The Golden Age of Church Counterpoint
The great Netherlands school--Okeghem and the mechanics of
music--Riddles in tone--The advent of pure beauty--Work of
Josquin des Prés--Attempts at expression by Willaert and
others--Secular music--Orlando Lasso and his beautiful works.
At the period of musical history which we have now reached, the Dutch,
as I have had occasion to say in another work, "led the world in
painting, in liberal arts, and in commercial enterprise. Their skill in
mechanics was unequalled, and we naturally expect to see their musicians
further the development of musical technic." The Dutch musicians at
first revelled in the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in the
construction of intricate contrapuntal music. In the first period of
their great school they acquired by such exercise so great a mastery of
the materials of their art that in the second period they began to make
serious attempts at writing beautiful music for beauty's sake. In the
third period the possibilities of writing something different from
church music began to be developed, and we find the Dutch masters
attempting the description in tones of external phenomena by the process
called tone-painting. This period also saw secular music taken into the
fold of art, and began the production of madrigals and other secular
songs. In the fourth period the dry old science of counterpoint was so
completely conquered that the composers of the time were able to make it
the vehicle of the purest expression of religious devotion the world has
yet found, and church music passed through its golden age. On account of
these facts let us consider this great school, which had more influence
on the development of music than any other school in the history of
music, under the following heads:--
NETHERLANDS SCHOOL (1425-1625 A. D.).
_First Period_ (1425-1512).--Perfection of contrapuntal
technics. Chief masters: Okeghem, Hobrecht, Brumel.
_Second Period_ (1455-1526).--Attempts at pure beauty. Chief
master, Josquin des Prés.
_Third Period_ (1495-1572).--Development of tone-painting and
secular music. Chief masters: Gombert, Willaert, Goudimel, Di
Rore, Jannequin, Arcadelt.
_Fourth Period_ (1520-1625).--Counterpoint made subservient to
expression of religious feeling. Chief masters: Orlando Lasso,
Swelinck, De Monte.
The reader will note that the division of these periods is not based on
chronological, but artistic grounds; and hence, in respect of years,
they overlap. The most famous writer of the first period was Johannes
Okeghem, born between 1415 and 1430, in East Flanders. He studied under
Binchois, a contemporary of Dufay, at Antwerp, was a singer in the
service of Charles VII. of France in 1444, was made by Louis XI.
Treasurer of the Cathedral of St. Martin's at Tours, and died there
about 1513. A considerable quantity of his music has been preserved. It
is notable chiefly for its technical skill; and during his life Okeghem
was the most famous teacher of his day. His most noted pupil was Antoine
Brumel (1460-1520), whose personal history is lost, though many of his
masses and motets are preserved. Jacob Hobrecht (1430-) achieved great
celebrity. Eight of his masses are extant. As I have said in another
account of the Netherlands school, "It is the prevailing influence of
one or two masters in each period that marks its extent. Its character
was formed by that influence, and salient features of the style of each
period may be fairly distinguished. The first period was marked by the
extreme development of the 'canon.'" I have already endeavored to
explain the nature of canonic writing. If the reader will bear in mind
that it is the most rigid form of imitation, requiring the original
melody to be imitated throughout in the subsidiary parts, he will not go
astray. Okeghem and his contemporaries completely explored the resources
of canonic writing. They invented all kinds of canons. They originated
the 'crab' canon, in which the part sung by the second voice was the
first voice part written backwards. Here is an example taken from a
text-book by Dr. Bridge:--
'CRAB' CANON, OR CANON RECTE ET RETRO.
[Music: _Begin at either end; play either forward or backward._]
You can sing or play this through forward and then backward, and its
counterpoint remains correct. They had also the inverted canon, in which
the second part consisted of the first part turned upside down. The
canon by augmentation makes the melody appear in a subsidiary part in
notes longer than those in which it appeared in the principal part; and
the canon by diminution is formed on the opposite principle. These old
musical puzzle-workers had other forms far more complicated, and they
took great delight in writing "riddle" canons. In these only the subject
was given, with the motto, "Ex una, plures," meaning that the musician
must work out the other parts from the one; and then some hint as to the
manner of working them out would be given, as, "Ad medium referas,
pauses relinque priores." The working out of these riddle canons became
a mania with Okeghem and his immediate successors; and the result was
that they acquired an immense command over the technics of contrapuntal
writing. But "the highest praise that can be awarded to their works is
that they are profound in their scholarship, not without evidences of
taste in the selection of the formulas to be employed, and certainly
imbued with a good deal of the dignity which would inevitably result
from a skilful contrapuntal treatment of the church chant." It is,
however, of singular significance in the history of this period that
some of the works of both Hobrecht and Brumel show a tendency toward
some conception of chord harmonies. Here is an example, which looks
modern:--
BEGINNING OF A MOTET BY BRUMEL.
