begins its career about 1400. Its invention is directly due to
the influence of the organ. When the clavier began to replace the
organ in the home, a desire was felt for the stronger notes of the
great wind-instrument. The clavichord was unequal to the task. A
new technique was required. The strings, instead of being touched
and divided, were plucked with quills, which stood out at the side
from the jacks, at the end of the key-lever. For this purpose it was
necessary of course that the strings should be tuned each to its
proper note, and therefore have each its due length. The mechanism of
plucking, and the measurement of the strings, give to the clavicymbal
its character as distinct from the clavichord. The tone becomes
rippling, metallically glittering, firm and yet rattling; nay, it
might be called romantic, if it could sustain its poetical air, which
it gains for us in the first instance by its strange character. But
it was a defect that the tone was unsuitable for _nuances_; for,
unlike the clavichord, it was unable to produce _forte_, _piano_,
or the “Bebung.” Here a hint was taken from the organ. Stops, as
with the organ, were added; these, as they were drawn out or pushed
in, made it possible to use either one, two, or three strings on
any single key, thus offering three gradations from piano to forte.
Or, by the same means of a stop, a damper of leather or cloth was
put on the strings, and thus an imitation of the lute was effected.
Or, thirdly, both these appliances were united by providing two
keyboards placed one over the other, on which at will the player
could play loud or soft. Hence arose dozens of combinations. Strings
were coupled in unison or octave, registers were made either for hand
or foot, keyboards were made to shift, the shapes of the cases were
either rectangular or in the “flügel” form (like our grand pianos)
to accommodate the gradual shortening of the strings as they reached
the higher octaves, the cases were either small, or larger, and
furnished with magnificent stands, such as were brought out by the
first famous clavier-manufactory, that of the Ruckers at Antwerp, who
flourished at the end of the sixteenth century; there were almost as
many names as shapes. Those with smaller cases were called Virginals,
those in the shape of a swine’s head were called Spinets (“Spinet”
referring to the plectrum of quill); while the larger instruments
were “Clavi-cymbals” (cembalo, a “dulcimer”; though the clavicymbal
was a _harp-with-keys_, not by any means a dulcimer, which is the
progenitor of the pianoforte, a very different matter), or in Italy
“Gravicymbels,” in England “Harpsichords,” in France “Clavecins.”
The keyboard, at first incomplete in the lower “short” octave,[23]
gradually spread itself over three or even five octaves. The fulness
of tone was greater, but the touch necessarily heavier than of old.
The new instrument was unsuited for the quick development of a natural
system of “fingering.”
[Illustration: A Concerted Performance. Engraved by H. Goltzius
(1558-1617).]
The technique of clavier-playing advanced but slowly from the mere
tapping of the finger-ends to the dexterity of to-day, which lays
under contribution the whole arm as far as the elbow. In the first
clavier and organ “school,” which was published by Girolamo Diruta in
Venice about 1600, and which bears the title, “Il Transilvano, sopra
il vero modo di sonare organi e stromenti di Penna,” are already to
be found rules for the use of the fingers, for the holding of the
hands, and as to the differences of organ and clavier-playing; but
fifty years later, according to Weitzmann, Lorenzo Penna,[24] in his
“Albori musicali,” knows no other rules than that the hand should be
raised high, and that, as the right ascends the scale and the left
descends, the third and fourth fingers should be alternately used,
and _vice versa_ with the third and second. Old pictures confirm this
statement. In England we meet notable examples of the influence of
this Italian fingering. The thumb, as the finger that passes under the
others, is still for a long time an _enfant terrible_. The technique
is still that of the zither, simply transferred to keys. It is not
till the time of Bach that the special technique of percussion springs
into existence.
It is astonishing to see what feats were attempted by the old English
masters of the virginal in spite of their scanty means. We feel
how they love this instrument, which, in spite of itself, pointed
out to them the way to the Promised Land of music, namely, to the
stiff rhythm and arrangement of the secular music. For example, we
actually find in the virginal books pieces by the famous Amsterdam
organist, Sweelinck, and arrangements of compositions by Orlando
Lasso, as well as all kinds of transcriptions of Italian works; but
the gems are the variations on popular songs and the dances. In the
contemporary virginal music of Venice this relation is reversed. There
the Ricercari (pieces for lute, organ, or harpsichord, displaying the
tricks of counterpoint), the Toccatas, the Preambles, are overlaid by
the heavy, clumsy harmonies of the Middle Ages; they stagger about in
uncertain syncopations, dabbling with 5/4 time, and confused with the
most intricate figurations. It is only towards the end[25] that they
yield a clear formal idea. Not until the younger Gabrieli do we see
rhythm more clearly defined.
