two rows of keys; and certain well-known contemporaries of his. A
satire on the unheard-of successes of the famous Italian Soprano,
Cafarelli. From the Nicolas-Manskopf collection, Frankfort-on-Main.
Cafarelli’s cat is sitting in the foreground singing an Italian
parody. The persons represented are named on the right. The two verses
are as follows: “The concert of these great Italian masters would be
beautiful, if the cat did not join in. Just in the same way, the sweet
harmony of two souls joined by the god of Love is constantly being
interrupted by some animal or other.” ]
It gave to the Italian sonata of its time the same character of unity
which the rhythm of the dance gave to the French clavier-piece.
But, before the separate movements could reach their full formal
development, the emancipation of the thematic subjects from
counterpoint, and their absolute self-dependence, must be completed.
The Italian ear, from its mere pleasure in motive and its development,
released the subject from obligatory contrapuntal treatment. From the
old thin forms of toccata and capriccio sprang fugal exercises with
poor and limited themes, to which, so early as 1611, the old Francesco
Turini gives the sounding title of sonatas. They are full of the
passages associated with solo-instruments; they sound with flexible
melodies; they run off in the measured steps of the dance, and circle
round with repetitions of motives, groups, and movements. The point
which a Rameau, in his “Cyclopes,” attains by an extension of the
rondo-form--perhaps under the gentle influence of the sonata--is
reached by the Italian by formalising the free fantasia, under the
influence of the dance. It is _form_ at which everything on all sides
aims.
[Illustration]
In Scarlatti’s sonatas we have very rarely more than one movement;
the two-movement groups of the sonatas, numbered by Czerny 122 and
123, are exceptions. The pieces might be combined into sonatas on the
Corellian model but for the lack of slow movements, which Scarlatti
did not willingly write for the brilliant and spirited clavier. The
structure of the movements displays that perfect freedom which still
reigned in that springtime of the age of musical form. If we are
so inclined, we may often detect, as in the prototype, a[67] first
and a second theme; but the signs of this later form of the typical
sonata are still so hidden that in many pieces we might, with equal
justification, detect five or six themes in the more melodious or
decorative passages. All is in transition, but the thematic conception
is never left utterly in the background. The motives come out in
apparently reckless profusion, but scarcely one remains without its
adequate treatment. We observe all possible arrangements. Sonata
110 has a perfectly incongruous middle movement; in Sonata 111 a
moderato alternates with a presto, and both are repeated in fuller
elaboration. On the other hand some sonatas preserve throughout the
same rhythmical movement. As a rule the second part of a movement
concludes like the first, but in a different key, just as it began
like the first, but again in a different key; or sometimes Part II.
begins with some different motive from that of Part I., or even with
one absolutely new. Usually the beginnings of both parts are somewhat
stiff in their thematic, while their later course is usually more
free. The development of a main motive--which in later times begins
the second division of a movement in sonata form--is as yet confined
to no definite part. Not rarely it is despatched in the first part,
as in Sonata 169, where the dactylic-trochaic motive is so taken up,
more or less decidedly, in the first part, that only the very briefest
reminiscence is left for the second. The general construction is well
illustrated in the eighth sonata--runs of five semiquavers (_sic_) in
A minor[68]--a fugal movement proceeding in crotchets, diatonically
rising and chromatically descending--groups of diminished sevenths
descending to C--conclusion, the semiquaver motive again. Part II.:
the latter motive modulating from C, through G minor to D minor, with
an insertion of the former figure in crotchets, developed as in the
conclusion of Part I., and returning from D minor to A minor.
Formal structure is the be-all and end-all of the Italian sonata.
