clown reproves their nasal tone. Othello himself gave them
money to go away, which argues rather in his favour. As for
Caliban, he was a true musician, except when drunk. Even
then he liked howling catches. See especially Tempest, Act
iii. 2, 136.
[4] This passage is the only one in Shakespeare where the
slightest inaccuracy or looseness in the use of a technical
word is to be noticed. The word “jacks” is here used
carelessly, meaning the “keys,” over which of course the
fingers walk, and which leap up to kiss the inward of the
hand. The actual “jacks” are _inside_ the instrument.
[5] _Cf._ Shakespeare on “eight-bar strains.” See
“Shakespeare and Music” (Dent), by E. W. Naylor.
[6] Readers to whom this ancient method of composition
is new will find in Mendelssohn’s “St Paul,” an easily
accessible example, viz.: the chorus “But our God abideth
in Heaven,” where the second trebles sing in long notes the
old melody of the Apostles’ Creed. No one could recognise
it in the midst of the counterpoint of the other vocal
parts, and this is the point in question; namely, that the
mediæval writers used secular tunes in the same way, and
were held blameless.
[7] Named after Jacques Arcadelt, of the early sixteenth
century, one of the many natives of Flanders who so
distinguished that period of Madrigal composition; a
first-rate man.
[8] Doubtless the author refers to the tendency in
the sixteenth century for voice parts to be made
interchangeable with instrumental parts. Many instances
might be given both in Italy and England, _e.g._ if a
tenor voice were absent, the part was played by a tenor
instrument, viol, cornetto, trombone, or what not. This
was the more easily made habitual since instrumental
accompaniment merely consisted in doubling the vocal parts.
[9] This paragraph replaces some rather obscure sentences
in the original, and aims at conveying their general sense.
[10] An excellent book, which ought to be known widely,
containing many examples of early lute music, is W. G. v.
Wasielewski’s History of sixteenth century instrumental
music. Berlin, 1878.
[11] Meaning the “Tablature,” a system of writing music
for the lute which has nothing in common with our “staff”
notation. A set of six horizontal lines (representing six
strings), was used, and letters (_a_, _b_, _c_, etc.) on
these indicated the semitones, reckoning _a_ as the “open
string,” _b_ as the semitone above that, and so on, for
each separate string.
[12] Another spelling for Pavana, or Pavan, slow dance in
square time.
[13] The play was _Gorboduc_, otherwise _Ferrex and
Porrex_. The author is better known as Thomas Sackville.
[14] See “Shakespeare and Music,” pp. 169-171, for other
English examples.
[15] “The English call it quite appositely by the name
‘Consort’ (from Latin consortium) when several persons with
various instruments, such as ... etc. ... play together in
sweet concord with one another.”
[16] It is misleading to say “in six parts.” There are six
voices, but the canon proper only takes four. The other two
sing, independently of the canon, a “bussing bass,” founded
alternately on Do and Re.
[17] In the early seventeenth century it was matter of
complaint in England that “French songs” and instrumental
music “in the Italian manner” were more popular than
necessary.
[18] These were also called by the plain English name
“fancies.”
[19] When Sir Toby says to the caper-cutting Sir Andrew: “I
did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was
formed _under the star_ of a galliard,” may he not refer to
one of these dedications of dances to noblemen?
[20] _Drehleier._ The instrument referred to is of the
ninth century.
[21] _Bundfrei_ and _gebunden_, the former only was capable
of striking any combination of notes at once--_e.g._, four
or five adjacent semitones.
[22] One of the many names of what we know best as
“harpsichord.”
[23] What were known as “short octaves” were to be seen
almost in our own time in certain old organs. For three
centuries the following or a similar arrangement was
practised. Supposing the lowest notes of the keyboard ran
thus: E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, the first E being that
under the bass staff. But when the E key was put down, the
note _sounded_ was the C a third below; when the F sharp
key was played, the resulting note was the D below; the G
sharp key produced the low E, which should have had its
own key to itself. Thus the keyboard, which apparently
stopped at E under the bass staff, really had D and C
below, arranged to sound on two other keys. So to produce a
diatonic scale beginning from the low C of the violoncello,
the keys actually played had to be: E, F sharp, G sharp, F,
G, etc., which would produce C, D, E, F, G, etc.
