horn-echoes, was inserted by Tielman Sufato in his collection of 1551.
Shortly before that date a Zürich lute book included dance-songs,
“mitsampt dem Vogelgesang und einer Feldschlacht.” The song of birds,
the imitation of animals, and all kinds of confused shrieking--a
comic counterpoint--offers rich material to the programme-music of
the sixteenth century. Even before an Italian had written the famous
fugal chorus, in which the scholars, with a comical employment of the
dismembered canonic voice-exercise, declined _qui_, _quæ_, _quod_, in
the ears of the raging schoolmaster--even before this, contrapuntal
janglings were well known. Jannequin, the Frenchman, depicted in
_chansons_ with many parts the battle of Marignano, the capture of
Boulogne, war, jealousy, women’s gossip, the hare and hounds; or, on
the other hand, the song of birds, the lark or the nightingale. We
hear in the music of this time the thirds of the cuckoo, the clucking
dactyls of the hen, the chromatic mewings of the cat, the trills of
song-birds. The boldest of these pieces--an earlier Howleglass--was
perhaps Eckard’s representation of the turmoil in St Mark’s Place at
Venice (1589), in which noblemen, beggars, hawkers, soldiers, appear
with all the artistic counterpoint appropriate to their respective
classes. Thus programme-music, in the sixteenth century, enjoyed
an international repute. It must not, however, be regarded as an
achievement of modern music, but rather as something as old as music
itself. The tempest which the Greek Timotheus represented on the
kithara, and the fight of Apollo with the Python, which Timosthenes
depicted on the flute and kithara, in all its stages--the challenge,
the struggle, the hissing, the victory--had a renown in very ancient
times. Programme-music belongs to all ages of musical development,
and appears always as a natural phenomenon, never as a revolutionary
movement. It marks the _ne plus ultra_ of the need of musical
expression, which cannot find satisfaction in pure musical forms, and
seeks to justify itself by extra-musical titles. Thus on the extreme
limit of ancient hymn-music stood a Timosthenes, on that of mediæval
choral-music a Jannequin, on that of modern instrumental music a
Berlioz.
We can trace the psychology of this programme-music with great ease
in the French instrumental art of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. From the first definite orchestral programme-piece--the
storm in Marais’ opera Alcyone--to the volume of François Dandrieu,
“contenant plusieurs Divertissements dont les principaux sont les
caractères de la guerre, ceux de la chasse, et la fête de Village”;
from the lute-dances of Gaultier to the clavier-pieces of Rameau, we
see nothing but an endeavour of the developed dance-form to enter
into relations with actual life--an endeavour which leads to the
manifold names of the pieces. Formerly the dances had taken their
names from the songs. Now, as definite pieces, they are so full of
special significance, so rich in all kinds of characteristic figures
and harmonies, that the composer feels his mind insensibly drawn to
incidents of life, of persons, of characters, humours, landscapes,
and calls upon all his fertility in association to fashion decorative
titles out of them. Music, which has arrived at the limits of
the traditional dance-forms, passes over from the formal to the
characteristic. As Berlioz’ Queen Mab is nothing but a further
development of Beethoven’s Scherzos, and not a heaven-descended music,
discovered in Shakespeare, so the pieces of the great clavierist
Couperin, whether they have descriptions of humours or personal names
for titles, are merely the developments of dances, which, so fertile
were they, reminded the composer of life itself. Couperin himself
declares that he gives in his pieces portraits, which appear to give
to others also, before whom they are performed, the actual features
of the models. But it is obvious that he could hold himself as a
portrait-painter, only so far as his music was rich enough, by its
definite relations to actual life, to give clearer definition and
a distinct picture to its stream as it flowed in a thousand forms.
Like all programme-musicians, he is such, not from poverty in musical
invention, but from wealth. The French are a people that revel in the
fulness of forms, and find their very life in the special magic of the
formal presentation of all things, whether social or artistic. Thus in
their hands all musical forms, melodious, harmonic, rhythmic, grew so
luxuriantly, that at all times, from Jannequin to St Saens, in order
to live they have necessarily turned to programme-music.
Yet the titles of the clavier-pieces are not fully explained by
this reference to the value of programme-music for the French mind.
We must take into consideration also an old decorative tradition.
