DIFFERENT SCHOOLS CORRESPONDING WITH THE GROWTH OF MUSICAL ART.
The centuries see little change in the elements of
the drama—Growth of opera concurrent with the
progress of the art of music—Points of difference
between early operas (Monteverde, etc.) and
those of Scarlatti and later writers—Birth
of the aria—England and France of the same
date—Opera buffa—Musical empiricism—Gluck—His
followers—Varying subjects treated—Italian opera
—Abuses by the singers—Wagner and modern opera.
[Sidenote: =Little change in the Drama=]
The changes that have taken place in opera during the short three
hundred years which constitute the life of modern music are far more
prominent and important than those that have been undergone by the
ordinary dramatic work: the arts of elocution, gesture, and stage
action are very old ones, and have seen little radical change for
many centuries. Great progress has been made through the use of
modern mechanical devices and inventions in the mounting of all stage
pieces—_i.e._, in the scenery employed, the lighting, and stage
effects generally: these all appeal to the eye; but the appeal to the
ear is not, in an ordinary dramatic work, more powerfully made than it
was in the days of the Greek dramatist. But when music is added, then
appeal to the ear of a most powerful kind takes place, and during the
whole life of the youngest of the Arts the improvements and growth in
musical technique and expression have been grafted upon opera with
continuously progressive power and effect.
[Sidenote: =Growth concurrent with the progress of the Art of Music=]
Now, since opera has demanded for its representation an art that has
been in a state of continuous growth, it will follow that the different
classes of opera will closely correspond with the different styles and
schools of music: we shall find therefore that the earliest operas were
only able to employ crude and undeveloped music, none better being
available; that as musical skill and knowledge grew, as additional
instruments were added to the orchestra, as knowledge of forms
developed, so all these improvements found their way into operatic
music, with the result that the difference between say a seventeenth
and an eighteenth century opera is a very wide one, while a vaster
difference still may be seen between one of the eighteenth and one of
the late nineteenth century.
We may briefly examine the causes of these differences, taking the dawn
of all modern music (about 1600 A.D.) as the starting-point.
[Sidenote: =Points of difference=]
If we take the operas of the first few years of the seventeenth
century, what do we find? That the form of tonality in use was the mode
and not the scale; that time (_i.e._, measured music), as we now know
it, did not exist; that harmony, as we now know it, did not exist; and
that the instruments of the orchestra (although some have survived),
were in the main instruments which have fallen into disuse, many of
them having no modern counterparts. It needs little pointing out that
this form of opera must have sounded very different to its successors.
[Sidenote: =Monteverde’s innovations=]
The next important innovations, generally accredited to =Monteverde=,
include the dramatic effects of _pizzicato_ and _tremolo_ passages
for the stringed instruments—devices which have been used with the
happiest results by all composers of subsequent date. Such devices,
unknown in church music anterior to this time, or even in the music
written for instruments only without voices in the church style, are
most effectively employed for the illustration of certain situations
on the stage: the mere introduction of these alone is sufficient to
separate this school of opera from that which preceded it.
[Sidenote: =Use of Orchestra=]
But Monteverde’s inventions or adoptions did not stop here, for it was
he who first added many instruments to the orchestra; not only did he
employ additional instruments, but he used them in such a way as to
wed certain characters or situations to music in which certain sets of
instruments were employed, thus anticipating the much later Wagnerian
device of accompanying certain ideas by a fixed theme, or by particular
combinations in the orchestra.
[Sidenote: =Adoption of Melody=]
So far the music of the opera was confined to recitative: that is, to
the musical rendering of the dialogue without regular rhythm or melody.
Another period of opera opened out altogether, when composers began to
adapt portions of the dialogue to regular formal melody of a rhythmic
nature, and in the diatonic scale, much as we now know it.
Credit for this is generally given to =Cavalli=, and his example was
followed by a well-known early opera writer, =Alessandro Scarlatti=.
The recitative of the latter took, too, a richer shape and form,
inasmuch as it was now often accompanied by the whole of the orchestra,
instead of merely by the continuous bass, completed by harpsichord
harmonies.
[Sidenote: =Birth of the Aria=]
Scarlatti, however, may claim a more still important innovation, the
adoption of set forms: his ideas were often cast into lyrical shapes,
his solos were often arias of definite mould, and above all, he
deliberately adopted the _Da Capo_ Aria in the majority of his works.
This _Da Capo_ Aria would be described by a student of modern form as a
“Ternary” movement, in so far as its first part was entirely repeated
after the performance of a contrasted middle section. That Scarlatti’s
invention killed itself by its own popularity is a matter to be spoken
of elsewhere: suffice it to notice that the introduction of the “_Da
Capo_” Aria brought into existence a new form of opera, different to
all that had gone before.
[Sidenote: =England and France=]
Meanwhile opera was progressing in Germany, France, and England, each
school having certain distinguishing characteristics. Purcell’s work
in England was unlike that of any Continental opera composer, and his
melodies have a boldness, freedom, and ring about them quite their own:
English music of the period was a reflex of the national character,
straightforward, honest, and vigorous. At the same time, Lully in
France was developing quite another side of opera, by the introduction
of the ballet, a form that has been retained till within quite recent
times by the French.