[24] Penna’s name should not be connected with the word
“Penna” in the title of Diruta’s book, where it merely
means “quill,” and “stromenti di Penna” = “harpsichords.”
[25] This is also the case with the English variations. The
last one is commonly the most valuable and convincing.
[26] It is right to mention here that Thomas Tallis
actually did write a motet in forty parts, “Spem in alium
non habui,” which, thanks to the enthusiasm of Dr Mann of
Cambridge, has been published (1888), and performed in
public on more than one occasion during the last few years.
[27] Meaning a “manufacturer” of show pieces.
[28] _Sfumato_ means “smoky,” and refers, in painting, to
the blurring of the outlines.
[29] The mordent is a grace where the main note is
alternated rapidly with the note below.
[30] This is a really fine passage, and (by the way) bears
every mark of the madrigal for double chorus.
[31] The passage has four times over a chromatic scale
of six notes, _every note_ properly harmonised. Neither
Purcell (a century later) nor Bach (later still) could have
done it better.
[32] The author here makes a startling leap of a century
or so in his chronicle of English composers. From Munday,
who was a grown man in 1586, he suddenly goes to Blow and
Purcell, who flourished in 1690, and even mentions Arne in
the same breath, who died in 1778.
The “isolation” of the early English clavier school is
fairly explained by the immense amount of attention
that was now given, from 1600-1695, in England, to the
development of the dramatic scena or cantata, for one
or two voices, to the song, and to the cultivation of
concerted music for strings and keyed instruments. It is
only to prevent any one from supposing that there was _no_
“secular” music in England between the days of Elizabeth
and the coming of Purcell that I give a few names, all of
which have a real claim to remembrance. Songs--Campion
(flourished 1600), Johnson (1600), Cæsar (early 17th
cent.), Cooper (1612), Laneare (1620), H. Lawes (1630),
Wilson (1640). Cantatas or “Scenas”--H. Lawes (1630), C.
Colman (1640). Instrumental music--Gregorie (mid. 17th
cent.), Jenkins (1630), W. Lawes (1630), Lock (1650),
Sympson (1660).
[Illustration: D’Anglebert, Chamber Musician to Louis XIV., after
Mignard.]
Old French Dance-Pieces
The independent musical fame of England--omitting Purcell, the
evening star--rests solely on this early period. Hence we have been
led to trace the musical history of England further back than that
of countries where the stream spread over a wider area. Old English
music, indeed, had no influence worthy of the name. It stands, like
a half-mediæval prelude, before the actual history of the piano. It
is true that it shows the forces which are to work in the future;
but they are not yet brought into the line which they are constantly
and exclusively to follow. This process begins rather in France; it
unites itself later with a second movement which comes from Italy,
and follows a broader and more lively path through Germany until it
reaches our own times.
Oskar Fleischer, the founder of the splendid Berlin collection of
old musical instruments, has endeavoured, in his book on Gaultier,
the great French lute-player, to describe English and French
relations in the seventeenth century. But the hints which, in his
view, the elder Gaultier[33] gained in England, are only matters of
execution. Flourishes which in England were marked, without precise
discrimination, with / or //, found a more exact representation among
French lutenists. I do not mean that every performer did not put his
own interpretation upon them. Every lutenist or clavier-player issues
a new code of these _agréments_; but the basis remains essentially
the same, and it is possible that the flourishes were adopted, by
an impulse derived from England, into lute-music and thence into
clavier-music. Thence they soon spread themselves over the whole
musical field. But it is a mistake to imagine that these _agréments_,
which infest old French compositions like locusts, were a peculiarity
of the country, the “style galant” of France. The peculiarity lies
elsewhere, in the form, in the dance.
