appearance of freedom which prevails in them in spite of the dry
combinations which he was obliged to make in obedience to the taste
of the time. He is credited with being the inventor of most of the
scientific refinements which were at once adopted by the composers of
all nations, and perfected by Palestrina and other Italian musicians.
Canonic art is especially indebted to him, if not for its invention, at
least for considerable development and perfection. He is the first who
wrote regularly in more than two parts. Finally he introduced into music
an air of elegance unknown before his time and which his successors did
not always happily imitate. Moreover, he became the model which each one
set for himself in the first half of the sixteenth century as the _ne
plus ultra_ of composition."
Ambros says: "In Josquin we have the first musician who creates a genial
impression," and he calls attention to his employment of the dissonance
to express emotion.
To summarize the whole matter, it appears, in spite of the hints of Fétis
that Josquin was possibly the inventor of canonic art, that this composer
was the first gifted musician who found the formal material of his art
sufficiently developed to admit of his approaching self-expression
through music. The earlier masters had given their time and study to the
foundation of contrapuntal science. Josquin, having learned all that
Ockeghem could teach him, was ready to begin in the vigor of his young
manhood to use his science as a means and not an end. This accounts for
the air of freedom, which, as Fétis notes, is a conspicuous merit of his
work. Luther's comment, previously quoted, shows that this freedom must
have been noticeable even to his contemporaries, though they could not
perceive its reason nor estimate its value. Josquin, like all other great
geniuses, was in advance of the ordinary minds of his time, and most of
his contemporaries continued to work out the old contrapuntal puzzles in
the old spirit. But the influence of Josquin made itself felt among the
more gifted musicians of the day, and paved the way for the third period
of the Netherland school, which, while boasting of no such genius as
Josquin, was richer in results than the second.
The third period, extending from 1495 to 1572, was particularly rich
in masters who advanced the development of musical art and whose names
deserve to be remembered. Nicolas Gombert was born at Bruges and was
in some capacity, not definitely known, in the service of Charles V.
Herman Finck tells us ("Novi sunt inventores, in quibus est Nicolaus
Gombert, Jusquini piae memoriae discipulus") that he was a pupil of
Josquin, and he set to music a poem by Avidius on the death of Josquin.
Burney deciphered this music and found that it was a servile imitation
of the composer's master. Gombert was educated for the church, and he
was a priest till the end of his life, though he acted as chapel-master.
The records of his career are very scanty and it is probable that his
life was uneventful. The latter part of his existence was passed in the
enjoyment of a sinecure office under the king of the Netherlands.
[Illustration: ADRIAN WILLAERT.
From Van der Straeten's "Musique aux pay bas," loaned by the Newberry
Library, Chicago.]
Adrian Willaert, the most brilliant light of the third period, was born
in Bruges in 1480. He was sent to Paris to study law, but his gift for
music soon turned his mind to the study of counterpoint. It is uncertain
whether he was a pupil of Josquin or of Mouton. On the completion of his
studies he returned to Flanders, but soon departed to Rome. There he
heard one of his own motets, "Verbum dulce et suave," performed as the
work of Josquin. He promptly claimed it as his work, whereupon the papal
choir refused to sing it again. Disgusted with such treatment, he shook
the dust of the holy city from his feet, and went to Ferrara. He did not
remain there long, however, and we soon afterward find him serving as
cantor to King Lewis, of Bohemia and Hungary. In 1526 he went to Venice,
and on Dec. 12, 1527, the doge Andrea Gritti appointed him chapel-master
of St. Mark's. In Venice he remained till his death, Dec. 7, 1562. He
became the head of a great vocal school, was the teacher of some of
the most famous organists of his time, and wrote compositions which
materially changed the character of all subsequent music, both religious
and secular.
