts (‘organa dupla’) but in three and even four parts

(‘organa tripla’ and ‘quadrupla’); in fact, his three organa quadrupla represent Ae peak of this particular type of composition. Undoubtedly he added much to the greater clarity of rhythm and grasp of musical structure, but his melodies, as we might expect, are inferior to L^onin’s, whose organum sections in particular, with their predominantly stepwise motion, broad sweep, and largely unorganized rhythmic patterns, show the still powerful influence of Gregorian chant. P^rotin’s melodies, on the other hand, employ leaps more often, are divided into short sections, and show a high degree of rhythmic organization. Both composers wrote melodically sequential passages—that is, passages in which a group of notes is repeated , at a higher or lower pitch (usually the latter), keeping their exact rhythmic patterns and

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

6o

general melodic shape, as, for instance, in bars 35-40 of Ex. 23. This device was not new, for it had been used in a number of Gregorian melodies, but not so frequently nor so extensively. It is a most satisfying device, as there are few things the ear enjoys more than recognizing a relationship with something already heard. Melodic sequence, in fact, is the simplest form of the two fundamentals of all music—unity and variety. The balance between these two has not, of course, remained the same in all periods. In L6onin’s time variety predominated, but with P^rotin the pendulum swung the other way, and it is therefore no coincidence that, not content with unifying his freely composed parts (duplum, triplum, and quadruplum) by rhythmic means, he used an even more powerful device, imitation, so called because a musical phrase in one voice is later imitated in another, usually at the unison, fourth, fifth, or their octave combinations above or below the pitch of the original phrase. This device may have originated in England, but occurs fairly often in the three- and four-part compositions of P^rotin and his contemporaries; it is found in two forms. The first can be shown diagrammatically thus: Triplum Duplum

Phrase A Phrase B

Phrase B Phrase A

and is known as ‘stimmtausch’, which simply means ‘voiceexchange’. It reappeared in the sixteenth century and was called ‘contrappunto doppio’ or ‘double counterpoint’, but on account of its difficulty if used extensively it occurs much less often than ordinary straightforward imitation which became common from the late fifteenth century onwards and which has its roots in the second of the two ways mentioned, thus: Triplum Duplum

Phrase A (Free part)

(Free part) Phrase A

Sometimes there is more than one imitated phrase, just as in stimmtausch there are sometimes more than two transposed phrases—^in fact, in one of P^rotin’s organa quadrupla there is a passage in which five phrases in the triplum part are imitated a fifth lower by the duplum part. This is the beginning of what we now call canon. Two examples of imitation will be found in bars 19-25 and 52-4 (indicated by r “I) of the following organum in Pdrotin style. This fine example, with its dancing, changing

6i

The Beginnings of Part-Music

rhythms and its sequential passages (bars 36-9 and 70-7), the second of which provides a most satisfying climax, when com pared with Ex. 23, will give some idea of the enormous progress in rhythmic organization that took place in the sixty years or so that separates the two pieces (see Fig. i) fEx. 27*): Ex.27 From

of90iium Dtsc^ndit d ta so Ihroufh whom ircW

a,

f 3l A - VC no - *tra X Wet - comt thot/, our

ipc hopo

at ^

-lu -

iia;

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Uj V

8

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8

po - rff: •ctl - Y*i%

•

- l»: tr/nf - c/A;

A - VC per quom rc'”Wot • comt thou^whoot glo-rlout

1 rty%

jd-—-LT-r... =5bj — 1---------Sol - VC floe cen- v«l - (( - om, HaM^ thou taou-Hcuo ttowr JO fair.

A - VC gul • 0 Hull, for God om

dc'-*'( - ta • ni - po^ tent

A - VC »FC - ei - c ” *F»/ - conic t/iet, to whom tS

f

Fi - nls ct ta Zav' -kJ VC thst»

(Motctus)

0 ^

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qul

out o fhw,

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pe in

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r

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— tcm, hg 0

>

f p

ft

Anon. 13th. cmt.

f - r "LiJ ■ ■■ *—;------^ turn vir « 90 mon-sts'tt in .• vl - 0 - to * to gfn^thougho ofuM bear, 0 Mo - ry mii4 with' T-» r7>"f> f g fTf • r'T=^^ L-j V yj-p ...^ yj ^ 1— fc- 91 - no 9I0 • ri • c— et on * 9c > lo - rum 0 p/o ' nous quosn, A • vti^ Who with tho on - goto

CVr

f D

105

rl

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ftm. ft^

to

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pe • rf • $ti citl* - «» f| - li - < Ao - // fcar^ ^O/ irAom thou wort tho

fO, ■ A

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fc - d •su stu> pc • re no - tu> thth eo^ooar AH thktfs do goto at

as-tum- psft ho - di > c didst foiso thoo up this day

VC

-

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ri

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c - thC'K . um soo tho hooAi - ty

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to -

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-ro - H- a. Te t re • co-fflorma 'terChri.stI c- sto no*bis pro •pi - li-a. thoo in owo. 0 J0 - susmothor thotthouy/hocrOi^ pr^s to thoo 00 Iht* hn-ptort.

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^

*'

P-f

P

• tcmj

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

io6

e«.4I WIM-Onporolt-AParlt-FUtnowtlt (•. J.MMc«6)

1 1 Halo ea

r r..

dfduls

trob me

But thumaii'ty

y bon ^ poln 1^ct ten

I--

cicr J.

vln.

fooitnadanitooe dtor

• cc, muc •rc,muc*rc fren

€Om9kt^tnt^w§dbfack‘ttr

dcs • plof - • - tentj Car 9jTt ^or apum

11

th9

= Bf" frnc eterp1 — =P== Bon

¥fBMf

Good

cct rfn!

QPf« Ftnh

mnt and

■"

J J-— -

ic ftptt - . flntttfwr • •

The All-embracing Style of the Thirteenth Century

107

EX. 41 (CONTD.)

M 6

^

8

....... Oc bon elcr vin ct HtM ea - flont fat one

*9nons, groat.

Ifwi • ttr

•

Mr ponsf Etd'cst*rc^a • • veue bons com • de cho beau ‘Jo - - * h^. And with good com . /SO • fty

Sens sou Sfioi*-/iiif

-

- •

-

. U wit

-

Fri • Frtsh

- r/ej/

-

-

•

•

c, grant ani jay

• tc non ftnt tinw- •

r-C----- ^-----•---—p--------s-g—r~FH —------------ r— ....... 8 > poi-gnons, LUs et joi . ' ons, Chontons.truf • ‘ font et 0 • mo • reus, at' way. So bt/the and day t/ng>/ngt cheat • • ing end a • mo • rove;

n r

rj-^. 8

m

bou -

ie

f -

- d(Mjr, Bfous thtrtjAnd

Jd-ous

ma-ny

la • fthe

Nuc*f«

fren -

n=r~

*________

p

• ■ met dbtt to ■ diaa

= 7^ -

JI

• nour, fair;

J' • • ' Ic! -Mr ... r/ts!

5hck-‘b9r’rit$,

• cc, imic>rc,mu(«rc tran - • come buyn^Mbf^-der - - .

io8

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

The thirteenth-century motet hcis often been regarded as the most difficult type of composition to understand and appreciate in the whole history of western music before the twentieth century, not only because of the simultaneous performance of two or more different texts, sometimes in two different languages, e.g. French and Latin, but also because the actual sound of the music is bare, even harsh, when compared to the more sonorous, smoothly-flowing conductus. The whole point of polytextuality, to begin with at any rate, was to enrich the chant by adding fresh words, usually in verse, which enshrined and expanded the meaning or purpose contained in the chant itself, as in Ex. 46; thus the authors of these added texts were stimulated by the same desire as that which prompted the writers of tropes and sequences. As for the largely incomprehensible jumble of words which inevitably results during a performance, two points should be borne in mind. Firstly, that this music, and in fact practically all music up to about 1600, was not intended for the general public; this applies to the liturgical as well as to the purely secular motet. In the former it was—and still is in cathedrals and monasteries —the act of worship expressed through the service that mattered, not the presence or absence of a congregation, and to the choirmen themselves and even to the officiating clergy the subtle technique in which two or three different texts simul taneously express the same sentiments would be fully intelligible and eminently satisfying. The same applies to the secular motet, which was always written for and performed by the cultured elite of society. The second point to remember is that the singing of different words at the same time has been a favourite and most dramatic operatic device from Mozart to the present day; in fact, operatic ensembles frequently go further than the average thirteenth-centmy motet because they express several different and often completely opposed sentiments, but as the audience knows roughly what these sentiments are from the previous action of the drama, it simply abandons itself to the total impression. Similarly in the thirteenth century; but it is also quite likely that when performing a motet like Ex. 40 or 41, particularly for the first time, only the tenor part was sung or played to begin with, then the tenor and motetus parts together, and finally the whole composition, with instruments either playing the unsung parts or else doubling the voices.

The All-embracing Style of the Thirteenth Century

109

The manner of performance suggested above describes exactly the method by which a composer wrote a motet, for he first of all selected a melodic fragment, either from a chant or a secular song, and, having arranged the notes in repeated rhythmic patterns and decided on the number of repeats of the melody, he used this as his tenor, the basis of his composition. (The tenor of Ex. 41 may have been newly composed; if so, it was exceptional. On the other hand, it may have been a popular street-cry of the times.) Next he added the motetus, and finally the triplum. This is known as ‘successive composi tion’, and is clearly shown in Ex. 40, where both the upper parts are very attractive melodies, and if one were omitted the piece as a whole would not suffer greatly—in fact, to many ears it would gain, for it is between the upper parts that the most licence was allowed and the greatest dissonance occurs; in other words, provided that each upper part was concordant with the tenor at the beginning of every group of three ‘beats’, it did not matter what happened between the upper parts themselves. The concords were the unison, fifth, and their octaves (though some theorists included the major and minor thirds as well), and although a discord in the form of an accented passing note was permitted on the first ‘beat’, it had to resolve on to a concord. Thus the whole conception of polyphonic composition was very different from the normal one of today, which considers the sound of all the parts, both vertically as chords and horizontally as melodies. The thirteenthcentury composer, indeed, enjoyed greater freedom than any composer between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries. Consecutive unisons, fifths, and octaves between the tenor and any other part were allowed because they were liked, while consecutive fourths, seconds, and sevenths between the upper parts were probably regarded as spicy discords which were subordinate to, while at the same time offsetting, the funda mental concords with the tenor. So far we have only dealt with the purely liturgical and wholly secular motet. But there was another kind which seems positively blasphemous at first, for it combined both sacred and secular texts—^for instance, a hymn to the Virgin Mary and a poem in which a lover yearns for his sweetheart {H.A.M., 32B). Occasionally the two texts had nothing in common, but usually, as in the above instance, they were linked in the sense

I 110

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Mttsic

that they expressed much the same sentiments, only on different planes. This blending of sacred and secular was not peculiar to musicians, for once again we find an exact parallel in the architecture of the period, or, rather, the sculpture that formed an integral' part of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals which reached their greatest perfection in France during the thirteenth century. As we saw in Chapter 2, the rigid, un naturally-posed figures of the twelfth century were subordinated to the column they ornamented or to the design zis a whole, but in the thirteenth century not only did decoration become increasingly rich and more widely used, but it also became more naturalistic. Figures became human, with smiling faces, tilted heads, expressive hands, and their clothing arranged in natural folds. The austere symbolic dignity of the earlier portrayals of Mary and the infant Jesus now gave way to the everyday picture of mother and child; humanity reflected divinity. Although the subject-matter, general treatment, and placing of the main pieces of sculpture were dictated by the Church, the less important or conspicuous places were appar ently left to the carvers ip wood and stone to do what they liked with, and it is in these places that one sees most clearly the increasing naturalism of the century. Animals, plants, mytho logical monsters, and fantastic—even grotesque—^figures, half man, half beast, can be found tucked away in comers or high overhead, both inside and outside the cathedral. Thus the thirteenth-century craftsmen and composers alike saw nothing incongruous or irreverent in associating things secular with things sacred, and both sculpture and motet represented what might well be called the ‘art of analogy’, in wWch the experiences and wonder of this world were used to help understand and partially reflect the glory of God; and it was no coincidence Aat this conception of the relationship between divinity and humanity was one of the main themes running through the works and teaching of the Church’s most brilliant and saintiy scholar, Thomas Aquinas. The changes in the motet during the thirteenth century were not limited only to the use of the vernacular (French) or to the borrowings from earlier secular songs, for a casual comparison between Exx. 40 and 41 will show that the triplum part has become much more animated compared to the other parts during the twenty-five years or so which separates the two

The All-embracing Style of the Thirteenth Century

Ill

pieces—^in other words, the tendency throughout the century was towards greater rhythmic independence of the parts. The difference between the number of notes in the upper voices and in the tenor led to a new way of arranging the parts, for it was clearly wEisteful to continue writing in score when the tenor had so few notes compared to the others, and parchment was very expensive. The most economical method was to write the parts separately and so use up as much of the page as .possible, like this:

1

2

3

Where i is the triplum part, 2 the motetus, and 3 the tenor. If the motet was too long for a single page it was' usually spread over two pages in this manner:

2

3

This separating of the parts on one or two pages (usually called ‘choir-book’ arrangement today or, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ‘cantus coUateralis’, i.e. ‘song [written] side by side’ (see Chapter 6)—^was used from about 1225 to about 1600 for practically all manuscript music except that written in conductus style, which was always written in score because aU the voices have roughly the same number of notes. The rhythmic independence of the parts in the motet is usually compensated by the repeated patterns in the tenor

II2

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

which give a basic rhythmic unity to the whole piece, and the more frequent but still fairly rare use of voice-exchange, an extreme example being the motet Alle-psallite cum-luya {H.A.M., 33a ), in which the two upper voices swop every phrase except the last. (The text, incidentally, is rather curious in that it consists of three tropes of the word ‘Alleluya’.) A more complex form of voice-exchange is the British ‘rondellus’, in which all three voices exchange phrases, but the most famous and remarkable piece of imitative writing is the so-called Reading Rota, Sumer is icumen in, which probably dates from the middle of the century. This six-part double canon is so well known that we shall not describe it in detail, but simply point out that technically it was far more ambitious than anything on the Continent until the fifteenth century, and that it cannot have been a flash in the pan, but must have been preceded by a number of other such pieces, which alas have not survived. It is ambitious, too, in its use of six voices, and this supports what has already been said about the British love of sonority. The increasing animation of the upper voices, particularly the triplum, developed rapidly during the last half of the century, and reached its peak in the motets of a certain Petrus de Cruce (or Pierre de la Croix) [fl. latter half of thirteenth century], and as he played a vital part in altering the way in which music was written down we must first of all see what it was that he altered. Up to about 1225 all part-music, with one exception, was written down in much the same way as that described in Chapter 2—that is to say, in groups of notes called ‘ligatures’ in which the alternations of long and short notes depend entirely on the arrangement of the ligatures. The exception was the conductus, in which ligatures could not be regularly used, because each syllable of the text corresponds roughly to one note. The same became true of the motet, and composers found it necessary to make clear to the singers which notes were long and which short; they therefore made two of the note shapes already in use in ligatures independent; these were the ‘longa’ (the ‘virga’ of Gregorian chant) and the ‘brevis’ (the ‘punctum’ of Gregorian chant). Later on [c. 1250), because composers wanted to write more flexible and expressive melodies, a shorter note value came into use, the ‘semibrevis’, with the

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The Mew Art

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Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

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The New Art

153

Machaut’s Mass can be regarded as a summary of the French Ars Nova, for it contains nearly all the devices and styles practised by him and his compatriots—syncopation, hocket, florid melody, syllabic settings, both Gregorian and freely composed tenors, the elaboration of a chant in an upper part, the use of instruments to accompany one or more of the voices, and the four unifying devices—isorhythm, identical texts, imitation, and sonority. With reference to the last of these, there is the same distinction between the conductus style and the isorhythmic movements in the Mass that we noted between the ballades and the motets—^in other words, there is a greater percentage of triads, especially on the first part of the breve, in the Gloria and Credo than in the other movements of the Mass. As for imitation it is hardly used at all, because mediaeval composers were more interested in the differentiation of individual voices than in their integration, and imitation is the most powerful unifying device that music possesses. This desire to make each part independent of the others was natural enough if we consider that part-music weis still in its infancy compzured to monophony, and that, like a child with a new toy, composers wanted to, one could almost say were bound to, exploit the possibilities of this kind of music in which the more the parts are dissociated from each other the less Hke monophony they become. The widespread use of instruments to contrast with the voice is another pointer in the same direction, for the similarity of range of the voices, which as a result frequently cross each other, would tend to obscure their melodic and rhythmic differences if unaccompanied, but when supported or doubled by instruments of different timbres each part stands out sharply from the others. Thus a purely vocal rendering of almost any French part-music written between c. 1200 and c. 1425 com pletely misrepresents the composer’s intentions. The Italian Ars Nova has usually been regarded as less important than the French, because for one thing its system of notation was less subtle and more cumbersome than the French and eventually became obsolete, and for another the school of composers that flourished from c. 1325 to c. 1425 left no followers, most of the fifteenth century being a blank so far as Italian composition is concerned. The music itself, however.

154

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

which is quite different in many respects, surpassed that of France during the latter part of the century. The ‘New Art’ in Italy began at about the same time as in France, and again it was a theorist, Marchettus of Padua [fl. first half of the fourteenth century], who, in his Pomerium tnusicae mensuratae (‘The Fruits of Measured Music’), provided composers with a neatly classified system of notation which enabled them to exploit the new rhythmic fireedom. The basis of this system is the breve, which never alters its value once this has been fixed, just as in Petronian notation, whereas in the French system the breve can be shortened or lengthened at any time by imperfection or alteration respectively (see p. 125). Like Petronian notation also, the groups of notes which make up the value of a breve are marked off by a long, a breve, a long or breve rest, a ligature, or, more frequently, a dot. Marchettus, however, expands the earlier system in two ways. He first of all divides both the ternary (perfect) and binary (imperfect) breve into four groups of smaller notes, the perfect breve consisting of three, six, nine, or twelve equal parts, and the imperfect of two, four, six, or eight equal parts. Each of these divisions is called by the number of parts it contains, e.g. ‘ternaria’ (three), ‘senaria perfecta’ (six arranged in three (i.e. ‘perfect’) groups of two), ‘novenaria’ (nine), and ‘duodenaria’ (twelve); ‘binaria* (two), ‘quatemaria’ (four), ‘senaria imper fecta’ (six arranged in two (i.e. ‘imperfect’) groups of three), and ‘octonaria’ (eight), and in order to tell the performer which of these divisions was in operation composers sometimes, but alas by no means always, wrote the initial letters in the stave. Four of these divisions are exacdy the same as de Vitri’s four common arrangements of time and prolation given on p. 125, for in modem terms novenaria (‘n’)=e = ©, senaria imperfecta (‘si’ or ‘i’) = | = G, senaria perfecta (‘sp’ or ‘p’) =|- = O, and quatemaria (‘q’) = C. Marchettus’s second expansion lay in the number of note shapes, and in this he went far beyond de Vitri, who was quite content with the addition of the minim, for some of the more complex Italian pieces bristle with shapes such as these ^ all of which have different values, depending on which ‘division’ they occur in, but in any one division their value is fixed; two notes, however, the semibrevis

The New Art

155

and the semibrevis major ^ (which also occurs in Le Roman de Fauvel, see p. 124), have no fixed value, like the Petronian semibreve. It may seem from the above that Italian Ars Nova notation is needlessly complex and obscure, but in actual fact it is much less ambiguous than the French system and presents far fewer difficulties to the modern transcriber once the values of the notes in any particular ‘division’ are known, largely because of the inevitable grouping in breves. In fact, the music of the earlier part of the century is really nothing more than an ornamented conductus-style, for instead of the parts moving together at the same time as in the older conduct!, the basic notes are broken up into notes of smaller value and so produce contrasting rhythms; thus syncopation can occur mthin the breve, but not between one breve and the next, and it is this limitation of the system that caused it to be severely modified fifom about 1350 onwards, when Italian composers came into contact with French music and saw how superior the French system was as regards rhythmical expression. The notation which evolved in Italy during the latter half of the fourteenth century is best described as ‘mixed notation’, for while it adopted de Vitri’s basic principles and scrapped the rigid division into breve groups, it still retained the multiplicity of note shapes—^in fact, it even added to these as the century progressed, despite the frequent protests of French and English theorists. To make matters even more complex, not only do red notes occur in all the parts (in France they were still largely restricted to the tenor and contratenor), but white notes as well. Yet this notation was the one used by most of the Italian Ars Nova composers (see Fig. 4, p. 156). The influence of France on Italy was not confined only to notation or even to music as a whole, for in society, learning, and literature French customs, ideas, and forms of expression played a considerable part in Italian life and culture. On the other hand, although Paris was still the intellectual and artistic centre of Europe, some Italian cities, particularly those in the north, were beginning to be independent of outside influence, and so far as music at any rate was concerned, Florence, Bologna, Padua, Rimini, Genoa, and, in central Italy, Gaserta and Perugia all had flourishing schools of composers whose output, while still clearly influenced

Italian Ars Nova ‘ mixed ’ notation. The ballata J/essun ponga speranza by Landini. Squarcialupi Codex (see p. 167). The tenor part starts at the beginning of the 5th stave and the contratenor at the beginning of the 8th stave. Note the multiplicity of note shapes and the white breves and semibreves. Facsimile in Apel, ibid. p. 393.

Fig . 4

The New Art

i57

by the French Ars Nova, stressed a side of part-music that had till now been of only secondary importance—namely, melody. Speaking generally, we can say that the development of music up to the end of the fourteenth century took place in France and that it was almost exclusively concerned with rhythm, both in the individual parts and as a means of providing some degree of unity (isorhythm). It is possible that this preoccupation with the most fundamental characteristic of music (for rhythm exists in nature without melody, but not vice versa) was inevitable, and that the melodic aspect of part-music could not be developed until the rhythmic aspect had been more or less fully worked out. Again speaking gener ally, it is true to say that the French have always been more interested in the intellectual side of artistic creation (rhythm and design) than in the emotional (melody and colour), whether in music, poetry, architecture, or painting, whereas with the Italians it has always been the other way round. (Could Gregorian chant, with its almost complete lack of interest in organized rhythm, have arisen in France rather than Italy?) This generalization is not contradicted by the fact that the first great flowering of secular melody arose in Provence, for this region of France was associated most closely, both geographically and culturally, with Italy, and the songs of the troubadours were in general more purely melodic than those of the northern French trouv^res in the sense that they were less concerned with overall structure and hence with melodic repetition. But the Italian genius, although it eclipsed the French during the latter half of the fourteenth century, was too much under the influence of the latter to show its natural melodic bent as consistently as it might have done, but the one purely Italian type of composition, the madrigal, does rely almost entirely on melody for its appeal, for it not only rejected the immensely popular device of isorhythm, but the melodies themselves are smoother, sweeter, and more typically vocal than those of Machaut and his compatriots. One might indeed compare the ^o chief composers of the fourteenth century, Machaut and Landini, with Bach and Handel respectively, in that both Machaut and Bach were mainly concerned with structure and their part-writing is frequently instrumental in character even

158

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

when written for voices, whereas Landini and Handel stressed the more sensuous and emotional aspect of music and their melodies are predominantly vocal even when written for instruments. The madrigal was one of the two types of composition that appeared in the early fourteenth century—that is, before French influence became strong. The name possibly derives from the Italian mandria, which means ‘sheepfold’, and later the term ‘mandriale’ was applied to any pastoral poem. It may, however, have come from the Latin matricale, ‘belonging to the womb’, and hence denoted poems written in the mother tongue or vernacular. Whatever the derivation, the texts of the Ars Nova madrigals are by no means always based on pastoral subjects, but they all consist of two or three verses, each with three lines and a final verse of two lines called a ‘ritornello’ (refrain); thus the total number of lines was either eleven or eight. The music for each verse is the same, but that for the ritornello is different and, moreover, usually written in a contrasting metre, as in this charming eight-line madrigal by Jacopo da Bologna [fl. first half of fourteenth century] (Ex. 58* opposite). The rhythmic simplicity and melodic smoothness of this piece, despite the occasional use of hocket (e.g. bb. 6-7, 14-16), is typical of the madrigal, as is the use of imitation (bb. lo-ii, 43-4), and it is this last feature that provides another important difference between fourteenth-century French and Italian music, because for the first time it was consistently stressed and made an integral part of composition by the Italian Ars Nova composers, particularly those of the early generation such as Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Firenze ( = Florence), or da Cascia, as he is sometimes called [fl. first half of fourteenth century]. The second of the two early types of Italian composition is the ‘caccia’ (hunt), which shows imitation carried to its extreme, for it is either entirely or mainly written in strict canon. Like the madrigal, most cacce are in two sections, the second, shorter one being the ritornello, but whereas the first section is always a canon, usually for two voices with an accompanying instrumental tenor, the ritornello is much less consistent, and is even omitted at times. Italy was not the first * Adapted from H. Gleason, op. cit., p. 99.

The Mew Art

159

country to employ strict canon in composition, as the cacda almost certainly derived from the French ‘chace’; the latter, however, did not become nearly so popular in France as the caccia did in Italy, because canon inevitably binds the parts together, and this as we have seen was completely opposed to the French conception of polyphony. Ex.56 Madrigal

/V

Jacopo da Bologna

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Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

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The J^ew Art

i6i 58

EX.

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(CONTD.)

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Although most cacce deal with himting in some form or other, this is often a disguise for amorous pursuit, the hunter being the lover and the hunted his mistress. In addition, animated scenes, such as a fire or market day, were sometimes used, but whatever the subject the. music reflects the general excitement of the setting. In the following caccia by Giovanni

162

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

da Firenze quails are the quarry, although it would seem from the end of the second verse that the hunter was himself ensnared (Ex. 59*); £x.59 Cacciii-CAsn brjcchj ossa/ («.«I.MMc.eO)_____________________________ rrrri^ rffrrn i

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The J\few Art

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Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

165

The New Art

EX. 59 (CONTD.)

166

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

EX. 59 (CONT.)

The New Art

167

Besides Giovanni da Firenze, Florence boasted a number of other composers, her most brilliant—^indeed, the most out standing composer of the Italian Ars Nova—being Francesco Landini [c. 1325— 1397] who, though blinded from smallpox while still a child, became not only a virtuoso organist, lutanist, and flautist, but was also widely acclaimed as a poet (like Machaut) and philosopher. It was his compositions, however, that brought him most fame, and those that have come down to us represent nearly one-third of the total number of Italian pieces of this period, a contemporary estimation of greatness that posterity for once has accepted. Most of Landini’s compositions are contained in a most beautifully written and illuminated manuscript, the Squarcialupi Codex, the largest collection of fourteenth-century Italian music that has been preserved. Twelve composers besides Landini are represented, and each is portrayed in a miniature placed at the beginning of the section devoted to his music. Unlike Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Firenze, Landini was considerably influenced by French music. This is clearly evident in his decided preference for the ‘ballata’ rather than the madrigal or caccia. The ballata is the exact parallel of the French virelai from which it is derived, but while the form is the same {A bb a A) the melodic character is quite different, being, as we should expect, smoother and more graceful. The following example has been described by one specialist of the period as “perhaps the most beautiful work of the century”; it is certainly an exquisite one (Ex. 60* overleaf). The cadence in bars 8-9 with the inserted E between the F and the final G is very common in fourteenth-century music. It is often misleadingly called the ‘Landini sixth cadence’, ‘sixth’ because the inserted note is always a sixth—either major (as above) or minor—from the final, and ‘Landini’ because it was once thought (wrongly) that he was the first to use it. A better name is ‘under-third cadence’. The seventh degree of the scale (F in this case) could be either sharp or flat (as in the above example), but it is possible that a contemporary singer would have sung F#; if he did then the G in the contratenor would probably be sharpened also. This brings us to the vexed question of ‘musica falsa’ or ‘musica ficta’ (the terms are * Adapted from H. Gleason, op. cit., p. 104.

168

Ex.60 te\)e\a-Gninp/ml'af/iocA/ (■ • J. MMc.60}

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

Londfni

The Mew Art

169

EX.

60

(CONTD.)

170

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

The J{ew Art

171

synonymous). To the mediaeval musician this simply meant those notes that are not included in the enlarged scale of Guido (see Chapter i, pp. 36 and 37), so that any note below G or above e", or any chromatic note except (which is in the Guidonian system) was regarded theoretically as ‘false’ or ‘fictitious’. Today, however, the term is hmited to the chromatic alteration of certain notes (including B) which a modern editor thinks would have been made by a contemporary performer. All we know for certain is that the music as written down does not indicate all the accidentals, and that performers altered certain notes as they went along. Admittedly the theorists give us some help by stating, for example, that B is flattened in the melodic progression F-B-A or A-B-A, and F sharpened in the progression B-F-G or G-F-G, that the harmonic interval of a diminished fifth must be made perfect by altering one of the notes, and that a third expanding to a fifth or a sixth to an octave should both be perfect. This last rule ties up with the ‘double leading-note’ cadence mentioned on p. 140. Even so, none of the theorists provides a complete explanation of the practice, and even if some of them had done we could not apply their rules to all compositions, because it is quite clear that the practice varied according to the period, the nationality of the composer and performer, and even between one composer and another. Moreover, different manuscripts of the same period sometimes present the same composition with varying acciden tals; thus it is unhkely that there ever was only one completely authentic way of performing a piece, a view which agrees with the lack of precise instructions as to which instruments should accompany or double the voice. The problems of musica ficta apply to most Renaissance music also, and in modem editions of early music the added accidentals are placed either in brackets before the notes or, better, above the stave. The Italian Ars Nova composers are usually grouped into three generations, the more important ones in the first genera tion being Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Firenze, in the second Landini, Niccolo da Perugia, Ghirardello da Firenze, and Paolo tenorista da Firenze, and in the third Matteo da Perugia, Antonello and Filippo da Caserta, Bartolomeo da Bologna, and the Belgian, Johannes Ciconia. The last group flourished during the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century and represents, together with a number

I ya

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

of French composers, the summit of mediaeval technique as well as some features typical of the Renaissance. The main characteristic of mediaeval polyphony is, as we have seen, independence of parts, largely achieved by con trasting rhythms in the different voices. It was essentially a French idea and is more clearly shown in Machaut’s music than in Landini’s. But even Machaut provides some means of unification, either through isorhythm, the development of a rhythmic and melodic motive (see pp. 148, 150), or sonority. The climax came at the turn of the century, when a group of composers, most of them French, but including some Italians, created an art which for rhythmical and notational complexity has never been surpassed or even equalled, and which employs dissonances more freely than in any period before the twentieth century; the result is a texture composed of virtually uncon nected strands of melody which at times all but disintegrates. The leading composers of this group—often called the Mannered School—whose output was almost entirely secular, were the Frenchmen, Solage, Jacques de Selesses (Senleches), Jean Trebor, and Jean Vaillant, and the Italians, Matteo da Perugia and Antonello and Filippo da Caserta. It seems likely that the last-named initiated this new style of composition, for he was a theorist as well as a composer, and his treatise deals at length with the complicated system of notation needed to express the rhythmic subtleties of the music, and just as in the case of de Vitri, whose Ars Nova satisfied the existing desire to enlarge the rhythmical horizon, so Filippo provided the means by which composers could pursue to the utmost their obsession with rhythm. Space forbids detailed discussion or even a complete example of this ultra-refined art; suffice it to say that cross-rhythms far more extravagant than that shown in Ex. 55 and syncopations more complex than that of Ex. 49 abound. Example 61* (opposite) will give some idea of this extraordinary art. Such music obviously requires not only first-rate musicians, but also the appreciation of a highly cultured circle intensely interested in secular art. Both existed in a few aristocratic estabUshments in the south of France, particularly at Avignon, the headquarters of the French Pope during the Great Schism. * Adapted from W. Apel, French Secular Music of the Late Fourteenth Century^ p, 36. The words in the top part have been omitted.

The New Art

m

To this brilliant and distinguished court men came from all over Europe, and it became famous as an international meetingplace. This explains the presence of the Italian contingent and also the fact that most of the compositions have French texts and are either ballades, virelais, or rondeaux, the first of these forms predominating. El. 61 From th« Bolla4< Du ml prittaa

Antomllo doCoierro'

The logical outcome of the mediaeval ideal had been reached, but alongside it there was developing a movement in the opposite direction, a movement which had already begun with the first generation of Italian composers and which aimed at a greater simplicity of rhythm, a smoother melodic line, and a more unified texture. The chief figures in this movement were Matteo da Perugia and Ciconia, most of whose works point towards the style of the mid-fifteenth century discussed in Chapter 6. Apart from France, Italy, and Britain (see below), the rest of Europe contributed little to the development of part-music. There was tremendous musical activity in Spain, particularly in Aragon and Catalonia, the provinces bordering on to France, which reached its peak during the reign of John I of Aragon [1350-1396], but even though the cultural and political ties with France and Italy were strong and some French composers, including SeleSses, visited John’s court.

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actual composition, as in the thirteenth century (see Chapter 3, p. 90), was largely confined to solo songs in virelai-form rather than part-songs. Similarly in Germany, where Minnesang continued to flourish, but part-music was almost totally neglected, being much farther behind France and even Spain in both quality and quantity. Britain, however, whose main centre of composition seems to have been at Worcester, though stylistically out of date in that her composers preferred the conductus to the motet and rarely attempted the rhythmic complexities of Continental music, persisted in stressing the two features already referred to in Chapter 4 and which became all-important in the Renaissance—namely, sonority and imita tion. The first is evident in the greater number of compositions in four or even five parts than on the Continent, and by the frequent use of * chords. This style is usually called ‘English discant’ today, and not only was it immensely popular in Britain from c. 1300 to c. 1450, but greatly influenced Contin ental music during the following century {H.A.M., 57s). Imitation was almost entirely limited to voice-exchange, and it is rather surprising that canon was hardly used at all. Admit tedly, the total number of British pieces that have survived is much smaller compared to France or Italy, but this does not fully explain the dearth of canonic writing, particularly after the tour de force of the Reading Rota (see Chapter 4, p. 112). Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that it is harder to compose a canon using full triads than it is to write a sonorous piece in conductus style in which the parts exchange phrases. Britain was also the probable home of the first harpsichord, the ‘echiquier’, and although we have no contemporary description or illustration it most likely consisted of a triangular shaped sounding board with a number of strings of varying lengths stretched over it and plucked by ‘jacks’, which in turn were operated by pressing down a key. The appearance of these jacks ranged across the base of the triangle might very well have suggested a row ofchessmen, for ‘echiquier’ means ‘chess-board’. The importance of instruments in the performance of fourteenth-century vocal music has already been stressed, and is further borne out by the frequent references in contemporary literature, the number of times they are portrayed in paintings and sculpture, and the great variety that existed. The almost complete lack of part-compositions intended solely for

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instrumental ensembles is certainly due to the widespread use of instruments in vocal music, much of which was undoubtedly performed without voices if so desired. Most of the remaining pieces that are definitely instrumental consist of dance and keyboard pieces; in the former the estampie is still the most common, and a special type called the ‘saltarello’ makes its first appearance. We know nothing about the actual dance steps of the saltarello, but the examples that have survived are (in modern terms) in |, f, or |, each having a number of ‘puncti’ with the usual ouvert and clos endings, and each employing melodic rhyme, as in the following delightful example (Ex. 62*): Cl.62 SottarwNo

(i-.MMc.80)

* From A. Schering, Gtschichte der Musik in BeispieUn, p. s i,

Anon.

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The fourteenth century is usually regarded as the period when dancing in the modern (i.e. fashionable) sense began as opposed to folk-dancing, which of course is as old as man. Unfortunately, very little dance music has survived, and what there is is nearly all monophonic, but we are better off as regards other instrumental music, most of which consists of arrangements for keyboard of vocal pieces. These are important because they show for the first time a clear distinction between vocal and keyboard styles, and the latter, by ornamenting the long notes and filhng in the leaps of the original song, and by the use of rapid repeated notes and broken-chord patterns prepared the way for the keyboard variations of the sixteenth century. In Ex. 63, (i) * is the second part of a solo song with its keyboard transcription placed below, and (ii)'|‘ is an excerpt from a transcription of a hitherto untraced song. Only one example of variation-form from the fourteenth century has come down to us, and this is entitled Di molen van pariis (‘The Windmills of Paris’; alternatively, the title may simply mean that the .composition is by a certain Mr. Windmill of Paris). None of the manuscripts of keyboard music gives any indication as to whether the contents are intended for the clavichord, harpsichord, or positive organ, or all three. (The great organ was obviously too clumsy, and the portative, as we have observed, was incapable of playing part-music.) Probably the occasion or the performer’s personal preference for one or other of the instruments was the deciding factor. Dance and instrumental music as well as singing played an important part in the fourteenth-century Mystery and Miracle Plays that developed from the earlier church operas. In Chapter I we saw how the popularity of these operas led to the increasing use of the vernacular instead of Latin, to the intrusion of secular music alongside Gregorian chant, and to performances in the market-place rather than the church, with professional and amateur actors replacing the clergy. Having ransacked the Bible for suitable material, and having created a unified series of playlets which dramatized the main events from the Creation to the Resurrection—the Mystery Plays—men began to find more outlet for their dramatic talent in the miracles and lives ♦ Adapted from O. Plamenac, ‘Keyboard Music of the Fourteenth Century in Codex Faenza 117’ (Journal of the American Musiological Society, IV, 3, pp. 191-2). t Adapted from O. Plamenac, ibid., p. 193.

XIII The chanson Le grant desk by Compere as printed by Petrucci in his Canti B. numero Cinquanta, 2nd ed. 1503.

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of the saints. These Miracle Plays were performed singly, not in cycles, and whereas each Mystery Play became associated with a certain locality and was performed virtually unaltered every year for generation after generation, the Miracle Play, with its wider choice of subject matter, greater freedom of treatment, and lack of sacred tradition, provided an opportunity for dramatic experiments. During the fifteenth and sixteenth

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centuries the Miracle Plays changed in character and content, and by portraying contemporary society to a far greater extent than formerly reflected the realistic approach to life so typical of the Renaissance. Thus, instead of depicting the conversion of a sinner by a saint, together with other holy deeds by the latter, they presented everyday scenes and people with the saint replaced by personifications of the moralities—the Morality Plays. The experience gained through these Morality Plays in having to devise both theme and plot instead of relying on historical or legendary events and figures, and their greater dramatic scope in having actual characters representing ‘Good’, ‘Evil’, etc., had a profound influence on later drama which can be traced from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus {c. 1588) to T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935). Mystery, Miracle, and Morality Plays were acted and produced with tremendous gusto and often considerable elaboration. Processions, tableaux, dances, choral and solo songs, buffoonery, and pathos combined to form an entertain ment so popular that the purely secular drama of the late Renaissance had some difficulty in ousting it. Only in Italy did the Morality Play not catch on, a fact which largely explains the comparative failure of Italian drama during the seventeenth and to a lesser extent eighteenth centuries. Judged as a whole, the music of the fourteenth century lacks both variety and balance when compared to the century that |)feceded it, even though many compositions by men such as Machaut and Landini arc as good as or better than anything produced in the thirteenth century. The lack of variety is due, in the first place, to the fact that secular music completely overshadows sacred, whereas in the thirteenth century the two fields are roughly on a par, and, secondly, because the absence of lyrical solo song, which resulted when the various national minstrel movements died out, is by no means adequately compensated for by the French treble-dominated style or even by the melodiousness of Italian part-music. The lack of balance is due to the obsession with rhythm and voice-differentiation; and while admittedly these are also the main characteristics of thirteenth-century music, their applica tion in this century is not so extreme, and is nearly always balanced by the structural devices of isorhythm or repetition (e.g. rondeau form). In the fourteenth century, however.

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preoccupation with rhythm incre2ised, and in general is not adequately balanced by structural devices, nor by the new sonority, nor by the rare use (outside Italy and Britain) of imitation, and eventually reached a pitch where the texture all but disintegrates. This lack of balance is much less true of Italian Ars Nova music than French, but France was the dominating influence in Europe for most of the century. Even so, the quality of Italian music and its differences compared to that of France make the fourteenth century similar in one respect to the eighteenth century. Thus the latter period saw both the end of the baroque movement (Bach and Handel) and the rise— indeed, fulfilment—of the Viennese classical style (Haydn and Mozart). Similarly in the fourteenth century, where Machaut and the Mannered School on the one hand represent the culmination of mediaeval ideals, i.e. the stress on rhythm and differentiation of parts, of which the treble-dominated style was one result and varied instrumentation another, while on the other hand many of the compositions of the Italian Ars Nova show traits characteristic of the music that flourished during most of the Renaissance, i.e. the melodic and rhythmic simplicity of individual parts, and a unified texture achieved to some extent through equality of part-writing in which no voice dominates the others, but more particularly through the consistent use of imitation. The beginnings and endings of artistic movements have always caused a good deal of dissension and none more so than those of the Renaissance. The problem becomes simpler if we realize that there never can be a hard and fast line between one movement and another, that the later develops from the earlier, and that therefore the distinction of a particular movement from other movements lies in the importance attached to certain features, most or all of which will be found in the preceding period. Thus naturalism—or the portrayal of Nature as she appears to the artist after close observation—is one of the main characteristics of Renaissance art, yet as we saw in the last chapter this had already become significant in Gothic sculpture and, moreover, continued to play a vital part in movements following the Renaissance, the difference being that Renaissance naturalism is more realistic than Gothic, and that in those later movements in which naturalism is an important feature it is

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either even more detailed or else treated more emotionally. Again, the chief feature of mediaeval music—the differentiation of parts—continued through most of the early Renaissance, albeit considerably modified, virtually dying out during the late Renaissance, but reappearing as one of the most notable traits of the early baroque. We should also remember that new movements affect different countries at different times and in varying degrees— indeed, some movements may hardly affect a particular country at all, as, for instance, the Gothic style in Italy (see Chapter 2, p. 70). Similarly, the Renaissance began in Italy earlier and affected Italian society more completely than in any other country. Moreover, the various arts are not necessarily influenced at the same time nor to the same extent by a change in outlook. Architecture, for example, was affected by the Renaissance much later and less strongly than was painting. In what ways then did fourteenth-century music reflect the Renaissance? Before we can attempt an answer to this question we must clearly understand what the main features of this movement are. Renaissance means ‘rebirth’, and what was reborn was the awareness that man as an individual was extremely important, that the present was very real, and that life should be investi gated and enjoyed to the full. All this was largely opposed to the mediaeval conception in which the world was renounced, the future being the focus of all man’s activities. It is dangerous to crystallize the ideals of any movement into a few words, but it may help to provide a rough distinction between one move ment and another. Thus the mediaeval approach to life was essentially mystical or abstract, while that of the Renaissance was realistic or concrete. This latter approach had, of course, existed before (hence it was reborn), particularly in the civilizations of Greece and Rome, and the study of classical literature, philosophy, and art, largely made possible by the labours of the mediaeval scholar-monks (see Chapter i, p. ii), played an ever-increasing part in fertilizing the seeds that had begun to germinate in the late Middle Ages. The corruption and division of the Church, the growing independence of temporal power that sprang from the con sciousness of man’s importance, and the stress laid on earthly life inevitably resulted in a pronounced swing towards the

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Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

secular in art. If the style of architectiu’e was not affected at first, its uses certainly were, and as much attention was given to the designing and construction ofpalaces and public buildings as to cathedrals and churches. Similarly with music; indeed, from this aspect at any rate music reflected the Renaissance more faithfully in the fourteenth century than in either the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, and more completely than any other art, with the possible exception of literature, for as we have seen very little was composed for the Church during the Ars Nova period, especially in Italy. In literature the great figures of the century were Dante [1265-1321], Petrarch [1304-1374], and Boccaccio [1313-1375]. In his Divine Comedy Dante represents in a wonderfully pene trating and poetic manner the highest flights of mediaeval thought based on the ideals of Aristotle and Aquinas. But his outlook is essentially mystical and mediaeval in that his great " poem traces the journey of a soul through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven rather than portrays purely human experiences on earth. The Divine Comedy was enormously popular—^so much so that the Tuscan dialect in which it was written ousted all other dialects and ultimately became the basis of modem Italian. But partly because it was such an unapproachable masterpiece and partly because it did not sufficiently represent the changing atmosphere of the times, it had far less influence than the lyric poems of Petrarch, especially those inspired by his love for a certain Laura, which are usually referred to as his Rime (literally ‘rhymes’). Although these were considered trifles by their author, who regarded his Latin treatises and verse of more importance, they were imitated and translated all over Europe, The reason for this was not only the quality of the poems themselves, but also the prestige of the poet in the field of learning, for Petrarch’s passion for antiquity, which led him to value highly and accept as true much of Greek and Roman moral philosophy, went far beyond that of Aquinas. In this he gave a lead to most thoughtful men of his time who could no longer find in the Church their only guide to personal conduct. Petrarch, in fact, was the first humanist, for by humanism we mean the desire to understand the Greek and Roman civiliza tions and the differences between them and mediaeval Christianity and heathenism, and the attempt to fuse classical with Christian doctrines without subordinating either of them

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to the other. It is this last which distinguishes the humanist of the Renaissance from the mediaeval classical scholar. Petrarch’s enthusiasm for classical culture was shared by his compatriot, Boccaccio, but whereas the former was a poet whose Jitme show the influence of troubadour verse in their refined and sensitive expression of unrequited love, the latter excelled in prose, and in his most outstanding work, the collection of 100 short stories called the Decameron^ he describes vividly, if somewhat crudely at times, and with penetrating psychological insight the men and women of his day. His characters live because they are based on acute observation, as are those of his great contemporary Chaucer, and in this Boccaccio can be likened to the first great Renaissance painter, Giotto [1276-1336]. In Giotto’s works the portrayal of the subject is no longer largely dictated by the design of the whole as in Gothic architecture, for he achieves unity and form through the realistic grouping of comparatively lifelike figures and objects, based on a close observance of Nature (Plate IX), just as the Greeks had done in their incomparable statues. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Giotto were all born in Tuscany, the capital of which was Florence. This ‘flower of cities’, as it has been called, was the heart of the Renaissance. It was also the most important musical centre of the Italian Ars Nova, not only because Landini was born on its outskirts and spent most of his life there, but also because it had a larger and more brilliant group of composers than any other city. It is no surprise, therefore, to find Renaissance traits-in the purely Italian madrigal and caccia, or even in the French-influenced ballata. Thus the greater melodiousness of Italian music compared to French can be likened to the lyricism of Petrarch’s verse, one of which indeed was set as a madrigal by Jacopo da Bologna, the first of countless others by later composers, for Petrarch was easily the most popular poet of Renaissance music. Again, the true-to-life stories of Boccaccio and the natural istic paintings of Giotto are paralleled partly in the lively realism of the caccia, but more importantly in the increasing use of imitation as a means of achieving unity, for the mediaeval device of isorhythm, which the Italians virtually rejected, is abstract in that it is felt rather than heard, whereas imitation is concrete, actual, its binding effect being clearly audible. But imitation was too powerful a means of unification to

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become general for composers whose chief concern was to differentiate one part from another, and even though this was less true of Italy than France, fourteenth-century music as a whole is undoubtedly more mediaeval than Renaissance-like in its aims and outlook. PERFORMANCE

(See also p. 153.) All the vocal examples, except 56 and 57, may be performed on instruments alone, provided they are of contrasting timbres, but when one or more voices participate the following arrange ments are recommended. Ex. 52. The triplum and duplum parts should be sung by solo voices with instruments doubling one or both. The tenor part should be purely instrumental. Ex. 55. The top part should be sung by a solo voice with or without instruments while the two lower parts are played. Ex. 56. The triplum should be sung, the motetus may be sung provided that it is doubled by an instrument, and the tenor and contratenor should both be played by instru ments of contrasting timbre. Ex. 57. This may be sung by unaccompanied voices, though it sounds better if the tenor and contratenor are doubled by contrasting instruments. Ex. 58. This may be sung by unaccompanied solo voices, or with the voices doubled. Ex. 59. The tenor part should be played by an instrument, but the two upper parts in canon may be sung by solo voices with or without instruments. Ex. 60. The top part should be sung by a solo voice, although instrumental doubling for the refrain is effective. The middle part should be instrumental, and the lowest part may be sung or played. Ex. 62. This may be played on a violin or viola, as written, or doubled at the octave by other instruments. The piece is much enhanced by playing the puned on different solo instruments with the others joining in the repeat, and with the addition, in the repeats, of a triangle and /or small drum when the ending common to all the puncti begins (i.e. bar 3 to the end in the first punctum).

6 MUSIC IN THE EARLY RENAISSANCE Th e leadership in European music during the latter half of the fourteenth century passed from France to Italy, but during the early years of the fifteenth century English influence became predominant, and mainly through the genius ofJohn Dunstable [d. 1453] profoundly affected later composers. English music of this period, except for that of Dunstable, is mostly represented in a large collection known as the Old Hall MS., compiled c. 1420, containing nearly 150 pieces, most of which are mass settings. The styles of composition are conductus, treble-dominated, isorhythmic, and caccia-influenced—• that is, two upper voices, either in canon or much more animated than the lower voice or voices. The first two styles are the most common, the conductus settings being either simple, as in the thirteenth-century type, or ornamental, as in the Italian Ars Nova madrigal, and the treble-dominated pieces occasionally indulge in the kind of rhythmic complexity discussed in the previous chapter. This latter, together with the use of isorhythm and canon, shows that England was less insular than is usually made out. The prevalence of conductus style, however, indicates a conservatism which the example of Dunstable did nothing to alter; indeed, he can hardly have been known in Britain, as practically all his work is contained in manuscripts scattered about the Continent, notably those at Aosta, Modena, and Trent (all in Italy), only one piece, the very beautiful motet, Veni Sancte Spiritus—Vent Creator, being in the Old Hall MS., where it is given as anonymous. Of the composers mentioned in the MS. the chief are Leonel Power [d. 1445], Thomas Damett [d. c. 1436], John Cooke [d. Byttering, Pycard, Nicholas Sturgeon [d. 1454], W. Typp, Oliver, and Robert Chirbury. The pieces by Power, Damett, Byttering, Chirbury, and the anonymous Credo are all in conductus style, Byttering’s motet* and Power’s Sanctus showing the ornamental type. A good example of treble-dominated style is Power’s Gloria {The Old Hall Manuscript, Vol. I, p. 65, ed. A. Ramsbotham), while Pycard’s * Strictly speaking, this is an antiphon, but for convenience we shall include all settings of sacred words in Latin under the term ‘motet’, except for the hymn and, of course, the mass and Magnificat. 185

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Gloria (ibid., p. 92)—one of the most attractive pieces in the entire MS.—is both canonic and isorhythmic. The MS. also contains the earliest surviving part-music by an English monarch—Henry V [1387-1422]. Several of the composers in the MS., including Damett, Cooke, Sturgeon, and Chirbury, were clerks or ‘singing men’ of the Chapel Royal. This institution dates back to the twelfth century, when it was clearly ap imitation of the Papal Chapel with its picked singers and composers. It was not confined to any one place, but accompanied the King wherever he went, and during the 200 years or so from Henry V to Charles II it included most of the leading English composers. Although all the styles mentioned above had been and were being practised abroad, they show in general an important difference, a difference that was characteristically British— namely, a greater sonority based on the ‘English discant’ technique (see Chapter 5, p. 174) and evident also in the number of pieces 04 and even a^. It was this sonority which attracted Continental composers so much and inaugurated what the first great theorist of the century, Tinctoris, called a “new art”. The third, and to a lesser extent the sixth, which had been gradually gaining acceptance in French and Italian compositions of the previous century, now became standard, but they did not yet seriously affect the supremacy of the fifth and octave, and in final chords especially the third was virtually excluded for many years to come, undoubtedly because it was less pleasing than the clear, open sound of the octave or octave and fifth combined (the | chord). The impact of British sonority abroad was largely affected by Dunstable, who was in France for a number of years as musician to John, Duke of Bedford—Henry V’s brother and Regent of France from 1422 to 1435. It seems likely that the composer visited Italy also, judging from the number of his works that exist in Italian manuscripts. At any rate he was sufficiently renowned in France to be acclaimed by a contem porary French poet, Martin le Franc, who in 1441-2 wrote: The English guise they wear with grace They follow Dunstable aright, And thereby have they learned apace To make their music gay and bright.* • Translated by G. Reese, Music in the Renaissance, p. 13 (see Plate XV).

TW

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‘They’ refers to the two leading composers on the Continent at that time, Dufay and Binchois (see Plate XV), of whom more anon. The ‘English guise’ as presented by Dunstable was not only an increased sonority, but a more pronounced feeling for chords and chord progressions, a more refined treatment of discord, a fresher, more lyrical vocal line, and a greater equality of part-writing than had existed before, the chordal sense and equality of part-writing being a natural outcome of English discant and conductus style combined. Although Dunstable might well be called the first great composer in the early Renaissance period, mediaeval features persist in much of his music—for instance, isorhythm (which, like most of the examples in the Old Hall MS., usually occurs in all the voices), polytextuality, and distinction between the parts, both through rhythmic differences and (more especially) through the use of voices and instruments, particularly in secular pieces, the most common layout being a vocal top part with two lower instrumental parts. Apart from general style, Dunstable’s music exhibits four noteworthy features. The first is his fondness for melodic figures—^particularly at the beginnings of phrases in the top part and usually ascending—which are based on the notes of a chord, e.g. 0 rosa bella (voice entry) and Sancta Maria, such figures clearly deriving from the increased chordal sense mentioned earlier. This feature hardly occurs in the Old Hall MS., but is fairly typical of the early fifteenth-century English carol (see p. 214), and this fact, together with the lyrical freshness of much of Dunstable’s music and found in most of the carols also, makes it likely that the composer’s art, or at any rate his melodic line, stemmed more from the semi-popular, non-liturgical English tradition than from the masses and motets of the professional composers of the Chapel Royal. The second feature, which is characteristic of the English school as a whole, is the free treatment of the borrowed chant melody. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this was almost always in the tenor, and although it was mercilessly chopped up into rhythmic patterns the original pitch and notes were nearly always kept. In fifteenth-century England, however, the chant was sometimes altered in pitch (transposed), either bodily or in bits, and frequently tampered with both by

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inserting new notes and by omitting some of the original. Furthermore, it was placed in either the highest or middle voice, especially the latter, more often than in the traditional tenor, as in the three pieces by Power and the anonymous Credo, the chant being transposed up a fifth in the last-named and up a tone in Power’s Sanctus. Sometimes the chant even wandered from voice to voice, as in Byttering’s Nesciens Mater, a practice made easy and probably suggested by the rhythmic similarity of the parts in conductus style. In the following extract from a Gloria by Dunstable the beginning of the top part is compared with the corresponding portion of the chant melody on which it is based; it will be noticed that the composer has transposed the chant up a fourth (Ex. 64*): Ei.64 Gh>r/9 (a) Fro» Nan IX î (k) Tht lop part fro» a lattina aS

!>.66

Both these are what we now call ‘perfect’ or, more strictly» ‘authentic perfect’ cadences, i.e. a tonic chord preceded by its dominant, but Ex. 65 is a transitional type showing the influence of the fourteenth century, in that the lowest note of the last chord is approached from the note above (the supertonic). The probable reason why the perfect cadence gained in popularity and finally ousted the mediaeval ones is that composers realized that if the lowest note or root of the final chord was approached by a leap it would stand out more clearly, and hence the whole chord would be more sharply defined, and the dominant note was the only one that would sound well with the other two, i.e. the leading-note and supertonic, both well established in the history of the cadence. Another cadence that began to be more widely used round about 1450 was the ‘piagai perfect’ cadence (Ex. 67):

Dufay’s tonal feeling, however, must not be overemphasized, for he continued to use the fourteenth-century ‘double-leadingnote’ cadence with its bimodal implications.

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The chordal approach aflfected not only cadences, but harmony as a whole, and Dufay in his more mature work shows a slight but definite preference for chords in root position, a preference which was to remain in music for centuries to come. Furthermore, the relationships between chords became less arbitrary—in other words, it began to be realized that certain chord progressions sounded more satisfactory than others because they are more closely related to a central chord. These two facts, plus the English habit of frequently placing the chant in the middle or highest part, almost certainly explains why Dufay (and all later composers) preferred to place the borrowed melody in an upper part, because this obviously enabled the lowest part to move with much greater freedom and widened the choice of chords. For instance, if we take a note—say, C—and make it the lowest one, the only concordant chords we can build on it are C-E-G and C-E-A; but if there is a lower part then we can get the same two chords (by writing a G either an octave below or in unison) plus the chords E-C-G, F-C-A, A-C-E, and A-C-F. To move the borrowed melody up a voice would have been pointless in earlier centuries, because the range of each voice was usually much the same. In the fifteenth century, however, the range expanded first upwards and then downwards, with the result that differentiation between the voices was naturally achieved by pitch and timbre, not artificially by rhythm and the singing of different words. The equality of part-writing thus suited the new trend admirably, and the use of only one text for all voices (when more than one voice is meant to sing that is) became increasingly common. The English cantus-firmus mass and paraphrase technique were also developed by Dufay. Of the eight masses that are definitely his, two are in three parts («3) and six are 04. Five of the latter use a cantus firmus, which in two (possibly three) of the masses is a secular melody, an innovation that may have been his, and one that represents another and more profound break with tradition than the displacing of the melody from the bottom part. One of these masses uses the tenor part of the ballade Se la face ay pale by Dufay himself, and the other is based on a tune that was to become more popular than any other as a basis for fifteenth- and sixteenth-century masses— L’Homme Armé.

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That only one of Dufay’s masses uses paraphrase may be explained by the fact that he was nurtured in the French tradition and therefore attached great importance to the overall structure of the mass and the means of binding it together, and it is obvious that a melody ornamented in different ways in different movements, even if it is in the top part, is less likely to be heard as a unifying device than if it is simply and uniformly presented, even though its position in the next to lowest voice tends to obscure it. Dufay and others seem to have been aware of this latter difficulty and partially over came it by choosing a melody that was well known, making it the last voice to enter, and anticipating its opening notes in the top voice or voices. It is certain also that the melody was played on a suitable instrument, either solo or doubling the voice. But Dufay was not content with the degree of unity achieved through the use of a cantus firmus alone, and in most of his masses, e.g. Missa Caput and Missa se la face ay pale, he intro duced (but did not invent) a device now known as a ‘head motive’. This is simply a melodic fragment (‘motive’) which occurs at the beginning (‘head’) of each movement, and at various important places en route, so to speak, and almost always in the highest voice where it is most clearly heard. It is usually varied each time it enters, but is always recognizable, and like imitation it is an external unifying device compared to the tenor cantus firmus which, like isorhythm, is an internal one, being more felt than heard. The head-motive device became standard in mass composition until c. 1500, when it was gradually replaced by the use of parody (see p. 204) and pervading imitation. The use of a cantus firmus either to link together the different movements of the mass or as a structural basis for a motet was in fact a logical development of isorhythm, and, like Dunstable, Dufay used the older technique in a number of his motets together with polytextuality, usually in those written to celebrate an important event, such as a royal wedding, the election of a pope, or the signing of a treaty, the solemnity of the occasion being the probable reason why a style hallowed by tradition was employed rather than the ‘modern’ one (see Chapter 5, p. 149). Most of his motets and hymns, however, are composed in the new style, but this is shown most consis tently in his purely secular work, his chansons. This term is a

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general one covering all French secular compositions, but we ' shall use it only in the plural, except for an individual work that cannot be classified as a ballade, virelai, or rondeau. In the fourteenth century the ballade had been the most popular form, but in the early years of the fifteenth century the ron deau gradually displaced it, and in—Dufay’s chansons the latter predominates. Although the fifteenth-century rondeau is similar in structure to the mediaeval type, it is usually more concise than that of the previous century as composers pre ferred syllabic underlay to melismatic. This meant fewer notes per line of text and indeed less composition altogether com pared to the ballade or for that matter the virelai, because the ballade usually had five different units—a, b, c, d, e (see p. 8o), and the virelai three—a, h, c {A bb a A or AB cc ab AB), whereas the rondeau had only two—a, b {AB a A ab AB). The popularity of the rondeau probably sprang from this reduction in length and content, and may be explained by the fact that composers were feehng their way towards a new style and would therefore naturally prefer to work on a small canvas, as it were. Monte verdi in the seventeenth century and Haydn in the eighteenth, to mention only two later instances, both experimented with a new musical language in the intimate and well-established fields of vocal chamber music and string quartet respectively, before applying their results to the larger forms of opera and symphony, and it is a reasonable assumption that Dufay and his generation did the same. Thus Dufay’s chansons, nearly all of which are «3, and some of his smaller sacred compositions (e.g. the lovely motet, Alma redemptoris Mater) are in general more forward-looking as regards style than the masses and larger motets. Dufay’s genius enriched the entire realm of vocal music and reached its greatest heights in sacred music, but although his versatility remained unchallenged until the advent of Josquin des Prez, his chansons were equalled if not surpassed by his fellow countryman, Gilles de Einehe, usually called Binchois \c. 1400-1460], who was also employed by Philip the Good and in whose service he remained for about thirty years. Binchois’ chansons were greatly admired and reflected more clearly than Dufay’s the taste of the bourgeois merchants, whose influence— in direct proportion to their wealth—in matters political, social, and cultural was increasing rapidly, an influence which

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counterbalanced the almost purely secular atmosphere of the aristocratic courts, and which supported the new wave of religious feeling already mentioned. The most obvious bourgeois element in Binchois’ chansons is their simplicity, not only in being mainly 03 and in rondeau form, but also in the texture, for the top part predominates more than in Dufay and the melodies are more ‘popular’, as for instance in the delightful rondeau. De plus en plus. The same lyrical rather than learned attitude is shown in his less frequent use of canon and, in his comparatively few sacred works, the rejection of the simple cantus-firmus technique in favour of paraphrase and treble-dominated style. He seems to have been the only major composer of the fifteenth century who wrote no complete setting of the Mass. Binchois was bom in the province of Hainaut in what is now Belgium, and some twenty years later the same province produced one of the most striking musicians of the Renaissance, Johannes Ockeghem [c. 1410 —c. 1497] (see Plate XVII), a composer who, from 1454 onwards, served three kings of France, Charles VII [reigned 1429-1461], Louis XI [reigned 1461-1483], and Charles VIII [reigned 1483-1498], and whose reputation was such that at his death he was mourned all over Europe, notably by Erasmus, the great humanist and scholar, and by two leading French poets, Molinet and Crétin, the lament by the former being set to music by no less a composer than Josquin des Prez. Like Dufay, Ockeghem was more at home in sacred than secular music, but for different reasons, for it was mainly Dufay’s interest in structure that found its most satisfactory expression in the mass, but it was Ockeghem’s creative vitality that found the chanson too limiting a form, and although a number of these were amongst the most popular of the century (e.g. the rondeau, Fors seulement), he most truly reveals himself in his masses and motets, where his rich imagination had more scope, and it is these, particularly the masses, that we shall discuss. Ockeghem has been more misrepresehted than any other major compose* of the early Renaissance. On the one hand he has been accused of dryness and pedantry because he happened to write a mass, the Missa Cuiusvis toni, that can be sung in any of the four church modes, and another, the Missa Prolationum,

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which is mostly in double canon, the canons being at all intervals from the unison to the octave, and on the other hand he has been acclaimed as the first composer to apply pervading imitation as a structural device on the evidence of a motet whose authorship is questionable. In actual fact he was no more learned than Bach, whose cycle of canons in the ‘Goldberg’ Variations is a distant relation of Ockeghem’s Mass, and the motet, even if it is his, is so unlike the rest of his work in its consistent imitative writing that it must have been composed towards the end of his life under the influence of Josquin des Prez. Ockeghem’s greatness lies not in his technical ingenuity, which was tremendous but discreetly employed, nor in his use of imitation, which is much less frequent than in the works of his lesser contemporary, Busnois (see below), butin the sustained power and beauty of his vocal line. Melody, in fact, is allimportant, not only in the top part but in all the parts, and the resultant multi-strand texture is frequently maintained with hardly a break throughout an entire movement or piece. This continuous polyphony is achieved by replacing the clear-cut phrases of Dufay and Binchois with ‘overlapping’ cadences— in other words, a voice begins a new phrase before the previous one has ended, a technique that became standard in later polyphonic as opposed to contrapuntal writing. Ockeghem also differed from his predecessors (and his successors for that matter) in the ornateness and sweep of his melodies, and his soaring melismas contrast sharply with the simpler, more syllabically underlaid lines of Dufay and Binchois. The application of such melody to all parts could only be effective if the parts did not cross, otherwise a positive tangle of sound would result, and it is not surprising therefore to find Ockeghem keeping his voices intact as it were, and as an inevitable result spreading them over a wider range, especially downwards, for the upper regions had already been partially explored by Dufay’s generation. But the greater distance between top and bottom would have meant a decrease in sonority if only three voices were used, and it is from Ockeghem onwards that four-part writing becomes normal in both sacred and secular compositions. The fact that Ockeghem paraphrases his borrowed material far more often than does Dufay provides a further proof of his

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strong melodic bent, as does the number of his pieces which are newly composed throughout—for example, the fine Missa Mi-mi. In addition, he shows distinct originality in his treat ment of traditional techniques, such as paraphrasing the highest part instead of the usual tenor of a previously composed chanson, or borrowing two parts and sharing them between all the voices, or changing the rhythm of the original melody from ternary to binary. This apparent delight in doing the unusual comes precious near to leg-pulling at times, as when he writes an original tenor part in long notes but places the borrowed chant, freely ornamented, in the top voice, thus kidding the listener into believing that the tenor is the chant and the top voice original. While Ockeghem, like Dufay, enriched both sacred and secular music, he had, like the latter, a contemporary who excelled in chanson composition, and who in fact definitely surpassed him in this field. This was Antoine Busnois [d. 1492], the most important composer in the service of Charles the Bold [reigned 1467-1477], the son of Philip the Good. In his comparatively infrequent use of imitation, Ockeghem stands somewhat apart from the general line of development from Dufay to Josquin des Prez, but it is the greater application of just this feature that is so characteristic of Busnois. Most of his chansons are in rondeau form and 03, and, like Ockeghem, he explored the lower ranges of the voice, but his melodies are clearly in the Dufay-Binchois tradition in their simplicity and clear-cut phrasing. However, his feeling for tonality, while perhaps not stronger than Ockeghem’s, is more obvious because of the greater number of times at which all the voices cadence together, whereas Ockeghem, as we have seen, prefers to overlap. This increased tonal sense is shown in the works of both men by the more frequent occurrence of perfect cadences, particularly the normal one (i.e. Ex. 66), which now definitely began to oust the ‘double leading-note’ cadence with its ambiguous tonality. Another feature of Busnois’s compositions (and indeed of Ockeghem’s too) which became common later on is the rhythmical interplay between the voices. For instance, one voice may begin a phrase in ternary rhythm on the first beat, and another voice imitate this phrase beginning on the third beat, but this beat receives the same accent as the first beat of

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the original phreise; hence there arises a conflict of ‘microrhythms’, i.e. of the rhythms of individual voices. In most modern editions of mediaeval and Renaissance music bar-lines are used to help the singer, but it must always be remembered that the originals are unbarred (with a few exceptions), and that although beating time was essential in order to keep everyone together, this simply indicated the duration of a breve or semibreve and did not imply a regular and recurring strong accent. Accent in fact is determined in two ways—melodically and harmonically. Any note in a melody becomes relatively accented if the word or syllable to which it is set is a strong one, or if its position in a phrase is higher or its value substantially longer than the surrounding notes. In mediaeval and most of early Renaissance music, composers were largely unconcerned about the way syllables fitted the music, but from the latter part of the fifteenth century on much greater care was taken and the natural stresses of the text are more faithfully reflected in the melody. Harmonic accent can hardly be said to have existed before the fifteenth century, because it depends entirely on a refined use of discord and concord. A discord in a series of concords gives rise to a feeling of tension owing to its greater sonority (see Chapter 2, p. 43), and this tension demands the relief given by a succeeding concord. Now greater sonority produces an impression of greater accentuation; thus, for example, in a succession of thirds and fifths played absolutely evenly and of equal duration, the thirds will sound more accentuated than the fifths, and the same applies with even more force to a series of concords and discords. If the discord is of short duration compared to the surrounding concords, it has little influence on the harmonic accent, but if it is of comparable length, then it will produce a definite feeling of stress which will afiect the ‘macrorhythm’, i.e. the rhythm of the piece as a whole. That this was increasingly realized from c. 1400 on is proved by the growing practice of placing the longest discords at intervals of two beats or multiples of two in binary rhythm, and of three or multiples of three in ternary rhythm, thus producing a macrothythmic framework in which the harmonic stress, when it does occur, always comes on what we would call 'the first beat of a duple- or triple-time bar’. The usual length of these discords is a minim, and their treatment becomes more and more circumspect during the early Renaissance, until by

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the latter half of the fifteenth century by far the majority of discordant minims are approached and quitted in a very definite manner now known as ‘suspension’. For example (Ex. 68):

The details varied, of course, but the three basic steps are always the same: (i) ‘preparation’, in which the note to be suspended is concordant with the other parts and occurs on a ‘weak’ beat; (2) ‘suspension’, in which the note is discordant with the other parts, thus producing a feeling of accent; and (3) ‘resolution’, in which the suspended note almost invariably falls a step on to a concord, falling rather than rising because lower notes are less tense than higher ones. In the top .part of Ex. 68 the accent most naturally falls on the F, the microrhythm of this part thus conflicting with the macrorhythm as determined by the harmonic accent, i.e. the suspension, and it is this subtle contrast between the fluid rhythm of the individual voices, with their irregularly placed stresses depending on the accentuation of the text or the shape of the melody, and the comparatively regular accents produced by suspensions which underline the prevailing binary or ternary rhythm of all the parts that is one of the chief characteristics and delights of later Renaissance music. Other important composers of the latter half of the fifteenth century are Jacob Obrecht [c. 1450- 1505], Alexander Agricola [? 1446— 1506], Antoine de Févin [c. 1470 —c. 1512], Gaspar van Weerbecke [c. 1445 —after 1517], Heinrich Isaac [c. 14501517] ) Johannes Martini [d. 1497/8], Loyset Compère [d. 1518] , Pierre de la Rue [d. 1518], Antoine Brumel [c. 1460-c. 1515], and Jean Mouton [d. 1522], but head and shoulders above these was Josquin des Prez (see Plate XVI) [c. 1440—1521], who has been mentioned several times already in this chapter, and with good reason, for he was the greatest composer in the early Renaissance and one of the greatest of all time. His masses, motets, and chansons are as a whole superior to those of any other composer both of his time and before it, but despite a number of fine masses and chansons—

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for example, the Missa Range lingua (a superb work) and the chansons Allegez may and Mille regretz—it is in his motets that his genius is most fiilly shown. The reason for this is probably that only the motet provided both a wide variety of texts suitable for expressive treatment together with a form large enough to contain his tremendous creative-vitality and sense of structure. Previously, expressive treatment had been mainly restricted to the chanson, and structural devices and melodic expansion to the mass; now, however, in Josquin’s hands, the motet not only represented more richly than any other type a synthesis of what had gone before, but introduced a style of composing that became ‘classic’ for the rest of the Renaissance. To discuss in detail the variety of elements which constitute Josquin’s style would take up far too much space, and a summary of the most important features must suffice. Like Ockeghem, the ease with which Josquin wrote in canon has caused some writers to over emphasize this side of his technique, but, as one scholar has aptly said, canon was as natural a form of expression to him as fugue was to Bach. To take only one instance (and one hard to equal, let alone surpass, in its combination of skill and beauty), the section beginning ‘Ave vera Virginitas’ from the motet, Ave Maria—perhaps the most exquisite motet he wrote. This section is a canon at the fifth below between soprano and tenor, the latter following after only one minim beat, with alto and bass being free. The charming simplicity of the main melody and the clear tonality and full harmony of the whole quite overshadow the technical feat involved, while the accents in the tenor part, falling as they do one beat later than in the soprano, produce an effect of indescribable poignancy. Much more important than canon, however, is Josquin’s use of pervading infitation as a unifying device, governing most or all of an extended piece. The ‘point’ of imitation is often double—that is, two voices introduce it and two other voices later imitate it, sometimes inverting it so that what was the top part at first becomes the bottom part when repeated (‘double counterpoint’). Occasionally imitation is ‘tonal’, not ‘real’—^in other words, if the first point begins by leaping a fifth up from, say, C to G, a later entry will underline the ‘key’ octave (in this case C-C) by answering with the complementary fourth, G-C, not another fifth, G-D. Josquin’s feeling for tonality is also

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shown in the greater frequency of perfect cadences and in his purely chordal writing. This latter sometimes persists through out an entire motet, but is more often contrasted with poly phonic sections, a technique that became standard in the sixteenth century and later. Contrast is obtained also by vocal scoring (see p. 214) which, as we shall see, was a typically English feature throughout the century, but which had been largely neglected on the Continent owing to the prevalence of three-part writing, for it can only be really effective in compo sitions for four or more parts. Writing 04 had become common with Ockeghem, but Josquin went further in not only com posing for five and even eight voices, but in helping to establish a standard combination of four voices—namely, soprano (C clef on the bottom fine of the stave, i.e. line i), alto (C clef on line 3), tenor (C clef on line 4), and bass (F clef on line 4). Towards the middle of the sixteenth century the soprano clef was often replaced by the treble or violin G clef that we use today. Other clefs that occasionally replaced or were added to the standard combination were the mezzo-soprano (C clef on line 2), baritone (C clef on line 5 or F clef on line 3), and sub bass (F clef on line 5). Josquin’s melodic line owes more to Busnois than to Ocke ghem, although he clearly learnt the art of overlapping cadences from the latter. Also his melodies tend to reflect the text (‘word painting’) to a greater extent than earlier composers, and while this is normally restricted to such devices as ascending or descending passages when the text mentions ‘rising’ or ‘falling’, etc., an extreme example can be found in his chanson. Nymphes des bois, a deeply felt lament on Ockeghem’s death (see p. 197), which is written entirely in black notes. Apart from pervading imitation, Josquin employs all the structural devices in current use—paraphrase, cantus firmus, and isorhythm. In the first two the borrowed melody is either sacred or secular and placed either in one part or shared between them all. A fair proportion of his compositions are free, but in some of these he repeats a short ’ melodic fragment achieving an ostinato effect, and in others he derives the main theme from the text, as in his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, where the vowels ‘e’, ‘u’, ‘e’, ‘u’, ‘e’, ‘a’, ‘i’, ‘e’ (=‘ae’) are regarded as solmisation syllables—namely, re, ut, re, ut, re, fa, mi, re, and these, in the initial statement of the theme, become

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the notes D, C, D, C, D, F, E, D. The use of borrowed material is not restricted, as it had largely been before, to the mass and motet, for a number of Josquin’s chansons are based on previously composed melodies. Furthermore, canon now invades the secular domain almost as often as the sacred, and, in keeping with Josquin’s freer treatment of-traditional techniques and forms, strict canonic writing is sometimes replaced by free, as in the tenor and bass parts of the chanson, Plus nulz regretz ; the chanson, in fact, has become a far richer and more expres sive medium of composition than ever before, and represents not only a more complete cross-section of the composer’s style than it had earlier, but also reflects the general tendency, already apparent in the mass and motet, of treating traditional structural devices more freely. Thus Josquin was possibly the first to break away from the strict rondeau, ballade, and virelai types and to create forms which, although using repetition also, are far more varied—for example, Cueurs desolez. In addition to the structural devices used in Josquin’s motets, there is one that occurs in his masses only. It consists of borrowing not one but usually all the voice parts of a previously composed sacred or secular work, either by the composer himself or someone else. Sometimes the entire model is quoted verbatim, but more often it is divided up into sections which are distributed throughout the mass, with the voice parts slightly altered and one or more voices added. This type of mass was later called a ‘parody’ mass, and it became one of the most popular types of mass composition in the sixteenth century. Although Josquin was not the first to apply the parody technique to several movements of a mass, his four-part Missa Mater Patris (printed in 1514) is almost certainly the earliest example of a true parody mass, in that the parodying of Brumel’s three-part motet. Mater Patris, provides the basic means of uniting all the movements. But important as Josquin is in the development of composi tion technique, his brilliance in this sphere is hardly if any greater than Ockeghem’s, and his early works, like those of Palestrina (and indeed many other composers), while amply demonstrating his mastery over his material, give little indica tion of his real stature. Between c. 1474 and some time after Ï 503 Josquin was almost continuously in Italy, first of all at Milan in the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, later as a

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singer in the Papal Chapel at Rome, and finally as composer to Duke Hercules I at Ferarra, to whom the mass mentioned above is dedicated. The impact of Italian culture in general and the taste of his noble patrons in particular had a profound effect on the composer. It was as if the southern sun had warmed and stirred the closed bud of his genius, causing it to unfurl until the full flower was revealed. From now on, not only did he excel in all branches of vocal composition, but surpassed all other composers before the late sixteenth century in the range and quality of his feeling and imagination; from the exquisite tenderness of Ave verum to the sombre depths of Miserere (commissioned by Hercules I); from the dramatic power of the five-part Cueurs desolez to the light-hearted gaiety of El grillo. This emotional range, expressed through sensuous harmony and melodic lines that are often of great beauty and always perfectly moulded to suit the texture, together with a profound technical skill, particularly in the use of sequence and canon, make him, as we said earlier, one of the greatest composers of all time. Josquin’s supremacy was recognized both in his own day and later, and while Martin Luther’s statement that “other com posers do what they can with the notes; Josquin alone does what he wishes” is somewhat exaggerated, it does in fact indicate the general estimation in which he was held, as does the high opinion of the sixteenth-century theorist, Glareanus (see Part II), who included more examples by Josquin than by any other composer in his Dodecachordon (1547). Both Luther and Glareanus were well acquainted with the galaxy (for galaxy it certainly was) of composers who were roughly contemporary with Josquin, and this lends added weight to their judgements. The brightest stars—but not all of the same magnitude—have already been given on p. 201, and some of them must be singled out for individual mention. We stated earlier that Josquin was not the first to apply parody technique to several movements of a mass ; indeed the technique was known in the fourteenth century as the Gloria and Sanctus of the so-called ‘Mass of the Sorbonne’ and the Ite Missa Est of the so-called ‘Mass of Toulouse’ demonstrate (see p. 148). So far as we know, however, these are isolated instan ces, and it seems likely that the first composer to use parody at all frequently was Obrecht, for in a number of his masses he

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introduces at various places all the voice parts of his model. Indeed, in his very fine Missa Rosa playsant each movement contains a reworking of the original chanson, but because the chief means of unifying all the movements is through the para phrasing of the chanson tenor—^in other words, through a cantus firmus—^it is not a genuine parody .mass. More important than Obrecht’s use of parody, however, is the very high quality of the actual music, particularly in his masses and motets, the imaginative treatment of the stereo typed secular forms, even though secular composition occupies but a small part of his total output, and his strong sense of tonality, notably at cadences where he often places the subdominant chord before the dominant, thus defining the tonic chord with greater precision. In all these ways Obrecht was progressive, and may well have influenced Josquin, who probably met him shortly before his death at Ferrara and who was almost certainly acquainted with his music. In other ways Obrecht was rather conservative, as in his infrequent use of imitation, and in the number of times he uses strict rather than paraphrased cantus firmi, and polytextuality, but all in all he is a very fine composer, surpassed by none of his contemporaries except Josquin. Agricola, too, was both progressive and conservative, and to a greater extent than Obrecht, for on the one hand his chansons (of which he wrote more than did any of his contemporaries, including Josquin) are often based on previously composed material, this being considerably varied, and his melodic lines in general show marked originality, even a degree of restless ness, in rhythm and contour. On the other hand, the omateness of his melody and the complexity of his texture hark back to Ockeghem, and his occasional use of * progressions and hocket to the early years of the century. The restlessness of Agricola’s melodies is reflected in his life, for he was in Italy twice, working in Milan, Florence, and Mantua on his first visit, and later made two trips to Spain in the service of Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I. Philip had married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella (see p. 223), in 1496, and in 1504 he became Philip I, King of Castile. Also in Philip’s retinue, from the date of his marriage till his death in 1506, was La Rue, who wrote more masses than any of his contemporaries. This fact underlines the essentially

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serious quality of his music, and it is not surprising that his Requiem, apart from being the high-water mark of his own output, is one of the finest compositions of the period. Another fine work, the Missa Ave sanctissima Maria, is probably the first six-part setting of the Ordinary and definitely the first mass to use canon o6, in this case the canon being 6 in 3 at the fourth above—in other words, three parts are written, each producing another part which is sung a fourth higher. The astonishing thing is that this technical tour de force in no way impairs La Rue’s melodic suppleness or harmonic variety. Both this mass and the Requiem show the composer’s fondness for contrasting groups of voices, especially for passages a2. La Rue does not appear to have ranked very high with his contemporaries, yet without doubt he is the equal of Obrecht and superior to Mouton, who was widely acclaimed, both at the courts of Louis XII and his successor, Francis I, and abroad. Like La Rue, Mouton wrote little secular music, and like him too he was a master in the use of canon. Two of his motets, Nesciens Mater virum and Ave Maria, gemma virginum, both fine works, are canons 8 in 4, and another exquisite motet. Ave Maria, gratia plena, has a ‘mirror’ canon between alto and bass —that is, the ‘comes’ (the part that ‘follows’) moves in contrary motion to the ‘dux’ (the part that ‘leads’). Although the quality of Mouton’s work entitles him to special mention, he is also important as the teacher of the most influential musician of the sixteenth century, Adrian Willaert, and was thus a significant link between the early and late Renaissance. The impact on Italy of composers from the north did not produce any really marked effect until the period after Josquin, but during his lifetime the tide had already begun to flow southwards, and in addition to Josquin himself, ajl the leading composers mentioned on p. 201, except Fevin, La Rue, and Mouton, crossed the Alps. Perhaps the most striking of Josquin’s contemporaries was Isaac, who for the last twenty years of his life was court composer to Maximilian I. While less brilliant and profound than Josquin, and not quite the equal of Obrecht and La Rue, he was the most versatile composer of the period, writing a number of secular songs with German and Italian as well as French texts, and also a fair amount (for those days) of instrumental music. The setting of texts in different languages

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does not of itself, of course, denote any remarkable versatility, and it is in the musical contrasts between his French chan sons, German Lieder, and Italian frottole* that the range of Isaac s gifts is revealed. Thus while both chansons and Lieder are frequently based on a borrowed melody and are generally imitative in style, the former are more sectional and freely repetitive than the latter, in which a continuous polyphonic flow is usually maintained, with the borrowed melody nearly always in the tenor part, and in which canon occurs more frequently. The differences between chanson and Lied, however, are not nearly so marked as between them and the frottola, for in this the style in general is non-imitative, less polyphonic, and simpler in texture, with the main melody, which is hardly ever borrowed, lying in the top part, though like the chanson it is sectional and employs repetition. During the middle fifty years or so of the fifteenth century, Italy produced practically no music, although there were plenty of vocal and instrumental performers. Of the latter the most famous was Antonio Squarcialupi [1416—1480], owner of the important collection which is our main source of Italian Ars Nova music the Squarcialupi Codex (see Chapter 5, p. 167)— and organist of the renowned Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence. Round about 1484 Isaac obtained this post and remained in Florence under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici [14491492]—nicknamed ‘the Magnificent’—and his son, until the overthrow of the latter by the ardent reformer Savonarola in 1494. This Dominican monk vigorously criticized the corrup tion and worldliness of the Medicean rulers of Florence and advocated government on more democratic lines. The masses acclaimed him for a time, but soon tired of his high ideals, and eventually the fury of the aristocracy and the displeasure of the Pope, whom he had also censured, led to his execution in 1498. The Medicis returned in 1512, but the old magnificence and joie de vivre did not, for the country had since been invaded by foreign troops and the city’s future was uncertain. The highlights of the Florentine year were the carnivals before and after Lent, and under Lorenzo these reached a degree of extravagance and ingenuity unmatched before or since. Legends, classical figures, the city guilds, etc., were all symbolized in great torchlight processions of decorated cars and * See below.