In England, however, the fruitful songs and dances admit none of
these flabby harmonies; all the ornamentation of the variations is
accommodated to the simple fabric of the piece; the clear melody is
allied with an equally clear harmony; and they are woven, by the quick
and light tone of the virginal, into a musical movement which, in
order to live, must include a thousand delicately elaborated _nuances_
of thought.
Compared with the lute dances, which necessarily retained the
stiffness of their fabric, there is here a blossoming field, a
veritable new world. The organ gives the voice parts their character,
the lute supplies their tone-colour, but the child of these two
parents has its own standing and its own future.
About 1500 we meet with the first Old English clavier-pieces, as well
as Aston’s Hornpipe, a variation on a popular song. A manuscript
collection in the British Museum, known as the “Mulliner Book”
(Mulliner was a master in St Paul’s School), offers us the earliest
specimens of clavier-works of this kind, by various masters, from
the middle of the sixteenth century. Many of the pieces by Thomas
Tallis, the old master of this school, are exceedingly rhythmical.
He was organist under four reigns--those of Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Mary and Elizabeth. There is a canon in two parts, in lines which
can be grasped at a glance, and which makes full use of sequential
repetitions--a sure sign, from the early times of church music, of
the advancing rhythmical consciousness. Gradually there is added to
the canon a running bass, which at first sounds twice, and finally
rolls forth quite unhindered, rendering the whole picture easily
grasped by the eye. The unaided eye indeed, in these old pieces, is a
good judge. Without being preoccupied by the archaism, which perhaps
wearies the ear, it detects the intellectual art of the composer, as
it were, at a certain distance. It observes the great and small curves
of the voice-contours, sees the succession of the canonic themes,
notices the parentheses in which long passages are confined, and the
delight of the composer in the clearness of the pattern. It is indeed
as a finely-sewn, carefully-fashioned pattern that we see an exercise
of this kind, simply worked out, but richly adorned with broken
chords--such, for example, as the figuration of the “Felix namque”
which Tallis has as the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book.
The _nuances_ of the accompaniment rejoice in their ornamental
existence.
William Bird, the pupil of Tallis, whose life reaches from 1538 or
1546 to 1623, would be reckoned as the father of modern piano-music,
if only this English school had exerted some influence on art, and did
not stand so isolated in musical history. We shall call him the first
of the clavier-masters. Both organist and singer in the Royal Chapel,
where both services were alternately demanded from all the adult
musicians, he had a considerable interest in the monopoly of music
printing and of the music paper duty which was granted by Elizabeth
first to Tallis and then to him. A happy man he was not; he appears
to have suffered more than most in the religious persecutions of the
time. We have hardly a word in the authorities as to the hours of work
of these old musicians; but indirectly we learn from the Act against
Rogues and Vagabonds that private instruction was a not unusual
_parergon_ of the musicians.
[Illustration: Page from “Parthenia,” the first English engraved
Clavier Music, 1611.]
Prosniz, the collector of all clavier-literature, in his “Handbuch
der Klavierlitteratur”--a work not to be implicitly relied on--calls
Bird’s music coarse and tasteless. Weitzmann agrees, saying that it
is composed with intelligence and art, but heavy and without soul.
But this is the fate of all transition styles. If we observe, from
the standpoint of modern music, the traces of the old style, as for
instance the change of time and the “flabbiness” of the harmony
in the Fantasia, which comes eighth in the Virginal Book, or the
cross-passages in the interesting Piece 60, they are indeed coarse
and tasteless. But we must endeavour in such things to put aside the
modern point of view. Mediæval music is not a preliminary step to
the modern, but something quite different. It is pictorial, as the
other is plastic. If we would hear their “molluscous” harmonies, and
their indistinctness of rhythmical arrangement, we must lay aside
the rhythmical canons of modern music; we must accept the molluscous
nature and want of distinctness as something purposed, and we must
follow without preoccupation this web of voices, enjoying it note by
note. The piece is so delicate, so quite in colour, that the last
note is a shock to us. In fact, the conclusion of these pieces, with
its formal clash, under which the harmonies and voices assemble
themselves in a stiff group, is a contradiction to their inmost being,
a desertion of the pictorial principle and--in a word--the germ of
the coming style. In a greater degree than we can bring ourselves
to believe, the ultra-modern expression-music is allied to this
conception of the art of tone.
It is true that we justly judge Bird chiefly from the modern point
of view, since we are investigating the progress of history, and
therefore work for the new, the developing, rather than for the old.