English clavier-music had attached itself to the song. From the
song it derived its stiffness of form and the grace of its melodic
outline--two important aids in the advance of music. But its treatment
of these pieces was conducted in a manner which reminds us of the
middle ages of music. The form, a continuous succession of variations,
sprang from the idea of figuration, which constituted the essence
of mediæval music; and the voice parts were worked out in general
on the fugal principle or in canonic imitation, both factors of the
mediæval music. The early ripening of English music, and its close
connection with the old Dutch vocal or organ composition, brought it
about that the _form_ rested still partly on tradition, while the
_content_ already pointed towards the future. Even dances were worked
out in this manner, which belonged especially to the time. In France
the system was the exact opposite. There, the form of the variation,
and the absolutely fugal clavier-exercise, are as seldom found as the
simply-harmonised song.
The emancipation in France was due to the attainment of a point of
departure which was as distant as possible from anything vocal. The
dance--although of course there were some sung dances--had early
allied itself with the purely instrumental exercise. It has never been
treated so entirely “à plaisir des gorges,”[34] as Gargantua expresses
it. It had a stiff arrangement in common with a stiff harmony. It
never showed much affinity with the contrapuntal twists and turns of
the voice, to which song associates itself so easily from its close
connection with choral music. If we compare the earliest instrumental
dances of the sixteenth century with the dances, in several parts, of
the old song-books--the “Rat’s-Tail,” the “Crane-Bill,” “Fox-Tail,”
“Cat’s-Paw,” “Peacock’s-Tail,” and the like, we see how rapidly the
influence of the instrument over a clear and light vocal current was
increased in France. Here especially does the dance, from the very
earliest times, enjoy great popularity. It is very early set to the
lute or the clavier, other instruments being but rarely employed. Men
grew accustomed to pieces in a condensed musical style, harmonised
simply and melodiously, contracted in form. These were regarded on
their own merits, and not as subjects for variations and figurations.
It was for this reason that the French clavier-piece was more
fruitful, more musical, and more capable of development than the
English.
The dance then is the darling conception of French music; and
French dances are the nucleus of all instrumental music. So early
as 1530--for we can go back a great distance--the Paris printer,
Attaignant, the oldest of French note-engravers, published all
kinds of musical volumes “reduict de musique en la tablature du jeu
d’Orgues, Espinettes, Manicordions,”[35] etc. We wonder to-day how M.
Attaignant could transcribe his pieces “out of music” into the script
of organs, spinets and monochords. But by “music” he meant nothing
more nor less than song, and song, down to his day, was nothing more
nor less than music. A few years after the German music-publisher
Agricola[36] wrote:--
“Drumb lern singen du kneblein klein
Itzund inn den jungen jarn dein,
Recht nach musicalischer art
Las aber keinen vleis gespart.”
“Thou little boy, come learn to sing,
Now, ere thy youth has taken wing.
Let all be done with art refined,
And give thereto thy heart and mind.”
[E. E. K.]
For music, he had once before said, is the foundation on which
all instruments rest. Attaignant was one of the first to make
transcripts of this “music” for keyed instruments. Nay, more; as far
as our knowledge goes, he was the first who in general printed for
such instruments. On his title-pages stand for the first time the
words spinet and clavichord, although the claims of the organ are
allowed. And it is noteworthy that the dances play the principal
part in his books. Here the Frenchman already peeps out. Galliards,
Basse-dances,[37] Branles, Pavans, are brought into a clear and
relatively good harmonic form, without much complication of the
instrumental parts. They are often, as for example in a charming
Galliard in F major, of entrancing _naiveté_. Not too many runs in the
treble, not too much harmony in the bass, and all exquisitely adapted
for the instrument.[38]
A hundred years after, the dance still rules French music, and not
merely French music, but French life. The forms of social intercourse,
as they were fashioned for the universal use of Europe at the court
of the Parisian princes, were modelled on the broad rhythms of
the dance. Going and coming, bowing and sitting, complimenting
and smiling--all the pleasure in the formal beauty of hollow
conventionalities, all this is nothing but the light and yet regulated
step, the theatrical and yet sympathetic essence of the dance. The
French people, having resolved to live their life, determined to do it
prettily; and therefore to put even their ordinary motions and common
gestures under the mild rule of the dancing master. Even in rough and
ready England, traces of this are extant; witness the would-be grace
of the formula of “introduction.”