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fantastic masks. Music naturally contributed to the festivities and the ‘canti carnascialeschi’, or carnival songs, extolled mythical heroes or the greatness of the Medicis, and described the various trades of the city or sections of the populace, usually by means of innuendo {H.A.M., 96) or even on occasion frank obscenities. Isaac is known to have composed carnival songs, none of which, however, have survived complete, but, judging by his other pieces with Italian texts, they were almost certainly typical of the current secular style in Italy. This style, as we have seen, is less complex and ‘learned’ than that of the typical Burgundian chanson or German Lied, and the main melody in the top part is not only simpler than in the chanson and Lied but more clear-cut than the lower, usually instru mental, parts. The chief type of secular music was the ' frottola, which strictly speaking refers to only one class of composition, but which we shall use to cover all the various types which arose from the widespread practice of reciting poetry to an improvised instrumental accompaniment. The main centre of frottola composition was Mantua, where one of the most gifted and influential women of the Renaissance, Isabella d’Este [14741539], resided. An ardent and accomplished musician herself, she was more than a mere patron, and in literature and poetry as well as in music she was respected by many of the great artists of her day. To her court, round about the year 1495, came Bartolomeo Tromboncino [d. c. 1535] and Marco Cara [d. ?i525], the first notable Italian composers of the Renaissance. The frottole of these two men, particularly of the former, were greatly admired by Isabella, to whom the musical setting of a poem in which the melody did not obscure the words was completely satisfying. The texts of most frottole, especially the earlier ones, are trivial, but the improvement in taste in the early years of the sixteenth century probably owed much to Isabella’s influence. Although the frottole are simpler in style and texture than Burgundian and German part-songs, the fact that they are mostly written 04 ,with the lowest three parts still being quasipolyphonic, tends to produce a heaviness which ill suits the syllabically underlaid vocal line with its clear-cut phrases. Cara seems to have realized this to some extent, for he composed

210

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

a frottola in which the accompaniment is restricted to a few simple chords. This experiment, so much more typical of the Italian genius than the madrigal, mass, or motet, would almost certainly have led to the creation of monody long before the ‘New Music’ of the early seventeenth century (see Part II), but Burgundian polyphony intervened, - and for nearly loo years Italy adapted her natural talent to the art from the north. The rise of the frottola occurred at the same time as the invention of music printing, some thirty years after the first printed books had been issued. At first either the lines of the stave were engraved in a wooden block and printed in black or red ink, the notes, clef, etc., being added by hand, or else the other way round, the notes being cut and the lines added. In the latter method the notes were sometimes engraved in separate pieces of wood and stamped on to the page. Later the lines were printed and the notes stamped on to them. These three methods involved difficulties in aligning the notes on the stave correctly, and this was overcome by engraving all the music on to wooden blocks and eventually metal plates. Although this method ensured the exact placing of the notes on the stave, it was lengthy and wasteful, for every page of new music necessitated a new block, and it was soon replaced by double-impression printing. In this method the lines of the stave were scratched (engraved) on a metal plate (usually copper), the number of staves depending on the size of the page; the plate was then inked and wiped, but the ink remained in the lines and was transferred to a sheet of paper when this was firmly pressed on to the plate. This was the first impression and easily performed. The second was considerably more difficult, for each note, rest, etc., was cut from small pieces of lead (type) so that the raised parts represented the shape of the note. These were then placed in a ‘bed’ and very carefully arranged so that when the staved paper was impressed each type would be printed in the position required. It was this exact arranging of the type that was so laborious and finicky a job and which made the method so costly, but when perfectly done it was artistically far superior to the single-impression technique which replaced it (see Plate XIII). This technique, which was invented by a Frenchman, Pierre Haultin, in 1525, dispensed with the engraved plates for the stave, using only

Music in the Early Renaissance

2II

type, each piece of which contained a note or rest, etc., placed in a small portion of the stave, these being joined together to form any length of stave required (see Plate XIV). The speed with which a page of music could now be set up was comparable to that for an ordinary book, and whereas Pétrucci (see below), who used the double-impression method, issued only about fifty music-books in twenty years, Attaignant (see Part II), employing the single-impression technique, published nearly twice this number in twenty-two years. Ottaviano de Pétrucci [1466-1539] was the first important printer of music, and his publications set a standard in accuracy and artistry which have never been surpassed and rarely equalled. He issued his first book in 1501 and his last in 1520, both in Venice, where he lived from c. 1490 to 1511 and from 1536 to his death, the intervening years being spent at Fossombrone. Fifty-two different collections of music from Petrucci’s publishing house have survived, and while most of these represent the best of Burgundian music from Ockeghem and Busnois onwards, he issued as many as twelve books of frottole, three of them being reprinted. The general reduction in length of fifteenth-century secular music, together with the melodic equality of all the parts, led to different arrangements on the page, and in a chanson 03 or 04, the parts follow each other down the page, one underneath the other, as in Plate XIII. In long pieces 04, however, two pages v^ere used divided thus:

Soprano

Alto

Tenor

Bass

212

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

These arrangements are still basically the same as that used for the thirteenth-century motet (see Chapter 4, p. iii)—^in other words, choir-book arrangement or cantus collateralis— and Pétrucci used both in his early publications, but whereas a real choir-book was large enough^ for a small group to stand round and see tolerably clearly, PetrucePs^ books measure only about 8 inches long by inches high with a stave of about the same size as that used for piano music today. It would thus have been very difficult if not impossible for four people to stand round a single Pétrucci print and sing from it, and buying two or more copies was out of the question for the average musiclover because of the expense. This brings up an extremely interesting point that concerns manuscripts as well. Most of the mediaeval and Renaissance manuscripts and sixteenth-century printed music that have come down to us do not show the wear and tear of frequent use. Performers then,, as now, must have made corrections or additions, or left finger-marks, etc., but these are hardly ever to be found on the copies that have survived. This leads one to suspect that these were either presentation copies or made for reference only, the ones actually used in performance always being in manuscript, which were then thrown away when they became too dirty or tattered, and fresh copies made. Furthermore, it is likely that the practice of copying each part on to separate pieces of parchment or paper was fairly common, for this would maike it unnecessary for the whole choir to cluster round a single copy on which all the parts were written (see Plate XVII). Even the huge choir-books with their outsize notes and placed on massive lecterns were probably not sung from, because apart from their remarkably clean condition, the treble part (where there is one) is written at the top of the page, where it must have been very difficult for boy choristers to read, especially in the semi darkness of the churches. On the other hand, placing the parts one after the other on a page or pages is the most obvious method if you want to present or preserve a piece intact. The copying of each part on to separate pieces of parchment or paper naturally led to binding the pieces of the same part together, as in modern performing editions of string quartets. This is known as ‘part-book’ arrangement, and was used by all sixteenth-century printers, beginning with Pétrucci, most of whose publications are in this form. The earliest manuscript

Music in the Early Renaissance

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part-books that have survived date from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but for the reasons given above concerning wear and tear this does not contradict the argument that the idea originated very much earlier. Although a great many manuscripts have come down to us from before 1600, hardly one of them is an autograph. This unfortunate state of affairs is explained by the fact that composers used blank sheets of parchment or paper called ‘cartelles’ on which the staves were indented, the notes, clef, etc., being written in ink or pencil. When the piece was completed it was copied by a scribe (often a pupil) and then wiped off, leaving the cartelle clean and ready for future use. The indented stave of the cartelle, and later the actual printing of music, explain why ledger lines occur so rarely, and as a result why there were so many different clef positions, for as the range of any individual part rarely exceeded an eleventh (the range of a five-line stave), it was obviously simpler to choose a clef which enabled the melody to be contained within the bounds of the stave than be constantly adding ledger lines. The only example of music printing from the sixteenth century which rivals that of Pétrucci is a collection of twenty three- and four-part songs published in London in 1530. Most unfortunately, it is incomplete and the printer’s name is missing, but until recently it was thought (incorrectly) to have come from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, who came to London from Alsace c. 1477 as assistant to the famous printer William Caxton [c. 1422-c. 1491]. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the man responsible was also a foreigner, an increasing number of whom visited Britain from c. 1500 on. This foreign influx which, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, became such a marked feature of British culture and society, naturally affected her music to some extent, but not until the end of the sixteenth century did a body of native composers arise whose work, while it imitated, also rivalled that of the Continent. Dunstable’s influence seems to have been restricted to the Continent, as very few of his compositions are found in early Renaissance British sources, a surprising fact in view of his reputation abroad. The most important MS of late fifteenthcentury British music is the Eton Choirbook (1490—1502); unfortunately over half the original contents are missing

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music (including the only motet by Dunstable) or incomplete (including a setting of the Passion choruses from St. Matthew’s Gpspel by R. Davy. The earliest polyphonic Passion settings are British and date from before 1440). Among the twenty-five composers listed are John Browne [fl. c. 1490], Richard Davy [1465-1507], William Cornysh [d. T523] (a poet and play wright, and a great favourite of Henry VIII), and Robert Fayrfax [1464-1521], who, as head of the Chapel Royal, organized the musical festivities at the famous Field of the Cloth of Cold in 1520. Apart from its seamless polyphony (reminiscent of Ockeghem) the music is typically British in its sonority (i.e. use of thirds—see Chapters 4, 5—and pre dominance of writing a5 and a6—see p. 186), and in its ‘vocal scoring’ (i.e. use of groups differing in size and timbre; also found in the Old Hall MS). But these two ‘progressive’ features do not always compensate for the near-monotony and lack of unity produced by a dearth of homophony, suspensions, and imitation—also true of the mature style of Fayrfax, the most notable composer between Dunstable and Taverner (see Voi. II), except'that he uses homophony and imitation more often and parody once (his Missa 0 bone Jesu is possibly the first British parody-mass). Elsewhere he, like the Eton Choirbook composers, is old-fashioned in his preference for un-paraphrased can tus firmi; indeed as an exact contemporary of Josquin he is less ‘up to date’ than Browne, and this underlines the slow development of British vocal music compared to Burgundian. But being up to date has little to do with value, and at its best the richness and tonal variety of Fayrfax’s music and that in the Eton MS redeem its weaknesses. Although Fayrfax wrote a number of secular songs (all 03 or a2), this side of music was largely neglected by his compatriots, and the only considerable body of music that can be called secular, in that it was not an integral part of the liturgy, is the carol’, a form peculiar to England. Nowadays the carol is usually associated with Christmas, but while this is still generally true of the fifteenth-century type, it also included other subjects, such as hymns to the Virgin, a petition to a saint, a prayer for a king, or a thanksgiving for victory, e.g. the famous ‘Agincourt Song’. The common factor of all these carols is not their subject-matter, buf their structure, for all consist of a ‘burden’ (B), which is sung at the beginning and 2^4

Music in the Early Renaissance

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after each ‘verse’ (V), the burden being clearly separated from the verses, each of which may have the same ‘refrain’ (R), this being part of the verse. Thus the following scheme is typical B : Vi R : B : Vj R : B : Vj R : B. The carols are almost all written in English discant-conductus style, and while comparing unfavourably with Continental chansons as regards technique and expressiveness, many of them are little gems that deserve wider recognition and more frequent per formance. Among Fayrfax’s contemporaries was Hugh Aston [ c. 1485 — 1558], who must be the only man in the history of any art to be ranked as important on the basis of a single work. This is a ‘Hornpype’ for virginal (a small harpsichord), and it shows a far more remarkable keyboard technique than anything on the Continent. Here is an extract (Ex. 69’"): Ci.69 Fron AtWi Horrpyp^ (ori9ifMl not* vohtti)

It is unlikely that Aston’s piece was as unique in its day as it appears to be now, for there must have been an earlier tradition, now unfortunately lost, showing a similar, though perhaps not so striking use of keyboard figuration. That very few British examples of fifteenth-century instrumental music have survived—a state of affairs that applies to every European • From J. Wolf, Music of Earlier Times, p. 6o.

2i 6

Mediaeval and Early Renaissance Music

country except one—must not blind us to the fact, made abundantly clear in contemporary writing, pictures, and sculpture, that the use of instruments on every conceivable occasion was even more widespread than in the fourteenth century. The exception is Germany, whose makers, especially of wind instruments, and performers became internationally famous, and where instrumental music, particularly for the organ, seems to have been more intensely cultivated and practised than elsewhere. The earliest collection of importance is the Buxheimer Orgelbuch {c. 1460), a manuscript containing well over 200 pieces, including two by the first notable organist, Conrad Paumann [r. 1410—1473], a contemporary of Squarcialupi. Though blind from birth, Paumann was acclaimed all over Europe, but unfortunately most of the twenty or so pieces by him that have come down to us are elementary exercises for would-be organ composers. In the latter half of the century Arnolt Schlick [c. 1460 —after 1521], Paul Hofhaimer [1459 — 1537]. and Hans Buchner [1483-1538], a pupil of Hofhaimer’s, also achieved international fame. Schlick was a theorist as well, and his treatise on the organ (1511), the first to be published in German, gives valuable information on construction, tuning, etc., and embodies principles and suggestions, some of which hold good to this day. He also published in 1512 the first printed collection of keyboard music, including, in addition to fourteen organ pieces, some music for lute solo. We have less than half this number of organ pieces by Hofhaimer, although his reputation and influence were greater, judging by the number of his pupils. Many of these are represented in four great manuscript collections of the early sixteenth century, totalling nearly 400 pieces, and made by Buchner, Hans Kotter [r. 1485-1541], Fridolin Sicher [14901546], and Leonhard Kleber [c. 1495— 1556]. The vast majority of German organ music is either based on a cantus firmus (usually sacred) around which the other parts weave more or less elaborate counter-melodies, or else consists of ornamental arrangements of masses, motets, and chansons. The style is essentially vocal, the only main exceptions being rapidly executed ornaments which occur most frequently at cadences. More characteristically instrumental writing is found in the

Music in the Early Renaissance

21‘j

lute music of the period, for while the organ and (less success fully) the harpsichord and clavichord can imitate the flow of vocal polyphony, a plucked instrument obviously cannot. The lute was far and away the most popular of all the instruments in the fifteenth century, especially in Germany, Italy, and Spain, but as it was almost always used either in extemporizing an accompaniment to a song or, as in the case of many frottole, in playing as much of the lower parts as it could manage, very few solo pieces were written down, and inevitably even fewer have survived. The advent of music printing, however, and an increasing realization of the instru ment’s possibilities, led to a growing number of lute solos throughout the next centiuy. Pétrucci set the ball rolling by issuing four books in 1507-8 and another two in 1509 and 1511. Nearly all the pieces are transcriptions of vocal music, sacred and secular, but a few original pieces, such as dances and preludes, are included. The only other lute music printed during the same period was that contained in Schlick’s 1512 collection. All lute and much organ music of this period was written in ‘tablature’—that is, a system of letters, figures, or signs some times placed on four or six lines (like a stave), sometimes above. These letters, etc., either represent the alphabetical names of the notes to be played (organ tablature only), or else indicate thef frets on which the lute player must put his fingers. Organ tablature was only used in Germany and Spain, particularly the former country, where it was even used on the rare occasion by as late a composer as Bach. Lute tablature, on the other hand, was universal, and though three systems were in use, the Italian-Spanish, German, and French, die last of these eventually ousted the others towards the end of the sixteenth century. In this system five horizontal lines represent the five highest strings, the sixth (lowest) string being shown by short ledger lines underneath. The letters ‘a’, ‘b’. ‘c’, ‘d’, etc., are placed on the Hnes, ‘a’ meaning an open string, ‘b’ that a finger should be placed on the first fret, etc., the frets being roughly a semitone apart. The strings, the three lowest of which were in unison pairs, were tuned either G, c,f, ~ .¿zfir Er?p:i}^

W'iFiÔttiii Sii liji TENOR.

of Songes [1597].

«tlenetl^oaxRRtnid^ni; ban «ihÍcti{o)^ÍRd*áut

Qieokk IcgddioïK.ilieanlv

ôneaiyfBfta«^, Oi^tttdidmxkcÿ&indbiiKw^ioille, âuctuqpiOiesas^tQd^ora/ .' ^{btt noiv iban irMeoQM ibi« whaebeipMe ifttäär

b:

»UJ0í-íÍ.ó«í?,.:...... .

The Late Renaissance: Secular Music

241

Ex.l From the programme chanson -i0(S/»rf» (1529) (o . J

=T- r

mio du - • • ro mor-tir,

cM and

mie du - ro mar

mymir-c/ -tcm

du - - ro mor-

mtr - - e/ - Ara

__ 1__ &__________

f

r

mio du - ro mar.

my mtr^cf^/tn

tir /lr)

vil» -

oit

- c^o-qni

»tí - - - le,

9tyit9 Wh con - • > çuer,

vh

ott

-

• c^oni »tí - - - le.

ctyfíadothcon - - quer.

Roland de Lassus [1532-1594]. The former, who spent most of his life in Rome, found the natural outlet for his genius in liturgical music (see pp. 307f.), and his undramatic, emotionally balanced approach, in which word-painting is very discreeüy used and chromaticism practically non-existent, harks back to the classically poised madrigals of Festa and Arcadelt, both of whom were working in Rome during the composer’s early manhood; indeed, Arcadelt may have been his teacher for a time. While many of Palestrina’s madrigals are fine compositions showing impeccable style and sensitive, if limited treatment of the text, they contributed nothing to the general development of the type, with one exception. Vestiva i colli (1566), a narrative madrigal which borrows the traditional opening formula of the French chanson (see p. 240) and which was so popular that literally hundreds of similar pieces were composed during the next fifty years or so. Lassus shows Rore’s influence far more than does, Palestrina, and he was more versatile than the earlier master; in fact, he was the greatest international composer of the Renaissance, writing French chansons and German Lieder with as much fcase and brilliance as madrigals and villanelle. Towards the end of his life he was profoundly aflfected by the CounterReformation (see Chapter 2, p. 310), and his ‘spiritual

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Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

madrigals’ are based on texts with a strong religious and moral flavour; the musical treatment, however, only differs from his earlier style in the less frequent use of chromaticism. Although Lassus contributed little to the development of the madrigal, his superb craftsmanship, inventive genius, and powerful personality created works that are, on-the- whole, superior to Palestrina’s, and that have stood the test of time more success fully than many more progressive pieces of his day. Rore wrote nearly 100 madrigals, Palestrina about 150, and Lassus over 270, but these numbers pale before the astonishing output of Philippe de Monte [1521-1603], another northerner, who produced over 1,100. More important, however, is the fact that their quality is equal to their quantity, this being achieved through a completely assured technique which handles wOrd-painting, chromaticism, voice-grouping, rhyth mic interplay, and contrasts in texture (polyphony versus counterpoint) in a masterly fashion, together with an extra ordinarily high standard of sheer musical beauty. Like Rore, he had a serious cast of mind, writing no villanelle, etc., and only a few chansons, and this partly explains why his treatment of the text, while less conservative than Lassus’s, is not so progressive as his compatriot, Giaches de Wert [1535-1596], a composer greatly esteemed by his contemporaries and succes sors. If Monte is Rore’s emotional successor, Wert is his stylistic one, and his later madrigals are typical of the late sixteenth-century trend in their detailed and vivid wordpainting (e.g. Ex. 8b, at the words “j B i giorni oscuri”, where all the voices are in their ‘darkest’ register), striking chromaticism (e.g. Ex. 8b), increased voice range, greater tonal feeling, declamation (i.e. rapid notes syllabically underlaid, e.g. Ex. 8a), and—of particular importance, as we shall see—the tendency to make the lower voices accompany the upper. (Ex. 8,* p. 257. For a translation of (b) see Ex. 7, pp. 252-5.) Monte and Wert were the last of the great madrigal composers who invaded Italy from the north; from now on the leading men are all Italian, and it is no coincidence that in their hands the madrigal finally merged into the accompanied monody of the early baroque, for the Italian genius naturally favours sensuous melody, clear-cut harmony and rhythm, and colourful * (a) Adapted from A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, Voi. Ill, p. 221, (b) Adapted from ibid., p. 208.

The Late Renaissance: Secular Music Ex.B(a) From the madrigal - Giunto a h tomba cut a/tuo apirto vin CI58I) , I I ^Tauo: La Gtnaa/tmma Ubtrato) (d.d.MM.e.72)

Ee.Slbl From the modrlqol ■ Crudal* actrbo ùMomòii mort* (1588) (Ntrorch)

Ha

dl mc~nar

tut - -ta mìa iri-tain pion-to,

257 Wert

Wert fn pion • - tOg

258

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

expression. Thus polyphonic texture in general and imitation in particular were increasingly superseded by a marked melodic superiority of the upper part or parts, predominantly chordal writing, dramatic contrasts between groups of voices, and a treatment of the text which for detailed realism is unsurpassed in any vocal music before or since. ~~ The earliest Italian composer who shows the new approach is Andrea Gabrieli [c. 1510—1586], who, like his teacher Willaert and his co-pupils Rore and Zarlino, was associated with the Chapel of St. Mark, becoming second organist in 1564 and first organist in 1585. Like Willaert also, but not Rore, he was one of the most versatile composers of the century, excelling in all branches of his art and being particularly important and influential in the instrumental field (see Chapter 2, P- 354)The fact that there were two organs and two organists at St. Mark’s obviously encouraged the idea of polychoral writing, i.e. writing for two or more choral groups, and Willaert, though not the inventor of this technique, as is so often claimed, certainly played a leading part in its development. For some reason or other, he restricted its use to his motets, and it was left to Andrea Gabrieli to introduce it into the madrigal. This he did with great brilliance, and the resultant dramatic contrasts together with the sonorous climaxes when both choirs unite, the expressive chromaticism, and hammering rhythm achieved through declamation, give both power and colour to his music. In contrast to the splendour of these pieces he also composed madrigals which show the increasing pre occupation already noted with detailed word-painting, and it is this aspect that is carried to its extreme by the greatest madrigal composer of the late Renaissance, Luca Marenzio [1553/4-1599]Marenzio is the summation of practically all the previous trends in the madrigal, polychoral writing being the only exception. He can be as vivacious as Noia, as classically restrained and limpid in texture as Arcadelt, as serious and complex as Rore and almost as passionate, as declamatory as Monte, and as sonorous and colourful as Andrea Gabrieli. Moreover, he developed that feature of Wert’s style which made the upper part or parts melodically superior to the lower and thus advanced a stage nearer to baroque monody; but his most

The Late Renaissance: Secular Music

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outstanding characteristic, in which he outstrips all his pre decessors and contemporaries, is his word-painting, and the care with which practically every word is treated that represents a sound or an object, an idea or a mood is matched only by an inventiveness that turns a technique that had been largely trivial before and, in the hands of less gifted composers, became mechanical during his time and later into something live and fascinating, and by a sensitive feeling for the whole that prevented this detailed realism from disintegrating the entire composition. In order to give some idea of the variety of means used by Marenzio and others, here are some typical examples of wordpainting; ‘sea’—a wavy melodic line; ‘sigh’—short rest like a catch of the breath, either after the first syllable of the word {‘sospiro') or else separating the word from the previous one; ‘arch’—an ascending and descending ‘curved’ melody; ‘night’ —black notation; ‘day’—long ‘white’ note values; ‘suffering’— chromatic changes or major chords in which the roots usually lie a third apart, or have at least one note in common, e.g. G major to E major or G major to Ejj major. These examples, while only constituting a fraction of those that can be found, were inevitably duplicated; thus black notes are also used when the Devil or Hell is mentioned, slowness or length of time is also indicated by long notes, and undulating lines represent ‘flying’ as well. (Ex. 9, * p. 260. Note the ravishing effects—^in their essentially diatonic contexts—of the C major-E major pro gression on ‘sospira', and of the held major chord on ‘dolcemente'. Note too the rising scales of anger {‘adira') and the broken rhythm of the phrase for ‘romper'). The important thing about nearly all these devices used by Marenzio and others is that they are not only seen on paper but are actually heard. The chief exception is the use of black notation, for whereas the shape of a melody or the switch from quick to slow movement, or an abrupt chord change are all perfeedy intelligible aurally, the insertion of, say, a group of black semibreves at the word ‘darkness’ only makes sense to the eye, in other words to the performer (eye-music). This, to gether with remarks by contemporary theorists, makes it quite clear that the normal madrigal was largely concerned with providing entertainment (in its widest sense) for the singers, • From A. Einstein, A Short History of Music (1948), p. 332.

26o

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

tx.9 ftom thi madrigal - As p/aA^o (1581] (Petrarch)

(o. J.HKc M)

chi...

Morentlo

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and that it was sung with one voice to each part, as indeed we might expect, judging from the size of the printed editions. The madrigal is essentially chamber music, intimate, subtle, refined, and performances, alas only too common today, in which each part is sung by six or more voices are as indefensible as playing a Mozart quartet on the strings of a symphony orchestra, for in doubling a vocal or instrumental part purity of intonation is lost, tone becomes rougher, and the gradations of nuance and expression coarsen. There was, however, a class of madrigal in which part-doubling did occur—namely, those written for a particular ceremony, such as a wedding or a birthday. On such occasions, of course, there was an audience, either in a largish room or else out of doors; in any case, a greater volume of sound would be preferred or even required than one singer per part could give. These madrigals, which fulfilled the same function as the ‘occasional’ secular motets of earlier times, are invariably much simpler in texture and less detailed in expression than the normal type, a fact which supports what we have already said concerning the performance of the latter. In addition to such pieces, it is likely that many of Andrea Gabrieli’s polychoral madrigals, in which sheer sonority plays an important part, were intended for a larger choral body than usual. This applies particularly to his nephew and pupil, Giovanni Gabrieli [c. 1553— 1612], who represents the peak of the Venetian School, and who is, moreover, a most important link between the Renaissance and baroque eras, as we shall see in later chapters. Giovanni, while naturally owing much to his uncle’s style and teaching, surpassed him in the brilliance of his voice groupings and dramatic choral contrasts, in the rich colour of his harmony with its greater use of chromaticism, and in the power of his rhythmic drive. Colour and sonority meant far more to him than to any other composer of his generation or earlier, and by relegating imitation and, indeed, polyphony as a whole, to a very subordinate position, and revelling in the sheer delight of chord progressions as such, particularly those whose roots lie a fourth or fifth apart, he anticipated the basically harmonic approach of baroque music. Both Gabrielis, of course, wrote normal polyphonic madrigals in which word-painting is a marked feature, and it was this aspect, not dramatic brilliance, that dominated the late

202

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sixteenth-century Italian madrigai, and while the general trend, represented to perfection by Marenzio, can be described as a balance between graphic and emotional word-painting, the latter became the main objective of one of the most extra ordinary composers in the history of music. Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa [c. 1560-1613]. This nobleman, whose private life reads like a nineteenth-century melodrama, concentrated on the expression of mood and feeling of a line or phrase of the text rather than on the detailed description of individual words. In this respect he is Rore’s and Monte’s successor, but in his obsession with the emotional he went far beyond them, and by a quite aistonishing use of chromaticism and violent changes in movement he all but destroyed the musical fabric of the madrigal. Indeed, the boldness and originality of his chromati cism, in which chords totally unconnected with each other are juxtaposed, e.g. A minor-F| major,, or G minor-E major, remained unequalled until Wagner. Never before had music so depended on the words to give it meaning and unity, for without them the sudden alterations in harmony, melody, and rhythm would be largely incomprehensible. (Ex. 10,* p. 263). (Note in (d) not only the unprepared seventh in bar 2, but more especially the way the chord B[>-D-F-Ab is resolved in bar 3 ; it is in fact what we now call an augmented sixth chord (the so-called ‘German sixth’), because the augmented sixth (^\b—^which should strictly be written as Gÿ) rises a semitone to A, while the root (Bb) falls a semitone to A. This is the commonest form of the German sixth, i.e. in root position, but it is found very rarely in the music of the period. A much rarer form occurs in bars 5-6, where the German sixth on F is given in its last inversion, i.e. the augmented sixth (Eb—really D#) is the bass note. With regard to (c) it might be mentioned that the haunting effect of the minor-major ending of the first movement of Walton’s Viola Concerto is here anticipated by Gesualdo nearly 350 years earlier.) The importance of the text had been growing steadily from the end ofthe fifteenth century on. Before Josquin vocal composi tions arc largely abstract in conception, for most of them would sound just as well to other words. From Josquin on, however, not only are the syllables set with increasing regard for their • (a), (b) From Gesualdo: Madrigale, ed. Weismann, p. 30. (c) From ibid., p. 6. (d) From H.A.M.. 161.

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264

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

naturai accents, but the words begin to be more closely linked with the music, and in Janequin’s programme-chansons they form an integral part of the whole. These latter profoundly influenced the Italian madrigal and eventually led, as we have seen, to a style in which the text is the raison d’être of the music. This being so, it is clearly important for us to see in what ways poetry influenced the madrigal and vice versa. In Part I, Chapter 6 (p. 209), we stated that the practice of reciting poems to simple improvised melodies and accompani ments was widespread. Most of the melodies were simple variations on standard types which fitted all verses with identical structure, and the most common poetic form was ‘ottava rime’, that is verses of ‘eight’ lines with the ‘rhyme’ scheme ab ab ab cc. It was in this form that Ludovico Ariosto [1474-1533], one of the greatest of all Italian poets, wrote his epic masterpiece, Orlando fitrioso (1516), which has been described as “the noblest literary glorification of the Renais sance”, and which swept the length and breadth of Italy. Several standard melodies were used in reciting this poem, but the most popular was called ‘ruggiero’, the name of one of the characters in the epic, which deals with the fight between Christian and Saracen in the days of Charlemagne. This melody was used in part-music also, but was more important in instrumental compositions. The popularity of Orlando furioso among all classes of society shows that a change in literary standards had occurred during the early sixteenth century. While the early frottola texts are mostly trivial, the later ones include an increasing number of first-rate poems; this reflects the general trend of the times, and the man most responsible for the improvement was Cardinal Pietro Bembo [1470-1547], whose scholarly ideals, prestige, and, to a lesser extent, published work restored the dignity and expressiveness of the Italian language, which had sadly lapsed after Dante and Petrarch. The latter poet was in fact Bembo’s model, and partly as a result of this Petrarch’s collection of lyric poems, the Canzoniere, not only went through nearly 130 editions during the century, but were set so frequently (some of the poems exist in as many as twenty different musical versions) that no other poet, not even Shakespeare or Goethe, has inspired so much music. But no man’s reputation and influence in the literary sphere.

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no matter how great, can dictate which poet is best suited to a particular musical type, and although Bembo clearly prepared the way for the greater seriousness of the early madrigal com pared to the early frottola, it was the character of Petrarch’s verse which was the decisive factor, for it provided well-nigh perfect madrigalian texts. Each verse is short enough to permit imitative interplay between the voices vwthout making the piece too long, the clarity and conciseness with which each mood is expressed almost dictates the musical treatment, and the emotional contrasts give the composer full scope for varying his rhythm, melody, and harmony. Petrarch’s popularity led inevitably to shoals of imitations which, as usually happens, are distinctly inferior to their model. Apart from Bembo, the earliest imitator of any import ance was an otherwise obscure poet, Luigi Cassola, most of whose output was clearly intended to be set to music, not to be read as poetry. This is an important distinction and one that applies to a tremendous number of sixteenth-century poems all over Europe, and it is as unfair and as unscholarly to judge madrigal texts from a purely poetical standpoint as it is to compare opera libretti with contemporary drama. Cassola’s poems are typical of a great many madrigal texts in their freedom of rhyme and metre, their sentimentality, their contrasts of mood, and the provision of a neat conclusion. Two examples from English madrigals will make this clearer than any description. The first contrasts the opening four lines with the last two, which provide a neat conclusion; the second shows the structural freedom possible. So light is love in matchless beauty shining. When she revisits Cypris’ hallowed bowers, Two feeble doves, harnessed in silken twining. Can draw her chariot midst the Paphian flowers. Lightness to Love, how ill it fitteth. So heavy on my heart she sitteth!* Come life, come death, I care not. If I may only see my lovely fere [=companion] But further, ah, I dare not! When she but spies me. She flies me. She fools me. She cools my desire ij • English Madrigal Verse, ed. FcUowcs, p. 239.

t Ibid., p. 82.

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The two main poetic types, epic and lyric, represented by Ariosto and Petrarch respectively, were cultivated throughout the century with the lyric in the ascendant. From c. 1550 on this became increasingly pastoral in character, and idealized and sentimentalized shepherds and shepherdesses, the Amaryllises, Floras, Clorises, and Phyllises vied with Petrarch’s Laura. The first important pastoral poet was Jacopo Sannazaro [1455/6-1530], whose Arcadia, published in 1502, eventually became so popular that it gave rise to a spate of pastoral poems and madrigals that outnumbered all other types. In this it truly reflected one aspect of the Renaissance—the romantic longing for the past—and in the hands of Torquato Tasso [1544-95] and Giovanni Battista Guarini [1538-1612] it reached its peak; Guarini’s Pastor Fido (‘The Faithful Shepherd’) (1581-90), though inferior poetically to Tasso’s Aminta (1573), was more frequently set to music because its use of words and contrasting emotions is more virtuosic than in the simpler earlier poem. Tasso, however, was both a lyric and an epic poet and his Gerusalemme liberata (‘Jerusalem ¿berated’) (1581) virtually replaced Ariosto’s great work because its more obvious darker emotional qualities suited the age of the CounterReformation better than the rather detached, ironic, even capricious treatment of Christianity versus Mohammedanism in Orlando furioso. The delight in Arcadia and in the amours of the rustic characters who populated it spread to the stage, and many pastoral poems, or ‘pastorales’ as they were called, were intended to be either read or acted; indeed, the pastorale was the most important dramatic form in Italy during the late Renaissance, and because the lyricism of its verse was so well suited to and frequently received musical treatment it was one of the forerunners of opera, as we shall see in Chapter 3. Music played an important part too in the only other significant drama of the Italian Renaissance, the classical tragedy and its imitations. The sixteenth-century author and producer knew that the Greeks and Romans included musical performance of some kind in their dramatic presentations, and this prompted them to insert between the acts of the plot, and often as prologue and epilogue as well, short scenes called ‘intermedii’, which consisted of songs, instrumental pieces, and sometimes dances. On especially festive occasions these

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intermedii were staged with great splendour, foreshadowing the elaborate scenic settings of seventeenth-century opera, but on all occasions they were greatly enjoyed and eventually became far more popular than the serious drama of which they were originally only appendages. Like the pastorale, the intermedio is also a forerunner of opera. Both Tasso and Guarini spent most of their lives at Ferrara, the home of one of the oldest and most brilliant Italian families. From Hercules I [reigned 1472-1505], an outstanding patron of the arts, especially music, and the father of Isabella (see Part I, Chapter 6, p. 209) and her almost equally famous sister, Beatrice, to Alfonso II [1558-1597], the Ferrarese Court was one of the main cultural centres of Italy. Alfonso employed both Tasso and Guarini, as w q U as one of the leading composers of the time, Luzzasco Luzzaschi [d. 1607], who had been a pupil of Rore’s. This man, who certainly knew and probably influenced Gesualdo, published in 1601 a remarkable collection of madrigals for one, two, and three sopranos, with a writtenout keyboard part (the first of its kind), and with the vocal lines highly ornamented (Ex. ii,* p. 268). We know from contemporary theorists that both instrumental accompaniment and vocal embellishment were common, and that therefore once again the music printed or in manuscript does not completely represent actual practice. Unaccompanied or ‘a capella’ performance, as it is often called, was certainly more widespread in the sixteenth century than in preceding centuries, but the use of instruments and the improvised ornamentation of the vocal line were typical features in certain circumstances. Thus at courtly festivities, when, as we have seen, the number of voices per part was increased, an ‘orchestra’ would accompany which might include a positive organ, harpsichord, viols, recorders, trombones, lutes, and cornets. On more intimate and less auspicious occasions a positive, harpsichord, lute, or viols might be used, and sometimes the lower or even all the parts were performed instrumentally. A keyboard player or lutanist (who was not, of course, restricted to pieces in tablature) would improvise ehords from the lowest part, according to certain rules which were fairly simple, owing to the restricted harmony of the period. The violists would each play a separate part and, if the singer was absent * Adapted from GtselnchU de Musik in Beispielen, ed. Scheiing, p. 176.

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for solo singing, and as this meant that the management had to spend a great deal in engaging ‘star’ performers, and as most of what was left went on scenery in order to satisfy the demand for the spectacular, there was precious little left for the chorus. The orchestra too was much less important than in the earlier part of the century, and its size and constitution had undergone a marked transformation. This had been heralded as early as 1624 in Monteverdi’s dramatic cantata, II Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (‘The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda’), in which the heterogeneous assortment of instruments called for in Oifeo is replaced by a harpsichord and string band. II Combattimento is important not only because it marks the begin ning of the modem orchestra in the sense that the strings are the fundamental unit, but also because it increased the dramatic rôle of instrumental accompaniment through the use of, for example, reiterated rhythmic figures to denote a galloping horse, and rapid, repeated notes (tremolo) and plucked strings (pizzicato) to depict the clash and fury of the fight (see 189). The idea of pizzicato seems to have been invented by Monteverdi himself, and he was also the first to use tremolo for dramatic purposes, although the device itself occurs in a few earlier violin pieces. This participation by the orchestra in the drama did not catch on in Venetian opera until later in the century, and during Cavalli’s time instru ments were entirely subservient to the voice. Even the intro ductory sinfonia was reduced to a few bars of slow, solemn chords, usually in duple time, that can have done little more than call the audience’s attention to the fact that the opera was about to commence. Actually, Cavalli’s Giasone is some thing of an exception in that the slow section is followed by a quick one in triple time in which the opening theme is derived from that of the preceding movement. In the same year and month, but not in the same theatre, that Giasone was produced, the first opera, Orontea, by Pietro Cesti [1623-1669] was performed at the opening of the fifth public opera-house in Venice. Most writers from the eighteenth century to the present day have replaced ‘Pietro’ by ‘Marc Antonio’, this presumably being a corruption of‘Frate Antonio’, a title he adopted on his admission to Minor Orders in 1637. Cesti is usually and rightly regarded as a Venetian composer, because although he spent very little of his life in Venice,

39^

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

oscillating between Rome, Innsbruck, and Vienna, and although only a small proportion of his operas were first performed in Venice, his style is typically Venetian. Of the too or so operas that Cesti is supposed to have written, only fifteen have survived, including his three most famous, Orontea, La Dori (Florence, i66i), and II pomo~d^orct (Vienna, 1667). In general his operas owe much to those of Cavalli, but in particular he widens the distinction between recitative and aria and carries the bel canto style a stage further, apply ing it to his ensembles (duets, trios, etc.); with Monteverdi and Cavalli these last are still somewhat madrigalian in their use of imitation, but Cesti favours the sensuousness of parallel thirds and sixths. We have stated earlier in this history that when composers stress any one aspect of music the other aspects tend to be neglected or simplified. This is true of bel canto style, and one result is the lack of harmonic variety, compared to Monte verdi or Cavalli, of Cesti’s and later Venetian composers’ accompaniments; Cesti, indeed, relies to an almost irritating extent at times on tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords, and rarely moves away from closely related keys. With him bel canto style became the first real instance of homophony in the history of music, for by homophony we mean a texture in which an all-important melody (sometimes doubled in thirds and sixths) is provided with an essentially chordal accompani ment. Admittedly a number of Renaissance lute songs tend towards homophony, but in the great majority of cases the lute accompaniment is basically contrapuntal or polyphonic, even if it is not in fact an arrangement of the lower voices of a part-song. In real homophony, however, the harmony is conceived as a progression of chords, not as a combination of melodic lines, and hence the movement of the lower parts is quite unimportant, provided, of course, that in ensembles (but by no means necessarily on the harpsichord) consecutive fifths and octaves are avoided (compare the definitions of counterpoint and polyphony in Part I, p. 48). This explains why bel canto accompaniments for continuo only were pre ferred to full orchestra until well into the late baroque, as the former allows the melody greater prominence. The harmonic restriction of Cesti’s bel canto style was not only an outcome of letting melody predominate, but also

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the result of a greater concern for a central tonality. Cesti, in fact, belonged to the generation of composers who marked the watershed, so to speak, between the period when the idea of a central tonality was not yet established and when chromaticism was used for purely emotional ends (as in Monteverdi and Cavalli, e.g. Ex. 22b and c) and the period when the idea had become firmly rooted and chromaticism was used both emotionally and to contrast with or offset the main key without disturbing its central position. The most notable feature of Cesti’s chromaticism is his use of the socalled ‘Neapolitan sixth’ chord, which nearly always occurs in minor keys and which can be described as the first inversion of the flattened supertonic. Thus in Ex. 23b, bar 5, the key is D minor, but the first inversion of B|> major is treated as the flattened supertonic (Neapolitan sixth) in A minor, for it is followed by the last inversion of the dominant seventh in A (bar 6), and later by a perfect cadence in A (bars 7~8)- The same progression occurs in bars 9—12, but a fourth higher, i.e. in D minor. (N.B.—^The lowest note of the Neapolitan sixth usually moves up a step to the dominant of the key, e.g. D-E in A minor or G-A in D minor.) (Ex. 2$*, pp. 398-9). The growing concern for a central tonality shown by all composers during the latter half of the seventeenth century is also apparent in the number of pieces (much greater in this period than in the eighteenth century) which are either wholly or mainly built round an ostinato motive. These motives invariably consist of a progression from tonic to dominant and so back to the next statement (Exx. 21 and 23a), or else from tonic to tonic, and were either restricted to the bass (basso ostinato), as in Exx. 21 and 23a, or else occasionally invaded the upper parts (passacaglia). By reiterating the tonic to dominant or tonic to tonic progression, these motives helped to underline the main key, even though the separate notes of the motive were not always harmonized in exactly the same way. In rhythm and melody, as well as harmony. Cesti shows less variety than Monteverdi or Cavalli, favouring smoother contours and regular, often sequential, patterns. His cadences, too, occur more frequently, and almost invariably comprise the progression subdominant (or supertonic first inversion)dominant-tonic (IV (or IIa )-V-I) of whatever key he happens * Melody and bass from Alte Meister des Bel canto, ed. LandshofìT.

398

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

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(b)

(Com*,my /If*, com*.’)

to be in. Some of his melodies are long-breathed, but most of them are constructed of short phrases; these last are, in fact, no shorter than those of most individual voice parts in late Renaissance polyphony, but the latter, by overlapping the phrases of the different voices, avoids the frequent ‘full stops’ of the early bel canto style. Harmonic restriction, rhythmic simplicity, and melodic short-windedness are also character istic of the style that formed the bridge between Bach and Haydn, and when in the works of some late baroque composers and in the Viennese School, polyphony reasserted itself, harmony became more varied, rhythm more subtle and

4°o

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

flexible, and melody more sustained. Polyphony, in fact, is and always has been a richer vehicle of expression than homo phony, for it not only maintains a balance between the various musical elements, but it also reveals more completely what is perhaps the most unique and wonderful aspect of music—the ability to present distinct and individuaHdeas (i.e. strands of sound) within an integrated and satisfying whole. Cesti was probably the most popular operatic composer before Alessandro Scarlatti (see Chapter 4), and the seal was set on his fame by II porno d’oro, written for the wedding of the Emperor Leopold I of Austria [reigned 1658-1705] with the Infanta Margherita of Spain, and performed in Vienna in 1667. The occasion made this opera something of an exception to the normal Venetian type, and, apart from costing a small fortune to produce with its sixty-seven scenes, forty-eight charac ters and twenty-four different stage settings (some of them requiring the most elaborate machinery—see Plates XXVII and XXVIII), there are a number of ballets and choruses (one in eight parts) and an unusually large orchestra, including trumpets, trombones, cornetts, bassoons, lutes, and a regal, in addition to the customary string band and harpsichord (see Plate XXVI). Cesti’s operas represent one point at which the swing of the pendulum away from polyphony started to move back (N.B. the part-writing in H.A.M., 221), for his Venetian successori, while cultivating the bel canto style as ardently as ever, began to enrich their vocal ensembles and instrumental accompani ments with real part-writing, and hand in hand with this came an expansion of melody, harmony, and form. This development is clearly seen in the works of the three most outstanding opera composers between Cesti and A. Scarlatti, Giovanni Legrenzi [1626-1690], Alessandro Stradella [1642-1682], and Carlo PaUavicino [r. 1630—1688]; with them the aria becomes more spacious, with frequent sequential passages (in Pallavicino’s operas especially), the orchestra plays a larger part, accom panying the voice more often than in Cavalli’s or Cesti’s arias (in most of which the harmonic support is provided by the continuo), forms are more varied and include, besides the da capo, such types as A, B (binary form) A^ Bj Bj, Aj Bj B^ C* Cj, etc. (i =tonic key, 2= different key(s)), there is a greater variety of harmonic resource and modulation, now set within a firm tonal framework, and the instrumental writing, espedally

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the baiss, is more interesting, often anticipating in a short ritornello the main theme of an aria before the voice takes it up. {H.A.M., 241). This last feature, indeed, was sometimes applied to the introductory sinfonia, as, for example, in II porno d’oro, where the second main theme of the overture reappears later as a chorus. This brings to mind Monteverdi’s Orfeo (see p. 375), and in some ways, e.g. the greater importance of the orchestra and the less haphazard structure of the whole, mid-baroque opera partially returns to the ideals of the first great operatic composer. In addition, a number of arias begin with a short vocal phrase or ‘motto’ expressive of the main mood, a feature typical of many of Cesti’s arias. (For the full significance of the ‘motto’ beginning, see Chapter 4, p. 440.) Side by side with and yet in opposition to this trend towards expansion and enrichment came a pronounced preference for rhythmically simple and melodically catchy songs. Occasionally the two tendencies can be found in a single aria, as when a simple vocal line is supported by a bass that is either florid or else provides scope for a wide range of chords. The tremendous impact of Italian Renaissance culture overflowed into the baroque era, and the rest of Europe would have followed Italy’s lead, for a time at any rate, no matter what kind of music she had produced. Thus the transalpine countries adopted opera, but only with varying degrees of success, and the enthusiasm for this particular art form was and still is more completely natural and spontaneous in the country that gave it birth than any other art form has been in any other country. That Austria, the southern German states, and Bohemia imported Italian opera before the rest of Europe was only to be expected when one considers their geographical position and remembers the interchange of musicians between the two regions during the Renaissance. Cesti’s II porno d’oro was by no means the first Italian opera to cross the Alps, this distinction, so far as we know, being held by Andromeda, by Giralomo Giacobbi [1567—1629], performed in Salzburg in 1618. Other cities followed suit, and performances are recorded at Prague from 1627, Innsbruck from 1655 (where Cesti was employed, though frequently absent, from 1652 to 1666), Regensberg from 1653, and Munich, where the first operahouse was opened in 1657.

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The opera produced in Regensberg in 1653 was L'inganno d'amore, by Antonio Ber tali [1605-1669], who lived in Vienna from c. 1623 to his death, was appointed court conductor in 1649, and who first introduced regular performances of Italian opera into the Austrian capital (the first recorded performance took place in 1626). Vienñá7 for obvious reasons, soon became the main centre of Italian opera outside Italy, and in Antonio Draghi [ c. 1635—1700], who resided in the city from c. 1658 to his death, she found the most prolific operatic composer of the seventeenth centuiy, whose mature style is similar to that of Legrenzi, Stradella, and Pallavicino. During the latter half of the century Italian opera spread to most of the other large German cities, among them Dresden, the capital of Saxony, where the Elector held court. Here in 1687 Pallavicino was appointed director of the first permanent opera house, although the first operatic performance dates from 1662. But Dresden is associated with a far greater name than Pallavicino, for Heinrich Schütz [1585-1672], the greatest German composer before Bach and, with Monteverdi, Lully and Purcell, the most outstanding musician of the century, was director of the electoral chapel from 1617 to his death. Although Schütz greatly admired and was considerably influenced by Giovanni Gabrieli, whose pupil he was from 1609 to 1612, and although his enthusiasm for the new Italian music, especially that of Monteverdi, prompted him to cross the Alps a second time in 1628, he never became completely Italianate, as did many of his contemporaries and successors. Thus the delight in expressive polyphony, chromatic harmony, and colourful sonority which he imbibed from Gabrieli, and the dramatic recitative, lyrical melody, and sensuous use of thirds and sixths which he learnt from later Italian composers, were restrained by that meditative, philosophic outlook on life that has always been one of the chief characteristics of his countrymen and which he possessed to a marked degree. In 1627 Sophia Eleonora, Princess of Saxony, was married in the Saxon town of Torgau, and to mark the occasion Schütz wrote an opera. Dafne. The libretto is largely a translation of Rinuccini’s text for Peri’s opera of 1597, and, like the earlier work, the music is lost. This is doubly unfortunate, because it was Schütz’s only opera and the first by a German composer.

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The earliest German opera that has survived intact is Seeleivig, by Sigmund Theophil Staden [1607-1655], produced in Nuremberg in 1644. This is more in the Roman than Venetian tradition, as it is described as a ‘spiritual pastorale’, and is concerned with the attempts of the ‘false deceiver’ Triigewalt, aided and abetted by allegorical figures representing Art and the Senses, to capture the ‘soul’ (Seelewig), but she, with the help of Wisdom and Conscience, evades their evil designs, and virtue ends triumphant. The setting is pastoral, the characters being nymphs, shepherds, and satyrs, while the music consists almost entirely of short, lyrical strophic songs, the throughcomposed dramatic or impassioned recitatives being conspicuous by their absence, and there are a number of instrumental pieces. The orchestra is remarkable in that there is no part for a harpsichord, theorbo and lute being the only chord playing instruments, the others consisting of violins, a viola, recorders, flutes, shawms, bassoons, and a horn. Each character or group is associated with a definite instrumental ensemble, e.g. strings and recorders accompany the nymphs, flutes and shawms the shepherds, while the horn is reserved for Triigewalt. Although the few German operas that are known to have been written during the first seventy-five years of the seventeenth century almost certainly do not constitute the total number actually produced, it is clear that in the south, where Italian influence was strongest, native opera simply could not compete against the constant flow from across the Alps. But even in the north native opera found difficulty in taking root owing to the political and cultural divisions characteristic of the whole country, divisions that were more pronounced than anywhere else in Europe, and which were aggravated by the so-called Thirty Years’ War (1618-48). Initially this was an outcome of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, but it soon developed into a purely political affair. The chief contestants were France and the Habsburg Dynasty, and before it ended two Holy Roman Emperors, Ferdinand II [reigned 16191637], and Ferdinand III [reigned 1637-1657], and the Spanish King Philip IV [reigned 1621-1665], three of the most powerful Catholic rulers of their time, were opposed by the Catholic King of France, Louis XIII [reigned 1610-1643], his astute adviser, Cardinal Richelieu, and by the Pope

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himself, Urban Vili; Richelieu, while he had bitterly perse cuted the Huguenots, had no scruples in forming alliances with the Protestant countries of Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and England. While the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) marked the end of the war and settled the religious frontiers- of central Europe, it brought even greater political disunity to the German States, because the homage, however slight, that each State had formerly paid to the Emperor had now gone, as the Treaty recognized the absolute sovereignty of each ruler within his own territory. The war did not affect the States so acutely as is sometimes supposed, for the devastation only visited certain strategic areas and economic stability actually increased during the latter part of the struggle, due in no small part to the founding, in 1619, of the ‘Hamburger Bank’, which, despite the huge inflation of 1620-3, improved the value of German currency. Hamburg, a flourishing port whose history and tradition of independent government had much in common with Venice, was of all the large German towns the most northerly. She was thus less influenced by Italian music, and it is no coincidence that not only did she build, in 1678, the first public opera house in Europe, apart from those in Venice, but she also became the home of German opera. The Hamburg opera-house was inaugurated by a perform ance OÎ Adam und Eva, by Johann Theile [1646-1724], a pupil of Schütz; while the music is unfortunately lost, the libretto tells us what we might have guessed anyway, that this is a moral opera. But although a number of similar operas were written during the succeeding years, indicative of the character istic German seriousness noted earlier, and partially placating that body of Lutheran opinion that inveighed against the worldliness and immorality of the stage, the secular element proved too strong, and plots and translated libretti from the Italian and French theatres soon predominated. In addition, a number of Italian operas were produced in their original language, and sometimes a compromise was reached in which the arias were sung in Italian and the recitatives in the vernacu lar, a practice that was adopted elsewhere and which has been adversely criticized by some historians, but which is not as absurd as it seems, as we hope to show in the next chapter. Despite the strength of foreign influence, particularly from

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Italy, the actual music of the Hamburg German opera school reveals several independent features, and the leading com posers, Johann Georg Conradi [d. 1699], Johann Wolfgang Franck [c. 1641-after 1695], and Johann Sigismund Kusser [1660-1727], all show a less virtuosic vocal line, a preference for long-phrased melodies in contrast to the shorter, snappier tunes of the Italians, and a recitative style that is more akin to the arioso than to the Venetian recitativo secco. In addition. Conradi and Franck wrote most of their arias in simple binary form (i.e. A, B), whereas Kusser, who was the most cosmo politan of the group, preferred the Itahan da capo form. Kusser, in fact, is the most important composer of the three, as not only did he probably teach and certainly influence the greatest composer of German operas in the entire baroque period, Reinhard Keiser (see Chapter 4, p. 462), but also profoundly affected the course of German instrumental music during the early years of the eighteenth century. The source of his influence on Keiser was Italy, and on instrumental music France, and it is to the operatic developments in the latter country that we now turn. Earlier in this chapter we stated that Rossi’s Orfeo, produced in Paris in 1647, was not the first Italian opera to be performed in the capital; it was in fact preceded by at least three others during the previous two years, all of them under the patronage of Mazarin, who, knowing the French nobility’s love of enter tainment, used them as means of distracting his opponents from the powerful position he was building up for himself. That he was temporarily unsuccessful and was one of the main causes of the civil war that lasted from 1648 to 1653 is reflected in the fact that the next performance of an Italian opera did not take place until 1654. Only two more performances followed during the ensuing eighteen years, not because Mazarin had lost interest in the art of his native land, or power in the country of his adoption, but because Frenchmen, while admiring the skill and invention that could clothe an entire play with music, were not enthusiastic over the way in which it was done, although naturally enough they enjoyed the ballets which were specially introduced in order to satisfy French taste, and were enthralled by the stage machinery invented by Giacomo Torelli that raised the spectacular element to a pitch never before seen in France.

4o 6

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

Although France, unhke Germany and, as we shall see, England, repelled the first invasion of Italian opera, she was sufficiently attracted to try to create her own. The two earliest attempts (the music of both is lost) were Akebar, roi de Mogol, by a certain Abbé Mailly, performed at Carpentras (near Avignon) in 1646, and Le Triomphe deTrAmour sur des bergers et bergères, by Michel de La Guerre [c. 1605-1679], performed at the Louvre, Paris, in 1655, and again before Louis XIV [reigned 1643-1715] in 1657. In a dedicatory letter to the King, La Guerre calls his piece “une Comédie française en Musique”, and daims that it is the first of its kind in France (‘comédie’ meant ‘drama’, not ‘comedy’; see p. 410). Two years later an almost exactly similar claim was made by Robert Gambert [c. 1628-1677] for his comédie. Pastorale (music lost), produced at Issy (near Paris) in April 1659 and then, at Mazarin’s suggestion, at Vincennes before the King. His Majesty was delighted, and, thus encouraged, Gambert and his librettist, Pierre Perrin [c. 1620-1675], continued in their collaboration, the next fruits of which were Ariane, ou le Mariage de Backus and Pomone. It is almost certain that Ariaru was completed by 1661, but in that year Mazarin died and per formance was indefinitely postponed. Thirteen years later an opera with the same title and with Perrin’s libretto was pro duced in London, but, according to the title-page, with music by Cambert’s pupil, Louis Grabu [d. after 1694]. Gambert himself was in London at the time and in charge of the performance, but whether the music is essentially his—Grabu’s rôle being restricted to arranging it and possibly supplying additional items—or whether Grabu composed an entirely new setting will never be known until the original score is found. Mazarin’s death caused a temporary hiatus in French opera because no influential person possessed his enthusiasm for this particular form of entertainment, and it was not until 1671 that Pomone was staged publicly. It was an immediate success and ran for eight months to packed houses. Pomone is the first extant French opera, as it is sung throughout; the same may have been true oíAriane, but Akebar, Le Triomphe, and Cambert’s first opera were probably pastorals—that is, plays with songs— for these, modelled on the pastorales of Tasso and Guarini (see p. 266), were much in vogue during the earlier part of the

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century. Two years before Pontone Perrin had obtained a royal privilege that gave him a monopoly of all performances of French opera. In 1670 he and Cambert converted a large building into a theatre, and in the following year founded the ‘Académie Royale des Opéra’ (the original home of the Paris Opéra), marking the occasion by the performance of Pontone mentioned above—the first public presentation of any French opera. Only the libretto and the music to the Prologue, Act I, and parts of Act II have survived {H.A.M., 223), and the same applies to Les peines et les plaisirs de l'amour, produced in 1672 with music by Cambert and hbretto by Gabriel Gilbert. The success of these two operas, especially of Pomone, was immense, but disaster for Cambert and Perrin was at hand. The latter, a gifted but unstable man, was imprisoned in 1672, and there he was visited by no less a person than Molière [1622-1673], the brilliant actor-dramatist whose comédies are performed as frequently and enjoyed with as much relish today as in his own time. Molière, who had included a certain amount of music and dancing in his comédies from La Fâcheux (1661) on, and who clearly saw the possibilities of such entertainments, can have had little difficulty in persuading Perrin to sell the royal privilege. It availed him little, however, for within a few weeks the privilege had become worthless owing to the machinations at court of one of the most outstanding musicians, and certainly the most unscrupulous, in the whole history of French music, Jean-Baptiste Lully [1632-1687]. Lully, an Italian by birth, was brought to France when only a lad of about ten years old. At twenty he so captivated the Dauphin, later Louis XIV, by his violin playing that not only was he appointed to the royal band, the famous Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi, but in 1656 was permitted by Louis to train sixteen specially selected fiddlers—Les Petits-Violons. This smaller band (which later expanded to twenty-one players) surpassed the larger in both volume and expressiveness, and soon led to Lully’s appointment as conductor of the ‘King’s violins’, a body that became internationally famous under his direction. Like other conductors of his time, Lully was expected to provide most of the music for his orchestra, but some years before this, probably in his late ’teens, he had realized that without the ability to play the harpsichord and compose he

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music would never get very far. He accordingly took lessons, and such was his talent for composition that in 1653 he was commissioned to write some music for a ballet de cour. In Chapter i we traced the development of the ballet de cour up to the early years of the seventeenth century. The first notable change occurred c. 1605, when“the récits, which had formerly been spoken rather than sung, began tentatively, but with increasing sureness, to be set in the Italian monodie style. This change was undoubtedly due to the presence of Caccini at the court of Henry IV in 1604—5, dramatic / manner of singing made a great impression on the musicians at court, especially Pierre Guédron [d. 1619/20], who suc ceeded Claude le Jeune as chief court composer, becoming Maître de la Musique du Roi to Louis XIII, and who, in his numerous ballets written between 1608 and 1620, did much to further the adoption of monody at the expense of part-music. The monodie style also affected the popular air de cour, though indirectly, in that the stress on declamation and the affective rendering of the text soon became all-important, the regular rhythms and simple melodies of the Renaissance type being replaced by the irregular patterns of musique mesurée and by numerous improvised embellishments of the vocal line and accompaniment. Italian influence waxed during the succeeding years, and by 1620 the literary element in the ballet was completely overshadowed by the musical. This resulted in an even greater disregard for dramatic unity than before, and the dances, particularly the ballets à entrées, became a series of virtually unconnected if spectacular tableaux. This state of affairs persisted until c. 1650, when a new lease of life was infused into the ballet de cour by the poet Isaac de Benserade [1612-1691], who reintroduced the feature that had made Circe so outstanding—namely, a unified dramatic plot, an example that was followed by the greatest writer of ballets de cour, Molière. Of the composers who wrote ballet music between c. 1608 and c. 1650 the two most notable were Guédron and his sonin-law and successor at court, Antoine Boesset [c. 1586- 1643], who also became Surintendant de la Musique de Roi in 1623. In the next and last important period of the ballet de cour (it had a late brief flowering under Louis XV), when Benserade and Molière raised it to a literary and dramatic level unknown

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before,the chiefcomposerswereJean-BaptisteBoesset [c. 1614 — 1685], who succeeded his father as Maître and Surintendant to the King, now Louis XIV, and his successors to these titles, Jean de Cambefort [c. 1605— 1661] and Lully. The ballet music Lully wrote in 1653, his first so far as we know, was for Benserade’s La JVuit, in which the part of ‘Le Roi soleil’ was so superbly danced by Louis that the title stuck to him for the rest of his life. Other composers also contributed to La J^uit, for it had long been the custom to share out the music of a ballet between two or more composers. (This, indeed, applies also to Jacobean and most Caroline masques.) During the next four years Lully contributed music to nine ballets, one of these being inserted into an Italian opera, and all but two by Benserade. In 1658, however, he composed the entire score for Benserade’s Alcidiane, and its success, together with his dislike for sharing royal or public acclamation, resulted in his never again collaborating with another composer. Between 1658 and 1671 Lully wrote the ballet music for thirty stage works, over half of them by Benserade, the best of which is Les Muses (1667); most of the remainder were comédies and comédie-ballets by Molière, beginning with L’impromptu de Versailles (1663) and reaching their peak in Le bourgeois gentil~ homme (1670). The two chief dancing masters during this period were Beauchamp and Lully himself, and they were the first to advocate a strict professional training for the ballet, which, as we have seen, had been previously performed by men and women who were courtiers first and dancers second. As a result, the Académie Royale de la Danse was founded by Louis in 1661, and in 1672 this was enlarged to the Académie Royale de Musique et de Danse, which still exists, with its headquarters at the Paris Opéra, and which marked the beginning of State ballet with its professional dancers and public performances. Actually the public had first witnessed ballet in the preceding year (1671), when Fomone W2is staged, for in this opera, as in practically all later French operas to the end of the nineteenth century, ballet was a large and important constituent. Only male dancers performed in public at first, but in 1681 the first woman professional solo dancer (ballerina) appeared on the public stage in Lully’s Le Triomphe de l’Amour, perhaps the most sumptuously staged ballet he ever wrote.

410

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

Among the ballets by Benserade for which Lully composed the music were two for the operas, Serse (1660) and Ercole amante (1662), by Cavalli, whose compositions Lully studied and from them derived his own musico-dramatic style, a style that was fully formed by the time he wrote his first real opera in 1673. —— By this date the ballet had become much more than a display of dancing, though naturally dancing was the m2iin attraction, and Lully, apart from writing numerous pieces for the dramatic ballets à entrées and the conventionEd ballroom types, such as the gaillarde and courante, also made famous a number of newer dances, all of French origin. These were the ‘menuet’ in stately J time, which is said to have been first danced, to Lully’s music, by Louis as *Le Roi soleil’ in La Nuit\ the more animated but still dignified ‘gavotte’ in | or Î; the ‘rigaudon’ and ‘bourée’ in quick duple time, the latter appearing for the first time in composition in Lully’s ballets and operas, though mentioned considerably earlier in literary sources; the lively, spirited, and very popular ‘passepied’ in g or I; and finally the ‘loure’, with its dotted rhythm in 4 time. But the attention which Lully was bound to pay to the dances in his ballets, because of their popularity with ELing and court, did not prevent him fi-om extending and developing the part played by both vocal and purely instrumental music. Thus he increased the number of solos and choruses, and adapted the Italian bel canto and recitativo secco styles, both of which he had learned fix>m Cavalli. The latter he employed to connect the separate scenes in Moiière’s comédie-ballets, while the influence of the former is clearly apparent in his récits and airs in both the comédie-ballets and ballets de cour, although the ornamental tiums, grace notes, etc., are still very much in the French tradition. When we add to this the fact that he stressed the importance of the orchestra to a far greater extent than any other composer, whether French or foreign, then we can begin to appreciate how richly varied had become the musical element in his ballets, especially the comédie-ballets of Molière, with their dramatic recitatives, affective airs that include both low comedy and tender sentiment, sonorous choruses, striking instrumental pieces, sometimes in five real parts, and dance music that ranges from the vivid characterization of the

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ballets à entrées to the noble grace of the menuet. It was but a short step from this to opera, and it is to Lully’s operas, or ‘tragédies-lyriques’ as he called them, that we now turn. Up to 1671 Lully had been contemptuous of Perrin and Cambert’s essays in French opera, but the granting of the royal privilege to Perrin, the founding of the Académie Royale des Opéra, and, finally, the enormous success of Pomone aroused his jealousy. He executed a rapid volte-face, exercised all his in fluence with the King, and within two months of the production of Les peines et les plaisirs de l'amour obtained the privilege for himself. Molière was robbed of his rights, Perrin died in misery three years later, and Cambert, embittered by Lully’s deceit, repaired to England, where he became court composer to Charles II until he was mysteriously assassinated. Not content with his ill-gotten power, Lully repeatedly petitioned the King to extend the scope of his privilege; thus in 1673 theatre W2is allowed to employ more than two voices and six violins, and in 1684 no opera could be performed without his permission. While his unscrupulousness in achieving his ends irregardless of others can only be condemned, Lully’s musical genius matched his lust for power and his dictatorial methods, and he created a type of opera and a style of operatic composition unique to France, and one that lasted for over 100 years; indeed, his third opera, Thésée (1675), remained in the reper toire until 1779. The chief characteristics of Lully’s operas and a comparison with those typical of Italy at the time can best be shown as follows: Lully 1. The libretto is more im portant than the music. 2. As a first result, the recitatives are models of correct declamation, which at times become lyrical, arc frequently accompanied by the orchestra, and are of major importance. 3. As a second result, the airs are few, short, melodically simple, and of minor im portance.