[Sidenote: =Opera Buffa=]
Handel, although the success of his operas killed, for the time being,
all English-born ideas, added little or nothing to the forms of
Scarlatti; he practically left opera where he found it, nor were his
works as widely known on the Continent as in England. More importance
may be attached to the rise, on the Continent, of a lighter form of
opera, entitled “Opera Buffa,” in contradistinction to which opera
proper received the title of “Opera Seria.” This delightful type had
its rise in the _intermezzo_ played between the acts of a dramatic
piece, and only gradually obtained a separate existence: from the early
attempts of Pergolesi and others there sprung an entirely new class of
work, which had great influence on the history of opera generally.
Another step towards the now universally known form of opera was made
when Logroscino invented the Concerted Finale, bringing several of
his characters on to the stage at the same time, and giving them a
simultaneous share in the music.
[Sidenote: =Musical Empiricism=]
Let us notice that all these improvements effected _in the music_
gradually led composers away from the true object of its use in opera,
namely, that of enhancing the general effect produced; the music began
to be looked upon as so important and so interesting on its own account
that all dramatic considerations were allowed to lapse. Meanwhile the
personalities of the singers, as opposed to that of the characters they
were personating, and their vocal abilities were thrust forward to the
exclusion of almost all else.
[Sidenote: =Gluck=]
This brought about an entire change of method, the dramatic and
far-seeing composer Gluck remodelling opera entirely, and endeavouring
to bring it, with the added resources made possible by the improvements
in musical technique, into line with the consistent ideas of the
Florentine amateurs, who endeavoured to reproduce opera on the model of
the ancient Greeks.
[Sidenote: =Gluck’s Followers=]
Gluck’s reforms had a very wide influence upon the history of opera,
which will be more fully dwelt upon in another place; an influence that
may be traced in the magnificent efforts of the group of German masters
that followed in the general lines laid down by him in their adherence
to dramatic truth and fitness. Moreover, these composers, the greatest
that the world has ever known, were developing the resources of music
of all kinds, and their achievements in the field of composition
generally were reflected in their writings for the stage. Consequently,
we find in the operas of Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, and Schubert an
advance in musical technique corresponding with the rapid strides which
the art of music as a whole was then making.
[Sidenote: =Varying Subjects Treated=]
And again, their varied and diverse temperaments led them into widely
different directions in their search for libretti, a point in which
they were followed by Spohr, Marschner, Cherubini, Spontini, and
others. The whole range of the field of opera was widening out, and
the subjects selected for treatment were no longer solely classical or
cast into classic mould, but included the romantic, the chivalrous,
the supernatural, the plebeian, and other types of plot and character;
these wide differences were of course reflected in the music.
Another point to be noticed about this period of opera is that the
orchestra employed began to settle down into definite shape, the
constituent instruments being those which form what we now call the
classical orchestra. These instruments are such as are to be found
(with one or two exceptions) in the orchestra of to-day, and such
operas therefore admit of reproduction at the present time, because,
although other instruments have been added to those which form the
ordinary classical orchestra, no radical changes in methods of scoring
have taken place since the time of Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber.
[Sidenote: =Italian Opera=]
Opera had now become so many-sided an art form that it will be
impossible in this brief _resumé_ of its history to follow it through
all its varieties; the principal of these were the “Opera Comique”
of the French, the Ballad Opera of the English, and the melodic and
tuneful form of Italian opera, which claims Rossini as its shining
light, and which, by its other sons, Donizetti and Bellini, attracted
and riveted public attention in Europe for so long.
[Sidenote: =Abuses by the Singers=]
In the Italian form of opera, the aggressive and encroaching qualities
of the _prime donne_ threw certain portions of the music (_i.e._, their
own arias and songs) into such prominence as to dwarf all else. Abuses
were again to the fore; the solo singers, male as well as female, made
the opera; plot, action, suitability, dramatic fitness—all mattered
little so long as there were plenty of flourishes, vocal cadenzas, and
roulades.
[Sidenote: =Wagner=]
As in the days of Gluck, a strong man arose to revolutionize the whole
trend of things, to turn the music back into its proper channel, to
stop its overwhelmingly preponderant importance, and to restore harmony
among the arts employed for the proper rendering of musical drama.
This man was Wagner, beyond whose achievements opera has as yet moved
no step. His methods of orchestration, his additions to the ordinary
orchestra, his devices of guiding themes, and of the continual
employment of song-like (although unrhythmic) melody, known as _Melos_,
constitute so many new features in the history of opera.
Modern opera, since his time, has presented us with nothing
sufficiently fresh to justify for itself the claim to have had any
radical influence in operatic development. The resources of the
technique of the art, the increased freedom with which remote discords
and far-fetched modulations are attacked, the greater facility
exhibited by composers in welding various themes together, and in
their use of the orchestra, are only a following of the principles and
practices of Wagner. Since his mighty operas were produced there is no
epoch-making event to chronicle.
Thus, side by side with the development and progress of the composition
and practice of music, opera has developed and progressed, from
the days of the simple monodic school, to the complex polyphony of
the twentieth century. This has been briefly, and without detail,
demonstrated above; and we now turn to a more analytical examination of
the various phases of opera. Before doing this, however, it will be as
well to examine a little more deeply into the causes of the somewhat
frequent checks in its history, which we have cursorily mentioned, and
of the reforms and uprootings of the abuses which have constantly
hindered its growth: a brief enquiry into those abuses will help us
more clearly to understand what opera really should be, and also how
much is due to those stalwart heroes of opera who have defied the
whole of the civilized world in their efforts to establish, or to
re-establish, it upon a proper basis.