=Italy the New Centre=.—Music developed in the Netherlands because of
commercial supremacy and the consequent world association. We shall now
see it pass to Italy, but because of a very different reason. From the
earliest Christian days Italy was the centre of religious influence;
it is only necessary to examine history to observe the ramifications
of that power in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and other
countries. This influence, often more political than religious in
character, gave to the Italian Church (then the Italian State), a
predominance of authority, which was a great power in religious and
secular thought. This influence spread to music for various reasons. We
must remember that the school at Paris was controlled by the Church,
that the Gallo-Belgic school owed its foundation to the same cause,
and that the men of all three schools were employed as organists by
the Church. It is true that in Italy the Church had not the broadening
influence of commercial intercourse, but was more than compensated for
that lack by what we may call artistic intercourse. The Church was
the one stable institution in these times of war in which painters
could find a refuge for their works, and from which patronage flowed
in a steady stream to the ever-needy artists. Thus was caused and
maintained the artistic atmosphere necessary to the cultivation of
Music. As an art, the Church was the only support of artistic music.
When Music originated it needed an institution to protect and foster it
and safeguard its growth, and this it found in the Church; it repaid
this protection by evolving a style eminently suited to the needs of
the Church, but absolutely useless for the expression of secular and
natural emotion. To this patronage of its peculiar art is due the
importation into Italy of the best in music wherever found, to aid in
these services. And so we find singers from the Netherlands engaged
for the Church in Italy. This, and the fame of Italy as the home of
superior singers, undoubtedly led the majority of those numerous
Netherlandish masters to seek their homes abroad, and preferably in
Italy. The fact that all music was vocal in style and that the Church
was the only institution capable of supporting such a style, cannot be
too strongly stated; for upon that depended not only the evolution of
Music, but also the very life of the Polyphonic emotional style.
=Emotion in Polyphony=.—This style is worthy of examination. As
a preface we must remember that we have to deal with the Church
and _human voices only_, for instruments had not been perfected
sufficiently for church use, excepting the organ, and that we must
consider a voice because of its peculiar tonal qualities and the
adaptation of vocal forms and styles to its use. This vocal style
had developed gradually, through a long course of reforms, until it
reached its perfection in the later polyphonic schools, and expressed
the peculiar emotion suited for the services. _Lack_ of _rhythm_
was a pointed _characteristic_; for, in the first place, it had
been discarded as profane, and in the next place, a long course of
treatment in the management of voices to avoid anything like concerted
and accentuated dissonances had produced a peculiar flowing movement
which, however smooth it might be, certainly possessed no rhythmic
force. Then, too, the old scale forms caused anything written in
their idioms to sound grave, severe and dignified, if not harsh. The
transition to the modern major and minor in the Monophonic school of
1600 and the immediate cultivation of music by the people may be taken
as an example of the musical qualities of the two modes. All of these
causes tended to produce a suitable form of music and an emotional
expression peculiarly suited to the Roman services. In this style
there was little storm and stress, little of the personal appeal to
God; on the other hand, it was grave, severe and immovable, or in a
better sense, impersonal in its expression. Music of the polyphonic
period, even until the time of Sebastian Bach, in whose works it is
well exemplified, does not show us the appeal to God from the heart of
the active Christian worker, but rather the appeal to a vast impersonal
and majestic God far removed from the needs and supplications of the
mere individual. It was this kind of emotion that developed in the
Italian Polyphonic schools. The human and more expressive emotion of
the schools of the Netherlands was transmitted, in the schools of the
Italian, into the high, contemplative moods of religious expression;
and it was well that it should be so, for polyphonic music could
never have expressed the emotion of a Beethoven; and it was not only
best that it should express its own peculiar style of emotion, but
inevitable that it should do so.
[Illustration: ORLANDO DI LASSO.]
=Schools Outside Italy=.—The overflow from the Netherlands concentrated
its efforts on certain points or school centres. In Italy, these were
Naples, Venice and Rome. There were others throughout Europe, such
as Madrid, Paris and Munich, which we must consider first because of
their relation to Italy. =Nicholas Gombert= (1495-1570) influenced the
polyphonic development in Madrid, but so isolated was the work that
nothing great resulted. =Okeghem= (1430-1512) worked longer in Paris
than other masters, though several lived there for short intervals,
such as Arkadelt and Goudimel. =Orlando di Lasso= (1520-1594) did
almost all his work in Munich and established the most important school
outside of Italy. He was a most prolific writer and can be compared
in ability and style to Palestrina. His style was broad and bold and
contained much of that serious and earnest character now attributed to
his Teutonic associations. He wrote in all known forms and was well
nigh universal in his knowledge of form, technic and expression. His
facility in the art of writing was very great and was fully equalled by
his love for work. Although his work has somewhat less perfection than
that of his great contemporary, Palestrina, it has astonishing power
of expression. It shows the force of his genius that he was able to
make his works in the strict contrapuntal forms full of real feeling.
He was a man of interesting personal character. The most famous of his
works is his setting of seven “Penitential Psalms,” containing a number
of most curious effects for unaccompanied voices, with much that is
singularly characteristic and beautiful, and showing well the character
of his genius.