Italian 1. The music is more important than the libretto. 2. As a first result, most recitatives are taken at great speed (recitativo secco), are accompanied by a few simple continuo chords and are of minor importance. 3. As a second result, the arias arc many, extended in form, often very ornate melodi cally, and of major importance.

412 Lully 4. The raison d'être of the whole is to glorify the king— his person, his realm, his deeds. 5. As a first result (French taste being what it was), the action and music are conven tional, never seeking to express violence or passion, and intro ducing wit rather than broad comedy as light relief.

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

Italian 4. The raison d'itre of the whole is to entertain the aristocracy or the populace or both. 5. As a first result, com posers, in order to satisfy their public, always played on the emotions, and violence and passion are the rule rather than the exception, with broad comedy rather than wit intro duced as light relief. 6. As a second result, 6. As a second result, allegorical scenes abound in elaborate spectacles involving which the spectacular element some of the most complex is chiefly used to glorify king stage machinery ever devised and country, which include are common, but there are few numerous ballets, and in which ballets. The chorus is hardly the chorus and orchestra play ever used and the number of an important part. purely orchestral items small. The importance of the libretto and Lully’s insistence that it should make dramatic sense and have some literary distinction falls into line with the traditional French attitude to music mentioned earlier (see p. 273), for whereas composers of opera in the Italian manner did not bother about the quality of the text nor about the probability of the plot, and thus, apart from scenic effects, relied wholly on the impact of their music, Lully made sure that the dramatic and literary sensibilities of his audience were not insulted. It must be remembered in this connexion that in the sphere of literature (including the theatre) France stood head and shoulders above the rest of Europe, and that the so-called ‘Classic Age’ {c. 1660-90), one of the major peaks in her literary history, coincided with the period of Lully’s operatic activity. As we saw earlier, Italian literature and drama were at their lowest ebb in the seven teenth century, and this, apart from the Italian temperament, fostered the kind of opera already discussed; similarly in France, where the distinction of such men as Molière, La Fontaine [1621-1695], whose Contes and Fables reveal him as one of the greatest of French poets, the outstanding playwright, Racine [1639-1699], whose tragedies, particularly his two finest, Phèdre (1677) and Athalie (1691), display a violence of passion that stepped right outside the aristocratic conventions

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of his time, and Pierre Corneille [1606-1684], whose Le Cid virtually created French classical tragedy, not to mention a number of lesser lights, created a literary standard among the intelligentsia which French opera was bound to reflect to some extent if it was to succeed; that it reflected it to such a large extent was due to Lully, and it is not surprising that he called his operas tragédies-lyriques, for this places the stress on the drama rather than on the music. Although Lully had provided the music for several of Molière’s comédies, he preferred as his regular librettists, both for ballet and opera, men of lesser talent and more docile disposition, the reason undoubtedly being that writers of the calibre of Molière, Racine, and Corneille (the last two also collaborated on occasion) were less likely to abide by his dictates and, moreover, were too distinguished in their own right to permit Lully’s star to shine as brightly as he desired, for he wanted no reflected glory. Thus of the nineteen ballets composed between 1658 and 1670 of which he wrote all the music, six are based on texts by anonymous authors, and of the remainder all but one are by the comparatively obscure writer, Benserade. In November 1672, only eight months after he had obtained the royal privilege, Lully produced Les Festes de l’Amour et de Bacchus, a work that stands halfway between his ballets and his operas. His librettists were Benserade, Molière, and Philippe Quinault [1635-1688], and it was the last-named, a dramatist of little significance, who supplied Lully with the libretti of all but two of the thirteen complete operas composed between 1673 and 1686, beginning with Cadmus et Hermione, Lully’s first opera, and ending with Armide et Renaud, his masterpiece, and the first French opera to be performed in Italy (Rome, 1690). In some ways Lully’s operas revive the principles of the early Florentines: in the importance of the text and the insistence on correct and affective declamation, and hence in the preference for the arioso as opposed to the secco recitative so common in contemporary Italian opera. This arioso style— which differs from the Italian in that the voice is often accom panied by violins, and even, at times, the full string band, in addition to the invariable continuo—^is clearly shown in Ex. 24, as is the close alliance between the stress and value of notes and syllables which result in fluctuating time-signatures.

4^4

Laif Renaissance and Baroque Music

(Notice the animated bass line and rapid changes of harmony in the middle of the recitative where the poetic imagery is most intense.) The majority of Lully’s airs fall into one of two types, in both of which the underlay is predominantly syllabic, as one would expect from a composer who laid such stress on the importance of the words. The first typeltems from the air de cour, and includes most of his serious or sentimental airs, particularly those of a pastoral nature (e.g. the well-known ‘Bois épais’ from Amadis de Gaule, 1684, Lully’s most popular opera after Thésée.) The second type, characterized by clear-cut rhythms and melodies, is the dance-song, and it is hardly surprising that this occurs more frequently than the first type. The air in Ex. 24 is a typical dance-song, being in fact a gavotte; typical also is the trochaic rhythm of the melismas on ‘-phez’ and ‘-chai’, which so captivated English composers, notably Purcell, and which, via the French overture especially, spread to other European countries north of the Alps (it was too jerky for the Italian bel canto style). (Ex. 24,* pp, 415-91. The cross in front of some of the notes indicates an ornament, probably a mordant. See also 225.) In order to improve his settings of French words and the declamation and acting of his singers, Lully spent much time studying the movements and speech of the greatest actors of his day at the Théâtre Française, but before long the position was reversed, the actors attending the Académie Royale, for Lully’s ability to train and discipline, already noted in connex ion with the King’s orchestra, produced a standard of acting and declamation that was second to none in France, or, indeed, anywhere else, and musicians from all over Europe came to study with him. Even so, it was not the vocal element in Lully’s operas that caught on abroad—Italian influence was far too powerful—but the instrumental, a constituent of opera that the Italians treated with comparative neglect. The importance of the orchestra in Lully’s operas was due not only to the enormous quantity of dance music it was called on to play as a result of the numerous ballets, but also to the quality of the music itself. Instead of the rather perfunctory instrumental items of contemporary Italian opera in which only the top and bottom lines mattered, Lully composed pieces of distinction, some of them of considerable length, a number * Solo and violin parts and bass from the and ed., Paris, 1709, p. 59.

Music for the Stage: I

Ex.24 Recitative-Au I (J.MM.C.96)

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Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

Ex. 24

6

CONTO.

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Music for the Stage: I

417

Ex. 24

CONTO.

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Late Renaissance and Baroque Music Ex. 24

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Music for the Stage: I

419

Ex. 24

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420

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

of them in five parts, and all of them showing a greater care in the writing of the inner parts; these last were, in fact, often added by his pupils, but only at Lully’s command. Here, for example, is part of the fine chaconne (153 bars in length) from Act II of Phaeton (1683), an opera so successful that it was nicknamed ‘l’opera du peuple’. (We shall define a chaconne as a continuous set of variations on a recurring succession of basic chords which almost invariably lead from tonic to dominant and so back to the tonic again. Thus a chord may not only change its position (e.g. a root may become a first inversion, as in variation (a), bar 2, of Ex. 25) and its mode (i.e. major may become minor, as in variation (¿), bar 2), but it may also be preceded, succeeded, and even replaced by a different chord or chords (as in variation (a), bar 3, and (c), bar 2), always provided that the route, as it were, from tonic to dominant is recognizably the same: Ex. 25,’'' p. 421). Lully’s orchestral style, particularly zis revealed in his overtures, swept the length and breadth of Europe, penetrating even Italy. The operatic overture in Italy is usually, as we have seen, a rather casual affair, but Lully the violinist and con ductor saw in it an opportunity to show off the King’s string band as well as to satisfy his royal master’s delight in instru mental music. The first distinct example of a Lullian or French overture occurs in the ballet Alcidiane (1658); this consists of two movements, a slow, pompous one in a predominantly dotted rhythm, followed by a quick one in duple time which begins in imitative style and is based on a short motive. Lully’s ballet music to Cavalli’s Serse (1660) contains an overture on similar lines, except that the second movement is in triple time; this became standard practice. Some French overtures are concluded by an adagio coda which has been classed as a separate movement by some writers, who, as a result, give the overall plan as slow-qmck-slow. This is wrong, so far as Lully’s overtures are concerned at any rate, because the final section is not a regular feature, and when it does occur it is simply a broadening out of the concluding bars of the second move ment (e.g. Alceste, H.A.M., 224). This two-movement plan, slow-quick, was not invented by Lully, as it can be found in a sinfonia in Landi’s SanP Alessio (see p. 382), and in a few Venetian operas, such as Cavalli’s Giasone (see p. 395), as well • From 3rd ed., Amsterdam [1711], p. 160.

Music for the Stage: I

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Ex.2S Beÿndng and CKCipt from C/toeonm /'Wrffon JI.5 j (1683)

Lully

( J-MM.C96) Violins I!

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as in the ‘ouvertures’, as they were called, of a few earlier ballets dating back to at least 1640; indeed, the first movement of some of these ouvertures display the dotted rhythm typical of the Lullian type. That Lully was acquainted with some of these early sinfonie and ouvertures can scarcely be doubted, but he was the first to adopt the slow-quick plan as a standard procedile, and its success, due partly to the admirably

422

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

contrasted movements, partly to the quality of the actual music, was such that it became the first significant example of orchestral music to achieve independence—^in other words, to be composed and played for its own sake without being attached to a stage work. The country that was most influenced "by-tully was England, largely through the enthusiasm of Charles II [reigned 16601685], who, after the execution of his father, Charles I, and during the Commonwealth, spent most of his exile in France and became thoroughly enamoured of French music, especially Lully’s ballet music. But Charles did not introduce opera into England, for while he may have seen La Guerre’s Le Triomphe and Cambert’s Pastorale while in exile, the first English opera. The Siege of Rhodes, had already been produced, with great success, four years before he was crowned. This opera is sub titled “A Representation by the Art of Prospective [=perspective] in Scenes, And the Story sung in Recitative Musick”. There is no mention of it being a dramatic entertainment, because the Puritans, under their leader, Oliver Cromwell [1599-1658], were strongly opposed to anything that smacked of the traditional theatre; they did not, however, object to music, and so Sir William Davenant or D’Avenant [16061668], who, besides being a dramatist and Ben Jonson’s successor as Poet Laureate, was also an astute theatrical manager, wrote a play and commissioned a number of com posers to set the words in recitative style and to provide songs and instrumental music, none of which unfortunately has survived. (It is worth noting that the performance of this opera marked the first occasion when a woman appeared on the English public stage, i.e. the first professional actress; she was Mrs. Coleman, wife of Edward Coleman [d. 1669], one of the composers engaged by Davenant.) The Siege of Rhodes was not Davenant’s first essay in the musico-dramatic sphere, as he had already written a number of masques for the court of Charles I; nor was the use of recitative the first instance of this style in an English stage work, for as early as 1617 Ben Jonson’s masque. The Vision of Delight, was partly and his Lovers make Men wholly (according to him) “sung after the Italian manner, stylo recitativo, by Master Nicholas Lanier .. .’’. Lanier [1588-1666], of French descent, was Master of the King’s Musick to both Charles I and II,

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and one of a group of composers who sought to adapt Italian monody to English use. This group included Henry Lawes [1596-1662], another contributor to The Siege of Rhodes, his brother William [1602-1645], Simon Ives [1600-1662]. It was William Lawes and Ives who wrote the music for the most elaborate, fantastic, and costly masque ever produced in England, The Triumph of Peace (1633), by the popular and prolific dramatist, James Shirley [1596-1666]. This extrava ganza was organized in protest against the violent attack on masques and plays contained in Histriomastic: The Players Scourge, by William Prynne [1600-1669], and published earlier in the same year. The masque included a procession on horse back from Holborn to Whitechapel of all the characters, and cost the Inns of Court, who commissioned the work, over ;^21,000 (at IcEist j(^20o,ooo in modem money), of which about ¿1,000 was spent on the music, Lawes and Ives receiving ^100 each. The Triumph of Peace represents, albeit in an extreme form, the general decadence of the Caroline masque, in which realism rather than fantasy was the aim and which, as a result of increasing French influence, relied to a greater extent than did the Jacobean masque on the purely spectacular. It was French influence also, rather than Italian, that was reflected in the English recitative style, a style in which the rhythm of the words is more or less faithfully transmitted to the vocal line, but which lacks the affective nature and harmonic variety of the French and Italian arioso. It was this projection of verbal metre into musical rhythm that prompted Milton, in 1646, to write of Henry Lawes: Harry, whose tuneful and well-measiured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas’ cars, committing short and long ; Thy worth and skill exempt dice from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth air couldst humour best our tongue. Milton was not alone in praising Lawes, but he in particular should have known better, for not only was his father a distinguished enough composer to contribute to The Triumphs of Oriana, but he himself had heard Italian opera in Rome

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(see p. 384). In actual fact Henry’s songs are hardly “tuneful” or “smooth”; neither was he the first to set English words “justly”, nor are the results superior to those by Lanier, his brother William, and others. Even his fairly well-known setting of Milton’s fine masque. Cornus (1634), owes its dis tinction to the beauty of the poem, for the-mnsic’s melodic and harmonic monotony is only occasionally relieved by the compa rative tunefulness of such songs as ‘Sweet Echo’ {H.A.M., 204). Five years after Cornus came the last of the court masques, Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia, but masques for private entertain ment continued to be written during the Commonwealth, the most outstanding being Shirley’s Cupid and Death, presented before the Portuguese Ambassador in 1653, with music presumably by Matthew Locke [r. 1621 — 1677], another con tributor to The Siege of Rhodes, and Christopher Gibbons [1615-1676], second son of Orlando. We say ‘presumably’ because the only music to this masque that has come down to us is that for the later performance of 1659 which is unquestion ably by Locke and Gibbons. Locke’s contributions, which exceed in both quantity and quality those by Gibbons, show a keener sense of drama and a bolder imagination than any previous English composer for the stage. Unlike Henry Lawes and his generation, he is more concerned with the dramatic impact of the whole than with the accurate rendering of speech rhythm, and as a result his vocal lines are more tuneful and flexible, his harmonies more varied, and his part-writing freer. (Ex. 26,* p. 425. Notice the shiver on “cold” the abrupt change of chord on “Bright”, and the melismas on the unaccented “a” and “-to” of “into”, a breach of verbal rhythm that must have made Henry Lawes shudder, but which arouse a feeling of expectancy for the word following.) The affective treatment of the words in Ex. 26 shows that Italian influence was beginning to make itself felt in England, an influence that grew as the century progressed. But while Locke’s melodies are, in the main, smoother than those of the previous generation of composers, their wayward rhythm and frequent wide leaps still contrast sharply with the simple, often sequential, pattern and melodic curves of the iel canto. More important is the comparative lack of feeling for a central tonality, for although there are signs of overall key-planning * Melody and bass from Aiusica Britannica, II, ed. E. J. Dent, p. 38.

Music for the Stage: I Ei.26 Beginning of recitative -

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425

Miotm'llit.Dmth, from the 'Fourth Song' (Cupfd and Dtttth) (\6Z9)

Locke

(etc.)

(i.e. within a group of movements) in Locke’s music to Cupid and Death (and even in that of William Lawes to The Triumph of Peace), the chord progressions within a movement, which often lead to a wide variety of keys, lack the single tonal direction that alone'can give both greater meaning to such excursions and at the same time a feeling of unity. • Locke never developed a strong tonal sense, even in his later works for the stage. Of these the most important are the

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Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

incidental music to, and the masque, Orpheus and Euridice, that formed part of The Empress of Morocco (1673)—a tragedy by the minor playwright, Elkanah Settle [1648-1724], the so-called opera, P^che (1673)—an imitation of Molière’s and Lully’s comédie-ballet of the same name by the Poet Laureate and successful dramatist, Thomas Shadwell -[-1642-1692], and in cidental music to Shadwell’s version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1674). (Adulterated versions of Shakespeare’s plays, in which original passages and sometimes whole scenes were omitted ^ind new material and even new characters added, together with songs and dances, became very popular during the Restoration period and later.) In Psyche Locke’s vocal line is less angular than in Cupid and Death, and his harmony more orthodox, but his instrumental pieces for The Tempest contain a number of what the English historian, Charles Burney, called “crudities”. Burney’s pro nouncements are usually sound, but he was prone, like many other critics since his time, to judge an earlier work by later standards, in this case the smooth chord progressions and unerring sense of tonal direction of the late eighteenth century. Locke’s harmonic language is undoubtedly sometimes rough and occasionally startling, compared to that of his contem poraries abroad, but to label unorthodoxy as crude is to imply that the composer was incompetent and his ear imperfect. Locke knew perfectly well what he was doing because not only is his harmonic style consistent within a work, but his free use of dissonance nearly always ‘comes off’. Indeed, he was but part of that English tradition which stretched back to the Middle Ages, when the comparatively dissonant thirds and sixths were much more favoured than on the Continent. Byrd’s use of dissonance is in the same tradition, and so too is Purcell’s, as we shall see. In Ex. 27 the dissonant entry in bar 2, the unusual dominant seventh in bar 5, and the false relation in bars 3 and 5 all ‘come off’ (Ex. 27,* p. 427). The movement from which Ex. 27 is taken contains the directions “soft” and “lowd”, and in the ‘Curtain Tune’, which is frankly programmatic in that it portrays a ‘tempest’, occur the expressions “soft”, “lowder by degrees”, “violent”, “lowd”, and “soft and slow by degrees”, of which the second and last are the most remarkable for the time at which they * From ‘ The Tempest’ Music, Suite I, ed. W. G. Whittaker.

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427

Ei.27 from ‘The Fini Hwick' (JH Ttnfttt) (Ii74)

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were written, because while abrupt expression marks, e.g. ‘lowd’ or ‘forte’, were uncommon enough before c. 1750, graduated ones, such as ‘soft and slow by degrees’ or ‘diminu endo e ritardando’, were extremely rare. Locke’s masque, Orpheus and Euridice, has been described as “the first surviving example of true operatic writing in England” (Anthony Lewis), for, apart from the fact that, unlike all earlier masques, it contains no spoken passages, the vocal line is very reminiscent of early Italian opera in its occasional use of sequence, its oscillation between arioso and aria styles, and its general smoothness, despite the fondness for iambic rhythm, i.e. J* J or n , which can be regarded as a fingerprint of late seventeenth-century English vocal writing. It is the first surviving example, because the music to The Siege of Rhodes has been lost, as has that to Davenant’s two later operas, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). The notable feature common to all three

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Late Renaissance and Baroque Music

operas is that they are concerned with what was then recent history. This is obvious enough in the third opera, but the first is based on an actual siege of the city in 1522 by the Turks under Solyman the Magnificent, while the second summarizes the history of Peru from pre-Inca times to the Spanish conquest in 1532, ending with a scene, admitted by the author to be entirely fictitious, in which the Spaniards are expelled by a combined Peruvian-English army. This opera was intended as a kind of lecture-recital, with music, dancing, and scenery to gild the pill, so to speak; in this it was poles removed from the Italian and French conception of opera, which was solely concerned with entertaining, not informing. In complete contrast too are the subjects of Davenant’s operas, for, as we have seen. Continental librettists delved mostly into ancient history and classical mythology, even though the characters behaved like seventeenth-century men and women. Whether Davenant had any intention of founding a school or tradition of English opera we do not know. He was an ambitious man and an opportunist who managed both to evade Puritanical objections and to capture popular appeal with his operas. As early as 1639 he obtained a patent from Charles I which gave him permission to build his own theatre, and to perform in it or other theatres “musical presentments, scenes, dancing, or any others the like . . .”. If this meant opera, then he was ahead of the French, but it is more likely that he only had masques in mind, for he could not have seen any opera before his visits to France in the 1640s. Even after the public theatres were reopened in 1660 Davenant produced no new opera, despite the success of his first three. He seems to have clearly understood the nature and purpose of recitative, judging by the speech he puts into the mouth of the Musician, one of the characters in his medley of plays entitled The Playhouse to Let (1663): Recitative Musick is not compos’d Of matter so familiar, as may serve For every low occasion of discourse. In Tragedy, the language of the Stage Is rais’d above the common dialect; Our passion rising with the height of Verse; And Vocal Musick adds new wings to all The flights of Poetry.

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By “Recitative Musick” Davenant almost certainly meant something akin to arioso, not the rapid patter of secco recita tive, which, in fact, was hardly ever used by English composers before Handel. Perhaps he sensed that opera, while satisfying the lack of public dramatic entertainment during the Common wealth, could not compete in normal times either with straight drama or with the masque, in which music serves only to heighten, at certain points, the emotional impact or the spectacular element, but which is not used for narrative or conversational purposes; in other words, that a play inter spersed with vocal and instrumental numbers was acceptable, but one sung throughout was not. This was certainly Locke’s view, for in the Preface to The English Opera (1675), which contains his music to Psyche and The Tempest, he says that the former work “may fitly bear the title of Opera though all the tragedy be not in Musick; for the author prudently consider’d that though Italy is the great Academy of the World for that Science and way of entertainment, England is not: and there fore mix’d it with interlocutions as more proper to our genius”. It seems from the above quotation that Locke would have liked to write a full-scale opera if conditions had been favour able; as it is, however, the first surviving English opera, although it is sub-titled ‘A Masque for the Entertainment of the King’, is Venus and Adorns, by John Blow [1649-1708], composed c. 1682. This work has closer affinities to Continental models than Davenant’s operas (so far as we can judge the latter from the libretto and contemporary accounts), being a mixture of Italian but more especially French styles and ideas, with a few features peculiar to England added. Thus the overall plan is Lullian in that, unlike Davenant’s operas, which were divided into a number of scenes, Venus and Adonis consists of a French overture leading straight into a pastoral Prologue and succeeded by three acts. Both French and Italian influence is shown in the fact that the plot is taken from classical mythology, that the libretto is sung throughout, and that the recitatives combine Lully’s carcfiil word-setting with the affective line of the Italian arioso; indeed, Venus’s outburst of grief when the dying Adonis lies before her reaches a degree of passion unknown before in England and rarely equalled abroad (Ex. 28,* p. 430). * Melody and bass from Venus and Adonis, ed. A. Lewis, p. 89.

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Italian rather than French influence is shown by the prepon derance of airs over recitatives, the former being, in the main, not only clearly set off from the latter, but more tuneful and regular in their construction than in any previous English vocal music for the stage. The English features are a certain angularity of line in the recitatives, an uncertainty in tonal direction, and the importance of the chorus, solo ensembles, and instrumental music. This last, to be sure, is also true of Lullian opera, but it undoubtedly stemmed from the masque tradition, as did the inclusion of a large number of choruses (they comprise nearly a quarter of the vocal music) compared to foreign operas. The greater use of the chorus was also due to the amateur and private nature of the performance, in which there were no ‘stars’ whose talents and temperaments had to be considered {H.A.M., 243). In its tunefulness, range of mood, and general structure, Venus and Adonis represents a considerable advance on what had gone before, even though Blow’s grasp of tonality is only

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slightly superior to Locke’s, and it is a pity that he never wrote another work for the stage, particularly as his association with the greatest English composer of the baroque era, Henry Purcell [1659— 1695], led to a new clarity and simplicity in his melodic and harmonic styles. Purcell was in fact a pupil of Blow, and the musical relation ship between the two was very similar to that between Haydn and Mozart, for both Purcell and Mozart were influenced by and in their turn influenced their older contemporary, and both were the more profound artists. This last is clearly revealed in Purcell’s only opera. Dido and Aeneas (1689?), for whereas there are sufficient similarities to Verms and Adonis to show that Purcell had studied his master’s work, the differences are much more striking and significant. The first and most important difference is simply that Purcell’s music reveals a far greater skill and imagination. Thus while both Dido’s famous lament {H.A.M., 255) and Venus’s passionate outburst mentioned above represent the climax of their respective operas (as did ‘Arianna’s Lament’ in Monteverdi’s opera), Purcell’s air conveys a deeper sense of tragedy which is sustained by a well-nigh perfect fusion of a highly expressive vocal line and poignant harmony supported by a chromatic ground-bass. Again, although Purcell’s opera, like Blow’s, reveals Italian influence in the number and character of its airs, and FrenchItalian influence in its arioso-like recitatives, the former are far more ‘catchy’ and the latter more expressive than in Blow’s work. His tonality too is much more assured than the older mân’s, for although the key structures in Dido, both within each Act and as a whole, are only slightly better planned than in Venus (but not nearly so well thought out as in the masque from The Prophetess, or the History of Dioclesian), his tonal sense within a key is firmer and his modulations smoother. Dido also includes, and for the same reasons as Verms, a greater number of choruses, ensembles, and instrumental pieces than was common abroad. Despite the superiority of the music, Purcell’s opera is less perfectly constructed than Blow’s, the major flaw being the totally inadequate treatment of Aeneas: This is all the more marked because, whereas Venus and Adonis, despite the former’s outburst of grief, are presented as dramatic figures roughly equal in stature, though neither are profoundly drawn.

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Dido is revealed through two wonderfully expressive airs as a mature and deeply passionate woman, while Aeneas’s character is never given a chance to establish itself, as he is only allowed a few recitatives, including an almost perfunctory lover’s quarrel with Dido; indeed, Belinda, Dido’s sister, is a far more vivid personality. Admittedly the -librettist, Nahum Tate [1652-1715], is also to blame, and as the opera was written for a boarding-school for gentlewomen run by a well-known dancing master, Josias Priest, it was natural that the part of Aeneas, which was obviously sung by an imported tenor, should be limited, but not to the extent that it is. Even so, if Purcell had had more operatic experience he would doubtless have insisted that Aeneas be given a larger share in the drama. Actually, however, his experience before Dido was limited to providing songs and instrumental music for seven plays, including Theodosius (1680), by the minor dramatist, Nathaniel Lee [1649-1692], the composer’s first and most popular contribution to the stage, and Circe (1685?), by Charles Davenant, son of Sir William, which contains one of Purcell’s finest ariosos, ‘Pluto arise’. In addition, he almost certainly studied Locke’s stage music, and may have seen P^che performed. He may also have been present at the London productions of Perrin and Grabu’s (?) Ariane in 1674 (see p. 406), and of Cambert’s Pontone (adapted by Grabu) in the same year, and must have seen Albion and Albanius (1685), by John Dryden [1631-1700], the greatest English poet and playwright of his generation, with music by Grabu, and, in the following year, Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione, given by a visiting French company. Purcell was probably as impressed by Lully’s music as he was appalled by Grabu’s, whose songs in Albion show an almost laughable unacquaintance with the English language, and the whole revealing a woeful poverty of invention. Why Dryden ever collaborated with him is a mystery, even if we admit that at the time he regarded both Purcell and Blow with disfavour (largely because of their low opinion of Grabu), for he was fully aware of the difficulties in setting English words to music; as he states so admirably in his Preface to the opera, “ ’Tis no easie Matter in our Language to make Words so smooth, and Numbers so harmonious, that they shall almost set themselves. ... The chief Secret is in the choice of Words; and by this

XXV ‘Trio des Parques’ from Rameau’s Hippolyte (II.5) {from the first edition).

i

i

T

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Choice I do not here mean Elegancy of Expression; but Propriety of Sound, to be varied according to the Nature of the Subject.” Any English musician could have made a better job than Grabu of setting Dryden’s libretto, but the complete failure of the opera cannot be laid entirely at the composer’s door, as Dryden was also to blame by turning what was origin ally intended to be only a prologue to a “Tragedy” into a full blown three-act opera. Dryden’s conception of opera was admirable: “An Opera is a Poetical Tale, or Fiction, repre sented by Vocal and Instrumental Musick, adorn’d with Scenes, Machines and Dancing. The suppos’d Persons of this Musical Drama, are generally Supernatural.” He is clear on the distinction between recitative and aria, or what he so delight fully calls “the Songish part”, but in the projected tragedy, mentioned above, he shies away from the genuinely operatic, for he says that it would have been “a Tragedy mix’d with Opera; or a Drama written in blank verse, adorn’d with Machines, songs and dances: So that the Fable of it is all spoken and acted . . . the other parts of the Entertainment to be perform’d by . . . Singers and Dancers.. .. It cannot properly be called a Play, because the Action of it is supposed to be conducted sometimes by supernatural Means, or Magick; nor an Opera because the Story of it is not sung.” Even if Dryden’s tragedy had materialized and Purcell had written the music it would only have been another semi opera, like the five that Purcell did in fact write after Dido. Of these, two are adaptations from Shakespeare, The Fairy Queen (1692) and The Tempest (1695?), one an adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher, The Prophetess (1690), and two by Dryden, King Arthur (1691) and The Indian Queen (1695), the latter being adapted from the play by Dryden and Robert Howard. All these works are characterized by the great importance of the chorus, and abundance of instrumental numbers (ritornelli, dances, preludes, and descriptive pieces), spoken dialogue, very few recitatives (all of the arioso type), elaborate sets and stage machinery, and the fact that none of the principal characters in the drama sing. The Masque from Dioclesian so impressed Dryden (and it has impressed everyone ever since) that, despite the failure of Albion and his slight of Purcell, he asked the composer to collaborate in a new play specially designed for musical

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Renaissance and Baroque Mttsic

treatment—King Arthur. This, the only semi-opera by Purcell that is not an adaptation of an earlier play, contains the remarkable ‘Frost Scene’, with its vocal and instrumental ‘shivering’ tremolandos and its weird harmony, and a host of fine solos, ensembles, and choruses, e.g. ‘Fairest Isle’ and the superbly extended ‘passacaglia’—really a-ground—that com prises most of Act IV. King Arthur loses far more by being presented in a concert version than do any of the other semi-operas, particularly The Fairy Queen, which is really a succession of highly spectacular masques with the original text of A Midsummer Night's Dream grossly mutilated and used merely as a series of connecting episodes. It is the longest of Purcell’s dramatic works, but it is remarkable how very few items there are that strike one as commonplace; indeed, the quality of inspiration is consistently higher than in either of the two earlier works, as, for instance, in such fine songs as ‘If love’s a sweet passion’, ‘Hark how all things in one sound rejoice’, ‘Hark the echoing air’, and some delightful fairy music. It also shows more clearly the influence of Italy in the use of coloratura and of the da capo aria. (In Dido, Dioclesian, and King Arthur there is only one air in this form—Belinda’s ‘Pursue thy conquest love’; in The Fairy Queen there are four.) In the three years that elapsed before Purcell’s last two semi operas, he composed incidental music to well over twenty plays, some of them by such well-known authors as Dryden, William Congreve [1670-1729], Thomas D’Urfey [1653-1723], and Thomas Southerne [1660-1746]. Several of the songs from these and earlier plays are among the best he ever wrote— ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ {The Libertine, 1692?), ‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile’ {Oedipus, 1692), ‘Man is for the woman made’ {The Mock Marriage, 1695)—and reveal an astonishing versatility, ranging as they do from lighthearted amorousness and rustic comedy to passionate declamation and ‘mad songs’ in which rapid changes of speed and style represent passing fits of insanity. The overtures, dances, and other instrumental pieces, like the songs, are a veritable mine of first-rate music, from hornpipes and jigs to poignantly chromatic adagios. The experience Purcell gained from all this incidental music bore rich fruit in The Indian Queen and The Tempest, which are

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not only the greatest of his works for the stage, but also repre sent the peak of his entire output. To enumerate the gems they contain would be simply to compile a list of most of the vocal and instrumental numbers; indeed, both works display a technique that accomplishes with ease the dictates of a rich, versatile, and mature imagination, a melodic gift that is universally recognized as being one of the most remarkable in history, a firm sense of tonality that is undisturbed by certain features typical of earlier English compositions, and a style which absorbed but did not submit to French and Italian influences. The typically English harmonic features mentioned above are essentially a free and (for the time) unorthodox use of dissonance, including false relation, which sprang from a mode of thinking that we can call ‘horizontal’. Such a mode of thought had practically ceased in Italy, where melody and bass were all-important and where inner parts, even when written down, were primarily ‘fillers-up’ of the harmony; the same is largely true of France, for while Lully paid more attention to part-writing than the Italians, the parts them selves have less independence than in English compositions. In England, however, the tradition of polyphonic writing had been maintained right through the seventeenth century in both vocal and instrumental music, and most of Purcell’s harmonic quirks, like Byrd’s dissonances (see Chapter 2) are the result of this, e.g. his use of false relation, either in passing—often for descriptive reasons, as in the chorus, ‘Full fathom five’ {The Tempest)—or in the so-called ‘English cadence’ (see Chapter 2), as in ‘What ho! thou Genius of the Clime’ {King Arthur). Roughly speaking, one can say that in Purcell’s music for the stage, particularly that written during the last five years or so of his life, Italian influence is most apparent in the vocal numbers and French influence in the instrumental pieces, although there are examples of the Italian canzona and sin fonia on the one hand and of French dance-songs on the other. Thus the overtures, in the main, follow Lully’s pattern, and most of the dances are those popular at the court of Louis XIV, while the songs reveal their author’s study of Italian models in their greater regularity of structure, their lyricism, and the range of mood within a single number, apart from an increasing but still comparatively infrequent use of da capo form and

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coloratura. In addition a number of features occur so often in his melodies as to be characteristic, e.g. the rhythm J J | J J in I time, successions of trochees, ( J. J. Jijand the expressive use of iambsj J'J.) , in which the short accented note is usually an appogiatura (i.e. a dissonance) thai^ often followed by a falling fourth or fifth (see Ex. 28). This list feature was more common in England than in France or Italy, probably because of the more marked accentual nature of the language, but the other two features are typical of Lully’s style. Purcell’s fondness for repeated motives (ground bass and passacaglia) was also typical of French, and indeed Italian, composition,^ and it is interesting to note that he used this technique less as his tonal sense developed (see p. 397). What distinguishes Purcell’s stage music from that of the Continent is the combination of French-Italian sequential structure with a greater freshness, breadth, and irregularity of phrase, supported by harmonic progressions that are basically orthodox but which include ‘odd’ dissonances. Purcell never travelled abroad, and while he almost certainly saw one of Lully’s operas (see p. 432) he never saw one by an Itah'an. His knowledge, therefore, of operatic performances in Italy was acquired at second hand, either from Englishmen, like his teacher, Pelham Humfrey [1647-1674], who had been sent there at the King’s expense, and Dryden, or from Italians who, from the Restoration on, visited or settled in England in increasing numbers. These last brought with them a fair quantity of vocal and instrumental music, chiefly cantatas and trio sonatas (see Chapters 5 and 6), and it must have been from these manuscript copies that Purcell’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of the Italian style chiefly derived. In the Preface to The Fairy Queen, after defining opera as “a Story sung with proper Action”, and praising The Siege of Rhodes as “a perfect Opera”, except that it lacked “the Orna ment of Machines, which they Value themselves so much upon in Italy”, the anonymous writer says: “That a few private Persons should venture on so expensive a Work as an Opera [i.e. The Fairy Queen] when none but Princes, or States exhibit ’em abroad, I hope is no dishonour to our Nation: And I dare aflSrm if we had half the Encouragement in England, that they have in other Countries, you might in a short time have as

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good Dancers in England as they have in France, though I despair of ever having as good Voices among us, e is they have in Italy.” From this it may be deduced that there would have been some support for full-scale operas in the Italian manner to English libretti, and, judging by the tremendous success of Artaxerxes (1762), it is possible that had Purcell lived another twenty years or so he might well have established a national operatic tradition.

4

THE BAROQUE : MUSIC FOR THE STAGE—II . . no Music can support an opera without great and favourite singers.” (Charles Burney, A General History of Music, 1776, Voi. IV, p. 457.) Italian

opera, or, more precisely, the opera that stemmed

from Naples, during the late baroque, (i.e. c. i68o-r, 1750) has been adversely criticized more widely, consistently, and violently than the music of any other period, country, or type. From the eighteenth century to the twentieth, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and even Italians have poured con tumely if not ridicule on an operatic type that inspired men of the calibre of Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, and Hasse to write some of their finest music. In recent years, however, a more imaginative approach has been made, and as a result the virtues as well as the vices of Neapolitan opera have been shown in a truer perspective. Up to c. 1680 Venice was the main operatic centre, and even in second-rate Venetian operas, not to mention those by Cavalli, Cesti, and the later generation of Legrenzi, Stradella, and Pallavicino, dramatic integrity and, though to a much lesser degree, musical characterization were important, but not to the same extent as with Monteverdi. As a result, the nature of an individual aria depended on the composer’s re action to the story or the poetic quality of the libretto at that particular point. In Neapolitan opera, musical characterization is almost totally lacking, and dramatic integrity is entirely subservient to musical variety. This last was achieved partly through the alternation of secco recitative and aria (as in late Venetian opera), in which the former is primarily concerned with action (i.e. the unfolding of the drama by means of dialogue), but is musically negligible, while in the latter action is non-existent, the stress being entirely on the music which reveals the emotional response of one character to the preceding events in the drama. Variety was also achieved by ensuring that 438

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successive arias were of different types and, less important, that they were sung by different characters. The chief types of aria were the ‘aria cantabile’, the most popular type, in slow tempo, sentimental, and providing more opportunities than the other types for displaying the singer’s all-round technical mastery; the ‘aria di portamento’, dignified, and containing many long notes on which the singer could reveal his sustaining powers and beauty of tone; the ‘aria parlante’ or ‘agitata’, the most highly emotional type, char acterized by syllabic underlay, and sung at a quicker speed and with great intensity of feeling; and lastly the ‘aria di bravura’ or ‘agilita’, the singer’s show-piece, in which the rapidity, agility, and sometimes the extreme compass of the voice (see p. 461) were abundantly displayed. In addition to being classified as a certain type, each aria was governed by a single mood or ‘affection’, and this feature, while it was typical of all music during the late baroque, represented the culmination of an aesthetic approach to music known as the ‘doctrine of temperaments and affections’, and was first fully revealed in the opera aria, particularly of the Neapolitan School. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word ‘affections’ (Italian affetti, German Affekte) had a far wider meaning than it has today, because it stood for a considerable number of what we may call mental activities. Thus affections included not only general emotions, such as ‘pleasure’, ‘sad ness’, ‘joy’, ‘anger’, but also feelings of association, e.g. ‘pastoral’, ‘warlike’, and, especially in instrumental music, abstract mental states impossible to describe accurately in words, but which, nevertheless, were (and are today) clearly recognized and understood. In other words, baroque com posers were primarily concerned with “rendering and trans lating into music the temper, disposition or frame of mind, passions, and mental reactions characteristic of man” (Lang). While this approach bears some resemblance to Plato’s equating certain emotions with scales and instruments (see Part P- 13)—the latter, in fact, were also classified ‘affectively’ by some late baroque theorists, the horn being ‘pompous’, the flute ‘modest’, the kettledrum ‘heroic’, etc.—and is a natural development of the Renaissance technique of wordpainting, it has much more in common, and indeed can be

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said to have originated with Rore’s mood-expression (see p. 251). Not until the advent of monody, however, did the affections become of paramount importance, although monody, unlike its offspring, the fully-ffedged opera aria, was not necessarily governed by a single affection. The development and fulfilment oTtht doctrine took place in vocal music because the clearest way of establishing it was through the use of words which alone can impart a precise affection. Moreover, instrumental music, while it certainly added on occasion to the emotions conveyed by the singer, both in the aria and, often with great power, in the recitativo accompagnato or stromentato (i.e. recitative accompanied by the orchestra), could not by itself express either the intensity or the range of feeling of a well-trained voice. The doctrine reached fulfilment in opera, rather than in the cantata or oratorio, because firstly, from Monteverdi and Cavalli on, opera, to the Italians, was so vital, all-absorbing, and popular that it both reflected more clearly the artistic aims of its time, and also provided a more natural medium for experiment and innovation than any other kind of music. Secondly, only the opera aria was theatrical; in other words, the basic affection was much more easily and naturally ‘put across’ by the actor whose facial expressions and bodily movements would all contribute. The basic affection, which, by the late baroque, dominated each independent musical movement, whether of an overture or concerto, or an aria, is always expressed as clearly as possible by means of a distinctive musical idea or motto. Each motto thus represents the quintessence of a basic affec tion, and while most of them naturally consist of a combination of melody, rhythm, and harmony, the distinctiveness of a motto nearly always lies in the greater importance of one of these elements, quite apart from whether it is in the major or minor mode. Mottoes that are primarily harmonic or rhythmic are first presented, as one would expect, in the opening ritornello, because the solo voice cannot express harmony and is an unsuitable vehicle for pure rhythm, but when melody is the prime feature of a motto it was natural that, with the affection clarified by words, it should be delivered by the voice at the very beginning of an aria. This ‘motto beginning’, which, as we have seen, became common with Cesti and later

Muñe for the Stage; II Venetian composers (p. 401), is usually succeeded by a short instrumental ritornello which either imitates the voice (see Ex. 30, p. 450), or else introduces a related or new but always subsidiary and never strongly contrasted figure (for this would disrupt the affective unity) which is used in the course of the aria (see Ex. 34, p. 473). Motto beginnings are musically artistic and emotionally significant when used with skill and imagination, but they became an empty mannerism in the hands of inferior composers who accepted mechanically the pseudo-scientific classification that took place during the early years of the eighteenth century. This hnked affections with mottoes, usually in general terms, but the German theorists Scheibe, Heinichen, and Mattheson (see p. 488) went so far as to equate a particular motto with a specific affection, an absurd belief, for music cannot be so specific; thus in Ex. 31 (p. 453), for instance, the most distinctive falling fifth (the germ of the aria) might imply a number of affections, resignation or sadness, and not until the voice enters do we know it to be ‘faithfulness unto death’. Obviously, if the mode becomes major, with or without a quickening of tempo, different affections will be implied. Even before this classification it was taken for granted that performers would recognize and their interpretation be dic tated by the basic affection; hence the dearth of expression marks in baroque music. But the reliance placed on performers would have been unthinkable if the doctrine of affections had not been generally accepted and if the performers themselves, especially soloists, had not received a much more all-round musical education than is customary to-day. The performer, moreover, was much more than an interpreter in the modern sense; he was also a co-creator, and both composer and audience expected him to embellish in performance what was written down on paper. This applied with particular force to opera singers, especially the castrati, who were the first real virtuosi in the history of music, and in Neapolitan opera virtuosity was ranked higher than in any other art form before or since. Operatic embellishments were of two kinds, ornaments and cadenzas. The former decorated the written notes with trills, grace-notes, scales, arpeggios, etc., particularly in the repeat of the first part of a da capo aria (the reprise) ; in the words of Pier Francesco Tosi [c. 1653 — 1732], one of the greatest singing

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masters of his time, the first part of an aria needs “nothing but the simplest Ornaments, of a good Taste and few, that the Composition may remain simple, plain, and pure; in the second they [i.e. the audience] expect, that to this Purity some artful Graces be added, by which the Judicious may hear, that the Ability of the Singer is greater; and,-in repeating the Air [i.e. the reprise], he that does not vary it for the better, is no great Master”.* Cadenzas very often occurred on the final vocal cadence in both the first and second sections of the aria, and always in the reprise; they varied from short flourishes to extended passages of considerable virtuosity, and, like the ornamentation, the cadenza in the reprise was the most elaborate. The degree of virtuosity depended on the singer’s technical mastery, the affection of die aria, and the aria type— ideally at any rate, though by no means all singers exercised such taste and discretion. The cadenza nearly always occurred on the ante-penultimate tonic ® chord, and in the classical concerto as established by Mozart, not only the actual idea of a cadenza for the soloist, but also its position in the movement and its announcement by means of a cadential tonic ® chord were taken over directly from the Neapolitan opera aria. The most famous castrati were Nicola Grimaldi or Nicolini [1673-1732], Antonio Bemacchi [1685-1756], Francesco Bernardi or Senesino [d. c. 1759], Gaetano Maiorano or Caffarelli [1710— 1783], Giovanni Carestini [t. 1705 —c. 1760], and, the greatest of them all. Carlo Broschi or Farinelli [17051782]. Bernacchi was taught at Bologna, where he later founded a famous singing-school of his own; he placed execution before expression, unlike his fellow Bolognese, Senesino, whose voice, in the opinion of many, was purer even than Farinelli’s, and whose clarity of diction and sensitive delivery in recitatives was imequalled. The other castrati named above were all trained in one of the Neapolitan conservatories that became worldrenowned during the eighteenth century. Caffarelli and Farinelli were pupils of the most outstanding singing-master and one of the most influential teachers of composition of his time, Nicola Porpora [1686— 1768], who travelled extensively, was sufficiently esteemed as an opera composer to be invited to rival Handel in London, and who, towards the end of his life, • Opionioni de’ cmwri antiche e moderni, 1723. Observations on the Florid Song, 1742.

Translated by J. E. Gaillard as

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taught young Haydn the fundamentals of composition. As a singing-master, Porpora’s aims were those of Bernacchi, and his most famous pupil, Farinelli, after he had received some further instruction from Bernacchi, who defeated him in a contest of vocal virtuosity in 1727, was acknowledged as the most brilliant singer in Europe. Four years later, however, he changed to a much simpler and more expressive style of singing, and such was his art that when, in 1737, he visited Spain, he was able, like David before Saul, to banish the pro longed fits of melancholy suffered by Philip V [1683-1746] which had caused the King to neglect his realm. The Queen, by offering a most handsome salary, persuaded Farinelli to stay, and every night for the next ten years he sang the same four songs to Philip. Naturally, he became a great favourite (but never, as is sometimes stated. Prime Minister), and under Ferdinand VI [1713-1759] enjoyed a position of greater con fidence and power than any official of the Crown. When Ferdinand died. Farinelli returned to Italy a very rich man, and spent his remaining years entertaining his many friends, among them noblemen from all over Europe, at his palatial mansion near Bologna. According to Giambattista Mancini [1716-1800], a pupil of Bernacchi and one of the leading sing ing-masters of his generation, Farinelli’s voice “was thought a marvel, because it was so perfect, so powerful, so sonorous and so rich in the extent, both in the high and the low parts of the register, that its equal has never been heard in our times. He was, moreover, endowed with a creative genius which inspired him with embellishments so new and so astonishing that no one was able to imitate him.”* We have dwelt on Farinelli at some length not only because he was the most brilliant singer of his time, but also because his position at the Spanish court reflects, albeit in an extreme form, the enormous popularity, power, and prestige accorded to the castrati in every European country except France. But the vocal accomplishments of these men were not lightly achieved, and from the age of nine or ten until their late ’teens or early twenties they underwent a rigorous education that included acting, elocution, musical theory, and composition in addition to exercises that aimed at producing voices of extraordinary beauty, control, flexibility, and power. These four qualities * Quoted from Grove's. Dictiortary, III, p. 25.

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music were not always regarded as of equal importance, and in the Neapolitan conservatories the last three took pride of place, as they are the most natural means whereby virtuosity and embellishment can be displayed. The exceptional popularity and power of the castrati affected Neapolitan opera in a number~of ways. Firstly, the lower male voices were virtually restricted to minor parts, because the chief ‘male’ characters were always castrati. Secondly, even women found it difficult at times to gain a principal rôle unless they were extremely gifted. The three most famous ‘cantatrices’ (i.e. virtuoso women singers) were the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni [c. 1698—1770], noted for purity of tone and intonation, and whose trills were so ravishing that on one occasion an enthusiast from the gallery of a London opera house shouted, “Damn her ! she has a nest of nightingales in her belly!”, and Faustina Bordoni [1700—1781], wife of Hasse (see p. 460), and who, apart from a charming face, figure, and personality (unlike Cuzzoni) was a most gifted actress, and possessed an unsurpassed agility of voice. The third cantatrice was Vittoria Tesi [1700-1775], whose compass was larger than Cuzzoni’s or Bordoni’s, but who excelled as a contralto of great power, so much so, in fact, that she became renowned in masculine rôles, an unnatural state of affairs that many less-gifted women singers were forced into by the supremacy of the castrati. Thirdly, the ordinary opera-goer was perfectly prepared to accept the spectacle of a castrato (most of whom, because of their operation, were taller and broader tlian the normal man) looking magnificently masculine as, say, Hercules draped in a leopard skin, but singing in a soprano voice. Lastly, most composers and librettists, apart from being more concerned with the placing of arias according to the conventions noted on p. 439 than with wedding music to drama or the natural development of the latter, were obliged to alter, replace, or add to what they had originally written if a ‘star’ singer so required. Nevertheless, there were a few composers and librettists whose reputations were such that they were not bound to comply with the largely egotistical demands of the virtuoso singer. The two most important librettists were Apostolo Zeno [1668—1750] and Pietro Trapassi or Metastasio [1698-1782]. Zeno, whose first libretto, GVInganni Felici (1695), achieved

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considerable popularity, was a Venetian. From 1718-29 he was court poet and historian to the Emperor Charles VI [reigned 1711-1740] at Vienna, and he effected a notable reform in opera libretti. Influenced by the French dramatists, notably Racine, he introduced a greater degree of unity into his plots (most of which are historical in theme) by largely rejecting comedy, the purely spectacular, and the arbitrary intervention of supernatural beings (except for the final deus ex machina which, because all his dramas end happily, was often used to resolve the complicated situation in the last act), and limiting the number of subsidiary plots that had formerly been introduced for spectacular or comic reasons. Each drama is generally divided into three acts, each act being divided into a number of scenes, and each scene into (usually) two parts, the first and by far the larger part unfolding the story by means of dialogue (secco recitative), and the second consisting (usually) of two four-line verses written in a highly polished and unimpassioned style, the first of which was meant to be repeated (A, B, A-aria) ; the verses express either the reactions of one of the characters to the situation of the moment, or else some more general sentiment, and in any case represent a unity of mood or basic affection. Zeno’s reforms, because they eschewed comedy and the irrelevantly spectacular, resulted in a type of opera known as opera seria. These reached their peak, so far as the libretti are concerned, in the hands of Metastasio, who wrote his first full-length hbretto. Didone abbandonata, in 1723. This Roman poet quickly estabUshed a reputation, and in 1730 Zeno recommended him as his successor at Vienna. Metzistasio was not only a better poet than Zeno, and a more imaginative dramatist (one of his plots even dared to end tragically), he was also a trained musician, having studied under Porpora at Naples, where he met and began a lifelong friendship with Farinelli. As a result, his verse, while it follows the same pattern as, and is no more impassioned than Zeno’s, is more lyrical, its imagery is more alive, its language more conducive to a musical setting. This explains why his hbretti were more popular than any other, for not only were they the basis of over a thousand operas in the eighteenth century (some of them, indeed, being set as many as seventy times), but, unlike Zeno’s, were pubhshed in his lifetime.

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Neither Zeno nor Metastasio were Neapolitans, but they restored to Neapolitan opera something of the literary dis tinction, dramatic integrity, and sincerity of expression of the early Venetian opera, the libretti of which, by Rinuccini and his imitators, were frequently, and sometimes luxuriously, printed, and were taken seriously by~0pera-goers, many of whom read them during performances. But the libretti of late Venetian opera began to deteriorate, and in Neapolitan opera, excluding those by Zeno, Metastasio, and a few others, the libretti are little more than loosely constructed patchworks of threadbare clichés and stereotyped situations. But it was the music and, more particularly, the way it was sung that mattered most. The first opera produced in Naples was Monteverdi’s Poppea in 1651. Three years later came L'Orontea regina di Egitto, by Francesco Cirillo [1623 —after 1667] who, while a Neapolitan composer, spent most of his life in Rome. The first real Neapolitan composer was Francesco Provenzale [1627?1704], of whose eight operas only two have survived complete —II Schiavo di sua moglie (1671) and Difendere l’Offensore (1678). These display not only a remarkable melodie gift heightened by a most expressive use of chromaticism, but also an intimate connexion between music and drama and considerable variety of form {H.Â.M., 222) ; the era when the da capo aria and the castrati dominated opera had yet to come. In 1684 Provenzale, who was highly esteemed in Naples, both as a teacher and composer, resigned from his position as second chapel-master to the Spanish Viceroy because the senior post, which he naturally expected to get, had been offered to a young musician from Rome, Alessandro Scarlatti [1660-1725]. Scarlatti’s work was not unknown in Naples, as his first opera. Gli equivoci nel sembiante (Rome, 1679), had been presented in 1680, and three years later a new opera. Psiche, was performed for the first time in the city, followed by a revival of II Pompeo (Rome, 1683) only a few weeks before his appointment. During each of the ensuing eighteen years Scarlatti composed at least one opera and sometimes as many as four. The demand for his work and the taste of his public caused him increasing irritation, as he was forced to write in a ‘popular’ style that offended his artistic standards. Matters came to a head in 1702, when his salary was in arrears and the

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city was politically disturbed. He asked for and was granted four months’ leave, and went to Florence, where he enjoyed the patronage of an ardent music-lover. Prince Ferdinand de’ Medici, for whom he composed some operas. The Prince, however, offered him no permanent position, and rather than return to Naples, Scarlatti accepted an inferior post as assistant chapel-master at the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Here he suffered another disappointment, because opera was dis approved of by the Pope on the grounds of morality. To compensate for this, he composed a few operas for Venice and a considerable number for Prince Ferdinand. In 1709 Scarlatti returned to his former post at Naples. His fame was now at its height and he could compose more or less as he liked ; the result was a series of operas that are a considerable improvement on those he had written earlier for Naples, notably Tigrane (1715), his io6th opera. But Rome, the scene of his first successes and later disappointments, was un doubtedly his favourite city, and in 1717, realizing that Papal disapproval had waned and that he had a considerable follow ing there, he left Naples and did not return until 1722 or 1723. In Rome he composed his only comic opera, the delightful II Trionfo dell' Onore (1718), and also his finest work for the stage, Griselda (1721), on a libretto by Zeno. This was his 114th opera, and the last of the thirty-six that have survived complete from a total of 115. Scarlatti’s operas reveal not only his development as a composer, but also, up to 1709 at any rate, the influence of the audiences for whom he composed. His earliest attempts dis play Venetian influence—then all-powerful in Rome—via the works of Stradella and Legrenzi. In these the dramatic situation dictates the musical treatment, aria forms are varied (see p. 400), recitatives are carefully composed, coloratura writing is restrained, ensembles are common, but crowd choruses are rare, though often highly effective in their realistic cries of praise, anger, etc. The music itself is short-phrased, rhythmically clear-cut, and sometimes dance-hke, harmonically limited with rather angular and often ostinato basses, the tex ture is frequently polyphonic or contrapuntal, and is most strikingly revealed in orchestral accompaniments in four real parts none of which double the vocal line (Ex. 29*). * A. Lorenz, Alessandro Scarlatti's Jugendoper, II, p. 28.

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Ex.29 ‘Si il foco ch'accendi Amore’ (Dalfno/ti7btnt)

A.Scarlatti

(J = MM.601

(destroys so that he should not escape)

These early operas, of which the only ones to survive are, apart from Gli equivoci, ühonesta ne gli amori (1680), and Dal male il bene (1681), show Scarlatti’s fundamentally serious approach to music; they also show his immaturity in melodies that are haphazardly phrased and extended by exact repetition rather than by free or sequential development, and in the curious and occasionally harsh sounds that result from polyphony being unmatched by a sufficiently sure harmonic sense. In Naples, during what we shall call his first Neapolitan period (1684-96), his technique and style became more polished, as he increasingly tended to work within a narrower field. This tendency may well have been partly self-imposed

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for artistic reasons, but it was also due to the necessity of satisfying the taste of his viceregal master and his audiences. As a result, the characters and dramatic situations of the libretti that he chose or was asked to set become more and more con ventional, with the da capo aria prevailing, the importance of the orchestra gradually wanes to the point where most arias are accompanied by the continuo, sometimes with a single violin line added, the full orchestra being restricted to the ritornelli; polyphony and imitation seldom occur, and ensem bles decrease in number, being mostly dialogue love-duets— the most popular type of ensemble in all Neapolitan opera. These somewhat negative features are more than balanced by others of a more positive kind. Thus partly because he was working within narrower limits, both formal and dramatic, and partly as a result of his natural musical development, his melodies become more regularly phrased, grateful, and sensuous, their construction less fragmentary, and their exten sions less purely repetitive, with sequential passages more prominent. Moreover, the dramatic situations, although more conventional, cover a fairly wide emotional range, but any emotional intensity depended entirely on the composer and the singers, and Scarlatti demonstrates his exceptional gifts by producing an impressive array of arias that vary from grief to skittishness, from tenderness to bellicosity, with accompani ments ranging from continuo to full string band, sometimes with wind instruments added. Particularly striking are the arias in which a solo trumpet concertizes with the voice, a very popular feature in Neapolitan opera, as it enabled the singers, especially the castrati, to display their superior agility. The trumpet was chosen because in the seventeenth century its technique was more advanced than that of any other melodic instrument, and when, in the early eighteenth century, the violin surpassed it in this respect, it was still preferred as it alone could vie with the castrati in power and brilliance (Ex. 30,* p. 450). Four features from the operas of this first Neapolitan period deserve special mention. First, the scene in which one or two characters express conflicting or changing emotions. For instance, in La Rosaura (1690) a lady laments her lover’s fickleness in a largo aria, but her maid interrupts in an attempt * Adapted from A. Lorenz, ibid., II, p. 46.

45° Ex^

Late Renaissance and Baroque Music 'sit,sù fieri guerrieri’ ^/f/icrercOAfe tironno, Naples (J-MM.48)

1689)

A.Scarlatti

(Arise, brava warriors, rousa yoursalves to arms I)

to cheer her up with a popular allegro tune. This is an extreme example, and the more usual treatment is to present different shades of the same emotion through a mixture of secco recita tive, arioso, and aria. In at least one of his later operas—Attilio Regolo (1719) (IIIj 9)—Scarlatti developed the mixed scene into something approaching the strikingly dramatic ‘grand scena’ of Handel (see p. 478) and Gluck.

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The second feature, accompanied recitative, combines the lack of form (i.e. of sectional repetition) and verbal clarity of the secco recitative with the semi-lyridsm of the arioso, the resultant vocal line being set within an expressive orchestral framework (otherwise exclusively reserved for the aria) that might consist of sustained notes, rushing scales, tremolos, agitated rhythms, sweeping arpeggios, loud punctuating chords, etc. Admittedly this feature can be found in earlier works, e.g. Monteverdi’s Orfeo (see p. 376) and Schutz’s oratorios (see Chapter 5, p. 522), but Scarlatti was the first to make it operatically significant, beginning with Olimpia Vendicata (1685). In his last Roman and Neapolitan operas, accompanied recitatives occur regularly, usually preceding the more important arias, a position that became standard for late baroque vocal compositions, and largely through his example they became one of the emotional highlights of Neapolitan opera. The third feature is the presence of comic characters (usually two) who enliven the proceedings in often broadly humorous episodes and who frequently round off the first two acts on a note of hilarity with a comic duet distinguished by a rapidity of patter and a vivacity of repartee impossible in the serious sentimental love-duets of the principal characters. It was this vivacity and its position that made the comic duet the startingpoint of one of the most distinctive features of opera buffa—the end-of-act ensembles (see p. 483). In 1696 Scarlatti revived Dal male il bene, composing new introductory music which established the form and texture of the ‘Italian’ overture or ‘sinfonia’, as it was called. This, our last feature, is in three movements, quick-slow-quick, its most significant characteristic being its essentially homophonie texture as compared to the contrapuntal-polyphonic French overture. Scarlatti’s opera sinfonia, like his da capo aria, was shorter, simpler, and less expressive than the overtures of Lully and his successors. Its popularity, which caused the demise of the latter, c. 1750, and its expansion and structural develop ment by later composers led to an entirely independent composition (see Chapter 6, p. 553) and ultimately to the classical symphony (see Part III). In his second Neapolitan period (1697-1702) Scarlatti was forced to adopt a much more popular style. Polyphony gives

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way to virtually unrelieved homophony, coloratura passages occur in greater profusion, but are usually not excessive, recita tives are scamped, with the cadential falling fourth, axiomatic in later Neapolitan opera, becoming common, accompani ments are thin, the rôle of the orchestra being much diminished, and melodies grow increasingly facile, repetitive, and limited in expressive range, but more highly polished. Most of these last are either square-cut and strongly rhythmic, following the latest successful fashion in arias set by his younger contem porary, Giovanni Bononcini [1670—1747], or else impart, sometimes to the point of cloyingness, a sense of pathos that is one of the composer’s most enduring traits. This is particu larly true of his sicilianos, admired and imitated wherever Italian opera held sway, and characterized by a hlting rhythm, minor mode, and the prominence of the Neapolitansixth chord (Ex. 31,* p. 453). This was Scarlatti’s worst period, only slightly redeemed by some attractive arias (including Ex. 31, p. 453) and the comic episodes, now usually sung by a soprano and tenor or bass. In the Roman operas, because women were not allowed on the stage, the comic characters were generally an old woman (sung by a tenor—the forebear of the pantomime ‘dame’) and an old man (bass), and such was the popularity of this incon gruous pair that they were not replaced by the more realistic young couple (the ancestors of Papageno and Papagena) until c. 1700. We can only assess the operas Scarlatti wrote for Prince Ferdinand if we assume (and it is a reasonable assumption) that the two surviving ones written for Venice during the same period are similar in style. The better of the two, Mitridate (1707), is not only remarkable for its political plot and the fact that hero and heroine are brother and sister, but also for the dignity, sincerity, and at times passion of the music, particularly the accompanied recitative ‘O Mitridate mio’ and aria ‘Cara tomba’ sung by Mitridate’s sister. For the first time since his early Roman days Scarlatti gave rein to his inherent seriousness. In Mitridate polyphony and counterpoint again become significant, incisive and fascinating rhythms abound, melodies are more varied and expressive, and are extended by sequence and motivic development (i.e. the use * Adapted from A. Lorenz, ibid., II, p. i6o.

Words omitted.

Music for the Stage: II E*.31 Opening ritornello trem‘Non ml tradir mol

(J->HH.36)

á' f- r

453 (Lq tfanno ancoro i tkhlt, Nopics 1698) .A.Soarlotti

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fetej

of short distinctive figures, usually taken from the main affective motto, which permeate and unify the texture and provide the chief means of modulating (see Ex. 34, p. 473), coloratura passages are frequent and sometimes reveal un mistakable ir:,trumental influence in typical violin figurations, but seldom pander to mere virtuosity and are often very effective, the orchestra regains its earlier importance, even at the expense of the harpsichord, the string writing in particular

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being far more interesting and vivid as a result of the general improvement begun by Corelli (see Chapter 6, p. 551), and aria and even recitative accompaniments are enriched by a wider harmonic vocabulary (including the chords of the diminished seventh and augmented fifth in addition to the Neapolitan sixth) directed by a firmer- feeling for tonaUty. Moreover, a number of arias are more extended than usual through the introduction of mildly contrasting ideas in both sections. Ensembles, while they occur in each opera, are infrequent, and so are solo choruses, i.e. choruses sung by all or most of the soloists; crowd choruses, as in the second Neapoli tan period, are non-existent. The most distinctive features of the operas that Scarlatti composed during the last sixteen years of his life, taken as a whole and compared to those immediately preceding them, are the greater number of accompanied recitatives, the more highly organized internal structure of each section of the aria, the occasional ensemble in which the characters express shghtly different emotions or states of mind, and especially the more imaginative handling of the orchestra. Thus, horns, used rather tentatively for the first time in Tigrane, are employed more extensively and effectively in Telemaco (1718) and in every later opera ; string parts show a considerable advance in technique, and the tendency, noted earlier, to treat the strings as a self-contained body, i.e. without the harpsichord, frequently results in a complete reversal of the usual procedure by accompanying the voice with strings alone, the harpsichord being restricted to the ritornelli. In this last period, too, re corders (always called ‘flutes’ in the baroque period), flutes (always designated as ‘flauti traversa’ or just ‘traversa’), oboes, and bassoons occur more often than in the earlier operas, but, despite a few arias in which they have characteristic solos, their chief function is to sustain notes or double string parts, as in the symphonies of the early classical period. Scarlatti, in fact, in his operas written after 1702, laid the foundation of the Viennese classical style in the polish, sensuousness, expres sive range, rhythmic precision, and impeccable phrasing of his melodies, in the motivic development of his arias, in his clear but colourful chromatic harmony, and in the variety of his texture, although his harmonic and textural richness was not imitated by most of his immediate successors.

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It has been said that Scarlatti inaugurated the decadent Neapolitan operatic style; even if we admit the adjective, this statement is untrue, because his only ‘decadent’ operas were those written in his second Neapolitan period, in order to please a taste already formed. That he fostered this taste and, through his outstanding melodic gifts, did more to popularize the ‘aria opera’ than anyone else, is undeniable, and while we may regret the fact that he lowered his standards for a time, we must also recognize their essential seriousness, and also that they are manifest in a considerable number of operas, none of which can be called decadent and some of which arc outstanding; indeed, his last operas contain a wealth of fine music, hardly any of which has been published, e.g. the arias ‘Come presto nel porto’ {Griselda, I, 6) and ‘Ho in seno due fiamelle’ (ibid.. Ill, 7), and the ‘mixed’ scene in Attilio Regolo already mentioned, where the heroine, suffering nightmare visions of Hades, goes mad (see p. 450). As has been well said, Scarlatti, like J. S. Bach, was “a great man . . . forgotten by his own generation” (E. J. Dent). But was Neapolitan opera decadent? The answer depends on two things. First, that we judge it not on its libretti, either as drama or as literature, but on its arias, which, as we have seen, were so arranged as to provide an admirable series of musical contrasts. (Such a judgement, incidentally, was, and is, applied to many late eighteenth and nineteenth-century operas, some of which are still popular, e.g. Mozart’s Magic Flute and Bellini’s Norma.) Secondly, that we are able, to some extent at any rate, to imagine the effect of these arias in per formance, remembering that both composer and audience expected them to be embellished, and that hence what appears undistinguished in cold print would on the stage, even if we discount the atmosphere of the theatre with its lights, costumes, and elaborate scenery, be transformed, in the hands of a skilled singer, into something fascinating and even moving. It is this that is the main difficulty in assessing Neapolitan opera, because it is very doubtful whether sheer vocal virtuosity will ever again rank as high or achieve such brilliance as it did in the late baroque, it is even more doubtful whether the practice of extemporized embellishment will ever again become as important, and it is certain that the peculiar beauty and remarkable power of castrati tone will never again be heard.

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If we judge a Neapolitan opera as it was meant to be judged by those who created, sang, and listened to it, and if we can imagine it as it was or might have been performed by the star singers of the day, then even if the libretto is a hotch-potch and the music commonplace, the work, far from being decadent, was vital in that it was partially and_ spontaneously created through the art of the singers. But if a singer fell below the best that was possible in beauty of tone or technique, and, relying on the tasteless ornamentation of some hack singingmaster, failed to impart an air of naturalness and spontaneity to the embellishments, then his or her arias failed dismally, unless (and this happened but rarely, considering the enormous amount that was written) the music was so outstanding that it compensated for the singer’s deficiency. This was the price Neapolitan opera had to pay for relying so heavily on the performer, and it explains the seemingly incredible behaviour of Italian opera audiences, who talked, played cards, and generally treated a visit to the opera as a social occasion. Such behaviour usually occurred after the first two or three per formances, when those who attended had either been before and so knew which were the best arias and singers, or else had acquired this knowledge from those who had already seen the opera, but even on a first night the audience would soon realize whether an aria or singer was good or not, and, if the latter, would prefer to talk and eat, for Italian opera audiences were, and are, much less tolerant of incompetent singers than the audiences of other countries. The recitatives were seldom listened to because the story was usually well-known or followed conventional lines. To sum up, Neapolitan opera at its best was a brilliantly executed, emotionally varied, and vital work of art; at its worst it was musically and dramatically sterile, a vehicle for vulgar display. Before we condemn what we see in the score we should remember the quotation at the head of this chapter, for Burney was an ardent and serious student of opera, and, moreover, was writing when the supremacy of the castrati was on the wane. By the early years of the eighteenth century Neapolitan opera dominated, to a greater or lesser extent, the stages of all the principal Italian cities and those of every European country in which opera was important, except France. In Russia, for example, the Empress Anne [1693-1740] founded, in 1734, a

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permanent opera at the Imperial Court at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), importing an Italian company under the Neapoli tan Francesco Araja [b. 1709]. Araja resigned in 1759 and was succeeded by a long line of Italian composers, including such distinguished men as Galuppi (see p. 484), Traetta, Paisiello, and Cimarosa (see Part III, p. 709). While Russia had no native opera until the late eighteenth century, Spain had a flourishing tradition of comic opera, the ‘zarzuela’ (see p. 485), and this, plus the powerful religious atmosphere that persisted in circles of authority for most of the seventeenth century, explains why, in spite of the close ties with Italy, the first Italian opera house was not opened until 1738 (Madrid), the inaugural work being Basse’s II Demetrio (see p. 460), although a few Italian operas had been produced earlier in both Madrid and Barcelona. Every composer of Italian opera, no matter what his nationality, derived his style from that of Scarlatti, and un fortunately most of them took as their models the works of the second Neapolitan period, which, as we have seen, were the worst and least characteristic. Of Scarlatti’s contemporaries and successors at Naples the most noteworthy were Leonardo Vinci [c. 1690—1730], Francesco Mancini [1672—1737], Francesco Feo [1691 — 1761], Leonardo Leo [1694—1744], Francesco Durante [1684—1755], Porpora, Niccolò Jomelli [1714— 1774] (see Part III, p. 712), and the Spaniard Davide Perez [1711 — 1778]. Vinci expanded the Scarlattian aria, often by more strongly contrasting motives within each section, and favoured rhythmically arresting melodies and highly dramatic accompanied recitatives. Feo, Leo and Durante (the last the most outstanding teacher of opera composers of the century) were also notable church composers, and hence employed poly phony more than Vinci. Porpora was the virtuoso singer’s composer par excellence (as one would expect), and his arias, while often excessively florid, are always extremely well written for the voice. The most important centre of opera after Naples was Venice, and the leading composers were Carlo Francesco Pollarolo [c. 1653—1723], Francesco Gasparini [1668—1727], Antonio Caldara [c. 1670—1736], Tommaso Albinoni [1671 — 1751], Antonio Vivaldi [1678— 1741], Antonio Lotti [c. 1667— 1740], Giovanni Porta [c. 1690-1755], and Giovanna Battista Pescetti

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[c. 1704-1766]. Apart from the more important rôle of the orchestra and the greater stress on the spectacular, Venetian opera was similar to Neapolitan, and the same is roughly true of opera elsewhere in Italy, except that in Rome, always the most conservative of Italian cities from early Christian times, sheer virtuosity was less favoured. Elsewhere in Italy the lead ing men were Francesco Pistocchi [1659-1726], a well-known castrato and the founder of a famous singing school in Bologna, G. Bononcini and his brother, Antonio Maria [1677- 1726], Attilio Ariosti [i666- ñ J—a simple but extraordinarily tell ing accompaniment. This is an example of mood-painting, which, together with the much rarer word-painting, occurs more frequently and is more imaginatively expressed in Handel’s operas than in those by any other late baroque composer, except possibly Rameau. In ‘Cade il mondo’ (‘Let the world fall’) {A, II, 4), the opening bass phrase in | quavers plunges through two octaves {d'f-e-d-A-D), and the whole aria demands the remarkable range of D-f. In ‘Vaghe fonti, che mormorando’ (A, II, 7) the ‘murmuring fountain’ is delightfully portrayed by two recorders that double muted violins in slow quaver chords in I time with a little rippling turn on the third beat, and accompanied by muted violas, pizzicato ’cellos and basses, and no harpsichord. Garden and country scenes never failed to call forth some picturesque music from late baroque composers, and Handel was no exception, the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ from Messiah being the famous but by no means the best example. Instances abound, but we must only give one further reference, the arietta ‘Augelletti che cantate ’ (Ä, I, 6), where ‘the birds that sing’ are delightfully imitated in a long introductory ritornello, most of it played by a sopranino and two treble recorders accom panied solely by violas, the aria ending with an entrancing five-bar unaccompanied cadenza for the sopranino. The fact that Handel uses the violas (the Cinderellas of the string family) as a support is typical of his imaginative use of instruments and keen ear, for viola tone gives just the right amount of ‘weight’ to the light-toned recorders and sopranino. Handel’s superior dramatic sense compared to other com posers of Italian opera is demonstrated in his accompanied recitatives (e.g. A, II, 5, where tremolo strings and shoals of diminished sevenths underline Ottone’s shock at being called a traitor), in mixed scenes (A, II, 13), and in arias where section B is in marked contrast to A. For example, the aria in the mixed scene referred to begins in 4 Andante, the voice, after a ritornello of broken, restless unison fragments, entering with

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‘Pensieri voi mi tormentate’ (‘Thoughts, you torment me’) set to a falling phrase echoed by a solo oboe, which later concertizes with the voice on two long melismas to the penultimate syllable of ‘tormentate’. (Notice the ‘modem’ use of the oboe, i.e. as an emotional instrument.) Section B, on the other hand, is in \ Allegro, and the forcefully syllabic voc^ line, accompanied by strings and continuo (but not, be it noted, oboe), impassionately declaims ‘Ciel, soccorre a miei disegni’ (‘Heaven, aid my schemes’). To be sure, most composers would have made some distinction between the two sections, for musical if not dramatic reasons, but none of them at the age of twenty-four created what is in effect a dual-affection aria of such power. Dual-affection arias can, indeed, be found in many of Handel’s operas, and also in some ensembles (e.g. R, II, 6, and Ä, III, 7) ; a more striking instance occurs in Orlando Furioso (1733) (III, 8), where Angelica sings ‘questo pianto e sangue ancor’ to a chain of ‘sobbing’ suspensions, while Orlando sings ‘ma non placa il mio giusto rigor’ in quick but firm dactyUic rhythm. If, to the above brief analysis of Agrippina and Rinaldo, we add two-, three-, and four-part recitatives, trios, quartets, and solo choruses, and purely instrumental pieces, we get some idea of the amazing variety contained in a single opera, a variety typical of all Handel’s later operas. Few of these exceed Agrippina or Rinaldo in this respect, but some of them display individual items that, musically or dramatically, are an advance on or cannot be found in the two earlier operas. A few examples must suffice: in Orlando (III, 8) the voice is accompanied by two ‘violette marine’ (that is, two viole d’amore) played originally by the Castrucci brothers, of whom Pietro was the leader of Handel’s opera orchestra; in addition to strings and continuo, we find two horns and two oboes {Radamisto, III, 6), two trumpets, two horns, and two oboes (ibid., final solo chorus), two recorders and two oboes (but alternatively, as the same performers played these two instru ments, but rarely the flute) {Alcina (i735)> 5)> finally, the most sumptuously colourful music in Handel’s entire out put, the seventeen-bar Sinfonia for double orchestra that accompanies the vision of Parnassus, where Virtue, attended by the nine Muses, sits enthroned {Giulio Cesare, II, 2); the first orchestra, which plays the first nine bars, consists of

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strings, ’cellos, oboes (doubling violins I), bassoons (doubling ’cellos), theorbo, viola da gamba (playing two- to four-part chords), and harp (bass doubling ’cellos, treble mostly doubling violins I) ; in the last eight bars the harp indulges in semiquaver broken-chord figures, and the second orchestra, consisting of strings, oboes (doubling violins I and II), and basses, joins in. There is no harpsichord part. The importance of the orchestral accompaniment in Handel’s operas can be readily appreciated from a casual perusal of the scores. Sometimes the term ‘orchestral accom paniment’ is positively misleading, because the quality and character of the instrumental parts is as essential to the whole as the vocal part, and it is both amusing and instructive to read that some of Handel’s singers objected to the unusual richness and interest of his scoring on the grounds that their thunder was being stolen; nearly 150 years later much the same objections were made agednst Wagner’s music dramas. Never theless, it is not so much his skill as an orchestrator as his development in dramatic expression and characterization that distinguishes many of his later operas from Agrippina and Rinaldo. Again only a few instances must suffice: at the end of the very moving aria ‘Stille amare’ {Tolomeo (1728), III, 4) the dying hero sings ‘la morte a chiamar’ (’death calls’), and in the final repetition of this phrase Handel, in a stroke of sheer genius, omits the last word as Tolomeo falls lifeless to the ground, ending the vocal line unaccompanied on an implied dominant seventh which the orchestra softly resolves, and, incidentally, anticipating by over a century the final bars of Schumann’s Mondnacht (see Part IV, pp. 823,824). Occasionally emotion is intensified by an exceptionally chromatic passage dr by unusual chord progressions (e.g. Rodelinda (1725), HI, 3). In complete contrast to the above are the stile galante arias (Ex. 35, p. 478) and those in the racy buffo style (see p. 483) that Handel learnt from the operas of Pergolesi and others during his 1733 visit {Serse ( 1738) 1,15). In some of the last operas the solo chorus is replaced by the potentially much more dramatic crowd chorus, especially in which in this respect and in its numerous ballets, was probably infiuenced by the enormous success of Rameau’s Hippolyte (1733; see pp. 492-3). Finally, there are the mixed scenes which developed considerably from those in Agnppina and Rinaldo, and two of these ( Tamerlano

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4 bori)

(C)

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(1724), III, 10, and Orlando, II, ii), because of their length and dramatic impact, are veritable ‘grand scenas’; the latter, in fact, is the most powerful scene in Handel’s entire output, its most striking aspect being the vivid portrayal of Orlando, here no symbolical type, but a living being in the last stages of mental collapse. In the vast majority of baroque operas neither librettist nor composer was concerned to present the characters as flesh-and-blood figures, and while there are a few exceptions, e.g. Ottone and Ottavia in Monteverdi’s Poppea, the brother and sister in Scarlatti’s Mitridate, and Purcell’s Dido, Handel surpassed all other baroque composers in the extent of his characterization and in the number of occasions in which one feels that he identified himself with the emotions of a par ticular character. One must not exaggerate this aspect of Handel’s operas, for most of his principal figures are treated conventionally enough, but it is possible that his distinction in this respect was influenced by the individualism of English society, so much more marked than on the Continent, and reflected in the detailed observations of ordinary men and women and their aflairs portrayed in the largely satirical art of William Hogarth [1697-1764], and more especially in the

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novels of Samuel Richardson [1689-1761], the founder of the modem novel. To sum up: Handel, in his operas, drew together a number of different threads, as it were, and wove a musical fabric that is more skilfully constructed, varied, and consistently excellent than the operatic output of any of his contemporaries. Italy gave him the foundations of his style—the supremacy of sensuous melody supported by clear, diatonic, though some times richly spiced harmony, and the homophonie galante and buffo styles, as well as the da capo aria and the secco and accompanied recitatives. French influence is revealed in his dance-arias, in his overtures, and his German origin in the frequency with which contrapuntal and polyphonic textures occur. The frankly popular element, the use of noxi-da capo forms, the greater contrast of vocal timbres through the use of natural male voices (favoured by Handel more than any of his contemporaries except the French), and, above all, the delight in instrumental sonority and colour also stem from his native country. The waning fortunes of Handel’s operatic ventures after 1728 were due to a number of causes, of which The Beggar's Opera and its successors were but one. This work is another example of a pasticcio, for the poet and dramatist John Gay [1685-1732] selected a number of popular pieces, asked Pepusch to add a bass to those that had none and compose an overture, and strung them on to a story about London’s thieves and vagabonds. The result is by no means a ballad opera, because only a few of the tunes are folk-songs, the majority being well-known items by Handel, Lully, Purcell, etc. It was very successful because it was a completely new kind of entertainment in which the Government, particularly the Prime Minister, Walpole, was satirized (always good box-office this) and Italian opera caricatured (but not violently). Moreover, it was performed in English throughout, with spoken dialogue ■instead of recitative, the story was up-to-date and down-toearth, and the tunes were both popular and of a high standard. It was neither intended as nor did it become the death-blow of Italian opera (Gay and Pepusch, in fact, were both personal friends of Handel), and the period immediately after its production witnessed not only a host of similar ballad operas, but also the most intensive activity in the field of Italian opera.