Let us open the magnificent volume of lute-pieces by the famous
Denis Gaultier,[39] which came into the Berlin Museum of Engravings
along with the Hamilton collection. It is fantastically called “La
Rhetorique des Dieux,” because only gods could speak so movingly by
music, and equally fantastically he introduces all kinds of titles for
the pieces, such as “Phaethon struck by lightning,” “le Panégyrique,”
Minerva, Ulysses, Andromeda, Diana, “la Coquette virtuosa,” and
the like, besides several “Tombeaux,” by which term dedications to
deceased persons were generally indicated.[40] If we compared these
sixteenth century pieces with their names, a certain nimble fancy
is required to find actual programme-music in them. Of a genuine
representation of the content there is no pretence. Minerva, Echo,
and the Coquette would seem to have more in common than they ever
suspected. The titles are nothing but decorative stamps, resembling
those medallions of Aphrodite which are so often engraved over a
love-poem. The interpretation is always in the widest spirit possible.
It is amusing to see how the editor of the collection labours to
explain the names while confining himself exclusively to the vaguest
generalities. On “l’Homicide,” or The Fair Murderess, as it is also
named, he writes: “This fair creature deals death to every one who
sees and hears her; but this death is so unlike the usual death that
it is the beginning of a life, not its end.” It could not easily
be more plainly indicated that there is no clear representation of
anything to be seen in the piece, and that the title is a piece of
self-flattery in the dress of the fantastic. Already had the elder
Gaultier, the founder of this lute-school, recognised, or perhaps
even invented, these decorative titles, such as “le canon,” “la
conquérante,” “les larmes du Boset,” or “la volte,” “l’immortelle,”
“le loup.” This last, it is certain, is no ordinary wolf, but howls so
musically that it is really a man.
The custom of adding decorative titles was made universal by the
lute-players, but the tone-painting must always have been of the
slightest. Otherwise the old historian of the lute, Baron, could
not have been so irritated at them as to write, some decades later,
“Gallot has given such strange names to his pieces that we have need
of close study to see their relation with the subject. For example,
when he wishes to express thunder and lightning on the lute, it is
a pity he has never added a note to tell us _when_ it lightens and
_when_ it thunders.” (We are reminded of the old English clavier-piece
on the same theme.) “We shall seldom,” he adds, “light on a French
piece but the name of some noble dame is attached to it, after whom,
if she so pleases, the piece is named.”
The clavier-players adopted this custom all the more willingly as
their instrument, so full of resource and so capable of expressing
shades of meaning, allowed them to raise these titles from their
decorative and shadowy existence into genuine programme-inscriptions.
We see this remarkable process clearly exhibited in Chambonnières, a
clavier-player who towers in solitary grandeur, and marks an epoch by
his introduction of the clavier _suite_, by the clear adaptation of
his dances to the clavier, by the first realistic use of these titles,
and by the establishment of a precise character in the clavier-piece,
which holds its ground even to-day. He is not, like William Bird, the
original of modern clavier-music, but its actual father, from whom a
straight unbroken line stretches down to the present day.
Jacques Champion de Chambonnières sprang from an old family of
organists, and was born at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The year of his death seems to be fixed as 1670. Titon des Tilliers,
who in 1732 wrote his “Parnasse Français,” a work of great antiquarian
research, says of Chambonnières that he played the organ very well,
but the clavier with special genius, and that his pieces as well
as his execution gained a considerable renown. His fame increased
until Louis XIV. appointed him his chief clavier-master; and his
compositions appeared in two volumes. In Titon’s times these pieces
were still admired. Copies of these works are very rarely to be found
to-day; but the great French historian, Farrenc, had the good luck to
get possession of one of them, and he has freshly edited it in his
famous collection of old clavier-music, “Le Trésor des Pianistes.”
While Attaignant still bound his dances together according to their
classes, there are here mixed sets of dance-pieces after the example
of the lutenists, in simple setting, but with the adornments of the
time. The succession is not yet so elaborate as in later _suites_, and
_courantes_ stand often one on top of another. The construction of the
melodies has still a certain gentle, unforced charm, which gains our
attention though its influence is scarcely irresistible. The canonic
element appears strongly only in the Gigues, three-time dances with a
lively movement. Every piece has its dance-inscription, and some have
in addition their special titles, as La Dunkerque, La Verdinguette,
la Toute Belle, Iris; or more distinct indications as the Slider,
the Barricades, the Young Zephyrs, the Peasant Girl. A Pavan with
slow conclusion in three sections is called “The Conversation of the
Gods.” Here the sliding, the zephyr, and the peasant, are easily to
be recognised in the music. Nevertheless, complete liberation from
the merely decorative framework of the fantastic title was not yet
attained.