Claude Goudimel was born at Vaison, near Avignon, in 1510. His teacher
is unknown. Between 1535 and 1540 he went to Rome, where he founded a
music school, subsequently the most celebrated conservatory in Italy. He
had many gifted pupils, among whom Palestrina has until recently been
erroneously included. In 1555, Goudimel was settled in Paris as partner
of the publisher Nicolaus du Chemin. The firm published Goudimel's
setting of the odes of Horace, treated according to their metre, under
the title "Horatii Flacci, poetae lyricae, odae omnes, quotquot carminum
generibus differunt, ad rythmos musicos redactae." Goudimel's scholarly
treatment of these odes shows that he was a man of classical education.
In 1558 he wrote his last mass, and afterward became a Protestant.
He became a marked man, and it is almost certain, despite Ambros's
contention to the contrary, that he was one of the victims of the
Huguenot massacre on the eve of St. Bartholomew, Aug. 24, 1572.
[Illustration: CYPRIAN DE RORE.
From Van der Straeten's "Musique aux pays bas," loaned by the Newberry
Library, Chicago.]
Cyprian de Rore was born at Malines, Brabant, in 1516. At an early age
he went to Venice to study under Willaert, and became a chorister at St.
Mark's. He soon rose to notice, and Willaert recommended him to the Duke
of Ferrara, who took him into his service. In 1563 he succeeded Willaert
as chapel-master of St. Mark's, but he remained in that post only a short
time. In 1564 he was prefect of the choir of Ottaviano Farnese at Parma.
He died in 1565.
Clement Jannequin was a native of Flanders, and probably a
pupil--certainly a disciple--of Josquin. Of his life almost nothing is
known, but fortunately many of his works are extant. Jacob Arcadelt was
another distinguished master of this period. He was singing master of the
boys at St. Peter's in 1539, and became one of the papal singers in 1540.
In 1555 he entered the service of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine. With him
he went to Paris where he probably remained till the end of his life.
The compositions of the masters of this period have been preserved in
large numbers. So many of them are extant that it is hardly necessary to
give a list of them. The most important are Gombert's "Pater Noster," his
motet "Vita Dulcedo" and "Miserere," his "Bird Cantata" and "Le Berger et
la Bergère"; Willaert's "Magnificat" for three choirs and his madrigals;
Jannequin's "Cris de Paris" and "La Bataille"; Goudimel's masses--"Audi
filia," "Le bien que j'ai" and "Sous le pont d'Avignon"; Cyprian de
Rore's "Chromatic Madrigals," Arcadelt's "Pater Noster" for eight voices,
his "Missa de Beata Virgine," and his madrigals.
The special features of this period were the development of secular
music and the entrance of ecclesiastical music upon a transition from
the dry canonic style of Ockeghem to the true emotional religious
style of Palestrina. The change in church music should first engage our
attention. In the Church of St. Mark there were, and still are, two
organs facing each other. It is probable that this suggested to Willaert
the advisability of dividing his choir into two parts. Having done this,
it was natural that he should hit upon the plan of writing antiphonal
music. Choruses in eight parts had been written before, but he was the
first to construct them as two separate choruses of four parts each.
Secondly, he began the practice of seeking for broad and grand effects
of harmony instead of working out his voice parts according to strict
canonic law. His chorals open with canonic progressions, but these are
speedily interrupted by the entrance of common chords. The result is that
in Willaert's compositions we find the foundations of modern polyphonic
style. He had a fine feeling for harmonies and employed rich chords
to excellent advantage. The earlier writers treated their voice parts
independently; Willaert made special efforts to constitute harmony the
foundation of his counterpoint. The development of each part was shaped
so that it became one of the elements of the general harmonic effect. In
order to accomplish this Willaert was obliged to adopt the modern chord
forms and the fundamental chord relations of modern music--the tonic,
dominant and subdominant. Claude Goudimel's church compositions show the
influence of Willaert in an unmistakable manner, and through them the
line of development to Palestrina is clearly marked. Palestrina was a
great genius, an original thinker; but the clay which was ready for his
moulding was a contrapuntal style in which chord harmonies were a vital
part. This style was prepared for him by his master Goudimel under the
influence of Willaert. The possibilities of modern style were revealed
in another direction by De Rore's study of chromatics. His "Chromatic
Madrigals," published in 1544 (eleven years before Palestrina's first
masses), were very influential in drawing the attention of composers to
the flexibility of style to be attained by throwing off the shackles of
the old Gregorian scales.