But it is precisely from this point of view that he presents such
surprises that we are not at first able to form a decisive opinion
about him. I find a quiet pleasure in observing his harmonies, which
are felt rather than calculated, as, for example, the sudden D major
chord in the famous song, “John, come kiss me now” (Virginal Book,
No. 10), and in studying the delicate parallel legato passages,
the gradual change of melody, the growing complexity, the unusual
variations, the alternation of hands, the rhythmical developments. In
the ninth variation there run together plain quavers, dotted quavers,
and the melody above all.
New suggestions, aroused by the clavier, are constantly being
introduced. Prelude xxiv. has a stiff structure. The Passamezzo-Pavan
and Galliard (Nos. 56 and 57) present broken chords as a genuine
clavier-motif, and the most delicate canonic repetitions by means of
a thematic modulation from the key of F to that of G. Very neat is
the descending D C A in the seventh galliard-variation alternating
with E D B. Bird is particularly fond of writing a passage based on a
chord of F, and immediately followed by another based on G. This is
akin to the practice of the drone in bagpipes, and has analogy with
the ancient “Pes,” or “pedal” two-part vocal accompaniment in “Sumer
is icumen in.” The similarity to the bagpipe drone is rather striking
in “The woods so wild” (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, No. 67) or in “The
Bells,” where the lower bell voices repeat themselves in a way that
reminds us of the pedal bass of Chopin’s Berceuse.
The rich technique of “Fortune” (No. 65), the wealth of figures in “O
Mistress Mine” (No. 66), the harmonies of the Passamezzo dances (Nos.
56 and 57), cling to the memory. But chief are his two most modern
clavier-pieces--the variations on “The Carman’s Whistle” (No. 58) and
“Sellinger’s Round” (No. 64, where the piece is complete, not abridged
as in Pauer’s edition). These have often been issued in popular form,
and in Pauer’s collection are provided with modern execution marks.
“The Carman’s Whistle” is a perfected popular melody, one of those
tunes which will linger for days in our ears. At the beginning of the
third and fourth bars Bird sets the first and second bars in canon,
in the simplest and most straightforward style. Next come harmonies
worthy of a Rameau, with the most delicate passing notes. In the
variations certain figures are inserted which are easily worked into
the canonic form, now legato with the charm of the introduction of
related notes, now diatonic scales most gracefully introduced, now
staccato passages which draw the melody along with them like the
singing of a bird. Finally fuller chords appear, gently changing the
direction of the theme. From first to last there is not a turn foreign
to the modern ear.
The “Sellinger’s Round” is more stirring. Its theme is in a swinging
6/8 rhythm, running easily through the harmonies of the tonic, the
super-dominant and the sub-dominant. It strikes one like an old
legend, as in the first part of Chopin’s Ballade in F major, of which
this piece is a prototype. The first variation retains the rhythm and
only breaks the harmonies. Its gentle fugalisation is more distinctly
marked in the third variation, which at the conclusion adopts
running semiquavers, after Bird’s favourite manner, anticipating
at the conclusion of the one variation the motive of the next. The
semiquavers go up and down in thirds, or are interwoven by both hands,
while melody and accompaniment continue their dotted 6/8, in a fashion
reminding us of Schumann. In the later variations the quaver movement
is again taken up, but more florid and more varied with runs which
pursue each other in canon. This piece, perhaps the first perfect
clavier-piece on record, which had left its time far behind, was
written in 1580.
Alongside of William Bird stands Dr John Bull (1563-1628). These two
represent the two types which run through the whole history of the
clavier. Bird, the more intimate, delicate, spiritual intellect; Bull,
the untamed genius, the flashing executant, the restless madcap,
the rougher artist. It is noticeable how these two types stand thus
together on the very threshold of the clavier-art.
John Bull, at nineteen, became organist of Hereford Cathedral, and
at twenty-two a member of the Royal Chapel. In the following year
he becomes Bachelor of Music of Oxford, three years later Doctor of
Music of both Oxford and Cambridge. When, in 1596, Sir Thomas Gresham
founded his College in London, he was made Professor in Music, and
that without (as the statute demanded) lecturing in Latin. But he
held this post no more than five years. We find him, “on grounds of
health,” travelling in foreign countries. His playing created the
greatest enthusiasm. The French, the Spanish, and the Austrian courts
were in a furore. Like all later executants, he is the subject of
myths. There is an anecdote that a kapellmeister of St Omer showed
him, as an extraordinary curiosity, a piece in forty parts.[26] Bull,
nothing daunted, added another forty parts to it. The kapellmeister
stares, and takes him for the devil himself. After an absence of six
years he returned to England, where, like his satanic prototype, he
resists all authority. He resigned all academic positions, threw up
his post in the Royal Chapel, and in 1613 again set out, without
permission, for the Continent. Four years later he emerges as organist
of Notre Dame in Antwerp, where he died in 1628.