The man to accomplish the great work was François Couperin, called
by his time “the Great.” The piano-player of to-day hardly knows
his name; and yet it is only two hundred years since men spoke of
him in the same breath with Molière and Watteau. A genial, smiling,
clean-shaven man--so the somewhat unsatisfactory portraits depict
him--with half-length peruke, polite and yet slightly subtle, with a
certain priestly sobriety of demeanour, his light fingers run over
the hundred adornments of his spinet-pieces. He seems half astonished
at his fame, and wholly ignorant that a whole art is one day to
rear itself on his shoulders. It was only with difficulty that the
pressure of his friends induced him to print his dances, which he
wrote for himself in memory of his experiences, or the preludes which
he wrote as exercises for his numerous pupils, or the concertos which
he composed for Louis XIV.’s Sunday musical evenings. He watched
with painful anxiety the tedious process of engraving. As we to-day
inspect these prints, we are struck by the joyous _naïveté_ of the
art, by the graphic awkwardness with which the notes overflow the
five-lined limits of the clef, and by the soul which breathes from
the delicately-engraved prefaces. He thinks that his portraits are
accurate pictures, and thankfully acknowledges his indebtedness to the
intimate character of his instrument. His notes as to execution, his
“gaiement,” “tendrement,” and “sans lenteur” (he is always warning the
performer against slowness) and all the other guides to interpretation
which he inserts, he excuses by saying that the pieces seemed to
express something which could not be embraced in accurate language.
In spite of all this pedantry of teaching he appeals to the sensitive
musical appreciation which will find the right way of interpretation;
and in spite of all this reference to the spiritual momentum of music
he is a stern disciplinarian in form and technique. In the midst of
the utmost freedom of movement we discern a strong feeling for style,
just as in the contemporary architecture the most playful license
of the rococo is strangely mingled with the most sober attention to
classical rules.
[Illustration: François Couperin, “Le Grand.”]
The Couperins, like the Chambonnières, were a widely spread musical
family. It was old Chambonnières who, in a noteworthy fashion, had
discovered Louis Couperin, the uncle of François. One morning the
father of François and his two brothers who lived in the neighbourhood
of the old master, brought a serenade for his inspection.
Chambonnières was struck with it, asked after the composer, brought
him to Paris, and thus laid the foundation of the fame of the family
from which the great perfecter of his work was to spring. François was
born in 1668. He lost his father when he was ten years old, but in
Tomelin, the organist of St Jacques-la-Boucherie, he found a teacher
and a second father. His life, as its details have come down to us,
was simple and uneventful. He became organist of St Gervais and
chamber-clavierist to the king, and died in 1733. But the dedications
of his works enable us to conceive him more definitely. He appears
in them as the professional artist and man of the world, pampered by
noble ladies, and kissing their hands with graceful flatteries. We
see him as he moves in the salons of Paris, which were then beginning
to realise their mission. He is the admired artist of the court
which he charms with his chamber-music; the intimate of the Duke of
Burgundy and of the Dauphin, of Anne and Louis of Bourbon, giving his
lessons and receiving pensions of a thousand francs. A true lady’s
man, he thinks the hands of women better adapted to the clavier than
those of men. He is the first to sanction ladies in his own family
as clavier-players. His daughter Marguerite Antoinette, and his
cousin Louise, played at court. Marguerite even became the teacher
of the Princesses, and was official royal clavier-player--in France
certainly, and probably in the world, the first woman to hold such a
post.