It can hardly be doubted that two intellectual and spiritual movements
influenced the development of religious music in the period of Willaert
and his contemporaries. The first of these was the reawakening of
interest in classical antiquity brought about by the influx of scholars
from Constantinople after the fall of Rome's eastern empire in 1453.
This reawakening is commonly known as the Renaissance, and its effects
were felt in music much later than in other branches of art. "The reason
of this," as Dr. Langhans with fine discernment points out, "is to be
found proximately in the lack of a musical antique. While the poet, as
also the painter, the sculptor and the architect, met at every step
the masterpieces of their predecessors in antiquity, and found in them
the stimulus and the pattern for their own creations, to the musician
the direct connection with the past was denied." Nevertheless the
proclamation by the eastern scholars of the chaste and simple beauty
of antique art was bound to have an influence upon music, especially
when the search for a new and purer style was urged by motives of
ecclesiastical expediency. This impetus came from the second movement,
the spiritual, namely, the Lutheran reformation.
Through the influence of Luther the rule of the church that the singing
should be exclusively in the hands of a choir was abolished, and the
practice of congregational singing arose. The elaborate contrapuntal
music of the day was obviously impracticable for this kind of singing.
Luther, therefore, "selected from the ancient Latin church songs such
melodies as were rhythmically like the folk-song and hence especially
likely to be caught up by the popular ear." Here we find the origin of
the glorious German chorale, of our contemporaneous hymn. The first
Lutheran hymn-book was published in 1524, and it is impossible to escape
the conviction that the advent of this new and influential form of church
music powerfully affected the style of all subsequent composers.
The development of secular music at this time is even more interesting
and instructive than that of religious music, but it would require a
chapter for its proper treatment; and as it was not long in abandoning
the basis of counterpoint and entering: upon the free arioso style of the
opera (in 1600), it may be dismissed briefly. The reader must understand
that popular music in the form of folk-songs has existed from time
immemorial. The Netherlands masters frequently employed the melodies
of these songs (and the words, too) in their masses, which gave rise
to abuses removed by the Council of Trent in 1565. In the third period
of the Netherlands school, however, the masters of scientific music
began to compose music for the general public, and the result was the
madrigal form, which has survived till to-day. This was a natural result
of Josquin's aiming at beauty in music. The next step after euphony was
naturally toward expression, and the first attempts at expression were,
of course, imitative. In other words the secular composers turned to
nature and tried to imitate her sounds in music. These men were the first
who practised what we may call tone-photography in contradistinction to
tone-coloring, which goes deeper. When Beethoven introduced the cuckoo
in the pastoral symphony he practised tone-photography. The works of
Gombert and Jannequin abound in skilful writing of this kind. Gombert's
"Bird Cantata" is a clever and humorous composition. Jannequin's "Cris
de Paris" is a musical imitation of the street cries of a great city,
and his "Le Battaille" is a picture of a battle. When we remember that
these works were written for voices in four parts, we are astounded at
the technical accomplishments of these old masters. This ambition to tell
some kind of a story in music affected even the religious compositions of
the day, and one of Willaert's motets tells the history of Susannah. This
work was plainly the precursor of the oratorio form, which first took
recognizable shape in Cavaliere's "L'Anima è Corpo," produced in 1600.
[Illustration: JAN PIETERS SWELINCK.]