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Most of the ballaci operas were performed at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, where the actor-dramatist John Rich [i 682?-i 76i ] was Manager from 1714 to his death. He is important as the founder of English pantomime (originally, as the word implies, a mime or dumb show), which he developed from the Italian Commedia dell' Arte characters, and presented annually from 1716 to 1760. In 1728 he accepted The Beggar's Opera (refused by his rival, Colley Cibber [1671-1757], then Manager of the Drury Lane Theatre), and its success, in the words of a contemporary wit, “made Gay rich and Rich gay”. In 1730 he opened a subscription list for building the Covent Garden Theatre, which was completed in 1732. The next year, at Lincoln’s Inn, he switched from ballad opera to Italian opera (tlie ‘Opera of the Nobility’), a significant fact that helps to place in its right perspective the sometimes exaggerated effect of the former on the latter. Ballad opera, indeed, was only really popular for seven years, during which nearly fifty were produced (further evidence of the passion for novelty), and not until Arne’s Love in a Village (1762) was there a brief revival. Arne was the only English composer of any distinction during the late baroque and early classical periods, and while he shows the influence of stile galante much more than does Handel, he imbued it with a freshness, simplicity, and charm that one can only describe as ‘English’, and which is best displayed in the numerous songs he wrote for the stage, e.g. ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’ and ‘Where the bee sucks’. In 1733 he successfully re-set Addison’s Rosamond', other operas followed, including ArtoxerxiJ (1762), on a translated Hbretto by Metastasio, in which the music is completely Italianate, but, unlike most native operas of the time, is sung in English throughout (i.e. recitatives, not spoken dialogue). It was a great success, but instead of following it up with another similar one, Arne, like the vast majority of opera composers of his time, must needs emulate the Italians on their own ground; the result, L'Olimpiade (1764), on an original Metastasian Hbretto, was a complete failure. Apart from Gay, the chief ballad-opera composers were Fielding, Cibber, and the playwright Charles Coffey [d. 1745]. Any success they or other writers had depended primarily on their wit and satire, which, as in The Beggar's Opera, was directed mainly at poHtical and social targets, not at Italian

Music for the Stage; II opera. Musically they are inferior to their model, and contain, as do all the later ballad operas, a greater number of specially composed pieces mostly by the popular song-and comedywriter Henry Carey [c. 1687-1743], Pepusch, and an obscure musician named Seedo. These satirical operas, once their novelty had worn off, proved much less satisfying to the musical élite than Italian opera, and during the last two seasons of the ballad opera craze, i.e. 1733-5, there were, as we have seen, actually two Italian opera companies, both of which managed to keep going until I737* Even after this date at least one new Italian opera (not to mention revivals) was produced at the King’s Theatre every year, including works by Hasse, Pescetti (both of whom had several successes), Leo, Galuppi, Pergolesi, Jomelli (for these last three, see below), and Gluck, who composed two operas for the Theatre in 174^ (see Part HI, p. 715.) The collapse of 1737 was due partly to the effect of the ballad operas on public taste, partly to the rivalry between the two companies, which naturally reduced the audience potential of each one (far smaller then than now) and which exhausted the supporters of both, and partly to two deliberately aimed satires, Fielding’s play Pasquín ( 1736) and Carey’s enormously successful The Dragon of Wantley (1737), with music by Lampe that burlesques superbly the Italian style. Like The Beggar's Opera, it contains a brawl between the two principal female characters {à la Cuzzoni-Bordoni), and was inspired by and directly tilts at Handel’s Giustino, produced earlier in the same year, in which a sea-monster figures prominently. The failure of Handel’s company was also due to his lack of sufficient first-rate singers and to the uneven quality of the music, for the operas composed after his second Italian visit (1733), although they contain much fine music, including some delightful stile galante and buffo arias, do not, in general, reveal the same consistent quality of inspiration, nor the vigour, spontaneity, and, because of the mixed styles, the unity of the operas from Agrippina to Admeto (1727). It may be that con sciously or unconsciously he was beginning to lose heart, but went on writing operas because he had been writing them all his life and because opera was the only vehicle he knew at the time through which he could express his exceptional dramatic gifts. These two reasons together account for his

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slowness in exploring the dramatic possibilities of oratorio, even after his ventures into this field had brought him a small fortune. Although the ballad opera phase was both short and artistic ally undistinguished, its scheme of set musical numbers interspersed with spoken dialogue became a characteristic of most later English operas. This is also true of the German Singspiel, which, in the hands of its first important composer, Johann Adam Hiller [1728-1804], became very popular during the later part of the century. (In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Singspiel meant any opera in German, but after c. 1750 it was used in the restricted sense described below.) The Singspiel sprang directly from the English ballad opera, in particular Coffey’s The Devil to Pay (1731), which, as Der Teufel ist los, was frequently performed and imitated from 1743 on, first of all in north Germany, as a reaction against Italian opera, and later in the south. Hiller’s entirely new setting of Coffey’s text (Leipzig, 1766) established Singspiel as a significant art form which, unlike ballad opera, opera comique, and opera buffa, was not hmited to CQmic plots. This is par ticularly evident in the works of Georg Penda [1722-1795] whose two melodramas, Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea (both 1775), profoundly impressed Mozart. (A melodrama contains, in addition to set musical numbers (arias, etc.), spoken dia logue much or all of which is accompanied orchestrally.) The roots of opera buffa go back to the Renaissance intermedii (see pp. 266-7) which, during, the latter part of the seventeenth century, developed into the intermezzi. These were scenes (usually two) of a light and often humorous nature placed ‘in between’ the normal three acts of a serious opera, partly in order to give the audience their money’s worth (people expected far longer entertainments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than they do now), and partly to satisfy that craving for variety already noted. By 1700 the two scenes formed a continuous plot, by 1725 what we call ‘buffo style’ was fully fashioned, and by 1740 opera buffa was a completely independent art form. We must make a distinction here between opera buffa and comic operaj the latter can be traced back to Chi soffre speri (see p. 384), and most opera composers of the early and late

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Baroque wrote at least one, the main difference between it and opera seria being the nature of the story. In opera buffa, however, like ballad opera, the plot is not only humorous and often satirical, but is also concerned with contemporary hfe. Another distinction is the small number of characters, some times only two, as in the comic scenes of Neapolitaq-o/»era seria (see p. 451). More important is the naturalness of the characters and their doings reflected in arias often vivacious, sometimes sentimental, and always expressing the text in a life-like manner (coloratura passages are rare), in recitatives that are little more than musically inflected conversations, in a com pletely homophonic style, often in only two real parts, and in the fact that all the voices are natural (i.e. no castrati). The conversational character of the recitatives is also found in the ensembles at the end of each act, these being a direct offshoot from the comic episodes of many Neapolitan operas (see p. 452), and, undoubtedly stimulated by the range of timbre of natural voices, they eventually developed into the most dramatically distinctive feature of opera buffa. Opera buffa was essentially a Neapolitan creation—many of the early libretti, in fact, are in Neapolitan dialect—and, like ballad opera, it represented a partial reaction against the largely stereotyped characters and situations, and the often excessive coloratura of opera seria. But, like ballad opera also, it did not oust opera seria, for although it was musically more unified and s^lfully written than ballad opera, it satisfied neither the love of virtuosity nor the delight in contrasting emotions, occasionally profound, that were possible in opera seria; indeed, all composers of opera buffa from Pergolesi to Mozart also wrote opera seria, and most of them were successful in both fields. The earliest surviving example of the fully-fledged buffo style is Vinci’s three-act comic opera in Neapolitan dialect, Li Z^te’n Galera (1722), but the first genuine, original, and successful opera buffa was by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi [1710-1736], a pupil of Durante and Feo. In 1733 he composed two intermezzi entitled La Serva Padrona, which he placed between the acts of his opera seria, II Prigionier Superba, and while the former, like his next intermezzi. La Contadina astuta (1734— sometimes known as Livietta e Tracollo) was much more favour ably received than the main work, it did not become famous

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until after 1738; indeed after 1752, mainly owing to the violent controversy caused by its production in Paris (see p. 495), it became an international smash-hit. In most of the later per formances the work was given as a whole, i.e. not as two separated intermezzi, and while a few earlier intermezzi had been similarly presented and hence, to this extent, qualify for the title opera buffa, none possesses the vivid characterization, the racy vivacity allied to sincere but never profound sentiment, and the delicate vein of tender pathos that distinguish both La Serva Padrona and La Contadina astuta. The success of Pergolesi’s opera buffa stimulated other com posers to follow suit, and it was not long before buffo style and even buffa characters invaded opera seria, as in Handel’s Serse. Conversely, opera buffa itself began to change, and in the late 1740s a much greater degree of sentiment was introduced, the original two acts were expanded to three, and the cast became larger, often consisting of two clearly defined groups, the comedians (usually three men and two women) and a pair of young lovers; in other words opera buffa became more conven tional, but never to the same extent as opera seria. The leading composers of comic opera, intermezzi, and opera buffa were, apart from Pergolesi, the Neapolitans Leo, Nicola Logroscino [1698-after 1765], Niccolo Jomelli [17141774], Rinaldo di Capua [c. 1705 —c. 1780], and Tommaso Traetta [1727— 1779], and the Venetian Baldassare Galuppi [1706—1785]. Leo, who taught Jomelli and Piccini (see pp. 711 —12), achieved fame with Amor vuol Sofferenza (1739); Logroscino was so successful that he was called 'il dio dell’ opera buffa’;^ovcie\\i, one of the first to break away from the rigidity of the da capo aria, had an exceptional flair for popular melody; Rinaldo stressed the emotional possibilities of the orchestra, particularly in accompanied recitatives; Traetta was very highly regarded in his time, notably by Burney, and, in his opera seria, anticipated Gluck in the importance he attached to the drama; Galuppi, the greatest of them all, wrote II filosofo di compagna (1754), the most popular opera buffa after La Serva Padrona. Galuppi is important also because he was the first to extend the rather limited finales that then existed, construct ing them of five or six linked movements, during which the plot developed. Thus the finale of Act I of// mondo alia roversa (1750) is constructed as follows: (i) C major, Allegro non molto, 56

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bars ending in G major; (2) G minor, Allegro, 34 bars ending on the dominant of A minor; (3) G major, }, Tempo primo, 50 bars partially based on (i) ending in G major; (4) C major, I, Larghetto, 19 bars ending on the dominant of C; (5) G major, *, Tempo primo, 19 bars. There is no musical climax in this finale, and the three characters that sing at various times are on the stage all through; there is thus no dramatic climax either, as there is, for example, in the finales of Mozart’s Figaro. Galuppi wrote nearly 100 operas, the majority being opera seria\ of his comic ones most are on libretti by Garlo Goldoni [1707-1793], the most popular Italian playvmght of the eighteenth centvuy, whose comedies paralleled opera buffa in their delightfully vivid portrayal of lower- and middleclass life, and their satire of the aristocracy. Much the same is true of the Spanish ‘tonadilla’ which flourished during the last half of the eighteenth century. The tonadilla was preceded by the ‘zarzuela’, which was very popular during the latter half of the previous century, and which consisted of two acts of spoken dialogue interspersed with solos, ensembles, and choruses (a few were, in fact, sung through out), and which rehed to a considerable extent on scenic effects; it was thus somewhat similar to the Lullian comedie-ballet and the English masque. A tremendous number of zarzuelas were written by the host of fine dramatists whose achievements represent the peak of what is usually called ‘the Golden Age of Spanish Literature’, and of whom the most outstanding was Pedro Galderdn de la Barca [1600-1681], the successor to Lope de Vega (see p. 358). Nevertheless, the popularity and excellence of this native art crumbled during the early eighteenth century before the invasion of Italian opera, although a flicker of the national culture remained in tire ‘entremds’ (intermezzo) performed between the acts of a play. The entrem^s often concluded with a song or tonadilla, and c. 1750 this expanded into a number of separate items linked by a simple plot, eventually, in the hands of Luis Mison [d. 1766], Pablo Esteve y Grimau, and Bias Laserna [1751-1816], becoming sufficiently highly organized and popular to achieve an independent existence. We turn finally to France, the one country that did not capitulate to Italian opera, though she could hardly escape

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being influenced to some extent, despite the widespread admira tion for Lully’s works. Lully’s operatic aims, indeed, were partially continued by his pupil, Pascal Colasse [1649-1709], whose Thitis et Belie (1689) remained in the repertory for sixty-five years, but his successors, to a greater or lesser degree, tended towards a conception of opera that, while it m£iintained the importance of dancing and scenic display, placed charm and elegance of melody and harmony before literary distinction and dramatic integrity. This can be seen in the operas of Andre Cardinal Destouches [1672— 1749], and more particularly in those of Andre Campra [1660-1744]. Both composers produced a smash-hit in 1697, the former with the opera Issi, which remained popular for nearly eighty years, and the latter with a new kind of entertainment, the ‘operaballet’ UEurope galante. In Issi the recitatives are Lullian, but the airs are mostly written in style galant—that is, a style similar to the Italian stile galante (see p. 460) but more pro fusely ornamented with grace notes, turns, etc. These had been rigorously controlled by Lully, as they would have interfered with the clear enunciation of the text and marred the clarity of his vocal line, but they became an integral part of ytyle galant, reflecting the taste of contemporary society which abhorred simplicity and tedium. This delight in ornamenta tion is also apparent in the painting, architecture, and sculpture of the period and is known as ‘rococo art’ (from the French rocaille, which implied artificially and elaborately decorated rockwork). Thus while both style galant and stile galante can be defined as a homophonic texture with melody governed by harmony, rococo refers to melody that is highly embellished and, in order to avoid being tedious, short-phrased, and it is the rococo element that chiefly distinguishes the French from the Italian gallant style. The mood of Isse is predominantly pastoral and frivolous, in contrast to the classically statuesque nobility of Lully’s trag^dies-lyriques. This contrast is even more marked in L'Europe galante, the airs being more galant and Italianate in their lyricism (Campra, incidentally, was of Itahan descent), with coloratura passages commoner and modulations, chro maticism, and discord more freely used; recitatives are less declamatory and more perfunctory, and the orchestra is sometimes most strikingly employed to heighten the drama by

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means of tremolos, rapid scale passages, etc., as in the Italian recitativo accompagnato, all these features serving to adorn a series of loosely connected scenes of great splendour, but of little dramatic or literary merit. Isse is a finer work than UEurope galant, but the influence of the latter was far greater and led to a host of similar operaballets in which the pastoral gaiety and charm of the music, together with an abundance of dances and frequent changes of scene, with the orchestra often providing a highly effective background, satisfied that craving for variety already men tioned more than once in this chapter, a craving that explains the enormous vogue of the spectacles coupds, where favourite airs, scenes, and even acts from operas of one or more com posers were torn from their contexts and performed as concert pieces. This craving was more intense in France than else where because in the unparalleled sophistication, elegance, superficiality, and sinfulness of the French aristocracy during the Regency [1715-1723], and for most of Louis XV’s reign [1723-1774], boredom was the most intolerable of all states, and amusement the only goal worth pursuing. Morally, we can but condemn such a society, but artistically we must recognize its exquisite refinement and, considering the narrow emotional limits that were de rigeur, its variety. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the entire baroque period is its duality—the way in which strongly contrasted and even opposing trends existed side by side. Thus the period covering the reigns of Louis XIV and XV is commonly called both the ‘Age of Absolutism’, when the life of every individual was more completely subject to the King than in any other country, and also ‘the Enlightenment’, when the freedom of thought that originated in the Renaissance received a new impetus through the scientific discoveries of the sixteenth and more particularly the seventeenth century. These discoveries encouraged men to regard as true only what could be tested by direct observation or proved by logical deduction, and to accept the premise of the first great modem philosopher, Descartes, that doubt is the starting-point of philosophy. This attitude stmck right at the roots of absolute authority, and it was almost inevitable therefore that, fanned by the Lettres philosophiques (1634) of Voltaire [1684-1778], which caused an uproar by implicitly criticizing French society through extolling

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the personal and political freedom that he experienced in England, the bitterest struggles between absolutism and enlightenment should have taken place in France. The achievements in science, mathematics, and philosophy in the eighteenth century elevated the power of reason to a position never held before or since, and was strikingly exempli fied in France by the group known as the Encyclopaedists. This was formed in 1749 when Denis Diderot [1713-1784], the most original French thinker of the eighteenth century, became Editor of what has been called “the great literary monument of the age of enlightenment”—the Encyclopidie, published between 1751 and 1772 in twenty-eight volumes. Diderot gathered about him some of the most distinguished men in France, including the German writer Melchior Grimm [1723-1807], who arrived in Paris in 1749, the mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert [1717-1778], who became co-Editor, and the Swiss Jean Jacques Rousseau [1712-1778], of whom more anon. These men aimed at creating a society entirely governed by reason, and which permitted freedom of thought and speech (hence their rejection of the Church’s authority), and so reflected the spirit of their times in which men attempted to classify everything, and in which a subject’s status was raised immeasurably if it could be treated in a scientific and philosophic manner. Of all the arts, music was most affected by this rationalist approach, because its raw material (sound) is most readily expressed in mathe matical terms (ratios and logarithms), and its affect on man had been recognized ever since Plato. The first type of classifica tion we can call scientific and the second philosophic; the latter has already been partly covered in our discussion of the doctrine of the affections (see pp. 439-41); it reached its peak theoretically in Der critische Musicus (1737-40) by Johann Adolf Scheibe [1708-1776], Der General-Bass (1738) by Johann David Heinichen [1683-1729], and Der vollkommene Kapellmeister by Johann Mattheson [1681-1764] but practically in the operas of the great French composer of the late baroque, Jean-Philippe Rameau [1683-1764]. It is typical of both the man and his period that Rameau first achieved notoriety through his theoretical work, the Traite de Vharmonie (1722), which was received with scorn by professional musicians, and which attempts, wath some success,

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to classify music both scientifically and philosophically. As regards the first, Rameau believed that music “depends on reason, nature, and geometry”, and that it is “a physicomathematical science”; he also believed that “melody is born of harmony”—in other words, that every melody implies its own harmonization, which is certainly true of late baroque, especially galant, melody. In his Traiti and later works (see below) Rameau ‘proved’ that the major triad was the basis of all harmony because it is the only triad in the harmonic series (see pp. 247-8), that 3 and * chords are inversions of a triad, and that the tonic, dominant, and subdominant are the three fundamental chords in any key, these two last propositions being his most important discoveries. The three fundamental chords had, of course, been recognized in practice for some time, but Rameau was the first to classify them and point out their tonal significance. Unfortunately, his desire for a neatly classified system led him into a number of errors, including the assertion that all chords are derived from the three fundamental ones (discords being obtained by adding thirds), and that each chord has what he called a basse fondamentale, for the discovery of which he gives quite arbitrary rules; this bass is supposed to link all chords together, but in fact it often makes nonsense of tonality. Some of the assertions in the Traiti were corrected or modified in later publications, notably the Nouveau ^stime de musique theorique (1726), Generation harmonique (1737), Demon stration du principe de Vharmonie (1750), and ‘new thoughts’ on the last in 1752. The errors in the Traiti were not, however, the cause of its hostile reception, as no musician was sufficiently well versed in the science of music to point them out ; the probable reasons were the pedantic and turgid style and the fact that the author was virtually unknown as a composer (apart from a few clave9in (harpsichord) pieces which every one was turning out, anyway), and in the baroque, especially the late baroque, musical theory and practice were more in separable than in any previous period. At any rate, the work was not accepted until after Rameau had fully established himself as a creative artist in the late 1730s. In the philosophic treatment of his art, Rameau was as convinced about the power of music as was Plato. “It is certain”, he says in his Traiti, “that harmony can arouse in us different

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passions, depending on the particular harmonies that are employed.” He then lists in detail the various emotional effects of concords, discords, keys, modulations, chromaticism, and cadences; melody he does not classify, for although he states that it is just as expressive as harmony, it depends more on good taste than anything else; nevertheless, his use of intervals and figures follows conventional practices, some of which go back to the Renaissance. The importance that Rameau attached to nature was more than scientific-acoustic, for one of the most characteristic features of the Regency-Louis XV period was the way in which all art sought to imitate or portray Nature. But it was Nature idealized, not “red in tooth and claw”. Nature limited to superbly ornamental gardens and sunny landscapes with welltrimmed hedges and pleasant, sheep-filled meadows in which elegantly-dressed courtiers wandered, conversed, and flirted in the shade, attended by charming shepherdesses and servile shepherds. The ‘back to Nature’ movement affected France more than any other country because it was more akin to French taste, which had never subscribed so completely to the emotional full-bloodedness of the early baroque as had other countries, and which, always avid for variety, revelled in a pastoral paradise where courtly manners and morals still obtained, but where the environment provided both the illusion of a new' life and fresh scope for the delicately sensual and superficially refined attitude to living. Although Rameau’s treatises are important and alone entitle him to a distinguished place in the history of music, it seems strange to us, who regard him primarily as a creative artist, that all his life he was more sensitive to criticism of his theories than of his compositions, though he fully realized that he could only demonstrate the validity of the former through the latter, which meant in effect composing successfully for the theatre. Three opera comiques appeared in 1723 and 1726, none of them of much merit, but in 1733, at the advanced age of fifty, he wrote his first important dramatic piece, the tragedie, Hippolyte et Aricie. At first audiences were stunned, because they never expected a learned theorist to compose such emotional stuff, nor were they prepared for some of the startling dis sonances, modulations, and orchestral effects. It was not long, however, before most of the musical ^lite, headed by Campra,

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became enthusiastic, while the more reactionary musicians, plus a strong bourgeois element, remained antagonistic, faithful to the glories of the past—Lully’s operas. The two rival parties, the Ramistes and the Lullistes, waged a bitter pamphlet war which was aggravated by having to share the only operahouse in Paris, but Rameau himself was much less partisan than his followers, and, as he plainly stated in the Preface to his ballet heroique Les Indies galantes (1735), had the greatest respect for his predecessor. The merits of Les Indes galantes, the ballet Les Fites d'Hebi (1739), and, more particularly, the tragedies Castor et Pollux (1737, revised 1754) and Dardanus (1739) did not convert the Lullistes, but as time went on their numbers waned as Rameau’s popularity increased, especially after his appointment at Court in 1745, until by 1750 there was virtually no opposition; he was at the height of his fame. At sixteen Rameau’s father sent him to Italy for three years to study music, and although he was apparently unim pressed by what he saw and heard, Italian influence is clearly apparent in all his stage works; indeed, this was one of the chief criticisms of the Lullistes. Nevertheless, his conception of dramatic entertainment is much more in the Lullian than in the Italian tradition, for his airs, while more Italianate than Lully’s, i.e. more sensuous, graceful, and sequential in structure, particularly the ariette type (e.g. ‘Venus, que ta gloire reponde’. Castor (1754), Prologue), are less purely melodic and important than in Italian opera. His recitatives are thoroughly Lullian in their overall importance, rhythmic freedom, careful under lay, and arioso-like style, although on occasion they contain bolder leaps (sevenths and ninths), richer harmony, and more vivid accompaniments. Lullian, too, are the spectacular but usually irrelevant scenes and elaborate ballets, both of which occur in greater profusion, and in the position to which he raised the orchestra Rameau was but accentuating one of Lully’s outstanding traits. The big flaw in Rameau’s stage works is the lack of literary distinction and dramatic unity insisted on by Lully. Con temporary Italian opera is superior in this respect, for many libretti, especially those by Zeno and Metastasio, have some literary merit, are dramatically consistent, and avoid super fluous spectacle. Even if the story that he boasted he could set

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La Gazette de Holland to music is untrue, it indicates his attitude, for he clearly did not bother about the quality of the language, nor did he care how many absurdities the plot contained, nor how many irrelevant scenes and dances were incorporated. In this he was truly the child of his time and nation, faithfully reflecting the excessive appetite for variety of the French aristocracy, but he was ahead of his time in his use of the orchestra, for, apart from the rarity of solo continuo accom paniments (true also of contemporary Italian opera), the orchestra is considerably more ‘affective’ than the voice, and even on occasion paints an introductory vignette of a character, e.g. the ritornello before Iphise’s first appearance {Les Fites d'Hebi, II, i). Compared with Italian opera, the great similarity between recitative and air is underlined by the frequency with which the orchestra accompanied the former and in the more varied orchestration of both, in which woodwind and brass instruments are added to strings and continuo more often. In most of the airs the nature of the accompaniment is orthodox, i.e. it is homophonic, contrapuntal, or polyphonic (‘Brillez, astres nouveaux’. Castor (1754), V, 7; ‘H^tez-vous’, Dardatms, II, 3; ‘Gruelle mire des amours’, Hippolyte, III, i, respectively), but in what Rameau called ‘recitatif accompagne pathetique’ the orchestra becomes sensational, portraying a violent emotion, such as suicidal grief (‘Grands Dieux’, Hippolyte, V, i), the appearance of a monster {Dardanus, IV, 3), an earthquake {Les Indes galantes, II, 5), thunder {Hippolyte, I, 4), etc., by means of all the devices used in the Italian recitativo accompagnato but in a more vivid manner. Moreover, such recitatives occur far more often than their equivalents in Scarlatti, Hasse, or even Handel, and were, in fact, enormously popular, particularly those depicting storms—a direct result of the aim to imitate Nature. The importance that Rameau attached to the orchestra was not only a reflection of the ‘back to Nature’ movement, nor merely the continuation of a tradition begun by Lully and continued by Campra; it was also an expression of his belief that harmony is the basis of music, for orchestral harmony can obviously be fuller, richer, and more affective than continuo harmony. This same belief also explains his fondness for ensembles and choruses, and here, as in the vocal line of his recitatives, which are further removed from speech and hence

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are less ‘natural’ than secco recitative, the scientific approach overruled the philosophic, for in nature people do not normally speak at the same time, except when they are part of an enthusiastic or angry crowd. Ensembles, in fact, occur far more frequently in Rameau’s stage works than in Italian opera, and choruses, virtually non-existent in the latter, are even more common, and contain some of his best music, e.g. the extra ordinarily dramatic ‘Trio des Parques’ {Hippolyte, II, 5; see Plate XXV), with its violent orchestral accompaniment, the almost as fine demons’ chorus, ‘Que I’Averne’ (ibid., II, 3), the delicate gaiety of ‘Volez, Zephirs’ {Les Indes galantes, I, 6), the pastoral languor of the musette ‘Suivez les lois’ {Les Fites d'Hebe, III, 7), and the unusually long, imitative, almost Handelian ‘Que ce rivage retentisse’ {Hippolyte, III, 8). The choruses and, more especially, the spectacular scenes and ballets provided the contrast which would otherwise have been lacking owing to the similarity between recitative and air. Indeed, it is generally true that the choruses cover a wider dramatic range more effectively, and the incidental music is on a consistently higher level than the solo vocal numbers. In the choruses, which are mostly contrapuntal with occasional snatches of imitation and even canon, melody is less exposed than in an air or recitative, less ornamental because of the number of voices singing each part, and the short phrases typical of Rameau are made less objectionable by the ejacu latory nature of the text or by the overlapping of one voice with another. In the purely orchestral pieces, the dance and incidental music, Rameau, unfettered by the lack of accent and prevalence of feminine endings of the French language, produced a wealth of attractive, rhythmically clear-cut melodies in which rococo phrasing is more natural (for all dance music must be sectionalized) and ornamentation more effective (because fingers are nimbler than vocal chords) than in recitative or air. This mass of instrumental music, from which several excellent ballet suites could be culled, includes marches {Hippolyte, V, 8), rigaudons (ibid.. Ill, 8), minuets {Dardanus, Prologue, 2), tambourins {Les Fites d’Hebi, III, 7—the well-known one from the 1724 book ofclave9in pieces), gavottes (ibid., I, 8), musettes (ibid.. Ill, 7—also adapted from the 1724 book), passepieds (ibid.. Ill, 7), loures (ibid.. Ill, 7—delightfully scored for

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piccolo and strings), chaconnes {Les Indes galantes, IV, 6), etc. Most of these dances were strongly pastoral in character and mood, particularly the tambourin (in duple time) and the musette (in triple time), both of which have a bagpipe-cumdrum flavour by being wholly or largely constructed on a tonic and /or dominant pedal. In Rameau’s later works the pastoral and spectacular elements become even more important, and the tone, with a few exceptions, more frivolous. Thus of the eight stage pieces composed between 1733 and 1740 five are ‘tragedies’ or ‘operas’, but of the twenty-six composed from 1744 to his death only three are so designated, the majority being ballets. Admittedly in Louis de Cahusac, who contributed to at least seven of the later pieces, Rameau found a librettist who to some extent anticipated Gluck’s collaborator, Calzabigi (see Part III, pp. 718, 719), by making the ballets and spectacles more an integral part of the story, but in general dramatic and literary considerations mattered even less than formerly. The best of the later works are the tragedie Zofoastre (1749), the tragedie-lyrique Abaris, ou les Boreades (1763)—both with libretto by Cahusac—the ballet bouffbn Platee (1745), and the acte de ballet Pygmalion (1748). The overture to Z°roastre is interesting because, apart from typifying the breakaway from the Lullian model, its three movements portray (according to the composer’s own descriptive notes) a general picture of the whole opera, and it underlines a feature of Rameau’s over tures that was exceptional for the time, but was fully in keeping with his views on the expressive powers of music—namely, an association either of mood- or word-painting or of actual music with part or the whole of the rest of the work. For example, the overture to (1748) paints the chaos of the opening scene, that of Pygmalion imitates the chipping of the sculptor’s chisel, the first section of the overture to Hippolyte is thematically linked with the opening chorus of nymphs, and so is the same section in Castor with the ‘Entree des Astres’ (V, 7). But re markable as this feature is, it is not Rameau’s overtures to the later works that show him most consistently at his best, though that to Pygmalion is delightful; nor is it his airs, though there are a number of fine ones; it is, as in his earlier stage pieces, the choruses and dances that contain the highest proportion of first-rate music, e.g. the battle chorus in (V, 4), the

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choruses ‘Douce paix’ (ibid., V, 4) and ‘Hymen I’Amour t’appelle’ {Piate'e, II, 5), the two gavottes in Abaris (IV, 4), the two minuets in Platee (III), the musette in G (.^ai'J, IV), the ‘gavotte en rondeau’ in JIais (1749; IV, 6), and the sarabande in Pygmalion (Sc. 4). Platie was the first and almost the only avowedly comic stage work by Rameau. The plot is appalling, but the music not only contains many excellent numbers, but is also more Italianate in the sense that much of it is melodically and rhythmically simpler than anything written previously. It was performed once as part of the wedding festivities of the Dauphin Louis and Maria-Theresa of Spain, when it aroused no comment, and again in 1749 at the Opera, when it was favourably received. In 1754 it was revived during the famous battle against Itahan opera buffa known as the ‘Querrelle (or ‘Guerre’) des Bouffons’. This had been sparked off in 1752 by performances of a visiting Italian troupe of Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, and Paris was divided immediately into two camps. The Lullistes, forgetting their earlier strictures on Rameau’s Italianisms, joined forces with the Ramistes and, backed by Louis XV, engaged in a most acrimonious war of words with the pro-Italian group headed by the Encyclo paedists and encouraged by the Queen. La Serva Padrona was followed by a number of buffo operas by Leo and others which were opposed by revivals of Platee, Pygmalion, Les Indes Galantes, Les Fites d’Hebe', and Castor during the years 1752-4, the performance of Castor in the latter year deciding the issue (but only temporarily) in favour of French opera. Why did the Parisians, who had consistently withstood the invasion of Italian opera and who were completely indifferent to an earlier performance of La Serva Padrona in 1746, suddenly become so violently partisan in 1752? There are three reasons. Firstly, the successful public performances of Platee, which took place only three years before, prepared the way for opera buffa via the ballet’s comic character and Italianate style. Indeed, Grimm, who was self-confessedly pro-Italian and prejudiced against French opera, called it “a sublime work”, and Pygmalion “a ravishing ballet”, though he later became one of Rameau’s most violent detractors. Rousseau, also proItalian and more consistently antagonistic than Grimm, described it as “divine”, “Rameau’s masterpiece”, and “the

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most excellent piece of music that has been heard as yet upon our stage”, while in 1753 d’Alembert wondered “whether La Serva Padrona would have pleased so greatly if Platee had not accustomed us to that kind of music?” Secondly, many French men, because of their craving for variety, seized on La Serva Padrona which, with its limpid texture, simple harmony, con versational recitative, and catchy tunes, its few characters and straightforward plot, could hardly have contrasted more strongly with Rameau’s rich harmonies, complex scoring, and the spectacular irrelevance and unreality of most of his libretti. Thirdly, La Serva Padrona was more ‘natural’ because its arias were less artificial (in the original sense of that much-abused word), its recitatives nearer to speech, and, above all, its situations more lifelike. The last reason brings us back once more to the ‘imitation of Nature’, the influence of which, in what we may call its philosophical aspect, became considerable c. 1750, partly as a reaction to scientific Rationalism, partly as a result of the Rationalists’ rejection of Christianity but acceptance of God as revealed in Nature. This aspect was ardently advocated by Rousseau, the most versatile and inconsistent of the Encyclo paedists. In 1762 he published his Contrat social, the main theme of which is that the individual must be completely subservient to the community, and which thus repudiates freedom of thought and speech, but in his Discours (1755), La Nouvelle Heloise (written 1756-9, published 1761), Emile (1762), and his last works he stresses the individuality of man, whom he regards as essentially good, but corrupted by civiliza tion, and who can only be ‘saved’ by communion with Nature. Rousseau expressed his ‘back to Nature’ philosophy not only in books, but also in music. He had studied the art in Switzerland, and later invented a new system of notation, but his few compositions, which include an opera, Les Muses galantes (1747), reveal a poor harmonic sense, for which Rameau duly castigated him. In 1752 he produced, in support of opera buffa, his comic opera Devin du Village, and followed it up with the now famous Lettre sur la Musique Frangaise (1753), the most important musical manifesto of the period. The Lettre, apart from its vituperous attacks on Rameau, is sensible and constructive, but the opera reveals the paucity of his talent. Its enormous success was due to its opera buffaAike simplicity.

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its completely rustic setting, and the greater ‘naturalness’ of spoken dialogue compared to recitative. This last was an essential feature of the French equivalent of ballad opera— the vaudevilles of the theatre de lafoire which, almost entirely due to the brilliant playwright Charles-Simon Favart [17101792], had developed from rather primitive and often vulgar comedies interspersed with songs mostly to popular tunes, to polished, witty satires with newly composed vocal solos and ensembles. The success of Devin and of Favart’s translation of La Serva Padrona gave a new lease of life to the theatre de la foire, and with the merging, in the 1760s, of vaudeville and opera buffa, opera comique was born.

The beginning'of the aria ‘Di gli ch’io son fedele’(1731), by Hasse, as sung at the first performance by the castrato Porporino (Antonio Uberti) [1697-1783], a pupil of Porpora ; it is in Frederick the Great’s own hand.

5

THE BAROQUE: MUSIC IN CHURCH, HALL AND HOME By An t h o n y Mil n e r At the beginning of the seventeenth century in Italy the

interaction of the developing monodic technique and^ the declining madrigal proved a fertile source of new forms. The success of the early monodies was not due merely to their simplicity, but also to the presence of features deriving from popular music. Their melodic style continued that of the frottola (see Part I, p. 209) which had, so to speak, survived ‘underground’ in popular music, occasionally reappearing in the upper parts of the polyphonic villanella and balletto (see Chapter i, pp. 245 and 272). This similarity between the frottole and the monodies is especially noticeable in the use of straight forward rhythms and sectional repetitions: Ex. 36 provides a simple comparison : Pesenci btflnmMntal carts aid woid»

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In the quartets there are several passages in which the four instruments enter within the space of a few b?irs, a semitone apart. Again, he does not regard the parts as having separate tonal roots. Bartdk’s music is always fundamentally tonal, even when his ambiguous harmonic processes are complicated by his partiality for modally inflected, non-diatonic scales. Bartok seems to have associated his rediscovery of classical principles of structure with the influence of Beethoven, likewise a revolutionary composer who modified established precedents under pressure of personal feeling. The core of Bartdk’s work is in his six string quartets. Superficially speaking, the grounds of comparison between Bartok’s quartets and the late quartets of Beethoven may seem far to seek—apart from the obvious resemblance between the opening of Bartok’s First and the opening of Beethoven’s C sharp minor. Yet there is a profound sense in which the comparison is justified, for both composers are seeking to reconcile the dynamism of sonata conflict with the apparently contradictory, monistic principles of counter point. In so doing, both of them modify traditional notions of tonal organization. Consider, for instance, Bartok’s Fifth Quartet, composed in

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1934. The first movement is in dynamic sonata form. The first subject is split into two groups: a reiterated percussive figure in or around B fiat, and a phrase syncopated across the bar-line, involving a trill and a glissando suggestive of Magyar music. The second subject, more flowing, sinuous and chromatic, also has a Magyar flavour (Ex. 68): Ex.68. Bartok Quartet No. 5

The development begins in—or rather on—E, a tritone apart from the main key. As in Beethoven’s quartets, the material is itself transformed as it is developed in tonal conflict. In the recapitulation all the material reappears, though not in the same order, and in linear inversion and sometimes reversion. Again there is a compromise between the tonal organization of the Beethovenian sonata and the linear organization of Bachian counterpoint. All the themes are gathered together and telescoped in a coda in close stretto which ends unambiguously on, if not in, B flat. The second movement, adagio molto, opens with frail wisps of sound which coalesce in a modally harmonized chorale, reminiscent in mood of the Lydian adagio in Beethoven’s opus 132. Over the chorale the first violin sings fragmentary lyrical phrases which, since they contain unresolved appoggiaturas, seem to be off key. These lyrical phrases are evocatively ex tended in a middle section. An elliptical recapitulation of the chorale fades into the whispered trills and glissandi of the opening. Both Beethoven and Bartok associate trills with the relinquishment of Time’s shackles; though Bartok’s paradise, if that is what it is, is certainly the more tenuous and tentative. One could hardly say that his peace brings a Beethovenian joy. The third movement is a scherzo and trio on classical lines. It is in Bulgarian folk-rhythms, 4 plus 2 plus 3 quavers a bar in

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the scherzo, 3 plus 2 plus 2 plus 3 quavers a bar in the trio. The first theme, built on rising and falling thirds, has an almost Debussyan pizzicato accompaniment; the second is more jaunty and folk-like in character, with an obtrusive Lydian fourth. The trio creates a magically sensuous sound while following classical convention in being based on the bagpipe drone. Its rusticity is disembodied, however, like the comparable musette trio in the scherzo of Beethoven’s opus 131. In the repeat of the scherzo both themes are treated in their original form and in inversion. Then occurs the work’s only departure from classical pre cedent: a second slow movement which balances, and is thematically related to, the adagio second movement. In this nocturnal music mysterious glissandi, pizzicati and swirling chromatics accompany a canonic dialogue between violin and ’cello. In the coda the themes disintegrate on viola and ’cello, while the two violins play a rarefied version of the adagio’s chorale. The last movement is a rondo which, like Beethoven’s rondos, makes some compromise with sonata style and has also a good deal of contrapuntal organization. The first theme is stated twice, the second time in inversion and canon. Another theme, marked leggierissimo, fulfils some of the functions of a second subject. All the material is developed in close counter point, and the climax comes when a fugato passage reveals the relationship between the first movement themes and those of the last movement. After the climax there is a strange passage in which the first theme appears in augmentation, in unam biguous A major. This moment of queerly comic relaxation is swept away by the contrapuntal frenzy of the coda, which ultimately lands us on the unison B flat of the opening of the work. This work has been discussed in some detail because it includes every aspect of Bartok’s creative relationship to tradition. Of the four great, ‘central’ twentieth-century com posers we have considered, he is the only one whose idiom derives its force from the sonata principle: which may be why he has gone further than the others towards establishing some relationship to a public. Yet even with him, as we have seen, counterpoint modifies his conception of the sonata; and the highest point his music reached—the first movement of the

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Music for Strings, Celesta, and Percussion—is a ‘monistic’ ex pression of the Bachian contrapuntal principle. The theme itself, narrow in compass, winding around a nodal point, seems to adhere to the melodic tonality of folk-song; but the structure of the piece as a whole is an expansion of the basic harmonic principle of classical music, for the fugal entries take place at successive fifths, beginning on A, in alternate ascending and descending cycles. When the two cycles meet on E flat—^the tonality which stands at the ultimate distance from the initial A—there is a tremendous tritonal climax; the celesta enters for the first time (a vision of the bliss to be attained?); the theme is inverted and the cycle of fifths continues until it once more reaches A. There is a short coda, in which the theme and its inversion are stated simultaneously, ending on the unison A, This is perhaps a fugal movement which, like that in Beet hoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, grindingly seeks the unity of paradise, rather than one in which paradise is attained. None the less, this climacteric point of Bartok’s music is certainly monistic to the core; and we may recall that his melodic and rhythmic conception is in some ways as much Eastern as European. When we look back at the other central figures we have discussed, we remember that Hindemith too has tried to recreate the Bachian notion of fugal unity, and to establish a tonal order ‘cosmically’ related to the medieval view of music as science and ritual. Stravinsky’s conception of music is still more specifically ritualistic. Whether in his primitive or his neo baroque phase or in the serial works of recent years, his music implies a kind of unity as much medieval as modern, as much Eastern as European. And Schoenberg’s twelve-note method is a technique of perpetual variation, an entirely monistic conception of form in which every note of a composition is a permutation of a single entity.

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EUROPE TODAY w. have seen that Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Bartok—the five central figures in twentiethcentury music—have manifested, over the past fifty years, a partial but spontaneous turning-away from the humanism and time-obsession that are our European birthright. Nor is this tendency confined to these major figures, for we can observe something comparable in distinguished, but marginal, com posers of the same generation, such as Karol Szymanowsky [1883-1937] and Ernest Bloch [b. 1880]. The Pole Szymanow sky began as one of the ‘last romantics’, creating in his opera. King Roger, a third act which is a single Tristanesque climax ^ lasting some forty minutes—superbly luscious in its chromatic, polyphonic-harmonic texture and in its opulent orchestration. The nostalgic lyricism of this opera—significantly dealing with a conflict between Christianity and paganism—^strikingly com plements that of Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet, just as the soaring cantilena of Szymanowsky’s First Violin Concerto parallels that of Delius’s concerto. The restless, fluctuating movement of the harmony is similar in both composers, pro ducing an impression of inordinately slow tempo, even when the figuration is rapid. Both use the orchestra in the same way, though Szymanowsky is texturally much more sophisticated. Yet this elegiac composer of a world’s twilight goes a stage further than Delius: the movement becomes so slow that it almost stops; and as this happens a new, linear element comes into Szymanowsky’s music, suggested by the Eastern affiliations of Polish folk music and liturgical chant. The sensuousness is still present in his impressive Stabat Mater, but the music is now a ritualistic, rather than auto-erotic, experience. Ripely sonor ous, harmonically conceived passages exist alongside sections that depend mainly on Asiatic-tending melodic arabesques in a sharply dissonant linear texture, with little harmonic movement. 1020

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This tendency is still more evident in the music of Ernest Bloch, the first Jewish composer whose music springs from his consciousness of alienated race. He is perhaps the most passion ately ego-centred of all twentieth-century composers, and his rich scoring and thick texture have obvious affinities with Wag ner and even Strauss. Yet the insidious power of a piece like his Schelomo for solo ’cello and orchestra depends on a dichotomy between the hysterical fervour of the orchestral climaxes and the improvisatory conception of the solo part: which assimilates into itself the age-old, basically pentatonic phrases of Jewish cantilation, and evolves by the Asiatic technique of melismatic decoration and ‘division’; while the scoring often emulates the actual sounds of the Hebraic folk-band. Even when Bloch writes music closer to Western tradition, as in the first movement of his First String Quartet, the violent tonal and metrical tensions are combined with declamatory, prayer-like themes that also lend themselves to oriental melodic extension; and the anguish is not resolved in an orthodox recapitulation. Reso lution^—in this quartet as in the still finer Piano Quintet— ultimately comes in extended cantabile melody which is also an elegiac lament. The relationship of this singing lyricism to the liturgical manner—half Hebraic, half Renaissance European— of Bloch’s Sacred Service indicates how Bloch’s elegy—unlike Delius’s—^implies a tragic resignation to suffering. This quality, too, may affect us as Eastern rather than European. While we cannot yet know what this general, cumulative trend away from the West means, it is at least feasible that we are living at the end of a cycle that began with the Renaissance: and that the values inherent in our music may come to reflect, in a vast international society, a changed conception of man’s nature and destiny. Certainly there is evidence to support this in the evolution of serial music since Schoenberg: for while Schoenberg’s music usually maintains a link with post-Renaissance ideas of progression, a serial technique need not neces sarily do so, and some later developments of twelve-note music have attempted a far more radical departure from harmonic implications. The early music of Anton Webern [1883-1945], for instance, is sensory experience that titillates the nerves in the same way as does Debussy’s music. In the tiny Bagatelles or the early pieces for string quartet the senses exist ‘absolutely’, apart from the Will: until they are so winnowed away that they

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dissolve into spirit. By the time this happens Webern’s music has become completely serial in the organization of its pitchrelationships; and while it is possible that the dominance of a certain interval, or a relationship between a group of intervals, may sometimes serve as a nodal point which takes the place of tonality, there can be no doubt that Webern habitually selected rows which were as remote as possible from tonal implications. He especially favoured rows in which the parts were inter related mathematically—for instance, in which the second half is a mirror reflexion of the first; often the two segments are linked by the neutral interval of the tritone. The texture is tenuous in the extreme, and the thematic line is often subdivided between a number of parts, each note having a different tonecolour. Webern’s instinct for sonority is of uncanny precision and the aural effect of his serial music is of the most exquisite sensuous beauty. Yet the effect is different from that of his early freq atonal pieces, or from that of Debussy’s impressionism, or from that of Schoenberg’s early ‘seismographic’ works; and the differ ence lies in the fact that the ‘moments of sensation’ are no longer fragmentary. Each single note in the wonderful slow movement of the Concerto for Nine Instruments seems part of a preordained order, a revelation of cosmic mathematical law, as are the notes of a medieval ‘isochronous’ motet.* It is not coincidental that Webern should have been an expert scholar in the field of mediaeval music. Though his style evolved out of Viennese chromaticism, with no conscious trace of mediaeval or oriental influence, there is a quality both mediaeval and oriental in the form of the Piano Variations, opus 27: for the piece describes the ultimate unity, the circle, in that the theme is accompanied by itself, backwards and inverted. The serpent eats its own tail. It is not surprising that in this work time seems to stop; and that the piano’s bell-like noises should suggest, however remotely, the gongs of the Balinese gamelang. Nor, perhaps, is it entirely fanciful to sense a relationship between Webern’s treatment of the human voice—far more ‘unvocal’ than Schoenberg’s—and the deliberately unnatural vocal tech niques used by mediaeval and oriental singers. The voice is * Is o c h r o n o u s Mo t e t : one in which the parts are organized in metrical series which remain constant though the pitch relationships do not. The metrical series sometimes have doctrinal significance (for instance, references to the Trinity). Cf. rhythmic pattern in mediaeval motets. Part I, pp. 57, 103, etc.

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deliberately dehumanized because it must become supernatural law. Almost all the poems Webern chose to set are, significantly, mystical and esoteric; yet although his music is much more remote than Schoenberg’s from traditional European pro cedures it is still, in its precision, quintessentially expressive. We can see from the two beautiful cantatas how, in his maturest work, Webern as vocal composer still expressively ‘interprets’ his texts; and even so apparently abstract a work as the Piano Variations depends for its effect on the sensitive nuance of its melodic contours, as we know from the testimony of Peter Stadlen, who studied the work with Webern before giving the first performance. Thus we may suspect that while Webern would have appreciated the manner in which Stravinsky has used certain aspects of his technique as a ritualistic discipline (the latest of his many masks), he would be chary of acknow ledging those who claim that he has inaugurated a new order in European music, above and beyond the concepts of ‘ex pression’ and ‘communication’. Across the Austrian border, in Germany, Karlheinz Stockhausen [b. 1928], taking Webern as his point of departure, has developed a music that is serial not only in pitch relationships, but also in rhythmic pattern and dy namics. Sometimes it is so complicated that it can be performed only by electronic means. Such a revelation of mathematical law dispenses with the human intermediary of the performer and possibly with the audience as well. The composer is alone in his laboratory; recent experiments by Stockhausen in the direction of ‘disciplined improvisation’ would perhaps suggest that he is aware that the laboratory may be a new kind of plastic Ivory Tower. But it is not only in the work of Webern and his disciples that a radical change of approach—and of philosophical im plication—can be observed. Webern rarefies the senses into an exquisitely tense, hyper-subtle heaven-beyond-becoming: a her metic paradise. Carl Orff [b. 1895], Germany, seeks a com parable end by an opposite route: by reducing music to a lowest common denominator, divesting it of virtually all harmony and expressive melody, leaving only rhythm and the contrast of sonorities. During the years of the Second World War he has done again what Stravinsky did, in the Rite of Spring and The Wedding, during the years of the First World War: he has

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simultaneously expressed the violence and horror of breakdown and suggested that, if this is what our sophisticated consciousness has made of the world, it is time we returned to our primitive, pre-conscious roots. The difference is that whereas Stravinsky went on to relate the primitive, non-European elements ex plored in these works to a ritual, both secular and religious, relevant to Europe’s past and present, Orff has, in later works, - retreated still further from Europe. The oriental elements in his Aphrodite, for instance, extend to the investigation of elaborate melismatic melody which is far more interesting than his earlier obsession with incantatory rhythm. Orff is a minor, even a trivial, composer compared with Stravinsky; yet the success enjoyed by his music is symptomatic.* People were looking, unconsciously, for an escape from the dominance of Time and the Self. Orff offers such an escape: at a lower level than Webern or Stravinsky, but at a higher level than the jazz fanatic who expects his music to ‘send’ him beyond self-consciousness. Orff believes that the future, even our survival, depends on the existence of a popular religious art meaningful not to a few, but to the many. Whether the primitive and oriental features in his music can really fulfil the emotional needs of urban and industrial man is dubious indeed. But at least he is justified in thinking that an orgiastic act is religious in the sense that it puts us into direct communion with elemental forces: and to that degree with eternity. A comparable concern with orgiastic experience and with Oriental ritual occurs in the music of a French composer of the same generation, Olivier Messiaen [b. 1908]. His orgiastic mys ticism is, however, esoteric rather than popular: except in the sense that, being a zealous Roman Catholic, he presumably speaks, on behalf of his faith, to all who will listen. Whereas Webern refines away the senses, Messiaen expatiates on them, inducing a kind of auto-erotic ecstasy comparable with that found in some Catholic baroque art. The musical affinities of his early work are obviously with the sensory impressionism of Debussy: but still more, perhaps, with the obsessively ‘intro verted’ harmony of Scriabin. Yet he carries the isolation of these • It is relevant to note that another post-Nazi, post-war German composer, Boris Blacher [b. 1903] has created a music almost entirely reliant on rhythmic experiment. His art, however, being without Orff's deliberate primitivism, pro duces a curiously ascetic excitement: as though the mind were stimulating, per haps even simulating, a vitality which the blood and heart do not possess. Perhaps it IS not surprising that his music has been widely influential.

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sensual moments from the idea of progression to a more extreme point than either Debussy or Scriabin. The more highly charged are the artist’s sensations the more completely must they be released from the grip of the Will; so the movement of higher chromatic discords in Messiaen’s earlier works is so slow as to be almost stationary, while the relationship between the chords is as disturbingly without harmonic direction as the comparable passages in the ‘Rose-Croix’ works of Erik Satie, which Messiaen much admires (Ex. 69). The later enormous piano E>.69 Trcs modcrc

work, Vingt Regards sur VEnfant Jesus is literally a series of con templative ‘looks’ in the sense that the movements are \vithout movement. Each piece tends to be built on an alternation of two or three chords, an ostinato, a pedal note, a reiterated figuration. The burden of personality dissolves into timeless con templation. The European time-sense is no longer relevant to music which evades the concept of beginning, middle, and end: which is why Messiaen’s works tend to last, chronometrically

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speaking, so long, if not for ever. There is no reason why they should stop. Even in Messiaen’s early works the sumptuously sensuous har mony, being non-developing, tends to proliferate into melodic arabesques related not only to mediaeval cantilation, but also to the melismatic styles of Eastern music. In his later work oriental features have become both conscious and elaborate. The sensory harmonies tend to be increasingly percussive in effect, like gongs, and virtually without harmonic meaning in the Western sense. Complementarily, the organization of such works as the He de Feu becomes almost entirely linear and rhyth mic: except that Messiaen’s ‘series’ are not completely chro matic, but are closely related to the linear ragas and rhythmic talas* of Indian music. His chord complexes are also derived from raga formations, whether traditional or (like Skryabin’s) invented; in either case the ‘series’ are given religious, or at any rate magical, as well as technical significance. In recent years Messiaen has added to his study of oriental melodic and rhythmic techniques an equally exhaustive enquiry into the cries of birds; and has stated that the rest of his* composing life will be devoted to an immense series of works wherein his humanity will be reborn through the language of birds. Fascinating though some of the piano-sounds may be, we may think that this is carrying forgetfulness of the human will a bit far; there is something in the messianic self-dedication of this most appropriately named composer that seems, in the strict sense, eccentric from—even opposed to—the needs of most twentiethcentury men and women. Yet Messiaen has created a language: which very few com posers succeed in doing; and that language has made a con siderable impact upon twentieth-century music. There are even affinities between it and the rival French school of Pierre Boulez [b. 1925], for Boulez has combined a completely serial, postWebern technique with serial processes derived directly from Eastern ragas and talas. The sonorities of a work like Le Marteau sans Maitre, with their high, ethereal resonance, are new, yet closer to Debussy and Messiaen than to Schoenberg or even Webern. They also recall the ritualistic music of Bali: with the * Ra g a : a linear pattern or series, usually with religious or magical as well as musical significance, used as the basis for improvisation in classical Indian music. Ta l a : a rhythmic pattern or scries, similarly employed, in conjunction with the raga.

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difference that the text the music sets (with a god-like exaggera tion of human vocal resource!) is not a ritual celebration of the divine or the earthly, but a surrealistic poem that is, strictly speaking, nonsense. This is not a frivolous remark; for in a postFreudian world we are, in exploring the depths below con sciousness, seeking imaginative knowledge of reality. Le Marteau is concerned with an awareness of God, if not with an appre hension of him. Webern and Stockhausen, Orff, Messiaen, and Boulez are, in their rejection of the West, saying something which Europe has at least partially to accept, if we are to live again. Their re jection may, however, easily become an evasion of our human responsibilities; certainly we feel more comfortable with those composers of Italy, Russia, and Britain who, while reacting against the exaggerated self-consciousness of Western civilisa tion, are not afraiid to accept it in order to re-create it. It is interesting that in Italy—birthplace of Europe’s Renaissance— some composers of both Messiaen’s and of Boulez’s generation have not carried the rejection of the West to anything like so extreme a point. Luigi Dallapiccola [b. 1904] has, particularly in his later works, made considerable use of serial techniques. Yet his music remains rooted in Renaissance polyphony and the unity of classical baroque texture. The forbears of his theatrical projection, his vocal lyricism, are the two great Green Men of Italian music, Monteverdi and Verdi. While Dallapiccola is usually concerned, in his large-scale works, with religious issues, he starts not from a desire to obliter ate the self in a mystical act, but from the necessity for com passion. His opera, II Prigioniero, the choral Canti di Prigionia, stem from an awareness of the violence, suffering, and oppres sion which man has inflicted on man during the first half of this century. They are concerned with God because man seems im potent alone; but (like Schoenberg’s music) they are in approach essentially humanistic, and it is not an accident that the central achievement of Dallapiccola’s career should be a dramatization of the story ofJob. This work reveals most impressively the way in which Dallapiccola’s music belongs simultaneously to Italy’s past, present, and future. In conception it is a Sacra rappresentazione in the seventeenth-century manner of Carissimi. The seventeenth-century Historicus sang in comparatively flat, emotionally uninvolved recitative. Dallapiccola’s Storico speaks.

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but in rhythmically measured notation, his phrases being echoed by a speaking chorus, also rhythmically notated: as though a crowd of listeners (including you and me) were involving them selves in the story. This gives an extraordinary immediacy—a sense of present reality—to the setting. The Storico recounts, impersonally. Job sings, lyrically and passionately, from within his being. Periodically the tension between the objective narration and Job’s subjective passion crystallizes into operatic action; the characters in the story come alive and sing with Verdian incandescence. Various serial and contrapuntal devices are used, but in the interests of dramatic expression: for instance, the Comforters sing a double and then a triple canon, in which the processional rhythm and the contrapuntal unity suggest a girding of the loins. The climax comes in Job’s desperate appeal to God, when human fortitude seems to be insufficient. The voice that replies ‘out of the whirlwind’ is represented by a singing chorus which, largamente ma con violenza, justifies the apparently arbitrary ways of God to man, while a brass choir blazes the Te Deum. The tortured and distraight polyphony grows gradually more sus tained; but rises to a furioso climax as the voice from the whirl wind sings not only of man’s dependence on God, but of God’s dependence on man—a conclusion proudly in tune with the spirit of the Italian Renaissance and with what one takes to be Dalla piccola’s attitude now. The music then fades into silence, eternity being symbolized by two flutes, one of which plays the other’s part backwards. The silence seems the deeper because Dalla piccola has dared to set the profoundest imaginative statement about the nature of suffering except for Shakespeare’s King Lear. In Dallapiccola’s music, as in Schoenberg’s, the purely chro matic and serial elements seem not to deny but to extend the boundaries of the traditional elements; the exacerbated tension is never merely destructive. It is worth remarking, too, that the music of Luigi Nono [b. 1926], which is ‘post-Webern’ in being completely serial and extremely attenuated in sonority, also shows a quality of compassionate humanity. His works are con cerned with an atom-threatened world; but the remote sighs and sobs of the dislocated choral and orchestral texture of his II Canto Sospeso are intensely moving, not merely in their glimpse of a quiet beyond the harried present, but also in their response to the human suffering that must be borne in a broken, battered world.

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In Dallapiccola and Nono there is, then, an embryonic re ligious sense combined with a social conscience.* The eomposers of Soviet Russia do not, of course, cultivate a religious sense, let alone the esoterie mysticism of a Webern or a Messiaen, None the less, their social conscience tends to direet attention away from a preoccupation with the self; and the official view that Soviet composers ought to study and make use of the folk traditions of the area they live in might be expected to en courage melodic and rhythmic techniques opposed to the tradi tions of western Europe, as it did in the case of Bartdk and Szymanowsky. The paradox in the position of the Soviet com poser lies, however, in the faet that he is building a new world in the interests not of a moribund peasantry, but of the pro letariat: whose musical taste is still—as we saw when discussing Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninov—centred around composers of highly subjective neurosis, expressed through basically Western techniques! A Tchaikowsky ‘cleaned up’, rendered buoyantly extravert, seems a contradiction in terms. Yet the contradiction may have been a saving grace to Soviet composers: for it has meant that they have been able to create out of a tension be tween a sincere desire to affirm and an elegiac consciousness of personal frustration such as all human creatures are prone to in this state-before-Paradise (whether on earth or in Heaven). The numerous symphonies of Myaskovsky [1881-1951] are a fine example of this simultaneously optimistic and elegiac approach. The sustained melodies, the spacious proportions, the power ful rhythms lend dignity to the Tchaikowsky-like melancholy: while the melancholy reminds us of the fallible human heart. Folk-music has no more influence on Myaskovsky’s art than on Tchaikowsky’s, and considerably less than it has on the work of the Big Five. He can reinvigorate nineteenth-century styles because he is, if not a great, a real composer, with some thing to say; and while it is true that, in Soviet Russia, much bad music has been poured into ‘outdated’ nineteenth-century moulds, it is equally true that a great deal of bad music has * We should mention in this context a senior Catalan composer, Roberto Gerhard [b. 1896], who left his native country at the time of the Spanish Civil War and settled in England. His early works stemmed from impressionism and Spanish national tradition. The rhythmic energy and harmonic sensuousness of his music have survived since he has begun to explore complete serialization; and his fusion of a passionate humanism with an ‘ impersonal ’ mysticism makes his position in the European * adition more central and perhaps more important than his almost complete isolation, in his adopted country, would lead one to expect.

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been created, in the West, by wilful attempts to avoid conform ity. There will always be more bad music than good. Any com poser starts from conditions as he knows them; what he makes of them depends on his integrity and vitality. This we can see in the work of the first two Soviet composers who have made —unlike Myaskovsky—an impact on the world outside Russia. The fundaments of Prokofiev’s art, as of Myaskovsky’s, were closely related to Tchaikowsky, and still more to Rachmaninov: consider the big tune at the end of his Third Piano Concerto. In his Parisian youth, however, Sergey Prokofiev [1891-1953] learned, as an exile, to disguise the passionate heart beneath a veneer of sophistication. After the First World War it was natural enough that Paris should have fostered a deliberate cult of irresponsibility. Jean Cocteau, as mentor of the new artists, encouraged hatred of pretentiousness, love of everything sup posedly simple and free of complication. Hence the cult of childhood, of Negro art, of music-hall and circus, of low life generally. Francis Poulenc [b. 1899] is the only composer of the group known as Les Six who has remained faithful to the ideals charmingly expressed in the works of his teens,’” such as the Bestiare songs and the Mouvements Perpetuels for piano. These pieces are all of tiny dimensions, with aggressively diatonic themes, like nursery tunes or cafe songs, in regular rhythms. These banalities, however, are consciously pepped up by * Of the other members of the group, two stopped composing and one devoted almost all his attention to film music. Of the remaining two members, Arthur Honegger [b. 1892] became a dramatic composer, dealing with large—often re ligious—themes on a large scale, in a re-created baroque style that is noble and ceremonial, though often sharply dissonant. Both his gravity and his ‘public manner’ are remote from the sophisticated banality of Les Six, but have much in common with the work of other Swiss composers such as Othmar Schoeck [b. 1886], Frank Martin [b. 1890], and Willy Burkhard [b. 1900]. It is interesting that the Swiss composers, whether their roots are German or French, seem to preserve a lucid neutrality. Comparatively uninvolved in the humanist crisis supremely represented by Wagner, they can use apparently archaic—medieval. Renaissance, and baroque—conventions with spontaneity and power. Their music is always civilized: and for that very reason, perhaps, seems rather remote from the issues that concern us most deeply. The other member of Les Six, Darius Milhaud [b. 1892], has nothing in common with Swiss austerity. He is a composer whose uninhibited prodigality springs from his Jewish passion, his Latin (Provencal) vitality, and his prolonged sojourn in South America. From so many violent and contradictory impulses he has not achieved a coherent idiom; but in the Concertino de Printemps for violin and chamber orchestra, he created the most tinglingly vivacious of all pieces in the French pastoral vein, while La Criation du Monde, though inferior to the real thing, is one of the few convincing, sophisticated evocations of Negro jazz. The value of his large-scale works—such as the immense operas on Latin-American subjects—is problematical.

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sophistication: by the ‘wrong’ note or altered harmony; by the simultaneous (polytonal) sounding of several simple tonalities; by cheekily raucous scoring (with a prevalence of brass and woodwind). The feeling in this music is quite different from that in the music of the two composers—Chabrier and Satie—whom Les Six acknowledged as their masters. For Chabrier was a positive comic genius whose ironic wit was inseparable from his animal high spirits; while Satie did not play at being childish, but recovered the innocence of the child through the lucidity of his technique. In the music of Chabrier and Satie there is neither sentimentality nor nostalgia. Poulenc, on the other hand, is all sentimentality and nostalgia—for the presumed irresponsibility of childhood, for low life, for the pretty ele gancies of an eighteenth-century rococo world quite distinct from Ravel’s profound re-creation of the classical fairy tales. These ‘regressive’ qualities are Poulenc’s genuine attributes, which have grown stronger with the years, as we can see from his Gounodesque church music, his Massenet-like opera, Les Carmelites, and his numerous, and most touching, later songs which reconcile Massenet with the malaise of the cafe-concert. {Montparnasse is perhaps the quintessential Poulenc song.) When Prokofiev settled in Paris in the ’twenties he welcomed the debunking wit which he found in the music of Les Six, especially Poulenc; and the affecting, as well as amusing, quality of the music he wrote in this vein comes from the fact that he too loves what he laughs at. There was, moreover, a particular reason why he, as a Russian exile, should respond to the nostalgia incipient even in Poulenc’s early music; in small works like the Grandmother's Tales for piano he gives a Russian rein terpretation of Poulenc’s use of the nursery ditty. Prokofiev’s themes too are short, with hypnotic repetitions; but, like so many of the modal song themes of Tchaikowsky, they invoke no urban environment, but the eternal-seeming melancholy of the Russian peasant. At the same time the haunting themes are now distanced by the disturbing relationships of the simple diatonic harmonies and the precise rhythmic patterns that ac company them. In acquiring a tender irony, their melancholy ceases to oppress. This suggests why Prokofiev, on returning to the Soviet Union, was able to use his Parisian experience to such good effect. The sophisticated high-jinks become aii element of mordant satire

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that can safeguard his romantic passion from hysteria and that can, at times, grow into a positive ebullience—the pride in a new world that finds expression in the finales of his symphonies and in the moto-perpetuo-like movements in his piano sonatas. (Perhaps one could not believe in these pieces if they were not, as well as vigorous, also intelligent.) Beneath the extravert gaiety, however, the tender nostalgia of Prokofiev’s Russian fairy tale is always present, if never obtrusive. This is why his most moving and characteristic music tends to be lyrical. In both the early and the late violin concertos, for instance, his gaiety and nostalgia are held in equilibrium; the merriment makes the sadness supportable, and the sadness make the merriment credible. Even in his emotionally more ambitious works, when he writes under the pressure of tense, often violent, experience, he is most convincing when the lyrical basis of his art is strongest. It is not fortuitous that perhaps the finest of all his works should be a sonata for violin and piano—the mature work in F minor: wherein the interpenetration of the linear and the percussive instrument creates a piano texture that has both metallic sharpness and sonorous depth, a violin line that is at once warm and pungent. Shostakovitch [b. 1906] made his mark at a remarkably early age with a symphony that, like Prokofiev’s early music, recon ciled a heartfelt Tchaikowskyan sweetness with a self-protective wit, Parisian in origin, yet growing, in the last movement, into a kind of communal frenzy. The tenderness, the cheek, the excitement, all grow to maturity in the sequence of his sym phonies; but in his case the relationship to Tchaikowsky and to Parisian sophistication is complemented by another, and deeper, affinity. If Mahler seems an unexpected musician to influence a Soviet composer, we must remember that Mahler’s conception of the symphony as an all-inclusive world, embrac ing every aspect of life, is in an obvious sense democratic. Mahler may have been an elegiac composer singing the swan song of a once-aristocratic world; but any truly creative com poser of a new world has to admit into his self-confident aware ness of present and future an awareness also of the old world’s death, and of the human disappointments and hopes that followed in its wake. It is certainly not an accident that the most talented com poser the Soviet Union has yet produced—perhaps her only

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composer of indubitable genius—^should betray this affinity with a composer who, we saw, al; ?ady suggested a turning away from Western traditions. And although Shostakovitch’s musical materials remain Western, even nineteenth-century, the manner in which he uses them marks a radical departure from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century notion of a symphony. Whereas for Beethoven a symphony is growth through conflict, Shostakovitch opposes the states of contemplation and of action. So although Shostakovitch described his Fifth Symphony, in Beethovenian terms, as ‘the making of a man’, he also said that the symphony was ‘entirely lyrical’; the drama which it incarnates is not, like that in Beethoven’s symphonies, subjective, but epic. Thus the work opens with an enormous melodic period that suggests, through leaping sixths in dotted rhythm, a ques tioning aspiration (Ex. 70). But this theme does not generate

a ‘dualistic’ tonal conflict; it evolves lyrically, growing cumu latively stronger, until it is transformed into a spacious cantabile theme, with a pulsing accompaniment, wherein the individual life seems to be fulfilled. Although these long, winding melodies tend to return to a nodal point, they have no relation to Russian folk-music and—like the cantabile themes of Tchaikowsky and Mahler—eclectically assimilate European elements from Italy, Austria, and France. Yet the brooding, timeless quality of this music is profoundly Russian. Its melancholy is at once intro verted and impersonal. Self-contemplation leads, as in Mahler, to self-forgetfulness and liberation; in this case, because a sub jective sorrow is absorbed into the yastness of the Steppes, the epic sorrow of a people.

