Birth of Oratorio and Opera—Monteverde and Heart Music
BIRTH OF ORATORIO AND OPERA
A friend of Palestrina, Saint Filippo Neri, was the founder of Oratorio.
In 1558, Father Neri started daily religious meetings to which all sorts
of people came. These were held in a side room of the Church called the
Oratory (chapel for private prayer), and in addition to his
talks,—hymns, litanies and motets were sung, and scenes from the Bible
were performed somewhat like opera. The name “Oratorio” was soon used,
not only in Rome, but throughout all of Europe, wherever there were
sacred dramas with music. Palestrina arranged and wrote some of the
music for Father Neri.
BIBLE STORIES ACTED
The acted stories of the Bible can be traced back into the Middle Ages,
and probably descended from the Greek and Roman theatre, for many early
Christians were Greeks and Romans and had a natural love for drama. The
Church understood this and saw in it a way to teach the history of the
Scriptures. You know yourselves how much better you remember historical
events when you have seen them in moving pictures! This natural love of
play-acting in mankind goes back to primitive man who acted out his
prayers in his religious rites. These theatrical performances were
called “moralities,” “mysteries,” or “miracle-plays,” and a very
beautiful example is _Everyman_, which was revived in England and
America a few years ago.
In the 8th century, Charlemagne’s time, people gathered in the public
markets, and the merchants entertained them by shows in which were
singing and dancing. The priests forbade these performances because they
were coarse and vulgar, but realizing how successful and how much loved
they were, they themselves turned actors, built stages in many of the
churches, turned the Bible stories into little plays, and added music.
Sometimes when there were not enough priests to take part, dolls or
puppets were used as in _Punch and Judy_ shows. Isn’t it interesting to
think that operas and plays began in the Church?
One of the most famous of the church plays was the _Feast of Asses_ in
the 11th century.
The people did not have means of entertaining themselves as we have, and
the Church was the place to which every one went for amusement as well
as religion. In the 14th century some plays given in England were: _Fall
of Lucifer_, _Creation_, _Deluge_, _Abraham_, _Salutation and Nativity_,
_Three Kings_, _Last Supper_, _Resurrection_. The clergy hired minstrels
during this period to supply the music.
In the 15th century there were also elaborate pageants.
The clergy soon saw that the people wanted to take part in the plays, so
societies were formed in Paris, Rome, and in England for the people. In
England, like in Germany in the 16th century, the guilds (trade-unions)
performed plays that were based on religious subjects, although more or
less comic. The trade-guild of water-drawers, who delivered water from
door to door, liked to give the _Deluge_! The story goes: Mrs. Noah
objected to going aboard the ark with her husband and children, because
she did not want to leave her friends, “the gossips”; she even tells
Noah to get himself another wife, but her son, Shem, forces her into the
ark, and when she finally enters, she slaps Noah’s face!
The subjects were not always comical, some were beautiful and inspiring,
like the _Passion Play_ still given in Oberammergau, Germany, every ten
years.
MASQUES
During Henry VII’s reign (1485–1509), which began the Tudor period, the
moralities and religious pageantry were at their best, and the Masques
began. Nobles, who appeared at balls in gorgeous costumes with masked
faces, danced, had a jolly time, and usually surprised the guests with
an elaborate entertainment in pantomime with much music and dancing.
This became more and more important until it combined poetry,
instrumental and vocal music, scenery, dancing, machinery, splendid
costumes, and decorations in the Masque.
The greatest masques were written in the reigns of the Stuarts (17th
century), by Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Milton. _Comus_
and Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ were set to music in this form. While the
Italians were experimenting with _Dramma per Musica_ (drama with music),
England was finding a new musical entertainment in the masque, and opera
was its direct descendant.
The custom of masking for the ball came from Italy, and before that, the
actors in the Greek drama (400 B.C.) wore masks, and that is why the
mask is used in art to represent the theatre.