Technique is its very life. An inexhaustible brilliancy and exclusive
adaptation to the clavier is the characteristic of Scarlatti. He
has in his eye the thousand possibilities of clavier-technique,
and throughout his pieces there breathes a glow of enthusiasm which
draws us easily from beginning to end with the sweet grace of an
irresistible rhythm. The successive retardations, as in the arias of
his father Alessandro’s Rosaura, the changes of hands, the rivalry
of concerted violins, the delight in passages of quavers with thirds
and sixths as their harmonic accompaniment, such as is seen in the
pieces of Corelli, long-sustained notes with sudden leaps which seem
to be derived from the violin--all this is yet treated from the point
of view of the clavier, and, so to speak, new-born from it. There is
little song in Scarlatti, and a singing phrase is preferably repeated
with brilliant decorations; for the _leggiero_ is much better adapted
to the spinet than the _arioso_. As a rule, both hands roll on in a
two-voiced exercise in pure and simple movement without any additional
encumbrance of heavy harmonies. It is a spectacle of fireworks. Deep
bass-tones are suddenly introduced; high thirds fly off; thirds and
sixths are darted in; close arpeggios swell into monstrous bundles
as they are filled in with all possible passing-notes; octaves are
vigorously introduced; the hands steer in contrary motion, to one
another, away from one another; they are tied into chains of chords;
they release themselves alternately from the same chords, the same
groups, the same tones; unison passages in the meanwhile run up
and down; chromatic tone-ladders dart through, then slowly moving
phrases or still-standing isolated treble notes are seen confusedly
dotted over the changing bass as it runs up and down, in a kind
of upper pedal point; harsh sevenths one after another; repeated
notes, syncopated effects, parallel runs of semiquavers with leaping
side-notes, such as we know so well in Bach; sudden interchanges from
major to minor, a device of which the Neapolitan operas are so fond;
bold characterisation by means of sudden pauses; startling modulations
by means of chromatic passages; embellishments rarely introduced; a
delicate arrangement of tones from the severest fugues to the most
unrestrained bourrées, pastorales, or fanfares--such is the world
of Scarlatti’s clavier-music. The “plucked” clavier (clavichord)[69]
as yet does not admit of the delicacies of touch[70] which delight
us in the pianoforte; and its technique, too, will have to consider
the three main problems--how to arrange the musical conception in
the light and lively style suitable to the clavier, how effectively
to combine the two hands, and how to use the opportunities which
spring from the divided movements of the single hand. These three
problems--what the fingers can do, what the hands can do, and what
the clavier can do--are solved by Scarlatti with all the readiness
of his Italian temperament. His style luxuriates in the liveliest
crossings of the hands--a practice he is said to have diminished as
years increased his bodily dimensions; and his ideas blossom out
into a captivating, often eccentric freshness, as, for example, in
his fugal theme G, B♭, E flat, F sharp, B♭, C sharp [D] (ascending),
which he has taken as the foundation of his best known and perhaps
most splendid composition, the Cat’s Fugue. Legend indeed asserts that
these boldly combined tones were suggested to him by a cat gliding
along the keyboard.
The most distinguished names of those who have laboured with success
at the Italian clavier are those of Alberti,[71] whose preference
for the skilfully broken chord-accompaniment has given rise to
the title “Alberti Bass”; Durante, who was dry, calculating, and
destitute of emotion; Galuppi, the graceful and courtly; the somewhat
superficial Porpora; the subtle Paradies; and Turini, who is by far
the most brilliant of all the Italian inheritors of the mantle of
Scarlatti. They take two or three movements for a work; they combine
dance-pieces and sonata-pieces; they pursue new melodic and rhythmic
graces; but they all group themselves around or after their hero,
Domenico Scarlatti, who, as first and greatest, has ushered in the
pure Italian delight in sound as voiced by the clavier.[72]
[Illustration: An Octave Spinet (tuned an octave higher than usual).
18th century. De Wit collection.]
[44] Before 1746. Burney says they were printed in Venice.
[45] The engraving and printing of music was rare, even in
the case of popular masters, till late in the eighteenth
century. In most cases short and simple clavier pieces
were copied privately. This method of spreading works
about in our own time when printing has made everything
democratic is not lost, but made aristocratic. When Wagner
copies the Ninth Symphony, or when a scholar copies an old,
unpublished work, we have an instance of the personal love
of manual labour in a dilettante or scholar--the work of
the hand in an age of machinery.--[Author’s Note.]
[46] A far earlier exponent of pure virtuosity is found in
England in Dr John Bull, whose pieces, written a century
and a half before Dom. Scarlatti’s, bear every mark of
devotion to “pianistic,” as Bülow would call it. The author
seems to recognise this a few lines back.