(From Naumann's "History of Music.")
[Music: O Do-mi-ne Je-su Christ . . . . . e.]
On the whole, however, the first period of the Netherlands school was
characterized by a devotion to the mechanics of music. The second period
was illuminated and dominated by the famous Josquin des Prés, whose
music is still heard at times, and is still ravishing to the ear.
Josquin was born at Condé in or about 1450, and was a pupil of Okeghem.
He was a singer in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and on the death of
Sixtus IV., in 1484, went to the court of Hercules d'Est, Duke of
Ferrara. He was afterward a short time in the service of Louis XII. of
France, and finally of Maximilian I., Emperor of the Netherlands, who
made him provost of the Cathedral of Condé. In that town he died, on
August 27, 1521. A large number of his works exists. There are in print
nineteen masses, fifty secular pieces, and over one hundred and fifty
motets. Josquin is the first genius in the development of music who had
sufficient musical material already formulated to enable him to write
freely. His works are notable for their elegance of style, and for the
firm mastery of the difficult counterpoint of his time. Martin Luther,
noting how he moulded seemingly inflexible material to his purpose,
said, "Josquin is a master of the notes; they have to do as he wills;
other composers must do as the notes will." Baini, the biographer of
Palestrina, in describing the immense popularity of Josquin's
compositions, says that there was "only Josquin in Italy, only Josquin
in France, only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Bohemia, in
Hungary, in Spain, only Josquin." In its technical aspect Josquin's
music presents for consideration no special feature, except that he
wrote always in more than two parts. His music is notable chiefly for
its pure beauty, and he was the first composer to make a determined
effort to secure that. He was able to do this because his predecessors
had so fully developed the technics of polyphonic writing. Josquin,
however, was not without grave faults. He continued the practice of
using secular airs in the mass, and wrote a mass on "L'Omme Armée." He
also had the bad taste twice to set to music the genealogy of Christ, a
mere catalogue of names.
The third period was very rich in masters of ability. Of Gombert little
is known save that he was a pupil of Josquin. Adrian Willaert, the most
brilliant light of his period, was born at Bruges in 1480, and was a
pupil of either Josquin or Jean Mouton. After many changes he settled in
Venice, where on Dec. 12, 1527, the doge, Andrea Gritti, appointed him
chapel master of St. Mark's. He carried the teachings of the Netherlands
school into Italy, became the head of a great music school, was the
teacher of many noted organists, and had a profound and wide influence
on musical art. Claude Goudimel was born in 1510, founded a music school
in Rome, and was the teacher of the great Palestrina. He subsequently
went to Paris, became a Protestant, and was killed in the massacre on
St. Bartholomew's eve, Aug. 24, 1572. Cyprian di Rore was born in
Brabant in 1516, and succeeded Willaert as chapel master of St. Mark's
in Venice. He died in 1565. Clement Jannequin was a native of Flanders.
Little is known of his life, but some of his compositions are extant.
Willaert's work must first claim our attention. Finding two organs in
St. Mark's he introduced antiphonal writing into the music of his time.
He wrote some of his grand works for two choruses of four parts each, so
that each chorus could answer the other across the church. He paid much
less attention to rigid canonic style than his predecessors had done,
because it was not suited to the kind of music which he felt was fitting
for his church. He sought for grand, broad mass effects, which he
learned could be obtained only by the employment of frequent passages in
chords. So he began trying to write his counterpoint in such a way that
the voice parts should often come together in successions of chords. In
order to do this he was compelled to adopt the kind of chord formations
still in use and the fundamental chord relations of modern music,--the
tonic, dominant, and subdominant. The tonic is the chord of the key in
which one is writing; the subdominant is that of the fourth note of the
scale of that key; and the dominant that of the fifth, thus:--
[Music: Tonic. Subdominant. Dominant. Tonic.]
This is the succession of chords which children strum when they try to
play accompaniments on the piano. It is the simplest progression of
harmony we have, and lies at the basis of all our common tunes. It is
called diatonic harmony because it is formed of chords on the whole
tones of the scale, in contradistinction to chromatic harmony, founded
on the chords of the semitones. It is necessary to speak of chromatic
harmony here, because Cyprian di Rore made a special study of it, and
his "Chromatic Madrigals," published in 1544, had a great influence upon
the progress of music. The old church scales were essentially diatonic,
and chromatic harmonies were not practicable in music written in those
scales. Di Rore's madrigals were influential in showing composers how
they could write more flexibly and more beautifully by breaking the
shackles of the old Gregorian scales. Still, most of the music of that
time continued to be essentially diatonic, for the composers had just
begun to explore the possibilities of chord modulation. These
possibilities do not seem to have been exhausted even by the music of
Wagner.