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Only at this point, after this immense lyrical paragraph, are the contradictions inherent in experience admitted. The con templative theme is transformed, on low brass, into a sinister lament which grows into a grisly march: the lyrical fulfilment is denied, metamorphosed into horror, rather as it is in the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth. So when the contemplative theme returns, it does so in a more frenzied version; and its ultimate disintegration into sweetly dreamy whimpers on flute, violin, celesta and muted trumpet leaves us feeling that the vast emptiness of the Steppes can be no assuagement for our loneli ness. So the movement ends with a wistful, unresolved restatement of the apparently affirmative opening paragraph; and the scherzo that follows, although funny, is also wry. Selfforgetfulness here becomes self-mockery; the gaiety is aloof, deliberately uninvolved, as though the composer were saying that if man’s aspiration is as unrewarding as the first move ment suggests, there is no answer but a shrug of the shoulders. The continual modulations, the occasional acid harmony, the sharp orchestration are disturbing as well as witty. The largo returns to the brooding contemplation of the first movement, but the questing element inherent in the leaping sixths has gone. The rhythm is level, the contours of the melody smooth; again the eternal-seeming spaciousness is emphasized by the Mahlerian, chamber-music-like nature of the scoring, the hollowness of the texture. This time there is no contradic tion. The sustained lyricism gradually assimilates the introspec tive passion of the first movement: so that the personal contem plation can lead into a public resolution. The last movement is all kinetic energy', sometimes fierce, sometimes hilariously comic in its transformations of popular material. Shostakovitch’s epic resolutions plumb less deep than Beethoven’s, for their public fulfilment is juxtaposed to, not the result of, the private struggle. None the less, the personal and social aspects of Shosta kovitch’s music are inseparable: for although the release of power and gaiety in the external world is not the consequence of inner growth, it could not occur but for the contemplation, wherein a personal loneliness or frustration is mastered in be coming epical. It is significant that the overwhelmingly tri umphant coda to the finale of this symphony is preceded by a remote reminiscence of the contemplative lyrical theme of the first movement.

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Perhaps we may say that the resolution in Shostakovitch’s symphonies is not so much the release of inner tensions as an act of faith. This accords with his prevailingly lyrical approach to the symphony; and although he is not, of course, a religious composer in the normally accepted sense, his communism has affinities with religious belief in that it sees personal problems in the light of an absolute. So he too manifests a turning-away from post-Renaissance principles which is not the less significant for being less obvious than that of his contemporaries in Ger many, Italy, and France. It is not fortuitous that he seldom employs, either in symphonies or chamber works, the classical, dualistic first-movement sonata form. Contemplatively, he works by slow lyrical extension; dramatically, by the sharpest contradictions that remain unresolved; kinetically, by the release of rhythmic energy that sweeps all before it. We should remark too that his major piano work is a series of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys—on the analog)" of Bach’s supreme masterpiece of baroque unity. The conservatism of English music in the twentieth century is a more complex matter than that of Russian music because —as we saw in the chapter on Vaughan Williams—^we have had to recover a spiritual heritage that our triumphant indus trialism had buried. To re-create the past as Vaughan Williams did called for a passionate religious sense such as is, inevitably, rare in an industrially dominated society: so that it is not sur prising that, though Vaughan Williams has had innumerable imitators, he has had only one true successor. We may say of Edmund Rubbra [b. 1901], as of Vaughan Williams, that the core of his work consists in his symphonies and his choral music, the latter being ancillary to, and in a profound sense connected with, the symphonies. These works are still more remote from the dualistic classical sonata than the symphonies of Shostakovitch, since they are in essence lyrical, contemplative—and unequivocally religious, having none of the Russian’s unresolved contradictions and metrical animation. As an English composer, with a deeply mystical mind and a vocal rather than instru mental heritage, Rubbra creates melodic lines which^—though they have not the pentatonic pastoralism of the imitators of Vaughan Williams-—spring from the step-wise movement, the rhythms and inflexions, of the human voice in the same way as do the melodies of Dowland. From such melodic lines he builds

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works which are genuinely symphonic and at the same time are not opposed to the principles of vocal polyphony. This is a very different matter from writing vocal polyphony scored for instruments: for if the symphony has to be rethought in lyrical rather than dramatic terms, vocal polyphony has, in its turn, to acquire a long-range harmonic and tonal architecture. Thus the whole first movement of his Fifth Symphony grows out of the phrase enunciated at the outset by solo oboe. The hne moves ‘vocally’ by step: but involves too a rising augmented fourth, followed by a falling perfect fourth (Ex. 71). So the

symphony begins, like a symphony of Bruckner, as an act of praise, a ‘monistic’ lyrical hymn that grows spontaneously, like a tree. But as the themes expand, the tension within the aug mented fourth grows increasingly dominant, reminding us of the human tensions out of which the symphonic principle had originally sprung. That the tensions are present, beneath the surface, is part of Rubbra’s contemporaneity; and is the reason why he (like Bruckner) has chosen to write symphonies, rather than to express himself purely in liturgical music. In the scherzo the subterranean tensions disappear, and the structure is mon istic in the most fundamental sense, being consistently contra puntal: a deceptively simple dance tune, alternating stepwise movement with perfect fourths, glides without climax through every major key of the chromatic scale. Only the restless modu lation belies the tune’s tranquil gaiety and the unity of fugue. With the short slow movement the hymnic lyricism is reinstated, the pulse slower than the first movement’s, the contours more spaciously serene: though it is significant that the movement makes some compromise with the sonata notion of develop ment and recapitulation. The recapitulatory passage repeats the song-melody in a key a semitone below that of its first appear ance: a transition, perhaps vocally derived, which crops up repeatedly in Rubbra’s music. This restatement leads without a break into a bounding allegro in |, a rhythm typical of Rub bra’s jubilant finales. Themes in cross-rhythm evolve from the initial phrase. Gradually a relationship is revealed between this phrase and the oboe theme with which the symphony had

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opened. Thus the work ends at the point where it began. The phrase has fulfilled its life-circle, and returns to its source. We may note that, for all the freedom of the modulations, the tonal sense is rooted firmly in the harmonic series. The keys in which the four movements start together make up the notes of the diatonic triad. Since Rubbra’s symphonies are basically a religious affirma tion, and his vocal music is rooted in the poetry of the seven teenth century, his work may not seem to have much direct relationship to the twentieth century. Yet his ‘celebrative act’ has a deeper relevance to our needs than has the music of the only composer of his generation to start from an acceptance of the immediate past. William Walton [b. 1902] is an authentic successor to Elgar, as Rubbra is the natural successor to Vaughan Williams. His first works—such as the overture, Portsmouth Point —attempted a fusion of the materialistic vigour of the nine teenth-century symphonic poem with elements derived from earlier English traditions (the extravert aspects of Purcellian and Handelian dance-music) and with the jazzy distortions of the twentieth century. He made his reputationj however, with the brilliant parodistic or sentimental genre pieces of Fagade, composed as accompaniment to Edith Sitwell’s (spoken) poems; and although these might seem to debunk Edwardian glamour, they would not be so touching as well as funny did they not spring from love of the object laughed at. It is not therefore surprising that Walton’s first considerable work—the Viola Concerto of 1925—should be prevailingly nostalgic and closely related to Elgar’s elegiac ’Cello Concerto. The witty Walton of the first works is here transformed into the acid self-mockery of the scherzo; while the last movement, with its spacious marching theme over a stalking bass, hints yearningly at Elgar’s public manner. But the core of the music is in the yearning, not the nobility; and the bittersweet false relations of the lyrically rhap sodic first movement return in the cadenza and valedictory epilogue. The tang of the false relations—the only element in Walton’s music that harks back to our crucial seventeenth cen tury—lends strength to the poignancy; in his later concertos for singing stringed instruments (for violin and for ’cello) Walton repeats the formula of the Viola Concerto perhaps too passively, for the retrospective nostalgia seems almost selfindulgent.

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In the three concertos Walton expresses a private nostalgia which most people can share, if not always sympathize with. In Belshazzer's Feast he, as a North-Countryman, takes over the public manner of English oratorio, which had come to its hey day with the rise of our material prosperity. The rhythmic exuberance, the sonorous spacing, the physical excitement of the scoring have obvious affinities with the extravert animation of Handel’s choral style, in its socially ceremonial vein. But the animation has turned to animus, revealing Edwardian pomp and circumstance in their true, luridly cruel colours. It is sig nificant that this work—which is probably the last ‘Handelian’ oratorio—should be completely irreligious, and that the tri umphant Christians should sing the same kind of music as the heathens. Now they are top dogs, they will clearly behave in exactly the same way; and this peculiarly savage irony is a logical conclusion to Walton’s earlier satirical bent. Belshazzar ‘exposes’ material prosperity, the cult of power, while yearning for its personal satisfactions. The positive values in this piece are contained in the almost Delian chromaticism of the waters of Babylon episode: a heart-breaking music of elegiac lament, comparable with that of the Viola Concerto. Only once in his career has Walton attempted to create something positive from the acceptance of the violence inherent in a materialistic world. That is in the impressive (and Beethovenian) first movement of his Symphony; but it is significant that he found the work so difficult to finish, and that the last movement is a rhetorical gesture rather than a resolution. Rubbra is essentially a religious composer, Walton an elegiacally sensuous composer; Michael Tippett [b. having both a religious sense and social awareness, perhaps touches the out side world at more points than either of them. He made his reputation with an oratorio to his own libretto, A Child of Our Time-, and the difference between this piece and Walton’s ora torio is crucial. Walton’s oratorio is devastatingly negative and deliberately superficial in its public manifestations, while its positive experience is of personal lament. Tippett treats the public experience ‘from within’, expressing its relevance to all of us. Dramatizing a true story of the Nazi terror, the oratorio deals directly with war, oppression, persecution, and isolation. But the personal story becomes a twentieth-century myth: by relating the conception to Handel’s Messiah, Tippett suggests

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some kinship with the oratorio-going British public; by substi tuting Negro spirituals for Bach’s Lutheran chorales, he uses an oppressed people as a general symbol for the stifling of the human spirit—^with the advantage that the idiom is related to the popular music with which his public is familiar. Tippett’s acute awareness of the anguish inherent in experience, especially today, communicates itself to his technique which compared with Walton’s assurance is in some ways strained and unfulfilled. Yet the inward immediacy and validity of the feeling conquer. Without offering any solution to our social evils, without casti gating us for our wickedness, the oratorio grows into a lyrical affirmation of life. In the thrilling final chorus the polyphony swells, the solo vocal writing burgeons into ecstatic arabesque. What keeps us alive, the music tells us, is the human impulse to dance and sing, whatever man’s bestiality to man. The end of the oratorio effects ‘the heart’s assurance’—to quote the title of the song cycle that Tippett wrote to a series of poems about death by two young poets who were killed in the war. From this work, which deals in personal terms with the public issues involved in the oratorio, we can see how Tip pett’s affirmation of life entails a technical development also. Here the bounding, long-breathed melodies in their lilting ‘sprung’ rhythms flower into creative ornamentation (Ex. 72).

Though the music is a new sound, its roots are in tradition—not so much in Renaissance music as in English music of the seven teenth century. Thus the compulsive rhythm is a more extrava gant version of the Purcellian tension between vocal inflexion and physical dance movement; the polyphonically derived har mony intensifies the seventeenth-century partiality for modal variety and false relation; while the flowering of the lines into eyer smaller note-values parallels the seventeenth-century tech nique of divisions on a ground. There is a baroque, sensuously exciting quality in the curling tendrils of Tippett’s vocal line and piano texture; yet—as with such seventeenth-century masters as William Lawes and Purcell—the sustained lift of the melodies gives the music a spiritual buoyancy also. From this

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point of view, the contrast between Tippett’s invigorating and Walton’s elegiac false relations is striking. The Heart’s Assurance may have been a preludial study for Tippett’s opera, The Midsummer Marriage: which differs from his oratorio in starting from, rather than ending with, the, affir mation of life. The marriage is itself the mating of the senses’ joy with the spirit’s mystery; and in taking his operatic myth ology from Jungian psychology Tippett has sought for imagery that will strike deep, to a twentieth-century audience, without need of intellectual explanation. Allegory is bound to be a tricky business, in a society that, believing itself to be rational istic, has grown out of the habit of allegorical thinking. But Tippett’s libretto is probably the only kind that he could have set; and its theme is closely related to the crisis in his own musical development. Technical limitations are always, per haps, imaginative limitations; here Tippett sheds the inhibitions that partially frustrated fulfilment in earlier works. The Ritual Dances—if not the whole opera—are magical in the old, celebrative sense, offering not illusion, but a revelation of the,deepest compulsions from which our lives draw sustenance. The difficulty of Tippett’s music is evidence of the struggle most twentiethcentury men must undergo in order to learn to celebrate. When once we are free, the act of celebration is itself simple. It is relevant to note that the features that make Tippett’s idiom so distinctive—the sprung rhythms and lilting syncopations, the harmonic false relations, the technique of division—all have their counterparts not only in our seventeenth-century music, but also, in a cruder form, in the urban folk-music of our own day—-jazz. Both Rubbra and Tippett were slow starters. That Benjamin Britten [b. 1913] created a work of genius at the age of eighteen cannot be separated from the nature of his achievement. In so far as A Boy was Born was a choral work based on a tradi tional Christian theme, it was part of the heritage of Holst and Vaughan Williams. Where it differs from other attempts to evoke a relatively remote past is in the absence of either nostalgia or inhibition. The ripe chromaticism of Bax’s or Peter Warlock’s settings of mediaeval poems carries with it the knowledge that one is shut out from such single-mindedness; while Holst achieves it only by a denial of the lyrical warmth man needs to live by. The ‘youthfulness’ of Britten’s music, on the other hand, seems

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to spring from a direct realization of what it felt like to live in a world dominated by faith. It is not (like a Rubbra symphony) a religious piece; it is simply about the growth of life in inno cence. A boy is born indeed; and the affirmation is inseparable from the technical virtuosity which Britten (unlike Tippett) seemed to possess by natural endowment. This virtuosity is not merely a matter of contrapuntal skill. It also involves an element that one might call theatrical projection: the ability to discover, as did composers of the baroque era, a musical image that ‘enacts’ aurally, even physically, the visual and psychological images of the poem. (A marvellous example in this work is the simultaneously burning and freezing major and minor seconds that aurally realizes the ‘bleak midwinter’) (Ex. 73). 6X.73

It does not follow that Britten’s A Boy was Bom is a better piece of music than Bax’s Ora Mater Filium or Holst’s Hymn of Jesus', but it does follow that there was in Britten’s work the germ of a future evolution. In his next significant work he began to develop instrumentally the element of theatrical projection present in the choral work—^its cosmopolitan, unprovincial sense of style. The Variations for String Orchestra on a theme of Frank Bridge represent a deliberate break from English pastoralism and are intentionally eclectic. It is not an accident that the theme should be taken from Britten’s teacher, Frank Bridge [1879-1941], for as composer Bridge had been relatively im pervious to Holst’s and Vaughan Williams’s rediscovery of our past, and had tried out his hand in most fashionable Continental techniques, from Skryabinesque chromatics, to Stravinskian percussive dissonance, to Schoenbergian atonality. The Continental composer who has, in this work, exerted a potently meaningful influence on Britten is, however, Mahler. No doubt the voung Englishman was fascinated by Mahler’s music for the same general reasons as was Shostakovitch; but

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there was also a particular reason for Britten’s interest, in that one of the dominant themes in Mahler’s work had been the search for a lost Eden, often identified with the innocence of the child. In A Boy was Bom Britten, being still a boy himself, had expressed a childlike innocence with adult virtuosity. In the few years that had elapsed since that work he was growing up; so into the Bridge Variations comes an element of Mahlerian nostalgia for an innocence that is lost. The introduction, built on arpeggiated figurations in bitonal relationships, and the theme and first variation have a declamatory rhetoric and an intense pathos that recall Mahler; they have also a tender radiance that is the first unmistakable evidence of Britten’s personality. After the first variation, however, the work abruptly ceases to be a personal testament and becomes a series of genre pieces —^March, Romance, Aria Italiana, Bourree Classique, Wiener Waltz, and Moto Perpetuo—^ranging from overt parody to a serious use of the ‘mask’ whereby the artist seeks to depersonal ize his experience. The pathos, and the Mahlerian rhetoric, return with the Funeral March and Chant: until the accumu lating tension is resolved in a brilliantly developed fugue. This combines the externalized vivacity of the genre pieces with the passion of the introduction: so the variations would seem to indicate, in purely musical terms, how one must lose the self in order to find it. It is as though Britten already knew that he was destined to be an operatic composer. In the next stage of his career Britten began to explore the possibilities of operatic ‘projection’ by composing song cycles in the French and the Italian manner. Only when he had dis covered how an English composer could exploit the heritage of European operatic style—as Purcell had exploited the Italian and French conventions of his own time—did Britten explore the possibilities of an aria and arioso relevant to the English language. The tenor Serenade, setting poems covering a wide range of English literature, resembles Purcell’s music in being at once eclectic and almost aggressively personal. One can tabu late the derivation of Britten’s mannerisms—the melodies built on arpeggiated thirds, the expansive leaps, especially of sixth and seventh, the pentatonic undulations—while knowing that his melodies have become unique, if not inimitable. The creation of an English operatic idiom was not, however.

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a purely musical matter. Purcell’s failure to create an English operatic tradition in the seventeenth century was not a personal failure, but the deficiency of a society. That had something to do with the division epitomized in the Civil War; and that had something to do with the ‘disassociation of sensibility’ that in England split mind and matter, spirit and senses, more rapidly and more radically than elsewhere. Perhaps that breach had to be healed, and the heart reborn in innocence, before an English opera could be achieved. However this may be, the discovery of an operatic convention involves, too, the discovery of the necessary myth. Looking back, we can see that all Britten’s operas deal with the same parable: the renewal of innocence as the condition of human creativity. A Boy was Bom—almost literally a boy’s work—could W’th dazz ling innocence create innocence in our minds and senses. The operatic works of Britten’s maturity, on the other hand, are concerned with the fight between the Fool’s simple heart and the corruptions of the world. Peter Grimes turns on the ancient myth of the Sauvage Man who in Eden would be innate good ness: whom the depravity of humanity renders destructive. De prived of Ellen’s love, Grimes’s innocence turns to cruelty and he destroys the Boy who is his own soul. Then the World (thrillingly represented by the chorus) rounds on him, harries him to his death. Though Grimes may be an unheroic hero, his predicament is genuinely tragic; and the progression from innocence to exile, to persecution, is a theme as relevant to our own times as Nahum Tate’s and Purcell’s rehashing of Dido’s story was to theirs. Arioso—the human singing voice become dramatic enactment— is the core of Britten’s opera as it is of Purcell’s; and the element of theatrical projection in Britten’s work now becomes reality. No opera is more evocative, yet at the same time more precise, in its creation of time and place. The tang of the sea, the hues of Suffolk light, the bustle of anonymous human activity, are re vealed through that baroque instinct for the appropriate musical image that first appeared in A Boy was Bom. And this precise realization of the external world is inseparable from the musicdrama’s insight into the mind and heart. Britten’s music, in association with Slater’s adaptation of Crabbe, achieves its deep est insight through its operatic objectivity; and its Englishness is revealed through its eclecticism.

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Albert Herring has the same theme as Grimes, treated comic ally instead of tragically. Herring is again the natural fool, a pathetic if not heroic figure: and though his exile and destruc tion by the World turn out to be only a charade, that does not deflate the almost-tragic potency of the threnody sung over him. These two operas most convincingly attain a balance between the private and the public Eispects of Britten’s habitual theme. In The Rape of Lucretia there is much heartfelt and exquisite music; but the Christian overtones of the end strike an un comfortable, even synthetic, note. Perhaps something the same is true of Billy Budd. The profound humanity of Grimes comes from the fact that the light of innocence and the dark of de pravity are both within him. In Billy Budd the separation of Billy’s light from Claggart’s darkness emphasizes the personal at the expense of the universal aspects of the theme, so there is something a little neurotic, even pretentious, about the dragging in of the Crucifixion. This may explain why Billy Budd has not become an accepted part of operatic repertory, in the way that Peter Grimes has, though there is a sense in which Billy Budd is the more consummately realized work. Still more completely fulfilled, imaginatively and technically, is The Turn of the Screw. Perhaps it is not fortuitous that this piece tackles the basic theme most directly: for Henry James’s horrifying conte enters the world of the child to explore the cor ruption of innocence. Britten’s tightly organized score sees the innocence of the nursery ditty—which he had entered into in his own most touching children’s operas—against the ghastly machinations of human spirits that have died in losing the inno cence that they, presumably, once possessed. Britten’s theatrical magic has never been more insidious; we submit whether we will or not. But the private claustrophobia of the piece means that it cannot challenge the human validity of Grimes. There are signs in Britten’s recent work, however, that the almost pathological horror of corruption is finding its resolu tion. The most beautiful of all Britten’s song cycles with piano, written in between Billy Budd and The Turn of the Screw, is Winter Words, settings of lyrics and ballads by Thomas Hardy. Britten is a highly sophisticated composer, and Hardy a notoriously unsophisticated poet. Yet Britten has used Hardy superbly for his own purposes, setting a group of poems which all deal with innocence and experience, while finding in Hardy’s calm

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acceptance a liberation from neurosis. The first song deals with the inevitability of Time’s threat to the innocence of childhood. It is a lyric poem which becomes a musical image: the bitonal chords and dislocated rhythms of the piano part suggest the wind-blustered trees and the agitation within the heart, while the intermittent unison Ds suggest a firm acceptance of the inevitable. The telescoped harmonies and dislocated rhythms continue softly in the piano while the vocal line sings sweetly, in cooing sixths and sevenths, of childhood’s innocence (Ex. 74): Ex.74

only to be swept away by the winds of Time. Then follow a series of ballads which are all operatic scenas in miniature, evoked again with astonishing economy: the little boy, with his

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ticket stuck in his hat, travelling through the night on the hoot ing train, vacant, knowing nothing of his destiny; or the other little boy, playing his fiddle in ironic simplicity to the convict in the railway waiting-room; or, comically, the wagtail that flies in panic from human contagion; or, pathetically, the an gelically innocent modal music that evokes the choirmaster’s ghostly visitation. Only in the last song does the lyric mode reappear. The poem deals, in philosophic terms, with the birth of consciousness which is also the death of innocence; but in asking when Nescience shall be reaffirmed it admits that Eden once lost can never be recovered. Britten’s long, eternally flow ing vocal line marvellously creates the simplicity of primal bliss and also the longing for its return: while the regular progression of the chords, thickly grouped in the low registers of the piano, accepts the inevitability of pain. This acceptance of reality, within the vision of innocence, finds a still richer and deeper expression in the Nocturne for tenor strings and a series of obbligato instruments. This work, written after The Turn of the Screw, carries on at the point where its companion piece, the tenor Serenade, left off. The Serenade dealt in daytime experience, while ending with Keat’s invocation to sleep. The Nocturne deals entirely in the world of night; but sees dreams as the source of the deepest reality known to us. Thus in the introductory song from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound the polytonal planes on which the intrinsically simple harmonies move create an extraordinary feeling of disassociation; out of the unconscious life of dream comes the creative imagination: ‘forms more real than living man’. But when the first obbligato instrument enters to introduce the first ‘reality’ that emerges from the subconscious the experi ence is frightening indeed. The poem. The Kraken, is one of Tennyson’s juvenalia; yet one wonders if a more terrifyingly aware utterance ever came from the mouth of babe or suckling. The bassoon here becomes the creature’s writhings and surgings, while the strings become percussive ploppings and seasizzlings. As the song fades into a recurrence of the lullaby music, the nightmare is succeeded by what seems to be a pleasant dream, in the remote radiance of A major, with the obbligato instrument, a harp, playing liquid arabesques over sustained string harmonies. The unchanging tonality, the pentatonic flavour, the slow waltz rhythm, give a hypnotic quality to

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Coleridge’s vision of the ‘lovely boy’ in the wilderness. But the innocent sweetness now hides a threat. Though he is a little child (in Britten’s lilting thirds and fourths), he is ‘plucking fruits’; and alone in the night, he has ‘no friends’. The succeeding songs grow from the tension between the dream and the nightmare, suggesting, in the settings of Words worth and Wilfred Owen, the half-conscious link between the terrors within the mind and their manifestation in the external world. The final song—a setting of Shakespeare’s forty-third sonnet—‘When most I wink, then do my eyes best see’—^fulfils the cycle’s theme; that the life of dream is the gateway to reality. Musically, too, the song is consummate, for the vocal line, over-slowly moving quavers, is more lyrically sustained than in any of the previous movements, and is rooted in C major-minor —the key that seems to exert a gravitational pull on the latent, neighbouring tonalities of the other songs. And perhaps, after all, Britten’s quintessential experience turns out to be religious, in a personal, not ritualistic, sense. For when, after the wideranging octaves of the climax, we return to the lullaby’s gende rocking, in the serenity of G major—^but with other-worldly, unresolved D flat major thirds on harp and string harmonics— Britten reveals the mystical depth beneath Shakespeare’s con ceit of the lover who sees his love ‘bright in dark directed’. It is no longer the human beloved we are seeking in the darkness of the night; it is also the Beloved, the source of life that mys teriously renews the human spirit. ‘There is in God, some say a deep but dazzling darkness.’ It cannot be an accident that Britten’s most recent opera is also a setting of Shakespeare—an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream’, that this piece should see the human and the spirit world as complementary: and that the magic music in the opera should be closely related to the music of the unconscious in the Nocturne. The opera is a ritual that is life-celebrating rather than death-stricken. And although there is nothing in Britten’s work to suggest that he thinks a European should, or could, escape the ‘pain of consciousness’, it is significant that he (like all the composers discussed in this chapter, with the partial exception of Tippett and Prokofiev) has hardly ever written a movement in sonata form: and that his recent music, especially A Midsummer Night's Dream, relies more on melodic arabesque over relatively static ostinati and and pedal points than on harmonic movement.

10

MUSIC IN A NEW-FOUND LAND Th is book has been concerned with the history of music in Europe. We have seen that, even in Europe, the composer’s approach to his art has been affected, over the past fifty or more years, by the disintegration of tradition. The American composer started from such disintegration, for he had no cul tural tradition to lose. He had nothing but the old rags and bones of European culture that, imported to a new environ ment, soon lost their savour. Then gradually, in the pulping machine of a polyglot society, the rags and bones began to ac quire a taste of their own. The process, however, took time; and perhaps for this reason the earliest American compositions to manifest a creative spark tended to be technically inexpert. William Billings [1746-1800], in the late eighteenth century, had little ambition except to produce devotional music in the tradition of the Puritan hymn. His mistakes in text-book harmony have, however, a whiff of creative genius: so that he is an original who can still move us, while the professional compe tence of his European-trained contemporaries and successors can move us no longer. If the lack of a past means the loss of the wisdom that respect for tradition brings, it also offers a supreme opportunity. Poten tially, the artist becomes an ‘unacknowledged legislator of the world’: so the first authentic American composer, Charles Ives [1874-1954], held that music was a moral force, dismissing the belief that it was primarily self-expression as ‘the Byronic fal lacy’. He could not be content, like his contemporary, Edward Macdowell [1861-1908], to write second-hand, if poetic, music in the German tradition, even with a piquant spice of Grieg-like chromatics. If he was to be an honest creator, he had to take his materials from the world around him. Since he was born at Danbury, Connecticut, this meant the provincial world of the hard-bitten farmer, the small business-man and trader: which 1048

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in musical terms was the town band (which Ives’s father directed), the corny theatre tune, the chapel hymn. The remote ness of this music from academic convention stimulated the aural imagination; and while Ives’s father had given him a training in conventional harmony and counterpoint and a re spect for the ‘manly’ classical composers, especially Beethoven, this was insignificant compared with the unpredictable soundstuff offered to him by his environment. What excited Ives’s imagination was the vast body of camp singers yelling slightly different versions of the same hymn; the horn-player who gets left behind his fellows in the town band; the four bands that, at celebration time, play different music simultaneously in the four corners of the town square; the chapel singing heard over water, mingled with the sound of wind and rustling leaves. Ives would have agreed with his father, who, when asked how he could stand hearing old John (the local stonemason) bellowing off-key at camp meetings, replied: “Old John is a supreme musician. Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds. If you do, you may miss the music.” Ives’s empirical approach to technique relates him to Whit man; he shares the poet’s all-inclusiveness, his ubiquitous love of every facet of the visible, audible, and tactile world. His gar gantuan- appetite ‘absorbs and translates’ experience as the original Leather-stocking pioneer attempted to subjugate the physical world; and techniques from conventional European music, from jazz improvisation, from chapel and bar parlour, and from the noises of Nature are to be used as experience dictates, often within the same work, and even simultaneously, since all experience is related and indivisible. Paradoxically, these fusions of contrarieties sound purposeful, not chaotic. In General Putman's Camp, from the orchestral Three Places in New England, a diversity of military songs and ragtime tunes are played together in different rhythms and tempi, and often in different keys, mixed up with the huzzaing of the crowd and various a-rhythmic, non-tonal sounds of Nature. The'music evokes, with astonishing immediacy, the physical and nervous sensation of being present at such a vast outddor celebration; yet the flux of life becomes one through the force ofthe imagina tion. Ives tells us that the piece derives from a rec^qction of childhood. It is difficult to think of any art that conveys more

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precisely the experience—common in childhood, rarer in later years—of being at once identified with the flux of appearances and detached from it, as watching eye, as listening ear. In this sense, the essence of Ives’s art is discovery: a new-found land. The third of the Three Places in New England—The Hausatonic at Stockbridge—^is another transient personal reminiscence that becomes a ‘moment of reality’. The lovely, sinuous horn melody, with its almost Mahlerian orchestration, suggests both the chapel singing that Ives tells us he heard coming over the water, through the mist, and also the tranquil security of the love be tween himself and his wife (charmingly called Harmony). This melody is absorbed in a haze of floating strings that play, as from a distance, more or less independently of the rest of the orchestra. Gradually these sounds of Nature—of river, mist, and rustling leaves—grow stronger until they engulf the love-song: at which point the tumult abruptly ceases, and the song is left suspended, unresolved on a sigh. With great poignancy, the piece reveals both the centrality of human love and also its impermanence in the non-human context of the natural world. For while Ives resembled Whitman in his appetite for ex perience, the obverse side of the American myth is present in his work, too: the Ego that would swallow all experience be comes progressively more aware of its isolation. The more im mediate the artist’s response to the external world, the more deeply he has to seek Reality beneath the flux. Ives accepted the world as it was, in all its chaos and contradiction, and for him there could be no division between the world of art and that of practical affairs. But he regarded his music and the insurance business in which he made his fortune as comple mentary activities. Both sought for a New World; in both the material and the spiritual were inseparable. He resembled the New England Transcendentalists in believing that he who would create a new world must first put his own house in order. One of his most representative works—^written, on and off, between 1908 and 1915—^is in fact dedicated to the Transcendentalists^to those New England Heroes who lived in Concord between 1840 and i860. The first movement of this Second Piano Sonata is a portrait of Emerson, hero of American strife; and this is a Beethovenian movement in so far as it dualistically opposes an ‘epic’ motive (the motto from Beethoven’s Fifth)

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against a song-like lyric theme. But although Ives is a Beethovenian composer, he cannot share Beethoven’s positives: so the opposed motives do not achieve reconciliation in tonal order. They interact; and change their identities as they are related in wildly opposed rhythms and on separate (polytonal) planes of harmony. Beethoven’s transformations of themes are positively controlled by the Will; the form of the Fifth Sym phony is the gradual revelation of the theme’s destiny. Ives’s transformations of themes are kaleidoscopic, protean like life itself, and the unity they seek becomes as much linear and serial as tonal: Ives even introduces Schoenbergian transpositions of the notes of the series to increasingly remote pitches (Ex. 75).

But the permutations of the motives do not, at the end, coalesce into a sustained melody; the music gradually disintegrates over a slowly oscillating chromatic bass: for though Ives has immense courage, he has not—perhaps no one, living in a rootless world, could have—^Beethoven’s assurance. In this Emerson movement the conflict between lyric and epic forces has been largely subjective. The fight goes on within the consciousness, and the Will attempts—with only partial suc cess—to control destiny. The second movement, however, is quite un-Beethovenian, for it deals with the subconscious life: with dreams, nightmare, *and the sensory impressions of child hood. Ives says that he has not stressed the most significant aspect of Hawthorne—his Puritan sense of guilt: though guilt is closely connected with the ‘phantasmal realms’ in which the movement deals. In this movement there is virtually no tonal ity, no metre, and, one might almost say, no rhythm, since every quaver is violently syncopated off a beat that is merely implicit. Into the amorphous hurly-burly fragments of both lyric and epic motive intrude. But they have no controlling force; they are flotsam, thrown up on the waves of the unconscious.

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Occasionally they provoke confused, dream-like recollections of daytime experience (the circus band episode, the tipsy ragtime, the love song that dissolves in a pianissimo haze of noteclusters, played with a strip of board). Emerson was the life of the mind and soul, Hawthorne the life of the subconscious. With the third movement, Ives turns to everyday reality: the Allcott’s house, the ‘witness of Concord’s common virtue’. Here both lyric and epic motive appear in simple form, realistically, for Beethoven’s Fifth is being played in the parlour. The opening hymn-like version of the epic motive is a tune now unambiguously in B flat, but harmonized with telescoped tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords of E flat, so that the harmonic progression seems almost immobile, com pared with the turbulence of the previous movements. But al though ‘the richness of not having’ may provide us with tran quillity of a kind, it does not release us from the burden of the Will or the mystery of the unconscious. That can come only with a mystical act: and in the last movement Thoreau sits in his sunny doorway at Walden—“He grew in those seasons like com in the night. He realized what the Orientals meant by contemplation and forsaking of works.” The music opens bar less, almost rhythmless, with a fluttering of leaves: which in volves too the fluttering of human nerves in response. Gradually, the fragmentary lines grow into a long, winding melody that fuses the lyric idea with the epic. Ives directs that this melody should be played on a flute, if you happen to have one handy. This is not merely quixotic: the other-worldly colour of the instrument would emphasize the effect of the melody as the goal of the whole sonata. As the melody sings over a swaying, un moving ostinato built out of the thirds and fifths of the epic motive, the spirit is liberated from inner strife (the Emerson movement): from nightmare (the Hawthorne movement): even from everyday reality (the Allcotts movement). The lyric and epic contrarieties have become one, in a mystical communion with Nature. Yet the end of the work is characteristic. The epic motive sounds high up, this time neither rising nor falling. This seems to suggest a final resolution into D major. Yet the G natural G complex is still audible, reminding us of the point we started from: while into the last bar the leading note, G sharp, softly obtrudes (Ex. 76): seeming to suggest how for Ives each resolution into Being is only a stage in the eternal flux

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of Becoming. Experience is essentially incomplete, and never to be completed, except by death. One might say that America has compressed its musical past, present, and potential future into the personality of Ives. The strife in his music is a still more violent development from European humanism (and the sonata principle); and its very violence leads him to a new, in part serial, search for order. That Ives anticipated by several decades the more experimental techniques of Schoenberg, Bartok, and Stravinsky (not to men tion musique concrete and electronic music) is not in itself im portant; and his techniques are not always adequately realized, since he suffered—as any artist must—^from working without a public. Yet in seeking order out of a polyphony not merely of lines, but also of freely evolving harmonies, rhythms, and tonal ities, he may have more to suggest to the future of music than any of the European composers who are, in intrinsic achieve ment, greater. Nor is his significance merely ‘historical’. His finest music—such as The Hausatonic at Stockbridge—sounds now as ripely a part of the past as the Mahler and Berg whom it fortuitously resembles. If it has also something of the rawness of a new world, the rawness brings with it an authentic note of grandeur. It is a note that is becoming rarer; we should be grateful for it. Carl Ruggles [b. 1876], is a man of the same generation as Ives; but whereas Ives is both gregarious democrat and soli tary visionary, Ruggles is unequivocally the isolated spirit. (He is almost literally a hermit; and the walls of his study, in his Vermont house, are symbolically papered with the exquisite calligraphy of his own manuscripts.) Thus the texture of Ruggles’s music has nothing like the multifarious complexity of Ives’s, the rag-bag into which all experience is poured helterskelter, to be re-created. Yet although Ruggles’s music contains no direct reflection of the chaos of the American scene, he is

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still concerned with the New: for he is a solitary in New England, where so much that went to make America is rooted. Though Ruggles has written only a handful of works, his music is singularly consistent. His is a dedicated art, affirming the freedom of the human spirit; and his affirmation runs parallel to Schoenberg’s ‘free’ atonal period, in the Europe of the second decade of the century. As an American, indeed, with no past, Ruggles sought freedom—^from tonal bondage, from the harmonic strait-jacket—even more remorselessly than Schoen berg. The sound of his music, with its preponderance of minor seconds, major sevenths, and minor ninths, is similar to Schoen berg’s; but in place of Schoenberg’s density, Ruggles cultivates a clear, ‘open’ resonance in his singing, winging polyphony. This spacious texture and resilient rhythm are perhaps Ruggles’s representatively American qualities, which have their counter part in the polyphonic textures of Ives in, say, the Emerson movement of the ‘Concord’ Sonata. But Ruggles differs from Ives in his desire to refine and concentrate. Ives accepts the Uni verse—the tawdry and trivial along with the sublime. Ruggles is concerned with his own soul—with the ‘great things’ that are done ‘when Men and Mountains meet’. It is revealing to compare Ruggles’s Men and Mountains with Delius’s A Song of the High Hills. Delius starts from the burden of his own passion ate heart—the appoggiatura-laden harmony that tries to drag down the singing lines. Ruggles’s chromaticism is not, historic ally speaking, so far from Delius’s. But for him, as for Schoen berg, singing polyphony overrides harmonic teirsion, seeking the One in the Many. Delius is a (belated and weary) humanist; Ruggles is a mystic in a non-religious society. Paradoxically, his mysticism is a part of his Americanism: for it is also his ‘newness’, his search for personal integrity. The American flavour of Harris’s language centres in its ‘ver nacular’ line and rhythm. If the opening suggests plainsong, that is not only because it is religious in feeling, but also because plainsong is close to speech. The racy vigour which the move ment gradually acquires and the open texture—with a preva lence of fourths, minor sevenths, and major ninths—rejuvenate the continuous Wagnerian flow of the enharmony and the shim mer of the Sibelian moto perpetuo. So, imperceptibly, the moto perpetuo is transformed into the brusquely American fugued dance with which the work concludes. This exciting, if curious.

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mating of the Middle West dance-hall with the mediaeval hoquet is the most obviously ‘contemporary’ section of the score: and the dosest in spirit and technique to the music of Harris’fi contemporary, Aaron Copland [b. 1900]. The pioneering, quasi-religious vein of Ruggles and Harris is remote from Copland’s early music. In an arid machine civilization, he seems to have felt that he had to sacrifice the natural technique of lyrical growth. In the Piano Variations of 1930 he starts from skeletonic fragments: the ambiguous thirds, sixths, and sevenths of the Negro blues, and the declamatory leaps ofJewish synagogue music. It is significant that both Negro and Jew are dispossessed peoples who become, for Copland, symbolic of urban man’s uprootedness. Since the dislocated fragments cannot grow spontaneously, they must be rein tegrated in a personal vision. So the technique of the' Variations is rigidly serial, based on a five-note figure (Ex. 77). The phrases Ex.77 COPLAND Voriotion*

never grow, though they are multifarious in mood—angry, fierce, protesting, naive, warm, tender. Yet out of these dislo cated fragments a whole is created by a kind of ‘cubist’ re integration; and though the piano texture, derived from the ‘blue’ false relations of the ‘series’, has the metallic hardness and precision of a machine, the music achieves, out of its minimal material, an austere but humane nobility. If Copland felt a need to humanize his music it was not because his early works were not bom of the heart; it was simply because an artist—as Ives found—cannot long subsist without an audience. The simpler style of his ballets and film music does not deny the technique of his earlier work: though the music’s deliberate lack of progression is less disturbing when allied to immediately recognizable, folk-like tunes, and to

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physical action or visual drama. Certainly the folky vein of Cop land’s ballets, especially Appalachian Spring, is not an evasion of the steel girders—^within which Copland so miraculously dis covers a human warmth—of the Piano Variations: for he sees the praiiie as symbol of the irremediable loneliness of big cities, the hymn as symbol of the religious and domestic security that urban man has lost. It is interesting that although the ballets are naturally less static, harmonically and rhythmically, than the Variations, they show a Stravinskian partiality for the tele scoping of tonic, dominant and subdominant chords. The identity between Copland’s urban and his rustic vein is revealed by comparing Quiet City—a sound-image of the empty city at night—with the elegy in Billy the Kid', it is also worth noting that his Music for Radio was composed in New York, as urban music for an industrial society; the sub-title Saga of the Prairies being added as a result of a competition for a descriptive tag. In any case, the ultimate maturing of his talent, in the works he has written since about 1940, involves a synthesis of the implacable isolation of the Piano Variations with the more outward-tending humanity of his ‘functional’ works. This is evi dent in the first movement of the Piano Sonata, which uses the technique of the Variations in a richer, more direct form. Again we have the brief figures, the ‘blue’ false relations, the splitting up of the phrases into their component parts. Again the buoy ant, upward lifl of fourths, fifths, and minor sevenths is pinned down by the immense slowness of the rhythmic and harmonic design. The energetic phrases seem, against this timeless back ground, curiously wistful, suggesting both urban man’s ant-like energy and his ineluctable loneliness. This is even more remark able in the nagging, wedge-shaped figure on which the scherzo is built: so it is not an accident that these two movements should lead—by way of a strange bridge passage, like a sublimated hill-billy stomp—into an andante which is a quintessential ex pression of immobility. The tender, cool melody, with its widely spaced fifths and fourths, floats out of the material of the scherzo and trio and comes to rest in empty harmonies that pulse as unobtrusively as a heart-beat. The pendulum swings wider at the climax, when the first movement’s clanging thirds return; but the regularity is never broken. The music runs down like a clock, dissolving away into space and eternity, while the grinding false relations of the opening movement echo from an

Music in a New-found Land 1057 immense distance (Ex. 78). The music that here stills the heart’s agitation is closely related to the film score to Wilder’s Our Town, which involves images of vast space; its serenity is the more impressive and (to most of us) moving because Copland EX.7* COPLAND Sonota

is not a mystic like Ruggles or a primitive like Harris. It is pertinent to note that one of his finest, most representative works is a song cycle, setting verses of that supreme poet of American isolation, Emily Dickinson. The regional, Robert Frost-hke aspects of Harris and Cop land have had many imitators; yet most that is vital in American music seems to derive from the tradition* of solitariness, if the paradoxical phrase be admitted. The music of Elliott Carter [b. 1908], for instance, though more controlled and sophisticated than either, has hints of both Ruggles and Ives in its sturdily independent polyphony of line and rhythm; while the impres sive slow movement of his First String Quartet reveals a much more complicated form of Copland’s dichotomy between the energy of the component melodic lines and the tortoise-like pace of the harmonic rhythm. Like Ives—but with a more Beethovenian awareness—Carter uses both ‘dualistic’ tonal tech niques and ‘monistic’ serial methods in his attempts to create order from chaos. Other composers, notably Roger Sessions [b. 1896], have gravitated from traditional tonality to accept ance of the serial principle. The Puritan austerity common to the composers we have mentioned thus far (with the partial exception of Ives) is characteristic of Sessions too, though his music has a sensuous rhetoric that suggests Mahler and Schoenberg, though his rhythms are more kinetic than those of the Viennese school. The whirring, whirling impetus of the movement, the kaleidoscopic texture, of the allegros of his Second and Third Symphonies have a—^perhaps typically

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American—multifariousness and zest; and the serial unity which he seeks is, like the Reality of the poet Wallace Stevens, the truth of the imagination. The external world intrudes into his music scarcely at all; perhaps this amounts to an admission that a socially acceptable idiom is, for a ‘serious’ American composer, no longer a practical possibility. Certainly he and Carter have had far more influence on the younger generation of American composers than the regionalists. It is understandable that though American music inevitably begins with an acceptance of the ‘western’ way of life in its most aggressive form, it also manifests, in all the composers we have discussed, a partial rejection of post-Renaissance humanism: a turning to the East comparable with, but more extreme than, that manifested in the European composers considered in the previous chapter. We shall not therefore be surprised to find that the most radically experimental tendencies we commented on in European music have their complement in American music: and that one American composer of the older generation was the pioneer of such developments on both sides of the Atlantic. Ives, in exploiting noise and non-European elements, had hinted at their abandonment. Edgar Varese [b. 1885]—a French-American who lived and worked in Paris during the nineteen-twenties, but has now settled in the States—entirely discarded the conventional materials of melody and harmony, as well as rhythmic patterns related to harmonic tension. For him the post-Beethovenian approach to music as psychological drama was irrelevant. He rather sought a musical complement to Action painting; music should be created, like the dance, as an act of the body itself, manipulating tangible and audible material ‘concretely’. So he starts from the sound-character istics of each instrument—^what he calls its density, its timbre and quality independent of pitch relationships, let alone har mony. The instrument is a sound like any other relatively acci dental noise; and Varese’s music is a polyphony of timbres, each instrument having its own typical linear figure and rhythmic pattern, both of which never develop. Construction, for Varese, is an achievement of the sense of space. Harmonically conceived music achieves this through the development of themes, the movement to and away from a central key. Varese achieves his ‘opening of space’ through the addition and contrast of rhythms and timbres.

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Clearly such a conception of music is more ritualistic and magical than ‘expressive’: and has much in common with Oriental music and with the music of primitive societies. Var^e believes that this was necessary because the hyper-self-conscious ness of modern man is one of the reasons for twentieth-century chaos; art’s duty is to encourage forgetfulness of self, if not in mysticism (which is accessible only to dedicated spirits), then in magic. But he has always insisted that his ritualistic approach is modern as well as primitive, being related to a machinedominated civilization. The percussive noises and patterns in his music have affinities with the sounds of city life that have be come part of our everyday consciousness. The artist’s task is to help us to perceive the patterns of order and beauty that lie beneath mechanistic chaos, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. When we can all see and hear, the artist, presumably, will be unnecessary. Some advanced composers have, indeed, already relinquished the notion of an audience. John Cage [b. 1912], in his early works, used ‘p epared’ pianos to create a melodically pentatonic and harmonically percussive music closer to Balinese music than to anything in Western tradition. In later works he first sub jugated the ego to completely serial processes and then—in ulti mate rejection of the will—to chance (for instance, the throw of dice). Though he begins with Varese’s preoccupation with sound as such, he has no use for Varese’s physical assault on the nerves. Music becomes therapeutic, an agent of Zen Buddhism: hardly discussable in the same terms as traditional Western music. It is perhaps interesting that his work appeals strongly to those concerned with the visual arts. Such experimental extremism seems a far cry indeed from Ives’s attempt at an ‘American’ comprehensiveness: the di chotomy which he so profoundly distrusted would seem to be complete if we put on the one side the music of Cage and his associates, and on the other the world of common appetite, of mass-produced entertainment music. It is true that this is a situation that has developed only during the last hundred years: that up to Schubert’s day (as we saw) there was a distinction in degree, but not in kind, between music written consciously to ‘entertain’ and music that was a testament of the human spirit: that even nineteenth-century composers such as Offenbach and

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Johann Strauss [1825-1899], whose art was basically social and functional, none the less entailed a sense of values consistent with the more ‘serious’ art of their time. But it is a tall order to convict the twentieth century of a kind of cultural schizo phrenia. Though there may be two kinds of art today, one of which preserves the integrity of the human-spirit while the other debases it, we must remember that the human mind has never shown much reluctance to being debased; the difference today is that machine techniques make the process easier and more efficient. Moreover, the nature of the debasement is not for tuitous. Commercial art prostitutes our feelings in the way that seems likely to yield the biggest financial return; but even commercial techniques assume the existence of proclivities that await exploitation. Though the Hollywood Dream may be shoddy compared with the myths in the light of which great civilizations have lived, we do not preserve our precious in tegrity by pretending it has nothing to do with us. It is even possible that commercial art is beginning to develop its own inner responsibilities. The Desert Song is pure (or rather impure) make-believe; but the glossy American musical is unconsciously evolving codes of behaviour, even of value, which are intimately related to an industrial society. Though we may not like them, their existence cannot be gainsaid: and should make us sus picious of glib distinctions between art and commerce. In this connexion the work of George Gershwin [1898-1937] is of particular interest. He was an instinctive musician, nur tured on the restricted diet of Tin Pan Alley. His basic material was the thirty-two-bar tune, whether in ‘common’ or ‘threequarter’ tempo: divided into a four-bar phrase answered by a four-bar phrase, both stated twice; followed by two four-bar or four two-bar phrases of‘contrast’; rounded off by a repetition of the first eight bars. The no less machine-made harmonic vocabulary came from fifty or sixty years back—from (say) Massenet and Grieg, with a garnishing of Ravel sauce. Yet the songs which Gershwin wrote within this convention revivify cliché: whereas all his attempts to extend his range proved —^with one exception—disastrous. In the Rhapsody in Blue or the Piano Concerto the tunes themselves are often as good—as stimulating in melodic contour, in the unexpected ellipsis or contraction of rhythm—as the best of Gershwin’s commercial numbers. But the tunes are complete in themselves, and are

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improved neither by the spurious ‘development’ nor by the bits of Lisztian tinsel with which they are flimsily tied together. Significantly, Gershwin’s only successful large-scale work is his opera, Porgf and Bess. Here the ‘numbers’, eis in the com mercial musical, can be held together by the story: so that it is comparatively unimportant that Gershwin’s technique is not much less rudimentary in his opera than in his symphonic pieces. Habitually, he resorts to ostinato basses, rhythmic patterns, alternations of two chords and mechanical sequences to keep the music going; in moments of excitement he relapses into sliding chromatics. Yet Por^ is a moving, deeply impressive, work; and it is so because, for all its sophisticated facilities, Gershwin’s tunes have never been more spontaneous or more fetching. These tunes cohere in a dramatic intensity, not because of Gershwin’s ‘external’ attempts at thematic inter relation, but because, working within commercial conventions, he has felt the drama deeply. For all his urban glamour, he has created a folk-opera about a dispossessed people, with a hero who is both a Negro and a cripple. The idiom of Broadway may pollute the authenticity of his Negroid music; yet one can have no doubts as to the genuineness of the ecstatic nostalgia that pervades the score and even—in episodes such as the funeral oration in Act I—^re vitalizes the harmonic texture. Gershwin chose a libretto, by a Negro writer, DuBose Heywood, which dealt with corruption, oppression, isolation, and the inviolability of a radical innocence of spirit. He was not himself a Negro or a physical cripple; but he was a poor boy who made good: a Jew who knew all about spiritual isolation, and who had opportunity enough to learn about corruption. Perhaps he wrote such fresh and powerful, as opposed to cliché-ridden, music because even in the face of temptation he preserved, like Porgy, a modicum of radical inno cence. Gershwin has here created a twentieth-century myth meaningful to himself: and meaningful to us, in so far as he was representative of his and our generation. Genius does not often flourish in the environment of Tin Pan Alley. But it is not common anywhere; and Gershwin was in no way frustrated by the commercialized conventions within which he worked. When Ravel said he had nothing to teach Gershwin, he meant precisely what he said: not that Gershwin was endowed direct from heaven with a complete technical

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equipment, nor that he was technically past praying for; but that his technique was exactly adequate to what he had in him to do. In this connexion we may compare him with Carlo Menotti [b. 1911], who grew up a decade or so later, when the techniques of commercial music had been sophisticated by years of application to the cinema. Being intelligent and ingenious, he adapted cinematic technique to solve one of the basic prob lems of opera in a democratic society. Taking his cue from Hollywood and from Puccini, he has created an operatic styli zation that seems almost as ‘natural’—and therefore acceptable to a popular democratic audience—as realistic drama. In no discreditable sense he has also learned how to exploit subjects that go home to his public. The Consul is a genuinely frightening vision of the dehumanized world of officialdom, with the added advantage that it can, if need be, be imbued with political significance (on either side). The Medium exploits both o.ur pseudo-scientific desire to debunk the irrational and our vague yearnings for supernatural excitement, if not satisfaction. Yet Menotti, who seems to have liberated commercial cliché in making it emotionally more malleable, is more a product of industrialized inhumanity than Gershwin : because although his musical-dramatic technique is much more complex, the music itself is neither good nor bad, but so cinematically para sitic as to be without identity. A Gershwin tune exists in its own right; Menotti’s parlando lyricism has no existence apart from his drama. What counts, in any field, is the quality of the music. Gershwin succeeded (and kept alive the human spirit) in his theatre music while failing, on the whole, in his concert music. Two other Jewish American composers, Marc Blitzstein [b. 1905] and Leonard Bernstein [b. 1918], started as highly sophisticated ‘art’ composers, but found fulfilment in a world at least allied to the commercial theatre. Blitzstein had a pro found admiration for Kurt Weill [1900-1950], a German com poser who wrote ‘straight’ music having affinities with Hinde mith and Busoni, but who made his mark in such works as Die Dreigroschenoper (a modern version of The Beggar's Opera) and Mahagonny, wherein he expressed the malaise of the post-war years in a peculiarly haunting adaptation of the idiom of popu lar music. At the time of the Nazi persecution, Weill went to America and worked on Broadway and in Hollywood, where

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his music lost much of the evocative simplicity that had made it so memorable. But perhaps he could not be expected to ‘feel’ the American scene with the same authenticity as he had shown in invoking the urban Germany of his youth; certainly his example suggested to Blitzstein how the idioms of America’s own popular music might be adapted to a comparably expres sive purpose. His plays-in-music on social themes both refine and intensify popular idiom until it is first-hand, not massproduced, feeling: but Blitzstein’s American art is buoyant in its honesty, whereas Weill’s had been pessimistic, if compassionate. The same energy is found in the work of Leonard Bernstein, who accepts the idiom of the commercial theatre more at its face value: so that his positive awareness of tenderness and com passion is perhaps suspect, when compared with Blitzstein’s. Nonetheless, the musical and choreographic urgency of West Side Story is equated with the reality, as well as the topicality, of the human theme; and that is concerned specifically with both the herd instinct and the isolation of the individual soul. This would seem to indicate that in American music the ‘tradition of solitariness’ and the social music of‘entertainment’ are not as disparate as one might superficially suppose. From this point of view, the work of a minor composer, Virgil Thom son [b. 1896], has an interest more than commensurate with the intrinsic value of his compositions. He was a bright boy from Kansas whose musical legacy consisted of the kind of American bric-à-brac—hymns, parlour pieces, ragtime—that was also the background of Ives’s experience. Intellectually precocious, he got himself to Harvard, and then to Paris, where, as American cosmopolitan but not expatriate, he became a member of the Gertrude Stein circle and wrote wildly experimental, often satirically debunking works as a protest against a world that had had its day. He might, given a more vigorous talent, have developed in any number of directions; yet in fact his sophisti cation, even his complexity, hid a peculiar naivety. His kinship with Satie is more illuminating than his association with Ger trude Stein; his bringing together of emotionally disparate ele ments—plainsong and café-tune, Bachian fugue and Middle West hymn—has Satie’s childlike unsentimentality, while he too discovers a personal logic in unexpected relationships be tween triadic harmonies. Significantly, his innocence is also his

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most American quality. Four Saints in Three Acts, the Gertrude Stein opera that won him both fame and notoriety, is the first of his works to fuse the American-naif with the Parisian-sophisticate. Although far too long for most of us, it reaches, beneath its enfant terrible elegance, the oddly poignant homespun humour which, on his return to the States, Thomson'transplanted into his specifically American works, such as the second Stein opera. The Mother of Us All, and the beautiful elegiac piece for wind band, A Solemn Music. The vein of American feeling in these works is close to that of Blitzstein’s plays in music; and it is not an accident that so much of Thomson’s best music has been written for the cinema, to which medium the Satiean technique of musical collage admirably lends itself. The essence of Thomson is in his score to Flaherty’s Louisiana Story: a film that, signifi cantly enough, sees the clash between man and Nature through the eyes of a child. In the Chorale the serially related but har monically unrelated triads that accompany the derrick’s pro gress along the river are Satiean, yet have become at once original and indigenous. Thomson’s American simplicity, which complements the American complexity of men such as Carter and Sessions—^is most completely fulfilled in subservience to a function: which involves, too, a highly mechanized technique. So if we view the amorphous, apparently chaotic American scene as a whole, it would seem that what matters most is the extremes. On the one hand stand the grand old ‘progressives’ —Ives, Ruggles, Varèse: with the more experimental Copland, Carter, and to a lesser degree Harris, Sessions, and some of the more recent experimentalists. On the other hand is the authen tic element in jazz, as a communal, urban folk art; Gershwin when he is not writing symphonic works; Blitzstein and the Bernstein of West Side Story, the film music of Thomson. Com paratively, the middle-of-the-path men, even such an excellent conservative musician as Samuel Barber [b. 1910] or such a clever theatre-man as Menotti, have little vitality and not much social or artistic justification. Perhaps there is a moral in this, for a new, if not for Europe’s old, community. Certainly it suggests that the split between the esoteric and the popular is not merely to be deplored. In the long run the real split may prove to be between the creatively vigorous on the one hand and the emotionally and academically safe on the other. And that split has been with us since civilization began.

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The ‘western hemisphere’ is not, of course, confined to the United States. There is also Latin America, which is rapidly becoming an important, creatively energetic part of the modern world. Its achievements in music are not as yet comparable with those of North America, but development will inevitably be sudden and spectacular. The problems of the Latin American composer depend on the fact that he lives neither in a New World nor an old. In the background he has a very ancient Indian civilization and a still vigorous primitive culture. In the foreground he has various European elements imported by the Spanish conquest (Spanish folk-music and urban popular music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) ; a Negroid element growing out of the slave trade; and a new, stream lined mechanistic civilization spreading from the United States. In the music of European composers, such as Janácek, Bartók, even Stravinsky, the primitive is involved in the traditions of civilization; in Latin America the various ‘layers’ of culture exist alongside one another, without apparent relationship. Thus the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos [1881-1959]—the most representative Latin American composer—has obvious affini ties with the Brazilian landscape, containing the musical equivalents of the jungle, the Lost City, the skyscraper and the road-house. In his jungle-like fecundity, his appetite for ex perience, for life in the raw, Villa-Lobos has points in common with Ives. But whereas Ives was conscious of creating a New World, both materially and spiritually, Villa-Lobos combines a Latin exuberance with a Latin passivity. He accepts the chaos of the contemporary 'scene; his energy, though intermittently purposeful, is directionless. This is why he was apparently com pletely unself-critical: and why his music tends to be most impressive when most fortuitous. From this point of view, it is significant that his most techni cally sophisticated works tend to be no more than mildly interesting. He does something with the Debussyan and Ravellian idiom he picked up in Paris in the second decade of the century; but the vein of piquant nostalgia which he distils from this style—“the mood of the Latin American saudades—^spreads thinly over so large a number of works. Almost all his memorable music is conceived in the convention of the choros\ and this, interestingly enough, is an art-composer’s adaptation of popular improvisation. Especially at Carnival time, the choro party is an

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integral part of Brazilian life: a Latin American jam-session at which any number of musicians, playing any instruments that happen to be handy, improvise empirically and episodically, with no more than a scheme of rhythmic relationships between each section to keep them going. Villa-Lobos’s innumerable works called Chores, scored for anythingTrom a single guitar to a mammoth symphony orchestra, are, ofcourse, composed music, notated; but he seeks always an effect of the maximum density of detail with the maximum energy of movement. Superficially, the sharp, hard sonorities he draws from imitation of Úitadkocchorobands resemble those which Stravinsky derived from popular music of the war years and the early-twenties. Whereas Stravin sky preserved, however, an almost geometric intellectual control over his unsophisticated sources, Villa-Lobos sought, and at best achieved, the white-hot immediacy of improvisation. In the seventh Choros, scored for a miscellaneous instrumçntal ensemble, we begin, for instance, with a nostalgically impres sionist prelude—the composer’s own, relatively sophisticated consciousness. Out of this emerges, from the depths below con sciousness, the primitive jungle: obsessive drum rhythms and short, screaming melodic phrases in incantatory patterns and exotic coloration. Then, with a scoop on the violin, we are in the world of nineteenth-century Spanish popular music: a waltz in which an urban nostalgia is interlaced with a savage vigour. Later, Indian incantatory elements turn Negroid, so we find ourselves in a world halfway between the jungle and the urban violence of Chicago-style jazz. At the end we return to the impressionist opening—to the composer’s own sensibility that apprehends the chaotic vitality of the Brazilian scene. Yet the piece has no real structure and no development; the brief, quasi-improvisatory sections shift between the various levels of culture in a way that is exciting, but, in its rootlessness, also sad. Occasionally—as may happen in genuine jazz improvisation— the creative imagination takes complete control. Then, as in the marvellous Nonetto of 1923, the jungle and jazz, the primitive and the urban, become a new world of sound. That the music has no beginning, middle nor end becomes a positive quality: for the whole piece is a tremendous incremental climax that destroys consciousness, and with it the time-sense. When the chorus enters it is not as the representative of humanity, but as a terrifying animistic force. This is a twentieth-century

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primitivism that exposes the glibness of such a composer as Carl Orff. While Villa-Lobos’s most violent music is easily his most impressive, it is hardly surprising that, living in a world embryonically coming to birth, he should have been impelled too by a complementary yearning for ‘civilization’. The most curious example of this is the sequence of works which he called Bachianas Bresilieras. To attempt to fuse the empirical, episodic choros technique with the unity and continuity of Bach’s idiom would seem a forlorn hope indeed. Yet the remarkable work for eight, cellos does achieve, at least in the slow movement, a sus tained line and an extraordinary depth and richness of harmony. The richness has not, of course, Bach’s tense serenity; it is not a faith accepted or achieved. But in this modinhya—a sentimental urban song derived from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish elements—nostalgia becomes almost a positive virtue; one can understand how the miraculous new cities may rise in the midst of the jungle. Villa-Lobos felt the need for order if he could not himself create it. The nature of the ‘new order’ is revealed in a Mexican com poser of the next generation, Carlos Chavez [b. 1899]. The them.atic and rhythmic patterns in his music are again brief, incantatory, ritualistic, related to primitive sources; the instru mental colours are hard and fierce. But he has none of VillaLobos’s chaotic prodigality; the linear texture of his music is sharp, dry, consistent, and continuous in figuration as a baroque toccata. The unity is achieved at a cost; the linear patterns are closer to the more arid manifestations of Stravinsky’s ‘white note’ music than to the lyrical pliancy and harmonic density of Bach—or even of the Bachianas Bresilierasl Yet there is a positive side to the aridity also: for this music grows from the hard light and sunbaked plain of the Mexican scene, while at the same time having affinities with the metallic urban world of the earlier works of Copland. Copland’s music is discontinuous, Chavez’s continuous; but while Copland’s ‘dislocation’ is prob ably deeper and certainly closer to us, it is the driving motor rhythm in Chavez that builds new cities in the mountains or the jungle. There is a valid relationship between the texture and spirit of Chavez’s music and the remarkable achievements of twentieth-century Mexican architecture. Today, Latin American music seems to be trying to preserve

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the geometric lucidity of Chavez without sacrificing the copious sensuality of Villa-Lobos. We can observe this in the music of the Argentinian, Alberto Ginastera [b. 1916]: for while his music has a clarity of linear contour and a rhythmic excitement characteristic of Chavez, it has also a lyrical tenderness and harmonic evocativeness more suggestive" òLVilla-Lobos, if we can imagine the Brazilian without the strain of banality that is part of his vigour. There is a pathos in the hollow texture of the slow movement of Ginastera’s beautiful String Quartet, a plain tiveness in the bird-noises of the slow movement of his Piano Concerto, that complements the driving energy of his quick movements. There is nothing comparable with this in the hieratic, hymnic, dissonant diatonicism that Chavez exploits in his (usually brief) slow movements; and if Ginastera’s melan choly embraces Villa-Lobos’s nostalgia, it pierces deeper, being a sign of growing maturity. This is in part, of course, a regional difference. An Argen tinian composer—or still more a Chilean composer of the older generation, such as Domingo Santa Cruz [b. 1899]—is further removed from primitive and Indian sources than a Brazilian or Mexican composer, and so may turn spontaneously to the more ‘adult’ traditions of Europe. But the difference is not merely regional, for all over Latin America composers are becoming less aggressively concerned with indigenous values. As their new civilization comes to birth they remain conscious of their birth right, yet aware of their place in a community of nations. Cultural barriers, at least, are no longer unbridgeable, what ever may be true of political barriers; and a Peruvian serialist is no longer an anachronism.

AFTERWORD, 1988 Ei v e r y age is inevitably an age of transition, but in some

periods people have been more aware than in others of the necessity for change, and more bewildered by its pace. The seventeenth century witnessed scarifying changes of front occa sioned by its scientific revolution; but not even the seventeenth century was more savagely bufieted by the winds of change and chance than we have been by our scientific (electronic) revolu tion, especially during the thirty years that have elapsed since Man and his Music was first published. To give an adequate account of all that has happened during these years is clearly impossible in a brief Afterword; we must be content to comment on significant later developments in composers who are now a part of history, and roughly to chart new directions that have unfolded since the mid-fifties. Most significant in the ‘historical’ category is the late work of a composer who has died since the first publication of this book: Dmitri Shostakovitch. Though it was obvious in 1957 that he was a composer of genius and a major figure, his full stature has been revealed only in works of his last decade. His so-called Fourteenth Symphony was not in fact a symphony but a song cycle with orchestra which, like Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, wrested affirmation out of an unflinching contemplation of death. In this work we may sense an autobiographical overtone since Shostakovitch knew that he was seriously, perhaps termi nally, ill. We may, without interpreting it in crudely political terms, also think of his impending death as the death of a world that had failed: a notion supported by the extraordinary fif teenth and final symphony, written in 1972. There seems little doubt that Shostakovitch intended this symphony as an epilogic work, riddling it with quotations from his own works — pre sumably of autobiographical import — and from other compos ers. It thus becomes at once a résumé of, and a threnody for, himself and Civilization, the latter embracing not merely Soviet 1069

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society but also ‘Europe’. The first movement is an allegretto which, according to Shostakovitch, evokes a toyshop at night. It sounds like a touching parody ofStravinsky the Russian who ‘got away’: the toys come to life in sharp, tingling sonorities that recall the puppet Petrouchka. That the little soldier struts to the only tune he can play — the march from William Tell — is quite appropriate, for Rossini’s military caper — reappearing seven times, always at the same pitch, marching but never getting anywhere — comments ironically on the trumpery bellicosities of the European nations. In the middle lurks a Mahlerian hint of psychological murk beneath the perky facade; the last return of the Rossini tune sounds clownishly pathetic. The second movement also incorporates a march, but one that is bony in texture and funereal in pulse. Hymnic homoph ony for brass alternates with broken lyricism for solo cello and violin, making passing references to the adolescent First Sym phony composed half a century earlier. The effect is deeply melancholy, perhaps because the hymnic music evokes the old Russia, from which a youthfully-tender lyricism emerges, yet fails to fly. The ‘failure’ leads without break into the short scherzo which returns to the first movement’s toyshop. But it is no lónger a game. The tunes, if frisky, are lopsided; modulations are incessant; the scoring is still sharp and thin, but with a Mahlerian, nightmarish acuity. Men can behave like puppets too; we are no longer merely playing with toys. The finale, the most substantial movement, comments on the previous three. It opens with quotations from Götterdämmerung — Siegfried’s Funeral March — intertwined with the Tristan motif: the feeling of death that pervades the sym phony would seem to be that of Europe, no less than that of Shostakovitch and Russia. Yet the funeral is also a celebration, and incorporates that ancient principle of unity, the chaconne: a series of variations over an unchanging ground bass. In this case the bass is another self-quotation, from the Leningrad Symphony. In its original war context it had symbolized the will of the Russian people to endure, whatever the odds; in the Fifteenth Symphony it seems rather a riposte to mortality itself. The variations encompass a lifetime’s variety of mood, from Tchaikowskian balletic grace to a tremendous climax in which the dotted rhythm from the first adagio and Siegfried’s funereal motif fuse in majesty and terror. A retrospective episode dream-

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ily hints at the toyshop of the first movement; and in the long coda, constructed over a tonic pedal, the music floats away in a tinkling and clinking of toyshop percussion, into which the celesta inserts a liquid major third. The key is A major, tradition ally a key of youth and innocence; the effect, far from being happy, is as though a child’s Eden were distantly glimpsed beyond the weary body and sorrowing soul. The symphony, if not ‘great’, is strangely moving and movingly strange; for through the precision of its technique a personal predicament becomes ours also. It is an elegy — on Shostakovitch, Russia and Europe — which (just) ensures the spirit’s survival, though the toyshop Eden ofits close offers no clue as to the kind ofworld we’ll find ourselves living in, if live we do. It is not fortuitous that the Fifteenth Symphony has much in common with the composer’s late string quartets, which are as private, indeed hermetic, as the late quartets of Beethoven, and are occasionally (especially the magnificent eighth and twelfth) comparable in strength with them. There is rough justice in the fact that Shostakovitch, avowedly a state composer, is most consummately realized in the abstract medium that has become associated with the inner life. This spiritual transcendence is his ultimate triumph, as, in the last resort, any man’s must be. In Russia, political reaction against a moribund feudalism had led to an established musical orthodoxy based on Western models, though Soviet composers of genius, notably Shostakovitch, used these models in odd, even subversive ways. This applies also to Schnittke, the most talented Soviet composer of the generation succeeding Shostakovitch, and the closest the Soviets have come to an avant-gardist. That Schnittke is a direct heir to Shostakovitch is manifest especially in his chamber music such as the string quartets and the powerful string trio, in which his recognizable identity relates to the wryly bleak intensity of Shostakovich’s late quartets, while intensifying it with micro tones, clusters, percussive effects, slides and glissandi. The ‘mod ernity’ of the music does not sever roots in ancient Russian folk and liturgical traditions; indeed the microtonal techniques make this affiliation more patent than it is in Shostakovitch. A comparable fusion of the very new with the very old occurs in contemporary Polish music. To a degree this was already evident in the tradition running from Chopin to Szymanowski; when rebellion, political and musical, became overt it prompted

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concepts of freedom even more radical than those of Schnittke. Two Poles have made a decisive mark on the map of the musical avant-garde. In 1954, Witold Lutoslawski [b. 1913] wrote Con certofor Orchestra, a work that rivals that of Bartok in combining a show-piece with musical substance, revitalizing Western or chestral concepts with the vigour of folk^radition. His later, more representative music seeks ‘freedom’ by incorporating into no less complex structures aleatory techniques that allow the performers a measure of independence. The function of the improvisatory elements in Venetian Games (1961), is clearly de fined and justifies Lutoslawski’s belief that, where extreme intri cacy is called for, improvisation may be more effective than notation in enhancing (not escaping from) principles of order. The growth towards freedom is the structural point of the work, mirroring the problems the human race'has in living together, whatever the nature of individual social groups. This is most potently revealed in Trois Poèmes d’Henri Michaux, for choir and instrumental ensemble, which was hailed as a masterpiece on its first performance in 1965 (and still sounds like one). The verses surreally concern not epic events in our distracted times, but what happens in our minds because of them. ‘Inner’ and ‘outer’ life are contained within the vocal and instrumental forces, which are allotted two conductors, function in partial independence of one another, and are written in proportional notation, using ‘mobiles’ — passages repeated and varied independently of the rest of the ensemble. This gives explicit formulation, appropriate to our times, to what must be in some degree implicit in any work of art: man’s ‘conscious’ will and his ‘unconscious’ psyche interacting to induce terror and pity. Although not harmonically progressive (in the Western sense) the work has a beginning, middle and end; the latter, if mysterious, is resigned, even consolatory. Like the Third Sym phony written twenty years later, this music attains a peace that passes understanding precisely because it is unafraid of hazard: ‘thou mettest with things dying, I with things new born’. Similar notions of freedom dominate the work of another Pole who achieved international celebrity in the wake of the Second World War. The music of Krzysztof Penderecki [b. 1933] calls for, and receives, instant attention — as was evident when in i960 his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, microtonally scored for fifty-two solo strings, startled the ears and

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ruffled the conscience of Europe and America. Later works, such as the St Luke Passion (1965) and its sequel, Utrenja (1971), are explicitly religious, even liturgical, but are no less theatrical in impact. Multi-divided choirs of microtonal voices and strings, many types ofnotated and improvised choral speech and yelling, sensationally barking brass, batteries of percussion and pyro technics for stratospheric solo voices make a stunning impact. These modern techniques are related to the shamanist ulula tions, sepulchral basses, squawking trumpets and tintinnabulating bells still active in European liturgical traditions certainly in the wilder areas of Poland and Central Europe. Here Western art-music seems to be returning aurally and orally to the Word and the Body in ways that pervaded European music before the Renaissance, and still pervade non-European music. A similar immediacy distinguishes Penderecki’s purely instru mental music, such as the Cello Concerto in which the soloist becomes a theatrical ‘presence’, gutsy in his virtuosity. One can understand why Polish audiences flocked to hear this piece one might say to undergo it - no less than they did to hear per formances of his Dies Irae, which had the adventitious pull of being dedicated to the victims of Auschwitz. Penderecki’s public in his own country is proportionally as large as our public for the current pop group. This is certainly not to be deplored, though one may wonder whether the multiplicity of‘effects’ in his music may not tend to trivialization. This music that excites us today may not do so, as do Lutoslawski’s Trois Poèmes, after twenty years. It is not by chance that remote Poland, looking to both West and East, should have become seminal to the avant-garde move ment; similar ambiguities occur in the centres of European civi lization. In Paris, Pierre Boulez - one-time pupil of Messiaen (who in his immense opera on St Francis has apotheosized his ob sessions, from Roman Catholic and non-Western mysticism to ornithology) — has become an old master of the avant-garde. Le Marteau sans maître, which catapulted him to fame, still sounds like a masterpiece, releasing us, airborne, from ‘the pain of con sciousness’ into space and eternity. But we still don’t know whether what is revealed is God’s will or an emptiness better than agony. There seems to have been a gradual admission that artists ought to be chary of invoking a supernatural law that is too abstract. For Boulez it is almost as though completion has

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become synonymous with death; today, at IRCAM, he works on and off, seeking, but perhaps never finding, a consummation of his musical metaphysics. During the years when he devoted most ofhis energies to conducting music by other composers he himself composed little, and what he did produce — notably the ravishingly beautiful PH selon PH (1958—196^"— usually involved aleatory elements and was usually left unfinished (in progress). Partial indeterminacy is also found in the work of the composer’s Italian contemporary, Luciano Berio [b. 1925] whose Circles ( 1960) was to spark off innumerable imitations. Berio called the piece Circles because its five movements set three poems in a circular ABCBA structure: a serpent eating its own tail appropriate to the poems of E. E. Cummings, which evoke an eternal Is, without before or after. This allows scope for the unconsciousness of improvisation, and encourages indetermi nacy of pitch from both the singing-speaking-yelling voice and from the mainly percussive instrumental ensemble. Essentially about beginnings. Circles is musically as blessedly simple, even simple-minded, as the poems. The lovely inconclusion in which the voice embryonically surfaces through murmuring mists effects a magical act, though modern man could hardly be content, having suffered so much, childishly to live ‘for ever and ever’ in this paradisial present. Circles, like Le Marteau, remains, however, a crucial work; none of its many successors recaptures its pristine bloom. Over the next twenty-five years, Berio became a pioneer in the complementary activities of deconstructing articulate language into its linguistic components, and in con structing collages out of ‘memory and desire’ — recollections and parodies (in both the colloquial and the technical sense) of other people’s music, interspersed with hopeful aspirations towards temporal ‘moments’ that may seem eternal, as in Circles. The Sinfonia written for the Swingle Singers and the New York Philharmonic was — and remains — a key-work in this context, while Berio has imaginatively exploited the potential of elec tronic tape in constructing his collages of past and present. Contemporaneously with Berio, the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen [b. 1928] was still more radically explor ing similar techniques and areas of experience. In the first edition of this book he was mentioned as a post-Webernian serialist offa natical rigour, who called on electronics to ‘realize’ his formi dable metrical intricacies. Over the last twenty-five years.