[Illustration: John Bull, at the age of 26, after Caldwall’s engraving
in Hawkins.]
From these few biographical notices we figure him as a restless
ambitious spirit. As the peaceful life of a mediæval painter is to
the splendid existence of the seventeenth century artists, so is
the relation of Bird to Bull. And Bull’s works exhibit many of the
lineaments of an elegant _faiseur_.[27] He is not so fond as Bird
of the primeval freshness of the popular songs and dances, nor does
he work out his pieces with Bird’s virgin purity. The side-issue is
often with him the main object; the figuration is often licentious,
and both hands vie in the performance of the closest and most
difficult passages. Often, indeed, his pieces assume a grotesque
appearance, hard and antiquated harmonies, in which the leading note
is conspicuous by its absence, being crossed with runs in semiquavers,
dotted rhythms, rapidly intruded chords, four-fold imitations,
syncopated grace-notes, mingled two and three-time passages in wild
and bewildering confusion. The eye looks as it were on a specimen
of Indian ornamentation, in which, among the confused lines, a pure
human feature is almost indistinguishable. From the first piece of
the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Bull’s thirty “Walsingham” Variations,
which later Bird treats so much more simply, the executant shines out
in his whole personality. There are thirty studies on figure motives
which in Bird are reduced to a dozen. The semiquavers run like will
of the wisps in their most unsubstantial courses, resembling endless
chains, which are here and there interrupted with leaps of a sixth
or seventh, to knit them together in the self-same run higher up or
lower down. The ornamentation is richer than with Bird, melting in
its _sfumato_[28] the lines of the voice almost after the manner of
Couperin. The clavier, even more than the organ, lent itself, with its
isolated tones, to such trills, slurs, and mordents,[29] which give to
the sound an apparently longer existence. It is these that, down to
the time of the German classical music, give the stamp to the special
physiognomy of the clavier-piece. I called them just now _sfumato_.
As in painting the sharp outline of the body gradually gives way
to greater truth to nature, and in Lionardo is replaced by the
specifically pictorial obliteration of the _sfumato_, by which, so to
speak, we see round the corners; so the ornamentation in these pieces,
in which the clavier is seeking its own means of expression, assumes
the habit of obliterating its thin outlines until finally the figures
thus obtained regulate the lines of the melody as a fixed motif, or
even become an end in themselves. It takes an inner effort before we
can transplant ourselves into this old world of ornamentation. We must
learn to feel it as it would be played by the old masters: we must,
if possible, play it ourselves on old and lightly-responding spinets.
Our heavy and serious pianos are unsuitable to them; they sound too
forcibly and harshly. The average pianist cannot play them; and hence,
in his new edition, Pauer has for the most part cut them out.
Doctor Bull’s flying fingers, utterly altering as they did many a
church-tune and many a dance, were constantly making discoveries among
the clavier-figures, just as the worst of executants has since done.
Thus, in Bull’s somewhat bewildering forest, we find many a germ of
future wealth: broken triads, which even in the contrary motion of
both hands delight us in the midst of all kinds of consecutive fifths;
broken octaves, of which Beethoven was so fond, a greater frequency
of the crossing of the hands, by which the voice-part gained a wider
field, and finally endless repetitions of the same note, either singly
or in the middle of a passage,--this last a genuine clavier-device,
for which later the new repeating mechanism was invented. Also, in
harmonic relation, Bull seeks out many novelties, boldly bending the
voice-part to his will; as he does in the truly stupendous Prelude
No. 43, in the Virginal Book, or in the bold enharmonic modulation
in Piece 51, an exercise in DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, a theme which
appears a tone higher at each repetition, starting from G, in the
midst of close figuration, until the C sharp simply changes to D flat.
There is a Lute Book of Bull’s in Vienna which gives us pieces like
the following: “Miserere Mei,” “Galliard,” “La chasse du Roy,” “Salve
Regina,” “Canon perpetuus, carens scriptura, notulis in systemati
positis scriptus,” and so on. Let us not think too badly of them.
The Virginal Book also has a variegated collection. In the time of
variations, “variatio delectat,” there are collections for household
use, which are not necessarily an indication of a want, on the part of
the originator, of the sense of the characteristic in an instrument.