The development of secular music at this time was remarkable. The
scientific composers began to make a practice of writing music to be
used outside of the church. They wrote madrigals and other part-songs of
real merit, and in them they made attempts at expression. Of course
these first attempts were purely imitative. The composers tried to
imitate natural sounds and movements in music. Gombert wrote a clever
and humorous "Bird Cantata." Jannequin, in his "Cris de Paris," tried to
paint the street life of the French capital, while his "Le Bataille" is
a military picture in music. These remarkable descriptive pieces were
written for four voices, unaccompanied, and in polyphonic style. After
trying to tell some kind of a story in secular music they tried it in
religious music. One of Willaert's motets, at any rate, tells the story
of Susannah, and is plainly a forerunner of the oratorio. We have seen
now how the first period of the Netherlands school brought contrapuntal
technics to a high state of development, how the second period produced
a genius and a desire for pure beauty, and how the third period
introduced a broader, simpler, and more imposing style into church music
and made definite attempts at expression. We now come to the fourth
period, which was destined to bring ecclesiastical counterpoint to its
perfection. This period also produced a master of splendid genius, whose
works live yet and ought to live as long as there is a place in the
Roman Church for pure and lofty music. This man was Roland Delattre,
usually known by the Italian form of his name, Orlando Lasso, or di
Lasso.
Lasso was born in Mons, between 1520 and 1530. He studied at home, at
Milan, Naples, and Rome, and at an early age became chapel master of the
Church of St. John Lateran. In 1557 he went to Munich as director of the
ducal choir. There he passed most of the remainder of his life, dying
there on June 14, 1594. He was a contemporary of the great Palestrina,
whose fame his far outshone. Lasso was celebrated all over Europe, was
employed and honored by monarchs, and was called the "Prince of Music."
He was one of the most prolific composers that ever lived. He is said to
have written 2,500 works. Many of his compositions are in print to-day,
and his quaintly beautiful madrigal, "Matona, mia cara," is often heard
in concert. Other composers of this period were Jan Peters Swelinck,
pupil of Cyprian di Rore, born at Deventer, 1540, died at Amsterdam,
1621, and Philip de Monte (1521-). Their work was by no means without
merit, but it was overshadowed by that of their great contemporary.
Lasso was a complete master of the counterpoint of his time, but he
aimed at making it a vehicle of expression for religious feeling, and
succeeded. He adapted his style to his purposes. Sometimes he wrote pure
hymn-tunes in four-part chords, much like our modern hymns. If he was
writing for grand and imposing effects, he could handle the most
complicated polyphony with ease. He wrote works for two and three
choirs, and other works for only two voices. His famous "Penitential
Psalms" are for two voices, and are marvellously beautiful and pathetic.
Yet some of Lasso's music is as old-fashioned and stiff as Okeghem's.
Again he becomes almost modern in his employment of chromatics. But
there is one notable feature of Lasso's work: it contains no parade of
contrapuntal difficulties for their own sake. On the contrary, it is
admirable for the skill with which it conceals its own mechanical
ingenuity and presents an appearance of spontaneity and fluency. It
abounds in the highest and purest expression of religious feeling, and
it is always beautiful as music per se. In fine we always know, when
listening to the works of Lasso, that we are in the presence of a
genius.
We have now reached the period at which Italy became the home of modern
music. Willaert and Di Rore in Venice, Goudimel and Lasso in Rome sowed
seed which was to produce beautiful fruit. At the same time influences
were at work which introduced a simpler style into music and which made
it an art more popular with the masses. One of these influences was the
music of those very masses. The popular songs of the day had, as we have
seen, long ago forced themselves upon the attention of the artistic
composers. The time was now approaching when those composers turned to
the popular music for suggestions as to the future development of their
art. Before entering upon an account of the birth of a new style in
music, the reader must go back with me and take a rapid view of the
growth of the folk-song.
FIRST STANZA OF "MATONA MIA CARA."
ORLANDO LASSO.
[Music: SOPRANO, ALTO, TENOR, BASS.]
Stanza:
Ma-to-na mi-a ca-ra
Mi fol-le-re can-zon
Ma-to-na mi-a ca-ra
Mi-fol-le-re can-zon
Can-tar sot-to fi-nes-tra
Lant-ze bu-on com-pag-non
Don, don, don,
di-ri di-ri
don, don, don, don;
Don, don, don,
di-ri di-ri
don, don, don, don.