In lute-music the dance takes the form of ceaseless corantos
and sarabands; on the stage it supplies the framework for the
love-representations of the time. In 1671 appeared _Pomona_, Perrin
and Cambert’s first French public opera. In it, cattle drivers and
agricultural labourers ply their dances. The great Lully, most fertile
composer of the nobly tedious French national operas, is inconceivable
apart from the school of the dance. His tunes, at every possible
opportunity, run off into the beloved dances of three or four strains,
now inserted in airs and prologues, now as episodic dances. By this
means the flexibility of the voice parts increases year by year;
and since Lully is a composer for the clavier, many of his dances
easily adapt themselves to clavier-arrangements, to which indeed they
are very early subjected. Lully is the most vigorous teacher in the
rehearsal of opera-dances. The style and the school of dances reach
such a height in Paris, that they give the law to the whole world just
as their social etiquette does. “France,” writes Mattheson, “is and
remains the true school of dancing.”
After the time of Lully, who had done so much for the development of
the characteristic dance, the art advances with rapid strides. The
Pantomime was invented by the Duchess of Maine: it was in 1708, at her
famous festivals, “les Nuits de Sceaux,” that the last scene of the
fourth act of Corneille’s “Horace,” was pantomimically represented
with musical accompaniment.
[Illustration: Le Maître de Musique. Painting by Jan Steen
(1626-1679), in the National Gallery, London.]
Of old the parts of women in the dance had been taken by men. Lully
ventured to introduce female dancers. Here begins the epoch of famous
“danseuses” who, in accordance with a natural law, become the centre
of public interest. We owe to Castil Blaze a list of those _grandes
dames_ who took up the profession. Henceforward the art of song and
that of dancing divided equally the popular affection, for the two
were not always separate callings. La Prévost was the first to essay
a solo dance, which she set to a violin solo of Rebel. La Pélissier
inaugurated costume-dances. She had purchased the whole wardrobe of
Adrienne Lecouvreur, lately deceased, and was thus able to appear in
the ballet “Le Carneval et la Folie,” in the characters of Jocasta,
Mariamne, Zenobia, Chimène, Roxana, Paulina, Célimène, Agatha, and
Elvira. Next we see rising the star of La Camargo, who from her début
in the ballet “Caractères de la Danse,” was the amazement of the
world, the discoverer of operatic airs set to the dance, the glass of
fashion, the arbitress of mode, against whose decisions there was no
appeal. But, as Castil Blaze tells us in his history of the French
theatre, all were surpassed by La Sallé, with her noble figure, her
lovely form, her perfect grace, her dancing so full of expression and
voluptuous languor. Not only does she dance; she writes dances. She
invents a Pygmalion, in which the divine statue assumes life, and
engages in a long pantomime with the sculptor, who teaches her to
assume her humanity by means of the measured motions of the dance. La
Sallé brought this ballet on the stage in London first and then in
Paris; and the London correspondent of the _Mercure de France_ writes
to his paper of the extraordinary furore created by the new art. For
Sallé had at last rejected the lingering relics of the old ballet--the
anachronisms of costume--in order to be able to give full expression
to the spirit of the dance. “She ventured,” says the correspondent,
“to appear without skirt or bodice, with loose hair, and absolutely
unadorned. Over corset and undergarments she had only a simple muslin
dress, and seemed the very image of a Greek statue.” Sallé appears
to have practised her dances without virtuosity, as a mere artistic
representation. She essayed no acrobatic leaps, no _entrechats_, no
pirouettes. Contrasting her with Camargo, Voltaire exclaimed:--
“Ah, Camargo, que vous êtes brillante!
Mais que Sallé, grands dieux, est ravissante!
Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux!
Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle:
Les Nymphes sautent comme vous,
Et les Graces dansent comme elle.”