The music of Couperin has something of this feminine quality. It
is more truly “virginal” music than that which Queen Elizabeth
once played in her quiet chamber. But its grace is not hidden;
it is coquettish and conscious of itself. It is the high style
of grace which belongs to the French culture of the eighteenth
century. A spinet stands on a smooth parquet, and the ladies sit
around with their roguish eyes and tip-tilted noses, smiling at all
the well-recognised allusions, as the then flourishing pastel-art
has fixed them for us in light colours. It is light, entertaining
music, in which the thoughts of their own accord run on bright and
resplendent paths. Short pieces; _courantes_ with their lively,
scarcely broken triple-rhythms; _allemandes_ in their decorous and
interwoven quadruple time; _minuets_ with their pretty, melodious
triple rhythm; _chaconnes_ and _passacaglie_ rearing their piquant
erections on slow-moving basses; _sarabands_ in their triple movements
and interesting national colouring; _gavottes_ with their graceful
movement in soft two-time, the hurrying fugal _gigues_, and all
the many other unnamed dances--all these give the ear, without
exertion, a subtle delight. The rondo-form takes a supreme rank; it
is constantly growing from a simple round-dance with refrain into a
genuine clavier-composition, seeming to forebode the sonata which
still remains unborn within it. Its theme, like a Ritornel, recurs
among the “couplets” or episodical passages; but it is only seldom
that the couplets set themselves in conscious opposition to the theme.
Usually they adopt its rhythm or the character of its melody, and play
with it until, neatly and gracefully, they glide back into the theme
itself. There is no iron rigidity of thematic handling. A delicate
colour-sense holds the parts together. Couperin does not regulate
his pieces according to any definite scheme of dance-successions; he
binds the dance and the non-dance, the piece in one or more sections,
together into one bouquet which he offers to his lady-friends, often
with a polite dedication appended, under the general title of “Ordre.”
Twenty-seven such “Ordres,” in four volumes, were published by him
between 1713 and 1730.
[Illustration: Concert. Painting by Gerard Terborch (1617-1681), in
the Royal Museum at Berlin.]
The music of Couperin is as simple as possible. But we must not judge
its sound by the somewhat heavy pianofortes of our time, which,
even in the playfulness of a rapid passage, seem conscious of an
_arrière pensée_. No; the spinet, which, even at its saddest, had a
joyous exhilaration--this was the instrument of this playful music.
The passages glide on, usually in two voices, of which the one is
played by the right hand, the other by the left; and whether these
voices are tied in chords or chord passages, or whether--as occurs
more rarely--full chords, usually arpeggio, stand between, in either
case there is a delicacy which recalls to us the origin of French
clavier-music in the sweet-toned lute. But Couperin advanced yet
further. In his last “Ordres” his compositions increase in depth; the
more luxuriant conceptions and deeper feelings of a lesser Beethoven
show themselves; the playful and ornamental element recedes into
the background, and the compositions become those of a master who
has summed up whole centuries of music in himself. From the insipid
melodies of Lully’s time Couperin has fashioned more graceful and
charming turns of expression; not only roguishly dancing-melodies,
in which the vigorous popular songs seem to live again, but also
melodies of the intellect, in which the soul of Mozart might seem to
dwell. He prefers to advance in the diatonic scale; and the sense for
the general outline of the composition, which is so often wanting
in the older generation, is in him so unerring that he permits, with
inimitable skill, the semiquavers of his “papillons” to sway up and
down through entire bars. Yet occasionally his melodies seem ashamed
of their nakedness, and, as in the “Sailor’s Song,” draw the flowery
robe of adornments so closely round them that we can scarcely trace
their limbs. There are the well-known short and long grace-notes,
upper or lower, the _pincés_, _ports de voix_, _tremblements_, and the
whole apparatus of ornamentation, which was then larger than it is
now, and which, in spite of the stern admonitions of the composer’s
marks, was frequently at the mercy of the performer. Like almost all
composers of that day, Couperin gives in his first volume the table of
his ornamentations, but he insists strongly on their exact carrying
out. To players of to-day his _agréments_ are anything but pleasant.