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however, he has moved increasingly towards a synthesis of ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ experience: as is aurally manifest in the remarkable Gesang der Jünglinge, in which pure electronic sounds meli with processed abstractions of vowel sounds and consonants, and with real children’s voices, speaking and singing snatches of kiddies’ runes and street songs. So the piece seems to deal with embryonic human life within the mathematical laws of the cosmos, and ends with an act of praise, sung by the Three Men in the Fiery Furnace of the Book of Daniel — the three men apparently being Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen himself as evangelists of a new world. The fiery furnace is hell, and also our post-atomic world; and though the electric gibbers and twitters get faster and fiercer while the children’s voices, scattered on five loudspeakers, cry more faintly and frailly, the human voice is not obliterated. Indeed the disintegration of language into phonet ics and its eventual identity with mathematics prove to be a reaffirmation of the human state. Stockhausen in these early days, a disciple of Messiaen as well as of Webern, was a Roman Catholic. Though he has since renounced the Faith, he has increasingly become a mystical composer who, in near-Wagnerian egomania, seems to have created his own Church. (Left-wing) political rebirth seems to be implicit in some of his monumental ‘circle’ structures, such as Prozession (1967) for live instrumental ensemble and electronics, and the purely electronic Hymnen (1969). The most powerful of these works, Momente, is, however, exclusively for live resources, vocal and instrumental, employed in closed, collective, variable and multiple groups. The piece opens in the present moment, where we are: in some putative hall or concert-room, with desultory clapping scattered between four choirs and punctu ated with random Bravos as well as expressions of disapproval. As the music unfolds we hear a main text, mostly allotted to soprano solo, which is timeless in being biblical, taken not from the Book of Daniel but from that erotic paean, the Song of Songs. This text must be sung in the language native to the audience, its wide-spun lyricism being an ‘eternal’ affirmation in the midst of the flux. Other texts are fragmentarily sung in several ‘real’ languages and one invented one, spoken, yelled and screamed, sometimes retaining intelligibility but more often disintegrated into syllables of pure sound (as in Gesang der Jünglinge). These texts, whatever their nature, were picked up by the composer at

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random from his reading during the period ofcomposition. They are moments in time and history which intersect with the time less; the ultimate point would seem to lie in Blake’s aphorism: He who kisses a joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise. Although starting from ‘history’, in which this present moment in this concert hall is a minute point, the music transmutes ‘mo ments’ into an aural universe, in which there is no dramatic se quence and a minimum of distinction between subject and object. It is hardly surprising that the immediacy of such moments, given the nature of the world we live in, should sometimes ap proach hysteria. Yet the hysteria is not the composer’s but is rather what the world does to us; indeed, the composer’s function may well be precisely to render us more composed: so that (again as in Gesang der Jünglinge) we may sing a love-song even from the heart of the flery furnace. Moreover, although the sounds of the external world — laughter, sighs, whispers, croaks, wails — occur in what appears to be the random sequence in which one experiences them ‘out there’ in concert-hall or street, at the same time these noises are shaped by the mind of the artist. Fortuitous clapping becomes a notated metrical pattern; the hétérophonie and statistically-rhythmed first section is balanced against a homophonie middle section; and that against the third section’s fusion of heterophony and polyphony in more traditionallynotated metres. The recurrent magnificent refrains for chorus and brass remind us that, traditional notions of the human imagination and will are not discounted in Stockhausen’s dis continuous aural universe. In a strict sense this is synthetic music for our synthetic culture, for it brings together and alchemizes as many aspects as possible of experience and of sound-matter, embracing non-Western and primitive musics, as well as noise which is not strictly notatable. Yet if the music of Stockhausen’s middle years implies a social programme, even a scheme ofworld regeneration, it comes to do so in increasingly mystical terms. He has even devised an immense cycle ofpieces with the apocalyptic title of Aus den Sieben Tagen (1968), in which there are no notated sounds, only an instruction that the performers should starve themselves, in solitary silence, for four days, and should then ‘late at night, play

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single sounds, without thinking you are playing’. Some such spiritual discipline may be a necessary preparation for most of Stockhausen’s later work, of which we may take Stimmung ( 1968) as representative. The title of this work may be translated as ‘tuning’, and in technical terms this is what happens. Six human voices tune themselves to the pure overtone series, the voice of Nature herself (or God?), and are assisted to do so by an almost inaudible but perfect overtone series on tape. Here lies the distinction between Stockhausen and the authentic shaman; today’s musician-scien tist-priest offers a helping hand or rather ear to fallible humans, thereby admitting to their imperfection. The physical process of tuning is thus also a metaphysical process whereby the self be comes part of the cosmos. This simultaneously scientific and magical act is social as well as religious: for tuning to the universe is complemented by a process whereby the separate voices tune to one another in rhythm, timbre and dynamics as well as pitch, this communication between human creatures being effected by the invocation of eleven magic names and by way of the vowels of the phonetic alphabet. Once a magic name has been called by a singer (not the com poser), it is repeated until ‘renewed identity is achieved’. The process is strictly comparable with the naming ceremonies among primitive peoples and today’s children; with the invoking of the ‘sensual speech’ through a ‘music of the vowels’; with the tuning ceremonies of Tibetan monks; and with the transmuta tions of medieval alchemy. Western music since the Renaissance has implied corn-position whereby an artefact is made by ‘plac ing together’, at the instigation of the human mind, elements of experience. In this context, Stimmung, like most of Stockhausen’s recent music — including the immense operatic festiva which when complete will outlast Wagner’s Ring — is not composition but a ritual act that effaces consciousness in order to renew it on a ‘higher’ plane. Modern science and ancient magic are here no longer the opposite poles that rational enlightenment had sup posed them to be. Stockhausen releases us from chronométrie time not merely by reinstating mythological time but also by giving musical meaning to modern theories of space-time and relativity, of cosmological and astrological time, and to those biological and astronomical clocks that we now know to func tion, independent of chronometers, within the human subcon-

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scious, and apparently within the senses of animals, birds, in sects, even plants. So if Stimmung is magic, it is magic that stems from the heart of our scientific technocracy and might be valid rather than evasive. Should this be so we might even come to believe that Stockhausen has transcended the ‘failure’ of Wagner’s disciple Schoenberg, who in Mases and Aaron created an opera about the artist as priest and prophet, but left it unfinished because music, given its sensual nature, must inevita bly betray the Word within the Word. If Stockhausen has found the Word that Schoenberg admitted he ‘lacked’, that will not make the former’s intrinsic achievement greater than that of Schoenberg, let alone Wagner. It might, however, just conceiv ably mean that Stockhausen’s estimation of himself as the most crucially significant composer of his time will be justified. Cer tainly the spiritual presence of Stimmung is still pervasive. A conspicuous instance of this pervasive presence is in the music ofGyörgy Ligeti [b. 1923], a Hungarian who has lived for the most part in Austria and Germany. His early works, such as Nouvelles aventures. Atmosphères, and Lontano, explore microtonal textures somewhat in the manner of Lutoslawski and Penderecki. From these works he gravitated into his aural ‘continuum’ in which pulsing beats and almost pulseless rever berations achieve a celebrative act out of atomic fragmentation; the choral and orchestral Requiem is an impressive instance. A similar equation between intellect and instinct distinguishes the music of the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis [b. 1922], who like Varèse and Stockhausen had training as an architect and mathe matical engineer. He claims to ‘construct’ musical compositions on the laws of physics as well as mathematics and geometry, using computerized formulae both in writing for live instrument and for electronic sound-sources; in either case the often highly exciting sounds are not readily distinguishable from those of an indeterminate piece by a disciple ofjohn Cage. Both elevate Law — whether of physics and mathematics or of chance — above human choice, though the powerfully idiosyncratic flavour of the sounds must come from the particular ‘laws’ selected, and the proportions in which they are combined. Although it would be extravagant to speak of influence, we may detect preoccupations parallel to those of Stockhausen — even in traditionally conservative Britain. Benjamin Britten, in the last decade of his life, modified his Western, humanist view

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of opera in creating Curlew River which, without ceasing to be ‘British Britten’, draws on musical and theatrical techniques of the Japanese JVoh play as well as on the medieval English miracle play. In so doing Britten poignantly reveals the obsessional mir acle of the Boy who is born or reborn. The partly autobiographi cal last opera. Death in Venice, wondrously effaces boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious life, as we may more deeply appreciate if we consider it in relation to its purely instru mental (and marvellously pure) complement, the Third String Quartet. Michael Tippett, as early as the fifties, had delved into Jungian interrelationships between rational and irrational levels of experience in his opera, The Midsummer Marriage. He is still composing, and has found in that Marriage a wellspring from which most of his later work has flowed. Much of this work — for instance the Second Piano Sonata and the Concerto for orchestra (1963) ~ explores statically non-Western concepts of form which he succeeds in relating to Western, post-Beethovenian traditions. In later operas, such as The Knot Garden (1970) contradictory realms of experience lead to ‘pluralistically’ di verse techniques, as barriers are crossed between art-music, jazz, folk and rock. The two major British composers of the Boulez-Berio-Stockhausen generation have proved to be Peter Maxwell Davies [b. 1934] and Harrison Birtwistle [b. 1934] who, while remaining sturdily indigenous, have not been impervious to Europe’s new directions. The early music of Peter Maxwell Davies owed much to advanced serialism of Webernian vintage. Webern himself had been something of a medievalist, who found in serial law a manifestation of‘God’s will’. Davies, congenitally imbued with the spiritual fervour of England’s Middle Ages, found in serial ism a revivified ‘way of life’, combining structural rigour stem ming from medieval cantusfirmus and proportional metre, with an incandescent purity, even innocence, of spirit. It is significant that the neo-medieval austerity typical ofworks like Prolation and WorldesBlis should be complemented by the modal choral music Davies wrote for children during his early composing years. 0 Magnum Mysterium, for choir and organ, is a ‘great mystery’ indeed, in which the unexpected transitions in the basically simple modality evoke a precarious wonderment — significantly comparable with the music to which Britten’s Boy is reborn in Curlew River.

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Equivocation between innocence and experience is the mainspring of Davies’s art, as it is of that of so many vitally creative twentieth century composers. Not surprisingly, this is the theme of the opera Taverner, which stands at the centre of the composer’s career: division between head and heart, spirit and flesh, the Old Faith and the humanistic'Reformation are exem plified in the life and death of the sixteenth century composer. One of Davies’s most well-wrought orchestral works, the Second Fantasia on an In Nomine ofJohn Taverner, is closely related to the opera and although something of the ‘Gothic desperation’ oflate medieval music survives in the sinuous lines of this work, there is little trace of the expressionist fervour of Viennese serialism. The composer’s preoccupation with the darker undercurrents of our libidinal instincts is now projected into pieces with theatrical dimensions, such as the ardently lyrical Leopardi Fragments (in which medievalism absorbs a potent injection of High Renais sance Monteverdi), and the Eight Songsfor a Mad King ( 1969), a product of the first flush of the music-theatre movement which remains, in Ezra Pound’s phrase, ‘news that STAYS news’. It calls on parody and collage techniques, in a manner independ ent of Berio and Stockhausen. Taverner is about betrayal, and some have considered it a be trayal that Peter Maxwell Davies should have embarked on a se nes of three symphonies and a violin concerto, all seeking easier accessibility within the normal concert repertory. This view is counteracted by the fact that although these works behave as symphonic works are expected to — they have been compared with Sibelius — they do not abandon Davies’s quasi-medieval techniques, his ‘magic squares’ and other mathematically extra musical devices. Moreover, although the symphonies testify to a desire for accessibility, they are paradoxically affected by the composer’s complementary need to remove himself from the hurly-burly of modern life, since they (in part) aurally image the wildness of the remote Scottish island on which he now (in part) lives. Davies’s more intimate Orkney works — most of them cre ated in collaboration with the poet George Mackay Brown — are perhaps his most profound, and certainly his most moving, statements. In them a sophisticated, formidably intelligent modern man is spontaneously responding to the pulse of a primitive folk culture, releasing — in the (literally) marvellous From Stone to Thom and Thorn Litany — a lyricism at once tenuous

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and strong. Davies makes the Orkney experience part of us today, as his medievalism could never be. It is pertinent to note that during these Orkney years Davies has again begun to create music for children such as was youthfully triggered off when he was a highly idiosyncratic schoolteacher. In this rediscovery of an ancient folk-culture Davies estab lishes common ground with his contemporary and one-time col league, Harrison Birtwistle. Always the most radical of English composers, Birtwistle was aware of the continental avant-garde while remaining always his own man. Two kinds of‘awareness’, which we have noted in other composers, dominate him, and prove to be complementary in their apparent contradiction. One is an obsession with intricate metrical organization, which impersonally orders the temporal dimension within which we humanly live. The other is a gut-response to primeval levels of being, manifest in the theatre-rituals of classical antiquity, in those of oriental cultures, and in English folk drama. Both categories have something in common, in philosophical concept and in sonority, with Stravinsky, though this is more an affinity than an influence. The temporal dimension, as manifest in Birtwistle’s pieces about mechanical clocks and the like, is the continuum which even ‘unaccommodated man’ exists in; not surprisingly, their technique relates to that of Ligeti’s ‘contin uum’ works. The ritually corporeal theatre-pieces, which are more numerous, uncover man’s animal nature, for instance in the searing operatic version of the Punch and Judy parable, and in an overt version of an English folk ritual like Down by the Greenwood Side. That the two distinct categories are nonetheless interdependent is revealed in one ofBirtwistle’s major orchestral works. The Triumph of Time, a ‘temporal’ piece which is also ritual incantation; and in the recent large-scale, one movement orchestralwork Earth Dances, which is indeed ferociously earthy, while being constructed on a highly intricate metrical scheme. Every aspeet of Birtwistle’s music is fused in his major achievement, the opera The Masks of Orpheus, at which he worked, on and off, for fifteen years, before its triumphant production in 1986. That the myth of Orpheus - a poetcomposer-priest of ancient Thrace who attempted, through Art and Reason, to play God and even to challenge death itself — should have haunted the human imagination'over many centu ries is understandable. Today, it would seem that Stockhausen

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regards himself as a modern Orpheus; Birtwistle, more English in discretion, merely re-musics his story, starting from a libretto by Peter Zinoviev that offers a version of the protean myth psycho logically and philosophically pertinent to our ‘pluralistic’ soci ety. No one is likely to unravel the mazes of this libretto in the theatre, nor is this necessary, since the music is stunning enough, and the visual images are dazzling enough, to absorb us utterly for nearly four hours. Birtwistle has made ‘corporeal music’: sounds, such as we’d long forgotten, to our bitter cost, that involve bodily action along with words so that, as with real primitive musics, one lives in the sounds while they last. The mir acle is that Birtwistle’s score, in alliance with visual images and mimetic movement, does function as a rite relevant to our global world. Profiting from the composer’s experiments at the Na tional Theatre, the piece evokes worlds alien to yet deeply within us. Music, decor, mime and costumes call on multifarious cul tures from Australian aboriginal to the sophistications ofJapan ese Noh and Kabuki, with Old English fertility rites thrown in for good measure. The slowly-initiatory birth of the first act, the terrifying hurly-burly of the second act, set in hell, the introspec tive resolution of the third act, are sublimely simple in their com plexity. Although Orpheus is annihilated, as in many versions of the legend, he is also (like Britten’s Boy) reborn. Neither Greek, nor Japanese, nor Old English — since as Birtwistle points out this is a world not imitated, but made — The Masks of Orpheus overwhelmingly achieves, at its mysteriously serene end, that cathärsis which was the end of and justification for the pity and terror of Aeschylean and Shakespearean tragedy. Like the primitive and oriental artefactors on whom he has resourcefully drawn but not emulated, Birtwistle thinks not linearly but circularly, refashioning the myths outside Time, in ever-fluctuating permutations. This accords with the findings of our psychology, while allowing for musical recapitulations help ful to those too enmeshed in linearity to shake out of it. In any case, in the theatre dubieties don’t occur, so gripped and on occasion griped are we by the vehemence of the music and the startlements of the spectacle. Birtwistle deploys his bands of percussion, woodwind and brass — one doesn’t miss the strings, even over so long a stretch — in manners closer to Australian aboriginal ritual and Japanese or Javanese theatre musics than to Western symphony, yet creates sonorities that belong irresisti-

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bly to us. The vocal lines, however taxing, extend conventional bel canto into non-Western vocal techniques, especially in the horrendous music for black Hecate and the Oracle of the Dead. The protagonists have three identities as Man, Myth and Hero, the last being represented by awesomely gargantuan puppets; throughout, the triple identities work persuasively, perhaps because we now accept such concepts viscerally as well as intellectually. Thus the work is a breakthrough not only experientially, but in musical-theatrical techniques: how it is done is inseparable from what is done, as opera singers, not merely professional dancers, move, mime and run as to the manner born, inspired by the grandeur ofBirtwistle’s aural imagination. Electronics are used to auralize the voice of God (Apollo), who utters his own, to us inarticulate, language. The resort to the supernatural forces of electronics to make the numinous manifest is powerfully effectual, though Birtwistle, less convinced than most of us, has said that he won’t call on electronics again. Certainly he has no need to, having in terms of ‘live’ music effected a renouvellement of Western tradition. ‘Opera’ will never be the same again. The term ‘corporeal music’, used in reference to The Masks of Orpheus, was in fact coined forty years ago by Harry Partch [1901 — 1976], that aboriginal composer who, reared in the parched and parching wastes of the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and California, discarded the trappings of Western civilization, and along with them the accoutrements of our harmonized music. Designing his own instruments, tuned to a forty-three-tone-to-the-octave scale, Partch anticipates Stock hausen’s Stimmung in making ofJust Intonation a philosophy of man and the cosmos, expounded in his book Genesis of a Music: he sees the European compromise of temperament, especially equal temperament, as a fall from grace to dis-grace. There is a parallel with the Birtwistle of Orpheus in that all Partch’s music is also mythic theatre; even purely instrumental pieces are performance-rites, in which the act of playing the very beautiful instruments is — for both player and listener - part of the experience. The difference is that whereas Birtwistle stems from, but transmutes European traditions, as to a degree do Stravinsky and Janácek, Partch is strictly speaking ab-original. Aiming at a rebirth of post-industrial man through incantation, justly in toned ‘spiritual’ monody and ‘corporeal’ rhythm, he creates, in

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a piece such as The Bewitcheda cross between an Ameri can musical and a Japanese kabuki play. In this ‘dance satyr’ (the punning spelling is the composer’s), four Lost Musicians consult an aged Seer, seeking a remedy for the ills of the modern world, and learn that they already possess, in being true to the moment, the only truth that is humanly apprehensible: ‘truth is a sandflea; another moment must find its own flea’. Partch’s ‘moments’ are less portentous than Stockhausen’s, but not necessarily the worse for that. His musicians, outside not only ‘Europe’ but even American technocracy, are also clowns, fools, bums, hobos — like Partch himself, who for eight years during the forties lived by riding the rails, and made out of the experience an oddly touching theatre piece called U. S. Highball. When social satire and musical parody dissolve into what Partch calls slapstick, the dadaism links contemporary non-values to values so old they seem eternal. Human beings who microtonally yell, moan, shout, wail, guffaw or grunt in jazzy abandon or hysteria may become indistinguishable from hooting owls, barking foxes and the wild cats of the woods; but in returning, ‘below’ conscious ness, to Nature, they may rediscover their true selves. In the Prelude to scenes 8 and i o of The Bewitched the wailing pentatonic chant evokes an age-old quietude that is nonetheless fraught with longing. Significantly, it is based on a chant of the Cahuilla Indians who live in the emptiness of the Californian desert. The weird incantation, sounding even more disturbing against the wavering ostinati of Partch’s forty-three tone reed organs, interestingly resembles the ululating lines produced on plastic sax by Ornette Coleman, especially in Chippaqua, which has Amerindian associations. We are reminded simultaneously of what home means, and of how it feels to be homeless. It’s pertinent to note that Partch’s last and longest theatre piece. Delusion of the Fury [1963—1969], described as ‘a ritual of dream and delusion’, celebrates the Global Village in drawing its materials from Japanese, African, Polynesian, African and modern American sources, yet debunks it as in the last resort delusory. Partch’s position is inherently paradoxical in that although he offers a programme of world-regeneration which, if less apocalyptic than Stockhausen’s, concerns common men and women everywhere, his desert-based music-theatre — beyond a Birtwistle’s or Stockhausen’s however transmuted Europe — can only be an elitist activity since its auralization depends on his

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expensive and not readily transportable instruments. Invented, designed and built in supportive universities, these are now decaying under the attrition of the years. Electronics might have provided an answer had not Partch, unlike Varèse and Stock hausen, considered science the devil’s ally. This philosophical muddledom will probably mean that Partch’s impact, powerful though it is, will weaken. Another old American lone wolf, who has become an increas ing rather than declining force in recent years, succeeds in effecting a link between the ‘head’ of mathematical science and the ‘body’ of Afro-American jazz. Gonion Nancarrow, born in an outpost of Arkansas in 1912, moved to New York in youth, to study with those different but related props of American ac ademicism, Walter Piston and Roger Sessions. Early works of the thirties — a piano sonatina, a string quartet, and a whirling toccata for violin and piano — transmute, indeed begin to demolish, conventional techniques through the prestidigitous speed (reflective of New York’s urban frenzy?) of their articula tion; recently the violin work has been dazzlingly performed with the violin part transposed upwards and the piano part taped, speeded to the vertiginous tempo the composer wanted but couldn’t exact from merely human executants. There is an affinity between these early Nancarrow works and the potently original music — notably a string quartet and a hair-raising piano study in unequal rhythms — that Ruth Crawford was producing in these turbulent years. Nancarrow’s career was, however, disrupted because, inspired by the social and political ferment of the thirties, he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. On his return to the U. S. in 1939 he was subjected to political harassment, as a consequence of which he settled in Mexico City. In this pullulating if exotic conurbation Nancarrow has lived for the past forty-five years. These biographical facts bear on the composer’s status as an outsider, and this in turn relates to his abandonment of conven tional instruments in favour of the player piano, for which all his music since 1948 has been composed. In youth, Nancarrow had been a jazz trumpeter, and the earlier of his pianola ‘studies’ relate to this alternative Big City culture, as do the studies by Charles Ives for (ostensibly) normal piano. In particular, Nancarrow’s music recalls the crudest and rudest types ofjazz, for both the polymètres and the clattering metallic sonorities

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sound like barrel house piano boogie, somewhat exoticized with touches of voice and trumpet blues, flamenco guitar and Mexi can marimba band. By means of his perforated rolls, Nancarrow creates miracles of polymetrical intricacy beyond the control of human fingers, however agile the mind behind them. So the musie’s corporeality merges into its intellectuality. Later studies — for which Nancarrow had more sophisticated pianolas especially designed — explore extremities of metrical proportion and disproportion, one tempo being related to an other in (say) the ratio of2 to the square root of i ; or two ‘metrical canons’ continuously accelerate and deeelerate on overlapping planes — a mechanical fulfilment ofthe startlingly experimental finale of Ruth Crawford’s string quartet, and an anticipation of aspects of the music of European Ligeti, who acknowledges an indebtedness to Nancarrow. If the concept is mathematically abstract, the musical consequence is of tremendous physical excitation. Body and head, for too long separated in our Western world, are reunited; and although (as we’ll see) comparable complexities are now easily negotiable by electronic means, no electronic music has created such ‘presence’ out of‘distinguished and divided worlds’, to use the phrase in which seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne, himself both artist-theologian and putative scientist, referred to body and spirit. This is the deeper meaning of today’s mating ofmen and machines: which explains why Nancarrow, a self-exiled loner, now occupies a crucial position in world music. Of course there are ranges of experience — for instance, tragedy and pathos in the Greek senses — that Nancarrow’s music of its nature bypasses; he cannot be a ‘great’ humanist composer in the same category as Charles Ives. But that is the measure of his historical import; if he embraces Black jazz within White intellect, he also anticipates those ‘process’ composers who seek a deliberate return to quasi-tribal ‘necessity’. This takes us into areas developed since the original publication of this book, for ‘minimal’ and ‘process’ musics have become the most influential, if not the most significant, forces in the music of the last twenty years. Minimalism and process are not identical though they are related. Ultimate minimality was adumbrated in the early sixties by La Monte Young [b. 1935], for whom the ‘I’ loses identity in surrendering to the aural cosmos of a single tone or interval, sustained as though in eternitatum. This is a

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phenomenon related to, but not identical with, Cage’s notorious silent piece 4’33” (1962), the difference being that Cage invited the listener to become his own composer, discovering music within the world’s arbitrary noises, whereas La Monte Young, a one-time pupil of Stockhausen, was encouraging the listener to participate in a mystical act — some years before Aus den Sieben Tagen. Terry Riley’s aural meditation less radically denies will in an oriental abnegation of works: in the sixties, through identifica tion with a single unremittingly repeated sound-source as in the deservedly celebrated InC; in the seventies through mainly pen tatonic, often improvised, pattern-making on electronic key boards; in the eighties through an incantatory use of traditional resources, including the string quartet. Riley effects the transi tion from minimal to process music, gravitating from single sounds to endlessly reiterated patterns. The objection to this might be that although to reject Western humanism and Ameri can technocracy may be understandable and even excusable, not even West Coast Americans in fact belong to an ancient oriental culture but irremediably to Western traditions which, as Europeans like Debussy and Messiaen have demonstrated, may be modified but not denied. Young’s and Riley’s willlessness in fact amounts to a prodigious exercise of will. If a similar objection may be urged against Steve Reich’s Africanism it is less damaging since the process his live perform ers undergo on their live instruments is indeed enlivening, calling for a high degree of skill, in which the audience participates vicariously. The body, expunged by Young and Riley, serves for Reich as a launching-pad for transcendence, as may happen in real tribal musics and in Afro-American jazz. In an hour-and-ahalf Reich work such as Drumming (1976), the slowly exfoliating metrical and linear patterns in the tingling orchestration of percussion instruments pitched and unpitched tend to enhance, rather than to engulf, consciousness. As with Chopi xylophone bands, Mexican marimba bands and Balinese gamelan orches tras — with all of which Reich has personal acquaintance — mind, nerves, body and senses are activated as one becomes part of a ritual performance, living in the noise until it arbitrarily — for there is no beginning, middle or end — ceases. The danger is that since we, unlike the Africans or Balinese, have no clear notion as to what the ritual signifies in relation to our lives, act

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may degenerate into habit. Compared with Birtwistle’s Orpheus, which embraces process within composition, the rites of Reich’s process are a variously rewarding game. Perhaps with this in mind Reich has in recent works, such as Desert Music and Tehillim, relaxed the abstraction of his pattern making to the point of calling on melody'instruments, incantatory voices, and even verbal content. Minimalist fanatics are apt to sniff at these pieces on the grounds that they betray the integrity of the abstraction which is apposite to, even as it counteracts, a mechanistic civilization. On the other hand a vast new public has found in a work like Tehillim a substitute tribal pop music. Momentarily and near-infantilely we live in the noise’s process as though we were real Near-Eastern folk dancing as we chant a Hebrew version of a Psalm. An ancient way of life is rendered immediate: still a game, perhaps, but legitimate in so far as we are most of us ‘alienated’, like non-practising Jews in New York’s urban community. ‘Pure’ process music might be described as a plain man’s version of the metrical intricacies of Birtwistle’s clock musics, while ‘tribal’ process music is a plain man’s version ofBirtwistle’s corporeal rituals. In considering this distinction between ‘com posed’ and ‘processed’ rites, some account of a composer often (misleadingly) allied to the processing minimalists is pertinent. He is Avrò Pärt, a fifty-year-old Estonian who was creatively reborn when first ‘exposed’ to plainchant and the music of the Russian Orthodox Church. This was not so much a technical discovery as a discovery of spiritual identity, for all Pärt’s music, whether or not it is liturgical, is concerned with the numinous. His vocal works are overtly ecclesiastical; his instrumental works seek the ‘eternal silence’ at the heart of sound, as is indicated by the title of his best known piece. Tabula Rasa. Ifone tries to think of points of reference in defining the nature of Pärt’s music one might mention, in addition to plainsong and medieval hetero phony, the liturgical music of Stravinsky, Satie’s Socrate, the ceremonial music ofJanácek, and even the children’s music of Orff. These same points of reference would have general rele vance to Birtwistle too, though in neither case is there any question of ‘influence’. Nor, though Pärt uses few notes and much repetition, is there any real link with the minimalists, since Pärt’s few notes are intimately expressive, and therefore in content not minimal at all. A five-minute Cantus (1976) in

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memory of Benjamin Britten, scored for a single bell and strings, starts from God’s music of the bell’s overtones and swells, bell like, into multiple intertwining canons that function magically in palliating the finality of death. The effect has that purity of spirit which Pärt admires in Britten’s music; the radiant serenity of both composers always has human relevance, and this applies even to Pärt’s most abstract music, such as the second part of Tabula Rasa, scored monophonically or heterophonically, or in simple diatonic concords, for a solo violin with string orchestra and the intermittent, quasi-Polynesian twang of a prepared piano. Monody and heterophony still more consistently characterize the vocal works, mostly on Latin texts. Pärt’s biggest piece, Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem (1981), at first sounds consciously archaic. The hétérophonie extensions to the choral parts, often instrumentally doubled, have a savage impersonal ity that recalls ancient liturgical incantation, especially that with oriental affiliations, though Pärt’s ritual is specifically related to humane Christian traditions. Christ is represented by a consort of voices, while even the narrator-Evangelist does not sing expressionistically, in relation to the text. Yet if the music sounds immemorially ancient, it also rings fresh as a daisy, and is as pertinent to our bruised and battered world as were the Passions of the aged Schütz to seventeenth century Germany, ravaged by a Thirty Years War which, proportionate to the population, may have exceeded in horror the two wars of our presumptively enlightened times. A parallel between the techni cal methods and emotional effects of the Pärt and Schütz Pas sions exists, though again there is no ‘influence’. The blaze of harmonic homophony in Pärt’s final Amen takes us by surprise, affirming the composer’s chastity of heart and resilient courage in the face of odds. Compared with Reich’s Tehillim, Pärt’s Passion is a composed rite, not a processed game, and one suspects that process music must inevitably involve an element of deceit if it pretends to be a ‘way of life’. This becomes patent in the theatre music of Philip Glass, who in his early days wrote middle-of-the-road Coplandaffiliated music, but arrived at a minimalism that finally bridges the narrow gulf between Process and Pop. In inviting us to surrender to the libidinal philosophy of Derrida and Lyotard, Glass attempts to abolish history, which can be achieved only by

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accepting Freud’s equation between submission to the libido and the death instinct. This correlation has been overtly made by many pop groups, whose names (and functions) have shifted over the last twenty years from the cheerfully animalistic Beatles, Birds and Animals to Boom Town Rats, Grateful Dead, Stran glers, Sex Pistols, The Enemy, The ClashT^nd (ultimate irony) The Police. It is difficult to avoid seeing Glass’s prodigious success in the eighties — his records sell over a hundred thousand copies, and he has had four or five operas running concurrently in capitals of the world — in relation to this fundamental negation. His music functions in the same way as that of the pop groups, both in its incremental remorselessness and in the fact that, although admitting to the existence of Western harmony, it employs it without reference to antecedence or consequence. Through electronic keyboards loudly and unremittingly play ing reiteratively phased patterns it creates an aural womb that becomes a tomb. Seeking an identity of time and space. Glass offers an anti-teleological interpretation of Einstein; his later ‘opera’, Ahknatan ( 1984), set in ancient Egypt, with a transvestite hero, carries phased repedtion to the point of mummification. Despite the splendour of the visual images achieved through dance, mime, lighting and cinematic devices, one emerges from the theatre-tomb reflecting, after four hours’ submission to Glass’s reiterations, that although one is for popular appeal and not against commercial success, one prefers them to be on behalf of life — as with Reich, not to mention the Beatles, Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell — rather than on behalf of death. One cannot discount a force as potent as Glass’s music; one may, however, find some of its implications alarming. If process music has bifurcated into two streams, one abstract and elitist, the other concrete and populist, the same may be said of electronic music, the fathers of which emerged some thirty years back. They tended to be sound-engineers rather than composers, specializing either in the taped redisposition of sounds ofthe natural world ( musique concrète), or in the construc tion of mathematically-ordered ‘pure’ electronic sounds. In those days only the great Varèse (in Deserts) used electronics to musical ends, though his technical equipment was by later standards jejune. The leaders of the intellectual camp were Vladimir Ussachevsky [b. 19ii] and Otto Luening [b. 1900] — the latter a

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‘straight’ composer who turned to electronics at the prompting ofBusoni’s theories ofa New Music based on the fusion ofArt and Science. Neither Luening nor Ussachevsky had enough creative impetus to make much mark; ‘abstract’ electronics began to matter only when taken up by a real composer, Milton Babbitt [b. 1916], who saw in them a means of bringing to fruition his ideal of total serialization, applied not only to pitch but to the minutest aspect of composition. His combinations of live instru ments with electronics, in for instance Philomel and Vision and Prayer, may be distinguished by a rarefied beauty; but the purely abstract and purely electronic compositions of Babbitt and his disciples seemed to most people purely incommunicable; they are certainly the most intellectually complex music yet invented. At the heart ofAmerican democracy, though functioning within universities which financed their gadgetry, these men made a music intentionally anti-democratic. Babbitt himself has even maintained that the value of his music lies in its mathematically demonstrable truth, which could only be sullied by communica tion with any, yet alone the, public. That there is psychological and semantic confusion in this ivory towerism is suggested by the fact that Babbitt is passionately devoted to American musical comedy and in particular to Jerome Kern, the ‘escapist’ com poser he would most like, at least in waggish moments, to have been. Yet the pure abstraction of electronics can only be another kind of escape from the toil and moil of living — with the further disadvantage that so few people want to escape with it. This may be why it sometimes seems that pure electronic composers are a dying breed, if breed they ever did. Such a judgment is unacceptable because it is too early to assess the potential ofwhat has become, with the aid of advanced computer science, a new approach to music’s nature and even function. Whether the work ofa Charles Dodge or John Chowning in American universities, or of Boulez and the Europeans at IRCAM in Paris, will amount to discovery as well as exploration is bound up with the future or non-future of our electronic civilization. In the interim, impure electronic composers have naturally been more prolific and — as we have noted in the case of Stockhausen — more communicative than the pure brand. For them, electronics are an enrichment of live instruments and of theatre: as we may hear, among the older American genera tion, in the work of the lively Robert Erikson at San Diego, for

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his imagination, however sensitive to new resources, maintains a recognizably humanist bias. One can say as much of some of the larger crop of composers born in the thirties, such as Roger Reynolds and Donald Erb, whose powerfully emotive music for electronics with symphony orchestras has achieved a measure of popular acclaim. Similarly accessible is-íhe-music of Morton Subotnick, whose purely electronic Silver Apples of the Moon creates a delicately distinctive aural universe, while his Electric Christmas ig6y blends synthesized electronics with film and light projection to make multi-media theatre, embracing medieval cantillation and tintinnabulation along with twentieth century rock. Return, a piece celebrating the visit of Halley’s Comet in 1985, also calls on quasi-medieval techniques, perhaps to evoke the eternity of interstellar space. In making a continuum of sound from an immensely magnified harpsichord it has some thing in common with Reichian process music, and more with Ligeti’s continuum works. Like most pop music nowadays, it also involves a visual dimension, being intended for performance in a vast planetarium, with full-scale sky show. It seems not improbable that the future'evolution of electronic music will steer this product of highly sophisticated technology towards precisely those ‘mystical’ and numinous ranges of expe rience that science was supposed to have discredited and even obliterated. This is suggested not only by Birtwistle’s use of electronics for the voice of God, but also by the deeply moving, Christianly committed, in part electronic music of Britain’s Jonathan Harvey, especially in his major work Madonna (1986), which electronically made a virtue of the acoustics of the Albert Hall. The American Robert Eaton’s famous-notorious Mass for microtonal Japanese soprano, clarinet and synthesizers also calls for comment in this religious context, for it offers a grotesque but not intentionally parodistic comment on God in the twentieth century. The piece, ifwith more (slightly scary) sociological than musical import, is weirdly fascinating; a male speaking voice declaims the Creed in American, in the portentous tones of a March of Time newscaster, while the microtonal soprano squeaks and squawks and the electronics emit their habitual bleeps, burps, gibbers and gobbles. If, over half a century, electronic music has produced little of humanly musical substance, it may be because music as a performing art battens on human presence. We haven’t yet

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recovered from the early ‘concert’ of electronic music, at which the computers owlishly winked as they bleeped, promoting hilarity or boredom. This may also be why electronic music has proved more successful — artistically as well as in terms of audience appeal — the more it has veered towards pop, which depends on synthesized sounds, if not pure electronics, for its existence. In this context, a minor, exclusively electronic com poser — Jon Appleton — merits more attention than many who are both more ambitious and more esteemed. Appleton’s early work, dating from the late sixties, is an extension of the primitive techniques of musique concrete: natural and unnatural noises of the external world are juxtaposed and ‘mixed’ to create ludicrous, sometimes bizarre, science fictional dreams and nightmares. The pieces — soundscapes rather than music as we have known it — are usually amusing, often stimulating, sometimes imagina tive. Appleton’s later work is more conventionally musical, being composed for a digital system called the synclavier, devised by the composer in collaboration with engineers Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones. The pieces are usually played straight at the keyboard, though the instrument stores computerized material. The synthetic sounds, even when microtonal, are clearly de fined, often ripely sonorous, and the forms are not radically distinct from those of orthodox music. If the glinting sonorities remind us (as does some process music) of Balinese gamelan music, it is never in the spirit of‘the old exoticism trip’, to call on Steve Reich’s phrase. The music merely takes over such sonori ties as part ofour global birthright. The sounds are so clean, light and airy that they prompt visual analogies: a tapestry of bell sounds is a mixed metaphor that goes some way towards defining the spatial and temporal effect of a piece such as Syntronia (1977) — an aural analogue, perhaps, to the bright colours and sharp shapes of (tasteful) advertising boards and strip cartoons. Although influences are not in question, there is a tie-up between the Appleton experience and the music of children (who like strip cartoons); that of the simpler exotic cultures, notably the Balinese; that of Satie both early and late; that of early (prepared piano) Cage; and perhaps, in the clean lines, open textures and non-Western modalities, of Lou Harrison. Here technology wou'i seem to be vindicated in that it allows the new-born old-new world that Harry Partch envisaged to fune-

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don in total audibility. No one, certainly not Appleton, would claim that his is ‘great’ music; but in that it is innocently concerned with new worlds, always sounds beautiful, and never loses its sense of humour, it does offer qualities which our beleaguered race is in need of Jon Applettm, like Erik Satie, may be an important, little composer. By way ofi modern machine, his music says something about birth and human potential; at the same time it offers a dispassionate comic assessment ofour no less human limitations. In Appleton’s music, electronics, a bastion of hyper-intellec tuality, join hands with a form of popular entertainment that is enlivening rather than amnesic; there is a close analogy between his lucent textures and those of Annie Lennox’s Eurythmies. Both composers have described their music as ‘soundscapes’, though it is improbable that there has been mutual influence. Inversely, the dream factory of the American musical has shown signs of coming of age, or rather of catching up with that great theatre piece, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (really a fully-fledged opera) and, at a somewhat lower level, with Bernstein’s West Side Story, a Broadway musical distinguished alike by its powerfully con temporary theme and its brilliantly professional musicianship. That the generality of musicals has remained escapist pap is counteracted by the emergence of the talent of Stephen Sond heim, who has proved that the musical may still be used to adult ends. In particular, Sweeney Todd is a strong, subtle, funny, frightening and paradoxically enlivening musical that deals — by way of a scnsitively-intelligent modification of Broadway con ventions — with that very death-Wvsh which underlies our cul ture, as manifest alike in (some) tribal pop and process music. At the same time pop itself has broken the barriers. It did so twenty years ago with the Beatles’ SergeantPepper; nowadays one wouldn’t want to put Jon Appleton and Annie Lennox in separate categories; and one doesn’t worry about where to ‘place’ Laurie Anderson, androgynous priestess of a tragi-comic sci-fi world in which, through sounds, mime and visual images, we alarmedly recognize the lineaments of the present, and are induced to laugh even if and as we are scared. Laurie Anderson, like Jon Appleton, may be said to update Harry Partch. Complementarily, traditionally trained jazzmen like Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett have embarked on notated composition and may present their music theatrically. Nor can we make sharp

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distinctions between artists and technicians, since the one is so dependent on the other — as men such as David Behrmann and Max Neuhaus have demonstrated. Looking back on the thirty years surveyed in this inevitably bewildering chapter it would seem that the music we make and listen to can only add to our confusion. Confronted by so many apparently contradictory possibilities, how can we recognize the ‘right’ when we hear it? This is ultimately a philosophical, not a musical, question. Our world, in its instability, may baffle and frighten us; yet this is not all loss, since fear also excites, and we teeter between hazard and hope. Paradoxically, technology not only offers opportunities for complete metamorphoses in human potential, it also presents us with unwontedly efficient means of preserving the past on disc, videotape and computer. This gives us a chance to keep our options open, and so safeguards us from despair on the one hand, and on the other from a euphoric reliance on our technical expertise. As long as we keep our ears, hearts and minds open (in that order), we have a fair chance of recognizing that the words ‘better than’ may still mean some thing, or that even if they philosophically don’t, we must needs act as though they did. ‘Youth culture’ was proven right in its realization that the Beatles were better than the Monkees, just as jazz fanatics were right to consider Duke Ellington’s band better than Paul Whiteman’s. In the past a fair proportion of people knew that Beethoven was better than fashionable Hummel, and that Bach was better than Telemann, even though in that case we cannot number among the wise the burghers who appointed him. The view of the ultimate democrat of modern music, John Cage, does not really deny this, since although his silent piece invites everyone to become his own composer, he hopes that being an (even silent) composer will help people to live better. He is still experimentally active, and in 1976 was invited to produce a work for the Boston Symphony to perform at the American Bicentennial. He offered two different works, to be performed simultaneously. One, Renga, offers graphic representations to the performers, selected by chance operations from the notebooks of Cage’s American Hero, Thoreau; these are to be ‘realized’ as the individual player’s instinct suggests. The other work. Apartment House 1776, consists of adaptations of marches, songs and hymns of the Revolutionary period, also chosen by chance operations.

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played by small instrumental groups, in any order, directed by a time-beater but not ‘conductor’. Vocal groups representing the people on the American continent in 1776 — Pueblo Indian, Sephardic Jew, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Black — sing songs from their respective traditions, creating an ultimately demo cratic circus. The audience is supposed To stroll around and through the performers, so that whatever they hear (or don’t hear) is aurally kaleidoscopic. ‘Exposed’ to the world, we may take our choice without having it imposed upon us. Ultimately it is not a question of moral choice but of belief; Cage is giving positive formulation to the negatively democratic phenomenon of Muzak, the purpose of which is to destroy music itself, since it is meant to be not listened to — usually for some ulterior motive, such as lowering our resistance to sales pressure, or lulling our airborne nerves into insensibility. Cage, though in favour of an abnegation of the will, is not in favour of insensibil ity; he wants us to listen to the random sounds that reach our ears, and to be more alive in consequence. His American inno cence reminds us again that although all art is in some sense propaganda, propaganda for life is preferable to propaganda for death; the point made earlier in reference to death-dealing tribal pop and the process of Philip Glass is of general application. We wait, with ears wide open, to hear whether the future will bring unimaginable marvels, submission to computerized routine, or total annihilation. This is why it is important that we should recognize life when we hear it.

COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY Da t e 1000

Co m po s e r s

Bemo of Reichenau (d. 1048). Hermannus Contractus of Reichenau (1013-54).

1100

1155 Bernart de Ventadorn (d. 1195) visits England. c. 1160-^ Maître Léonin at Notre Dame, where music in two to four parts is being cultivated.

c. 1180-1236 Maître Pérotin at Notre Dame.

Mu s ic a l

ev ent s

Lit e r a t u r e

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles continue to be compiled till after Norman Conquest. Peter Abelard (1079-1142). Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx ( 1109?-66). John of Salisbury (c. 1115-80). 1135 Geoffrey of Monmouth: Historia 1150 Period of troubadours, Region Britanniae. trouvères, jongleurs, and ménestrels of France.

Ar

So m e t a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic f ig u r e s a n d e v e n t s

1018 Assembly of Oxford. Danes and English under English law. 1063-92 Pisa Cathedral. 1079 Winchester Cathedral, Norman rebuilding begun. 1086-97 Tower of London.

1066 Norman Conquest.

1086 Completion of Doomsday Book.

1093 onwards, Durham Cathedral. 1147 The Second Crusade.

I I

1165 FI. Chrétien de Troyes.

1163-C. 1250 Notre Dame, Paris.

1174-85 Canterbury Cathedral choir. 1176 Old London Bridge. 1194-1260 Chartres Cathedral.

c 1167 Oxford University founded. 1169 Saladin is Sultan of Egypt. 1170 Murder of Thomas à Becket.

Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). 1182 Jews banished from France. 1189 The Third Crusade.

m

1200 German Minnesingers

1200

1207 First song contests at the Wartburg.

Adam de la Halle

(c. 1230-C. I288).’ 1239 Death of John

of Fomsete. Philip de Vitri (1291-1361)

1300

Guillaume de Machaut

1226 Period of the Passion, Christmas, miracle, and Easter plays. 1230 Musical instmction at Oxford and Paris. c. 1250 The Reading Rota: Sumer is icumen in. 1270 Adam de la Halle writes his opera. Jeu de Robin et Marion.

(c. 1300-f. 1377)

1310 Period of transition from ars antica to ars nova.

Francesco Landini (1325-97)-

Roger Bacon, Franciscan monk and scientific thinker, bom (c. 12:4-1293).

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). 1300 Dante: Divina Commedia begun. Petrarch ( 1304-74). Giovanni Boccaccio

1200-1304 Cloth Hall, Yprcs.

1220-88 Amiens Cathedral 1220-65 Salisbury Cathedral Cimabue (1240?-: 301?). 1246-48 Sainte Chapelle, Paris. 1248 onwards Cologne Cathedral. 1261-1324 York Minster. Giotto (c. 1266-1337)

(C.1340-C.1400)

John Dunstable (?-i453).

1370 Meistersingers active in Germany.

1362 Langland: Tiers Plowman, c. 1366 Froissart’s Chronicles. 1369 Chaucer: The Boke ofthe Duchesse.

1222 Padua University founded. 1228 Frederick II leads the Sixth Crusade and takes Jerusalem. 1237-40 Mongols conquer Russia. c. 1243 Salamanca University founded. 1244 Egyptian Sultan re-captures Jerusalem. 1265 Parliament summoned by Simon de Montfort. 1271 Marco Polo began his travels. 1290 Jews expelled from England.

1313 Berthold Schwarz, German Grey Friar, invents gunpowder. William of Wykeham (1324-1404).

(•3t3-75)-

1340 The Luttrell Psalter.

1215 Magna Carta signed. Before 1219 Bologna University founded.

1309 Papal Court set up at Avignon.

John Wycliff (c .1320-84). 1323 Jean de Mûris: Musica William Langland 1332-c. 1400). Speculativa Geoffrey Chaucer :34o Secular and instmmcntal music increasing.

1202 The Fourth Crusade, 1071. c. 1209 Cambridge University founded. 1209 The Albigensian Crusade.

Filippo Bmnelleschi (1339-1446).

The van Eycks (1370-1441).

1332 First record of division of Parliament into two Houses. 1338-1453 The 100 Years’ War. 1340 First European paper mill. 1347-51 The Black Death. 1348 Prague University founded.

1362 English language used in Parlia ment instead of French. 1381 The Peasants’ Revolt.

So m e Da t e

Co m po s e r s

Mu s ic a l

ev ent s

1300 cemtd. 1400

1387 Chaucer: Canterbury Tales begun.

Gilles Binchois (c. 1400-60). Guillaume Dufay (1400-74).

Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420^. 1495).

Jacob Obrecht (c. 1440-1505). Alexander Agricola (c. 1446-C. 1506)

Lit e r a t u r e

Robert Henryson (c. 1425-1508).

1436 Dufay composed his motet Nuper rosarían. 1440-65 The Trent Codices.

François Villon (b. 1431, disappeared 1463).

1452 Lochamer Liederbuch, begun.

Politian (1454-94).

1460 John Hambroys, Oxford’s first Doctor of Music.

John Skelton (c. 1460-1529) William Dunbar (c. 1460-1520).

Ar

t a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

Donatello (1386-1466). 1386 Heidelberg University founded. Fra Angelico (1387-1455). P. Uccello (1397-1475) (c. 1400 Wilton Diptych). Roger van der Weyden (1400-64). Masaccio (c. 1401-28). Filippo Lippi (?i 4o 61409 Leipzig University founded. 69) Piero della Francesca (1406-92). 1411-46 London Guildhall built. 1415 Battle of Agincourt. Jean Fouquet (c. 1415-77)Jan Huss burnt at Constance. Giovanni Bellini (1428-1516). Hans Memiing (1430-94). Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). 1434 Jan van Eyck: Amolfini and his Wife. Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510). 1446-1515 King’s College, Cambridge. Ghirlandaio (1449-94) Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Filippino Lippi (14571504).

1426-50 First printed books, Holland and Germany.

in

1431 Joan of Arciburnt at Rouen. 1431-33 First German peasant revolt near Wormá. 1440 Eton College founded.

1450 Rebellion ofJack Cade of Kent. Isabella of Castile (1451-1504). Ferdinand V of Aragon (14521516). 1453 Fall of Constantinople.

1400

eontd. Juan de Anchieta (c. 1462-e. 15Í3).

Francisco de Peñalosa (c. 1470-C. 1538) Hugh Aston (c. 1480-1533).

Christopher Tye (c. 1500-73). Thomas Tallis (1505-85)-

Erasmus (1466-1536). Juan del Encina (c. 1468-C. 1529). Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527).' Sir Thomas Malory, (d. 1471). 1471 Orfeof by Politian, performed in Mantua. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535).

1490-1502. Eton Choirbook collected.

1495. Josquin des Prez, choirmaster at Cambrai Cathedral. 1496. Franchino Gafori; Practica Musicae. 1497 Pétrucci of Veiuce prints music, etc., from movable type.

1485 Malory: Morte d'Arthur.

François Rabelais (i494?-i553).

Hieronymus Bosch (1462-1516).

Albrecht Dürer ( 14711528). Michelangelo (14751564). Titian (1477-1576)Giorgione (c. 1478-1511). c. 1480 Eton College frescoes. Raphael (1483-1520).

I4.Q5-97 Da Vinci’s Last Supper painted in Milan. Hans Holbein the Younger (i497-i543)*

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42).

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71). 1503 Da Vinci: Mona Lisa. 1503-19 Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster. 1506-66 Bramante, Michelangelo and others; St. Peter’s, Rome.

1469-92 Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler of Florence. Copernicus, Polish astronomer (>473.-'543)- . 1476 Caxton’s printing press at West minster.

1484 Parliament passes reform Acts on law, trade, and tax-collecting. 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field. Tudor dynasty. 1492 Christopher Columbus crosses Atlantic to America. Jews expelled from Spain. 1493 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. 1495 Jews expelled from Portugal.

1497 The Venetians, John and Sebastian Cabot, sail from Bristol for Henry VII of England to re-discover N. America.

1505 A regular mail service estab lished between Vienna and Brussels.

Da t e

(ÜOMPOSERS

Mu s ic a i ,

ev en t s

Lit e r a t u r e

1300 coTitd. 1400

1387 Chaucer: Canterbury Tales begun.

Gilles Binchois (e. 1400-60). Guillaume Dufay (1400-74).

Johannes Ockeghem (Í.1420-Í.1495).

Jacob Obrecht (c. 1440-1505). Alexander Agricola (c. 1446-C. 1506)

Robert Henryson (c. 1425-1508).

1436 Dufay composed his motet Nuper rosarum. 1440-65 The Trent Codices.

1452 Lochamer Liederbuch, begun. 1460 John Hambroys, Oxford’s first Doctor of Music.

François Villon (b. 1431, disappeared 1463).

Pohtian (1454-94). John Skelton (e. 1460-1529) William Dunbar (c. 1460-1520).

Ar

So m e t a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

Donatello (1386-1466). 1386 Heidelberg University founded. Fra Angelico (1387-1455). P. Uccello (1397-1475) (c. 1400 Wilton Diptych). Roger van der Weyden (1400-64). Masaccio (c. 1401-28). Filippo Lippi (?i 4o 669) 1409 Leipzig University founded. Piero della Francesca (1406-92). 1411-46 London Guildhall built. Jean Fouquet 1415 Battle of Agincourt. (c. 1415-77)Jan Huss burnt at Constance. Giovanni Bellini (1428-1516). Hans Memling (1430-94). Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). 1434 Jan van Eyck: Amolfini and his Wife. Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510). 1446-1515 King’s College, Cambridge. Ghirlandaio (1449-94) Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Filippino Lippi fi4>V71504).

1426-50 First printed books, Holland and Germany.

in

1

1431 Joan of Arc burnt at Rouen. 1431-33 First German peasant revolt near Worms. 1440 Eton College founded.

1450 Rebellion ofJack Cade of Kent. Isabella of Castile (1451-1504). Ferdinand V of Aragon (14521516). 1453 Fall of Constantinople.

1400

contd. Juan de Anchieta (r. 1462-C. 15^3).

Francisco de Pefialosa (c. 1470-C. 1528) Hugh Aston (c. 1480-1522).

1500

Christopher Tye (c. 1500-73). Thomas Tallis (!505-85)-

Erasmus (1466-1536). Juan del Encina (833-97) ■

1830 Corot: Chartres

Cathedral

1838 National Gallery, London, opened.

1837 Morse invents telegraphic inked tape in New York. 1837 Accession of Queen Victoria. 1838 Regular steamship communication between England and Ameriea.

So m e Da t e

1800 contd.

Co m po s e r s

M. Moussorgsky (1839-81).

P. Tchaikowsky (1840-93).

Mu s ic a l

ev en t s

1839 Schubert’s G major Symphony produced by Mendelssohn at Leipzig. Chopin; Twenty-Four Preludes, Op. a8. 1840 Schumann marries Clara Wieck. Smetana at Prague. Wagner: Faust Overture. Adolph Sax invents the saxophone.

A. Dvofák (18411904). A. Sullivan (184a1900).

1841 Liszt: Années de pélérinage. 184a Philharmonic Society of New York founded. Verdi: Nabucco.

Edward Greig (1843-1907).

1843 Leipzig Conservatoire established by Mendelssohn. Donizetti: Don Pasquale. Balfe: The Bohemian Girl produced in London. 1844 Mendelssohn; Violin Concerto. Berlioz: Traité de l’Instru mentation.

Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908).

Gabriel Fauré (i845-i9a4).

1845 Wagner: Tannhäuser. Liszt: Les Préludes.

1846 Mendelssohn’s Elijah performed at Birmingham. 1847 Verdi: Macbeth.

Lit e r a t u r e

Ar

t

a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic FIGURES AND EVENTS

1839 Stendhal: La Chartreuse de Parme.

Paul Cézanne (18391906).

1839 Opium war with China. Hong Kong taken. New Zealand proclaimed a British colony.

George Sand: Spiriaion. Thomas Hardy (1840-1938).

Auguste Rodin (1840-

1840 Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Rowland Hill introduces the penny post.

184a R. Mayer: Law of the conservatism of Energy. Macaulay: Lays of Ancient Rome. Gogol: Dead Souls. 1843 J. S. Mill: System of Logic. Henry James (novelist) (1843-1916). F. W. Nietzsche (18441900). Anatole France (1844-1934). Robert Bridges (1844-1930). 1845 Disraeli; Sybil. F. Engels; Situation of the Working Classes in England. 1846 Lear: Book of Nonsense. 1847 C. Bronte: faru Eyre.

1917)-

Claude Monet (18401926). 1840-53 Charles Barry builds the Houses of Parliament. Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

184a Mudie’s lending library opened in London. James Nasmyth invents the steam hammer. 1843 First workmen’s Co-operative Society (Pioneers of Rochdale).

H. (Douanier) Rousseau. (1844-1910). Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1933).

1846 Repeal of Corn Laws. Mohl discovers protoplasm. 1847-1931 Thomas Edison.

i8oo contd.

C. V. Stanford (1852-1924).

Lecâ Janáíek (1854-1928).

Edward Elgar (1857-1934).

1847-48 Irish potato famine, followed Emily Bronte; by heavy emigration. Wuthering Heights. H. Hoflman; Struwwel peter. 1848 Smetana opens a music 1848 Murger; Scènes Paul Gauguin 1848 Public Health Act passed. (1848-1903). de la vie de Bohème. school in Prague. First Peace Congress in Brussels Marx and Engels; under Richard Cobden. Communist Manifesto. Widespread revolutionary mo Thackeray; Vanity Fair. vement throughout Europe. 1849 Sterndale Bennett August Strindberg forms the London Bach (1849-1912). Society C.1850. Pre-Raphaelite 1850 First performance of 1850 Dickens; Brotherhood. Wagner’s Lohengrin under David Copperfield Tennyson; In Memoriam. Liszt at Weimar. R. L. Stevenson (1850-94). Paxton; Crystal Palace. 1851 The Great Exhibition. 1851 H. Melville; 185t Verdi; Rigoletto. First submarine cable laid from Moby Dick. Dover to Calais. Hawthorne; House of the Seven Gables. 1852 Berlioz visits London. 1852 H. Beecher Stowe; Uncle Tom’s 1852 Napoleon III Emperor of the Cabin. French. Vincent van Gogh 1853 Mrs. Gaskell; 1853 Schumann writes his Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). (1853-90). Cranford. article ‘New Paths’. 1854-56 Crimean War. Arthur Rimbaud 1854 Berlioz; Te Deum. Brahms; Songs and the B (1854-91). major Piano Trio. 1855 Longfellow; 1855 Wagner conducts in Hiawatha. London. Liszt plays his E flat major Walt Whitman; Piano Concerto at Weimar Leaves of Grass. 1855 Alexander II Emperor of Russia. G. B. Shaw (1856- 1856: Ingres: under Berlioz. 1950)1856 Louis Pasteur becomes Pro La Source. Crystal Palace concerts fessor in University of Paris. Oscar Wilde start in London. Bessemer invents cheap process (1856-1900). of converting iron into steel. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). 1857 Trollope; 1857 Dvorák studies in 1857 Indian Mutiny. Barchester Towers. Prague. Flaubert; Madame Liszt’s nine symphonic Bovary. poems published.

So m e Da t e

1800 conld.

Co m po s e r s

Mu s ic a l

ev en t s

Cecil Sharp, collector of folk-songs (1859-1924). 1859 Wagner: Tristan und Isolde. Hugo Wolf (1860-1903). Gustav Mahler (1860-1911).

Frederick Delius (1863-1934).

Richard Strauss (1864-1949).

Ar

t

a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

Baudelaire: Fleurs du Mal. 1858 Tennyson: Idylls of the King.

G. Puccini (1858-1924). Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).

Claude Debussy (1862-1918).

Lit e r a t u r e

Gounod: Faust, produced in Paris. Liszt leaves Weimar and goes to Rome. Dame Nellie Melba (1861-?). 1861 Royal Academy of Music founded in London. Brahms: D minor Piano Concerto. 1862 Verdi’s Forza del Des tino produced at St. Petersburg. 1863 Bizet: Pearl Fishers. 1864 Tchaikowsky: Over ture, Romeo and Juliet.

1859 Meredith: Richard Feuerel. 1859 Gontcharov: Oblomou. C. Darwin: Origin of Species. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Rabindranath Tagore (1860-1941). 1860 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. 1861 George Eliot: Silas Marner. Hans Andersen: Fairy Tales.

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

1858 Atlantic Cable completed. Property qualification for Members of Parliament re moved. Alexander II begins emanci pation of serfs in Russia. Georges Seurat (1859-91). 1859 Ingre.s: Le Bain Turc. Corot: Macbeth. W. R. Sickert; P. Wilson Steer (both born and died 1860-

1860 Abraham Lincoln, President of U.S.A.

1942)-

Georges Seurat (1860-91). 1861-74 Paris Opera House built.

1861 Victor Emmanuel, first King of United Italy. American yivil War. 1

1862 V. Plugo: Les Misérables. 1863 Renan: Vie de Jésus.

Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901).

1863 Lincoln declares emancipation of Negroes. 1864 Geneva Convention for protec tion of wounded (Red Cross). Metropolitan Railway (Under ground) opened in London.

s»MSr 1800

contd.

1865 Defeat of South in American civil war; Lincoln assassinated.

1865 Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies. 1865 Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). W. B. Yeats (1865•939)-

Jan Sibelius (1865-1957). Carl Nielson (1865-1931).

1866 Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment. Ibsen: Brand. H. G. Wells (i8661946). 1867 Wagner: Meistersinger, 1867 Marx: Capital. Ibsen: Peer Cyr.t. produced in Munich. 1867-69 Tolstoy: Verdi: Don Carlos. War caul Peace. J. Strauss: Blue Danube John Galsworthy Waltz. (1867-1933). A. Sullivan: Cox and Box. Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). 1868 W. Morris: 1868 Grieg: A minor Earthly Paradise. Piano Concerto. Haeckel: History of Smetana: symphonic poem, Creation. My Fatherland. 1869 Wagner: Das Rhein- 1869 J. S. MiU: gold, produced in Munich. Subjection of Women. Maxim Gorky (1869-1936). 1866 Smetana: Bartered Bride, produced in Prague.

1870 Délibes: Ballet Coppélia produced in Paris.

1871 First performance of Verdi’s Atda at Cairo.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922).

c. 1866 Degas paints his scenes of the life and work of ballet dancers.

1866 Prussia and Italy attack Austria. First condensed milk factory in Switzerland. Federal Union of Canada. 1867 Factory Inspector Act.

1868-82 G. E. Street: London Law Courts.

j 868

Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). Frank Lloyd Wright (18691-1960). Henri Matisse (1869-1954) 1870 Schliemann be gins to excavate Troy. Ck>rot: Femme à la Perle.

1869 College for Women (afterwards Girton College) founded in Cambridge. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948).

1871 Whistler; Artistes Mother»

The

Gladstone’s First Administra tion.

1870 Franco-Prussian War. Third Republic proclaimed. Napoleon III flees to England. Compulsory education in Eng land. Dogma of Papal Infallibility declared by Vatican Council. V. I. Lenin (1870-1924). 1871 William I, German Emperor.

Da t e

Co m po s e r s

Mu s ic a i ,

ev en t s

1800 contd.

Ar

Lit e r a t u r e

1871-2 George Eliot: Middlemarch. R. Vaughan Williams (1872-

Serge Diaghilev, ballet impressario (1872-1929)

S. Rachmaninov (1873-1943).

Feodor Chaliapin (1873-

1958).

>938).

1873 Debussy enters the Paris Conservatoire. Enrieo Caruso (1873-1921). Gustav Holst 1874 Johann Strauss, Jr.; (1874-1934). Die Fledermaus. Arnold Schoenberg Moussorgsky: Pictures at an (1874-1951). Exhibition. Charles Ives (1874- Wagner completes his '954)Götterdämmerung. Maurice Ravel 1875 Bizet: Carmen. ('875-'937)-

1876 Purcell Society founded. Grieg: music for Peer Cynt. 1877 Borodin: Symphony in B minor

John Ireland (1879-1962).

1878 Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony performed for the hrst time at Milan. 1879 Tchaikowsky: Eugene Ondgin.

Walter dc la Marc (1873-1956). 1873 Verne: Round the World in Eighty days.

So m e t

a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

G. Renault (18711958). First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris. Royal Albert Hall opened in London. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944).

W. Somerset Maugham 1874 Monet exhibits his Impression: Soleil (1874-1965). Gertrude Stein levant. (1874-1946). R. M. Rilke ('875-1926). 1875 Mark Twain: Tom Sawyer. Robert Frost (1875-1963). Thomas Mann (1875-1958). Jack London (1876-1916). 1877 Tolstoy: Karenina.

h is t o r ic a l

a n d s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

1872 National Union of Agricultural Workers formed in Britain. 1873 National Federation of Em ployers formed in Britain.

1874 Disraeli’s fìrst Administration. Endowed Schools Act. Winston Churchill (1874 — '965).

1 1876 Renoir: Au Théâtre.

Anna

John Masefield (1878-1967).

Augustus John (1878-1961).

E. M. Forster (1879- '97°)1879 Ibsen: The Doll’s House.

Paul Klee (1879-1960). Matthew Smith (1879-1960).

Í

1876 The telephone invented Graham Bell.

by

1877 Victoria proclaimed Empress of India. Edison invents the phonograph. 1878 German Socialists outlawed. Factory and Workshop Act in Britain.

Ernest Bloch (1880- 1959).

Béla Bartók (1881>945)Villa-Lobos (1881-1959). Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967). Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). Karol Szymanowski (1883-1937). Arnold Bax (1883>953)Anton von Webern (1883-1945). Alban Berg (18851935)-

•

P ' T' *

1880 Puccini studies at the Milan Conservatory. Rimsky-Korsakov: A Night in May. A. Sullivan: The Pirates of Pengance. 1881 Brahms: Academic Festival Overture.

1880 Dostoevsky: Brothers Karamazov.

1882 Brahms: Piano Con certo in B flat. Rimsky-Korsakov: Snow Maiden. 1883 Royal College of Music opened under George Grove.

James Joyce (1882>94>)-

1884 Massenet: Manon, pro duced in Paris. 1885 César Franck: Variations Symphonique. Rachmaninov studies at the Moscow Conservatory. 1886 Improvements made in piano construction by firms of Bliithner, Bechstein and Steinway.

1883 Stevenson: Treasure Island. Nietzsche: Zarathustra.

1880 First practical electric light by Jacob Epstein ¿80-1959). Edison and Swan. À. Derain (1880-1954). Franz Marc (18801916). 1881 Monet: Sunshine and Snow. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Fernand Léger (18811955)Georges Braque (1882-1963).

1881 Canadian Pacific Railway formed.

1883 First skyscraper in Chicago.

1883 Britain occupies Egypt.

1882 Married Women’s Property Act. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882— 1945)-

Modigliani (1884-1920) 1884 Fabian Society founded. D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Ezra Pound (1885-1972). 1886 Ibsen: Rosmersholm

1885-1911 Victor Emmanuel Monu ment, Rome.

1886 American Federation of I.abor founded.

i886 Van Gogh leaves Holland to study art in Paris. 0. Kokoschka (1886— 1980). Diego Rivera (i886«957)- . , 1887 Verdi: Otello, produced Rupert Brooke in Milan. Juan Gris (1887-1927). (1887-1915). MarcChagall (1887-1985). 1888 Pasteur Institute established in T.S.Eliot (1888-1965). Le Corbusier (1887 — i688 Mahler directs the Paris, 1688 Henry James: 1965) Budapest Opera. G. di Chirico (ß.ifBM)- 1889 London EtoA&’siStfike. Aspern Papers. London Coïmtytioanîll formed. 1889 Êiiffel Tower, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). _ 1890 Free elementary education 1890-1914 J.G.Prazer: Paris. established. Paul Nash ( 1889-1946). Golden Bough.

Da t e

1800 contd.

Co m po s e r s

S. Prokofieif (18911953)-

Arthur Bliss (1891 -1975). Paul Hindemith (1891-1963). Darius Milhaud (1892-1974). Walter Piston (1894-1976).

Mu s ic a l

ev en t s

1892 Dvofák goes to New York as Director of the National Conservatory. 1893 Verdi: Falstaff, pro duced at Milan. Queen’s Hall, London, ' built. 1895 Henry Wood directs concerts at Queen’s Hall, London.

1898 Folksong London, formed.

1900

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). Aaron Copland (1900-). Alan Bush (1900-). Edmund Rubbra (190!-).

Society,

1900 Elgar: Dream of Gerontius. Rimsky-Korsakov : Tsar Saltan. 1901 Rachmaninov: Second Piano Concerto.

Lit e r a t u r e

Ar t

So m e a n d a r c h it e c t u r e

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic f ig u r e s a n d e v e n t s

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960). 1891 0. Wilde: Stanley Spencer Picture of Dorian Gray. (1891-1959). 1891 Hardy: Tessofthe 1891 Gauguin goes D’Urberoilles. to Tahiti. Kipling: Barrack Room Joan Miro (1893 — 1983)Ballads. 1891 Conan Doyle: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 1895 Joseph Conrad: 1895 Kiel Canal opened. 1895 X-rays discovered by Röntgen. Almayer’s Folly. Lumière brothers invent the cinematograph. Marconi invents wireless tele graphy. 1896 A. E. Housman: 1896 National Portrait 1896 Nobel Prizes established. A Shropshire Lad. Gallery opened. Daily Mail founded. W. W. Jacobs: Many Cargoes. 1896 T. Hardy: Jude the Obscure. 1897 H. G. Wells 1897 Workmen’s Compensation Act. Invisible Man. William Faulkner (1897 - 1962). 1898 G. B. Shaw: Henry Moore 1898 Zeppelin 'invents rigid airship. The Perfect Wagnerite. (1898- 1986). M. and Mme. Curie discover radium. Spanish-American War. Diesel motor first used. 1899 Haeckel: The 1899 Boer War in South Africa. Riddle of the Universe. Board of Education created. 1900 British Labour Party founded. Federation of Australia. The Boxer risings in China. 1901 Rudyard Kipling: 1901-4 Picasso’s Blue Kim. Period.

1901 Theodore Roosevelt elected President of U.S.A.

■ William Walton (1901-1983).

D. Kabelevsky (1904-1987).

igo2 Debussy: Pelle'as et Mélisande. 1903 Wagner’s Parsifal performed in New York.

1903 G. B. Shaw: Man and Superman. G. E. Moore: Principia Ethica Samuel Butler: IVay of All Flesh. Evelyn Waugh (1903-)1904 Phonographic studies 1904 W. H. Hudson: of primitive people’s music Green Mansions. made by Berlin musicologists Barrie: Peter Pan. Romain Rolland: Jean Christophe.

A. Rawsthorne (1905-1971). M. Tippett {'905-)-

1905 R. Sti'auss’s Salomé produced in Dresden.

D. Shostakovitch (1906-1975).

1906 Mozart Festival held in Salzburg.

E. Maconochy (>97-)-

1907 Delius: A Village Romeo and Juliet.

Oliver Messiaen (1908-).

H. G. Wells: First Men in the Moon.

1909 Vaughan Williams: Fantasy on a Theme by Tallis. Strauss: Elektra. Paderewski directs the Warsaw Conservatory.

igoa Boer War ended. 1903-26 A. Gaudi: Barcelona Cathedral. Barbara Hepworth ('903- '975)Graham Sutherland (1903-1980).

Entente Cordiale. 1903 Wright brothers achieve first powered flight by an aircraft, North Carolina.

Sal . ador Dali (1904-).

1904

Jean-Paul Sartre (>905- >980). 1905 Wilde: De Pro fundis. H. G. Wells: Modern Utopia. igo6 John Galsworthy: Man of Property. Upton Sinclair: The Jungle. Samuel Beckett (1906-). Cubism (1907-14). W. H. Auden Basil Spence (1907 — (1907-1973). >976). 1907 J. M. Synge: Playboy of the Western World. Gorky: Mother. 1908 Arnold Bennett: 1909 Futurist Manifesto Old Wive.s’ Tale.

Russo-Japanese War.

1905 Revolution in Russia Einstein’s first theory of rela tivity.

1907 Experimental wireless trans mission by Marconi and other scientists. 1908 Old Age Pensions Bill in Britain and Australia. 1909 Blériot flies in an aeroplane from France to England. 1909 Peary discovers North Pole.

So m e Da t e

Co m po s e r s

*1900 conid.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981).

Mu s ic a i ,

ev ent s

1910 Vaughàn William*: A Sea SymphomStravinsky: Firebird. I q 11 Ravel : Daphnis et

adoë.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).

1912 Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire. 1913 Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps.