The victories of the dance were universal. Even public ceremonies were
taken up in its advance. The “Messe des Révérences” was altered into
the “Ballet des Écrevisses.” In their first delight of dominion, love
and the pleasure of life revel in the light and magical rhythms of the
dance. The great and flourishing masked balls of the opera, acquiring
a new rapture, lead on to new dances--the Calotins, the Farandoule,
the Rats, Jeanne qui saute, Liron Lirette, le Poivre, la Fürstemberg,
le Cotillon qui va toujours, la Monaco--old songs of universal popular
origin; or, like wines and laws, named after towns and races, and now,
as dances, naturalised on the parquet. How ancient is this connection
between song and dance, in which the name of the song remains attached
to the dance! This is a process which is of daily occurrence in our
music-halls.
Famous _danseuses_ received characteristic nicknames. The elder
Duval du Tillet was called “La Constitution,” because her father
was an eminent clerical constitutionalist; the younger was
affectionately dubbed “Church Calendar.” La Mariette was called
“the Princess,” on more private grounds. It was the same with their
male companions. The three brothers Malter were called “the Bird,”
“the Devil,” and “Knickerbockers.” I stay to refer to this as this
French nickname-mania explains the bizarre inscriptions of so many
clavier-pieces. An amusing story is told of a certain Cléron, who, in
the demi-mondaine circles from which her beauty and seductive arts
had brought her to the opera, was known as “Frisky” (Frétillon). In
the opera she greeted her new friends very affectionately, but added,
“I shall do my best to be agreeable to you; but if any one calls me
Frisky, let him know I will give him the best box on the ear he
ever had in his life.” Mademoiselle Cléron was no boaster, adds the
narrator, and was pretty likely to keep her word.
The due understanding of old French clavier-music then, must start
from the knowledge of the dance. Almost all its pieces are dances,
whether they declare themselves as such or not. They take up the
numerous existing dance-forms and develop them in the ways already
described. But in addition to this formal principle we must notice a
second, the symbolic. The pieces _mean_ something, and mean more and
more the further the century advances. As if to console themselves for
the want of content which belongs to the dance in itself, composers
are fond of indicating in their titles and dedications all kinds of
relations which give to their pieces a more marked physiognomy or a
more comprehensible expressiveness. For this purpose they had not only
at their disposal the old song-names which clung to the dances, but
a hundred other associations. They loved the dance, but they loved
associations also. Nicknames and allusions flew from the smiling lips,
and men had the fairest inducements to take the abstract in a concrete
sense. The chief inducement was the stage with its representative
music, the stage, so passionately loved by the French in the middle
ages that even from the thirteenth century we have dramatic lyrical
plays with the most delicate songs by the trouvère Adam de la Hale.
These stand like flowers in the midst of their time, and penetrated
so deeply into the life of the people that the little song of Marion
“Robin m’aime” is still, they say, sung in the Hennegau. The fairies,
which had already played their part in the works of this mediæval
opera-composer and writer, had in the later French opera their rich
harvest of beings of symbolic meaning. In Lully’s works there is quite
a swarm of abstract figures, gods, demi-gods, personifications, which
in small scenes or great airs bring out this characterising function
of music to the utmost degree possible. But what such things as the
good and bad Dreams, or the nymphs and Corybantes in the “Atys,”
entering as chorus, performed in characteristic music was as nothing
to what was done by the great ballets which drew heaven and hell
into the circle of their representations. “Le Triomphe des Sens,”
“Les Voyages d’Amour,” “Les Génies,” “Le Triomphe de l’Harmonie,”
“L’Ecole des Amants”--all these are titles of operas and ballets of
those times which had as their aim to represent musical things as
symbols of sensuous incidents. From the lists of ballets and operas
performed from Lully’s time right into the eighteenth century the
application of fêtes, rococo-amusements, love-pictures by Watteau, or
idyllic porcelain-ornamentation, to stage purposes, speaks with no
uncertain sound. In such an environment, recollecting the renowned
fantastic art of the contemporary Callot, we are led to understand the
unusual preference for the direct association of clavier-pieces with
particular persons or things.
But here we must speak specially of programme-music.