They seem to destroy our sense for the pure run of the voices, and
are painful in their superabundance. But we must play them with
_historical_ fingers, and seek to understand the psychology of their
expression. They give to the quick clavier-tone a significance of its
own; they are, so to speak, running drills, cutting the tones deeper
into the relief of the piece, some more, some less, until they bring
out the light and shade which serve to aid expression in the material
of the clavier. Could we hear Couperin play, we should certainly
hear the pure voice more distinctly than we imagine, enfolded as
it would be here and there by deeper or brighter shadows of the
ornamentations which bring out its form in plastic manner. His was a
technique which was lost to us with the thorough comprehension of this
music. Couperin took pains to bring it to the highest perfection. At
times he introduced a slight tempo rubato; he took from the note at
the conclusion something of its length, and gave to another at the
beginning a short pause for breath, inventing for the former the mark
of aspiration, for the latter that of suspension. Here the endeavour
was the same as with Prall-triller[41] and grace-notes. Instead
of the ornamentation, the short pause, like the white mounting of
a picture, raises the important note, giving to it its meaning and
with the meaning the due expression. But later, in the last “Ordres,”
Couperin must have felt the inadequacy of these marks. The aspirations
and suspensions retreat into the background, while the sign ) becomes
more prominent. This sign simply marks off an independent musical
phrase in order to resign its due interpretation to the sympathetic
feeling of the player. Such is the trouble he takes with the
traditional style of ornamentation and its spiritual expression.
But the remaining musical peculiarities of his composition follow the
simplest lines of development. Freedom of motive increases. Tremolo
accompaniments, interesting sequences, a playful counterpoint--this
latter especially in the pieces for two claviers, or in the “Pièces
croisées” for clavier with two manuals--in fact an inexhaustible
array of new forms arises. Thus the harmonisation simplifies itself
along with the advance of the entire musical development. Couperin
modulates, into the dominant or sub-dominant, by means of their
related notes, in major and minor keys. By his turn for repetitions
of short figures on changing basses--a truly modern motive--or
by bold passages of passing notes--for instance, in the saraband
“La Majestueuse,” we find once e flat, d, f sharp, g, a, one over
another--he gives us interesting harmonies, which appear, especially
in the _allemandes_, as full, heavy chords, already anticipating Bach.
The theatre of Couperin is rich and varied. The representations
which we see in this theatre under the innumerable titles of the
pieces, range over the whole world. Some of the characters are
also not strange to us; others we soon learn to know; a few remain
unintelligible to us since the relations they betoken are too
subjective. But all lend to the pieces a personal value and an
intimate charm, as Goya’s editions present them to us; and it is from
them that the clavier derives its great significance as interpreter of
this intimate personal art.
“Nanette” greets us with her pleasant quavering melody; “Fleurie” is
more subtle, and sways delightfully in richly-adorned 6/8 time; the
“Florentine” blooms in graceful, gentle play of quick triolet-figures;
but the “Garnier” has the dress of the confined fantastic time,
having not yet cast off her heavy folds. “Babet” is “nonchalamment”
contented; “Mimi” has a temperament which the many slurs and points of
the ornamentation can scarcely fully exhibit. “Conti” (or “les Graces
incomparables”) works lullingly out her counterpoint; “Forqueray”
(or la Superbe) has a physiognomy of almost academic severity. Many
ladies pass by us in these pastel-portraits. We are amused with the
divine Babiche (Les amours badins) and the beautiful Javotte (or
the “Infanta”); but the most beautiful in melody is Sœur Monique,
an intellectually delicate creation, and the most beautiful in
construction is “La Couperin” (perhaps the musician’s cousin Louise)
who poses before us in a masterly, stately, and slightly fugal
movement.
Then follow the troops of nameless ones. First the nuns--the blondes
in the minor and the brunettes in the major section. Then the
charming and melodious representatives of landscapes: Ausonian,
Bourbon, Charlerois, Basque. Then the “Enchantress,” who of course
in process of time suffered much from her magic. Then the “Working
Woman,” who finishes her course, but is surpassed in it nevertheless
by the “Diligent One.” The “Flatterer” and the “Voluptuous Woman”
are a relatively quiet pair. The “Gloomy One” is sharply defined,
with her dismal, jerky passages, and the heavy full chords. The “Sad
One” exhibits the light sentimentality of all archaic melodies. The
“Spectre” sweeps past in slurred thirds. Close behind come the “Gray
Women” with their ponderous sad march. The “Fox-Tail” has tripping
broken chords; the “Lonely One” shows her caprices in the rapid
successions of grave and gay. Then follow, in endless succession, the
“Princesse d’Esprit,” “l’Insinuante,” “l’Intime,” “la Galante,” “la
Douce et Piquante,” faithful ones, _risqué_ ones, bold, visionary,
mysterious ones, with their chromatic descents. “Le Turbulent” is one
of the few men in the list.