ITALIAN OPERA’S BEGINNINGS
In Italy during the second half of the 16th century, a group of people
tried to combine music and drama to fit the new ideas of art. The
Renaissance had influenced poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture,
and now it was music’s turn to profit by the return to Greek ideals. The
Florentines and the Venetians felt that the madrigal was not the best
form to express the feelings and emotions of the subjects of their
plays. In the Middle Ages, the subjects were always Biblical, but now,
as a result of the new learning they were chosen from Greek mythology
and history. From the first operas at the close of the 16th century, to
those of Gluck in the 18th, the names of Greek gods and heroes are used
as the titles of operas: _Orpheus_, _Euridice_, _Daphne_, _Apollo_ and
_Bacchus_. These first operas were a combination of early _ballets_, and
a sort of play called a _pastorale_.
Torquato Tasso, the Italian poet of the 16th century, wrote several
_pastorales_, and was interested in music with drama. Like Ronsard in
France, Tasso wrote beautiful poems for madrigals, which were set to
music by the composers. He was a friend of Palestrina and of Don
Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, a famous patron of art, particularly of
music. In the Prince’s palace at Naples, a group of men met to spread
and improve the taste for music. They also wished to create music that
would fit the stage-plays better than the polyphonic or poly-melodic
style imported from the Northern countries. They wanted melody and they
wanted it sung by one voice alone, as were their popular songs,
accompanied by the lute, called _frottoli_, _vilanelles_, etc. Tasso, no
doubt, talked over his ideas with composers from Florence who had formed
a club, and who were directly responsible for the first opera in Italy,
_Daphne_ by Jacobo Perti.
THE CAMERATA
This Florentine club was called the “Camerata”; it met at the home of
Count Bardi, himself a poet, and among its members were Vincenzo
Galilei, an amateur musician and father of the famous astronomer; Emilio
del Cavalieri, a composer and inventor of _ballets_; Laura Guidiccioni,
a woman poet; Giulio Caccini, a singer and composer; Ottavio Rinuccini
and Strozzi, poets; and Peri, a composer and singer. They must have had
wild times at their club meetings, for the musicians who were not
amateurs did not want the popular song with lute accompaniment to
replace polyphonic music, which was the “high-brow” art of that time.
But the poets and singers and less cultured musicians won the day.
Pretending to return to Greek music drama of which they knew less than
nothing, they made a series of experiments which led to the invention of
the artsong, or homophonic style (one voice, or melody, instead of
polyphonic—many voices), which seemed to satisfy the Italian’s natural
love for melody.
Galilei set a scene from Dante’s _Inferno_, for solo and _viola da
gamba_, an instrument of the violoncello type. Following this, Peri
invented the “speaking style” of singing now called _recitative_. This
was a very important step in the making of opera and oratorio, for it
did away with spoken words, and instead, the conversation was sung, or
intoned, to satisfy the poets who wanted the meaning of their words made
very clear. It was accompanied by simple chords on the lute, and later,
the harpsichord.
Here were all the parts needed for a real opera,—the solo song, or aria;
the recitative, or story telling part; the chorus or ensemble, which was
the old madrigal used in a new way; and the accompanying instruments
which grew into the orchestra. Peri was the first to put all these parts
together in an opera for which Rinuccini wrote a real play based on the
Greek story of Daphne. Caccini and his daughter Francesca sang it, and
no doubt made many suggestions as to how it should be done. Its first
private performance (1597) was an important event for the closing of an
important century. The audience thought that it was listening to a
revival of Greek music drama, but we know that it was another case of
Columbus’s passage to India! Although the Greek drama was not like this,
after 2000 years it helped to create modern music.
Its success led to an invitation in 1600 for Peri and Rinuccini to write
an opera, _Euridice_, for the marriage festivities of Henry IV of France
and Marie de’ Medici. Several noblemen, probably members of the
“Camerata,” took part in the first performance; one played the
harpsichord, and three others played on the chitarrone (a large guitar),
a viol da gamba, and a theorbo (double lute). The orchestra was
completed by three flutes. This orchestral score was notated in a sort
of musical shorthand called figured bass which shows the chords to be
used as accompaniment to a melody by means of a bass note with a figure
above it. Peri and his colleagues seem to have been the first to use
this, but it was adopted by all composers into the 18th century,
including Bach and Handel. It was called _basso continuo_ or figured
bass or thorough-bass.