The fourth and last period of the Netherlands school was distinguished
by two features: the production of a master whose genius eclipsed the
brilliancy of all his predecessors and whose music was a logical outcome
of their labors, and secondly, the completion of the mediæval development
of counterpoint. The mission of the Netherland masters was ended, and new
art-forms came to supersede the ecclesiastical canon. This now descended
from its leadership of the musical army and took that place in the ranks
which it maintained till the supremacy of Haydn and the sonata form.
As Orlando di Lasso, the mightiest of all the Netherland masters, is to
be treated separately in this work, no outline of his life need be given
here and his music will be discussed only in its general relation to the
progress of his time. Jan Pieters Swelinck (born at Deventer in 1540,
died at Amsterdam, 1621) was a pupil of Cyprian de Rore. Swelinck had
already displayed ability as an organist when he set out for Venice to
engage in advanced studies. He became one of the most famous organists
of his day, but his vocal compositions show that he stood directly in
the line of development of the school to which he belonged by birth. His
settings of the psalms in four, five, six, seven and eight parts are
written in strict _a capella_ style. Swelinck is particularly interesting
as being one of the founders of the polyphonic instrumental style, which
succeeded the choral counterpoint, and a forerunner of Bach.
Philip de Monte was born either at Mons or at Mechlin about 1521. He
was treasurer and canon of the cathedral at Cambrai, and in 1594 he
was prefect of the choir in the Court Chapel at Prague. He passed the
remainder of his life there, and was held in high esteem. He was a
prolific writer and besides masses and motets, nineteen books of his
madrigals for five voices and eight books of French songs for six voices
are extant. His works show the usual Netherlandic skill in counterpoint,
some of them being extremely intricate.
We have seen how influences had begun work which was to destroy the
empire of _a capella_ counterpoint, but its reign was to go out in a
blaze of glory lit by the torches of genius in the hands of Lasso and
Palestrina. The despotism of ecclesiastical counterpoint over all
art-music was indeed at the close of its career, yet the writer must
not be understood as asserting that the development of counterpoint
ended, for in the German fugue it found its highest and most perfect
form. But it ceased to be the controlling power in music, giving way to
modern melody built on scale and arpeggio passages and to the song-and
dance-forms of the people. It may as well be said here that the technical
possibilities of counterpoint were exhausted by the Netherland masters,
and not even Johann Sebastian Bach, the most profound and original
musical thinker the world has ever known, could invent a form of canonic
writing which they had not practised. What he was chiefly instrumental in
accomplishing (in a technical way) was the extension of canon into the
perfect fugue, and the application of the polyphony of the Netherland
masters to the organ, the clavichord and the orchestra, thus laying the
foundations upon which rest the whole structure of the modern symphony
and string quartet.
[Illustration: PHILIP DE MONTE.
From Van der Straeten's "Musique aux pay bas," loaned by the Newberry
Library, Chicago.]
The music of the other composers of the fourth period is but a reflection
of that of Lasso, who was fully as great a genius as Palestrina. He had
a perfect mastery of the whole science of counterpoint as it had been
developed by the masters of the first two periods. He was equally a
master of the simpler style which had gradually been asserting itself. He
used these styles and their combinations according to the character of
the text to which he was writing music. Some of his masses are Gothic in
their wonderful tracery of intertwining parts. His famous "Penitential
Psalms" surprise, move and conquer us by their beautiful, pathetic
simplicity. The notable fact about all his music, and about that of his
contemporaries, is the plain manifestation through it all of an absolute
mastery of contrapuntal science and a settled employment of it for their
own purposes of expression. And here arises the question, what kind of
expression?
The music of Lasso, and some of that written by other composers of this
period, shows that musicians had at last begun to lay hold of the real
purpose of their art. Their music shows that they aimed at expression
of themselves. They began to praise God personally, and musical science
became in truth what it had been only in appearance so far as the
composers were concerned--a real, earnest _Gloria Tibi_. It is this which
vitalizes Lasso's music and makes it acceptable to-day.