[47] Plagiarism of the most thorough-going character was
common in the eighteenth century, and can hardly have been
accounted disgraceful, considering how frequently Handel
himself practised it, appropriating subjects of fugues,
long passages, and whole movements, from Stradella, Kerl,
Urio, Steffani, and others.
[48] A “spiritual” opera, or oratorio.
[49] A doubtful story. S. died _circa_ 1681, probably in
his bed.
[50] “Tearing the passion to tatters.”
[51] For instance, in the numerous seventeenth century
English “cantatas” for solo voice, and the contemporary
instrumental fantasias, where it is common to find short
sections in triple time breaking the continuity of the more
ordinary quadruple time.
[52] A notation for the lute was published as early as 1512.
[53] “Monochord” is synonymous with “Clavichord” here. The
word was often used for the keyed instrument, probably
because the “German” clavichord had tangents at the ends
of the levers, which cut off the right length of the
string, just as the moveable “bridge” of the acoustician’s
monochord of one single string does.
[54] Our modern notion of a “cantata” includes the free use
of a chorus; whereas the seventeenth century “cantata” was
for a solo voice with accompaniment of a single instrument,
harpsichord, lute, or viol da gamba.
[55] For instance, Corelli’s trios, two books (out of four)
of which are “suonate da camera,” chamber music, the rest
being “da chiesa,” for church.
[56] Two Gabrielis, uncle and nephew; the former, Andrea,
dating 1510-1586, the latter, Giovanni, 1557-1612. Andrea
was a pupil of Willaert and he succeeded Merulo as “second”
organist of St Mark’s, Venice, in 1566.
[57] “Canzone,” a sixteenth and seventeenth century term
for a sort of vocal madrigal.
[58] “Ricercari” (compare French “recherché”), the name of
a class of pieces for organ or cembalo in which the object
was to include as many ingenuities of counterpoint as
possible.
[59] Compare Byrd’s Cantiones Sacræ, 1575, where the pieces
are divided in this way, _e.g._, Pars Prima, Pars Secunda.
[60] Meaning that the fingers were held straight out,
and consequently only the first, second, and third (in
so-called “German” notation, 2, 3 and 4) would be in common
use, the ends being nearly of a length.
[61] It is difficult to set the limits of what is possible
in such matters; _e.g._--John Jenkins wrote a “Fancy” for
three viols, before 1667, which modulates from F major
through the whole set of flat keys, up to G flat, whence he
coolly turns a rather sharp corner home to F. No one would
have dared to suppose this possible.
[62] This might well be. Compare the first phrase of the
Recitative, which precedes Dido’s dying song in Purcell’s
“Dido and Æneas,” with the first phrase of Wolfram’s
recitative before the “Star” song in “Tannhäuser.”
[63] This _coloratura_ means the elaborate ornamentation
with which Corelli used to overlay the plain written violin
part. Joachim’s edition gives Corelli’s own version of the
sonatas as he himself used to play them.
[64] These in France were usually arranged adagio, allegro,
adagio; in Italy, allegro, adagio, allegro, but in both
countries they had found very early a stereotyped form for
the succession of their movements.--[Author’s Note.]
[65] Such things are found as late as Mozart; cf. overture
to Zauberflöte.
[66] The true origin of imitative counterpoint is almost
certainly the _Rota_, what is nowadays called a Round.
This sort of infinite canon was already perfect in the
thirteenth century in England. No doubt the _Rota_ itself
was invented by an accident.
[67] The “first” and “second” subjects are often very
clearly distinct in the binary form of Scarlatti. The
“second subject” is not a mere continuation of the “first”
in the subordinate key, as more generally it is in J. S.
Bach, but it is another melody altogether.
[68] The movement here described is apparently the “Presto”
on page 25 of the first volume of Mr Thomas Roseingrave’s
edition of Scarlatti. The groups, so-called, of “five
semiquavers,” are of four descending semiquavers, followed
by a crotchet, making five notes altogether.
[69] The action of all these keyed instruments, whether
called virginal, spinet, clavecin, clavichord, harpsichord,
cembalo, is the same, namely, a “plucking” of the string
by a projection of quill or leather. The exception is
the _German_ clavichord, which was not a keyed harp, but
a keyed “monochord,” with key levers in connection with
“tangents” of metal, which sounded the string and cut off
the right length of it at the same time.