Caccini also wrote an opera which he called _Euridice_, but it was in
the style of a pastoral ballet with songs, dances, and recitatives. This
work was probably the result of his having helped Peri in working out
his ideas at the meetings of the “Camerata.” This same year, 1600, which
finished the 16th century, saw the presentation of Emilio del
Cavalieri’s mystery play, or oratorio, _La Rappresentazióne di ‘Anima e
di Córpo_ (Representation of the spirit and body), for which Laura
Giudiccioni wrote the text. This oratorio, with very elaborate
decorations, was sung and danced in the oratory of a church. It must
have been very like the operas except that it was based on a religious
idea, and was performed in a church, while the opera by Peri was
performed at the Pitti Palace and was from Greek mythology. The
orchestra was composed of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a double guitar,
and a theorbo or double lute.
BAIF’S CLUB IN FRANCE
While the Italians were trying to find the old Greek and Latin methods
of combining drama and music, there was a movement in France to write
poetry in classical verse. Following Ronsard’s example, Baif influenced
the composers to write music that should express the feeling of poetry,
and also imitate its rhythm. They also tried writing madrigals arranged
for a single voice with accompanying instrument, or group of
instruments. While the Italians invented the recitative, the French
developed a rich fluent rhythmic song form, _musique mesurée à
l’antique_, or, music in the ancient metre.
Baif formed a club or an Academy of poets and musicians much like
Bardi’s “Camerata” in Florence. They worked hard to perfect mensural or
measured music, and opened the way for the use of measures and bars,
which in the 16th century were unknown. We are so accustomed to music
divided into measures by means of bars, that it is hard to realize what
a great step forward was made by Baif’s Academy. They were struggling to
get rid of the plainchant which lacked rhythm as we know it, and which
for centuries had used “perfect” or “imperfect” time.
Two prominent composers of this group were Jacques Mauduit (1557–1627),
also a famous lute player, and Claude Le Jeune (1530–1600), who worked
with Baif to bring “measured” music into favor, composer of many
_chansons_ and of a Psalm-book used by all the Calvinist churches
(Calvin was a church reformer in Switzerland) in Europe except in
Switzerland! It went through more editions than any other musical work
since the invention of printing. Le Jeune was a Huguenot, and on St.
Bartholomew’s eve (1588), he tried to escape from the Catholic soldiers
carrying with him many unpublished manuscripts. They would have been
burned, had it not been for his Catholic friend and fellow-composer,
Mauduit, who rescued the books, and saved his life. The title appears
for the first time in history on one of his pieces, “Composer of Music
for the King.” (_Compositeur de la musique de la chambre du roy._)
During the second half of the 16th century, in spite of serious
political and religious troubles, the most popular form of entertainment
at the French court was the very gorgeous ballet. No expense was
considered too great, and no decoration too splendid for these ballets
in which nobles and even the kings and their families appeared “in
person.” They were like the English Masques, and were the parents of the
_French opera_. Baif, Mauduit and Le Jeune, together composed (1581) _Le
Ballet comique de la Reine_ (Queen’s Comedy-Ballet) which was produced
at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris.
Beaulieu and Salmon are often named as the composers of this ballet
because in those days, one composer wrote the parts for voices, and
another for instruments, so probably the musicians worked with the poets
and dramatists to produce it. The characters in this musical drama were
Circe and other Greek gods and demi-gods.
With Marie de Medici and Cardinal Mazarin from Italy, Italian opera came
into France. But this did not happen until the 17th century.
MONTEVERDE AND HEART MUSIC
Wouldn’t you be proud if you could compose a whole book of music at the
age of sixteen? Monteverde did and besides he made music grow by
composing things that had never been done before.