We have now reached the time after which the brilliancy of the
Netherlands school speedily disappeared. The march of musical progress
was transferred to Italy, where the seed sown by Willaert and De Rore
in Venice was producing splendid fruit. Indeed the mission of the
Netherlands school was at an end. It had given its life blood to the
perfection of musical science and had completed its labors and achieved
its loftiest glory by indicating the emotional power of music. We
have seen that each of the four periods was marked by a step in the
advancement of art, thus:
First period: Perfection of Contrapuntal Technics.
Second period: Attempts at Euphony.
Third period: Development of Tone-painting.
Fourth period: Counterpoint made subservient to emotional expression.
In those four steps you have the history of music up to the close of the
sixteenth century. Away back in the twelfth century we saw as through
a glass darkly a horde of students thronging the streets of Paris and
swallowing, in wild eagerness, all kinds of learning in scraps and lumps,
with little order and less system. The Cathedral of Notre Dame and the
University of Paris, the former glorified throughout Europe as the rose
of Christendom, the latter celebrated even by Pope Alexander I., as "a
tree of life in an earthly paradise," were their cloister and their
shrine. Out of this motley multitude there breaks upon our vision one
sober, industrious musician, Jean Perotin, striving to find the secret
of law and order for tones. Evidently a man of method, an orderly,
peaceable, mechanical, plodding sort of person was this Perotin, and
he left us "imitation." This his successors took up and in a few short
years developed double counterpoint. Five more centuries rolled away and
counterpoint had passed the period of mechanical development and reached
the loftiest heights of ecclesiastical expression. Orlando Lasso and
Palestrina built great Gothic temples of music that will stand longer
than Westminster Abbey. But still counterpoint meant canon and fugue.
Then came the birth of opera. The labors of the Netherlanders ended,
and music saw that her mission was to sing not alone man's love of God,
but his love of woman, his fear, his joy, his despair--in short the
unspeakable emotions of his boundless soul.
So the old mathematical canon grew into a new kind of counterpoint,
undreamed of by Ockeghem and Josquin, a free untrammeled counterpoint,
which breaks upon us to-day in all varieties of works from the humblest
to the greatest. Listen to Delibes' "Naila" waltz. There never was a
truer piece of counterpoint written in the days of Josquin than that
violoncello melody that glides in beneath the principal theme of the
first strings, like a new dancer come upon the ball room floor. Turn to
the wonderful prelude to "Die Meistersinger." Hear the melody that voices
the love of Walter and Eva surging through the strings against the stiff
and stately proclamation of the Masters' dignity by the bass. The two
melodies proceed together. It is not canon, it is not fugue; but it is
counterpoint--even Dr. Johannes de Muris, of the Paris University, would
have passed it as _contrapunctus a penna_. But it is modern counterpoint,
not for itself, but for an ulterior purpose, the one glorious purpose
of modern music, to reveal the soul of man. The music of to-day could
not sustain its existence through twenty consecutive measures had it not
been for the labors of those cloistered scholiasts of the middle ages,
building note against note, like ants heaping up sand. Like the artist
that rounded St. Peter's dome, they builded better than they knew, and
left an inheritance which grew to fabulous wealth in the hands of their
giant heirs Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The very body of
Wagner's music is counterpoint, free counterpoint, not canon and fugue.
And it is counterpoint with a soul in it, for every time two or more
themes sound simultaneously the orchestra becomes so eloquent with rich
meanings that its utterance throbs through the air like the magnetism of
love. It was a happy time for the tone art when in the Autumn days of the
fifteenth century the folk-song wooed and won the fugue.
[Illustration: W. J. Henderson.]
[Illustration: IOANNES PETRALOYSIUS PRAENESTINUS
Imago secundum prototypum in Archivo musico
Basilicae Vaticanae conservatum.
_Principis musicae sacrae saec. XVI. autographum_
[Illustration]
_Reproduction of a vigorous etching by F. Böttcher from portrait
preserved in the Vatican library. Authentic portraits of Palestrina are
extremely rare. This is doubtless the best._]
[Illustration]
GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA