=The Dominance of the Netherlands=.—The most important asset of a
nation is its commercial activity, for upon that depends its art life.
The fine arts are to an extent luxuries, and until a nation has,
by commercial activity, acquired wealth, they cannot be earnestly
cultivated, for all arts require from the artist his entire time and
life, and until there is money and inclination enough among the people
to support an artist in his commercially non-productive state, there
can be no art; hence we see a shifting of art centres in the Middle
Ages, just as the commercial centres changed.
The Netherlands were preëminently fitted to carry on great commercial
pursuits by virtue of their geographical situation and long combat
and association with the sea. Possessing the natural outlet to a
great part of Europe, it was reasonable that the Netherlands should
play an important part in the Hanseatic League, and that her fleets
should trade on every sea and her coffers be enriched by barter in
the produce of every clime. It was a golden age for the Lowlands,
from 1350 to 1625, for their trade made them one of the wealthiest
and most important nations in the world. Their situation between
the trading countries of the South and the North made them, as it
were, the commercial exchange of Europe. The consequent wealth could
not lie dormant, therefore much of it was used in building notable
architectural structures, encouraging Painting, and developing the then
infant art of Music. It is unnecessary to mention the famous structures
which were the result of this period, and it is but necessary to name
Hubert Van Eyck, Rubens, Van Dyck, to understand the prominence given
to the art of Painting by the acquisition of this enormous wealth. And
it is largely due to this commercial activity that the school of the
Netherlands attained such an undying fame.
One other influence, and that dependent on commercial activity,
produced great results. Art is not sectional, it is universal;
and great art works are produced not by local influences but by
association, or contact, with the world. For this reason, the
intercourse with the entire world generated by the great commercial
activity of the times produced the first great world School of Music.
Intercourse developed emotion and produced broader and less localized
view-points of life: it brought into close association the art life of
different nations and infused a unity of emotion wherever it occurred.
In short, Music, by being brought into contact with the ideas of the
world instead of a local association, took on a universal form and
feeling never before felt and never to be relinquished. For this
reason, Music unconsciously advanced from Paris to the Netherlands,
toward the greater sphere of influence, stopping for only a short
period with the Gallo-Belgic school, where it was prepared technically
for its new growth as a world form.
=The Gallo-Belgic and the Netherlands Schools Compared=.—The
Gallo-Belgic school, in the control of churchmen, was isolated from
any influence tending to develop a broad emotional scheme. And it is
doubtful whether it could have caused any change in musical evolution,
for the technical forms were not ready. And so the Gallo-Belgic school,
in its retirement from the great world activities, confined itself to
attaining the power to manipulate notes, for the sake of mere technical
effects, leaving emotional development entirely out of consideration.
With such a school, while its work was important, no real art feeling
could be gained; and so the school of the Netherlands marks the
departure into a new romantic school governed, to a great extent, by
the emotional. The Netherlands, because of their more comprehensive
view of the musical activities of the past and their constant
intercourse, commercially and artistically, with all nations, acquired
a more human sense of the beauty of music, and ceased to manipulate
musical material for technical ends, producing instead of cold,
lifeless forms, music pulsing with vigor, life and emotion. With this
primary change of view-point came a direct growth of form, the Canon
being perfected and immediately giving birth to the Fugue; the Madrigal
and Canzona and many other lesser forms sprang into being, all capable
of emotional development, and almost immediately producing great
results. For the first time music was free from consecutive fourths,
fifths and octaves because composers created from the standpoint of
emotional beauty and not that of technical utility. The result was a
musical technic capable of development, and refined beyond need of
further reformation.
=The Organ and its Influence=.—The organ was the third great
reformative power in this epoch. All music was vocal and no other
conception could be had, for effective instruments and instrumental
music were not yet in existence. The organ, because its tones were
suited to accompanying the human voice and because its tone color was
closely identical with that of the voice, was readily adapted to the
vocal forms then in use. This gave a greater resource, for what was
often technically impossible with the human voice became easy with
the organ. The mechanical improvement of this instrument immediately
gave greater freedom and range of technic, and it proved so well
suited to polyphonic development that it aided the evolution more than
any other one agency. The use of the organ must not be accounted as
the beginning of instrumental music, for the organ used only adapted
voice-forms, such as the Canon, Fugue, Madrigal, etc.; for this reason
it is to be doubted if it aided in emotional development except by
making technical resources much less restricted. In this sense, then,
the technic of this school was freed from most of its former rules, and
Music, previously cramped by narrow vocal restrictions, passed into the
comparative freedom of the polyphonic style of the organ.
=The Men of this School= are hardly to be separated from the men of the
Gallo-Belgic school. The work passes from one school to the next with
little or no perceptible pause, and the first men of the later school
are pupils or disciples of the last men of the Gallo-Belgic period.
Another noteworthy fact is, that so great was the musical growth,
of this school and the skill and learning of its followers that the
composers of the Netherlands expatriated themselves and settled in all
parts of Europe, founding famous schools in Paris, Madrid, Naples,
Venice, Munich and Rome; the celebrated _Italian school_ is really an
_offshoot_ of that of the _Netherlands_. It is this overflow which
marks this school as the greatest of the early polyphonic schools
and shows why and how it acquired its emotional supremacy. =Jean de
Okeghem= (1430-1512), pupil of Binchois, was the first prominent
worker. It is difficult to class him as a composer of the Belgian or
Netherlands school, for he has the earmarks of both. He lived during
the supremacy of the Netherlands, but worked with the material of the
Belgians. He developed the Canon to its highest technical point and
took the first step toward the originating of the Fugue. To him is due
the credit of introducing the use of retrograde, inverted, diminished
and augmented imitation in the Canon. Much of his work was done in
France. The tendency of his teaching was toward artificiality, as he
delighted in puzzle canons and other exhibitions of ingenuity.
=Antonius Brumel= (1460-1520), a pupil of Okeghem, is noteworthy
because of a foreshadowing of the use of chords in real harmonic
progressions.
[Music: 8ve lower]
Part of a motet by Brumel, Naumann, History of Music, Vol. I, page
333, used to illustrate the idea of the harmonic feeling of some of
the polyphonic writers. The rest of the composition is strictly in the
polyphonic style.
=Jakob Hobrecht= (1430-1506) was the first real Dutch composer, and is
noted, in his use of technical forms, for their emotional beauty rather
than mechanical excellence.
[Music]
Part of a composition by Hobrecht, cited by Naumann, “History of
Music,” Vol. I, page 331. Excerpt shows how strictly even this fragment
is written and yet how musical it is. At 1 is shown a figure in the
bass repeated in imitation a step higher at 2. At A is shown a melody
imitated at B in augmentation and with altered rhythm. The student
should refer to Naumann.
This is truly a remarkable work for that period, and shows that even
then composers were beginning to observe the emotional power of chord
relationship.
=Johann Tinctor= (1446-1511), a disciple of Okeghem, worked in Rome
and Naples, and will be considered with the Italian school. =Josquin
de Pres= (1450-1521), also a disciple of Okeghem, worked in Rome and
Paris, and must also be considered as one of the Italian school. It
may be here mentioned that he was one of the first to use music as a
vehicle for expressing human emotions rather than technical power. He
summed up in himself all the harmonic science of the 15th century. He
was renowned through all Europe as a composer, and if his music seems
to us somewhat dry and pedantic there is abundant testimony to the deep
impression it made upon his contemporaries, which is a test of its
power to excite and to express emotion. Compared with the works of his
predecessors and even the majority of his contemporaries, Josquin’s
writings show freedom from the bonds of the old scholasticism, greater
simplicity and esthetic beauty. Among those of his works that have come
to us is a _Miserere_ for five voices, and an _Ave Maria_ that cannot
be considered other than lovely music. =Nicholas Gombert= (1495-1570),
a pupil of Josquin de Pres, had a natural, tuneful and flowing style
similar to that afterwards shown by Palestrina. His work was done in
Madrid, and to him Spain and Portugal owe all they have of the ancient
polyphonic music. =Jacob Arkadelt= (1492-1570) and =Claude Goudimel=
(1510-1572) worked in Rome, =Adrian Willaert= (1480-1562) and =Cyprian
de Rore= (1516-1565) in Venice, and will be considered with the Italian
school. =Orlando di Lasso= (1520-1594) worked some in Italy, but mostly
in Munich, where his influence was great. His style was broad, flowing
and especially emotional, and as a writer of the Netherlands school his
name stands as one of the very highest. =J. P. Sweelinck= (1562-1621)
is the last, and while of the Netherlands, studied in Venice, but did
his work at home. He was a great organist and the last great master
of the school, and had the honor of being the link between it and the
German school, serving as an example for Sebastian Bach. His works have
recently been published in Germany. Of all these men it may be said
that they developed music steadily toward the goal of emotional freedom.
=Summary=.—The great work of this school was to make _technic
subservient to thought_. In all preceding schools, the material and
the forms were so new and the methods of handling them so crude,
that technic always dominated thought. And it was naturally so, for
expression cannot come until the power to master the material has been
attained; it was by this power that the Netherlands developed emotional
music. But the student invariably objects and says he does not see any
emotion in the polyphonic music of this period! The student must place
himself in the position of these old masters, supported by the church
and constantly imbibing the religious atmosphere of the institution
they served, until they unconsciously expressed, in their music, the
grandeur and power of their religion rather than the intimate personal
feeling of modern musicians; and then the student will understand
what is meant by polyphonic emotion. We must always remember that
_polyphonic emotion is not monophonic emotion_, and that its tremendous
technic and complexity of device were but the means of expressing
its peculiar form of emotion, which to understand, one must study
diligently, and then approach with a reverent feeling.