[70] The _German_ clavichord referred to in the note was
able to produce a most delicate effect of tremolo or
repetition, called _Bebung_. This was possible simply on
account of the “tangential” action of the German instrument.
[71] Alberti rather deserves the title of an early
“decadent.” His broken-chord formula is mainly a way of
avoiding trouble in writing real passages.
[72] Pieces by Durante, Galuppi, Porpora, Paradies, and
Ferdinando Turini (1749-1812), also the disputed movements
mentioned on p. 82, which bear Rossi’s name, may be found
in Litolff’s publication “Les Maîtres du Clavecin.”
[Illustration: German Clavichord, 17th century, “gebunden” (explained
on page 22). De Wit collection.]
Bach
In 1717, when Scarlatti as yet dreamed not of his Spanish renown,
and shortly after Couperin’s first little pieces had appeared, the
Parisian clavecinist Marchand made a journey to Germany. At the Polish
court of Dresden he created a furore by his playing, and a famous
contest was the result, got up, as it appears, by intrigue, between
Marchand and an organist of Weimar, Johann Sebastian Bach. The King
was present in person. Marchand began by improvising variations on a
French song, and was loudly applauded. Bach then took the same theme,
but varied it twelve times over so marvellously that without further
contest he carried off the palm from his famous adversary, who, when
Bach proposed a competition on the organ, incontinently fled from
Dresden.
Who was this Bach, and what was this sudden development of German
music? Hitherto not much had been heard of it in foreign countries,
and on looking at the German tablatures[73] of the older time one
could only recognise an honourable but somewhat clumsy struggle. In
the sixteenth century, perhaps when, in wider circles, some mention
was made of the great vocal compositions of Isaac and Senfl, a certain
Nürnberger, Hasler by name, proposed himself to Gabrieli in Venice as
a pupil, and later his renown was heard at the courts of Vienna and
Dresden. In the next century another German, Johann Jakob Froberger,
was associated with Frescobaldi in Rome, and his fame also was
afterwards heard at the Viennese court. He cannot have been unpopular,
for a number of anecdotes clustered round his name. Froberger, and
with him Pachelbel of Nürnberg, began the emancipation of the clavier
in Germany. In the Hanse Towns of the north were good organists, such
as Buxtehude in Lübeck and Reincke in Hamburg; but no one in Italy or
France troubled himself with them.
The fame of Italian sonatas and French suites was such a matter of
course, that the Leipzig organist, Kuhnau, when he in 1700 published
his collections of genuinely German clavier-pieces, plumed himself
mightily, in his chatty prefaces, on the fact that now at last, even
in Germany, good music was to be had, which could take its place by
the side of the foreign. “Even in Germany,” he exclaimed, “oranges
and citrons at last bloom!” The excellent Kuhnau ventured to give
the title of sonata to a piece on the model of the Italian sonata da
camera, although it was written not for violin but for clavier. Hence
it is often said that he was the creator of the clavier-sonata. But
this piece has nothing in common with the later popular composition
of that name; it was a cento of several movements in various tempi,
as the suite was a cento of several dances. Nay, the Cyclopes of
Rameau stands nearer to the later type than this. The suites and
sonatas of Kuhnau are pure clavier-pieces, somewhat marred by the
usual failings of youth, and running every theme to death, but clear,
vigorous, and adapted to the fingers, smooth in feeling and modern
in technique. But the most curious work of Kuhnau is his “Biblical
Histories.” Here he illustrates on the clavier all kinds of Scriptural
stories, like the death of Goliath, the cure of Saul, the marriage of
Jacob, Hezekiah’s recovery, the life of Gideon, and Jacob’s death, in
sonata-form, on the model of the programme-music[74] of the time, and
with the assistance of verbal elucidations. Yet Kuhnau is as little as
Froberger or anyone else a forerunner of Bach, who so overshadows the
work of his predecessors that one may almost say he is independent of
them.