Claudio Monteverde (1567–1643) was born in Cremona, a town made famous
by the great makers of violins. Monteverde was one of the first great
innovators in music, and he brought new ideas and vast changes into
music as an art. His teacher, Marc Antonio Ingegneri, Chapel Master at
the Cathedral, taught young Monteverde all the tricks of counterpoint
and of the great polyphonic masters, and also gave him lessons on the
organ and the viol. He must have been a very talented pupil, for he
could play any instrument, and at the age of sixteen, published his
first book of madrigals,—_Canzonette a tre voci_ (Little Songs in Three
Voices). The last song in this book has these charming words: “Now, dear
Songs, go in peace singing joyously, always thanking those who listen to
you and kissing their hands, without speaking.” Evidently, little
Italian boys were brought up to say nice things!
Even in this first book of madrigals and the four books that followed,
Monteverde tried experiments in harmony and wrote music that sounded
harsh to 16th century ears. He was trying to create a style that would
combine the best points of the old school of polyphony (many voices)
with the new school of monody (one melody), and this is why he is called
the originator of the modern style of composition, which is, melody and
accompaniment. Since his time there have been many originators of new
styles in music, and when first heard they have usually been received
with harsh words by the many and liked by the few. Monteverde was
severely criticized in a book that appeared in Venice, in 1600, on the
short-comings of modern music, (and they are still writing “on the
short-comings of modern music” today!). The book was written by the
monk, Artusi, who liked the old-fashioned music and believed that
Monteverde’s work was against all natural musical laws. But if we search
we will find that music grows through experiments that are made by the
composers, who “go against natural laws,” then after the natural laws
are broken, comes a learned theorist who shows that no law was broken at
all, and so we go on stretching the boundaries of “natural law,” and
music goes on changing all the time. This is what we mean by the growth
of music.
In 1590, Monteverde became viol player and singer to Vincenzo di
Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a patron of arts and letters. At one time he
took the poet Tasso from an insane asylum; he was patron of Galileo, the
astronomer, who was considered to be a heretic because he said that the
earth revolved around the sun, contrary to the teachings of the Bible;
he also invited the great Flemish painter Rubens, to visit his court;
and probably influenced Monteverde to write operas. The Duke engaged
many musicians at his court, who formed a little orchestra to play dance
music, solos, or parts in the madrigals. These were no longer sung
alone, but were accompanied by instruments, or sometimes played by the
instruments without voices, (see how music grows up!) because in Italy,
the composers had not yet begun to write special music for instruments
as they had in France.
The composer went with the Duke on many travels, even into battle, and
in the evenings between military encounters, they sang madrigals and
played on instruments!
The next trip with the Duke was pleasanter, for it gave Monteverde the
chance to visit Flanders, where he heard the beautiful “new music” of
Claude Le Jeune, Mauduit, and others. It impressed him so deeply that he
began to write heart-music instead of head-music. He was one of the most
successful in breaking down old rules and traditions and was enough of a
genius to replace them with new things that were to point the way for
all the opera writers and most of the composers that came after him.
Monteverde must have heard the music composed by the members of the
“Camerata,” but he was too much of a musician to brush aside all
polyphonic writing and to value words above music. However, their work
opened the way for his. Up to 1607, he had written everything in the
form of vocal madrigals, but his last book seems to have been composed
for string instruments instead of being madrigals for voices. These
sounded as though composed for viols and lutes and not for voices, and
were dramatic and full of deep feeling as if written for an opera! No
wonder they sounded strange to the audience—even as Stravinsky,
Schoenberg and Milhaud do to most people today.
Until Monteverde was forty years old he had never written an opera, the
greatest work of his life! He probably would not have done so then had
it not been at the command of his patron, Vincenzo di Gonzaga. His first
and second operas, _Orfeo_ and _Arianna_, followed each other quickly
and were epoch making. Without the work of the “Camerata,” they might
never have been written, but they were much better than the best work of
the “Camerata” (Peri, Caccini, and Cavalieri). Monteverde was wise
enough to adopt their melodramatic form which he improved by his use of
the devices of the Italian madrigalists and organ composers, and the
_airs de cour_ (songs of the court) and the ballets of the French
composers.