At this epoch the instrument delivers men from the mediæval love of
grouping instruments. And I even find that Bull in certain pieces has
shown a noteworthy sense for characteristic. He has once a simple
bag-pipe melody e f e d e f d c, called “Les Buffons,” with a series
of variations in humorous style. There are at first chords with simple
broken accompaniment, then hopping semiquaver figures, then a popular
canon, then slurred sixths, and similarly right on to the conclusion,
which is as usual fully harmonised, in the turns of which, of course,
his want of plasticity, as contrasted with Bird, is clearly shown.
More striking still is the working out of his best-known piece, the
variations on the fresh delightful song, the “King’s Hunt,” giving
us a romantic reminiscence of horns and trumpets. Something of this
romance runs through his figures. He uses the horn-motive of the
second part specially for a longer variation, which is simple and full
of character. The flourish of runs in quavers, which he also uses in
Galliard No. 17 of the Virginal Book, and the systematic answering of
right-hand chords by the left hand, which appears also in Galliard 11,
are here specially characteristic. We seem to see tramping horses and
waving flags delineated in ancient technique. He was specially good
in such hunting pieces. On the musical side, as his somewhat awkward
variations on the fine “Jewel,” though among his best pieces, clearly
show, he cannot be compared to the magical Bird; but his sense for
characteristic and for technique has aided the advance of the clavier.
Both of these superiorities are parts of his nature, which expressed
itself most completely in this style. The clavier needed both types.
[Illustration: Henry Purcell, 1658-1695.]
The most characteristic and notable piece of this school is the third
in the Virginal Book, a Fantasia by John Munday, which represents no
less a phenomenon than the changes of the weather. Over its sections,
which have no thematic connection, but have various distinctions
of rhythm--_e.g._, quietly moving semibreves and minims; jerky
dotted quavers interspersed with semiquaver rests; extensive runs in
semiquavers, etc.--he writes in this succession four times each, “Fine
Weather,” “Lightning,” and “Thunder.” Instead of “fine” appears once
“warm” weather; and a slow passage, marked “a clear day,” forms the
conclusion. The characterisation is of course extremely superficial,
and the last time the lightning rolls just like the thunder. But this
novelty, as a symptom, ought not to be overlooked. It reveals to us
the consciousness of characteristic, and the increasingly intimate
character of the clavier. Technically, Bull inaugurated a school.
Of the various authors of the Virginal Book, Ferdinand Richardson
(who exhibits pure part-writing), Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons,
Peter Philips, to a large extent follow his footsteps. Farnaby thus
early writes pieces for two virginals; he darts, in the midst of
his technique, through a graceful “Spagnioletta,” and often lights
on interesting modern passing chords, as, for example, running
upwards, b, f sharp, d, a, where a follows b and c d. In the use of
chords Peter Philips (who arranges many pieces of Orlando Lassus
in the Virginal Book) stands in the first rank. In the Pavan (No.
76), which is dated 1592, he has in the conclusion[30] unheard-of
simple alternating triads; in the Galliard he deals with the most
beautiful suspended chords; and in the “Galiarda Dolorosa” (No. 81) he
introduces chromatic colouring.[31] We can perceive how much he must
have learnt on his Italian and Dutch travels from the flourishing art
of the Continent. The spirit of Bird does not exert so powerful or so
enduring an influence as that of Bull. The anonymous Piece 14 of the
Virginal Book is a famous Alman (German dance), which in the severity
of its subject reminds us of Bird, and its working-out is done by
means of single-note passages of melodious motive.
[Illustration: The so-called “Hand” of Guido of Arezzo, with an early
and extensively used diagram of the scale-notation.]
In their clearness of arrangement and harmonious development, so far
as they do not deal with dance or song, the majority of the pieces
of the Virginal Book are marked by the spirit of the Toccata of the
great Dutchman Sweelinck, which appears as Piece 96. Here the spirit
of Bach is seen before its time. Gradually the distinctive edges of
individuality fade away. A piece by Thomas Morley on the theme, “Goe
from my window,” whose melody he himself partially employs again in
his “Nancie,” appears again almost unaltered in the same Virginal
Book, and is then ascribed to John Munday. With John Blow, Henry
Purcell, Thomas Augustine Arne, in the following generations,[32]
English clavier music blends with the general Continental stream,
till it is absorbed and must seek its nourishment from without.
[1] The Cor Anglais is mentioned here as expressing a
tone-colour which is entirely foreign to the pianoforte.
This instrument is the alto hautboy. Its name is a curious
instance of a “ghost” word, viz.: in its original meaning,
“Cor anglé,” a bent or “angled” tube, German “Krummhorn,”
it was misunderstood and explained as Cor Angl_ais_, Corno
Inglese, English Horn.
[2] Readers who do not know the picture must not be misled
by this expression. St Jerome’s window-frames are filled
with numberless little rounds of bottle-glass.