Lit e r a t u r e

Ar

t

a n d a r c h t t ec t u r e

1910 G. B. Shaw: ^gmalion. Ê.'M. Forster: Howard’s End. J. Galsworthy: Justice. 1911-14 George Moore: Hail and Farewell.

1910-12 First London exhibitions of Post-Im pressionists.

1910 Union of South Afias?.,*

1911-23 R. Ostberg: Stockholm Town Hall. 1911-13 Woolworth Building, New York.

1913 D. H. Lawrence: .^ons and Lovers. Proust: Swann’s Way. Albert Camus

1913-40 Lutyens: Government Buildings, New Delhi.

1911 Italy makes war on Tturkey and seizes Tripoli. Amundsen discovers South lÿle 1912 China becomes a republic. Woodrow Wilson President of U.S.A.

(>913-59)-

1914 Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony. 1915 Sibelius: Fifth Symphony. 1916 Jazz compels interest in U.S.A.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-).

1917 Salzburg Music Festival founded. Prokofiev: Classical Symphony. Respighi: Fountains of Rome. 1918 Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle. 1919 De Falla: ThreeCornered Hat. Elgar: Cello Concerto. 1921 Paul Whiteman visits Europe with orchestra. Prokofiev; Love of Three Oranges. 1922 Vaughan Williams: Classical Symphony.

h is t o r ic a l a n d s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

1914 James Joyce: Dubliners. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) 1916 Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Toung Man. 1917 L. Fcuchtwanger: Jew Süss P. Valéry: La jeune parque.

1914 Opening of Panama Canal. Assassination of Austrian arch duke. German Invasion of Belgium. First World War. 1916 Verdun; Somme; Jutland. Sydney Nolan (1917-)-

1917 Russian Revolution. U.S.A. declares yar on Germany. 1

1918 Dada Manifesto

1918 Armistice.

1919 J. M. Keynes: The Economic Conse quences of the Peace.

1919 Treaty of Versailles. Alcock and Brown’s Atlantic flight.

Joyce: Ulysses Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1922-).

1922 Mussolini’s March on RoTne. B.B.C. formed.

1923 Honegger: Pacific 231.

1924 Bloch: Piano Quintet

Pierre Boulez ('925-)-

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-).

1926 Berg: Wozzcck. 1927 Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex. Weinberger: Schwanda the Bagpiper. 1928 Weil and Brecht: Beggars' Opera. Ravel: Bolero. 1931 Walton: Belshazzar's Feast.

1933 R. Strauss: Arabella. 1934 Hindemith: Mathis Harrison Birtwistle der Mahler. ('934-)Peter Maxwell Davies 1935 G. Gershwin: Porgy and Bess. {'934-)1937 Toscanini refuses to conduct in Europe.

T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land. Rilke: Duino Elegies. G. B. Shaw: Saint Joan. T. Mann: The Magic Mountain. E. M. Forster: A Passage to India. 1925 Kafka: The Trial.

1929 Hemingway: Farewell to Arms. R. Graves: Goodbye to All That. E. M. Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front. A. Malraux: La Condition Humaine. 1934 A. Toynbee! A Study of History. 1935 T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral. ^

1938 Graham Greene: Brighton Rock.

1923 Eisenstein: Battieship Potemkin.

>923 First Labour government in Great Britain under J. Ramsay Macdonald.

1925-6 Walter Gropius: Bauhaus, Dessau. 1926 First ‘sound movie’ in New York.

>925 Locarno Treaty.

John Bratby (1928-).

1931-39 Rockefeller Centre, New York. >933 G- Holden, Senate House, London University.

, 1937 Picasso: Guernica. Paris Exhibition. >939 New York ^hibition.

1926 General Strike in Great Britain. Amundsen’s flight over the North Pole.

1929 Wall Street crash. >93> Statute of Westminster. >932 Large-scale unemployment in Britain, U.S.A. and Germany. >933 Hitler Chancellor of Germany.

>935 Italian invasion of Abyssinia. >936 Spanish Civil War.

>938 Austrian Anschluss. >939 Second World War.

Co m po s e r

s

Mu s ic a l

So m e ev en t s

Lit

er a t u r e

1940 Stravinsky: Symphony in C. Webern: Variationsfor Orchestra. 1941 -Messiaen: Qyatuor pour la Fin du Temps. Prokofiev: War and Peace. 1942 Copland: Rodeo.

1944 Bartók: Concertofor Orchestra. Tippett: A Child ofour Time. *945 Britten: Peter Grimes.

*945 Osbert Sitwell: Left Handj Right Hand. 1947 Albert Camus: La Peste.

1949 Messiaen: TurangalUa.

1949 George Orwell: Nineteen Eightyfour. Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe.

1951 Britten: Billy Budd. Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress. Menotti: Amahl and the Night Visitors. ■953 Britten: Gloriano.

1951 Anthony Powell: A Question of Upbringing.

1954 Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra. Varèse: Déserts. 1955 Boulez: Le Marteau sans Maître. Partch: The Bewitched. Tippett: The Midsummer Marriage.

1953 Samuel Beckett: Waitingfor Godot. 1954 William Golding: Lord ofthe Flies. 1955 Philip Larkin: The Less Deceived. Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita.

Ar

t

AND ARCHITECTURE

h is t o r ic a l

and

s c ie n t if ic

FIGURES AND EVENTS

1943 Piet Mondrian: Broadway BoogieWoogie. 1944 Barbara Hepworth: Wave.

1943

‘Colossus’ — first electronic computer — developed by Thomas Flowers.

1945 Kandinsky retrospective exhibition, New York.

1945

Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed by atom bombs. Second World War ends. India gains independence from Britain.

1947

1948 Jackson Pollock: Number One. 1949 People’s Republic of China Barnett Newman: proclaimed. Ornament I. * 949"5° Nato formed. 1950 Jackson 1950 Beginnings of the European Pollock: Lavender Mist. Common parket. 1951 Matisse: Vence chapel, Cannes. Jean Dubuffet: Piècede Boucherie. *953 Francis Bacon: 1953 Discovery of the structure of Study After Velasquez’s DNA. Portrait of Pope Innocent X. 1954 Mark Rothko: Ochre and Red on Red. *955 Jasper Johns: ‘955 Warsaw Pact set up. White Flag. Le Corbusier: NotreDame-du-Haut, Ronchamp.

1900

contd.

1956 Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge. 1957 Bernstein; West Side Story. 1958

Stravinsky: Threni.

1959 Peter Maxwell Davies: Prolation. 1960 Penderecki: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. 1961 Lutoslawski: Venetian Games. 1962 Boulez: Pii selon Pli. Cage: Britten: War Requiem. Stockhausen: Momente. 1963 Tippett; Concertofor Orchestra. 1964

Britten: Curlew River.

1965 Penderecki: ¿«tí Passion. 1966 Henze: TheBassarids. 1967 Stoekhausen; Prozession; Stimmung. Birtwistle: Punch and Judy. 1968 Stockhausen: Ausden Sieben Tagen. 1969 Birtwistle: Down by the Greenwood Side. Partch: Delusion of the Futry. 1970 Tippett: The Knot Garden. Penderecki: The Devils ofLoudon. 1971 Penderecki: Utrenja.

1956 John Osborne: Look Back in Anger. Albert Camus: La Chute. 1957 Boris Pasternak: Dr. Zhivago. Patrick White: Voss.

1956 ‘This is Tomorrow’ exhibition, ICA, London (Pop art).

1959 Harold Pinter: The Caretaker. Günther Grass: Die Blechtrommel.

1959 Robert Rauschenberg: Monogram.

1961 V. S. Naipaul: A Housefor Mr Biswas. 1962 Alexander Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life ofIvan Denisovitch. 1963 Alain RobbeGrillet: Pour un nouveau roman. 1964 Saul Bellow: Herzog. 1966 Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea.

Soviet invasion of Hungary. Suez, crisis.

1958 Algerian crisis and fall of 4th Republic in France. 1959 Cuban revolution.

1962 Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans.

1962

Cuban missile crisis. Second Vatican Council.

1963 Roy Lichtenstein: Drowning Girl.

1963

Assassination of US President, J. F. Kennedy.

1965 James Rosenquist: TheF-iii.

1965

Chinese Cultural Revolution. US bombs North Vietnam.

1967

Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

1968 Gabriel Garcia Márquez; A Hundred Tears ofSolitude.

1968 Christo Jachareff; 56 Barrels. 1969 Joseph Beuys: The Pack.

1970 Ted Hughes: Crow.

1970 Robert Smithson: SpiralJetty.

1971 Geoffrey Hill: Mercian Hymns.

1956

1968

Student demonstrations in Paris. 1969 Apollo XI lands the first men on the moon. Development of the micro chip by Edward Hof. 1970s Japan emerges as a leading industrial power.

Da t r

1900 coniä.

Co m po s e r s

Mu s ic a l

ev en t s

1972 Shostakovitch: i¡th Symphony.

1976 Reich: Drumming. Part: Cantus. Cage: Apartment House ijjS. 1977 Appleton: Syntronia.

Lit e r a t u r e

1973 Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago voi. i

Ar t

a nd

a r c h it e c t u r e

■973 J0rn Utzon: Sydney Opera House.

1978 Iris Murdoch: The Seay The Sea.

‘977 Walterde Maria: TheLightning Field.

1984 Glass: Akknatan.

198Ö Harrison Birtwistle: The Masks of Orpheus,

1980 William Golding: Rites of Passage. 1981 Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children. 1982 Claude Simon: La Route de Flandres.

1980 ‘The Presence of the Past’ exhibition. Venice. 1981 Ricardo Bofill: Les Arcades du Lac, Saint-Quentin-enYvelines.

1984 Seamus Heaney: Station Island. Wole Soyinka: A Play ofGiants.

1984 Philip Johnson: AT & T Building, New York.

1987 V. S. Naipaul: 7 he Enigma ofArrival.

h is t o r ic a l AND SCIENTIFIC FIGURES AND EVENTS

‘973

Britain enters the EEC.

‘975

Israel and Egypt sign Camp David Treaty. Mao Tse-Tung dies. Viking I spacecraft lands on Mars.

‘976

1979 Richard Meier: The Athenaeum, New Harmony, Indiana.

1981 V'Á.rt: Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi secumdum Joannem.

So.ME

Karol Wojtyla becomes Pope John Paul it. World’s first test-tube baby bom. '979 Moslem fundamentalist revolution in Iran. Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. 1980 Iran8, 721, 727, 730-2, 734. 737, 739. 74o. 743, 746, 747, 748, 749-50, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 760-1, 762, 765, 770, 788, 797, 805, 806, 820, 825, 826, 830, 83 ■, 832, 833, 836a., 847, 851, 852, 856, 857, 865, 869, 871, 902, 913, 914, 916, 917, 918, 919, 920, 925, 929, 930, 934. 935, 953, 964, 976, 979, 982, 984, 985, 99 b 993, 1005, 1013, 1016, 1017, 1018, 1033, 1034. 1038, 1049, 1050, 1051, 1052, 1057, 1058, 1071, 1095, PI. XXXII Beethoven (Riezler), 639a. Beggar’s Opera, The, 469, 479-80, 1063 Bel canto, 391, 396-7, 399, 424, 499, 507, 662, 716, 783, 785 Belgiotoso, Baldasar de, 277 Belgium, 190, 197 Bell Pavin, The, 544 Bellini, Giovanni, 225, 783-5, 786, 787, 792, 798, 807, 808, 810, 813, 815, „ , 817, 839, 852, 865 Bells, 68, PI. I Bells, The (Byrd), 339 Belshazzar, 518 Belshazzar’s Feast, 1038 Bembo, Cardinal Pietro, 264-5, 3*6 Benda, Georg, 482

General Index

1210

Bendidio, Lucrezia, 269 chant, 52; dis cantus 57; organum, 46; trope, 22 Binidiction de Dieu dans la Solitude, 842, 844 Benvenuto Cellini, 760, 768, 769 Benevoli, Orazio, 506 Benserade, Isaac de, 408, 409, 410, 413 Berardi, 503 Berceuse (Busoni), 943; (Chopin), 815 Berg, Alban, 849, 991, 994-6, 1015, Benedicamus Domini

1053 Bergeries, Les,

560

Berio, Luciano, 1074, 1079, 1080

Berlioz, 721, 734, 741, 742, 749, 75973. 775. 780, 784. 788, 789, 793. 794. 795. 805, 809,826n., 836,839, 841, 843, 847, 850, 912, 913, 919, 953, PI. XXXVI Bemacchi, Antonio, 442, 443 Bernard!, Francesco.

Senesino

Bernart de Ventadorn, 84, 90 Berno of Reichenau, 21 Bernstein, Leonard 1062 — 3, 1065,

1094

Bertali, Antonio, 402

Beschreibung des Hochfurstlichen Schloss Esterhasz im Konigreiche Ungern,

PI. XXX Bestiare songs, 1030

Bewitched, The, 1084

Biber, Heinrich, 539, 541 Billings, William, 1048 Billy Budd, 1044 Billy the Kid, 1056 Bimodalism, 1386, 142 Binary dance form, 586-7; form 590 Binchois, Gilles, 187, 190, 196-9, 224, PI. XV Bird as Prophet, 827 Birthday Odes (Purcell), 512, 513, 514

Birtwistle, Harrison, 1079, 1081 —3, 1084, 1088, 1092

Bizet, 734, 775-80, 781, 799, 865, 867, 869, 910 Blacher, Boris, 1024)1. Black Death, te, 122 ‘Black Mass’ (Skryabin), 921 Blake, William, 657 Blantk, 881 Blitheman, William, 335 Blitzstein, Marc, 1062-3, 1064, 1065 Bloch, Ernest, 1020, I02i Blondel de Nesles, 84 Bloody and dying Jesus, The, 526 Blow, John, 429-32, 510-12, 547 Bluebeard’s Castle, 1014 Boccaccio, 182L Boccherini, 608, 711 Bock, 360 Boesset, Antoine, 408; Jean-Baptiste, 409

Boethius, iif., 16, 19

Bohemia, 401, 715, 878, 881 Bohm, Georg, 525, 564 ‘Bois 6pais’, 414 Boito, 742, 793, 795 Boleyn, Anne, 337 Bologna, 8, 155, 291, 442, 443, 533, 550. 552; Church of S. Petronia, 533; School, 533, 553 Bonn, 633 Bonne Chanson, La, 956 Bononcini, A. M., 458, 459, 466, 467, 468; Giovanni, 452, 458, 459, 467. 468, 469, 471 Book of Common Prayer, 311, 323-5 Booke of Common Praier noted. The, 324, 326, PI. XXI Booke of Consort Lessons (Morley), 342 Bordoni, Faustina, 444, 460, 467, 48: Boris Godunov, 861-3, 873 Borodin, 854-8, 866, 870, 874, 878, 9 "8, 930 Borroni, Pietro P., 353 Boschi, Guiseppe, 467, 469, 470 Botany, 360-1 Botticelli, 224 Bouilly, 730 Boulez, Pierre, 1026 — 7, 1079, 1091

'073 —4>

'°75.

Bourr^e, 410, 472

409, 962 Bourgeois, Louis, 320, 328 Bourree, 538 Boy was Born, A, 1040-1, 1042, 1043 Boyce, William, 547 Brade, William, 542 Bradford, 923 Brady, Nicholas, 328

Bourgeois Gentilkorrme, Le,

Brahe, Tycho, 359

Brahms, 51, 118, 142, 593, 693-703, 705. 756, 847, 882, 883, 885, 893, 920, 929, 982, 997, 1013 Brandenburg Concertos, 567 Braun, Baron, 730 Brautwahl, Die, 983, 984 Brazil, 1065-7 ‘Breathe soft, ye gales’, 517 Brescia, 356 Bridge, Frank, 1041 Bridge Variations (Britten), 1041, 1042 ‘Brillez, astres nouveaux’, 492 Britain, 7,34, 756,9of, 97-103,112,147. 1736, 180, 185L, 189, 191, 213-15. 222, 227, 1027, 1035-47. England Britten, Benjamin, 1089

1040 — 7,

1078 — 9,

Britton, Thomas, 512 Brno, 887 Brockes, Heinrich, 526, 527 Broken Consort, The, 545 Broschi, Carlo. See Farinelli

Browne, John, 2146; William, 289

General Index

Bruckner, 593, 657, 672, 683-93, 694, 695. 701. 702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 708, 825, 847, 882, 886, 962, 969, 996, 1036 Brueghel, Pieter, the Elder, 357 Brumel, Antoine, 201-4 Brunelleschi, 224 Brunfels, 360 Bruno, Giordano, 359 Brunswick, 462, 464 Bruyere, La, 585 Buck der Hdngenden Garten, 987-8 Buchner, George, 994 Buchner, Hans, 216 Budapest, PI. XXXI Buffo music, 7i2ff.; style, 482 Bukler, C., 89?!. Bukofzer, Manfred, i88n., 52ih ., 567/1. Bull, John, 334, 339-40, s'ii, 345, 351 Bulletin Hispanique, gon.

Bunyan, John, 979, 980-1 Buono Figliuona, La, 713 Burgundy, igof. Burkhard, Willy, 1030;!. Burnacini, Lodovico, Pis. XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII Burney, Charles, 426, 438, 456, 460, 484. 547 Busnois, Antoine, 1986, 211 Busoni, 772, 849, 962, 982, 986/!., 999, 1016, 1063, 1091 Buus, Jacques, 354 Buxheimer Orgelbuch, 216 Buxtehude, Dietrich, 525, 562, 564 Byrd, William, 280-1, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 310-16, 317, 325, 326, 330, 331, 332, 334, 338, 339, 340, 341, 345, 346, 355, 363, 364, 426, 435, 538, 577, 578, 851, 966, PI. XXIV Byron, Lord, 765, 836, 838, 923, 928, 1048 Byttering, 185, 188 Byzantine chant, 20, 29; Church, 4; music, 996 338, 348-9 Cabot, John, 232, 361; Sebastian, 232, 361 Caccia, 158, 161, 183, 185, 192, 301-2, Ca b e z o n , An t

386

o n io d e ,

Caccini, Giulio, 366, 367, 368, 369, 37.0, 372, 373, 374, 377, 408 ‘Cade il Mondo’, 475 Cadence, 81, 139-42, 167, 171, 1936, ig8f., 202f., 206, 213, 397, 550; English, 314, 435; ‘Neapolitan’, 590;/.; plagel, 582; Phrygian, 471 Cadenzas, 441-2

I2I I Cadiz, 608

413, 432 Cafe-concert, 1031; music, 681, 705; songs, 1030; tune, 1064 Caffarelli, 442 Cage,John, 1059, 1060, 1078, 1087, 1093, 1095-6 Cahusac, Louis de, 494 Cairo, 792 Caldara, Antonio, 457, 459, 627 Calderdn de la Barca, Pedro, 485 Calvin, Jean, 311, 320, 330, 359, 463 Calypso and Telemachus, 466 Calzabigi, 494, 718, 719 Cambefort, Jean de, 409 Cambert, Robert, 406, 407, 411, 422, Cadmus et Hermione,

432

‘Cambridge’ Psalter, 329 Campian, Thomas, 287, 288, 289, 290 Campra, Andre, 486, 491, 492 ‘Can she excuse’, 525 Cancionera de Palacio, 224 Canon, 60, 1586, 174, 1856, igif., igyf., 202, 2046, 2076, 221, 291, 301 Cantade et arie a voce sola, 499 Cantata, 395, 499-502, 507-8, 511, 525-8, 528-30; aria style, 663; chamber, 514; French, 509; rondo, 599-600; solo, 599-601 Cantata (Stravinsky), loii Cantatrice, 444 Canterbury, 322, 327; Psalter, 329 Canti carnascialeschi, 209 Canti di Prigionia, 1027-8 Cantica Sacra (Dumont), 507 Cantiga, 90, 224 Cantillation, 6 Cantional (Schein), 520 Canto fermo, 598 Cantoris, 331 Cantus, 1088 Cantus collateralis. See Choirbook arrangement Cantus firmus, 189, 1946, 2036, 206, 214, 216, 227, 301, 302, 306, 313, 335. 342-3. 344-5. 35'. '079 Canzona, 239, 354-5. 532-3. 536. 539, 557

Canzonets for Two Voyces Canzoniere, 264

(Morley), 342

Caporale, Andrea, 468 963 Capua, Rinaldo de, 484 Coquet desfemmes, 240 Cara, Marco, 209 ‘Cara tomba’, 452 Caravaggio, Michelangelo, 356-7 Carestini, Giovanni, 442, 461 Carey, Henry, 337, 481; Lady, 337 Carissimi, Giacomo, 500-1, 507, 508, 793. 795. 1027

Capriccio,

1212 Carlyle, Thomas, 743 Carmelites, Les, 1031 Carmen, 778-80, 799, 801, 865, 871 Carnaval, 819-20 Carneval von Venedig, Der, 463 Carnivals, 2o8f. Carol, 187, 214, 224 Caroso, Fabritio, 354 Carpaccio, 225, 356 Carpentras, 406 Cartelle, 213 Carter, Elliott, 1057, 1058, 1064 Cartier, Jacques, 361 Cartography, 361 Caserta, 155 Cassation, 597 Cassiodorus, It, 16 Cassola, Luigi, 265 ‘Casta Diva’, 783 Castanets, 93 Castrati, 383, 442-4, 446, 447, jiSn. Castrucci, Pietro, 467, 476; Prospero, 467, 476 Castor el Pollux, 491, 492, 494, 495 Catena d'Adone, La, 377-9, 380, 381, 383 Cathidrale Engloutie, La, 937, 939 Caucasian lezginka, 854 Caurroy, Eustache du, 350 Cavalieri, Emilio de’, 367, 372, 373, 374) 377) 379 Cavalli, Pietro Francesco, 391, 395, 396) 397) 400, 410, 420, 438, 440 Cavazzoni, Girolamo, 354-5; Marc Antonio, 354-5, 558«. Cavendish, Michael, 288 Cavour, 782, 787 Caxton, William, 213 Cazzati, Maurizio, 533 Cease sorrows now, 283 Ceccarelli, 722 Cellini, Benvenuto, 357, 358 ’Cello Concerto (Dvorak), 883-4, ^^6; (Elgar), 969, 970, 971, 1030; (Penderecki), 1073; (Walton), 1037 ’Cello Sonata (Debussy), 943 Cenerentola, La, 733 Certaine notes set forthe in foure and three partes, to be sung at the Mornyng Communion and Evenyng Praier, 326,

329) 335 Cervantes, 358 Cervetto, Giacomo, 467 Cesti, Pietro (Marc Antonio), 395-401, 438, 440, Pis. XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII Cezanne, 942 Chabanon, 542 Chabrier, 776,780,945,946,949,1030-1 Chace, 159 Chaconne, 420, 536, 562, 583; ‘mon istic’ principle of, 641 Chailley, J., I49n.

General Index

Chaillou de Pestain, 123 Chalumeau, 462 Chamber Concerto (Hindemith), 995 Chamber Concerto for viola (Hinde mith), 999 Chamber music, 261; song, 332 Chambonnieres, Jacques de, 535, 536, 559

Chamisso, 823

514, 516 Chandos, Duke of, 514 Chanson, 239-45, 246, 251, 255-6, 275) 294-5, 302, 305) 320, 339) 354) 355) 363; Burgundian, 239; de geste, 76; de toile, 83; French, 239-45) 251) 255, 305; narrati^, 3iof; Renaissance, 141, I95ii., 199, 201, 203-9, 2:4, 216, PI. XII Chansons au luth . . . , 24 m. Chansons de Charles d’Orleans, 942 Chansons Madecasses, 950 Chants des oiseaux, Les, 240 Chapel Royal, i86f., 213 Chapel Royal Choirbook (1635), 509 Charlemagne, 76, 21, 264 Charles, King of Navarre, 130 Charles I (England), 288, 289, 422, 428, 509, 544 Charles II (England), 186, 411, 422, 509-10, 544 Charles V, Emperor, 130, 149, 299, 321) 445 Charles VI, Emperor, 459 Charles VII (France), 190, 197 Charles VIII (France), 197 Charles IX (France), 275, 276 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 19I) >99) 225 Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, 507-10, 780-1 Chatterton, 808 Chaucer, 130, 183; Geoffrey, 279 Chemin, Nicholas du, 242 Chausson, 919 Chavez, Carlos, 1067-8 Chekov, 864, 868 Cherubini, 670, 730, 731, 740, 761, 770, 773) 795) 815, 852 Chi sojfre speri, 384, 483 Chichester, 331 Child of Our Time, A, 1038 Child, William, 509 Childe Harold, 838, 923 Chile, 1068 China, 232 Chippaqua, 1084 Chirbury, Robert, 1856, 189 Choirbook arrangement, 111, 21 if. Chopin, 577, 681, 784, 806, 8o8-i7) 8i 4 819, 821, 824, 825, 826, 827, 828, 830, 836, 837, 838, 839, 841, 850, 864, 894, 923, 925, 945)

Chandos Anthems,

General Index

1071, PI. XXXVIII Choral recitative, 269-70 Chorale, 351-2, 519; motet, 521 Chorale Prelude (J. S. Bach), 702 Choralis Constantinus (Isaac), 222 Chord, added sixth, 43; augmented fifth, 454; diminished seventh, 454, 461, 473; dominant seventh, 314; German sixth, 262; Neapoli tan sixth, 397, 461 Choros, 1066, 1067 Chows (Villa-Lobos), 1066-7 Christian chant (outside Ch. i. Part I), 96, 227 Christ lag in Todesbanden, 529 Christ's Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, 539

‘Christmas Oratio’ (J. S. Bach), 529 Christmas Oratorio (Schiitz), 524 Christas, 847 Chromaticism, i4off., 246, 250, 262, 338. 339. 345. 397 Church music, 279, 281, 285, 297-332, 366, 498-530, 547«., 581-3, 591, 592. 596. 607-11, 627-9, 652-3, 679-80, 686, 690-1, 692, 7056, 770-2, 793-5,846-8,886-7,891-2, 905. 9'0. 9‘4. 975. 979-80, 996, toil; Protestant, 298-9, 320-34, 5t9ff.; Roman Catholic, 297!!., 301-20, 524-5 Church opera, 236, 176 Cibber, Colley, 480 Ciconia, Johannes, 171, 173, 191 Cid, Le, 413 Cimarosa, 457, 712, 797 Circe (Davenport), 432; (Keiser), 464

Circe, ou le ballet comique de la Royne,

275, 277, 408, PI. XVIII 1074 Cirillo, Francesco, 446 Cittern music, 342, 347 Clarinet music, 462-3 Classic Age (France), 412 Claude le Jeune, 274-5, 320, 408, 940 Claudin de Sermisy, 239-40, 293, 295 Clausula, 53, 57fif., 70, 96!., 103!., 119 Clavichord, 93, 176, 217, 2i8f.; music, 250. 340-1. 364 Clavecin. See Harpsichord Clavecin, music, 539-61 Clavierbiichlein, 560 Clayton, Tfiomas, 465 ‘Cleare Day, A’, 339 Clegg, John, 468 Clemens non Papa, 242, 304, 305, 306, 307. 321 Clement IX, Pope, 383-4 Circles,

CUment Janequin: Chansons [Attaignant,

15^9), 24on. Clementi, 805-6, 807, 808 Cleofide, 460

1213

Clerambault, 509 Coates, H., 307/1. Cocteau, Jean, 948/!., 1030 Coda, 603//. Codetta, 603/!. Coffey, Charles, 480, 482 Colasse, Pascal, 486 Coleman, Edward, 422; Mrs., 422 Coleman, Ornette, 1084, 1094 Coleridge, 1047 Colette, 950 Collected Works of William Byrd, The, 314/!. 520 Collegium Germanicum, 317 Golloredo, 613 Cologne, 286 Coloratura, 447, 462 Columbus, Christopher, 224, 232, 361 Come, Holy Ghost (J. S. Bach), 567 ‘Come presto nel porto’, 455 ‘Come sei pallida, e muta e bella', 796 Come, ye sons of Art, 512 Comedie, 406; ballets, 410 CorrUdie larmoyante, 713 Comic opera, 482-3 Comma of Didymus, 249—50 Commedia, 722, 724/!., 725, 797 Commedia dell’ Arte, 271, 384, 480 Compere, Loyset, 201, 262, PI. XIII Comte Ory, Le, 734 Comas, 424 ‘Concert’, 555 Concert, public, 512—13 Concertato style, 504 Concerti da chiesa (Corelli), 551 Concerti di camera (Corelli), 551 Concerti Sacri (Scarlatti), 506 Concertino, 474 Concertino de Printemps, 1030;!. Concerto, 551-3, 561-2, 588, 62iff., 696, 807, 883-4, 898-9, 949, 963, 969. 970. 982-3; creation of, 621-2; grosso, 551; spiritual, 521 Concerto lor harpsichord, oboe, clarinet, and ’cello (Falla), 898-9 Concerto for Nine Instruments (Webern), 1022 Concerto for Orchestra (Lutoslawski), 1072; (Tippett), 1079 Concerts royaux, 557 Concord (U.S.A.), 1050, 1052 ‘Concord’ Piano Sonata (Ives), 1050—2, 1054 Conductus, 48, 76, 97, 100-4, 108, III, ii8f., 149, 153, 155, 174, 185, 187, 214, 227; motet, 103 Congregation of the Oratory, 319 Congreve, William, 434, 515 Conradi, Johann Georg, 405 Consort,' 342-6, 355, 545; ‘broken’, 543; music, 290, (English), 539 Collegia musica,

General Index

1214

Constance (Switzerland), 222 Constantine the Great, 5, 10 Constantinople, 8, 119 Constanza e Fortezza, 459 Consul, The, 1062 Contadma astuta. La, 483—4 Conte de fees, 950 Contes (La Fontaine), 412 Conti, Francesco, 458 — 9 Conti, Gioacchino, 467 Continuo, 367, 368, 532 Contrafacta, 83, 275 Contrapuntalized harmony, 528 Contrat social, 496 Cooke, Henry, 509-10; John, 185?. Coperario, 290, 345, 544 Copernicus, 359 Copland, Aaron, 1055 — 7, >064, 1068, 1089 Corelli, Archangelo, 454, 465, 471, .551-2,553.556,557.561,564.567

Coriolan overture, 732 Cornara, La, 532-3

Corneille, Pierre, 413 Cornet music, 267 Cornett, 68f., 218, Pis. VI, IX Cornysh, William, Jun., 214!. Coronation Anthem (Handel), 510, 51516 Corranto Lady Riche, 290 Corregidor, Der, 908, 909 Corrente, 472, 538 Corsi, Jacopo, 367, 372 Cortez, Hernando, 233, 361 Cosifan tutte, 624, 728 Costeley, Guillaume, 275 Cotton, John. &cJohn of-Afflighem Council of Trent, 22, 32, 300 Counter-Reformation, 226, 266, 297, 300, 303, 306, 310, 316, 325, 359, 385, 403, 508 Counter-tenor, 512 Counterpoint, 396; definition of, 48 Couperin, Francois, 508, 556-7, 55860, 561, 562, 583, 584, 589, 714, 724?!., 914, 942, 944, 946, 953, 954, 955; Louis, 535-6 Courante, 276, 337, 410, 535, 536, 538 Coverdale, Miles, 327 Crabbe, George, 1043 Cradle Song (Moussorgsky), 860-1, 879 Cranmer, Thomas, 322, 323, 324 Crawford, Ruth, 1085, 1086 Creation du Monde, La, i03on. Creation, The, 586, 608-9, 610, 621, 627 Crecquillon, Thomas, 241, 278 Credo (Old Hall MS.), 185, 188 Cremona, 356, 377 Crete, 357 Cretin, G., 197 Critische Musicus, Der, 488 Croce, Giovanni, 271

(Keiser), 462-3 Gromwell, Oliver, 422, 509 Growley, Robert, 327 ‘Cruelle mere des amours’, 492 Croesus

Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, The, 427-8

Criiger, Johann, 519 Crusades, 8, 86, 119 Cubism, 948,1. Cueurs desoleg (Josquin), 04, 204; 05, 205 Cumberland, Duke of, 518-19 Cupid and Death, 424, 425, 426 Curlew River, 1079 Cutting, Francis, 346 Cuzzoni, Francesco, 444, 467, 469, 470, 481 Cyclopes, Les, 561 Cymbals, 2, 68f. Cypres de la Villa d’Este, Awe, 848 Czardas Macabre, 848 Czech nationalism, 876-92 a capo, 388, 400, 554 Da Ponte, 725, 740 Da Salo. See Gasparo da Said Dafne (Gagliano), 377; (Peri), 372, 377, 402; (Schiltz), 402 Dal male il bene, 383-4, 448, 451 d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 488, 496 Dalibor, 878-81, 883, 886 Dall’Abaco (’cellist), 468; Felice Evaristo, 553 Dallapiccola, Luigi, 1027-9 Dalza, Joan Ambrosio, 352-3 Damasus I, Pope, 7 Damett, Thomas, 1856, 189 Damnation de Faust, 767 Danae, 963 Danbury (Gonn.), 1048-9 Dance, dance music, 91, 141, 1756, 217, 275ff., 336-7, 344-5, 346, 352-4, 363, 371, 408-11, 4I4-‘5, 536, 538flT., 54iflf., 543ff., 819, 946 ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, 963 ‘Dance of Youth and Beauty’, 977 Dance suite, 532, 534!!. Dandrieu, Jean, 559 d’Anglebert, Jean Henri, 535-6 D’Angoult, Comtesse, 838 Daniel, Arnaut, 199 Danseuse, 956 Dante, 119, 1828, 264, 843 ‘Dante’ Sonata, 848 Danyel, John, 287 Daphne, 963 Daphnis et Chloi, 947 Daquin, Claude, 559 Dardanus, 491, 492, 493 Dargomyzhsky, 859

General Index

1215

856 Diet of Worms, 298 Dart, Thurston, 545, 546n., 548n. Dieupart, Charles, 467 Daudet, 776 Difendere I’Offensore, 446 Davenant, Sir William, 422, 424, 427-9 Diferencias, 348-9 Davenport, Charles, 432; Sir William, Dijon, 190 ^ 432 Diminished fifth, 574a. Davey, H., 69a., 117a. D’Indy, Vincent, 913, 918, 919 ‘Davidsbund’, The, 818 Dioclesian, 433, 434 Davy, Richard, 214 Diocletian, 4 Day, John, 326, 327, 328, 329, 335 Discanting, 279 Death in Venice, 1079 Discantus, 48, 52ff, 57f., 123 De Harmonica Institutione (Regino of Discours (Rousseau), 496 Prum), PI. II Dissonance, discord, 42-5, 51, 54, 109, De Plus en plus (Binchois), 197 *416, 147, 172, 187, 191, 200f., De Profundis (Schoenberg), 993 213, 222, 313-15. 316, 425, 435; ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet, 902 free, 543 Deborah, 516, 517, 518 Dissonance’ Quartet, 670 Debussy, 118, 775, 780-1, 856a., 860, Divertimento, 596 872. 895, 897, 898, 915, 920-1, Divertimento for string trio in E flat, 922, 928, 935-45, 946, 948, 949, K.563 (Mozart), 630 950, 952, 953. 954. 958. 959. 960, Divertissement de danses, 715 974. 987-8, 991, 996, 1003, 1004, Diuertissement for piano and wind 1013, 1014, 1015, 1018, 1020, instruments (Roussel), 957 1021, 1022, 1024, 1025, 1026, Divine Comedy (Dante), 119, 182 1066, 1087, PI. XLIII Division-Violist, 544-5 Decani, 331 Divisions, 346; playing, 267, 269; on Defesch, William, 467 a ground, 651 Delibes, 865, 869, 871 Dr. Faustus (Busoni), 983-4; (Marlowe), Delius, 758, 894, 914, 922, 923-8, 931, ^ 179 932. 933. 934. 935. 936, 940, 941, Dodechordon (Glareanus), 205, 246-7 945. 950. 952. 958, 964. 967. 974. Domenico Scarlatti (Kirkpatrick), 554a. 980, 985, 1020, 1021, 1038, 1054 Dominant seventh, chord of, 576-7 della Croce, PI. XXIX Dominicans, 11 Delusion of the Fury, 1084 Domine in tua misericordia speravi, 131 Demofoonte (Hasse), 460,461 Domitian, 4 Demonstration du principe de I’harmonie, Dompe, 337 489 Don Carlo, 791 Denmark, 404, 929b Don Giovanni, 376, 624, 626, 632, 716, Denner, Johann Christian, 462-3 726-7, 728, 789, 798, 839 Dent, E. J., 424a., 435 Don Juan (Strauss), 959 Descartes, Rene, 487 Don Pasquale, 785 Descriptio Kambriae (Geraldus), 99 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 358; (Strauss), Desert Music, 1088 959 Deserts, 1090 Donatello, 224 Desert Song, The, 1060 Donizetti, 785-6, 787, 852 d’Este, Beatrice, 267; Isabella, 267 ‘Donna b mobile. La', 790 Destouches, Andre Cardinal, 486 Donne, John, 357 Deuteromelia, 291 Doppelgdnger, Der, 668, 671, 680 ‘Devil’s Chorale’, 1007, 1010 ‘Dorabella’, 968 Deoin du Village, Le, 482, 496, 497, 712, Dori, La, 396 T2.2 Dorian mode, 247 Diabelli Variations, 651 Dostoevsky, 860, 889, 891 Diaghilev Ballet, 947 Double, 535, 995a. Diary of a Fly, The, 1016 Double bass, 368 Diary of a Toung Man Lost, 891 Double counterpoint, 60, 202 Dichterliebe, 823 ‘Douce paix’, 495 Dickinson, Emily, 1057 Dowland, John, 286-7, 296, 329, 34,6, Diderot, Denis, 488 525. 543. 662, 1035, PI. XIX; Dido and Aeneas, 377, 431-2, 433 Robert, 346 Didone abbandonata, 445 Doim .by the Greenwood Side, 1081 Didymus, 249; comma of, 249-50 Draghi, Antonio, 402 Dies Irae, 23 Dragon of Wantley, The, 481 Dark Forest, The,

General Index

I2i 6

Drake, Sir Francis, 361 Drama, 357-8; European, 8, 23, 179, 224 Dram symphonique, 948n. Draw on, sweet night, 284 Dream of Gerontius, The, 969, 980 Dream, 339 Drei ^igeuner. Die, 849 Dreigroschenoper, Die, 1063 Dresden, 298, 402, 458, 460, 462, 522; Elector of, 522 Drum, 2, 68 Drumming, 1087 Dryden, John, 432-4, 436, 515 Dubourg, Matthew, 468 Dufay, Guillaume, 187, 190-g, 224, 2306, PI. XV Dukas, Paul, 919 Dulac, Jean, PI. XLIII Dulcimer, 218 Dumas, 790 Dumbarton Oaks, loii Dumont, Henri, 507 — 8 Dump, 337 Duni, 712 Dunstable, John, 185-9, "95> 2136, 227, 2306, 305, 966 Duo Sonata for violin and ’cello (Ravel), 949 Duos, or Songsfor two voices (Whythorne), 342 Duparc, Elizabeth, 467; Henri, 910-12, 913. 939. 952 Durante, Francesco, 457, 483, 506 Durastanti, Margherita, 467, 469 Diirer, 2256 D’Urfey, Thomas, 434 Durham Cathedral, 39, PI. IV Dussek, 806-7 Dvorak, 575, 882-7, 894 Dylan, Bob, 1090 Dynamic marks, 356, 426, 427

PI. XXIV 10in.

Eiarie of Salisbury, The, Early E/tglish Harmony, Earth Dances, 1081

East India Company, 361 East Indies, 232 East, Thomas, 329 Eaton, Robert, 1092 Ebelsberg, 684 Eccard, Johann, 300 Ecce sacerdos magnus, 302 Echappie, 314 Echiquier, 174 Echo et Marcisse, 721 Eclogue, 838 Edward I (England), 119

Edward VI (England), 311, 323, 330 980

Egdon Heath, 974, 976, Egmont overture, 732

Egypt, 232 ‘Egypt was glad when they departed’, 519 Egyptian Church, 4 ‘Eighteen’ Chorale Preludes, 567, 581 Eighth Symphony (Beethoven), 639— 41, 647, 658, 649; (Mahler), 706 Eight Songsfor a Mad King, 1089 Ein Heldenleben, 959 Einstein, A., 99n., 25m., 256n. El Greco, 357, 905 El grillo (Josquin), 205 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 90 Elector Palatine, 589 Electric Christmas ifSy, 1092 Electronic music, 1023, 1053, 1069, 1074 — 5, '083, 1086, 1090 — 4 EUgie, 910 Elegies for piano (Busoni), 983 Elektra, 960-1, 962, 963 Eleventh Nocturne (Faure), 956 Elgar, 952, 967-72, 980, 1037 Elijah, 833 Eliot, T. S., 179, 657-8 Elizabeth I (England), 282, 283, 311, 327, 332, 339 Elssler, Joseph, Jun., PI. XXXI Emerson, 1050, 1051 Emile, 496 Emmett, 910 ‘Emperor’ Concerto, 647 Empress of Morocco, The, 426 Encina, Juan del, 224 Encyclopidie, 488 Encyclopaedists, 488, 495, 496 Ende vom Lied, 822 England, 99, lOi, 185-90, 194, 203, 214, 221, 224, 239, 279-92, 300, 305. 3'0-16, 321-49, 350, 351, 358, 361, 363. 404. 406, 411, 422-37, 465-70, 509-19, 534, 539. 542-7. 807-8, 828, 833-4, 894, 9236, 929, 952, 966-81, I028n., 1035-47 English Cathedral Music (Fellowes), 51 on., 547 English discant, 174, i86f., 192, 214 English language, 8, 90 English Madrigal School, 282, 313 English Madrigal Verse, 265n. English Opera, The (Locke), 429 English Psalter, 326 ‘Enigma’ Variations, 967-8 Enlightenment, 487-9 Ensemble music, 538^ Ensembles, 384, 531-2, 542-3 Entertainment of the King and Queen, 291 Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Die, 724, 725

General Index

Enharmonic modulation, 664a.; tran sition, 708 ‘Entrde des Astres’, 494 Entremis, 485 Bolides, Les, 915-17 Episodes, 534 Equal Temperament, 231 Er, der Herrlkhste von Alien, 822 Erasmus, 197, 225 Erb, Donald, 1092 Ercole, 410 Erikson, Robert, 1091 — 2 Erlkonig, 664 Ernani, 787 ‘Eroica’ Symphony, 623, 639-41, 698, 706, 964; Variations, 642 Erstes Liebeslied eines Madchens, 903 Erwarttmg, 993, 995, 988, 990 ‘Es ist der alte Bund’, 702 Escobar, 224 Esercizi per Gravicembalo, 554 Essai, en forme d’ouverture, 557

Essay concerning Human Understanding

(Locke), 542a.

574 Estampie, 91, 175 Este, Ercole I d’, Duke of Ferrara, 205; Isabella d’, 209 Esterh&za Castle, PI. XXX EsterhSzy family, 585, 595!!., 835-6, 851; Prince, 597, PI. XXXI Esther, 469, 515-16, 517 Etude in G major (Chopin), 576 Etude in E flat minor (Chopin), 812 Etude in E major (Chopin), 810, 812 Etudes, opus 10 (Chopin), 812, 814-15 Etudes d'Exlcution Transcendante, 837 Etudes Symphoniques (Schumann), 824, 918 Eugene Onegin, 865, 867-8, 872 Eumelio, 377 Euridice (Caccini), 373, 374, 377; (Peri), 373, 374, 377 Euripides, 720 Euiyanthe, 939-40 Evelyn, John, 510 Expert, H., 240a. Exploration, 361-2, 363 Eyck, Hubert and Jan van, 225 Eye-music, 203, 228, 259

Essay of Music^ Expression,

J^ables (La Fontame), 412 Fafode, 1037 Fdcheux, La, 407 Faerie Queene, The, 279 Fairy Queen, The, 433, 434,

436, 546 Falla, 898-9 Fallopius, 360 False relations, 314, 853a., 1030

1217

Falso-bordone, 504 971; (Verdi), 387, 7978, 799, 802 Fantasia Contrappuntistica, 983 Fantasia quasi una Sonata, 843 Fantasias, 338, 339, 348-6, 346. 35°. 351-2. 353. 355. 543. 544. 5455 three-part (Gibbons), 342; twopart (Morley), 342 Fantasiestucke, 841-2 Fastasy for piano (Schubert), 681 ‘Farewell’ Symphony, 600 Farinelli, Carlo, 442-3, 445, 470 Farnaby, Giles, 283, 329, 339, 340 Fate rhythm, 643 Falstaff (Elgar),

Fastes de la Grande et Ancierme Menestrandise, Les, 560

Fauri, 913, 945, 952-7, 964, 965, 966 Faust (Goethe), 662, 706, 707, 775, 846; (Gounod), 843 ‘Faust’ Symphony, 846-7, 960 Faustus (Busoni), 986/1. Fauxbourdon, 192 Favart, Charles Simon, 497 Favorite, La, 954-5 Fayrfax, Robert, 2i4ff. Feind, Barthold, 464 Felix namque, 338, 3^ Fellowes, E. H., 265a., 313a., 314, 343a.. 510a., 547a. ‘Feminine ending’, 774, 800 Ftoelon, 585 Feo, Francesco, 457, 483, 506 Ferdinand I, 273, 298, 316, 32: Ferdinand II, 403 Ferdinand III, Emperor, 403, 537-8 Ferdinand V (Aragon), 206, 223!. Ferdinand VI, 443, 554 Ferrabosco (i), Alfonso, 282; (ii) Alfonso, 290, 291, 345 Ferrara, 203L, 267, 269, 291 Ferrari, Benedetto, 384 Festa, Constanzo, 242-3, 246 Festes de VAmour et de Bacchus, Les, 413 Festin d’Aesope, Le, 836a. Festing, 468 Fete Champitre, 944 Fetes, 941, 942 Fites d'Hibi, Les, 491, 492, 493, 495 Fivin, Antoine de, 201, 207 Fidelia, 721, 731-2, 740 Field, John, 807-8, 809, 8io, 897 Field of the Cloth of Gold, the, 214 Field-Marshal Death, 861 Fielding, Henry, 480, 481 Fifteenth Symphony (Shostakovitch), 1069 — 71 Fifth String Quartet (Bartdk), 1015, 1016-17 Fifth Symphony (Beethoven), 631,6424, 646, 651, 704, 730, 1050-1, 1052; (Bruckner), 693; (Nielson),

General Index

I2i 8

930; (Rubbra), 1036; (Schubert), 671; (Shostakovitch), 1033-4; (Sibelius), 930; (Tchaikowsky), 871; (Vaughan Williams), 980 Figaro, 624, 725-6, 727, 728, 733, 877 Fili mi Absalom, 522 Filippo da Caserta, 1716 Finck, Heinrich, 221 Finland, 928-34 Finta Giardinero, La, 722 Finla Semplice, La, 722 Fioritura, 461 Fioriture, 79 m. Fioro Musiccdi, 531 Firebird, The, 1002 First

Book

of Selected

(Barnard), 509

Musk,

The

First Booke of Songes or Ayres . . . with Tableture for the Lute, 286, 287,

PI. XIX First Chamber Symphony (Schoent)«g), 986-7 First Set of Psalmes (Child), 509 First String Quartet (Bartdk), 1016; (Bloch), 1021; (Carter), 1057; (Smetana), 881 First Symphony (Beethoven), 698; (Borodin), 855; (Brahms), 697, 698; (Mahler), 705; (Nielson), 929; (Schubert), 670; (Shostakovitch), 1070; (Sibelius), 930.931

First Violin Concerto (Szymanowsky), 920 First Violin Sonata (Faure), 954 Fischer, Johann Caspar Ferdinand, 541-2, 562 Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 290, 336, 337, 338, 538

Five-part Mass (Byrd), 577

Orchestra (Webern), PI. XLV Flageolet, 67 Flaherty, 1064 Flamenco, 8g8n. Flat, submediant, 670 Fletcher, John, 289, 433 Flor, Christian, 524 Florence, 155, 167, 183, 206, 2o8f., 2246, 245, 288, 291, 356, 362, 377, 381, 396, 447, 465, 838 Florentine Camerata, 367!!., 386 Florida, 923 Florilegium, 561 Flos Campi, 977 Flourishes, 79 m. Flowerings, 79in. Flute (transverse), 67, 218, PI. VIII Flute and Harp Concerto in C, K.299 (Mozart), 622 Flying Dutchman, The, 727, 744-5, 746, Five Pieces for

Fogliano, Ludovico, 247 Folia, 353 Folksfrangaises, Les, 560 Folk-music, 363, 811, 821, 849, 853-5, 857. 865-6, 871, 876, 885, 887, 89411., 897, 898, 923, 936, 939, 970. 972. 975. 1014. 1017-18; Hungarian, 1013-14; Polish, 811; Spanish, 1065 Fontaine, La, 412 Fontana, Giovanni Battista, 532 ‘For unto us a Child is born’, 518 Form, 240, 354, 374, 382, 383, 388, 400, 405, 434, 435 Form6, Nicolas, 507 Fors seulement (Ockeghem), 197 Forster, Georg, 278 Forty-eight, The, 575, 601, 680, 916, 997, 1000 Four Quartets (Eliot), 656-8 Four Saints in Three Acts, 1064 Four Serious Songs, 701, 702 4’33”. '087 Fourteenth Symphony (Shostakovitch),

1069

Fourth Nocturne (Field), 808 Fourth Quartet (Schoenberg), 991-2, 993

Fourth Sonata (Skryabin), 920 Fourth String Quartet (Bartdk), 1015 Fourth Symphony (Beethoven), 642, 644; (Brahms), 699, 701, 702; (Mahler), 706-7; (Dvofik), 883, 884; (Nielson), 930; (Schubert), 670; (Sibelius), 931; (Tchai kowsky), 864, 868, 871; (Vaughan Williams), 977-8 Fra Angelico, 224 France, 239-45, 272, 27311., 288-9, 292, 295. 300, 304, 306, 321, 339, 34950, 361, 383, 403, 405-22, 428, 435. 437. 443. 456. 486^7, 507-9, 534®. 543. 546-50. 555®. 584. 711,712. 724. 741. 759. 782.913®. 952. 966, 1026, 1030, 1033, 1035 ‘Francesina, La’, 467 Francis I (France), 207, 321, 683 Francis II (France), 275, 276 Franciscan movement, 11, 297 Francisque, Antoine, 350 Franck, Cdsar, 578, 775, 913-18, 919, 921, 922, 924, 935, 957, 970; Johann Wolfgang, 405; Mme, 914, 915. 917 Franco of Cologne, 113-16, 119, 125 Franfois Couperin (Mellers), 55gn. Frankfort, 287 Frau ohne Schatten, Die, 963 Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen), 88 Fredegunda, 463 Frederick the Great, 568 ‘Free’ dissonance, 543

General Index

1219

739 French language, 8, 90; Psalter, 319; Revolution, 275, 277, 576, 631 Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 531-2, 533,536, 537, 554 Freud, 891, 989, 993, 1027 FreudooU und Liedvoll, 839-40 Fricken, Ernestine von, 818, 819, 820 Friesland, 190 Frische teutsche Liedlein, 278 Froberger, Johann Jacob, 536-8, 562, 564 From Stone to Thorn, 1080 From the Cradle to the Grave, 848 ‘From virtue springs’, 517 Frost, Robert, 1057 Frottola, 208-11, 217, 239, 241, 245, 246, 264, 498 Frvhlingstraum, 668-9, ^73) 682 Fuchs, 360 Fuenllana, Miguel de, 348 Fugal exposition, 531 Fugato, 640 Fugue, 352, 517-18, 531, 534«., 541, 551, 582ff., 697, 798; baroque, 531 Fugue in A minor (J. S. Bach), 601 Fugue in B minor (J. S. Bach), 916, 997 Fugue in C sharp minor (J. S. Bach), 680 Fugue in D sharp minor (J. S. Bach), Freischutz, Der,

575

Fugues, opus 35 (Mendelssohn), 832 ‘Full fathom five’, 435 Funirailles, 841 Fux, Johann Joseph, 459, 503, 562, 564, 594. 686

IjrABRiELi,An d r

ea

,258, 261 -2, 278,

306, 318, 319, 354, 355, 362, 386, 521, 522, 523, 533, 755; Giovanni, 261-2, 306, 314, 318-19, 352-3, 354. 355-6. 362, 386 Gaddi, T., PI. IX Gafori, Franchino, 228-31 Gagliano, Marco da, 377 Gagliardo, 353, 3154 Gaillardes, 276, 336, 350, 410 Galatea, La, 383, 384 Galileo, 354, 362, 367; Vincenzo, 3534. 367, 369 Galliard, John Ernest, 442, 466, 467, 468 ‘Galhard of the Sons of the Morning’, Galliards, 337, 344, PI. XXIV Gallican chant, 7; Church, 5 Gallus, Jacopus, 688, 848 Galuppi, Baldassare, 457, 481, 484-5 Gama, Vasco da, 361

Gamelang, Balinese, 1022 ‘Gapped’, 977a. Garden of Farid, The, 926n. Gaspard de la Nuit, 946, 947, 048, 040 Gasparini, Francisco, 457, 467, 468 Gasparo da Said, 356 Gastoldi, Giovanni Giacomo, 272, 283, ^ 316, 353 Gaukler. See Jongleurs Gaultier, Denis, 534-5; Jacques, 534 Gavotte, 410, 414, 472, 538 Gay, John, 469, 479^0, 514, 515 Gazette de Holland, La, 492 Geisslerlieder, 86, 299 Geistliche Konzert, 521 Geistliche Lieder, 591, 592 Geminiani, 467, 553 General-Bass, Der, 488 General History of Music (Burney), 438, 456, 547

General History of the Science and Practice of Music (Hawkins), 515 General Putman's Camp, 1049 Gindration harmonique, 489 Genesene an die Hoffnung, Der, 902

Geneva, 311, 327, 713 Genevan Psalter, 320, 321 Gennrich, F., 79a., 82a. Genoa, 155 Genooeva, 827

Gentleman’s Journal and Monthly Mis cellany, 513

George I, 468 George II, 469, 515 George V, 967 George, Stefan, 987 Gerhard, Roberto, 1029a. Gerhardt, Paul, 519 Gerle, Hans, 349 German Requiem (Brahms), 699 Germany, 86-9, 174, 208, 216-18, 22iff., 225, 288, 292, 295, 297ff., 305. 307. 321. 339. 340. 349. 350. 351. 365. 402-5. 406, 458, 459ff., 519-30. 533-4. 537. 538ff., 558, 561, 585, 662, 741, 759, 772, 782, 852, 894, 913, 923, 952, 958, 966, 982, 1023, 1035, 1063 Gershwin, George, 1060 — 2, 1064 — 5, 1094 Gerusalemme liberata, 266 Gervais de Bus, 121 Gesang der Junglinge, 1075, 1076 Geselle woll’n wir uns in Kutten hSllen, go6 Gesner, Konrad von, 360-1 Gesualdo, Carlo, Prince of Venosa, 262, 267, 287, 292, 314, 368, 373, 381, 386, 752 Gesualdo: Madrigale, 262a. Geystliche Gesangkt Buchleyn, 299 Ghiberti, 224 Ghirardello da Firenze, 171

General Index

1220

Giacobbi, Giralomo, 401 Gianni Schicchi, 802 Giasone, 391, 395, 420 Gibet, Le, 946 Gibbons, Christopher, 424 Gibbons, Orlando, 285, 330, 332, 334, 340, 342-5 Gibbs, Joseph, 547 Gieus de Robin et Marion, Lt (Adam de la Halle), 84 Giga, 538 Gigue, 536, 538, 942 Gilbert, Gabriel, 407; William, 360 Gilles, PI. XL Ginastera, Alberto, 1068 Giorgione (painter), 225, 356 Giotto, 183 Giovanni da Firenze (da Casein), 158, i6if., 167, 171 Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald de Barri), 99

Girl of the Golden West, The, Giulio Cesare, 474, 476

801

Giustiniani, 191, 225 Giustino, 481 Gizziello. See Conti Glass, Philip, 1089 — 90, 1096 G/’ Inganni Fetid, 444-5 Glareanus, Henricus, 205, 246-7 Gleason, H., 46n., 47«., 1310., i58n., i6jn.

Glee-men, 75f.

Gli Atnori piacevoli d’Ergasto, 466 Gli eguiooci nel sembiante, 446, 448

Glinka, 852-4, 859, 863, 864 Glogauer Liederbuch, 221 Gloria (Power), 185; (Pycard), 186 ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas’, 335 ‘Glory to Thee, my Clod, this night’, 326 Gluck, 450, 481, 484, 494, 518, 608, 629, 662, 715-21, 723, 729, 733, 734. 740. 746, 760, 761, 76a, 766, 768, 769, 771, 783, 784, 789, 793 Gobert, Thomas, 507 Goethe, 264, 601, 662, 665, 720, 721, 726, 767/1. 775, 823, 839, 843, 846, 904 Gogol, 859 Goldberg Variations, 198 Golden Age of Spanish Literature, 485 Golden Cockerel, The, 875 Goldini, 722 Goldoni, Carlo, 485 Goliard, 75-8, 87 Gombert, Nicolas, 242, 278, 304, 305, 306, 308 Gonzaga family, 377 Goostly psalmes and spiritual songes, 327 Gorzanis, Giacomo, 353 Gossec, 711 Gostling, John, 511

Gothic style, 8, 39, yof., no, ii6, 119, i8of. Cotterdammerung, 751, 863, 1070 Goudimel, Claude, 275, 320, 321 Gounod, 773-4, 775. 776, 777, 778, 781, 800, 833, 843, 910, 913, 914. 952, 953 Godts Rimis, Les, 557 Goya, 897, 898 Goyescas, 897, 898 Grabu, Louis, 406, 432-3 Gradus ad Parnassian, 459, 503 Granados, 897, 898 ‘Grand scena’ (Handel), 450, 478 Grand Siecle, 508 ‘Grand’ Symphony (Schubert), 671, 675 Grande Messe des Morts, 770-1 Grandi, Alessandro, 499 Grandmother's Tales, 1031 ‘Grands Dieux’, 492 Grandville, PI. XXXVI Grant desir, Le (Compere), PI. XIII Graun, Carl, 526 Graupner, Christoph, 564 Graziani, La, 533 Great organ. See Organ Great Schism, 122, 172, 189, 297 ‘Great’ Service (Byrd), 331 Greber, Jakob, 466, 467 Greece, 947 Greek civilization, 18if.; drama, 16, 23; music, 1, 5f., 12-21, 4if.; philosophy, 2, 19; scales, 246, 250; tragedy, 366, 369, 374 Greensleeves, 291 Greenwich, 289 Gregorian chant (outside Ch.i, Part I), 40, 46, 5if., 59f., 70, 72, 96, 104, Ii2f., 119, 123, 131, 138-41, 148. 157, 176, 303, 307, 324, 335, 368; treatment of in part-music, 4of., 45ff., 52-8, 97, i03f., 109, 128-31, 1486, 153, i87ff., 227. See also Cantus firmus. Hymn, Paraphrase, Psalmody, Sequence, and Trope Gregory I, Pope. See St. Gregory Gregory III, Pope, 7 Gregory IX, Pope, 24 Gretchen am Spinnrade, 664 Gretry, 713-15, 868 Greuzen der Menschheit, 904 Grieg, 894-6, 897-923, 925, 1048, 1061 Griese Kopf, Der, 667 Grillen, 827 Grimaldi, Nicola. See Nicolini Grimau, Pablo Esteve y, 485 Grimm, Melchior, 488, 495 Gtiselda, 447, 455, 461 Grosse Fuge, 650, 902

General Index

Ground, 337, 388; bass, 337, 353, 388, 562 Grout, D., 387a. Griinewald, 225 Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 266, 267, 279. 371. 406, 468 Guedron, Pierre, 408 Guerre des Bouffons, 495, 712 Guerre, La (Janequin), 240, 339, 538 Guerre, Michel de la, 406 Guerrero, Francisco, 319 Guicciardi, Countess Guilietta, 638 Guicciardini, 358 Guido of Arezzo, 21, 26f., 35ff., 45, 138, 171, 231, 338 Guillard, 720 Guillaume of Aquitaine, 84 Guillaume Tell, 734 — 5,742,782,786,1070 Guiot of Provence, 86 Guiraut de Bornelh, 84, 90 Guiraut Riquier, 84, 90 Guitar, 93; music, 347 Gurrelieder, 986 Gymel, 101-3 Gymnopidies, 947 Ha s s , R., 369«., 39m. 945 Habsburgs, 403, 585 Had I only known, 866 Hail, Bright Cecilia, 513 Habanera,

H.A.M. See Historical Anthology of Music Haman and Mordecai, 515, 516

Hamburg, 287, 404-5, 462-4, 520, 526 Hamburger Bank, 404 Hamlet, 467 ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, 648-50, 652, 653. 691, 694, 695, 697, 1019 Hammerschmidt, Andreas, 521, 522 Handel, I57f., 180, 382, 429, 438, 442, 450, 462, 464-5, 466, 467, 468-79, 480, 481-2, 484, 492, 500, 501, 502, 508, 513, 514-19, 526, 528, 529. 541. 547. 552, 562, 564. 565, 578, 582-3, 584, 586, 587, 596, 601, 603, 605, 606, 608, 627, 629, 660, 662, 697, ^oon., 715, 723«., 729. 756, 782, 785, 79«. 833. 851, 859. 966, 968, 970, 976, 1010, 1037, 1038

Handel: A Symposium, 5ijn.

‘Handel’ Variations (Brahms), 697 Hanover, 458, 459, 465 Hardy, Thomas, 1044 ‘Hark, he strikes the golden air’, 517 ‘Hark how all things in one sound rejoice’, 434 ‘Hark the echoing air’, 434 Harmonic series, 247, 248

1221 Harmoniemesse, 610, 627 Harmonies Poitiques et Religieuses,

841 Harmony, tertiary, 144 Harold en Italie, 765, 768 Harp, 68, 218, Pis. I, VIII Harpsichord (virginal, spinet), 174, 176, 217, 249, 250, 267, 315, 334, 338-41, 344-5, 349-52, 354, 364, 368, 534, 535-6, 558, 559; music, 898 Harris, Roy, 1054-5, *°57 Harrison, Lou, 1093 Harvard, 1063 Harvey, Jonathan, 1092 Haskell, Arnold, 276 Hasse, Johann Adolf, 438, 444, 457, 459-64, 469, 470, 481, 492 Hassler, Hans Leo, 278, 300, 519 ‘HStez-vous’, 492 Haugtussa, 895 Haultin, Pierre, 210 Hausatonic at Stockbridge, The, 1050, 1053 Hawkins, Sir John, 515 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1051, 1052 Haydn, Joseph, 52, 95, 180, 196, 317, 343. 345. 382, 399. 443. 461. 558, 578. 581. 585. 586, 588, 593, 594-611, 612-13, 614, 615-16, 617, 618-19, 620, 622, 626-7, 629, 631-2, 633, 634, 639, 642, 644, 659, 662, 669, 678, 683, 686, 688, 702-3, 706, 707, 714, 716, 719, 805, 830, 835, 849, 851, 852, 885, 978, PI. XXXI; Michael, 594-5 Haym, Nicola, 467, 468 ‘He turned their waters into blood’, 517 Head motive, 195 Heart’s Assurance, The, 1040 Hebrides overture, 831, 832 Heckel, Wolf, 349 Heidegger, J. J., 466, 467, 469 Heilingenstadt Testament, 638-9 Heine, 664, 668, 823, 824, 840 Hcinichen, Johann David, 441, 488 Heinrich von Meissen. See Fraucnlob Hemiola rhythm, 640, 869 Hence Care; thou art too cruel, 283 Hengrave Hall, 292 Henrici, Christian, 527 Henry II (England), 90!.; (France) 276, 277, 321 Henry HI (France), 276 Henry IV (France), 275, 321, 408 Henry V (England), 186 Henry VII (England), 232 Henry VIII (England), 213, 282, 288, 3”. 322, 328, 357 Henry the Navigator, Prince, 213 Herbage, Julian, 517/1. Hercules, 516

General Index

1222

Hercules I, 267 Hermannus Contractus, 2if. Herr, was trdgt der boden hier, 905, 910 Hexachord (Guidonian), sSf, 138, 231; scale, 338 Heyse, Paul, 905 Heywood, DuBose, 1061 Hidden fifths, 633n. Hiller, Johann Adam, 482, 997 Hiller Variations, 997 Hindemith, 981, 996, 997-1001, 1013, 1015, 1019, 1020, 1063 HippolyU et Aricie, 477, 490, 492, 493, 494, PI. XXV Hirt auf dem Felsen, Der, 663 His Humour, 339 His Rest, 339 Histoires Naturelles, 946

Historical Anthology of Music {H.A.M.),

I04«., 2fi2n., 272, 283, 370, 373, 374. 381, 382, 391, 395, 400, 401. 407. 414. 420, 424. 430. 43t. 446. 500n., 501, 509, 523, 525, 531, 533”-. 534. 536. 539. 542n-, 552«., 553. 555«-. 557. 558n., 559n-. 56 m., 56211., 564 History of Music in Sound, 532n., 533n. History of

Sir Francis

(Davenant), 427-8

Drake,

Histriomastic: The Players Scourge,

Hitler, 802

‘H6 in seno du fiamelle’, Hochsteit, Die, 744

The

423

455

Hocket, 117, 123, 153, 158, 206 Hoffman, 837 Hofhaimer, Paul, 216 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 961-2, 963 Hogarth, William, 479 Holbein, Hans (the Younger), 357, 363 Holborne, Anthony, 346 Holinshed, 359 Holland, 190 Hollywood, 713, 774, 875, 1062, 1063 Holmes, Augusta, 915 Holst, 972-4, 975, 976, 978, 980, 1002, 1008, 1014, 1040, 1041 Holzmeister, Joseph von, 586 Homer, 273 Homophony, 396, 775 Honegger, Arthur, 1030^. Hopkins, John, 327-9 Hoppin, R. H., 13m. Hoquet, 1055 Horace, 273 Horn, 93, PI. IX Hornpype (Aston), 215, 337 House of the Dead, The, 891 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 279; Robert, 433 Hucbald, 21 Hugo, Victor, 741, 787, 789 Hugo von Montfort, 88

Huguenots, 321, 404 Huguenots, Les, 781 Hull, 531 Humfrey, Pelham, 436, 510 Hummel, 681, 806-7, 808, 809, 810, 818 Humour in music, 644-5 Hundred Years’ War, 122, 190 Hungarian rhapsodies (Liszt), 849 Hungary, 221, 835!!., 10136 Hurmenschlacht, 844 Hurdy-gurdy. See Organistrum Hiiltenbrenner, Anselm, PI. XXXIII ‘Hymen 1'Amour t’appelle’, 495 Hymn, 6f., 10, 296, 76, 83, 193, 195, 299-300, 348, 351, 5i9ff. Hymn of Jesus, The, 973, 1041 Hymn to the Sun (St. Francis), 85 Hypoaeolian mode, 246 Hypoionian mode 246 HyppolyU, 584

Classici della Musica Italiana: No. 4, Giulio Caccini, 3 yon. I Puritani, 784

‘I sing of a maiden’, 972 / Trionfi del Fata, 459 lam dulcis arnica uenito, 74 Iberia (Albdniz), 807.^, 8q q , 946 Ibdria (Debussy), 898 Jch grolle nicht, 822 Idomeneo, 621, 627, 722-4, 725-6 ‘If love’s a sweet passiop’, 434 II Canto Sospeso, 1028

II Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, 395

II Demetrio, 457, 460 II filosofo di compagna, 484 II Moderato, 515 II mondo alia roversa, 485 II Pastor Fido, 468 II Penseroso, 838 II pianto e il riso delle quattro stagioni dell’ anno, 502 II porno d’oro, 396, 400, 401, Pis.

XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII

II Pompei, 446 II Prigionier Superba, 483 II Prigioniero, 1027^ II primo delle Canzone Napoletane, II Re Pastore, 722 II Ritomo d’Ulisse, 387 II Schiavo di sua moglie, 446 II Sesostrate, 460 II Tabarro, 801

‘II Tricerbero’, 472

II Trionfo di Camilla,

466, 468

II Trionfo di Dori, 283 II Trionfo dell’ Onore, 447

278

General Index

802 ‘lie de Cyth^re’, 944 lie de Feu, 1026 Images, 942, 949 Imitation, 60, 153, 158, 174, 180, 183, 19if-. 195. 198, 202, 206, 208, 213, 224 ‘Imitation of Nature’, 490, 492, 493, 496 ‘Impressionist’ music, 938 Improvisation, 65f., 192, 223, 267, 269, 307, 368, 441 In a Simmer Garden, 926 InC, 1087 In der Nacht, 822 In Ecclesiis, 318-19 In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, ton In nomine, 291, 335-6, 338, 342, 346, , 542, 543 In vain the am’rous flute’, 513 Incas, 233 Incidental music, 776-7 Indes galanles, Les, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495. 584 India, 161, 232 Indian music, 1026 Indian Queen, The (Dryden and Howard), 433; (Purcell), 433, 434-5, 512 Industrial Revolution, 966 Inner pedal, 245 Inner Temple Masque, 289 Innocent III, Pope, 24 Innocent X, Pope, 383 Innsbruck, 222, 396, 401 Inquisition, 316 Instrumental music, 22, I74ff., 207, 2i5flr. Instruments, 2676, 322-65, 531-69; use of in church, 2, 32, 34, 66-70, 91-4, 108, ii8f., 153, 174-8, 180, 187,195,227;use ofoutside church, 76, 91-4, 108, Ii8f., 153, 180, 187, 209, 227 Intermede, 943 Intermezzo, 466, 482, 483 Intermezzo (Strauss), 963 Intermezzo in A major (Brahms), 700 Intermezzo in B minor (Brahms), 701-2 Intermezzo in E flat minor (Brahms), 701 Interpretation of Music, The (Dart), 584"Interval ratios, 44 Intonation, 247ff, 261; flexible, 249; just, 247-9 Intravolatura, 558«. Introduction and Allegro for Strings (Elgar), 969 Inverted pedal, 245 Invitation au Voyage, 911 Ionian mode, 246, 247 Iphiginie en Aulide, 720-1 II Trittico,

1223

Ireland, 7

975 Isaac, Heinrich, 20i, 207ff., 222, 277, 278, 299, 305, 306 Isabella of Castile, 206, 223 Isabella, Queen, 316 Isochronous motet, I022n. Isorhythm, 1296, 149, 153, 157, 172, 179. 183, i85ff., 191, 195, 203 Israel in Egypt, 516, 517, 518,519 Issi, 486-7 Issy, 406 Italian buffo music, 714; comedy, 72411.; opera, 782-801 ‘Italian’ Concerto, 566, 567 Italian Madrigal, The, 25 m. Italian Madrigals Englished, 282 Italian song-book (Wolf), 905, 909 ‘Italian’ Symphony (Mendelssohn), 337. 832 Italy (outside Ch. i. Part I), 856, 153-72. iSiff., 191!., 204!., 208II, 219, 224ff., 233, 239, 240, 242, 256, 258ff., 266-7, 268-70, 272-3, 274. 275, 278, 280, 282, 288, 291-2, 295, 304, 306, 307, 313, 317. 318, 332, 341, 345, 349, 351, 352-8, 359, 362, 386, 401, 402, 405. 411, 413, 420, 434, 435, 436, 437. 438-56, 457-8, 469, 470, 491, 498, 522, 538, 543, 548-40, 551, 554ff.. 711, 712, 724, 740, 782, 838, 852, 982, 1027-8, 1033, 1035 Ivan the Terrible, 873 Ives, Charles, 104^53, 1054, 1056, 1057, 1058, 1060, 1064, 1065, 1085, 1086; Harmony, 1050; Simon, 423 Is My Team Ploughing,

d a Bo l o g n a , 158, 167, 171, 183 Jacopone da Todi, 23 Jacques de Selesses (Senleches), I72f ' J’ai perdu ma force et ma vie’, 849 James I, 283, 288, 311 James II, 510 James, Henry, 1044 Jandcek, 882, 887-92, 893, 896, 897, 898, 1065, 1083. '088 Janequin, Clement, 239-40, 264, 295, 339. 538. PI. XIV Japan, 361, 1082 Jarrett, Keith, 1094 Jazz, 998, 1105-6, 1008, 1009, loii, I030n., 1040, 1064, 1066-7 Jean, Due de Berry, 130 Jefferies, Richard, 927 Jehannot de I’Escurel, 117 Jenger, PI. XXXIII Jenkins, John, 543-4, 545

Ja c o po

General Index

1224

Jennens, Charles, 515 Jermfa, 888 Jeptha, 516, 723B. Jepthe, 501 Jesuits, 316, 317, 385-6

Jesus der du Meine Seek, 529 Jesus martyred and dying for the sins of the world, 526

‘Jeunehomme’ Concerto, 623

Jeux, 949 Jewt d Eaux a la Villa d’Este, Les,

848, 946 Jeux d’Erfants, 776 Jewish music, sf., 15, 985, 993, 1021, 1055, 1061, 1062-3 Jezter, 724 Jig.