Also, following the French ideas, Monteverde used a large orchestra of
forty pieces, including two clavichords; two little organs called
_organi di legno_, which sounded like flutes; a regal, also a kind of
small organ; a bass viol; a _viol da gamba_; two very tiny violins
called _pochettes_, because they could be carried in the pockets of the
French dancing-masters; ten _violes da bracchia_ or tenor viols;
ordinary violins, two _chitarroni_ or large lutes, and the usual
trumpets, cornets, flutes and oboes. In this Monteverde was a pioneer
for he had no other works to guide him, and had to find out for himself
the effects of combining different instruments. Today many of his
musical effects sound crude to us, but he had no symphony concerts, at
which to hear an orchestra, for such a thing did not exist. Neither were
orchestral scores written out, but only indicated, and when instruments
were used, their parts were made up at the moment and played, according
to the “figured bass.”
During the 16th century, the musicians had learned that trombones and
cornets made a wonderful effect in scenes of the underworld (Hades,
Inferno, Hell), of which there were many. They discovered, too, that
trumpets and drums made battle scenes and war songs real; that flutes,
oboes and bassoons gave a pastoral, or shepherd-like effect; that viols
were for scenes of love and of sadness; and that to represent Heaven,
they needed harps, lutes and regals. Monteverde brought them all
together, and studied how to simplify the orchestra to give it a better
balance in tone and variety. It must have been a wonderful time to live
in this “young manhood” day of music.
The opera _Arianna_ was written a year after _Orfeo_, to celebrate the
wedding of the Duke’s son. It must have been a sad task for Monteverde,
as he had just lost his wife to whom he was very devoted. Ottavio
Rinuccini, poet of the “Camerata”, was his librettist (the writer of the
words), and a famous Italian architect, Vianini, built an immense
theatre in the castle for the first performance in 1608. Six thousand
people assembled, the largest audience that had ever heard an opera!
Nothing remains of the opera today, but the text, or words, some
published accounts of the performances, and a very touching and
beautiful _Lamentation_ in which Arianna expresses her grief at being
left by Theseus. This one piece is enough to show Monteverde’s genius,
also how freely he expressed human feelings in music. Not a house in
Italy with either a clavichord or a theorbo was without a copy of the
_Lamentation_!
About this time, Monteverde wrote a prologue for a comedy composed by
five other musicians of the court, all well-known composers of their
day, Rossi, Gastoldi, Gagliano, Giulio Monteverde, and Birt.
In 1613, a year after the death of the Duke, Vincenzo di Gonzaga,
Monteverde was made Chapel master of St. Mark’s in Venice, which had
long been famous for its fine music, where Adrian Willaert, Cyprian de
Rore and Zarlino had been Chapel masters in the time of the “Golden Age
of Polyphony.” Monteverde had much to live up to! But, after his hard
work at the court of Mantua, he found his position very agreeable, and
he gave his time now to composing music for the Church, madrigals,
intermezzos, and a new form of music called “cantata.” His church music
can be divided into works written in the old polyphonic style of
Palestrina, and those written in the modern style of his day. So, when
he did not write in the older church style, it was not because he did
not know counterpoint, but because he wanted to make music express
feelings through harmony and not through polyphony. He was able to do
this as no one else had! His church music is not published for the parts
have been so scattered, that a bass will be found in one collection and
an instrumental part in another, and perhaps a soprano in still a third.
So it would be very much like a jig-saw puzzle to find them all and put
them together.
The Gonzaga family tried to persuade him to return to their court, but
he refused, although he often wrote special operas for them or short
dramatic spectacles which were called intermezzos. Of these, sad to say,
almost nothing remains.
The recitative style invented by the “Camerata” had by this time taken
such a firm hold upon the people, that it spread even to the music of
the Church and to the madrigals. All the Italian composers began to
write _recitative_ for solo voices and accompaniment which they called
_canzoni_ (songs), _canzonetti_ (little songs), and _arie_ (melodies).