We give part of a composition by di Lasso showing his broad style and
the increasing use of what sounds suspiciously like our modern chord
progressions. The lack of rhythmic effect and the holding over of notes
past the accented beat is shown in this exercise. The whole example,
with words, may be found in Naumann, History of Music, Vol. I, page
387.
[Music]
=The Italian School=.—But it is with the Italian schools that we are
most concerned. The school at Naples had as its principal master
=Johannes Tinctoris= (1446-1511) a Fleming by birth, a doctor of laws
and a mathematician, one of those peculiar combinations seldom noticed
after the Paris school, and almost sure to mark the theoretician.
His work was principally theoretical and his treatises are of great
value. =Adrian Willaert= (1480-1562), born at Bruges, was a pupil of
Jean Mouton, at Paris. After visiting Rome and Ferrara, he settled in
Venice and, as organist of St. Mark’s, founded an important school.
He introduced the use of large double choruses which caused him to
write harmonically rather than polyphonically. This influence caused
him to relegate the imitative polyphonic part writing to smaller forms
(motets, etc.) and to write plain chord progressions in his larger
works; and before long he began to observe and to use the relationship
between the Tonic and the Dominant. This tendency and the invention
of the Madrigal furnished the basis for a new instrumental school at
a later date. His best-known pupil, =Cipriano di Rore= (1516-1565),
was short-lived, and worked in both Venice and Parma. He made some
investigation into the use of chromatics, thus showing the growing
tendency to abandon the Church modes for the natural scales. Following
these Dutch masters came the two Gabrieli’s, who were native Italians.
=Andrea Gabrieli= (1510-1586) was a great organist and wrote in the
style of Willaert, his famous master. =Giovanni Gabrieli= (1557-1613)
was a pupil of his uncle Andrea, and carried the latter’s methods
further toward perfection. He also wrote for instruments in conjunction
with voices, abandoning to a certain extent the _a capella_ style, and
opening that epoch of instrumental music foreshadowed by Willaert in
his madrigals. Rome was the centre of church government, of church art
and also of church music, and as such, had the largest and greatest of
Italian music schools. =Jacob Arkadelt= (1492-1570), a Netherlander,
lived nineteen years in Rome and did most of his work there; he wrote
both secular and sacred compositions in the strict polyphonic style,
and in that of Willaert. =Claude Goudimel= (1510-1572), though a
prominent master in Paris, worked much in Rome and was the teacher of
Palestrina. He set to music in four parts metrical versions of the
Psalms, published in 1565. In him is to be observed that clearness of
expression and beauty of melodic flow with which Palestrina attained
such a high point of expression.
=Palestrina=.—It remained for his pupil =Palestrina=, (Giovanni
Pierlugi Sante, 1514-1594) an Italian, to reach the highest point of
emotional expression and technical freedom; we must, however, rank
Orlando di Lasso with him. He carried to the highest fruition the
teachings of the Netherlands, tempered by the romantic and melodic
tendency of the Italian nature. His writings were so free technically
that they have been called simple in form; this they are, but the
simplicity is the simplicity of genius. His style is melodic, and has
a clearness never attained by any writer before his time, and yet his
music is written in the most severe forms. He founded a school of
music in Rome which, however, never produced any great masters, for
it was the time when the reformation of Opera began and carried the
development of music into other channels.
[Music: SOP. ALTO TENOR BASS]
The end of a composition by Palestrina, showing the melody in the upper
voice instead of the tenor, as was usually the case in polyphonic
compositions, and the use of our modern Minor mode. This composition,
at least this last part of it taken alone, might be by a modern writer,
so familiar do its progressions sound; indeed, the melody of the first
two measures is strikingly similar to a progression used by Beethoven
in one of his string quartets. The entire example with words may be
seen in Naumann, History of Music, Vol. I, page 510.
=Summary=.—The Polyphonic Era has many important characteristics and
results which make it worth while to sum it up. Its development is
largely the history of the _development of vocal music_ to its highest
point, and the consequent failure of it to provide accurate expression
for human needs. It marks the development of scales, intervals, forms,
instruments and emotion. In scales we find the trend to be always
toward the natural; in intervals, toward freedom, using only the ear as
a criterion; in instruments we note the development of the organ, but
the lack of others which would have changed music entirely; in emotion,
we note the evolution from crudeness to the highest and most polished
forms of impersonal expression. The lack of the Polyphonic school
was not in the intrinsic value of the music, nor in any lack of the
desire to express emotion; the failure to provide a suitable means of
musical expression was due to the idea of church relation to God rather
than to the personal individualistic relations established by Luther.
_After the Reformation_ music takes up this new idea and immediately
a _secular music_, vocal and instrumental, begins to _develop_,
culminating in an emotional school of a totally different and truer
style than the Polyphonic. Polyphonic music expressed the old monkish
ideas of religion perfectly, but monophonic music expresses the emotion
of the people, a universal emotion. Polyphonic music must always be
appreciated for its value, but it must be examined for its fundamental
principles and reasons for being, before it can be understood. Then we
may know its value as a foundation for our modern music.