It is indeed hard to compare Bach even with the other wonders of the
history of art. For there is scarcely one who is so identical with
his art as is Bach with music. A Michel Angelo does not include a
Rembrandt, nor a Rembrandt a Monet; but in Bach there is a Beethoven,
a Schumann, a Wagner. I believe that if the Almighty had wished to
offer to men in sensible form what at that time was called music,
he would then have given them the work of Bach. In it there are the
deepest secrets of musical polyphony, as well as the most intense
degrees of decadent expression; the mysticism of the Middle Ages is
there no less than the perspective of the future. But content and form
are not dissociated as they are in history; they are identical, they
are one and the same, as they are in the philosophic concept of music.
Once, and perhaps once only, in this world has the “Thing in Itself”
been realised, and the difference between concept and actuality been
reduced to nothing. The history of music can be written with almost
exclusive reference to Bach. We might show how it has converged
towards him and again diverged from him in search of its special
partialities. We might point out how it revolves round him, comes to
him, and goes from him in the course of the centuries, just as in the
case of the imitative arts we show that they come from Nature and go
to her.
Bach’s life was the most uneventful conceivable. He made no journeys
to Rome and Paris; he learned musical literature by studying and
copying. A true “Old Master,” he sits with his serious, almost severe
countenance, in the midst of his large family of twenty children,
all musical, and composes for instruction or for his own pleasure,
without seeing many of his compositions printed. His renown had no
wide extent;[75] his bold extravagances aroused only that hostility
which does not bring honour, and in his successive posts at Arnstadt,
Weimar, Köthen, and Leipzig, he had little opportunity for sunning
himself in the rays of princely favour. A single moment of his life
perhaps stands out prominently, when Frederick the Great at one of his
concerts received the list of strangers in Potsdam, and interrupted
the playing to say to his officers, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.”
He was instantly summoned, and, in his travelling dress as he was,
improvised on a theme of the King’s, which, when completed and
published, he dedicated to the King as “Musikalisches Opfer.” When two
great men meet, the whole world feels the electric shock.
With the appearance of Bach the whole history of music turns to
Germany. And clavier-music, so far as it has a particular meaning, is
henceforth German. England, France, and Italy, sink either gradually
or suddenly into the background.
Bach’s clavier-music is a complete world, a mirror of his music as a
whole. As Nature is her whole self in every leaf, so in every piece
or group of pieces Bach is the whole Bach. Thus for the first time it
came about that the clavier became capable of interpreting the whole
nature of a great man. With the early Englishmen it was the embodiment
of the whole tone-poet; with Couperin the whole man, indeed, but a man
who was nothing but a dancer; with Scarlatti a whole clavier-player;
but with Bach the whole nature of a man of whom it is impossible to
say whether the musician or the intellect in him was the greater. This
was the first outstanding peak attained by the clavier.
The natural creative principle from which Bach works, that which gives
unity to his being, is the conception of counterpoint. Music can
be written in which every single voice is treated as an independent
line, and in which the art of combining these lines reaches the
highest possible development, as in a picture of Holbein--and this is
counterpoint. Or music could be written, in which an upper melody,
clearly illuminated, runs on an advancing basis of accompanying
harmony without much attention to purity of voice, as in a work of
Ribera--and this is the style resting on “accompaniment.” Bach’s
essence lies in the contrapuntal method. He conceives the voices _over
against_ one another; and at the very moment in which he interjects a
motive, there is a second or third motive introduced, embracing the
other in contrapuntal wise.
[Illustration: Konrad Pau(l)mann, the first German writer for keyed
instruments, blind. Died 1473. After a modern drawing by Wintter.]
Yet he has taken the accompaniment-style also into himself. Just as
little as he can ever be censured for defect in melody, so little
has he ever neglected the newer “secular” harmony--rather, he has
carried on his counterpoint in accordance with its laws. He has of
course as little respect as any other first class musician for the
common Italian accompaniment with its singing melody alone. If he
adopts it, it is in very discreet fashion; the richly decorated arioso
soaring above the vigorously moving _basso continuo_ in such delicate
arrangement that we think rather of an ornamented contrapuntal
passage than of a light singing voice accompanied by the cembalo with
_figured_ bass.
In this secularisation of counterpoint by means of the contrasting
features of an arioso, the foundation of a bass, and the modern system
of a network of harmony, he exhibits the characters of both musical
styles in one, and gives us the unification of two epochs, which
necessarily opened a boundless prospect into the future.