Monteverde was one of the first to turn the madrigal into a _cantata da
camera_ which means the recitation to music of a short drama or story in
verse, by one person, accompanied by one instrument. But, as things
improve or die out, very soon another voice and several instruments were
added. This composition is a musical milestone of the 17th century as
the madrigal had been of the 15th and 16th. The cantata for more than
one voice forms a little chamber music opera without any acting. Some of
the best known cantata writers were Ferrari, Carissimi, Rossi,
Gasparini, Marcello, and Alessandro Scarlatti. At the age of seventy,
Monteverde took up this new style of composition with all the enthusiasm
and freshness of a young composer! He was not the inventor of the
_cantata da camera_, as is so often claimed for him, as no one man was
its inventor. It was the result of the constant search of the composers
of that day, who followed along the same path, and worked together to
perfect a new form.
NEW FEELINGS EXPRESSED
One of Monteverde’s most important works in this style is the _Combat of
Tancredi and Clorinda (Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda)_ a poem
by Tasso, which is noteworthy for several new things. In the preface of
the published edition, Monteverde says that he had long tried to invent
a style _concitato_, or agitated, that he had been struck by the fact
that musicians had never tried to express anger or the fury of battle,
but had expressed only tenderness and sweetness, sadness or gayety.
(Perhaps he did not know Jannequin’s _Battle of Marignan_.) So he wrote
battle music.
The second innovation was the tremolo, which, however familiar to us
today, he used for the first time to express agitation, anger and fear,
and the musicians were so surprised to see something that they had never
seen before, that they refused to play it! This was neither the first
nor the last time that musicians balked at something new.
The third innovation was that he wrote independent parts for the
orchestra, and for the first time the instruments did not “copy” the
voice, but had notes all to themselves to play.
In 1630 there was a terrible epidemic in Venice, the “Black Plague”
which lasted a year and took off one-third of her population! In
gratitude for having been spared, Monteverde became a priest in the
Church. This did not seem to interfere with his composing secular works,
for after this, he wrote several operas.
Venice was the home of the first public opera house in the world! It was
opened (1637) in the San Cassiano theatre by Benedetto Ferrari and
Francesco Manelli, and for this in these last years of his life,
Monteverde wrote some of his most important operas. Monteverde’s operas
of this time were a combination of the Roman _opera-cantate_, then in
style, and his first operas, _Orfeo_ and _Arianna_, written thirty-five
years before. He had great enough genius to fit his work to the
conditions that he found in the opera house, so that when they had to
reduce expenses, Monteverde cut down the size of his orchestra to just a
clavichord, a few theorbos, a bass viol and a few violins and viols, and
wrote works without choruses! He was agreeable, wasn’t he? A thing which
people of “near” greatness rarely are!
The last work he composed at the age of 74 is one of his best! Is it not
wonderful to think that he had not lost inspiration and enthusiasm after
a long life of hard work? The Italian name for his last opera is
_Incoronazione di Poppea_, or the “Coronation of Poppea.” It is a story
of the court of Nero, and Monteverde has sketched his characters in
vivid music, and has made them seem true to life. Henry Prunières, who
has made an earnest study of Monteverde says in his book, _Monteverde_,
“Monteverde saw Imperial Rome with eyes of genius and knew how to make
it live again for us. No book, no historical account could picture Nero
and Poppea as vigorously as this opera.” It is the greatest opera of the
17th century, and actually created the school of Italian grand opera.
With it, mythological characters gave way to the historical in opera,
which enlarged the field of drama with music.
So Monteverde, the great innovator, died in Venice in 1643 and was given
by the citizens of Venice a funeral worthy of his greatness.
He dug new paths on which all modern composers travel and throughout his
life he followed his ideal, which was to translate into the language of
music, human feelings and ideas.
[Illustration:
_After a painting by Molenaer in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam._
_A Lady at the Clavier (Clavichord)._
]
[Illustration:
_After the painting by Terborch._
_A Lady Playing the Theorbo (luth)._
]