337

Joan of Arc, 190 Job, 977. 978. 979. 980 John, Duke of Bedford, 186 John, King of Bohemia, 130 John XXII, Pope, i22f., 130, 141, 148 John of Afflighem, 45 John of Salisbury, 53, 69, 71, 122 Johnson, John, 346; Robert, 290-1 Jomelli, Niccolo, 457, 481, 715 Jones, Inigo, 288-9, PI. XX; Robert, 288 Jongleurs, 75!?., 84 Jonson, Ben, 288, 289, 290, 291, 357-8, 422 Joseph and His Brethren, 516 Joseph II, Emperor, 585, 608, 631, 723-4 Joshua, 516 Josquin de Prez, ipdff., 201-7, 213, 221, 227, 23of., 243, 246, 262, 299, 301, PI. XVI Joyeuse, Duke of, 275 Judas Maccabaeus, 516, 518 Judenkilnig, Hans, 349 Judgment of Paris, The, 515 Jung, 1040 Junge Pfonne, Die, 665 Jungmann, J. A., 507a. ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, K.551 (Mozart), 651 Just intonation, 231, 247-9

K.ANGEL, Six t u s ,

Kansas, 1063 Kant, 657, 985 Kantoreien, 520

349

888, 891 Keats, 1046 Keiser, Reinhard, 405, 462-5, 526 Kermst du das Land, 840 Kepler, Johann, 359 Kerle, Jacobus de, 300, 307 Katia Kabanova,

Kerll, Johann Kaspar, 458 — 9, 519 Keyboard, 33f., 66, 92, 119, Pis. XI, XII Keyboard music, lydff., 2156, 220, 334-65. 367. 533-4. 554ff-; ac companied, 558: German, 533-4 Kimberley (Norfolk), 544 Kinderscenen, 820 King Arthur (Purcell), 433, 434,435,546 King Lear, 573, 1028 King Roger, 1020 King's Hunt, The, 339 Kipling, Rudyard, 967 Kirkpatrick, Ralph, 554a. Kitesh, 873, 875 Kithara, 13, 16, l8f., 68 Klaoierstucke, 681 Kleber, Leonhard, 216 Knaben Wunderhorn, Des, 664 Knights Templar, 11 Knot Garden, The, 1079 Kod&ly, 1013, 1014 Konzertmusik, 998-9 Konzertstuck, 737 Kotter, Hans, 216 Krahe, Die, 667 Kraken, The, 1046 Kreisleriana, 820 Krieger, Adam, 525; Philipp, 526 Kriehuber, J., PI. XXXVII Kuhnau, Johann, 526, 529, 564 Kusser, Johann Sigismund, 405, 462, 463 Kyne, K.341 (Mozart), 627 Kytsch, 468 a ci Darem’ Variations, 809 ‘£a Lamentazione’ Symphony, 600 ‘La Passione’ Symphony, 600 La Rue, Pierre de, 201, 2o6f. La Torre, Francisco de, 224 ‘Lh-bas dans la montagne', 778 L'Absence, 765 Lachrimae, 287, 543 Laecherliche Printz Jodelet, Der, 463 Lai, 79ff., 86, 130, 142 VAllegro ed ll Pensiero, 515 Lamentations (Lassus), 310 Lamento (Frobcrger), 526. 537-8 VAmfiparnasso, 271 Lampe, John Frederick, 467, 468, 481 Lande, Michel de la, 508 Landi, Stefano, 381-2, 384, 387, 520 Landini, Francesco, 157!., 167-72, 179. 183

Landler, 472, 597, 598, 655, 691, 708 Landshoff, 397/1. Lang, P. H., 439 Lanier, Nicholas, 422, 424 Lanner, 673/1.

General Index L’Apotkdose de Lulli, 557 L’ArUsietme, 778 L’Art de toucher le clavecin,

559 ‘Lascia ch’io piango’, 472 ‘Lasciatemi Morire’, 376-7 Laserna, Bias, 485 Lasst uns erfreun, 980 Lassus, Roland de, 255-6, 276, 278, 281, 293, 295, 300, 302, 307, 309-10.312.319.364,578,851

23 Laude spirituali, 85, 90 Laurencie, 24 m. Lavrosky, PI. XLII Lawes, Henry, 423, 424, 509; William, 423, 424. 425, 509, 543. 544. 545. 1039 Lazarus, 679 Leaping ninths, 640 Lebegue, Nicholas-Antoine, 559 Lechner, Leonhard, 278 Leclair, Jean-Marie, 555, 557-8 Legons des Tenibres, 507, 508 Lee, Nathaniel, 432 Ugendes, 842 Legrenzi, Giovanni, 400, 402, 438, 447, 500, 502, 532-3, 551, 567 Leich, 86 Leighton, 329 Leipzig, 287, 482, 527, 528, 530 Le Marteau sans Maitre, 1073 L’Enfance du Christ, 771-2 L’Enfant et les SortUiges, 950-1 Leng, Wilhelm, 8o9n. Leningrad, 457 Leningrad Symphony (Shostakovitch), 1070 Lennox, Annie, 1094 Leo, Leonardo, 457, 481, 484, 505, 506 Leonardo da Vinci, 224ir., 358 Leoncavallo, 799 Lfionin, 53-60, 66, 70, 72, 97 Leonora, 730; overtures, 732 L’Epine, Francesca Margherita de, 467 Leopardi Fragments, 1080 Leopold I, 400 Leopold II, 722 Les Six, 1029, *03-1 Lesueur, 761 ‘Let monarchs fight’, 511 Lettre sur le Musique Frangaise, 506—7 Lettres philosophiques, 487-8 Letzte Hqffhung, 667 UEurope galante, 486-7 Leveridge, Richard, 468 Lewis, Anthony, 427, 429«. Lezginka, 854 L’Hermite, Tristan, 942 L’Heure Espagnole, 947, 950 VHomme armi, 303 L’honesta ne gli amori, 448 Li Zite’n Galera, 483 Lauda Sion salvatorem,

1225 Liber Usuales, i88n., PI. Libertine, The, 434

Ill

Libretti, 381, 411-13, 444-5, 455-6, 740-2, 744 Libule, 881 Liebe Farbe, Die, 671 Liebstod, 751, 752, 753, 755 L'Idaspe fidele, 467, 468 Lied (Lieder), 2o8f., 221, 255, 277-8, 295, 299, 463. 519, 525, 591, 662, 663, 701, 821 Lied von der Erde, Das, 70Q Li6ge, 713 Life for the Czar, A, 852-3 Ligeti, Gyorgy, 1078, 1081 LTsle Jqyeuse, 898, 944, 946 L'Impromptu de Versailles, 409 Lincoln, 312, 323; Cathedr^, 39, PI. V LTncoronazione di Poppea, 387, 388 Lindenbaum, Der, 672 L'inganno tPamore, 402 Linley, 609 Linz, 684; Quartet, 621; Symphony, 621 Liszt, 340, 681, 8o 9«., 826, 827, 828, 832, 835-50, 851, 855, 857, 876, 879, 881, 882, 883, 897, 914, 915, 916, 917, 920, 946, 959, 960, 961, 969, 982, 983, 997, 1013, 1061, PI. XXXVII Litaniae de venerabili altaris Sacramento,

627 Litany, 83, 322 Literature, 2246, 357-9, 362-3, 412-13 Little adding, 658 Liturgical drama. See Church drama Liturgical music. See Church music Livietta e Tracollo, 484 Livri, Comte de, 558 Livri, La, 558 ‘Lo conosco’ (Pergolesi), 555n. Locatelli, Pietro, 553 Lochamer Liederbuch, 221 Locke, John, 542; Matthew, 424-7, 429, 431, 432, 437, 543, 545, 546 Loeillet, 468 Loewe, 903 Logroscino, Nicola, 484 Lohengrin, 744, 745, 746-7, 756, 760, 879 VOlimpiade, 480 London, 282, 289, 292, 406, 432, 442, 444. 458, 462, 465-70, 5ioff'., 543, 592, 596, 606, 615, 627, 807, 808, PI. XXXV ‘London’ Symphony (Vaughan Williams), 976 Longo, Alessandro, 554«. Lontano, 1078 Lord is my Shepherd, The (Blow), 272 Lorenz, A., 447/1., 449/!., 452/1. Lorettine Litanies, 627

1220

Loris, Heinrich. See Glareanus L’Onntea regina di Egitto, 446

Lorraine, Margaret of, Lortzing, 741 Lolario (Handel), 469 Lotti, Antonio, 457, 465, 503 Louis XI (France), 197 Louis XII (France), 207 Louis XIII (France), 403, 408 Louis XIV (France), 406, 407, 409, 411, 414, 420, 435, 487, 507, 508, 510, 584, 585 Louis XV (France), 408, 461, 487, 489, 495. 584 Louis XVI (France), 495 Louisiana Stoiy, 1064 Louise, 780-1 Loure, 410 Love in a Village (Arne), 480 Love music, 774-5 h>vers make Men, 422 Loyola, Ignatius, 316, 317 Lucca del Robbia, 224 Lucia di Lammermoor, 785-6 Ludo Silla, 722 Ludus Tonalis, 1000 Luening, Otto, 1090— 1 Lugubre Condole, La, 849-50, 983 Luisa Miller, 788, 789, 790 Lullaby (Byrd), 281 Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 402, 407-22, 426, 430, 432, 435, 436, 462, 479, 485, 486, 491, 492, 494, 495, 510, 536, 556, 557. 58'. 584. 596, 7«2. 7«4. 717. 720. 721. 761, 762, 939. 940. 946. 953. 962 ‘Lully in the Elysian fields’, 557 ‘Lully taken up to Parnassus’, 557 U Unique, 560 Lupo, Thomas, 345

Lustgarten neuer teutscher Gesang Balletti, Galliarden und Intraden, 278

Lute, 93, 2i6fK; music, 217, 267, 287, 296, 333. 335. 346-7. 348. 349. 350. 352. 353-4. 355. 534-5; stop, 341. 535; tablature, 16, 2i7f. Luther, Martin, 7, 205, 221, 297-8, 299. 300. 3". 317. 320, 325, 663 Lutheran chorale, 663 Lutheran chorales (J. S. Bach), 1039 Lutheranism, 5t9ff. Lutoslawski, Witold, 1072, 1078 Luzzaschi, Luzzasco, 267, 299, 318, 387 Lydia, 953 Lydian mode, 246-7 Lyric Movement for viola and chamber orchestra (Holst), 974 ]\^aJinestmoncommencetnent (Machaut),

144

General Index Ma Vlasi, 881 Macbeth (Verdi),

788, 790, 791, 796 Macdowell, Edward, 1048 Mace, Thomas, 546-7 Machaut, Guillaume de, 129-31, 140, 142-52, 157, 167, 172, 1796, 188, t9G 503»225 i ., 1010, loii Machiav^i, Macht der Tugend, Die, 463 Mackay Brown, George, 1080 MacSwiney, O., 467 Madame Buttetfiy, 801 Madeira, 232 Madonna, 1092 Madrid, 457 Madrigal, 239, 242-75, 280-1, 292, 293-4. 308-9. 314. 316. 3*8, 333. 334. 340. 363. 364. 368, 371, 373, 386; chromatic, 752; comedy, 271-2; continuo, 509; English, 265, 279ff., 282-5, 291, 294; fourteenth-century, 1576, 183, 185; Italian, 264, 273, 282, 294; sixteenth-century, 141 Madrigals of 5. and 6. parts, apt for the viols and voices, 284 Magellan, 232, 361 Maggini, Giovanni Paolo, 356 Magic Flute, The, 455, 586,626,628, 851 Magna Carta, 8 Magnard, AlWric, 919 Magnificat, 190, 213 Magnificat (J. S. Bach), 530; (Monte verdi), 503; (Vaug^ian Williams), 980 Magnus Liber Organi (Lionin), 57 Mahogarmy, 1063 MahlCT, 593,693, 703-9,964, 993, 996, 985. 986, 987, 988, 1032, 1033, 1034. 1041, 1042, 1050, 1053, 1058, 1069, 1070, PI. XXXIV Mailly, Abbi, 406 Maiorano, Gaetano. See Caffarelli Mairy, 24 m. Maitres musiciens de franfaise, 200n. Majestueuse, La, 535

la

Renaissance

Major triad, 693 Malays, 232 Maldeghem, 244n. Male alto. .512 Malipiero, 37711., 504 Mallarm£, 949 ‘Man is for the woman made’, 434 Mancini, Francesco, 457, 467; Giam battista, 443 Manelli, Francesco, 384 Mannered School, 1726, 180, 228 Mannheim, 589, 596, 614; birdies, 589; skyrocket, 589, 590, 689, 706; steam-roller, 589 Manoir de Rosamunde, Le, 911

General Index Manon, 774, 799 Manon Lescaut, 799

Mantegna, Andrea, 357 Mantua, 206, 209, 291, 318, 377; Duke of, 503 Manuel Venegas, 909 Manuscripts: Aosta, Seminario, 185; Chartres, Cathedral Libr. log, 42, 44; Eton, College 1^8, 2i3ff.; Rorence, Bibl. Med.-Laur. pint sgl, 54JI., 57H., 58n., Med.-Laur. Pal. 87 (Sguarcialupi Codex), 167, 208, Fig. 4; Modena, Bibl. Estense, lat. 471, 185; Old Hall, 185-9, 2i3f.; Paris, Bibl. Nat. fr^. gssr, 144, Fig. 2; IVent, Codices, Castello de Buon Consiglio 87~g2 and Arch. Capit. gg, 185; Wolfenbiittel, Herzog. Bibl. iso6, 61, Fig. 1 Manzoni, 782, 793 Manzuoli, 722 Maps, 233 Marais, Marin, 556 Marazzoli, Marco, 383, 384 Marbeck, John, 324, PI. XXI Marcabru, 84 Marcello, 502, 565, 567, 793, 795 Marcellus II, Pope, 307, 308 March rhythm, 764-5 Marchand, Louis, 559 Marche au Supplice, 763 Marche Nocturne, 771 Marchettus of Padua, 154 Marcia Funebre, 641 Maria Theresa, 729 ‘Mariazell’ Mass, 608 Marenzio, Luca, 258-61, 284, 293, 294, 362, 368, 386 Margherito, Infanta, 400 Maria Barbara, Princess of Portugal, 554

1000 Marignano, Battle of, 240 Marini, Biago, 532 Marlowe, Christopher, 179, 357-8, 726 Marmontel, 713 Marot, Clement, 320 Marriage, The, 859, 877, 947 Marrocco, W. T., 162a. Marschner, 751, 746 Marseilles, PI. XXVIII Marteau sans Maitre, Le, 1026 Martin, Frank, 1030 Martin le Franc, 186 Martini, Johannes, 20t, 722 Martyre de St. Sibastien, 942 Mary I, 311, 316, 326, 327, 348 Mary Queen of Scots, 275 Mascagni, 799 Mascherate, 286, 272, 288 Maske A, 290 Marienlieder,

1227 Masks of Orpheus, The, 1081—3, ■ 088 Masonic music, 586, 604,608,609,626, 628, 728 Masque of Blackness, 288, 291 Masque of Queens, 289, 290

Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Irm, 289

Masquerades, 288 Masques, 288-91, 423-30, 433-4, PI.

Mass (Eaton), 1092; (Monteverdi), 503 Mass for chorus and instruments (Stravinsky), ton Mass for double chorus (Vaughan Williams), 975 Mass for soli, chorus, orchestra, and organ (Jandcek), 891-2 Mass of Three Voices (Byrd), 315 Mass in A flat (Schubert), 679 Mass in B minor (J. S. Bach), 299309, 530 Mass in C, K.337 (Mozart), 627 Mass in G minor, K.427 (Mozart), 627 Mass in E flat (Schubert), 679-81 Mass in E minor (Bruckner), 686 Mass in F minor (Bruckner), 690, 692 Mass, Gregorian, 96 Mass of Besancon. See Mass of the Sorbonne Mass of Life, A, 924 Mass of the Roman Rite, The, 507a. Mass of the Sorbonne, 148, 205 Mass of Toulouse, 148, 205 Mass of Toumai, 1486 Mass Ordinary, 506, 508 Massenet, 773, 774, 799-800, 865, 867, 869, 936, 1031, 1061 Masses, 243, 245, 292, 30068, 306E, 3i2ff., 317-18, 32368, 329-30, 333> 334. 335f-> 346, 363, 364, 503, 506-7; cantus-flrmus, 302-3, 3378; parody, 302, 303, 503; poly phonic (mediaeval), 130, 148-53; Renaissance. See also Missa, 141, J49, 185, :88f., 194-9, 201-7, 213, 216, 222; short, 303 Mastersingers, The. See Meistersinger, Die Mater Patris (Brumel), 204 Mathis der Maler, 1000 Martin, Le, 599

Mathematics, 361-2 Matteo da Perugia, 17168, 191 Mattheson, Johann, 441, 463, 488, 526, 538, 541 Mauduit, Jacques, 275, 320 Maugars, Andr6, 505-6 Maximilian I, Emperor, 191, 2068, 222 Maxwell Davies, Peter, 1079 — 81 Mqyerin, 537 Mayflower, 361

1228

Mahyrofer, 664 Mazarin, Cardinal, 383, 384, 405, 406 Mazurka, opus 63 (Chopin), 811 Mazurka in C sharp minor (Chopin), 816 Mazurka in F minor, opus 68 (Chopin), 816 Mazzochi, Domenico, 377-9, 380-1, 384; Vergilio, 384 Meek, Mme von, 864, 868 Medea, 482 Medeae, 761 Mediaeval music, 1010, loii; traits, Q26f. Mediant, 578 Medici, Catherine de’, 276, 277; Lorenzo de’ (‘The Magnificent’), q o 8; Prince Ferdinand de’, 447, 452 Medicine, 360-1 Medium, The, 1062 Medtner, 893 Mehul, 734, 740, 761 Mei, Girolamo, 367 Mein G’mut ist mir verwinet, 519 Meissen, Heinrich von. See Frauenlob Meistersinger, 88, 222f. Meistersinger, Die, 88, 223, 756-7, 789 Melismata, 291 Mellers, Wilfrid, 559a. Melodic types, 3f. Melodramas, 482 Milodrame, 779 Memlinc, 225 Men and Mountains, 1054 Mendelssohn, 337, 775, 797, 828-34, 835. 836, 887, 958, 961, 966, 967 Menotti, Carlo, 1062, 1065 Menuet, 4:0 Mephisto waltzes, 843, 844, 848 Mer, La, 928, 941, 942 Mercator, Gerard, 361 Merchant of Venice, The, 12 Merulo, Claudio, 354, 355, 533 Messager, 734 Messe basse solenelle, 507 Messiaen, Oliver, 1024 — 6, 1027, 1029, 1073. ‘075> '087

475, 516, 517, 518, 582, 586, 601, 1038 Metamorphosen, 963, 964 Metastasio, Pietro, 444-6, 460, 461, 480, 491, 663, 740 Mexico, 361, 362, 1067-8 Meyerbeer, 741-2, 744, 746, 771, 776, 777. 778, 783, 786, 787, 792, 798, 835 Michelangelo, 356, 357, 360, 838, 909 Microco^mos, 1016 Midi, Le, 599 Midsummer Marriage, The 1040, 1079 Messiah,

General Index

(Britten), 1047; (Shakespeare), 434, 1047; overture, 831 Milan, 7, 204, 206, 275, 279, 291, 615 Milan, Luis, 348 Milanese chant. See St. Ambrose Milano, Francesco Canova da, 353 Milhaud, Darius, 943, 10300. Mille regretg (Josquin), 202 Milton, John, 384, 423, 424, 609 MinnesMng, 299 Minnesinger, Minnelied, 86, 88, 174, 222 Minor triad, 643 Minstrel, 76 Minuet, 472, 538, 597-8 Mira lege, 97 Miracle play, 24, 176, 179 Miroirs, 946, 948 Miserere (Josquin), 205; (Lully), 508 Misfin, Luis, 485 Missa Alma redemptoris Mater (Power), 189 Missa Ave sanctissima Maria (La Rue), 207 Missa brevis, 303, 333 Missa Caput (Dufay), 195 Missa Cuiusvis toni (Ockeghem), 197 Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae (Josquin), 2038 Missa in Tempore Belli (Haydn), 6to Missa L'Homme Armi (Dufayl, 192, 194 Missa Mater BeOris (Josquin), 204 Missa Mi-mi (Ockeghem), 199 Missa 0 bone Jesu (Fayrfax), 214 Missa Pange lingua (Josquin), 202 Missa Papae Marcelli (Palestrina), 96, 307 Missa Prolationum (Ockeghem), I97f. Missa Quarto (Palestrina), 303 Missa Rex seculorum (Dunstable), 189 Missa Rosa playsant (Obrecht), 206 Missa se le face ay pale (Dufay), I94f. Missa Solemnis (Beethoven), 96, 6to, 652-3. 679. 691, 731. 9*3 Mitchell, Joni, 1090 Mitridate, 452-4, 478, 722 Muted scene, 449, 450, 475, 477 Mixolydian mode, 247 Mock Marriage, The, 434 Mode, Aeolian, 246, 247; Dorian, 247; Hypoaeolian, 246; Hypoionian, 246; Ionian, 246, 247; Lydian, 246, 247; melodic {see also Greek music), I4ff., ipff., 26, 37, 80, 88, 131, 138-42; Mixolydian, 247; Phrygian, 247; rhythmic, 49-54, 78, loi, 114 Modeme, Jacques, 242 Modinhya, 1067 Molen van pariis, Di, 176 Midsummer Night's Dream, A

General Index

Molifere, 407, 408, 409, 410, 412, 426, , .713 Molinaro, Simone, 354 Molinet,J., 197 Molza, Tarquinia, 269 Momente, 1075 — 6 Moment Musical (Schubert), 681, 685 Monasticism, monasteries, lof., 21, 49 Mond hat eine schwere Klag’ erhoben, Der,

907 Mondnacht, 477, 823, 824 Monet, 942 Monn, 598 Monochord, 67 Monody, 210, 367-71, 376-7, 381. 386, 408

Monsigny, 712, 713

Montagnana, Antonio, 467 Monte, Philippe de, 256, 258, 262, 300, 319. 368 Monteverdi, Claudio, 196,269-71,287, 314, 373-7. 383. 384. 387-91. 395. 396. 397. 401. 402, 438, 440, 446, 451. 478, 479, 503-4, 521, 522, 7'7. 749. 782, 1027, io8o Monticelli, Angelo Maria, 467 Montparnasse, 1031 Mood. See Proportional system Mood-expression, 251, 440 ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, 637, 638, 652 Moore, Tom, 910 Morales, Cristobal de, 304, 305-6 Morality play, 179 More, Sir Thomas, 225 Moresche, 272 Morhange, Charles Henri, B$6n. Morike, 902, 904, 905 Morlaye, Guillaume, 350 Morley, Thomas, 281-3, 294, 312, 334, 340, 342, 345 Morte del Cor Penitente, La, 502 Moscow, 460, PI. XLII; Bolshoi Theatre, PI. XLII Moses and Aaron, 993, 1078 Motet, 243, 245, 292, 301, 302, 303, 312, 315. 317-19. 330. 333. 334. 363. 364. 520; French, 507; isochronous, I022n.; Italian, 507; mediaeval, 53, 103-12, 114-19, 123, 126, 128-31, 142, 148!., 153, 185, 191; Protestant, 300; Re naissance, 141, i88f., 195, 197, 201-4, 207, 213!., 216; Roman Catholic, 300 Mother of Us All, The, 1064 Motteaux, P. A., 466, 467, 468 Motto beginnings, 401, 440-1, 453 ‘Mourn, Israel’, 517 Moussorgsky, 858-63, 864, 865, 867, 872, 873, 874, 875, 876, 877, 879, 888, 893, 894, 914, 935, 940, 947, 1004

1229

Mouton, Jean, 201, 207 Mouvements Perpituels, 1030 Mozarabic chant, 7, 34; Church, 5 Mozart family, PI. XXIX; Leopold, 614; Variations, 997; W. A., 261, 303, 345. 376. 431. 44a. 455. 460. 46*. 474. 482, 483. 578, 586, 588, 593. 594. 595. 598. 600, 602, 603, 604, 608, 612-30, 631-2, 634, 636, 637, 639, 644, 645, 651, 653, 659, 660, 661-2, 665-6, 669, 670, 671, 676, 678, 679, 682, 685, 688, 689, 702, 707, 711, 716, 717, 719, 722-30, 731. 732-3. 734. 736, 737. 738, 739. 740. 74a. 749. 768, 775. 776; 783. 789. 791. 795. 796-7. 798. 805, 806, 811, 815, 826, 829, 831, 839. 849, 852, 865, 868-9, 871, 877. 894. 909. 925. 932. 933. 945. 950. 961, 962, 993, 997, 1012 Much Ado about Nothing, 768 Mudarra, Alonso de, 348 Muffat, Georg, 561 Muller, 666, 902 Mulliner Book, 335-6 Mulliner, Thomas, 335 Mundy, John, 339 Munich, 310, 401, 458-9 Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot), 179 Musae Sioniae, 521 Muses galantes, Les, 496 Muses, Les, 409 Muset, Colin, 84 ‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile’, 434 Music for Radio, 1056 Music for Strings, Celesta, and Per cussion (Bartdk), 1015, 1019 Music in the Baroque Era (Bukofzer), 52 m., 567a. ‘Music of the Spheres’, 12 Musica Britannica, 424a. Musica enchiriadis, 4of., 45 Musica ficta (falsa), 167, 171 Musica practica (Ramos), 231 Musica Transalpina, 282, 284 Musical Aesthetic of the Baroque, The,

53 in.

568 Musical Society (London), 513 Musick’s Monument, 546-7 Musik des Baroks, 369a., 39 m. Musikalische Exequien, 522 Musique coru:rete, 1053; mesurie, 274, 408; sacrie, la, 768 Musset, 849 My Beloved Spake, 510-11 My heart is inc(iting, 510, 516 My Lady Carey’s Dompe, 337 My Ladye Nevell’s Book, 538 My little sweet darling, 281 Myaskovsky, 1030 Musical Offering, The,

General Index

1230

Mystery play, 24, 176, 179 Mystery Sonatas (ffiber), 539

IV abucca, 787 Nachtlichen, Die,

983 Nachtanz, 349, 537 Nancarrow, Conlon, 1085 — 6 Nantes, Edict of, 321 Napier, John, 362 Naples, 245, 273, 291, 362, 438-56, 457. 460, 465, 468 Napoleon, 642, 763, 771 Napolitana, 624 Narvdez, Luis de, 348 Nationalism, 851-99 Nations, Les, 556-7 ‘Nato k gia I’Austraco sole’, 502 Nature-mysticism, 923-34, 936-7, 957 Nature of Music, The, 58 m. Navarra, 897-8 Neapolitan sixth, 397, 452, 454, 461 Negro blues, 1055: music, 984, 1055 Neidhart von Rcuenthal, 88 Neighbour, Oliver, 992n. ‘Nelson’ Mass, 610, 686 ‘Neptune’, 974 Neri, Filippo, 319, 372 Nero, 4 Nesciens Mater (Byttering), 188; (Mouton), 207 ‘Netherland’ polyphonists, 986 Netherlands, 278, 282, 300, 304, 309, 321. 339, 350, 361, 404 Neumeister, Erdmann, 525-6 Neumes, 256, 28, 32, 35, 74, PI. II Neusiedler, Hans, 349; Melchior, 349 New Hebrides, 361 ‘New Music’ (Nuove Musiche), 5if., 210 New Orleans, 822-4 New Oxford History of Music, The (II) 3in., 42n., 9on. New York, 1056, 1063

Newe Teutsche Leidlein mit fiinff Stimmen,

278 Newfoundland, 361 Newman, Cardinal, 970 Newton, Sir Isaac, 360 Niccolo da Perugia, 171 Nicolai, 741 Nicolaus of Cusa, 226 Nicolini, Nicola, 442, 467 Nielson, Carl, 929 Nietszche, 780, 924 ‘Nigger’ Quartet (Dvorak), 575, 884, 885 Night on the Bare Mountain, 859 Nights in the Gardens of Spain, 899 Nightingale, The, 1002 ‘Nimrod’, 967-8

Nina, 587 Nine Fantasies . . .

(Gibbons), 343a. Ninth Sonata (Skryabin), 921 Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 652, 675, 676, 686-7, 89*, 892, 896, 897. 898, 704, 731, 749, 760, 901; (Bruckner), 688, 691, 692-3, 703; (Mahler), 705, 708-^, 1034, PI. XXXIV Nisi Dominus, 504 Nixe Binsefuss, 903 Nocturne (Britten), 1046, 1047 Nocturne in B major (Chopin), 813 Nocturne in E minor (Field), 808 Nocturnes (Debussy), 940, 941 Nola, Giovane da Domenico, 245, 258 Nonetto, 1067 Nono, Luigi, 1028 — 9, '°75 Norma, 455, 783, 702, 839 North America, 232, 361, 1048-65. See also U.S.A. North, Roger, 542, 543 Norway, 894-6, 923 Notation, 2, 24-8, 35, 506, 74, 112-15, 123-8, 153-6, 172, 228ff., 243, PI. II, Figs. 1-4 Note bianche, 243; nere, 243 Notker Balbulus, 22; Labeo, 21 Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris), 49, 58; School, 49-61, 78, 98, 103, 123 Nouveau systeme de musigue thiorique, 489 Nouvelle Helcise, La, 506 Nouvelles aventures, 1078 Novalis, 664, 679 Noverrc, 715-16 ‘Now Love, that everlasting boy’, 517 Nozze d'Eneo con Lavinia, 387 Nozzi di Teti e di Peleo, i«, 391 Nuages 940, 941 Nuages Gris, 849 Nuit, La, 409 Numitore, 469 Nun lass uns Frieden sohliessen, 906 Nuove Musiche (New Music), 332,366ff., 370 Nuremberg, 286, 403 Nursery Songs (Moussorgsky), 860 ‘Nymphs and Shepherds,’ 434 Nymphes des Bois (Josquin), 203

0 care, thou wilt despatch me, 283 ‘O come, ye servants of the Lord’, 330 O Haupt vol Blut und Wunden, 519 ‘O Holy Spirit, Lord of Grace’, 326 0 Magnum Mysterium, 1079 ‘O Mitridate mio’, 452

General Index O quandje dors, 840 Orosabella (Ciconia),

1231

191; (Dunstable),

187 289, 740 Oboe, 68, 2i 8 Oboe Concerto (Strauss), 963-4 Obrecht, Jacob, 201, 205!?. Ockeghem, Johannes, i97ff., 202ff., 211, 213, 221, 224, 231, 305, PI. XVII Octavio, 463 Octet for strings (Mendelssohn), 830 Octet for wind instruments (Stravinsky) 1008 Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, 515 Odo of Cluny, 21 Oedipus (Purcell), 434 Oedipus Rex (Stravinsky), 1008, 1010, ion Offenbach, 734, 741, 781, 1060 Office (Roman Catholic), 10 Old Hall MS., 305 Old Hundredth, 329 Old 124th, 329 Olimpia Vendicata, 451 Oliver, 185 On Wenlock Edge, 975 Ondine, 946 115 guter neuer Liedlein, 277-8 isi neue Lieder, 277 Opella nova, 283 Opera, 548, 613-14, 711-802, 827, 839, 852!?., 859^0, 861-3, 865, 867-70, 857, 873-4,8^877ff., 886,887, Oberon,

888, 890-1, 896, 908-10, 940-1, 947. 950. 956. 959ff-> 983-4. 1000. 1009, 1010, 1014-15, 1020, 1027, 1031, 1039-40; birth of new kind, 711-42; English, 422, 427-37, 455, 469. 479-81; French, 277, 405-22, 485-97: German, 401-5, 462-4, 482; in Austria, 401, 402, 459; in Bohemia, 401 ; in England, 465-81; in France, 405, 410; in Germany, 401-5, 460-2; in Russia, 456, 457; in Spain, 457; Neapoli tan, 438-62, 464, 483, 506, 550; Roman, 377-85, 482; Venetian, 385-401, 438, 416, ^57-8. See also Ballad opera. Comic opera, Entremes. Opera-ballets, Opera buffa, Opira comique. Opera seria. Semi opera, Tonadilla, TragWielyrique, Zarzuellas Opera-ballets, 486ff. Opera buffa, 371, 384, 451, 482-5, 495, 496, 555. 586, 71 iff., 715, 724ff., 734

482, 490, 497, 7i2f., 715, 724ff.. 734, 877, 880-1, 910 Opera houses, 384, 400, 401, 404, 459; Covent Garden, London (Royal Opera comique,

Italian Opera House), 467, 470, 480, PI. XXXV; Drury Lane, London, 480; Her Majesty’s, London, 466; King’s, London, 466, 469-70; 481; Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, 480; Queen’s, London, 466-7; San Cassiano, Venice, 384, 387, 391; Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 387. See also Acaddmie Royale des Opdra ‘Opera of the Nobility’, 469-70, 480 Opera-passion, 526 Opera seria, 586, 71 iff., 722, 724; in Italy, 266-7, 271, 438-58, 465 Opera ultima, 945 Operatic storm, 646 Opionioni de’ Cantori e moderni, 442n. Opus II (Schoenberg), 987-8 Opus 19 (Schoenberg), 987-8 Ora Mater Filium, 92611., 1041 Oratorii erotica, 501 Oratorio, 86, 501-2, 508-9, 5i5ff., 608-9, 723«-. 77*-2. 833. 887, 967, 968, 970, 976f., 1005, 1038-9 Oratorio volgare, 501, 514 Orbium

colestium

Revolutionibus,

De

(Copernicus), 359 Orcagna, 843 Orchestra: Renaissance, 267, 268, 296, 318, 319; baroque, 375, 376, 395, 400. 403, 414, 420, 447, 449, 453, 454. 458. 481. 462, 472-7. 486, 487. 492, 493 Ordre, 559 Orfeo (Gluck), 716-18, 719, 720; (Monteverdi), 373-6, 377, 383, 387. 395. 401. 451. 504: (Poliziano), 371; (Rossi), 383, 405 Orff, Carl, 1023 — 4, >027, . 452. 454. 457. 484. 486, 487. 492; choral, 269, 270; secco, 371, 382, 383, 388, 411, 413, 438, 445, 450. 452. 483. 493 R^cits, 277, 408, 410 Recorder, 67, 94, PI. I; music, 267 Redford, John, 335 Reese, G., 58/i., 78n., 119^., i86n. Reflets dans I’eau, 946 Reformation, the, 7, 297!?., 3ir, 316, 321-2, 333 Regal. See Organ Regensberg, 401-2 Reger, 997-8, 999 Regino of Prilm, 21, PI. II Regiomontanus, 226 Regnart, Jakob, 278 Reichart, 663 Reich, Steve, 1087 — 8, 1092, 1093 Reinken, Jan, 352, 564, 567 Religious music. See Church music Rellstab, 664 Renaissance traits, 70!., 180-4, 226f. Renga, 1095 Reniement de St. Pierre, Le, 509 Repos de la Sainte Famille, Le, 771 Reguiem (Berlioz), 767-8, 771, 795; (Dvof^k), 886; (Faure), 954, 956; (Mozart), 627, 628^^; (Verdi), 793-5, 796 Requiem Mass (La Rue), 207 Respigliosi, Giulio, 383 Responses (Tallis), 326-7 Resurrezione, La, 514, 516 Reti, Rudolf, 62611., 642n., 65211. Return, 1092 Revels, 290 ‘Revolutionary’ Etude (Chopin), 813 Reynolds, Roger, 1092 Rhapsody in Blue, 1061 Rhythm, 28-32, 53, 57ff., yof., 78, 85f-. 97. loi. 104. 109. I”. 123, 126-9, 139, 142, 147, 1546, 1576, i72f.. 1796, 187, 194, i99ff., 213, 227 Ricercare, 353, 354, 355 Rich, John, 480

General Index

Richafort, Jean, 241, 278 713 Richard I, the Lion-hearted, 84, loi Richardson, Samuel 479, 713 Richelieu, Cardinal, 383, 404 Richter, 598; Hans, 95811.; Johann Paul, 81911. Rienzi, 744 Riezler, 63911. Rigaudon, 410 Rigoletto, 789-91, 797 Riley, Terry, 1087 Rimini, 155 Rimsky-Korsakov, 863, 873-5, ^86, Richard Cceur de Lion,

1002

Rinaldo, 465, 469, 471-6, 477, 478 Ring of the Mbelung, The, 738, 749,

751-2. 845, 95811., 988 Rmuccini, 367, 372, 373, 374, 377, 402, 446 Ripieno, 474 Rippe, Albert de, 350 Rite of Spring, The, 647, 85611., 1003, 1004, 1023 Ritomello form, 552 Ritual Dances (Tippett), 1040 Robinson, Anastasia, 468; Thomas, 346 Rococo style, 486, 508 Rodelinda, 477 Rodrigo, 465 Roi Malgri Lui, Le, 780 Roi s’amuse, Le, 780 Roi Soleil, 585 Rokseth, Y., 10411. Roma, 776 Roman Catholic Church (outside Ch. I, Part I), 68£f., 746, 84, 86, 95f.. 119, i2iff., 141, i8if., 189 Roman chant, 7; Empire, 4; music, i Roman de Fauvel, Le, 115, 121, 1236, 126, 128, 155 Romance, 746, 767 Romanesca, 353 Romanesque style, 8, 38, 70, PI. IV Romani, 783 Romantic virtuosity, 835-50 Romanza, 722 Rome, 9, 35, 122, 190, 245, 250, 291, 298, 305. 3". 317. 362, 377. 380-7, 396, 413, 423, 446, 447, 452, 458, 465, 500-1, 505, 551, 561, 713, 847. See also Papal Chapel Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikowsky), 871 Romio et Juliette (Berlioz), 765, 766 Rondeau, 79, 82f., M7ff., 130, 142, 144, >72. 179. >966. 199. 204, 583; form, 536 Rondellus, 112 Rondes de Printemps, 942-3 Rondo, 82 Ronsard, Pierre de, 273, 274, 357

General Index

Rore, Cipriano de, 250-6, 258, 262, 267, 293, 294, 355, 368, 381, 386, 440 Rosamond (Arne), 466, 480; (Clayton), 466 Rosamunde, 673 Rosaura, La, 449-50, 467 Rose Adagio, 869-70 ‘Rose-Croix’ works (Satie), 1025 'Rose cherie’, 714 Rosenkavalier, Der, 961-2, 964 Roseingrave, Thomas, 547 Rosenmuller, Johann, 539 Rosseter, Philip, 288, 346 Rossi, Luigi, 383, 405, 499-500; Salomone, 532 Rossini, 662, 663, 671, 732-6, 737, 738, 741. 746, 751, 775. 782-3, 785, 786, 793. 797. 809, 815, 853, 865, 1070; crescendo, 733 Rotta, Antonio, 353 Rotrouenge, 79 Rounds, 291 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 488, 495, 496, 645. 712. 715. 720. 722

Roussel, 943, 947 Row, The, 990 — 3 Roy, Adrian le, 242, 276, 346, 350 Royal Academy of Music (London), „ 346, 350. 469 Roj/al Consort, The, 543, 545 Royal Fireworks Music, 565

Royal Hunt and Storm, 769 Rubbra, Edmund, 1035-7, >038, 1041 Ruckers, Andreas, PI. XXIII Ruckers family, 341 Rtickert, 664 Rueda, Lope de, 358 ‘Ruggiero’, 264, 291, 353 Ruggles, Carl, 1053-4, '055. i°57. 1064 Rumelant, 88 Rusalka, 886 Russia, 456-7, 808, 851-75, 876, 894, 897. 972. '027, 1029-35,1069-71 Russian ‘art’ music, 852; Ballet, 86970; cantilena, 855; nationalists, „ 851-75, 954 Russian and Ludmilla, 853-4

Sa c h s , Ha n s ,

223

Sacra rappresentazione,i02'j Sacred Service (Bloch). 1021 Sacrie musique, la, 730 Sadko, 874 Saga of the Prairies, 1056

St. Alexis, 381 St. Ambrose, 5!!., 29f. St. Augustine, 7; Buhop of Hippo, 11

1237

St. Basil, 2 St. Benedict, lof.

S. Casimir Re di Polonia, St. Elizabeth, 847 S. Filippo Fieri, 502

502

St. Francis of Assisi, 85, 842 St. Francis of Paola, 842 St. Gall Monastery, 22 St. Gervais, 5590. S. Giovami Battista, 502 St. Gregory, 8, ii, 2i, 35, 38 St. Hilary, 6 St. Jerome, 7 St. John of the Gross, 316 St. John Passion (J. S. Bach), 527; (Handel), 514, 526; (Reiser), 526; (Part), 1089; (Schiitz), 524; (Selle), 524 St. Ludmilla, 887 St. Luke Passion (Penderecki), 1073; (Schiitz), 524 St. Martial Monastery, 22; School, 46, 48f., 52ff., 97, 103 St. Matthew Passion (J. S. Bach), 527; (Flor), 526; (Schutz), 526 St. Petersburg, 457, 852 Saint-Saens, 913, 915, 918, 935, 936, 945. 952, 953 St. Teresa of Avila, 316, 317 St. Thomas Aquinas, 23, no, 119, 182 Salerno, 8 Salieri, 730 Salinas, Francesco de, 249 Salisbury, 34 Salmacida Spolia, 424 Salome, 960—1 Salomon, 596 Sancta Civitas, 975, g8o Sand, George, 817, 8l8 Santa Cruz, Domingo, 1068 Saltarello, 175, 337, 350, 352, 353 Saltmarsh, J., 9m. Salve caput cruentatum, 519 Salve Regina (Haydn), 607 Salzburg, 401, 506, 612, 614 Sammartini, Gian Battista, 553, 598, 618, 715 Samson, 516, 518 Sannazaro, Jacopo, 266, 279 Sancta Maria (Dunstable), 187 Sanctus (Chirbury), 189; (Power), 185, 188 Santiago de Compostela School, 48 Santissima Trinith, 502 Sapphische Ode, 696 Sarabande, 472, 535, 536, 557, 560; grave, 557; tender, 557 Saraband of the Sons of God’, 977 Saran, F. L., 88n. Sdrka, 979 Sarum Use, 34, 189

1238 Satie, Erik, 945, 947-8, 949, 950, 1002, 1025, 1030-1, 1064 ‘Saturn,’ 974 Saudades, 1066 Saul (Handel), 516, 517 Saul, Saul was verfolgst Du mich?, 523 Saute Mouton, 776, 777 Savage, William, 468 Saoitri, 973 Savonarola, 208 Saxony, Elector of, 402, 530 Scandello, Antonio, 278 Scandinavia, 97, 99 Scarbo, 946 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 382, 400, 438, 446-55. 457. 458, 460. 46«» 465. 467, 468, 470, 471, 552-3, 554-5, 618, 715, 717, 723, 782, 793, 897; Domenico, 465, 547, 554, 898 Seine aux Champs, 763 Seine de Sommeil, 575, 714 Schedelesches Liederbuch, 221 Schihérazade, 946 Scheibe, Johann Adolf, 441, 488 Scheidemann, Heinrich, 352, 534 Scheidt, Samuel, 352, 520, 521-2, 525, 533-4. 536, 539 Schern, Johann Hermann, 520, 521, 525. 539 Schelomo, 1021 Scherchen, Hermann, 581«. Schering, A., 175«. Scherzo (Holst), 978 ; (Vaughan Williams), 976 Schikaneder, 728^, 730 Schiller, 664, 673, 838 Schlick, Arnolt, 216, 218, 249 Schnittke, 1071, 1072 Schobert, 615, 618, 622 Schoeck, Othmar, 1030«. Schoenberg, 192, 693, 703, 707, 758, 826, 949, 964, 985-94, 995, 996, 997. 998. tooo, 1001, 1002, 1003, 1008, 1013, 1019, 1020, 1021, 1022, 1023, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1041,1051,1053, 1054, 1058,1078 Scholia enchiriadis, 41, 45 Schöne Welt, wo bist du, 973 Schools of Musiche (Robinson), 346 Science, 199, 225, 23 t, 233 Schubert, 576, 593, 594, 645, 655, 659-82, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 689, 691, 695, 696, 698, 702, 703, 704. 705. 706, 707. 740, 770. 775. 805, 806, 818, 819, 823, 824, 826, 829, 830, 844, 847, 879, 882, 883, 885, 886, 901, 902, 962, 1060; PI. XXXIII Schubertiad, the, 659-60 Schumann, 477, 695, 696, 700, 76711., 776, 817-28, 829, 830, 832, 840, 844. 846, 864, 894, 904, 914, 916,

General Index 918. 945. 950. 952. 953. 954; Clara, 696 Schürmatm, Georg Kaspar, 464 Schütz, Heinrich, 402, 451, 522, 524, 525, 1000, 1089 Science, 359-60, 362 Scops, 75f. Score, The, 99211. Scott, Sir Walter, 664, 785 Scriabin, 1024, 1025 Scribe, 742 Sculpture, 224, 357 Se la face ay pale (Dufay), 194 Sea Drift, 927-8, 933 ‘Sea’ Symphony, 976 Seasons, The, 645 ‘Seaven Passionate Pavans’ (Dowland), 287 Sechter, Simon, 685, 686 Second Bookeof Songes or Ayres (Dowland), 287 SecondFantasia (Maxwell Davies), 1080 Second Piano Sonata (‘Concord’; Ives), 1050-2, 1054 Second Piano Sonata (Tippett), 1079 Second String Qjuartet (Bartók), 1015; (Dvofák), 885; (Smetana), 881 Second Symphony (Beethoven), 623; (Borodin), 857-8; (Brahms), 698, 700; (Mahler), 706; (Nielson), 129; (Sessions), 1058; (Sibelius), 93°. 932; (Vaughan Williams), 976

Second Violin Sonata (Bartók), 101516; (Fauré), 954 Seconde Leçon des Ténibres, 914 Secular monophony, treatment of in part-music, 96, 1076, ti7f., 119, 194, 208, 221. See also Cantus fiimus. Paraphrase Secret, Le, 881, 887, 953 See, 0 see, who comes here a-maying, 291 Seedo, 481 Seelewig, 403 Selva Morale e Spirituale, 377 Semele, 516, 517 ‘Semi-opera’, 432-4, 514 Senesino, Francesco, 442, 469, 470 Senil, Ludwig, 277-8, 300, 305 Sequence, 57711.; Gregorian chant, 2iff., 30-2, 80, 83, 91, 108; melodic, 59ff., 148, 205 Serenade, 597 Serenade (Britten), 1042, 1046 Serenade for wind in C minor, K.388 (Mozart), 621 ‘Serenade’ Quartet (Haydn), 604-5 Serial technique, 990-3, 1000 Serlio, Sebastiano, 380 Serse (Cavalli), 410, 420; (Handel), 477. 484

General Index Serva padrona. La, 483, 484, 495, 496, 497. 555«Services, 325-33, 363 Servio Tullio, 439 Sessions, Roger, 1058, 1064 Settle, Elkanah, 426 Seven Last Wordsfrom the Cross (Haydn), 608 Seven Words from the Cross (Schütz), 524 ‘Seventh Book of Madrigals’ (Monte verdi), 499 Seventh Symphony (Beethoven), 646, 648, 656, 675, 676; (Bruckner), 688, 690, 691, 692, 693, 695; (Sibelius), 932 Seventh Trio Sonata (Purcell), 541 Sforza, Cardinal Ascanio, 204 Shadwell, Thomas, 426 Shakespeare, 12, 264, 289, 357-8, 426, 433. 434. 467. 725. 728, 752. 765. 768, 770, 771, 785, 788-^, 790, 792. 793. 795-6. 831, 971, 1028, 1047 Shaw, G. B., 853-9 Shawm, 68, PI. VII Shelley, 1046 Shepheardes Calendar, 279 Shirley, James, 423, 424 Shore, John, 468 Short History of Opera, A (Grout), 3870. Shostakovitch, 1032 — 5, 1041, 1069 — 71 ‘Shropshire Lad, The’, 975 Sibelius, 918, 928-34, 941, 974, 979, 1055, 1080 Sicher, Fridolin, 216 Siciliano rhythm, 619 Sidney, Sir Philip, 280, 357 Siege of Rhodes, The, 422, 423, 424, 427, o-

“^36

Siegfried, 751, 1070 Silver Apples of the Moon, 1092 Silver Swan, The, 285 Simone Boccanegra, 791, 795 Simpson, Christopher, 544; Thomas, 542 Sinfonia, 451, 539 Sinfonia (Berio), 1074 Sinfonia avanti l’opera, 552/i. Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola in E flat, K.364 (Mozart), 622 Sinfonie e Galiarde, 552 Sinfonietta (Janàcek), 89-90 Singspiel, 482, 724, 728, 737, 739, 740 Sirventcs, 83, 87 Sitwell, Edith, 1037 Sixth Sonata (Skryabin), 920 Sixth Symphony (Beethoven), 574, 844-7. 661; (Schubert), 671, 675, 681; (Sibelius), 932, 933; (Tchaikowsky), 871, 872 ; (Vaughan Williams), 980

1239

Skelton, John, 279 Skryabin, 920-2, 926, 928, 1026, 1041 Slater, 1043 Slätter, 895-6 Sleeping Princess, The, 856, 869-70, 872, 874, PI. XLII Smetana, 876, 877-82, 883, 884, 886, 887, 888, 889, 890, 894 Snow Maiden, 873 Snow, Valentine, 468 Socrate, 94811. Soir, Le, 599 Soirées Musicales, 735 Solage, 172 Soldier's Tale, The, 899, 1006, 1007, 1009, loio, 1011, 1012 Solemn Music, A, 1064 Soler, 898 Solesmes, 28-31, 39 Solimano (Hasse),460 Solo songs, 662f. Solomon, 516, 517 Solomon Islands, 361 Solyman the Magnificent, 428 ‘Sombres Forets', 734 Somnámbula, La, 783 Sonata, 356, 539, 553, 554fr., 634fr., 737-8, 805, 806-7, 809. 824, 845fr.. 855, 876, 877, 881, 920, 943. 954. 982, 1015-16, 1019; birth of, 581-93; chamber, 532-3, 539. 553. 554; church, 532-3, 539, 553. 554; 6a camera, 538; da chiesa, 546, 556; form, 581fr.; solo, 532-3; trio, 532-3, 553, 554 Sonata for Violin and Piano (Prokofiev), 1032 Sonata, opus 110 (Beethoven), 925 Sonata pian’ e forte (G. Gabrieli), 355-6. Sonata sopra Sancta Maria, 504 Sonate a due, tre, quattro e cinque stromenti, 533. Sonatina in Diem Nativitatis Christi, 999 Sondheim, Stephen, 1094 Song cycles, 666fT. ‘Song of Thanksgiving on Recovery from Sickness’ (Beethoven), 657 Song of the High Hills, A, 925, 926, 933, 934. 940. 1054 Songbook (Hamburg), 520 Songs, 278-81, 296, 66ifr., 671fr., 70if., 704f., 805, 817fr., 829-30, 839fr., 859-61. 866-7, 901-2. 925-6. 939. 942. 949. 952-3. 955-6. 972-4, 975 Songs and Dances of Death, 860 Songs and Duets from the Works of Claudio Monteverdi, 38811. iSongj of a Wayfarer, 704 Songs without Words, 829-30 Sonnets (Shakespeare), 1047 Sonority, 43, 98, 103, 141, 144, 147,

General Index

1240 153. 172, 174. «86f., 192, 198, 200,213, 227 Sophia Eleanora, Princess of Saxony, 402 ‘Sound the Trumpet’, 512 Source Readings in Music History, 549«., 56 m., 562«. Souterliedekins, 321 South America, 232, 361, 1030«., 1065-8 Southerne, Thomas, 434 Spain, 70, 90, i73f., 206, 223f., 232f., 239, 292, 297, 304, 316, 347> 348, 361, 36a, 400, 403, 457, 534. 987-9, 945-51. i029n. Spanish Armada, 292; Civil War, i029n.; song-book (Wolf), 904-5, 909

Spataro, Giovanni, 23 t Spectacles coupés, 487 Spectator, 466 Spectre de la Rose, Le, 765 Speculum Charitatus (Aelred), 69, 117 Spem in alium, 319 Spenser, Edmund, 279-80 Spinaccino, Francesco, 353 Spinet. See Harpsichord ‘Spiritual Madrigals’ (Lassus), 310 Spitta, 538«. Spohr, 741, 746, 8o8n., 809, 810, 829, 958, 967

Spontini, 734, 740, 746, 761, 783 Squarcialupi, Antonio, 208, 216 Stabat Mater (Jacopone da Todi), 23; (Haydn), 608; (Szymanowsky), 1020 Staden, Sigmund Theophil, 403 Stadien, Peter, 1023 Stadt, Die, 668 Stage settings, 379-80 Stagione, Le, 552 Stamitz, Johann, 588-90, 597, 598, 599, 614, 615 Stanford, 976 Steffani, Agostino, 458-9, 461, 462, 465, 468, 555 Stein, Gertrude, 1064 Stendhal, 734 Sternhold, Thomas, 327-9 Stevens, Wallace, 1058 Stile antico, 502 — 3, 504, 520; concertato, 503; galante, 477, 480, 555; moderno, 502-3

‘Stille amare’, 477 Stimmtausch, 60, 174 Stimmung, 1077 — 8, 1083 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 1023, 1027, 1074 — 8, 1079, '080, 1081, 1083, 1084, 1087, 1091 Stollen, 734 Stoltzer, Thomas, 221, 278, 300 ■Stone Guest, The, 879

‘Storm and Stress’. See Sturm und Drang Strada del PÓ, Anna, 467 Stradella, Alessandro, 400, 402, 438, 447. .500, 502 Stradivarius, Antonio, 356 Strauss, Johann, 673«., 963, 1060; Richard, 8i6, 923-4, 936, 952, 958-65, 966, 967, 968, 969, 971, 986, 996, 997, 1013, 1021 Stravinsky, 51, 276, 647, 843, 856«., 899. 945. 948n-. 949. 953. 974. 981. 998, 1002-13, 1015, 1019, 1020, 1023, 1024, 1053, 1056, 1065, 1066, 1067, 1070, 1081, 1083, 1088, PI. XLIV Striggio, Alessandro, Jun., 374 ; Alessandro, Sen., 271, 374 String quartet, birth of, 596 String Qjiartet (Bruckner), 687; (Fauré), 956; (Franck), 917, 918, 921; (Ravel), 946 String Quartet in A major (Schumann), 826 String Quartet in B flat, K.172 (Mozart), 618 String Quartet in G (Schubert), 680 String Quartet in G sharp minor (Beethoven), 1016 String Quartet in D, K.155 (Mozart) 618 String Quartet in D minor (Wolf), 901-2 String Quartet in G, K.387 (Mozart), 621 String Quartet in G major (Dvoíák), 885 String quartets (Schoenberg), 986-7 String Trio (Schoenberg), 993 Strong, R. G., 283 Strophic song, 664, 665«. Strunk, O., 2n., 35a., 4m., 549»., 56m., 562a. Studies, 353 Studies in the Renaissance, 283 Sturgeon, Nicholas, i85f. Sturm und Drang, 599, 600-1, 604, 606, 607, 617-18, 626, 722 Style galant, 460, 486, 547, 556, 564, 601 Subotnick, Morton, 1092 Suites, 353-^ ‘Suivez le lois’, 493 Suleika, 671 Sultane, La, 556 Sumer is icumen in, 112, 174 ‘Sun’ quartets (Haydn), 601 Sunless, 860 Sunt Lackrymae Rerum, 849 Suor Angelica, 802 Superbia d'Alessandro, La, 459 Sur les Lacunes, 765 Sure there is no God of love, 285 Surgery, 360

General Index Survivor from Warsaw, A, 993 Susanna, 516 Susato, Tielman, 342 Suspension, 20i Suspice clementissime, 3x8 Swanee River, 967 Sweden, 404 Sweelinck, 319-20, 350-2, 533, 536, 540-1 Sweeney Todd, 1094 ‘Sweet Echo’, 424 Swieten, Baron von, 609 Swift, Dean, 577 Switzerland, 300, 496, 838, 1030«. Sylvia, 871 Symbolists, the, 936 Symphoniae Sacrae, 522-3, 524 Symphonic drama, 750; form, changes in, 707-8 Symphonic Variations (Franck), 918 Symphonie Fantastique, 762-3, 764, 765 Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, 763-5, 767, 836«. ‘Symphonies’, instrumental, 508, 509 Symphony, 588f., 669ff., 675-6, 697702; development of, 639fr., 825-6, 870-2, 882-3, 9'5. 9i 7-»8. 9«9. 929ff., 945, 969, 971, 978-9, 980, 1009-10 Symphony (Walton), 1038 Symphony for piano (Alkan), 83612. Symphony in A major, K.201 (Mozart) 617 Symphony in B flat (Bruckner), 934; ^Chausson), 919; K.22 (Mozart), Symphony in B minor (Borodin), 857-8 Symphony in C, K.425 (Mozart), 621, 626 Symphony in G major (Schumatm), 825 Symphony in D, K.133 (Mozart), 617 Symphony in D minor (Dvofák), 882; (Franck), 917; (Schumann), 826 Symphony in E flat (Borodin), 856-7, 918, 930; (Elgar), 969, 971 Symphony in E major (Schubert), 672, 672 Symphony in F major (Dvoíák), 883 Symphony in F minor (Vaughan Williams), 979 Symphony in G major (Dvoíák), 883, 884 Symphony in G minor, K. 183 (Mozart) 617, 625, 626, 670 Symphony in Three Movements (Stra vinsky), 1008, 1010 Symphony No. 22 (Haydn), 598-9 Symphony No. 31 (Haydn), 598-9 Symphony No. 39 (Haydn), 599-600, 617 Symphony No. 52 (Haydn), 600

1241 Symphony No. 80 (Haydn), 602 Symphony No. 94 (Haydn), PI. XXXI Symphony No. 104 (Haydn), 602-4, 605, 608 Symphony of Psalms (Stravinsky), 1009-10, 1012 Syncopation, 127, 147, 153, 155, 172 Syntronia, 1093 Syrian chant, 15, 20; Church, 4 Szymanowsky, Karol, 1020,1029, 1071

Ta b l a t u r e , 533 Tabor, 68 Tdbor, 881 Tabula Rasa, 1088, 1089 Tabulatura nova, 533 Tabulaturbuch (Scheidt), 520 Tactus, 113, 124, 243, 247 und Nacht, du Heil der Frommen, 591 Tala, 1026R. Tallis, Thomas, 312, 319, 324, 325, 326, 328, 330, 331, 334, 335, 338, .348. 509

Tallis Fantasia, 975, 979-80 Tambourine, 68 Tamerlano, 478 Taneiv, 870 Tango for piano (Stravinsky), 1012 Tannhäuser (Minnesinger), 88 Tannhäuser, 88, 744, 746, 760, 879 Tansillo, 357 Tantzen und Springen, 278 Tanz, 349, 537 Tapióla, 932, 933, 934, 941 Tartini, Guiseppe, 554 Tasso, Torquato, 266, 267, 269, 279, 357. 371. 406 Tate, Nahum, 328, 432, 1043 Taverner, John, 214, 305-6, 325, 335 Taverner, 1080 Tchaikowsky, 863-73, 874, 875, 877, 893, 920, 921, 935, 1012, 1029, 1031, 1032, 1033, 1070 TeDeum (Berlioz), 768, 771; (Dvoíák), 886-7; (Lully), 508; (Tallis), 326 Te Deum and Jubilate (Purcell), 513; Utrecht, 514 Teares or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soule, The, 329 Teatro di San Cassiano, 384 Tehillim, 1088, 1089 Telemaco, 454 Telemann, Georg Philipp, 463, 526, 528, 564, 1095 Teltscher, Joseph, PI. XXXIII Temperament, mean-tone, 249, 250 Tempest, The (Purcell), 433, 434-5; (Shakespeare), 289, 426, 429, 433 ‘Tempest' Music, The, 426«.

General Index

1242 Tempo, 54, ii6f., aaSff. Tempo la cetra, 499 Temps des Lilas, Le, 919 Tennyson, 833, 1046 Tenth Nocturne (Fauré), 956 Terry, R. R., 95«. Terzi, Giovanni Antonio, 354 Teseo, 468 Tesi, Vittoria, 444 Théâtre Française, 414 Theile, Johann, 404 Thematic Process in Music, The, 626«., 642»., 652a. Thematic transformation, Beethoven’s,

6S9ff-> 652»-

Theodora, 516, 517 Theodosius, 432 Theorbo music, 347, 367, 382 ‘Theresa’ Mass, 610 Thésée, 411, 414 Thétis et Pelée, 486 ‘They loathed to drink of the river’, 517 ‘They shall be as still as a stone’, 518 Thibaut, 241 n. Thibaut IV of Navarre, 84 Third Piano Concerto (Prokofiev), 1030 Third Quartet (Schoenberg), 993 Third String Quartet (Britten), 1079 Third Symphony (Beethoven), 639, 642; (Brahms), 698, 700; (Dvofák) 883; (Harris), 1054 — 5; toslawski), 1072; (Nielson), 929; (Session), 1058; (Sibelius), 930,933; (Vaughan Williams), 976 Thirty-two-bar line, 1060-1 Thirty Years’ War; 403, 520, 585 Thomas à Becket, 90, 97 Thomas of Celano, 23 Thomism, 297 Thomson, Virgil, 1063-4, 1065 Thomyris, 466, 468 Thoreau, 1052 Thom Litany, 1080 Thorough-bass, 367 Three Blind Mice, 291 Three Dozen Fantasias (Telemann), 564 Three Places in New England, 1049-50 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, 1072, “’73 Through composed song, 665^. Thurn, Count von, 538 Tierces Alternées, Les, 987, 988 Tigrane, 447, 454 Till Eulenspiegel, 959 Time. See Proportional system Tin Pan Alley, 1062 Tinctoris, 186, 2306 Tintoretto, 356 Tippett, Michael, 1038 — 41, 1047, '079

‘’Tis Nature’s voice’, 513

Titelouze, Jean, 350 Titian, 356 Tito Vespasiano, 460 Tobias, 608 Toccata, 255 Tod Jesu, Der, 288 Tod und das Mädchen, Der, 673 Tod und Verklärung, 959 Tofts’ Catherine, 468 Tolomeo, 477 Tolstoy, 858-9 Tombeaux, 535, 537-8 Tomkins, Thomas, 281, 285, 330, 332, 334, 340 Tonadilla, 485, 896«. Tonadillas (Granados), 897 Tonality, 283, 286, 313, 382-5, 397. 424,425, 430,431,435,472,550-1, 989, lOOO-I Tonic sol-fa, 37 Torelli, Giacomo, 405; Giuseppe, 552 Torgau, 402 Tosi, Pier Francesco, 441-2, 466 Totentanz, 843 Tourte bow, 220 Tovey, Donald, 519, 542, 631, 635, 653 Traditionalists, 952-65 Traetta, Tommaso, 457, 484, 715, 717 Tragidee-lyrique, 411, 413, 508, 548, 555 ‘Tragic’ Symphony, 670 TraBé de l’harmonie, 488-90 Transposition, 131, I38f., i87f. Traviata, La, 790-1, 795 Treble-dominated style, 148, 1796, 185 Trebor, Jean, 172 Tregian, Francis, 336 Tremolo, 395 Trent, Council of, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308-9 Trésor musical: Musique profane, 244«. Triangle, 93 ‘Trio des parques’, 493, PI. XXV Trio for piano, clarinet and viola in E flat, K.498 (Mozart), 621 Trio in C minor (Brahms), 700 Trio in F minor (Dvofák), 885 Trio sonata, 596-7 Triomphe de l’Amour, Le (Lully), 409 Triomphe de l’Amour sur des bergers et bergères (La Guerre), 406, 422 ‘Tristan’ chords, 753, 800 Tristan und Isolde, 270, 636, 667, 686, 687, 744. 75 L 755. 756. 757, 796. 800, 802, 814, 815, 826, 838, 840, 847, 848, 850, 886, 913, 926, 927, 932, 936, 940. 960, 963. 985. 988, 989. 997. '020. '070 Triumph of Peace, The, 423, 425 Triumph of Time, The, 1081 Triumphs of Oriana, The, 283, 423 Trois Poèmes d’Henri Michaux, 1072, 1073 Tromboncino, Bartolomeo, 209

1243

General Index Trombone, 218; music, 267 Trope, 2iff., 3if., 108 Troubadours (outside Ch. 3, Part I), 8, 51, 104, i4>. t57, , ‘Trout’ Quintet (Schubert), 681 Trouvères (outside Ch. 3, Part I), 8, 51, 104, iiyff., 142, 156 Troyens à Carthage, Les, 769, 771, 780, 782 Trumpet, 2, 93f., 218 Tudway, Thomas, 510 Tunder, Franz, 521, 522, 534 Tuning, 250, 338, 341 Tuotilo, 22 Turandot, 801 Turn of the Screw, The, 1044, 1046 Tutte le Opere de Claudio Monteverdi, 270«., 377n., 504«. Twelve-note technique, 990-3 Tye, Christopher, 330, 335 Typp, W., 185

Ug e l l o , 225

Ukeleie, 93, 217 Um Mitternacht, 903 Un Ballo in Maschera, 791-2 ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, 671-2, 675 Universities, 8, 76 Unstern, 849 ‘Unvurzaghete, Der’, 87 Urban VIII, Pope, 381, 383, 404 Urbani, Valentino, 467 U.S.A., 883, 884, 894, 923, 1048-65 Ussachevsky, Vladimir, 1090— 1 U.S.S.R., 1029-35 Ut queant laxis, 35 Utilitarian music, 998-9 Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate, 514 Utrenja, 1073 ^^GHE FONTI, CHE MORMORANDO’, 475

Vague et la Cloche, La, 911 Vaillant, Jean, 172 Valderabano, Enriquez de, 348 Valentini. See Urbani Valéry, Paul, 956 Vallèe ¿’Obermann, La, 838 Valse, La, 949, 950 Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, 947, 948-9, 950

Van Gogh, 936 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 466 Varèse, Edgar, 1058 — 9, 1064, 1078, 1090 Variations, 176, 337-8, 346, 348-9, 532, 539. 65Ï-2. yoon.,; chorale, 351-2; ground bass, 532; harpsichord, 351; virginal, 351

Variations for String Orchestra (Britten), 1041-2 Vasari, 358 Vasco da Gama, 232 Vassy, 321 Vaughan Williams, 954, 969, 974-81, 1002, 1013, 1035, 1037, 1040, 1041 Vecchi, Orazio, 271, 353 Vega, Lope de, 358, 485 VeUchen, Das, 662 Venetian Games, 1072 Venetian School, 261 Veni Creator, 706 Veni Sánete Spiritus (Anon.), 23 Veni Sánete Spiritus — Veni Creator (Dunstable), 185, 189 Venice, 211, 224!., 245, 247, 261, 269, 273. 291, 377. 384. 385. 387-4Ç>. 404. 438, 447, 452, 457-8. 460, 465. 467. 507. 55* Venus and Adonis (Blow), 429, 431-2 ‘Venus, que ta gloire réponde’, 491 Veradni, Francesco, 467, 554 Verdelot, Philippe, 242-3, 245, 278 Verdi, 387, 735, 741, 742, 749, 778. 779. 780, 782. 783. 784. 785. 786-99, 800, 802, 839, 841, 847, 865, 867,879,884, 958, 1027, 1028 Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, 840 Verklärte Nacht, 985-6, 988, 989 Verlaine, 956 Verlassene Mägdlein, Das, 904 Verona, 272, 291 Veronese, 356 Vers mesurés, 273 Versailles, 713 Verse-anüiems, 510 Vesalius, 360 Vespers of the Blessed Virgin (Monte verdi), 503 Vespucci, Amerigo, 232 Vestiva i colli, 309 Vexilla Regis (Dufay), 192 Via Crucis, 848 Viadana, Ludovico Grossi da, 318, Vicentino, Nicolo, 246-7, 250 Victimae paschali laudes, 23 Victoria, Tomás Luis de, 316, 317, 364, 578

Vièle, 67, 94, 356, Pis. I, IX Vielle. See Organistrum Vienna, 300, 396, 399, 400, 402, 445, 454.458.459.460,536,586,594ff-. 612, 633, 659, 662, 6736!., 683, 684-5, 694, 707, 716, 719, 809, 818, 876, 887, 952, 962, 963, 996, 1022, 1058, PR XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII Vierdanck, Johann, 539 Viéville, Jean Laurent le Cerf de la. Lord of Freueuse, 549-50

General Index

1244 Vihuela, 347-8 Villa-Lobos, Hector, 1065-7, 1068 Village Romeo and JtUiet, A, loao Villancico, 224 Villanella, 245,256,257,295, 498,624«. Villanesca, 239, 245 Villon, 942 Villota, 272 Vincennes, 406 Vingt-Qjiatre Violons du Roi, 407,510 Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus, 1025, 1026 Vinci, Leonardo, 457, 464, 483 Vinje, 895 Viol, 215ÍL; division, 346; lyra, 346; music, 267, 332, 344, 345-6> 347 Viola Concerto (Walton), 1037, 1038 Viola da gamba, 367, 368, 556 Viola music, 356 Viole d’amore, 476 Violette marine, 476 Violin, 220; music, 356, 368 Violin and Piano Duo in G major (Schubert), 681 Violin and Piano Sonata in E minor, K.304 (Mozart), 618 Violin caprices (Paganini), 837 Violin Concerto (Beethoven), 647; (Berg), 991; (Delius), 927; (Elgar), 968; (Schoenberg), 992, 993; (Walton), 1037 Violin Sonata, opus 96 (Beethoven), 629; (Debussy), 943; (Strauss), 958 Violin Sonata in E minor (Busoni), 982 Virdung, Sebastian, 218 Virelai, 79, 8iff., 85, 90, 104, 117, 119, 130, 142, 144, 167, 172, 174, 196, 204, 224 Virgil, 273, 769, 770, 771 Virginal, 215, 2i8f., 315, 340-1, 342, 344, 351, PI. XXIII. See also Harpischord Virginia, 361 Vision and Prayer, 1091 Vision of Delight, The, 289, 422 Visionnaire, La, 556, 560 Vitali, Filippo, 377; Giovanni Battista, 533. 553. 545; Tommaso, 553 Vittori, Loreto, 383 Vivaldi, Antonio, 457, 552, 555, 564, 567. 587-8, 598 Vltava, 881 Vocal embellishment, 267-9; scoring, 2i4f.; transcriptions, 346, 348, 349, 352 Vogl, 664 Voiles, 938, 939, 945, 1004 ‘Volez, Zephirs’, 493 Vollkommene Kapellmeister, Der, 488 Volpone, or the Fox, 488 Voltaire, 488 Voluptueuse, La, 535

Vor deinen Thron tret’ich allhier, 581 VySehrad, 881 l^Mhet auf, 529, 530 Waddell, H., 74«., 78a. Wagenseil, 598, 622 Wagner, 51, 88, 223, 262, 270, 477, 636, 646, 667, 679, 682, 686, 687, 688, 689, 691, 693, 701, 704, 708, 719, 721, 727, 731, 733. 734. 735. 739. 740. 741. 742. 743-58. 760, 761. 765. 786. 768, 769, 770, 771, 772-3. 774. 775. 778. 792. 793. 795. 796, 799. 802, 805, 813, 814, 815-16, 826, 827, 828, 835, 840, 845, 846, 847, 848, 850, 851, 860, 865, 874, 875, 879, 881, 883, 886, 895. 90 Ï. 902-3. 905. 9°8. 909. 910,911.913. 914, 916, 917, 918, 920, 921, 922, 923, 924, 925, 926, 927, 928, 929, 932, 935, 936, 939, 940, 941, 942, 945, 952. 953. 958. 959. 960, 961, 962, 963. 988, 970. 971. 972. 984. 985. 986, 987. 988, 989. 990, 995. 997.99,8.999> 1020, 1030«., 1055, PI. XXXV Waisselius, Matthaeus, 262, 270, 477 ‘Waldstein’ Sonata (Beethoven), 694 Wales, 99 Walküre, Die, 721, 751 Walpole, Sir Robert, 479 Walsingham, 339 Walther von der Vogelweide, 88f. Walter, Johann, 299-300 Walton, William, 262, 1037, 1039 Waltz in A flat, opus 64 (Chopin), 816 ‘Wanderer’ Fantasia, 844 Wanderer rhythm, 676 Wanley MS., 325-^ Ward, John, 285 Warlock, Peter, 1040 Warum? 822 Water Music (Handel), 468, 565 Watson, Thomas, 282 Watteau, 724«., 939, 944, PI. XL Weber, 647, 732, 736-40. 74«. 744. 746. 783. 797. 806, 827, 830, 83t, Webern, Anton, 996, ion, 1012, 1021-3, 1024, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029, 1079, PI. XLV Weckmann, Matthias, 521, 534 Wedding, The, 1003, 1004, 1006, 1023 Weelkes, Thomas, 283-4, 287, 291, 330, 331-2, 334, 925 Weep no more thou sorry boy, 285 Weerbecke, Gaspar van, 201 Wegweiser, Der, 675 Weidemann, Karl Friedrich, 468 Weill, Kurt, 1063

4642t!**

General Index Weimar, 845 Weinen Klagen Variations, 847, 916 Weissenfels, 462, 464 Weismann, 262n. ‘Welcome’ odes (Purcell), 5^12 ‘Welcome to all the Pleasures', 513 Well-tendered Clavier, The, 542, 568, 592, 812 Wellesz, Egon, 996-7 Wert, Giaches de. 256-7, 258, 269, 368 West Indies, 232, 362 West Side Story, 1063, 1065, 1094 Westphalia, Treaty of, 404 Weyden, van der, 225 ‘What ho! thou Genius of the Clime’, 435 ‘When I am laid in earth’, 377 ‘White Mass’ (Skryabin), 921 Whitman, Walt, 1049, 1050, 1054 Whittaker, W. J., 426a. Whole Booke of Psalmes, The, 327, 328-9, PI. XXII Whole Booke of [r^o] Psalmes, The, 328 Whole Psalmes in four partes. The, 328-^ Whole Psalter, translated into English metre. The, 326-7 Whole-tone progression, 800; scale, 8oon. Whythome, Thomas, 280, 342 Wieck, Clara, 818, 820, 823, 824, 827, 828, PI. XXXIX Wilbye, John, 284, 292 Wilder, 1057 Willaert, Adrian, 207, 242, 244, 245, 246, 250, 258, 304, 306, 355 William Byrd, 313 William Tell. See Guillaume Tell Winchester, 45, 331 Winchester, Old, 329, 330 Wind instruments, 349 Wind Sextet (Janâèek), 891 Wind Symphony (Stravinsky), 945 Winter Words, 1044 Wintereise, 666-9, 673, 675, 677 Wipo, 22f. haben beide lange Z‘it geschwiegen, 906-7 Wittenberg, 297 Wodehouse family, 544

1245

Wolf, Hugo, 687, 901-10, 912. PI. XLI; J; 215«- , Wolfcnbüttel, 462 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 88 Wooldridge, H. E., 6gn., 123«. Worcester, 174 Word-painting, 996, 203, 2276, 251, 255. 259, 261-2, 283, 285, 333, 339. 439 Wordsworth, 1047 Worldes blis, 91 WorldesBlis (Maxwell Davies), 1079 Worms, 298 Wozzeck, 994-6 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 279 Wynkyn de Worde, 213

^Ce n a k is , Ia n n is , 1078

Ya s t e r b t s e v , 874 Yeats, W. B., 966 Yonge, Nicholas, 282 ‘Your harps and cymbals sound’, 518 Young, Cecilia, 468 Young, La Monte, 1086—7 Young Pretender, 578 /

Z Ceskych, 881, 887 Zachau, Friedrich Wilhelm, 526 Z